Neighbours Part 25

. I had not re-opened my suit. I had accepted her decision. But the old picture would come back, and this Christmas morning as it swam before my eyes it stirred within me an immeasurable poignancy of spirit.

"Merry Christmas!" shouted Marjorie, poking her head into my room.

Marjorie was going through a time of strangely mixed emotions. Her heart was light on her own account and heavy on mine, and in these days she found the bridge between laughter and tears an extremely narrow one.

Perhaps it was for that reason that her shout of "Merry Christmas!"

ended in something like a sob, and, with a little rush, she plunged on to my bed and threw her arms about me; she wrapped them around my neck and shoulders and drew my face to hers. And as her cheek lay against mine a little warm trickle of moisture wended its way down, upon, and across my lips, and I felt her frame tremble as it rested near me.

"Not crying, Marjorie; not crying, on this of all mornings!" I exclaimed, although my own throat was full. "Not crying, dear--on my account?"

To that question she snuggled closer, and after a little I heard her whispering in my ear. "It will come all right in time, Brother mine,"

she said; "all right in time. I can't think--I can't believe--anything else. Don't you feel--don't you _know_--that it will?" And so to soothe her, and that her greatest day might not be spoiled, I said I knew it would come all right in time, but there was a stone between my lungs and a band of iron about my chest.

Marjorie kissed me on the lips, then raised her face and dried her eyes.

Suddenly she sprang to her feet, and I could not but admit how very good she was to look upon. Her dark hair hung loose about her shoulders; she allowed herself no curl-paper nonsense, and indeed no device could have added to the beauty of her waving locks. She was still in her night dress, although she had drawn on something warm about her feet, and, like the good wife she was always to be, she had started the fire--a duty which I admitted properly fell to the man of the house. Perhaps it is because a man _should_ start the fire that he so greatly enjoys having his wife do it. I could hear the poplar sticks crackling as I lay watching her through moist and dreamy eyes. She was good to look upon; so different from Jean, but still so good!

"Hustle up, Frank," she cried, with a sudden return to her normal manner. "We have a lot to do to-day."

It was not until after our midday meal that I went over to Twenty-two.

Jean was in her room, but I mustered the spirit to chaff Jack with such a mingling of good wishes and humorous sallies as my brain could command, and we finished the whole with an impromptu sparring match in the middle of the kitchen floor.

"Watch your beak, old Sitting Crow!" I commanded, "or I'll send you to the minister with a busted mug," and I swung on him with enthusiasm. But Jack was handy with his fists, and something thumped in my eye like a piledriver.

"Aha!" said he. "The first of the wedding decorations. Let's make it a pair."

But at that moment Jean came out, looking so radiantly sorrowful, if one can look that way, that the glory of Marjorie seemed as the glory of one of the lesser planets against the sun. She came to me with an outstretched hand.

"Merry Christmas, Frank," she said, looking me squarely in the face.

"Why, what has happened to your eye?"

"I was just practising," said Jack, "and I want to exhibit this specimen of my handiwork to Marjorie before we are married. It is as well that she should understand----"

But Jean was gone in quest of b.u.t.ter, with which she rubbed my swelling eye, and the caress of her fingers was worth the punch it had cost.

It was now time to hitch the oxen to the rough sleigh or jumper which Jack and I had built. Into this the four of us could with some difficulty be packed, and as we reckoned it would take at least an hour for Buck and Bright to break trail to Spoof's, we loaded up and started on our journey at a little before two. Spoof had insisted that the ceremony should take place at his house, if for no other reason that there might be a honeymoon trip as far as from Two to Fourteen, and the minister was expected at three.

As the snow-clad prairie crept by to the leisurely plodding of Buck and Bright the mound which marked Spoof's house and stable gradually defined itself against the bright grey background of the December afternoon.

Spoof had been on the look-out, and while our oxen were still puffing and blowing at a considerable distance from the shack we saw him coming over the drifts with his great, rapid, English stride. He was beside us in a few minutes, his wind-tanned face wreathed in smiles, his white teeth gleaming under a short, sandy mustache to which of late he had been giving some encouragement.

"Merry Christmas!" he cried. "The merriest ever--ever!" He held out both arms, and we all shook hands at once, and I suspect that the bride-elect pressed a chaste kiss upon his cheek. But Jack, as lawful owner, could afford to be generous. Jean took no such liberty. That would have been different.

The inside of Spoof's shack was always an example of orderly overcrowding. It was full of useless furniture, inappropriate clothing, fire-arms, saddles and bridles, cartridge belts, smoker's equipment, tobacco tins, photographs, magazines, and an endless a.s.sortment of miscellaneous knicknacks, all carefully placed and tended. Even when Spoof occupied it alone it was something of a mystery where he found s.p.a.ce for himself in the midst of his possessions. But now Jean and Marjorie and Jack and I were crowded in as well, only to find a number of others already there.

Our eyes had not yet become accustomed to the semi-twilight of the interior when a familiar voice saluted us. "Merry Christmas, Sittin'

Crow, an' ev'rybody," it said. "Didn't I warn you'se what 'ud happen?"

It was Jake. He was sitting perched like a toad on the wood-box where he could expectorate with convenience into the ashpan of the stove. "We dragged him into the centre of the floor and in the melee that followed Jake lost his footing and at least three of us were precipitated with him.

"Oh, save my husband, save my husband!" cried Bella Donna, in mock alarm, while Spoof gravely remarked that perhaps the cogitation nut had come loose.

"I am the minister," said a straight, clean-looking young man, when the uproar over Jake had subsided. "My name is Locke. This is our good friend Reddy; pardon me, by the way, Reddy, what--what is your real name? I should know it for introduction purposes."

"I left it down East," said the individual addressed as Reddy, a slight, boyish looking figure with a shock of carroty hair.

"Well, Reddy it is, then," said the minister, and we shook hands all around. "Reddy is an important personage in our town," Mr. Locke continued. "In a sense he is my chief compet.i.tor. He runs the village pool room, and, I am afraid, draws bigger crowds that I do Wednesday nights, and perhaps on Sundays, too--behind the blinds."

"Not guilty," pleaded Reddy. "There are no blinds on the shop."

You may not know that the chief social inst.i.tution in the young prairie town is the pool room. It is the club house of the village and the community. It is usually a long, crude building of plain boards, unpainted inside or out, and equipped in its central part with a huge coal stove and three or four pool tables. The main entrance is in the centre of one end, and on one side of the entrance is a barber's chair, a tall mirror, and a shelf of razors, mugs, and clippers; on the opposite side of the entrance is a show case filled with tobacco in its various forms, with perhaps some boxes of candy and a slot machine where those of a sporting temperament may endeavor to "beat the house" for cigars. The fact that these attempts almost invariably end in failure does not seem to diminish their popularity. Into these pool rooms come the farmers to have their hair cut, or to enjoy the luxury of a bought shave, or to while away an hour while the horses rest in the livery barn, or because it is not late enough or too late to start for home.

Here come the townspeople; the blacksmith and the bank manager, the storekeeper and the grain buyer, the cattle dealer and the machine agent, to spend a lazy evening or a stormy afternoon and perhaps make the acquaintance of a possible customer. Here the commercial and social affairs of the community are discussed, and, to a large extent, settled.

Here, too, such t.i.t-bits of scandal as even the smallest village can afford are told and re-told, and lose nothing in the telling.

"I believe," said the minister, generously, "that Reddy's compet.i.tion is of a very honorable kind, and his presence here to-day is proof of his bigness of heart. As it was not convenient for his customers to come to him, he has come to his customers. He brings with him, I believe, a small tray of plain gold bands and a blank marriage license or two. I prevailed upon him to bring two or three extra licenses; it is always well to be prepared for emergencies." . . . .

I looked at Spoof and found him looking at me, and then I looked at Jean and found her looking at the floor, and a faint flush of color slowly spread about her face. The flat reception of the minister's pleasantry was relieved by Jake, who declared in favor of a total embargo on the marriage license business.

"At least it should take as long to get married as to prove up on a homestead," Jake remarked, "an' most fellows have a lucid interval once in three years."

"Humph!" said Bella Donna. "I bet you haven't had one in thirty."

"Looks like it, I admit," her husband retorted slyly.

When the formalities about the license were completed the minister had Jack and Marjorie stand together in the centre of the shack, and spoke the few simple words that made them man and wife under the law. We paid them the usual hackneyed compliments, and then stood around looking rather sheepish and wondering what to do next, until Reddy produced a box of chocolates and presented it to the bride. It was a simple thing, but in some way it loosed our tongues, and presently we were all laughing and wis.h.i.+ng each other Merry Christmas.

By this time the sun had set on the short December day, and night was drawing her grey curtains across the plains. I paid for the license on Jack's behalf and gave the change to the minister, and we were about to thank Spoof and say good-bye to the little company when they announced in concert that they were coming over to Fourteen. In vain we protested that the roads were bad, that the night was settling down, that the sky looked like a storm. All these perfectly good reasons why they should stay at home were converted into arguments why they should come. Spoof, as host, yoked up the oxen and insisted that he would drive the bridal party; our jumper would carry five as well as four. "It was built for two," he argued, "so one more will make no difference."

Finding that there was nothing else for it we accepted the inevitable and crowded in. Spoof provided rice, with which we all were liberally pelted; Jake fired two shots from a gun, and with much shouting at Buck and Bright and the world in general away we went at a pace of almost three miles an hour, dragging behind a chain of Spoof's discarded boots and overshoes.

When we were well under way our attention was suddenly arrested by a commotion in the rear. It was Jake with the "flying ants", and with Bella Donna and the minister and Reddy in his cutter. He was standing up, waving the loose ends of the reins about his head, and imprecating his horses into a gallop. In a moment he was upon us.

"Out o' the way, you old married people," he shouted. "I don' blame you fer goin' slow, but don' hold up the percession."

But Spoof had no intention that the bride and groom should surrender the place of honor. With many strange adjectives he goaded the oxen, and presently noted a slight acceleration in their movements. "We're making nearly four knots an hour," he shouted.

"That's nothing," the minister shouted back. "I made a knot in less than ten minutes."

But for all of Spoof's urging our oxen plodded stolidly along the wintry trail, now barely distinguishable from the grey whiteness of the plains.

Flakes of snow were falling, and on every side the pall of night surrounded us, drawing its circle closer and closer. The trail was firm, but the surrounding snow was loose and deep, and to pa.s.s us Jake would have to plunge his horses through it, at considerable risk of upsetting his cutter. The old land guide, however, hesitated not a moment for such a consideration as that. Swinging his horses from the trail he cut out at them with his whip, and they rushed by us, throwing a snowy spray like a torpedo boat pa.s.sing a liner.

But as it is so often the occasion that makes the man, so now was it the occasion that proved Spoof's resourcefulness. Climbing over the dashboard of the jumper he ran along the tongue and threw himself upon Buck's ample back, which immediately began to heave and gyrate with an entirely new motion. Whether it was as a protest against the liberty which Spoof had taken, or whether it was that the legs about his sides brought back memories of youthful days when some bare-legged urchin on a Manitoba farm rode him in wild triumph through the pasture field of the parental herd, matters not; the fact is that Buck presently broke into a most unprecedented gallop, and his mate, w.i.l.l.y-nilly, followed suit. They were just in time to prevent Jake's party getting on the trail ahead of us, and in great glee we careered by them.

"Forced draught!" shouted Spoof. "Fourteen knots!"

But our triumph was short lived. Unaccustomed to such speed, the oxen presently began to wobble in their course and suddenly floundered off the trail.

"Hard a-port, hard a-port!" Spoof shouted. But he was too late, or his directions were misunderstood. Over went the jumper, flinging its freshly married and other contents into the snow. The speed of the oxen wrenched the tongue from the wreck, and they continued homeward in greater haste than before.

Spoof jumped free and barely escaped a defiant flourish of Buck's heels as they flipped by him. Ruefully he gazed upon the wreckage.

"I told the bally bullocks to swing hard a-port," he explained, "and instead of that they slithered off to starboard."