Corporal Cameron of the North West Mounted Police Part 46

"It is pleasant to be appreciated and to carry away with one memories, I will not say tender, but appreciative."

"I can't act like a boor. I must be decent to the girl. Besides, she isn't altogether a fool."

"No, but very crude, very primitive, very pa.s.sionate, and therefore very defenseless."

"All right, I shall simply shake hands and go."

So, with the consequent sense of relief that high resolve always brings, Cameron lay down again and fell into slumber and dreams of home.

From these dreams of home Mandy recalled him with a summons to dinner.

As his eye, still filled with the vision of his dreams, fell upon her in all the gorgeous splendour of her Sunday dress, he was conscious of a strong sense of repulsion. How coa.r.s.e, how crude, how vulgar she appeared, how horribly out of keeping with those scenes through which he had just been wandering in his dreams.

"I want no dinner, Mandy," he said shortly. "I have a bad head and I am not hungry."

"No dinner?" That a man should not want dinner was to Mandy quite inexplicable, unless, indeed, he were ill.

"Are you sick?" she cried in quick alarm.

"No, I have a headache. It will pa.s.s away," said Cameron, turning over on his side. Still Mandy lingered.

"Let me bring you a nice piece of pie and a cup of tea."

Cameron shuddered.

"No," he said, "bring me nothing. I merely wish to sleep."

But Mandy refused to be driven away.

"Say, I'm awful sorry. I know you're sick."

"Nonsense!" said Cameron, impatiently, waiting for her to be gone. Still Mandy hesitated.

"I'm awful sorry," she said again, and her voice, deep, tender, full-toned, revealed her emotion.

Cameron turned impatiently towards her.

"Look here, Mandy! There's nothing wrong with me. I only want a little sleep. I shall be all right to-morrow."

But Mandy's fears were not to be allayed.

"Say," she cried, "you look awful bad."

"Oh, get out, Mandy! Go and get your dinner. Don't mind me." Cameron's tone was decidedly cross.

Without further remonstrance Mandy turned silently away, but before she turned Cameron caught the gleam of tears in the great blue eyes. A swift compunction seized him.

"I say, Mandy, I don't want to be rude, but--"

"Rude?" cried the girl. "You? You couldn't be. You are always good--to me--and--I--don't--know--" Here her voice broke.

"Oh, come, Mandy, get away to dinner. You are a good girl. Now leave me alone."

The kindness in his voice quite broke down Mandy's all too slight control. She turned away, audibly sniffling, with her ap.r.o.n to her eyes, leaving Cameron in a state of wrathful perplexity.

"Oh, confound it all!" he groaned to himself. "This is a rotten go. By Jove! This means the West for me. The West! After all, that's the place.

Here there is no chance anyway. Why did I not go sooner?"

He rose from the gra.s.s, s.h.i.+vering with a sudden chill, went to his bed in the hay mow, and, covering himself with Tim's blankets and his own, fell again into sleep. Here, late in the afternoon, Tim found him and called him to supper.

With Mandy's watchful eye upon him he went through the form of eating, but Mandy was not to be deceived.

"You ain't eatin' nothin'," she said reproachfully as he rose from the table.

"Enough for a man who is doing nothing," replied Cameron. "What I want is exercise. I think I shall take a walk."

"Going to church?" she enquired, an eager light springing into her eye.

"To church? I hadn't thought of it," replied Cameron, but, catching the gleam of a smile on Perkins' face and noting the utterly woebegone expression on Mandy's, he added, "Well, I might as well walk to church as any place else. You are going, Tim?"

"Huh huh!" replied Tim.

"I am going to hitch up Deck, Mandy," said Perkins.

"Oh, I'm goin' to walk!" said Mandy, emphatically.

"All right!" said Perkins. "Guess I'll walk too with the crowd."

"Don't mind me," said Mandy.

"I don't," laughed Perkins, "you bet! Nor anybody else."

"And that's no lie!" sniffed Mandy, with a toss of her head.

"Better drive to church, Mandy," suggested her mother. "You know you're jist tired out and it will be late when you get started."

"Tired? Late?" cried Mandy, with alacrity. "I'll be through them dishes in a jiffy and be ready in no time. I like the walk through the woods."

"Depends on the company," laughed Perkins again. "So do I. Guess we'll all go together."

True to her promise, Mandy was ready within half an hour. Cameron shuddered as he beheld the bewildering variety of colour in her attire and the still more bewildering arrangement of hat and hair.

"You're good and gay, Mandy," said Perkins. "What's the killing?"

Mandy made no reply save by a disdainful flirt of her skirts as she set off down the lane, followed by Perkins, Cameron and Tim bringing up the rear.

The lane was a gra.s.sy sward, cut with two wagon-wheel tracks, and with a picturesque snake fence on either side. Beyond the fences lay the fields, some of them with stubble raked clean, the next year's clover showing green above the yellow, some with the grain standing still in the shock, and some with the crop, the late oats for instance, still uncut, but ready for the reaper. The turnip field was splendidly and luxuriantly green with never a sign of the brown earth. The hay meadow, too, was green and purple with the second growth of clover.

So down the lane and between the shorn fields, yellow and green, between the clover fields and the turnips, they walked in silence, for the spell of the Sabbath evening lay upon the sunny fields, barred with the shadows from the trees that grew along the fence lines everywhere.

At the "slas.h.i.+ng" the wagon ruts faded out and the road narrowed to a single cow path, winding its way between stumps and round log piles, half hidden by a luxuriant growth of foxglove and fireweed and asters, and everywhere the glorious goldenrod. Then through the bars the path led into the woods, a n.o.ble remnant of the beech and elm and maple forest from which the farm had been cut some sixty years before. Cool and shadowy they stood, and shot through with bright shafts of gold from the westering sun, full of mysterious silence except for the twittering of the sleepy birds or for the remonstrant call of the sentinel crow from his watch tower on the dead top of a great elm. Deeper into the shade the path ran until in the gloom it faded almost out of sight.