Chapter XV: Temptation

THE rush of harvest work was over. The threshing machines had gone, and all the men were busy on some other farmer’s holding. Even Tom was away most days helping his neighbours, as they had helped him. When all the corn in that neighbourhood was threshed out, then would begin the task of carrying it to Rownton for storage in the grain elevator there, until the cars could distribute it to the markets of the world.

At first Bertha was so thankful for the cessation from driving toil and release from the constant preparation of meals, that she just sat still and enjoyed the quiet. Then, alas! it began to pall, and she would have given a great deal just for the privilege of driving off in the mornings to help some sorely pressed housewife, as Eunice had come to help her. But this was not possible, because someone must be at home to take care of poor helpless Grace, and all that Bertha could do in the way of returning or passing on the kindness which had been shown to her was to send for the Smith babies from Blow End, and keep them for the whole four days that the engines were at the Smiths’ place, which was a very real help indeed; for little children not old enough to know where danger lies are apt to be a considerable care at threshing times, when no one has a moment to spare for keeping them out of danger.

Even the babies had gone home now, and there were only their own five small people to look after, and with no machinery about to excite their curiosity, they required so little taking care of, that Bertha had no worries on their account. She sat out on the veranda every day when her housework was done, professedly sewing, but half the time with her hands at rest, whilst her hungry gaze roamed the wide stretches of dun-coloured stubble in search of something, anything, which would break the monotony of those level sweeps of land, reaching on every side to the horizon, from which the wheat had been harvested.

“Oh, what would it be to see a grove of trees, a hill, and a waterfall!” she murmured, with such a wave of homesickness for the dear old life at Mestlebury, that her eyes grew blurred with tears, and she had to sit winking her eyes very hard to keep them from falling. Grace could see through the open door to the place where Bertha was sitting, and it would have been cruel exceedingly to let the poor thing even guess the riot of misery which was going on in the heart of Bertha at that moment. Suddenly she stood up and shaded her eyes with her hands, flicking away the tears with her fingers as she did so.

“What can you see?” enquired Grace from her couch.

“There is a man riding along the trail from Pentland Broads. I wonder who he can be?” Bertha answered.

“It would not be likely to be Tom, because he has gone in the other direction,” replied Grace. “It may be someone coming this way on business, or perhaps it is a visitor. Don’t worry about it, Bertha; the creature shall not disturb your peace. Just plant him, or her—if it is a woman—on a chair within reach of my tongue, and I will exert my conversational powers to the utmost until I tire the visitor into going away or until it is supper-time, just whichever comes first.”

“It is not a woman, that is certain, unless indeed it is a woman in rational dress and riding astride,” said Bertha, laughing. “So you will have to hold forth to a man until Tom comes home to relieve you. I never can talk to men—I do not know what to say; and as they never by any chance know what to say either, the result is decidedly embarrassing.”

“You may get over that some day, if you ever chance upon a congenial spirit, that is,” replied Grace, and then she dropped into silence, while Bertha got up and moved about in a restless fashion as the horseman came nearer and nearer.

She felt that she could not sit still and watch him coming nearer and nearer, for some strange instinct was telling her that he was a messenger of fate, but whether of good or bad she could not tell. She stirred up the embers in the stove and made the kettle boil. The arrival might like a cup of tea, and certainly Grace would be glad of one, for the hot weather wore her so much.

“Why, it is Mr. Long!” said Bertha, in surprise, as the horseman rode up the paddock. “I wonder what he can have come for?”

“Have patience and you shall know,” replied Grace, with a smile, and then a minute later the brother of Eunice Long drew rein before the house and greeted them with western heartiness.

“I had to ride through to Sussex Gap with a telegram that was paid right through to Jim Ford’s door, and as there were letters for you, I thought it would just be neighbourly to ride round this way and deliver them,” he said, with so much meaning in his manner as he looked at Bertha as to make her blush an uncomfortable red, for Mr. Long’s intentions were always quite painfully obvious.

But Grace came to the rescue with ready tact, calling out from her sofa, “Oh, Mr. Long, how nice of you to come! Why, it is ages since we have had a visitor, and now that Tom is away so much helping other people, it is downright lonesome. Come right in and sit down; you can talk to me while Bertha makes us a cup of tea. There are heaps of things I want to ask about.”

Mr. Long went in as he was invited, although, truth to tell, he would much rather have stayed outside talking to Bertha; but pity for poor Mrs. Ellis would not allow him even to seem to neglect her. And Grace displayed such an amazing thirst for information, that the poor man had no chance to talk to Bertha at all, which was just what Bertha wanted; for Mr. Long’s attempts at love-making were to the last degree embarrassing, while no amount of civil snubbing had the least effect upon him. He had brought two letters for Bertha, for which she was bound to feel grateful, as otherwise she would have had to wait until the next day or even the day after before getting them. One was from Hilda, and the other, a thick one, from Anne.

As she had not heard by the last two mails she was very eager to open them and read, so it was rather trying to be obliged to stay and make tea for Mr. Long and Grace, when she was aching to shut herself up in her room and tear open the envelopes. But there are limits to most things, and Mr. Long had to bring his visit to a close much sooner than he had intended, because that stupid Jim Ford had chosen to send a reply telegram, which he had to put on the wires without too much loss of time. However, he could come again soon, for now that harvest was almost at an end, it would be possible to think of something besides the eternal wheat theme, which, of course, had been the staple of thought and conversation for the last five months or so.

“Oh, I thought that he would never be done drinking tea!” sighed Bertha, when at last the visitor had mounted his horse and was riding away across the paddock. “Grace, do you want me to read any of your letters to you?” said Bertha, holding them one by one before her, so that she could see the addresses.

“No, thanks, they will all keep until Tom comes back; meanwhile, I will just lie and imagine what is in them, which is very good fun when one has nothing better to do. Run along, dearie, and enjoy yourself.”

Bertha needed no second bidding. Hurrying into her room, she shut her door and sat down by the window. She would be sure to cry—she always did when letters came from the girls—and it did not seem right to let Grace see the tears.

Hilda’s letter was not very long, and it was so packed with glowing accounts of her own doings, of the lovely time she was having, and how her music was improving under German teaching, that there was no room at all for enquiries as to how Bertha was getting on, or how the burden of work and responsibility was being carried.

“Anyone would think that she had not had my letter telling her about poor Grace,” said Bertha, with a little sigh of dissatisfaction, as she turned the sheet over, thinking that she had read it all. Then a short sentence crammed into a corner of one of the margins caught her eye, and she twisted the sheet round so that she could read it.

“Very sorry that Grace has had such a nasty accident. I hope
that she is quite well by this time. What a good thing that you
are with her to be a little help. I dare say that you cannot do
much, but every little counts, especially when there is sickness
in a house.”

Bertha laughed aloud, only the merriment had a hollow ring. She wondered what Hilda would think if she could see her wrestling with the work of every day—washing, cooking, mending, nursing, and, not least by any means, mothering the five little ones whose mother could no longer do it herself.

“I think that I will show it to Grace, and yet—no, I don’t think that I will. If I were Grace I should want more fuss than that to be made over my bad accident,” murmured Bertha, shaking her head in a dubious fashion, and then, laying it on one side, she reached for the envelope from Anne. When her sisters’ letters came together she always read the one from Anne last, because it had always more affection in it, and surely no one ever hungered for love more than Bertha.

Anne’s letter was long, and very serious in its tone. After commenting at length on the disaster which had overtaken poor Grace, she went on—

“Now comes the question of what to do about you. My husband and
I are both of one mind in the matter, and we want you to come
out to us here. This is a sparsely settled district, and you may
find it very dull, but it will be better for you than staying
with the Ellises now that poor Grace is so helpless. They may
even be glad not to have you, as you say the house is so small.
I suppose that Tom has had to get a housekeeper. I hope, for all
your sakes, that she is a capable body. Of course, dear, I know
that you would do anything you could for Grace and Tom, but it
is not as if you were able to take hold of work and do it. I
know how our little housekeeping at Mestlebury used to bother
you, and I am afraid that you must be very uncomfortable indeed
in such a muddled life as you must be living now. I am afraid
that I was sometimes not very patient with you, but oh, I have
regretted it so sorely since, and I fear that I must often have
judged you hardly in my ignorance and rude strength. But I will
do my best to atone when I get you here, and you shall have the
very easiest life that we can make for you. Ask Tom to advance
you the money for your journey, which we will at once repay when
we know how much it is, or if it is not convenient to him to do
this, cable to us and we will get the money sent to you as
quickly as possible. Poor little Bertha! It seemed to me at the
time that I was doing my very best for you, but if I had known
what was going to happen to Grace, of course I should never have
dreamed of sending you West. I suppose that what I really ought
to have done was to bring you out here with me. But I have
always so stoutly maintained that it is not fair to a man that
he should have to be hampered with his wife’s relations, and I
tried to live up to my theory. Although if I had known my
husband then as well as I know him now, I should have understood
how little difference it would have made. He is so good and
kind, that he would welcome not merely you, but Hilda also.
Therefore, little sister, have no doubts about your welcome, but
come to us as soon as you can.”

There was more of the same sort, and when she had read it a wave of the most terrible homesickness swept over Bertha. It seemed to her that she simply could not bear the hard life that she was living for another day. She must get out of it somehow, oh, she must, she must! Grace and Tom had no right to expect so much of her; it was not fair. Her sisters never expected her to be capable and efficient, and why should other people put such heavy burdens upon her?

It was true that Tom had generously increased her salary, and would have given her still more, only, knowing the struggle he was having, she would not accept it. But if he could pay her, of course he could pay someone else instead, and then she might slip the burden of this distressful family from her shoulders. Then she would go out to Australia and settle down to the old life of irresponsible ease, with nothing to do but to dream dreams and think noble thoughts. She might even attain to fame as a story-writer, although she was a little dubious about this, as a farm in the back-blocks of Australia did not seem exactly the place for acquiring knowledge.

“And it is knowledge that I need most of all,” murmured Bertha to herself, as she sat with the letter tightly clasped in her hand.

It was her only bit of wisdom to know that before she could write with any sort of power she must have knowledge, far more knowledge than at present she possessed. But her one idea of knowledge was that it must be gained from books, whereas by far the most valuable knowledge is gained at first hand by experience and observation.

“They must find a housekeeper and let me go; oh, they must let me go!” she muttered, standing up and stretching out her arms towards that point of the compass where she imagined Australia to be. “Oh, Anne, Anne, why didn’t you take me with you at the first?”

But she had inadvertently spoken aloud, and it was the sound of her own voice which aroused her to an understanding of her own selfishness. It was then that she realized it was more a desire for her own ease than from such a sick desire to see her sister that she was so anxious to go to Australia.

“Oh, what a horrible, low-down sort of nature mine must be, for it is only my own ease that I am thinking about!” she exclaimed, with an impatient shrug, and, springing to her feet, she bustled about her room for a few moments, just to get rid of those telltale marks of tears on her face, the sight of which would be sure to make poor Grace uncomfortable. Then presently she went out to the other room, to find Grace with an open letter in her hand.

“Why, why, however did you manage that?” demanded Bertha, for none of the children were in the house, and the letter had not been opened when she went to her room.

“I did it myself,” said Grace, with a sob of pure happiness. “Oh, Bertha, darling Bertha, I do believe that I am going to get better, for see, I can hold that finger and thumb quite close together, and I managed to scratch the envelope across that spike in the wall. I reached out to it, do you understand?”

“Hush, hush, you must not excite yourself so much or you may do yourself an injury,” said Bertha soothingly, for she was fairly frightened by the blaze in the eyes of Grace; then she said quietly, “I have noticed that you were getting more power. Eunice Long pointed it out to me when she was here helping at harvest time. But we did not say anything, because we did not know whether the improvement would go on, and it seemed so cruel to raise hopes that were not going to be realized.”

“But they are going to be realized now, oh, I am sure of it! Oh, to think that there is a ray of hope for me after all these weeks and weeks of black despair! Bertha, Bertha, do you know what it will mean to me and to my poor dear Tom?” and she burst into a fit of sobbing, her brave self-control breaking down at this tiny ray of hope, as it had never broken down since her hard fate overtook her.

Bertha dropped on her knees beside the couch, soothing Grace as she would have soothed one of the children. Such stormy emotion must surely be bad for the invalid, and it would shake the feeble spark of life in the helpless body, might indeed even shake it out, or so in her ignorance she feared. But Grace was soon quiet again, only there was a deep glow of happiness in her eyes, and the radiance of hope on the face which had grown so wan from the weeks of hopeless helplessness.

“Often and often I would have prayed to die, if it had not been for Tom,” said Grace, after a while, when she had grown calm enough to speak of this wonderful hope which had come to her. “But he said to me, on that first day when I realized that I was as helpless as a log, that he would rather have me like that than not have me at all, and that I should be ten times more his inspiration than I had been. So for his sake I had to keep hold of life for a little while, at least, until he and the children could do without me. But I don’t think that my courage for the effort would have held out if it had not been for you, dear. If I had seen the children neglected, or Tom bowed down with more worries than he could stagger under, I should have turned coward, and asked the good, kind Father in Heaven to take me out of this evil world, and spare me the sight of misery that I had no power to relieve. If I get better I shall owe it to you, for you have kept the hope alive in my heart.”

Bertha got on to her feet in a scrambling, unsteady fashion and rushed out on to the veranda. She was afraid that Grace would be able to read all the miserable selfish thoughts and desires that were in her heart, and she did not want to be despised at this the very sweetest moment in all her life.

No, she would not go to Australia, she could not. Anne and Hilda must think what they liked about her incapacity and general helplessness. She must be of some use in the world, for she had given Grace the courage to keep alive. It was a joy that more than repaid her for the hard toil, the monotony, and the unloveliness of her life. But the trouble was that the temptation would keep coming back, and for weeks afterwards, while the shortening days crept down to winter, and the sting of bitter cold came into the little house on the prairie, Bertha was fighting her longings for a life of leisured ease.