Thunder rolled across the woods, but the lake sparkled in the sun. A light wind ruffled the shining surface and dark-blue smears broke the silver reflections. For three or four hundred yards the dusty cars curved along the bank, and the locomotive pump’s sharp throb pierced the languid splash of water.
Not far from the engine the track was cut. Gravel and ties and rails had gone down, and two broken freight cars blocked a swollen creek. Sweating, bare-armed men labored in the gap the flood had made. The shovels flashed and the gravel they threw about rattled noisily. Behind the train, rocks and woods rolled back to Hudson Bay.
Alison, under a slanted pine, occupied herself with some sewing. Kit helped the workmen who unloaded the broken cars, but by and by he climbed the bank.
“In Canada, the main thing is to get on a move. Economy’s not important,” he remarked. “I supposed they’d carry the undamaged goods back to the line, but the foreman’s orders were to fire the blamed stuff into the creek. It’s now going in. I wonder whether the company will meet the bill.”
“When do we start?” Alison inquired.
“They expect a construction train in two or three hours, but we may not get off for some time afterwards. Suppose we light a fire and picnic by the lake?”
Alison agreed, and he carried the basket along the line. The day was hot and groups of passengers sat on the car steps and lay about in the shade. For the most part their clothes were threadbare and dusty and their faces were lined. Kit thought they had known poverty in the countries from which they came, and after the stormy voyage they had sweated and jolted in the crowded Colonist cars. To rest by the way was some relief, and nobody was keen to resume the journey. In hot weather a Colonist car has drawbacks, and one gets train-sick.
Other groups loafed about the woods and picked wild berries. Where a smooth rock sloped down to the water, women washed clothes, and garments thrown down to dry dotted the stone. All but the children were quiet, and their shouts were spiritless. It looked as if a pilgrim caravan had stopped to rest in the lonely wilds. The locomotive pump and the noisy shovels struck a jarring, modern note.
Kit lighted a fire behind a rock and thin blue smoke floated across the water. The pine twigs snapped and one smelt the resin in the wood. In front, languid ripples beat the stones. Alison brewed coffee and unpacked the basket.
“Our stock gets low, but it ought to carry us to Winnipeg,” said Kit in a sober voice. “I expect another meal is all we’ll need.”
Alison gave him a quiet glance and then looked in front. Kit’s brows were knit, and she admitted she was melancholy. She was not a romantic sentimentalist and Kit was not a philanderer; in fact, he had told her something about Evelyn. They were travelling companions who had met by chance, and at Winnipeg their roads went different ways. Yet but for Kit Alison knew she would have been lonely, and some time before morning she must let him go. To think about it disturbed her.
“Where do you start for when we get to Winnipeg?” she asked.
“I think I’ll get off at Harper’s Bar. Gordon, the fellow with the frying-pan, talked about a new bridge and thought the engineer might engage me. Since you made friends of Gordon’s kiddies perhaps I owe you something. You see, I must get a job as soon as possible.”
“I owe you much,” said Alison. “Then the children were your friends.”
“Well, let’s agree they were our friends. I don’t know if mutual debts, so to speak, cancel out, but I hope they do not, and I don’t want to cancel mine. You undertook the housekeeping and you feasted me.”
Alison knew her debt would stand. When her pluck was breaking Kit braced her up. His jokes had banished her dreariness and in his society she had got back hope and calm.
“I wonder whether my train starts from Winnipeg before yours,” she said. “I wouldn’t like to be left at the station——”
“Yours goes first, and I’ll see you on board, but we won’t talk about it yet. Let’s pretend we’re picnicking in the Old Country; for example, at a tarn I know. Imagine the train and the pines have vanished, and red heath and bright green moss roll down to the water. Little Herdwick sheep dot the slopes, and at the top the moor is broken by a dark gash the storms have cut. A beck sparkles in the stones and at the bottom leaps across a ledge——”
“The tarn ripples,” said Alison. “A keen wind blows across the fells, but behind the steep bank, where the mountain ashes grow, the water’s smooth and stained by the peat. In the sun it shines like amber; where the clouds’ shadows fall it’s dark like claret.”
“Do you know the mountain ashes grow up the bank?”
“I know Swinset tarn,” said Alison. “Whinnyates is four or five miles off across the moor. But take your coffee. And you might give me the fruit can.”
Kit took the coffee and began his lunch, but after a time Alison looked up.
“You have stayed for a holiday at Netherdale?”
“That is so. In summer, Netherdale’s an attractive spot.”
“Were you at the post office? Mrs. Grey takes boarders.”
Kit hesitated. He did not want to say he was at Netherhall; for one thing, he believed his relations had done with him. Then Mrs. Carson was an important lady, and he would sooner Alison did not know Alan was his uncle.
“I stopped farther up the valley. You see, I wanted to get on the moors, and at the dalehead the fishing’s good.”
Alison gave him a queer look, and he wondered whether she knew Alan Carson preserved the fishing.
“When you were at Whinnyates I suppose you went to Netherdale village?” he said.
“For a time I was teacher at the school. To cross the moor was awkward, and in winter my pony could not face the storms. Then the pay was small and I was ambitious, but sometimes at the office I wanted to be back. Perhaps my habit is to undertake too big a job.”
“Ah,” said Kit, “when you get to the obstacles that bother you they begin to melt. The proper plan’s to set your mouth and shove ahead. Since you left Whinnyates I imagine you have gone some distance, but until you get where you want you mustn’t stop.”
“You’re an optimist,” Alison remarked with a smile. “Have you gone far?”
“I’ve gone back” said Kit rather moodily. “All the same, I am not beaten, and I expect to make a fresh start.”
For a few minutes Alison said nothing and Kit was quiet. He thought she sympathized and perhaps she was curious, but he doubted if she wanted him to give her his confidence. Anyhow, he had not boasted; he was not beaten. In the meantime he was sorry for Alison. For a girl to face loneliness and struggle in a new country was hard. All was fresh and to some extent antagonistic. She must obey rules she did not know and be resigned to much that jarred.
Kit thought Canadians had not much use for beginners, and to find an occupation might be awkward. He wondered whether Alison was daunted, and admitted he did not know. She was quiet and perhaps rather melancholy, but that was all. Anyhow, he could not help. At Winnipeg their roads forked and each must start alone. Kit owned he did not want to think about it.
“I wonder whether I can telegraph when we get to Winnipeg,” Alison said by and by. “If Florence knew when I’d arrive, she would meet me. One likes to be met. I’d hate to get off the cars and see nobody I knew. But perhaps the office will be shut.”
“I fancy the Canadian telegraph offices do not shut, and after a fixed time you can send a night letter, a long message for a small charge. We’ll send your friend a summons that will bring her to the station. After weighing words against pennies in England we can be royally extravagant.”
“Is your habit to weigh your words?” Alison inquired.
“In a telegram, yes,” said Kit. “I don’t know if it’s strange, but as a rule the pennies tipped the beam. When my remarks cost something, I’m parsimonious.”
Alison gave him a kind smile. “You’re modest. At all events, I’m glad you were not parsimonious on the train. Your humor helped——”
“Oh, well, I doubt if my humor’s cultivated, but it’s, so to speak, my stock-in-trade. You see, I may not get a post, and if I do not, I think I’ll push out for the lonely settlements and play the fiddle. It looks as if the North Americans are a strenuous rather than light-hearted lot, but so long as some days are dreary and folks are sad, perhaps to joke and play the fiddle is a useful job.”
Alison turned her head and looked about. The light wind had dropped and the sun was very hot. The calm lake shone dazzlingly and one smelt the pines, and the creosote in the railroad ties. But for the clash of shovels, all was quiet, and groups of listless emigrants occupied the belts of shade. Nobody talked, and the children had stopped their play. In the Canadian woods one knew them forlorn strangers.
“They’re tired, Kit,” said Alison. “Play them something.”
Kit went for his violin, and sitting in the stones, pulled the bow across the strings. His clothes were not conspicuous and his figure melted in the shadow of the trees. The calm water was like a sounding board, and when he began to play, the great composer’s march seemed to float across the lake. Alison wondered whether Kit consciously helped the illusion, for the music was distant and somehow fairylike. Perhaps it was monotonous, for Kit was satisfied to mark the rhythm, but she felt it called, and the measured beat carried her along. She pictured people going somewhere, going steadfastly, and she wanted to join their advance.
The emigrants were no longer listless. People turned their heads as if to see who played, and Alison thought a number knew the music, because they smiled. Some got up and came nearer the shady rock, but although Kit knew he had captured his audience he used control. Their stopping at the lake was but a rest by the way and nobody yet saw the journey’s end. One shouldered one’s load and went forward; that was all.
When Kit put down his violin a crowd surrounded the rock. Alison heard English voices and calls in languages she did not know.
“They have not had enough,” she said. “They want you to begin again.”
“I think not,” Kit replied. “I played the march on board the ship and we’ll try something fresh. All are not foreigners, and you’ll sing our lot a love song that’s famous where the English language goes.”
He put the fiddle to his neck and for a minute or two played, like an overture, two or three old Scottish airs. Then he nodded to Alison and began a prelude on the lower strings.
Alison got up. Her color was high, but she trusted Kit’s support. Her voice was steady and carried far.
“Maxwelltoun braes are bonnie——”
Kit knew she was going to triumph; his part was to help by quiet harmonies. As a rule her mood was sober, but he imagined she was moved by something of the tenderness and passion the dark North hides. Then, for the most part the British emigrants were North British, and Canada wears a Scottish stamp. Alison felt her power and she let herself go.
“Like dew on the gowan lying——”
Train hands came from baggage cars and the locomotive cab. They advanced noiselessly, and the crowd was still. In the distance shovels clashed, but the musical voice dominated all, and Burns’ love song floated, undisturbed, across the Canadian lake.
Kit lowered his violin, and Alison gave the crowd a shy smile. She was not a concert singer; all the music she knew she had studied at a village school. When the cheers and shouts began she blushed and turned to Kit.
“Let’s go. I don’t think I could sing again.”
They stole away, and when Kit put his violin in the car they followed the track. A throbbing noise rolled across the woods, and presently a long black plume of smoke streaked the trees. The throb got louder and the advancing smoke leaped from the forest as if shells exploded along its track. Kit knew a locomotive hauled a heavy load up-hill and he frowned. The construction gang would soon arrive, and when the line was mended the emigrant train would start.
“I expect they’re bringing a load of ballast and when they have dumped the stuff we’ll get off,” he remarked in a careless voice.
Alison said nothing. But for Kit, and another whom she had not seen for long, she had not a friend in the new country. Loneliness was hard to bear and to know Kit was about was some comfort. At Winnipeg they must separate.
They sat down in the shade by the broken track. The train had arrived and men swarmed about the line. The cars carried gravel and a massive plow topped the piles of stones. Kit was interested. The track was not like an English track; the rails were light and not altogether even. The cross-ties were loosely ballasted and some were out of line. Yet they carried loads Old Country engineers had not tried to move.
Then, for a thousand miles, the road pierced a wilderness where the traffic would not pay for locomotive coal. The men who pushed the line across the rocks and woods obviously had pluck. Moreover, when the road reached the plains, but for the Red River settlement, Manitoba was a wilderness. In the West, the plow followed the locomotive and where the rails went homesteads sprang up.
Kit thought the engineers’ haste was justified. They started the trains running and afterwards filled up the muskegs and cut out awkward curves. North Americans did not expect their work to stand; their children would use fresh plans. At Montreal merchants pulled down office blocks and built higher. The streets were bordered by scaffold poles, cranes rattled, and cement blew about. All was growing; one saw no static calm. Turmoil and destruction of the obsolete marked the nation’s swift advance.
Kit, however, did not want to philosophize, and he studied the construction gang. Old Country methods were obviously out of date; the engineers were not going to throw off the ballast by hand. The cars’ sides went down and the big plow forged ahead. A cataract of stones marked its progress along the train, and the shovel gang went forward behind the noisy wave. Hollows vanished and a bank of gravel soon stretched across the gap. Men dragged clanging rails and hammers beat.
“Everybody has got his job; I don’t see a fellow who could slack,” Kit remarked and laughed. “In a way, their hustling’s ominous. To keep up with a lot like that would bother a stranger!”
After a time the gravel train steamed away, and Kit and Alison went back along the line. Alison cooked supper, and when all was ready Kit picked up the basket.
“We shall not need the stuff that’s left and I don’t expect the emigrants’ children have got very much,” he said.
Alison agreed and Kit carried the basket to the Colonist car. She thought him melancholy, and when he came back she smiled. She herself was not cheerful, but at their last supper she must not brood. She served the meal and when Kit began to banter her she joked. The jokes, however, were flat and her appetite was not good. By and by she heard the conductor shout: “All aboard. Next stop’s Winnipeg.”
The cars jolted and the wheels began to roll. Alison put up the tin plates and got her sewing bag. The train slowly crossed the mended line and plunged into the woods. Rocks and tangled pines rolled by and thick smoke blew about the shaking cars. Kit studied the newspaper; Alison sewed and mused.