There were but few passengers at this season so that beyond the daily exchange of ordinary courtesies, she was able to pass much of the time by herself. The weather was unusually fine for the time of year. It was possible to spend almost all the daylight hours on deck, and with night came long hours of dreamless sleep such as she never remembered to have enjoyed since childhood. As a consequence, it was a thoroughly rejuvenated Nora that landed in Montreal. The stress and strain of the past summer was forgotten or only to be looked back upon as a sort of horrid nightmare from which she had happily awakened.
It was too late in the day after they had landed to think of continuing her journey. Besides, as is often the case with people who have stood a sea voyage without experiencing any disagreeable sensations, Nora found that she still felt the motion of the boat after landing.
It seemed a pity, too, not to see something of this new-world city while she was on the ground. Her brother's farm was still an incredible distance farther west. People thought nothing of distance in this amazing New World. Still, it might easily be long before she would be here again. The future was a blank page. There was a delightful irresponsibility about the thought. She had come over the sea at her brother's bidding. The future was his care, not hers.
The journey west had the same charm of novelty that the sea voyage had had. The nearest station to Eddie's farm was a place called Dyer in the Province of Manitoba, not far from Winnipeg. Once inured to the new and strange mode of traveling in Canada, so different from what she had been accustomed to, Nora prepared to enjoy it. Never before had she realized the possibilities of beauty in a winter landscape. The flying prospect without the window fascinated her. The magazines and papers with which she had provided herself lay unopened in her lap. She realized that these vast snow-covered stretches might easily drive one mad with their loneliness and desolation if one had to live among them. But to rush through them as they were doing was exhilarating. It was all so strange, so contrary to any previous experience, that Nora had an uncanny feeling that they might easily have left the earth she knew and be flying through space. She whimsically thought that if at the next stop she were to be told that she was on the planet Mars, she would not be greatly astonished. It was like traveling with Alice in Wonderland.
One thing, however, recalled her to earth and prosaic mundane affairs: her supply of money was rapidly getting dangerously low. Barring accident, she would have enough to get her to Dyer, where Eddie was to meet her. But suppose they should be snowed up for a day or two? Only an hour before she had been thrilled with an account of just such an experience which a man in the seat in front of her was recounting to his companion. Well, if that happened, she would either have to go hungry or beg food from the more affluent of her fellow-passengers! Fortunately she was not obliged to put their generosity to the test. The train arrived at Dyer without accident only a few minutes behind the scheduled time.
There were a number of people at the station as Nora alighted. For a moment she had a horrid fear that either she had been put off at the wrong place or that her brother had failed to meet her. Certainly none of the fur-coated figures were in the least familiar. But almost at once one of the men detached himself from the waiting group on the platform and after one hesitating second came toward her.
"Nora, my child, I hardly knew you! I was forgetting that you would be a grown woman," and Nora was half smothered in a furry embrace and kissed on both cheeks before she was quite sure that the advancing stranger was her brother.
"Oh, Eddie, dear, I didn't know you at all. But how can one be expected to with that great cap covering the upper part of your face and a coat collar hiding nearly all the rest. But you really haven't changed, now that I get a look at you. I daresay I have altered more than you. But I was little more than a child when you went away."
"Well, we have quite a little drive ahead of us," said Eddie as, having himself helped to carry Nora's trunks to a nondescript-looking vehicle to which were attached two horses, he motioned to Nora to get in. "I expect you won't be sorry to have a little air after being so long in a stuffy car."
Nora noticed that he gave the man who had helped him with the trunks no tip and that they called each other "Joe" and "Ed." This was democracy with a vengeance. She made a little face of disapproval.
Nora never forgot that drive. In the light of after-events it seemed to have cut her off more sharply from all the old life than either the crossing of the pathless sea or the long overland journey. It was taken for the most part in silence, Eddie's attention being largely taken up with his team. Also Nora noted that he seemed to feel the cold more than she did, as he kept his coat collar turned up all the way. She herself was so occupied with her thoughts that she had no sense of either time or distance.
At last they came in sight of a house such as she had never seen. It was built entirely of logs. At the sound of their approach, the one visible door opened on the crack as if to avoid letting in the cold, and Nora saw a thin dark little woman with rather a hard look and a curiously dried-up skin, whom she rightly guessed to be her sister-in-law, standing in the doorway, while lounging nonchalantly against the doorpost was a tall, strong, well-set-up young man whose age might have been anything between thirty and thirty-five. He had remarkably clean-cut features and was clean-shaven. His frankly humorous gaze rested unabashed on the stranger's face.
Forgetting all her good resolutions to adapt herself to the habits and customs of this new country, Nora felt that she could have struck him in his impudent face. The fact that she reddened under his scrutiny, naturally only made her the more furious.
"Come on out here, some of you," called Eddie jovially. "Heavens! The way you all hug the stove would make anyone believe you'd never seen a Canadian winter before in your lives. Here, Frank, lend a hand with these trunks and call Ben to take the horses. Gertie, this is Nora. Now you need never be lonely again."
"Pleased to make your acquaintance," said Gertie primly.
The man called Frank, the one who had been honoring Nora with his regard, came forward with a hand outstretched to help her alight, while another man, the ordinary type of English laborer placed himself at the horses' heads.
"Come, hop out, Nora."
There was nothing else to do, Nora put the very tips of her fingers into the outstretched hand. To her unspeakable indignation, she felt herself lifted bodily out and actually carried inside the door. At her smothered exclamation, Gertie gave a shrill laugh.
CHAPTER VI
Three weeks had passed with inconceivable rapidity, leaving Nora with the dazed feeling that one has sometimes when waking from a fantastic dream.
There were moments when she was overwhelmed with the utter hopelessness of ever being able to adapt herself to a mode of life so foreign to all her traditions. She had, she told herself, been prepared to find everything different from life at home; and, while she had smiled--on that day such ages ago when young Hornby had called on her at Tunbridge Wells to announce his impending departure from the land of his birth--at his airy theory that the life of the Canadian farmer was largely occupied with riding, hunting, dancing and tennis, she found to her dismay that her own mental picture of her brother's existence had been nearly as far from the reality.
On the drive over from the station, Eddie had vaguely remarked that he had a great surprise for her when she reached the house. Nora had paid but little attention at the moment, thinking that he probably meant the house itself. What had been her astonishment--when once her rage at being lifted bodily from the sled by the man called Frank had permitted of her feeling any other emotion--to find Reginald Hornby himself an inmate of her brother's household. There was but little trace of the ultra smart young Londoner, beyond his still carefully kept hair and mustache. The only difference between his costume and that of the others was that his overalls were newer and that his flannel shirt was plainly a Piccadilly product.