Nora had known gentlemen farmers in England who worked hard, riding about their estates every day supervising and directing everything, and who seemed, from their conversation, to take it all seriously enough. She had made all allowance for the rougher life in a new and unsettled country. There was something picturesque and romantic about the frontiersman which had always appealed to her imagination. She had read a little of him and had seen a play in London the night she recognized Reggie from afar, where the scene was laid in the Far West. On returning to the hotel she had looked with new interest at Eddie's photograph and tried to picture him in the costume worn by the leading man.
But to find that her own brother, a man of education and refinement, actually worked with his own hands like a common laborer and--what to Nora's mind was infinitely more incomprehensible--on a footing of perfect equality with his hired men, calling them familiarly by their given names and being called "Ed" in turn, was a distinctly disagreeable revelation. That they should be familiar with Gertie was quite another matter. Probably they were acquaintances of long standing dating back to her old hotel days.
Her sister-in-law, too, was absolutely different from the type she had imagined. Always she had seen her as one of those vapid, pretty little creatures who had become old long before her time; peevish, spoiled, inclined to be flirtatious, refusing to give up her youth, still living in the recollection of her little day of triumph.
Gertie fulfilled only one of these conditions. She was a small woman, not nearly so tall as Nora herself. In all else she was as different as possible from what she had imagined. There could never have been anything of the 'clinging vine' about Gertie. As a girl she might have been handsome in an almost masculine way; pretty, in the generally accepted sense, she could never have been.
Her one coquetry seemed to be in the matter of shoes. Her feet were unbelievably small. Nora divined that she was inordinately proud of them. While always scrupulously neat, she was apparently indifferent to clothes so long as they were clean and not absolutely shabby. But her high-heeled shoes were the smartest that could be had from Winnipeg.
And as for her being soft and spoiled! Never was there a more tireless and hard-working creature. From early morning till late at night she was never idle. She was a perfect human dynamo of force and energy. The cooking and washing for the 'family' which, now that Nora was here, consisted of six persons, four of whom were men with the appetites which naturally come with a long day's work in the open air, in itself was no light task. But, by way of recreation, after the supper dishes had been washed up, Gertie darned socks, mended shirts, patched trousers for the men folk or sewed on some garment for herself. Nora longed to see her sit with folded hands just once.
That she was as devoted to her husband as he to her there could be no doubt. All other men were a matter of complete indifference to her. Were they good workers or shirkers? That was the only thing about them of any interest. But she was not the sort of woman to show tenderness or affection.
Eddie had apparently the greatest respect for her judgment in all matters pertaining to the running of the farm. Frequently in the evenings they sat together in the far corner of the living room, Eddie talking in a low voice, while Gertie, always at her eternal sewing, listened with close attention, often nodding her head in approval, but occasionally shaking it vehemently when any project failed to meet with her approbation. Occasionally her sharp bird-like glance flashed over the other occupants of the room: at the three men yarning lazily by the big stove or playing cards at the dining table and at Nora making a pretense of reading a six-months-old magazine, or writing, her portfolio on her knee. Always, when Nora encountered that glance, she understood its exultant message.
"Look, you," it said as plainly as if it had been couched in actual words, "look at me ruling over my little court, advising, as a queen might, with her prime minister. You think yourself my superior, you with your fine-lady's airs and graces! A pretty pass your education and accomplishments have brought you to. Of what use are you to anyone?"
There was no blinking the fact: the antagonism between the two women was too instinctive, too deep ever to be more than superficially covered over. They each recognized it. And yet neither was wholly to blame. It had its roots in conditions that were far more significant than mere personal feeling.
Nora, for her part, had come to her brother's house with the sincere intention of doing everything in her power to win her sister-in-law's good will if not affection. She had believed that their common fondness for Eddie would be a sure foundation on which to build. But from the first, without being at all conscious of it, her manner breathed patronage and disapproval of a mode of life so foreign to all her experience. She had made the resolution to remember nothing of Gertie's humble origin, to treat her in every way with the deference due her brother's wife.
Gertie, too, had made good resolutions. She was at heart the more generous nature of the two. She was prepared to find her husband's sister unskilled to the point of incompetency in all the housewifely lore of which she was past mistress; for she, too, had her traditions. She would have laughed at the idea that it was possible for her to be jealous of anybody. But secretly she knew that there was one thing which aroused in her a frenzy of jealous rage; that was those years of her husband's life in which she had neither part nor lot. Any reference to his old life 'at home' fairly maddened her.
And deep down in her heart, each woman nursed a grievance. With Gertie it was the remembrance of the angry letter of protest which Nora had written her brother when she learned of his approaching marriage and which he had been indiscreet enough to show her; with Nora, it was the recollection of Gertie's laugh the night of her arrival when her brother's hired servant had dared to take her for a moment in his arms.
Still, any open rupture might have been avoided or at least delayed for several months longer, if either could have been persuaded to exercise a little more patience and self-control. Each of them, in her different way, had known adversity. Both of them had had to learn to control tempers naturally high while they were still dependent. But it never occurred to either of them that the obligation to do so still existed.
From Gertie's point of view, Nora was just as much a dependent as in the days when she was a hired companion to a rich woman. It was her house in law and in fact, for her husband had made it over to her. It was her bread that she ate, her bed she slept in. It behooved her, therefore, to be a little less lofty and condescending. She had always known how it would be, and it was only because the project seemed so near her husband's heart that she had consented to such an experiment.
In simple justice it must be said that such a thought had never entered Nora's head. She had accepted gladly her brother's invitation to make her home with him. What more natural that he should offer it, now that he was able to do so? In return she was perfectly willing to do everything she could to help in all the woman's work about the house as far as her ignorance would permit. It could hardly be expected that she would be as proficient in household work as a person who had done it all her life. She was more than willing to concede her sister-in-law's superiority in all such matters. And she was perfectly ready to learn all that Gertie would teach her. She had, in everything, been prepared to meet her half-way; further she would not go. For the rest, it was her brother's place to protect her.