The Land of Promise: A Comedy in Four Acts (1922)

'Oh, very! But I was the hired man, and you'd never let me forget it. You thought yourself a darned sight better than me, because you could play the piano and speak French. But we ain't got a piano and there ain't anyone as speaks French nearer than Winnipeg.'

'I don't just see what you're driving at.'

'Parlor tricks ain't much good on the prairie. They're like dollar bills up in Hudson Bay country. Tobacco's the only thing you can trade with an Esquimaux. You can't cook very well, you don't know how to milk a cow; why, you can't even harness a horse.'

'Are you regretting your bargain already?'

'No,' he said, going over to the shelf in search of the matches, 'I guess I can teach you. But if I was you'--he paused, the lighted match in his fingers, to look at her--'I wouldn't put on any airs. We'll get on O. K., I guess, when we've shaken down.'

'You'll find I am perfectly capable of taking care of myself,' she said with emphasis, speaking each word slowly. She returned his steady gaze and felt a thrill of victory when he looked away.

'When two people live in a shack,' he went on as if she had not spoken, 'there's got to be a deal of give and take on both sides. As long as you do what I tell you you'll be all right.'

A sort of an angry smile crossed Nora's face.

'It's unfortunate that when anyone tells me to do a thing, I have an irresistible desire not to do it.'

'I guess I tumbled to that. You must get over it.'

'You've spoken to me once or twice in a way I don't like. I think we shall get on better if you ask me to do things.'

'Don't forget that I can make you do them,' he said brutally.

'How?' Really, he was amusing!

'Well, I'm stronger than you are.'

'A man can hardly use force in his dealings with a woman,' she reminded him.

'O-o-o-oh?'

'You seem surprised.'

'What's going to prevent him?'

'Don't be so silly,' she retorted as she turned to look once more out of the window. But her hands were clammy and, somehow, even though her back was turned toward him, she knew that he was smiling.

CHAPTER XIII

How much time elapsed before he spoke she had no means of knowing; probably, at most, two or three minutes. But to the woman gazing out blindly through the cobweb-covered window into the night, it might well have been hours. For some illogical reason, which she could not have explained to herself, she had the feeling that the victory in the coming struggle would lie with the one who kept silent the longer. To break the nerve-wrecking spell would be a betrayal of weakness.

None the less, she had arrived at the point when, the tension on her own nerves becoming too great, she felt she must scream, drive her clenched hand through the glass of the window, or perform some other act of hysterical violence; then he spoke, and in the ordinary tone of daily life.

'Well, I'm going to unpack my grip.'

The tone, together with the commonplace words, had the effect of a cold douche. She drew a sharp breath of relief, her hands unclenched. She was herself once more. She'd won.

She turned slowly, as if reluctant to abandon the starry prospect without, to find him bending over a clutter of things scattered about his half-emptied case. She had been about to say that she must see to unpacking some of her own things.

'Wash up them things.' He jerked his bowed head toward the littered table.

For the first time, his tone was curt.

But she was too much mistress of herself and the situation now