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

'But you couldn't go back now,' said Nora, her face aglow, 'you couldn't. You never could be happy or contented in a little shop after the life you've had out here. And think; if you'd stayed back in England, you'd have always been at the beck and call of somebody else. And you own your land. You couldn't do that back in England. Every time you come out of your door and look at the growing wheat, aren't you proud to think that it's all yours? I know you are. I've seen it in your face.'

'You don't know all that I've had to put up with. When the children came, only once did I have a doctor. All the rest of the times, Sid was all the help I had. I might as well have been an animal! I wish I'd never left home and come to this country, that I do!'

'How can you say that? Look at your children, how strong and healthy they are. And think what a future they will have. Why, they'll be able to help you both in your work soon. You've given them a chance; they'd never have had a chance back home. You know that.'

'Oh, it's all very well for them. They'll have it easy, I know that. Easier than their poor father and mother ever had. But we've had to pay for it all in advance, Sid and me. They'll never know what we paid.'

'Ah, but don't you see that it is because you were the first?' said Nora, going over to her and laying a friendly hand upon her arm. Mrs. Sharp was, of course, too preoccupied with her own troubles to realize, even if she had known that the question of Nora's return to England had come up, that her friend was doing some special pleading for herself, against herself. But to her brother, who years before had in a lesser degree gone through the same searching experience, the cause of her warmth was clear. He nodded his approval.

'It's bitter work, opening up a new country, I realize that,' Nora went on, her eyes dark with earnestness.

Unknown to herself, she had a larger audience, for Hornby and Frank stood silently in the open door. Marsh saw them, and shook his head slightly. He wanted Nora to finish.

'What if it is the others who reap the harvest? Don't you really believe that those who break the ground are rewarded in a way that the later comers never dream of? I do.'

'She's right there,' broke in Marsh. 'I shall never forget, Mrs. Sharp, what I felt when I saw my first crop spring up--the thought that never since the world began had wheat grown on that little bit of ground before. Oh, it was wonderful! I wouldn't go back to England now, to live, for anything in the world. I couldn't breathe.'

'You're a man. You have the best of it, and all the credit.'

'Not with everyone,' said Nora. She fell on her knees beside the elder woman's chair and stroked her work-roughened old hand.

'The outsiders don't know. You mustn't blame them, how could they? It's only those who've lived on the prairie who could know that the chief burden of the hardships of opening up a new country falls upon the women. But the men who are the husbands, they know, and in their hearts they give us all credit.'

'I guess they do, Mrs. Sharp,' said Marsh earnestly.

Mrs. Sharp smiled gratefully on Nora through her tears.

'Thank you for speaking so kindly to me, my dear. I know that you are right in every blessed thing you've said. You must excuse me for being a bit downhearted for the moment. The fact is, I'm that nervous that I hardly know what I'm saying. But you've done me no end of good.'

'That's right.' Nora got slowly to her feet. 'Sid and Frank will be here in a minute or two, I am sure.'

'And you're perfectly right, both of you,' Mrs. Sharp repeated. 'I couldn't go back and live in England again. If we lose our crop, well, we must hang on some way till next year. We shan't starve, exactly. A person's got to take the rough with the smooth; and take it by and large, it's a good country.'

'Ah, now you're talking more like yourself, the self that used to cheer me up when----'

Turning, she saw her husband standing in the doorway.