43 Homestead and boarding-house

And now George had the grand vision of the independent life of a landowner! Shades of dear papa’s dream! There was nothing to be done about it, except to let the disease run a swift, unhindered course. I hated to give up the little shop, just as it was well under way, but I had no desire to support throughout life, as mamma had done, a suspicion of blame for blocking a cherished dream.

George quit his job and returned to the Bonus Wires in the CPR telegraph office in Winnipeg. By his working double time, and our living in two small rooms, we managed to save enough money to make the fine gesture. He had filed a claim twenty-five miles north of Prince Albert, and during this winter the logs were cut for a house.

In the spring George set off in fine fettle to purchase a team of horses, a wagon, lumber for flooring, a pump, and such other requirements found necessary for the initial venture. I stopped off at Saskatoon to make arrangements about our furniture, some of which had been in storage, some rented to a supposedly reputable couple, who had disappeared with most of it.

I spent a couple of weeks with my former neighbour, Mrs. Gibson, an Englishwoman of great common sense and diversified talents. Before her marriage she had been the matron of a London hospital, and this gave us a common interest, for, to both of us, the human element was a source of endless speculation.

While I waited for George to send for me, I had the pleasure of helping my good friend prepare for a long-desired visit to England, doing my utmost to invade her innate modesty with frivolous ideas of personal adornment. It used to amuse us no end that Flo should be setting out to dazzle society, and I heading for the sticks to hibernate with a cow and eight chickens.

The important day dawned at last. Encumbered with small George, two grips; and a box of canned supplies, I left for Prince Albert, to be met there with the most comical sight that ever greeted my eyes. Friend husband was standing beside a spick new wagon, prefaced with the oddest team-mates that ever hugged a whiffle-tree. A mournful chestnut Clydesdale, and a stiff-legged western pony, who dangled in the traces like an ill-advised participle in a pompous speech. Catching my eye, George hastened to explain that the mare, a precious purchase two weeks past, had suddenly developed a lame foot, but the pony would serve our purpose for the moment. The three of us, atop the bright green wagon, made a pretty spectacle as we rattled out of town, the chestnut clomping sedately, and the pony dog-trotting jerkily, with insult in his eye.

The first part of the curious excursion was not too bad, although sitting in a springless wagon with a heavy youngster in your lap is not particularly restful; but a few miles out from town the air began to thicken with smoke fumes. Forest fires were raging in the north, and each slow mile brought us increasing discomfort. The rancid air stung the eyes and choked the breath.

The baby began to whimper and wail with thirst, his little eyes reddened from smoke. It was not much farther now, friend husband encouraged us, a few more miles and we should be there, or almost there. It was true that we should have to camp a few days in a deserted hut some distance from our land, but how fortunate the hut was there, since our own cabin was still unroofed.

What the dear man failed to mention was, that the last mile traversed a section that still smouldered and represented nothing so much as the remains of a gigantic Indian bivouac. The horses refused to budge through a field hot underfoot; and I envied them the comparative luxury of the road, where they were tethered, after I scrambled with George in the darkness over hummocks that scorched the soles of my shoes.

The cabin was not a thrilling habitation. It had been swept, it is true, and George had set up a bed. There was a table under a hole in the wall that was meant for a window, and there was a rusty iron box stove in the middle of the floor. A lantern gave us glimmering light, by which sickly beam I managed to make tea, fry bacon on a tin plate, and heat canned milk for the baby.

A wind sprang up, and freshened the air, which was gratifying, and I thought to myself that at least we should get a fair night’s sleep. But I had bargained without the mischief of the elements conspiring against a roof of shrunken poles draped with cracking clay. I had hardly settled the forty million kinks that were my body into a semblance of ease, when I realized that every gust of wind sent down a shower of fine dust and sundry creepy creatures that wriggled over my face.

That put an end to sleep, so far as I was concerned. I preferred to watch a huge silver moon racing dark dragon clouds through the night, to wrestling with sleep under a blanket of worms.

The next day George set up a tent, borrowed from a man who, with his sons, had filed on the claim next to ours. For which charity, and their help in finishing our own log cabin, I cooked endless meals for inexhaustible appetites, over open fires and the rickety heater, through the hottest weeks of the short, hot summer.

There was a cow which I had to learn to milk, and the chickens to keep from the hawks, clothes to wash, without any facilities, and the baby to mind. Finally, when the roof was up, the floor down, and a door in place, there was the familiar job of unpacking the household effects we had shipped, and creating a semblance of order and comfort within this shelter of Saskatchewan logs.

George had a grand time ploughing up a bit of land, cutting trees for firewood, finishing the well, clearing a road to the trail that meandered through the bush toward the one and only highway.

Then, suddenly, we awakened to the fact that the last of our money had magically disappeared, and the prospect of living off the bounty of the wilderness lost its fine allure.

Forthwith, he decided to go back to Winnipeg for a grubstake, and, in the meanwhile, I could keep the castle against the enemy.

The idea of being left alone in the depths of scrub timber, with my nearest English-speaking neighbour five miles away, was not a cheerful prospect. I had visions of myself in the black night, listening to the serenading of coyotes, and waiting for the brown bears that were plentiful in the bush to crash through the flimsy plank door on a friendly call, and the vision did not amuse me.

Fortunately, there was a Swedish family some miles away, whose eldest daughter, Ella, consented to spend the night with me. She could not be spared from home until late in the evening, but the thought of riding one of our ponies through the woods night and morning struck her as a glorious adventure, so that she was more than willing to hire out as my keeper. A grand girl she was, at that; cheerful and strong, and full of rough counsel that was both amusing and helpful. When work was less exacting at home she often spent the morning with me, which time we put to excellent use.

The cow took to wandering, and one rosy dawn we discovered that Bessie, the pony Ella rode, a beautiful little bay mare, had disappeared. A few hours’ search, and I found her fast to a willow shrub, in which the stake she was dragging had become tightly entangled. I decided that we must make some sort of corral for safeguarding our three obstreperous animals.

Tony, the pinto who had suffered the shame of teaming with a plough horse, Bessie, our pet, and the important cow had to be protected. Sure, said Ella, that’s no trick at all. Between the two of us we could saw the trees needed by dinner-time, and maybe dig the post-holes. To-morrow, we could finish the job; and so it was done, with, I must confess, some bruising of thumbs on my part, and much good-natured scorn from Ella.

During the long afternoons spent alone I finished chinking the house, using chips of poplar, and coating the seams with clay. I built a pen for chickens, roofed over with saplings to keep out the hawks. I made butter with a wooden dasher in a tin pail.

All was going merrily, until one morning, when a strange man arrived on the scene with a rifle under his arm. ‘Howdy, missus,’ said he, sober as judgement, ‘I heard you was here by yourself, and I got to thinkin’ you should have a firin’ piece. There’s a heap of vermin in these woods. So I brung you my rifle.’

That I had never touched a weapon in my life did not alter his good intentions. I must have it, and so he hung it on two nails over the bed, where the sight of it would be a comfort, and the reaching of it handy in emergency.

Thereafter, I naturally glanced twice at every shadow and suspected every clump of harbouring at least a lean, hungry bear, if not a desperate vagrant.

But the evening that actually produced a bear, the last thing I thought of was the rifle. I shut the door on the baby and myself, and, from the window, watched Mr. Bruin nosing round the yard, and never even remembered the comforting weapon hanging on the wall.

But my most frightening exploit had to do with the old mare who limped about the yard. It outraged my sense of justice that the creature should give up the ghost before she was paid for! Something must be done.

‘Well,’ said Ella, ‘pa says it sometimes helps to scrape the hoof, and put on a manure poultice.’

To do it, then, thought I, my heart sinking to the level of my boots. Ella fetched the mare to a sawed off tree stump, tied a rope round her leg, and heaved up the rotting hoof to the impromptu operating slab. While she held the animal captive I prodded and scraped, leaping back in terror each time the poor thing reared in the air when I struck a sensitive spot. No monster of nightmare was ever so huge and menacing as that mild old plug dancing on heavy hind legs! Every snort set me quaking like jelly, but I have yet to start a job I have not finished. The hoof was scraped clean, the foot firmly bandaged, and, I am pleased to say, the operation was entirely successful.

These crazy months had their value. It gave me an insight into the lives of pioneering people that no amount of visiting and yarning could have done. It gave me two memorable histories of brave women. The first of these was Ella’s mother. She would like me to visit her, the daughter said, for so few came to see her, and she was lonely. Ella could act as our interpreter, and, besides, mamma was beginning to understand a little English; and I had a little Swedish.

I shall never forget that first visit. The house—such a small, insufferable house for so many occupants—was spotlessly clean. The table, set in the middle of the rough floor, was covered with a fine cloth, and loaded with innumerable Swedish dishes. Two beds flanked either wall; a wooden settle stood under the window; the stove and cupboards filled the far corner. A sideboard, at the foot of one bed, and some benches, completed the furniture—no, there was an amazing picture on the wall; the picture of a beautiful country estate in beautiful southern Sweden.

Ella saw me staring at it, and in an almost surly tone said: ‘That was mamma’s home.’

Then Mrs. W. came hurrying in from some chore or other, and I knew that her daughter had spoken the truth, and, to some extent, why her voice betrayed an element of resentment. Between the tall, gentle, sad-eyed woman who greeted me in a soft, restrained voice, and the sturdy peasant who was her daughter, no affinity was remotely possible. They were so dissimilar that I could guess for myself the kind of rude, elemental, handsome creature Mrs. W. had married, heaven knows why.

And I was right. Mr. W. was the sort of male who stomps through life with hooves of iron; proud of his word; proud of his vitality—he was never sick, never wrong, never defeated. He had been a contractor, and had lost his money. No matter. He would make more, another, better start on the land. His wife and children could work the homestead, while he plied his trade in town. Work was good for the soul, and women were designed for the hearth and the comfort of men.

By degrees, I learned something of what this finely nurtured woman had endured, and what had come to be the most insupportable. It was not nice, she said, in her faltering, fumbling English, to be so many in one room. It—it hurt so, inside—it was not nice, having the children grow up so—so insensitive.

She seldom said anything of the endless back-breaking drudgery, except the day following a heavy rain, when I found her carrying all the bedding out of doors to dry. Then half apologetically, she said:

‘If only Mr. W. would fix the roof, it would help so much. I can’t seem to get the sod right myself.’

Mr. W. had no time for such nonsense. A little water in the house didn’t hurt any one. There were kids enough to help her haul the stuff about. Time meant money, and money was more important than pampering kids and women folk.

What she did confess with restrained bitterness was the one thing she found so hard to forgive: the death of her little seven-year-old boy. Not so strong as the others, yet he had to take his turn helping papa in the woods, lopping branches of the newly felled trees. It was cold, perhaps the child was benumbed, and a little stupid with chill and weariness. He had not been quick enough when a spruce crashed down. It had crushed his skull.

‘Oh, dear God! I cannot forget it, she moaned, hiding the tears with her reddened hands, ‘I cannot forget—when I take him to my arms—the brains spill over my apron—’

My other friend had no such tragic memories, nor was she bound to a man of incompatible temperament or desires. But she had her troubles, none the less which she faced with that amiable cheerfulness characteristic of most English people.

Before the War this charming couple, whose courtesy and way of life amused some of their neighbours, had been upper servants in one of those places that Noel Coward has satirized as The Stately Homes of England. Mrs. F. had been lady something or other’s personal maid; Mr. F., the butler. He went to war, was wounded and honourably discharged. While convalescing he began to ponder his former ways of life, only to discover that he had lost all taste for such a moribund existence. Anything would be better than a senseless round of bowing and scraping and polished dissembling. He heard of the lands opened up to returned soldiers in Canada. So here they were, and here they were glad to be.

I used to visit them regularly, once a week, and quite an adventure it was, packing a three-year-old five miles, coming and going, over a blazed trail. But it was worth any effort to reach that bright little home, where a cup of tea and intelligent conversation enriched the hours with peculiar charm. There was no place like it in the entire settlement. It was a lovely bit of England, going on bravely amid the sticks.

Flowers bloomed at the windows, and in the young garden before the house order and neatness prevailed as much as within. All the usual clutter and claptrap of Canadian homesteads was noticeably missing. Nearly all the furniture was made from boxes and crates that had crossed the sea and half a continent. Little cupboards for pretty dishes; bookshelves, and a dressing-table—which vastly amused bucolic housewives who found no merit in well-groomed hair and a good complexion. I had met that ridicule myself; been loudly laughed at by Ella for fussing with my hands after each bout with the chores. Fancy going to the trouble of making hand lotion from carefully rendered fat, boracic acid, and a dash of toilet water! Oh, she would get over all that nonsense, the practical ladies assured my little friend: curling her hair, wearing white aprons, using sheets, instead of grey blankets, and—of all things!—napkins at the table!

‘But I do not want to get over these things,’ said little Mrs. F. ‘We came to Canada to preserve our self-respect. These things mean just that to me. See, I have made my little everyday napkins from bleached flour-sacking, to save my few good ones. It may be long before we can buy anything of the sort—but I should hate to save work on the decencies of life.’

There was a moment, however, when she had been faced by a sore dilemma. It was when her husband’s last trousers showed a treacherous tendency to fall apart. There was no money to buy even a cheap, ready-made pair, but she remembered a length of tweed cloth she had brought from England. So, with as much fear as I had attacked that rotted hoof, the resourceful lady took the precious trousers apart, studied their mysterious details and then fashioned a creditable copy from her tweed. The fit was not perfect, she admitted; a bit baggy perhaps, and lumpy about the pockets. But how proudly they had dressed and gone to church that Sunday! How sure that any and all miracles were possible in Canada!

My own experiment in homesteading was coming to a swifter conclusion than I had anticipated. One dark and chilly night I heard my husband’s voice singing on the trail, announcing in his fashion his unexpected return. There was no more extra work, and, judging from the slump in business, no likelihood of immediate improvement.

Taking stock of our scant resources next day, it was obvious that we should not be able to remain where we were. The cabin was not proof against Saskatchewan weather; there was no shelter for the cow and the horses, no crop of any kind, and not enough money to feed ourselves for more than two or three months. So far as I could see, the only possible solution was to use what money we had to bring our furniture from Saskatoon, pay a month’s rent on a house in Prince Albert, and set up a boarding-house.

In less than a week I had found a big, rambling, nine-room brick and stucco dwelling. It had good lines, and an attractive yard, well treed, and not too unkempt; but the interior was dingy from indifferent housekeeping. While we waited for the household effects we scrubbed and scraped floors and woodwork and wainscotting, varnished and painted and cleaned the wall-paper with oatmeal and brown paper.

This done, I had sixteen windows to curtain, lengthening, shortening, dipping, and refrilling what material I had. Then I organized the kitchen. Fortunately, I had nearly a hundred sealers of fruit and vegetables left from my cold-packing orgy, when, on the whiff of pickles, plums, peaches, I had eased myself through the religions of the world. This, with a thirty-five-dollar grocery order obtained on credit from our Saskatoon grocer, was my stock in trade. No, not quite all—I had the cow, and I knew how to cook!

Well, any one who has tried this easy way to fame and fortune knows what the first few weeks entail. The anxiety that no one may appear to patronize the shining rooms, enjoy the menus planned and pinned on the kitchen wall; the even greater anxiety when the first two or three angels draw out of the dark!

However, in a little over a month the rooms were rented, and I had thirteen people to cook for. Most of them were students, some of whom only came in for their meals. There were two young lawyers, a dentist, and a poor, shell-shocked soldier, whom I had not the heart to turn away, although he often frightened the girls with his bursts of violence. He did not take his meals in the house—people worried him too much—but he liked his quiet room. He liked to have me talk to him, now and then. He had a passion for The Lady of the Lake, which he read and re-read as he nibbled hazel-nuts.

It was a hectic period. To begin with, when a new roomer appeared I had to dash off to purchase, on the strength of his rent, what was required for his or her comfort. I had not enough beds or bedding, and every sort of goods was outrageously high in 1918. Food was scarce and the price prohibitive, especially of eggs and butter; flour was often of very poor quality. To set an attractive table on a limited budget under these circumstances required some resourcefulness. I used to buy meat by the quarter. I baked twenty-two loaves of bread weekly; eleven brown at one setting, the same number of white, the next. I had no help, a huge house to keep in order, a child to care for, and all those endless meals to prepare on a coal range. George attended to the outside chores, and helped me with the dishes and peeling vegetables when he could. But his principle occupation was to cut firewood in the bush, and haul it to the house. An occupation we find amusing in retrospect, although it was not so funny in sub-zero weather.

It was not a perfect holiday. I was so tired by the time I went to bed that sleep was usually a lottery with few fine prizes. I would toss about, going over the meals, racking my brains for new ways of serving the same old vegetables, making frantic note of the things Mr. So-and-So could not eat, and Miss So-and-So must not eat, and trying to anticipate something which might please them.

It was not just a matter of getting three orderly meals prepared. Not all these people took breakfast, or lunch, at the same time; dinner was the only meal to which I might expect them all at the same hour. Breakfast repeated itself until nine, and lunch until two. That left a short afternoon to bake pies, cakes, and bread, shop for supplies, dress myself and the baby, before getting down to the business of cooking the main meal of the day.

The dinner dishes done, I had to scour milk pans, set the milk, get things in order for the morning, bath the baby, and, after he was put to bed, wash his little clothes. I had always changed his things twice a day, making little checked rompers for the morning, and something more cheerful for the afternoon.

He was an attractive child, with heavy fair hair and a clear, healthy complexion. He was very little trouble, for he had never been fussed with, was never fed between meals, nor allowed pastries or candy, and had his own little meals on a kindergarten table, and therefore was quite content to amuse himself in his own small corner. Even so, I sometimes used to wish I had four pair of hands and at least two heads.

There was a morning that stands out in my mind as something of a test of patience. One of the roomers had come in very late, and had failed to close the door properly. When I came down to get breakfast the house was like ice, all my cherished houseplants frozen, and the water pipes emitting gay fountains all over the kitchen floor. The floor was a miniature lake, but, being at a lower level than the dining-room, the water had not penetrated there.

But breakfast must go on. While George, who is a cheerful soul, though sometimes short on temper, fired the furnace with something more than wood, and flew about with a wrench, dismembering water pipes, I fed my sizable family, sloshing through the icy water in rubbers. When the meal was over, one of the young lawyers stepped into the kitchen.

‘Lady!’ said he, ‘I take off my hat to you! Most women would have sat and wept, and sent us packing!’

A welcome pat, bless him—warming to the heart, if not to the pedal extremities.

For the most part, they were all nice young people. I used to enjoy their chatter at dinner. It gave me an opportunity to compare their reactions and opinions, to mark how differently those youngsters, with ample allowance for all their needs, accepted life, as compared with those whose background was less secure and comfortable. How certain those fortunate ones were that all was well with the world, and all their opinions correct! How utterly unconscious of the fact that nothing but the accident of birth had given them this happy philosophy. How easy it was to foresee them as the future solid citizens, suspicious of new things, and sworn to the comfortable, easy virtues!

I like them all: the little prigs and the little rebels equally. If I had any preferences, it was for the lonely soldier and the young lawyer, who had always a happy word in awkward moments—although such moments were usually of his own creating, for he was an incurable tease and an outrageous flirt. The girls were in a continual dither. The moment he entered, on went their company faces, and out cropped all their sweetest guile; and none of it made the slightest impression.

This matriarchal regime was not destined to survive. The flu epidemic struck Prince Albert with such violence that it produced near panic. Ill reports multiplied daily, and all conversation turned, sooner or later, upon some unfortunate and speedy death.

One morning, the young dentist could not rise from his bed; and no sooner had he been taken to the hospital than all my young folk fled; all but the aforementioned lawyer and the soldier. So here we were, with an empty house, the town in a panic, and no means of subsistence; back where we started, all the work and worry equally futile.

Then I came down with the flu. That did not particularly upset me. I had had a bout with it when it struck before; had it in Saskatoon, at a time when I happened to be alone in the house, my husband away in the country.

There is no point in labouring that experience; but, since I had survived nights and days of raging fever, when, drenched with perspiration, I had to drag myself out of bed to tend to the baby, I certainly had no reason to fly into a panic now. George was home, and did what he could for me, keeping the house warm, fetching me hot lemonades, putting wet cloths on my head, and caring for the child.

To be sure, when three days passed and I was still on my back, his patience cracked a bit. If I were as ill as this, I should have a doctor. I didn’t seem to be making much headway at this rate, etc., etc.; all very sensible, but not particularly soothing. I did not want a doctor, for I was suffering from the complex an empty pocket so readily creates. I was thinking of the rent to be paid, of the grocer, and the butcher, and the vacant rooms; of the fixed overhead, which neither doom nor death altered. I had not the heart to run up bills for myself.

Meanwhile, George was not idle. I question that even the ease of Paradise would reduce him to such luxury! He flew about doing a thousand things, sending wires and letters, scouting some job, going to the bush for firewood, tending the cow and the horses and the house. He had discovered he was not born to the soil, so he contracted with a returned soldier to take the homestead off his hands. And, at the darkest moment, as so often happens, he found an opening in the railway service. An operator was needed at Biggar, Saskatchewan. He had to leave at once.

So there I was, scarcely able to leave my bed, with a barn of a house in midwinter. The furnace was of the old-fashioned variety, fed four-foot logs of wood. I had to sit down on the cellar steps after each stoking orgy.

However, in a few days I had sufficient energy to form some sort of plan. I decided to auction all the household effects, except my books, the piano, some kitchen ware, and dishes; and thus square my accounts and be free to make another start.

When it came to making ready for the sale and packing what I could not keep, one of the girls came back, offering to help me—a girl of mixed blood and limited means; and my soldier insisted upon crating the books and tying boxes. He also insisted upon spending the last night in the house, after the furniture was sold, sleeping on a mattress in his empty room. It has been my experience in a not too easy life that publicans and sinners, and the humble of earth, are more dependable in an unpopular hour than their respected brethren.