44 Birth of an author

It is true that every evil has its germ of good. Life looked pretty black—which, doubtless, was just the state of my liver; it seemed to me that all my best efforts to conform to the time-honoured duties of women had brought me nothing but endless work and disillusionment. I had no life of my own, no inner satisfaction, no feeling of justifying my existence. When I watched the sale of piece after piece that represented so many dresses sewn, so many coats, so many hours of placating the whims of fussy customers; hours that other housewives spent in social pleasures, I made up my mind that I should appropriate something of the spoils. I made up my mind to use some of this money for a course in English.

Biggar was not an inspiring village, nor were the houses to let any woman’s dream of bliss. We found a small cottage, minus all modern improvements and on the very edge of a windswept plain, that, after the usual painting and varnishing, was comfortable enough. It was heated by stoves and lighted with lamps, in the good old ancient manner. As soon as I had completed the household arrangements, I enrolled with the Extension Department of an American school, and put my mind upon syntax and composition.

While the March wind howled and filled the earth and air with snow, I sat there under the kerosine light, trying to recapture my one-time passion for words, tearing through dry lessons on technicalities, some quite familiar, and perceiving by degrees that none of this was what I really wanted.

I wrote to the school, asking to be permitted to submit compositions for corrections, rather than papers on parts of speech, and so forth. But, of course, that was out of their province.

So I disregarded their scholastic advice, and wrote for myself, with no better guide than my sense of rhythm and dislike of useless verbiage. I wrote verse for two reasons: first, because the simple forms were no effort; and secondly, because it focused my thoughts to a restricted, short, set medium. But I should never have dreamed of imposing these gymnastics upon any one. Not until I had written quite a batch of rhymes that showed a minimum of promise did I commit the stuff to any one else; and then to Mr. Reeve, former editor of The Writer, for correction and comment.

One of the pleasant memories of Biggar arose from these lamplight experiments. Mr. Watt, one of the train dispatchers, who at this time was initiating my husband into that phase of railroading, took it into his kind heart to furnish me with better illumination. I shall never forget the terrible, stormy day when, trudging through knee-deep snowdrifts, he arrived at the cottage with an Aladdin lamp under one arm and a bundle of neatly shaved kindling wood under the other! But then, as I was to learn from others, Mr. Watt was the kind of soul who seeks out kind deeds for the doing, as others seek out pleasures for themselves.

The next year we were back in Regina, George working the third trick as train dispatcher, and I wrestling with words, as poor Jacob wrestled with the angel. I began to mail out some of this pain and agony, and, I am glad to say, most of it came back. In time, however, an occasional verse was printed in country papers.

I dug out my old Latin grammar, with some notion of perfecting my sense of derivatives. I wept over Victor Hugo, and would have liked to bathe his feet with these tears! I cared nothing whatsoever for my mental offspring. I had not listened to papa satirizing inane verse without acquiring some sense of what constituted poetry. I had not the slightest ambition to become a homespun poet. What I wanted was the language of ideas, and liberty to express ideas in a medium that should transmit something of my national flavour. I tried my hands at a few bits of prose, and found them feeble and foolish. Then I wrote two short stories, one of them destined to win the Canadian Club prize the following year.

But all of this went on under disheartening circumstances. I had no literary friends—no friends at all, in fact, except Mrs. Tanner; and my health was steadily going down hill. Everything I ate seemed actually to poison me. Dr. Henderson, to whom I had finally to admit this defeat, put me on various diets, which gave temporary relief. The flu had left me this gift, said he, but the serious thing was my heart. It was strained—whatever that means—which explained my shortness of breath, and sundry other unreasonable aberrations. Thankful that the old bogey of tuberculosis had not overtaken me, I returned to my scribbling, my canning, my cooking, and seemingly made no more progress than a cat chasing its tail.

Then fate took a hand. Dr. and Mrs. Andrews became interested in my verses. They did more: they took me to their home, and their hearts, thereby opening up a new world to my starved spirit. Not long thereafter, the University Women’s Club began making preparation for Bliss Carmen’s first visit to Regina. Mrs. Andrews suggested that I should write a verse of welcome to the poet, which I did in fear and misgiving, never dreaming what was to come of it.

Nothing would have prevailed upon me to read the thing, or to have my name mentioned. Mrs. Andrews elected to do it, and did it so well that the poor little effort acquired merit through the sympathy of her voice. In the audience was a young Scotsman, whose passion for letters made him eager to follow any glimmer of Canadian talent: the late Austin Bothwell whose faith in my ability decided my future, and to whom I owe a debt of gratitude that words cannot express.

Without the encouragement of Mr. Bothwell and his dear wife, Jessie, I should never have dared to attempt a serious piece of work, or come to recapture the hope which had always lain at the back of my mind since that long-gone day in the West Duluth Library, when my heart quickened with the determination to write a book. But to dream and act are not quite the same. I had yet to conquer my self-mistrust, my fear of ridicule upon the ultimate discovery that I was just what papa would call another miscreant of letters; and I was sorely depressed.

However, enheartened by Mr. Bothwell’s report upon the few things I sent him, I kept scribbling away, jotting down scenes and dialogues that ran through my head as I went about the household chores. It was then that I realized how good a service nausea had done me during those dreaded street-car rides. I could carry on pages of conversation as I flew about, dusting, sweeping, ironing, and baking, and never lose a word of it! I could visualize, without any particular effort, scenes that I had thought long since forgotten. I had only to recall some quaint turn of speech heard in the drug store, on the street comer, or in the theatre, and all of it was there in my mind’s eye. Without this ability I should never have been able to write as much as I did write in the next few years.

All those years of bondage to stupid duties had taught me to regiment and perfect mechanical labours to an extent that left my mind free to pursue more fascinating speculations. And I could support a terrific grind. For instance, when I was doing research for Lord of the Silver Dragon, I worked at that particular task from midnight until three in the morning. The first part of each day was devoted to housework. After lunch, I wrote usually from two to five. When dinner had been disposed of I became a human being, entertaining a few friends, or going out somewhere with my husband.

Except on rare occasions, I was back in my own room by ten o’clock. From then until eleven, when I made my husband’s midnight snack before his going to work, I amused myself with some sort of extension work.

But all this was in the future. I was still in Regina, full of doubt and hesitations, much more certain that I should can the vegetables from the garden than write a book. That I gradually recovered a modicum of courage I have to thank the literary society which met every week in the public library. It was there that I partly learned to creep out of my mental shell. It was there I met my faithful friend, George A. Palmer, whose amiable humour and catholic interests so greatly helped to put me at ease.

The outstanding event of the winter, however, was a little party given in honour of Mrs. McClung, who had just returned from England, and was lecturing in Regina. Just an intimate, friendly gathering, at the home of Mr. and Mrs. McLeod, but, for me, it was a memorable occasion—my first introduction to a Canadian author. I am forced to admit that I knew very little of Canadian literature, in general, and had only read Mrs. McClung’s Sowing Seeds in Danny. But I had loved her for painting, with sympathy, obscure, inconsequential folk, and more especially for the work she had done on behalf of women.

Naturally, I looked forward to the occasion with a mixture of pleasure and dread. So many idols are better left in their shrines; so many actors are disappointing out of character. To bolster up my timidity, I made myself a new dress, sitting up half the night to do it, and bought my first pair of really good shoes. Thus, shod with respectability, if not clothed in my right mind, I sallied forth to make my bow to Canadian achievement. Recalling those nervous qualms, I am tempted to laugh. For surely no famous person ever wore laurels more gracefully than Mrs. McClung!

It was a pleasant evening, and I was purring with contentment that a woman both celebrated and handsome was free of all vanity and pretence. Yet I was a little disappointed that nothing was said of books, as such. I had, without being conscious of it, I suppose, a purely European attitude. I should have liked the guest of honour to hold forth in fine Bjornson style on some aspect of politics, or discourse upon points of literature after the famed Anatole France pattern. Certainly I could not imagine any group of Icelandic intellectuals behaving so mildly! Like the Jews, we have a passion for ideas; and the more provocative they are, the better we like them. It is not escape from ourselves and the problems of existence that we seek in our mental diversions, but a stimulus to curiosity and thought.

What I chiefly remember of that amicable evening is my impression of Mrs. McClung; her generosity to any writer mentioned and the delightful quality of her slightly husky voice.

Before the little gathering broke up something was said apropos of beginners in fiction—something I accepted without reservation, and which I fervently wish had never been uttered. According to this opinion, if you knew your subject, and had the perseverence to master a plain, lucid style, eventual success was a foregone conclusion. I also gathered that editors were sitting on the edges of their chairs, waiting for the Canadian product, and all the intellectual world searched the heavens for signs of a forthcoming great Canadian novel.

I had no delusions of grandeur, but, if this were true it seemed to me that I had less to fear; more reason to hope that my individualized reaction to the Canadian scene might meet with some favour.

As a matter of fact, what I should have been told was to shed my Icelandic hide and every vestige of national character as quickly as possible! Saying which, I do not mean to imply that I, as an individual, have suffered any discrimination because of my nationality. That would be far from true. It is a long time since any one thought me suspect for no better reason than that. Of course, I have still to explain, with slightly diminishing enthusiasm, that Icelanders are a Norse people, with social institutions a thousand years old; that the country is not an ice cake, but a sizable cauldron of volcanoes and hot springs. And I have still to smile politely when helpful mortals rush to my rescue by saying: ‘Oh, I knew an Icelander, once—such a nice person, too!’

What I should like to make clear has nothing to do with such harmless commonplaces. It was something quite different, and much harder to define, something instinctive, that affected my point of view and made it strange, and even offensive, to other popular beliefs. I had been conditioned in liberal thought, and came naturally by a genuine curiosity in every shade of opinion. In spite of her individual preference for the forms of the high church, my mother imposed no dogma upon her children, and she considered all attempts to censor reading and other common amusements insulting to the human intelligence.

I remember her disgust with a pious lady who expressed surprise that I should be reading a novel. A book that, most likely, dealt with disgusting examples of depravity and sin! Imagine the effects it would have upon me!

‘Don’t be an ass!’ said mamma. ‘If such things are written about, they must exist, and its high time we found out about it. There is little merit in sanctimonious blindness!’

All her life mamma read whatever came to hand, and her last request in this world was for light—plenty of light, and a good story!

As for my father, any new discovery, any theory, of whatever kind, he seized upon with eagerness and interest. We never enjoyed material blessings, but we certainly had the benefits of complete mental freedom and boundless interest in the lives of our fellow creatures; in human beings, as they were, not as we wished them to be! Such an attitude toward life was the first obstacle in the way of successful authorship.

Humanity was for me a sort of living hieroglyphics of the life principle: generations upon generations translating into acts and deeds the strange forces that impelled them; a fancy which lent fascination to the dullest life.

The second, and greater obstacle, was my conception of the purposes of fiction. Old-fashioned Icelanders did not look upon the sagas as something to kill time. They had, indeed, no predilection for such a curious desire. Even as an old woman my mother hated to go to bed—sleep seemed such a waste of life! To our way of thinking, even light fiction failed of its purpose to interest or amuse if it did not in some way extend the mental horizon. If there was nothing in the story to provoke a novel train of thought, nothing that gave you an intriguing glimpse of human foibles, nothing that touched on the springs of beauty in nature or in man, then why trouble to read the thing? A cup of coffee would do just as well, if all you wanted was mental oblivion!

With such an unfortunate conviction rooted in mind, it never even occurred to me that I should sit down to invent a sort of Punch and Judy show, mechanically timed to a prescribed tune, which changed with epidemic propulsion at cyclic intervals. Glad books, sad books, mad books, bad books—like the plagues of Egypt! For instance, when I finally resolved to write of such people and events as were thoroughly familiar, the pioneers of the west, the fiddler had called another tune. The American continent had discovered sex! It had discovered thoughts!

Just how the world wagged along before this flaming revelation shook the continent, was a mystery. The only mystery—everything else, from Grandma’s wandering thoughts as she munched a lettuce salad with vital relish, to the gurgling of a baby nursing its toes, was ripped of pretence, and bravely shown in its full, erotic significance. The poor old earth writhed with complexes and repression. Even sleep afforded no escape. The demon pursued you down Elysian fields with matchless subterfuge and cunning.

Such a horrible state of affairs ought not to be endured, shouted the glandular prophets. Mankind must be free as its fiercest desire, free as the elk and the goose. Dreadful indeed were the psychopathic tragedies depicting the warped women whose horrid husbands snored in their sleep, and served no romantic purpose in their waking hours. Bold were the modern Judiths who beheaded the monster Restraint, and went a-hunting the proper mate. Gallant souls, who, it must be admitted, reminded me just a little of the less enlightened ladies at the court of the Merry Monarch.

To fly in the face of this brave new convention, with tales of antiquated mortals who stubbornly believed in the larger loyalties of social obligation, in honour and friendship and the human spirit, was not a sensible course. In fact, it was an almost fatal course, since the only other popular medium of fiction—mawkish sentimentality—was just as impossible to me.

Any single week in my aunt’s hospital would have supplied me with material for six turgid novels. With no arduous invention, I could have acted upon the advice of a successful author who, after reading Lord of the Silver Dragon, said to me: ‘When you can write like that, why waste your time? Write of love—and make it illicit!’

Honest council, but, like my deluded characters, I had my own peculiar loyalties. There were the ancestors—which is to say, there were obligations of common decency to men and women who had laboured long and hard in the service of humanistic ideals.

At this point I should like to make clear another peculiarity of Icelandic ideology. When a group of old friends gather round the coffee table, and suddenly trot out Grandfather So-and-So, and Great-grandmamma Something-Else, it is not done to create an impression. The Icelander rakes up the ancestral fires in search of some glowing ember of integrity and merit whereby to light his own spirit and quicken his heart with courage against the dark future. The ancestors were a sort of spiritual scourge. When a scholarly old gentleman once told me of an ancestress who, in ancient times of famine, retired to the church to write poetry ‘in the peace of God, until He claimed her,’ it was not told as an example of family distinction, but given as the reason for his own dutiful striving to surmount the obstacles of poverty and ignorance. He was not proud of his ancestors. He only hoped he had not disgraced them.

All of which will doubtless seem a strange invention, but the fact remains, that to the immigrants of Canada this need to justify their race was a powerful and ever-present incentive to courageous effort. It did not surprise me, therefore, that papa’s first comment upon being told that I intended to write a book was not very flattering.

‘My dear,’ said he, ‘are you sure it will be a good book? There are so many bad books the old bards must shudder to see!’

But I am anticipating. I was still writing verse, in the queerest moments. I was getting breakfast one morning when a sudden burst of melody drew me to the window. There, on the telephone wires, a meadow lark sang out his little heart, and, having done, soared off into the sky. I used to feed the little singers oatmeal, bits of suet, and crusts. I loved them, as the most beautiful attrtibute of the beautiful prairie. Now, it seemed to me I should fix this affection in some way. So, while the bacon frizzled in the pan, I sat down on the threshold and wrote: ‘The Creation of the Birds.’

When brooding o’er the earth newly created—
Where in her pristine splendour fair she lay,
A beryl beauteous, ‘mid encircling waters—
The Lord grew lonely through the dragging day.

So, from the sun He took a spark of glory,
And from the clouds their lovely summer hue,
And from the winds the breath of dreaming ages,
And from the fern the ever-sparkling dew:

With all these things, in love and exultation,
The little birds He formed, with deep delight;
And cast them forth from out His holy bosom,
To make Him glad with song from morn till night.

Hidden Fire, my first short story, was awarded the Canadian Club prize in the summer, and I had the terrifying experience of receiving it from the hands of Lady Byng, with nothing better to wear than a voile dress and a newly dyed hat, which smelled to high heaven.

My happiness in the event derived from the pleasure the Bothwells took in this small success. They were so sure it prophesied better things ahead. It was not so difficult to believe it, on the rare occasions that I spent in their invigorating company. Mrs. Bothwell was like a fine flame that melted the chill in my heart. Austin Bothwell was a scholar and a Scotsman. I dared not doubt him. If he said that I could write, I had to write. It became a duty that obsessed me night and day.

A fortunate obsession, no doubt, for I was not privileged to enjoy this inspiring friendship for long. In the fall we went to Edmonton, where my husband worked as swing-dispatcher, which means that he relieved the regular trick men in Edmonton on their allotted days off, and then repeated the process in Biggar.

We found a suite on the wrong side of town, where rents were supposed to be cheaper, and when I had settled the place to the best of my ability, I began to think about the task Mr. Bothwell had charged me with: to write a book about my own people. I had never heard any technical points discussed. I had no idea that such material was available. I knew nothing, in fact, except what I wanted to represent.

That was clear enough, after a fashion. I wanted to write a story which would define the price any foreign group must pay for its place in the national life of the country of its adoption. I wanted this payment to express spiritual values, which, to my way of thinking, are the true measure of national greatness, the only riches that abide, and which make a nation endure.

How to do it was still a mystery. I wrote to my father, at the time living in Gimli, and, through him, arranged for a meeting with two elderly gentlemen who had kept a record of the early Icelandic settlement. While I waited for my flying vacation, so to speak, I began jotting down episodes with which I was familiar, and almost at once the characters who were to enact these experiences took shape in my mind.

They did more: they began to haunt me in my sleep. I had one peculiar experience that was repeated two nights running. I had no more than dropped off to sleep than a woman drew out of the shadow. A sad, distraught, creature, who bore, in her extended arms, a beautiful child, whose golden curls and small, waxen figure were dripping water. It was so real, so tragically moving that I woke with a start. I must be getting a little mad, I thought—altogether too obsessed with my subject. I had no memory of any such incident, and had no intention of incorporating it into my book.

But when, some ten days later, I met the two old gentlemen in Gimli, the first tale they told me was of a poor woman whose child had been drowned, while she was charring for the daily bread; drowned in a little creek that used to traverse Market Square, where the Winnipeg City Hall now stands. So small Lillian found her place in my book. As a matter of fact, I seemed to have little to say as to how any one behaved in that book.

For instance, I had a dear old gossip in mind to act as a sort of spiritual buffer when I invented Finna, but Finna refused to be invented: she took on flesh and blood, and ran away with the story.

Back in Edmonton, I hired a second-hand typewriter, bought a kitchen table and some Manilla papers, and shut myself up in a slice of room to draw up the skeleton of the story. As I said before, I had no knowledge of the mechanics of writing. But I did have sense enough to know that it was impossible to create a story out of vague, disconnected scenes. I had to see the end before there could be any beginning. When the last paragraph finally came to me—and it came while I was doing the week’s ironing—I knew that I should somehow find the right opening. When the ironing was finished, I wrote down my last paragraph:

‘For in such strength alone do nations live, have their beginnings, and everlasting power. Out of the hearts of men, out of their joys and tears, their toil and tribulation, springs that illusive, and holy thing, the Soul of a Nation.

‘Out of the sore travailings of men, and out of their quiet death, spring hope and faith, and that great love which, transcending the grave, revitalizes life, and makes a nation indestructible.’

I looked at these words, and there swept over me the same emotion which I had experienced so often as a child, when I saw the sun go down, leaving the world in grey widow’s weeds. How often I had watched such a scene from a small, uncurtained window, opening out upon the little creek, and, with a queer ache at the heart, tried to imagine what argosies of human joys and sorrows, completed and done, were drawing beyond the rim of the world on the brave banners of the sun. Here, in these stray words, were harmonic colours that must be made to live on my canvas, to burn and radiate in varying degrees of intensity in the hearts of my characters.

I had still no plan, but now I had a definite mood within myself: an emotional disquiet, that I had long since come to recognize as the forerunner of almost photographic invention; when, in my mind’s eye, I would see and hear and feel imagined or remembered scenes with extraordinary intensity. I began to draft leaders in verse for my chapter headings, trying to make each one carry forward my basic theme. That done, I mapped out the actual experiences I wished to incorporate in the story; and then, as I had known I must, I spent a sleepless night, struggling with the flood of images that crowded into my mind. In the morning, when my housework was done, I began the story.

Now all should have been simple. I had two weeks each month when there were only myself and my son to care for; but I was really ill. There were days on end when I sat at the machine with a mustard plaster on my head, because it was less disturbing to suffer the burning sensation than the sickening throb in my temples and at the base of my skull. I knew I should go to a doctor, but I wanted to finish the book. I had hardly any sleep, ate scarcely anything, and doped myself with aspirin. On the few occasions I went out I had to brace myself like a dope addict.

I went on with the book. When several chapters were completed, George suggested that I should ask Mrs. McClung what she thought of them. I should never have had the courage to do such a thing, and, I am glad to say, it is the only time I have ever inflicted such punishment upon anybody.

Mrs. McClung was kindness itself, and, when I had committed my little crime, assured me that the story was good. I had begun my manuscript in Victorian fashion, where the settlers arrive at Fisher’s Landing, en route to Winnipeg. Mrs. McClung thought that a more colourful opening would enhance the story—some flash back into the lives of the people in their native land. I thought she was right, and think so still.

But what lasting scorn I drew upon my innocent head by embroidering a symbolic introduction! I did not want to disturb the story itself, and therefore decided upon an opening scene that would combine an intimate glimpse of an old-fashioned Icelandic homestead, and something of the disasters from which the country had so often suffered through the centuries.

I knew, as well as any one, the exact year of the last volcanic eruption, which had, for its aftermath, the misery and hardship which drove so many to emigrate. I certainly knew that the great volcanoes were inland—how should I not, when my father had once lived under the shadow of Mount Hecla! But I did not see that such specific detail was necessary to an introduction that was obviously nothing but symbolism.

However, the Icelandic people were so indignant that I should have played fast and loose with their landscape, shrinking it, so to speak, until the volcano came down to the sea, that the story itself had no merit. That I had tried, to the best of my ability, to represent those spiritual qualities of the people themselves, which must commend them to their Canadian brethren, was completely discounted. I had made a fool of myself by not invoking a verbal map of the country for a frontispiece!

It is never pleasant to be wounded in one’s dearest affections. I loved the brave past of my little country. I thrilled to the courage of a tiny nation that neither poverty nor tyranny could reduce to spiritual bondage. This courage and integrity of purpose, under whatsoever cloud or affliction, were the qualities that I tried to represent as the payment Canada might expect from my people for their place in national life. However, although I and all my works have been tacitly repudiated by my own people, with but few exceptions, it has not changed my own affection, which is all that matters. There are no losses, except they rob the heart.

Driven by a panic of fear that I should not finish the manuscript because of illness, I wrote in a kind of frenzy. As each batch of my manuscript was finished, I dictated it to my husband, who typed the final copy, and I revised, to the best of my ability, at the reading. Not a very satisfactory method, I will admit, and one I should shudder to attempt in a serious book to-day. I had no better knowledge at the time, and little enough vitality to wrestle with the story itself.

When the manuscript was suitably prepared, I sent it to Mr. Bothwell, and waited on tenterhooks for his opinion. The that his first little note came back was undoubtedly the happiest moment of my life.

‘Hurrah! You have done it!’ wrote he. What that meant to me, no words can convey. That an unpopular author was about to dawn upon the horizon is not of much importance to any one. I shall come to a better reason for writing this disconnected history. But that the feat was accomplished at all is due, not alone to Mr. Bothwell’s inspiration, but to another man whom I must mention, for, without his very concrete support, I should have had to give up almost the beginning.

I refer to Mr. J.H. Cranston, formerly editor of the Toronto Star Weekly. When every other periodical rejected with cryptic dismissal my human interest tales of the pioneers, Mr. Cranston found them sufficiently meritorious to publish. It would be no exaggeration to say that these short stories supported my books. Those earnings paid for the preparation of the manuscripts, for my husband could not undertake such a task as a fixed pastime. He had his own work, and, like myself, was engaged in his own self-improvement, taking extension courses in traffic management, etc., efforts which he hoped might be beneficial to his advancement.

Those Star stories also made it possible for me to undertake the research required for historical novels. There is nothing which I can possibly say, by way of gratitude to Mr. Cranston, except that I have tried my best to justify his faith and encouragement. That the Cranstons are enshrined with my dear and honoured friends is not flattery, but an abiding fact. It may not be the mission of Canadian editors to support native talent, but without some such interest I fail to see how Canadian letters are to develop.

I had the rather unique experience of having The Viking Heart accepted on the merit of its first eighteen hundred words, with the provision, naturally, that the rest would measure up to this promising beginning. That took a load off my mind, and so the book was finished in three months—a race which I have never been able to repeat.

That it was possible even then can be explained after a fashion. The story was in complete possession of my mind, mood, and feeling, and I wrote all day long, and far into the night, for five days out of the week. Saturday I had reserved for a thorough house-cleaning, marketing, ironing, mending, and so on. Sunday I kept for my few friends. I had the good fortune to have a neighbour, Mrs. Gertrude Acheson, a Press woman, and member of the Canadian Authors’ Association; and a neighbour she was, in the best sense of the word. There was also, in Edmonton, a former girlhood acquaintance, Mrs. Johanneson, of whom more later, whose hospitality and kindness brightened a toilsome period.

When the book was done, I began to go to pieces. My husband thought that we should leave the suite, which was noisy, and the building itself fronting the street-car tracks, and find a quiet house with a bit of garden. We located an attractive old place, and I used up my flagging energy getting settled. I was so delighted with the garden, which was treed, and had lovely honeysuckle shrubs in the front of the porch. There was a little sun-room, with bright windows, that I instantly saw full of flowers. I bought some second-hand chairs, and a table, and after removing the old stain, enamelled them in dove grey, with touches of blue. I even painted an old congoleum rug in the same colour.

I had a grand time, sewing cheerful cretonne curtains and little table mats. My husband brought me a dear little puppy. It seemed to me that the whole earth had a brighter, more beautiful aspect. It was the first real home I had ever had. And I had it exactly thirty days! Then my husband came home one morning with the news that he was ‘bumped’—that an older man had taken his job.

I had a vision of what it meant—of the endless hours wasted in fixing and refurbishing the old house; taking down the bright curtains that had hung so gaily for only two weeks; of the packing, and crating and general turmoil and eternal expense. For the first time in our wanderings, I sat down and cried—the foolish tears of sheer physical exhaustion. I just could not see how I should manage another bout of moving.

When the fit was over I went downstairs to get the breakfast. Then I took down the curtains, fetched a barrel from the basement, and began to pack the dishes.

I was not destined to follow our goods to Melville, however. I had to undergo medical treatment that made it impossible to leave. How we should have managed without the Johannesons, I cannot imagine. Mrs. Johanneson herself insisted upon taking my son and myself into her own home.

She had a young baby, and not too much room. But what of it, said she. I could have the porch, and could cook my own special food, and young George would be safe while I underwent my treatments. The sort of sacrifice plain people make for each other without thought of reward, and which gets little enough publicity in smart writings.

Those many weeks, despite the daily jogs to the doctor, are a pleasant memory. We drained so many pots of excellent Icelandic coffee out on the little porch in the summer evenings; reviewed so many memories of old Winnipeg; and I began to mend. For the first time in many years I could eat without discomfort, walk up a flight of stairs without the weight of Atlas on my chest. When my blood tests were satisfactory, the infection from which I suffered eliminated, the doctor consented to my departure, cautioning me, however, not to work round the clock.

By this time George had gone to Calgary, so that I was spared one hop, at any rate, and our few sticks of furniture escaped a second crating. Calgary was not the happiest place in which to test a new-found strength—the extreme altitude is no respecter of persons. But at last we were settled in another house, the old floors dressed with linseed oil to permit a descent camouflage with varnish, the windows decked out in altered curtains, the furniture, which had stood in a railway warehouse, cleaned of grime. These gentle employments over, I sat down to plot another story.