The School for Candour

by Ralph Stock

THE SCHOOL FOR
CANDOUR

By RALPH STOCK

WHEN it is recorded that James Strode, twenty-seven, single, landed as a steerage passenger in Canada with nothing more than ten dollars in his pocket, and a corresponding amount of hope in his breast, a good deal will be expected of him.

What else is Canada for, one may well ask, but to provide adventurous souls with the opportunity of landing penniless on her shores and ultimately becoming wheat, cattle or lumber kings, of taming wild horses on her illimitable plains, fighting and laying low camp bullies, or tracking evil-doers to the edge of beyond in the ranks of the North-West Mounted Police?

The question is unanswerable, and that Strode did none of these things must be admitted with regret, and excused, if excuse be possible, on the grounds that from the viewpoint of high romance the modern young man is a disappointing person, and present-day Canada a disappointing place.

Behold him, then, wandering the streets of a strange city in search of nothing less prosaic than work whereby he could live.

For the third time he paused before a blackboard outside an employment agency bearing the mystic legend in chalk—

WANTED.
Swampers.
Choreboys.

Was he a swamper? Was he a choreboy? Strode rather doubted it, but as such appeared to be the sum total of Canada's requirements at the moment, he determined to find out.

The agent, a lean, rather depressed-looking man with a lower jaw listlessly revolving on a quid of tobacco, sprawled in a tilted chair before a red-hot box stove. He received his client without enthusiasm.

"Good morning," said Strode. "I see you want swampers and choreboys. Am I likely to be of any use?"

The agent directed a jet of auburn fluid with extraordinary accuracy at a brass receptacle about a yard distant. "What can you do?" he asked, as one without hope.

"I hardly know yet," said Strode, "but I'm fairly strong. I ought to be able to do something."

"You ought, all right," agreed the other; "the thing is, can you?"

"It depends. Give me a chance to find out," Strode suggested.

"Ever handled an axe?"

"No. But——"

"Can you milk?"

"No."

"Well, then——"

The agent turned his melancholy attention to the stove, and as there seemed nothing more to be said, Strode wandered towards the door, wondering vaguely what he ought to do next.

"Going?" suggested the agent, with the first hint of interest he had shown.

"That was the idea," Strode admitted. "There doesn't seem much to stay for, does there?"

The agent actually laughed. "You're a queer guy," he observed.

"Well, it's good to hear I'm something," said Strode. "The trouble is, I can't make a living by just being queer, can I?"

"I'm not so sure of that. Do you always take things this way?"

"What other way is there?"

"Plenty." The agent stared before him as though conjuring visions. "There's the feller with the notion that just because this is Canada he can go out and pick up dollars in the street. And the one that can do anything from river-driving to broncho-busting—until he comes to try. And the one that reckons he's been sent out here on a mission to teach the heathen just how they do things back home. And the one who's never done anything, and never will do anything if he can help it. Oh, I tell you, we get all sorts in here."

"I expect you do," said Strode, "but I don't seem to recognise myself yet."

"No," agreed the agent, "that's why I'm taking the trouble to talk to you."

Strode was encouraged into turning back from the door.

"Mind, I'm not raising any false hopes," warned the other, with a dolorous eye fastened on his victim like a poultice, "but if you're willing to do anything until you can do something, there's a mixed farmer out Lakeville, Ontario way, wanting a choreboy."

Strode's inward elation at the prospect of work took the mistaken form of inquiring as to wages.

"Wages?" The agent seemed offended at the word as at something indelicate. "I don't know what you mean."

After a pause, during which Strode preserved a discreet silence, the other explained that wages and choreboys were incompatible at the moment. This wasn't "harvesting," be begged leave to point out, when any poor fish could hold up his boss for three times what he was worth. This—in case Strode hadn't noticed it—was winter, and anyone who could bluff an employer into giving him board and lodging in return for what he could do might consider himself lucky.

Strode took the agent's word for it, and next morning a train for Lakeville, Ontario.

First impressions may be misleading, but they are usually vivid. During the next twenty-four hours Strode's consisted of a colonist car and a kindly but voluble soul who insisted on plying him with tea and an intimate record of her life; of an unbroken panorama of mighty rock and timber streaming past the car windows; of his arrival at a little town labelled Lakeville, carved out of a frozen world, and seeming to set it at cheerful defiance with tinkling sleigh-bells, wooden side-walks resounding to the tread of fur-clad giants, and doors that opened and shut, exhaling the breath of life on the keen, dry air; and finally of a fortuitous lift in a bobsleigh bound in his direction—on and still on through the brooding bush, until he came to a little box-like house set in a rock-strewn clearing.

Here he met his future employer, Mr. Lamb, and from that, moment impressions merged into the sterner stuff of actual experience.

Mr. Lamb owned ten acres of cleared land and a hundred and fifty of primeval bush, two pigs, five cows, three horses, sundry chickens, and now a choreboy. Strode was left in no doubt as to this last item. Lamb was quite nice about it, but he had views on choreboys—even unpaid ones. He was a worker himself, and expected others to fall into the same category. Life, as far as he was concerned, consisted of a pitched battle against time and circumstance. If he was not milking by the light of a hurricane lantern before dawn, he was turning the handle of a separator, driving the cream to a neighbouring cheese factory, cutting cordwood, or preparing one of the three daily meals of beans and bacon. His leisure, consisting of a few hours after dark, he would while away by carpentry or harness mending, and occasionally he slept. He seldom spoke, and when he did, it was usually to intimate, on a note of hopefulness, that in another month or so work would really begin.

As for Strode, he suffered an immediate introduction to that great North American institution, the wood-pile, and was left in its sole company for two months. It appeared that in the past Mr. Lamb had allowed a choreboy to do something else than saw wood, but with such disastrous results to life and property that he was resolved never to repeat the experiment. Consequently it was Strode's lot to stand on one leg for the greater part of each day, wielding a bucksaw, and slowly but surely raising a veritable monument of sawn timber. In this fashion he passed through the inevitable stages of backache, blisters, and bone-weariness to a surprising physical fitness and a fuller appreciation of such achievements as the Egyptian Pyramids.

This, then, was manual labour! Well, he had nothing against it except that when his task became so mechanical that he could almost have accomplished it in his sleep, he was rather at a loss as to what to do with his mind.

As it was, Strode found his own indulging in the weirdest antics. It projected him into the past and future with extraordinary clarity, while the present remained for the most part a blank, underlaid by a vague consciousness of physical exertion. So, as the woodstack grew almost without his knowledge, his thoughts took charge, flitting involuntarily and at random. For instance, having recited most of Kipling forwards, he recited him backwards, and occasionally found himself laughing aloud at the result. People and events, long since forgotten, leapt at him out of the past, challenging his conduct on various remote occasions, if he had only done this, or said that. … The possibilities thus engendered provided him with food for thought that sometimes wasted out an entire morning.

The future was hardly as prolific. It was too patent. As far as Strode could see, it consisted of sawing wood for nothing until he had made enough money to emulate Mr. Lamb. And he felt no desire to emulate Mr. Lamb even if he ever did make enough. Wasn't it dreadful? And what was to be done about it?

From these conjectures it will appear that there was something radically wrong with Strode. He had wanted work, and now he had it. Why didn't the fellow settle down into an animated bucksaw and have done with it? Yet those who have passed through the ordeal of initiation into the ranks of manual labour will appreciate his difficulties and bear with him. They will know from experience that when all thought is circumscribed by mechanical and monotonous toil, one of two things is bound to happen: the toiler either rebels and seeks fresh fields of activity, or succumbs and is converted into a human machine.

Strode escaped this latter fate as by a miracle. Towards the end of his eighth week of bucksawing he had mechanically constructed an edifice of firewood no less imposing than Mr. Lamb's house itself, and was standing on one leg chatting brightly to himself, when he became aware that he was not alone. A buggy had come to a standstill on the far side of the snake fence that enclosed the yard, and from it a lady with grey hair and an appearance of refinement, in marked contract to her surroundings, sat watching him with grave concern. He felt himself colouring visibly. How long had she been there? What nonsense had she heard him muttering?

"I wonder if you'd be so good as to loosen this bit. Dan doesn't seem to like it as it is."

The very tone and accent of her voice added to Strode's embarrassment. He hurried towards her with the horrid consciousness that he had not shaved for three days, that his overalls were out at the knee, and that, on the whole, he must be giving a very fair imitation of Rip Van Winkle emerging from the mountains.

On examination of the horse's bridle, it seemed to him that the bit was loose enough as it was, so he unbuckled it and buckled it again in the same hole, which seemed entirely to satisfy its owner.

"Thank you so much," she murmured, adding irrelevantly: "Is Mr. Lamb at home?"

"No," said Strode, and for the life of him could think of nothing else to say.

Under a kindly but discerning scrutiny he shifted his weight from one foot to the other, and knew for the first time how "the poor" must feel when visited by well-meaning denizens of another world. A vague resentment took hold of him. This disconcerting person had had her harness attended to, and been assured that Mr. Lamb was not at home—what more did she want? Strode had the uneasy feeling that she had penetrated his bucolic disguise, and for some reason was sorry for him.

"I'm glad of that," was her rather surprising rejoinder, "because there are few things Mr. Lamb dislikes more than myself. Have you been here long?"

"About two months," said Strode.

"And you cut all that yourself?" The lady nodded incredulously at his monumental woodstack.

"Yes," said Strode.

Her eyes said very plainly "You poor boy!" while her lips voiced the question: "Are you suited here?"

"I suppose so," Strode answered a trifle awkwardly. "I was hired as a choreboy. I'm making a living."

"I see." The tone was one of complete understanding. "And do you like the work?"

"I can't say I'm exactly thrilled by it," Strode confessed, which seemed to cause the lady some amusement. She laughed, then looked away down the road with a certain wistfulness.

"You must excuse this inquisition," she said. "It's not idle curiosity. I happen to want a choreboy myself, that's all. The wages are thirty dollars a month, and the work no more thrilling than Mr. Lamb's, but if you think of making a change, you might bear in mind that Mrs. Purvis, of 'Homelands,' can do with a 'hand.'"

"I can't handle an axe, or milk," blurted Strode.

"Really," commented Mrs. Purvis. "Well, as you won't be required to do either, that needn't worry you. Think it over. In the meantime——" She paused, listening intently. "Isn't that Mr. Lamb's wagon? I think so. Good day." And this with the most charming of smiles the amazing apparition drove off into Ontario bush.

It was Mr. Lamb's wagon, loaded to capacity with farm gear, which he unloaded at the barn door. Then he went into the house to prepare the evening meal.

It was not yet six o'clock, so Strode continued his labours, but to the accompaniment of comparatively tumultuous thoughts. It was quite a relief not to have to recite Kipling backwards or do anything except recall the recent interview. By the time Mr. Lamb had smitten a suspended crowbar by way of summoning his choreboy to tea, Strode's mind was made up.

As a rule the meal was consumed in silence, and Strode's voice sounded strange in his own ears as it went out across the beans and bacon.

"I thought I'd better let you know that I'm leaving, Mr. Lamb."

His employer seemed pained. "That's right," he wailed. "Quit directly the time comes for you to be some use!"

"Haven't I been of any use?" Strode suggested mildly.

"You've earned your keep," admitted Mr. Lamb, staring at the beans and bacon. "The only way to do is to get a Hottentot nigger and chain him by the foot, as far as I can see."

Strode was inclined to agree with him.

"I guess that Purvis woman's been here' said Mr. Lamb after a bean-chewed pause, and, evidently taking Strode's silence as assent, continued in pensive vein: "Thought those was her wheel-tracks the minute I seen them. Just as if she had a spite against me. Well, she can have you for all of me, and if she turns you into the guy she did the other one, Heaven help you, that's all." With which cryptic utterance Mr. Lamb relapsed into a silence that lasted until his choreboy left the next morning.

Strode experienced a vague feeling of guilt as he shut the yard gate and turned up the road. Mr. Lamb was at the barn door assembling farm implements as though his life depended on it—which, of course, it did. Was it altogether fair to leave him at this juncture, with an avalanche of work poised above his head? A turn in the bush road that hid Mr. Lamb, his house, and even his choreboy's woodstack from view, answered the question by dispelling it from Strode's thoughts. Instead, conjecture played about Mrs. Purvis, thirty dollars a month, and the prospect of shortly being able to stand on both legs.

"Homelands" proved to be a fine old house in the early colonial style, complete with drive and pillared portico, and Strode was decorously making for the tradesmen's entrance, when Mrs. Purvis appeared at the front door and welcomed him with, metaphorically, open arms.

"I'm so glad you decided to come," she told him, as though receiving an honoured guest instead of a choreboy. "Your room is over the stable—I hope you don't mind. And——"

But there is no need to record all that Mrs. Purvis said and did while Strode was in her amazing employ. His duties appeared to consist of rising at any hour that seemed good to him, mealing with his employer and her daughter Joyce—a taciturn but otherwise attractive girl of about twenty-five—and occasionally rolling the drive, supervising the vegetable garden, or posting letters. Of an evening he was expected, and usually contrived, to make himself pleasant to the family and any chance visitors, and on the last day of each month Mrs. Purvis handed him, almost apologetically, a very clean envelope containing thirty dollars.

At first Strode suffered twinges of conscience. There were times when he could have shrieked aloud and fled the scene of his indolence. But he did not. Mrs. Purvis was so obviously satisfied with her choreboy that he ultimately became satisfied with himself. He even succeeded in believing that he earned his salt, and after that almost anything was possible.

The only fly in the ointment of his peace of mind was Joyce. She seldom spoke to him, and when she did, it was with a contempt evidently difficult to conceal. She disliked him, Strode felt, and it is unpleasant to be disliked without being able to put one's finger on the cause.

As the season advanced, so Strode's duties became more ornamental, until they resolved themselves into little more than a ceaseless round of buggy drives and surprise parties, canoe excursions and dances. It was all very pleasant up to a point, and that point was invariably Joyce Purvis.

How long her attitude of disdain would have remained a disquieting mystery to Strode it is impossible to say. He might have succeeded in dismissing it from his mind by the much-favoured process of laying the cause for it at the girl's door instead of his own, or by merely getting used to it. But these things were not to be. The revelation came with shocking unexpectedness, close on the heels of one Hubert Middleton.

This gentleman—perfect in his way—had married Joyce's elder sister Mildred, and he and his wife, taking pity on the hopeless rustication of Mrs. Purvis at Lakeville, were in the habit of foregoing the fleshpots of Toronto and occasionally Paris in order to visit her for a week each year.

Mrs. Middleton was an intensely refined edition of Joyce. Middleton was—well, what he was. But for Strode the chief interest attaching to the visitors lay in the fact that Joyce appeared to dislike her brother-in-law rather more fervently than she did himself. Before Middleton had been at "Homelands" two days, Strode saw this strange girl making deliberate detours to avoid him, and at table his mere presence seemed to affect her appetite.

It was all the more surprising, then, to come upon them, towards the end of the week, sitting at the opposite ends of a Peterborough canoe moored under the maples at the bottom of the garden.

They were talking, and Strode found himself listening. It is difficult to do otherwise when you hear your name mentioned.

"Strode, eh?" Middleton was listlessly twisting a signet ring round one of his tapering fingers. "I wonder if he's one of the Gloucestershire Strodes."

"I expect so," said Joyce.

"Why?"

"Because you're a something Middleton, aren't you? And you're very alike in some ways."

"Thanks."

"Don't mention it. For one thing, mother stole him from Mr. Lamb just as easily as she did you."

"Really. Your dear mother seems to have a weakness for choreboys."

"She has. You see, father was one when mother fell in love with him, and she's never been able to forget it. She begins by being sorry for them."

"And ends?"

"By spoiling them, body and soul."

"Dear, dear!" Middleton coughed faintly and settled back amongst the cushions. "But please go on. I love this school for candour of ours. It's a sort of yearly cure."

"I haven't noticed that," returned Joyce, "but then you're past praying for. I was thinking of this Strode boy. It seems more of a shame in his case, somehow."

"What?"

"To turn the makings of a man into a lap-dog. He's more sensitive about it than you were."

"I see." Middleton lit a cigarette and smiled at his adversary through the smoke. "You seem as partial to me as ever, my dear Joyce."

"Quite."

"Tenacious little beggar, that's what you are, and abominably rude."

"You can't be rude to a lap-dog. He just snuggles down again."

"That's your theory, is it? Well, I wonder what you'd say if I put you across my knee and spanked you in the old-fashioned style that you deserve."

"I shouldn't say anything. Besides, you wouldn't do it: I might get your allowance stopped."

Middleton flicked his cigarette ash into the lake and changed the subject.

"Still keen on being a cow-girl or engine-driver?" he suggested lightly.

"I'm still crazy to go West, if you mean that," admitted Joyce, her small, boyish face lit with the eagerness of the fanatic.

"Out to the great spaces," chanted Middleton, "where everyone's a he-man or a she-woman or something like that."

"Out to where there's something to do besides kill time and live on other people," corrected Joyce. "But as if you'd understand!"

"Well, why don't you go?"

"I shall—directly the new pet's trained. I can't leave mother alone. He's beginning to eat out of her hand quite nicely, and I'm hoping that it won't take long for him to curl right up in her lap."

"Has he proposed to you yet?"

"No. He's taking longer than you, isn't he?"

For a moment Middleton looked genuinely annoyed, but only for a moment.

"As a matter of fact," Joyce continued calmly, "I don't think it's entered his head. He's not naturally designing, and he doesn't like me."

"Well, if you're as charming to him as you were to me, you can't wonder at that, can you?"

"No. It didn't stop you, though, did it?"

Middleton made a delicate movement of protest that passed unnoticed or was ignored.

"That's what makes me think here may be something in him," Joyce added, "something that it's a shame to spoil. What's that?"

It was a twig snapping under Strode's foot as he turned away.

Back in his luxurious room over the stable that Mrs. Purvis had been so apologetic about, Strode sat thinking. He thought thoroughly and with compressed lips for upwards of five minutes, then packed his papier-mâché suit-case and left the house.

He was standing on the depot platform, with a colonist ticket for the West in his pocket, when he became aware that someone was addressing him.

"You heard!"

It was Joyce Purvis, hatless and flushed.

"Yes," said Strode. "I must apologise."

"Don't say that," she begged. "I knew what had happened the minute I found you gone. It was terrible——"

"It was true."

"That's no excuse. I shouldn't have said it—about you."

"I'm very thankful you did."

"Do you mean that?"

"Yes."

"I guess I'm a beast," said Joyce, staring along the platform, "but if you only knew how I hate——"

"Lap-dogs," supplied Strode. "So do I. That's why I'm running away."

They were silent for a space. The shriek of an engine came out of the Ontarian bush.

"Where are you going?" Joyce asked.

"West," said Strode.

The girl's eyes filled with longing. "If only I were a man!" she whispered, and held out her hand. "Good-bye, good luck!"

"Good-bye," Strode called to her from the car window, "and thanks! I mean it!"