英语散文:A House of Her Own

She couldn’t believe her eyes last year when her young Ernie came home with a wife! Nora knew she shouldn’t let him go on that stupid training thing! But her husband insisted that if she wanted her son to rise up through the ranks - and in a growing frontier town at that, where there could be some real power to be had - she’d better bloody well let him do what he had to do! The ‘bloody’ shouted at the top of His Lordship’s lungs, just in case she’d suddenly come down with a case of deafness, Nora presumed.

Mr. Harding was not really a Lordship, but had the pretensions of one. He would have been, if not for the meaninglessness of being born a fifth son of a petty nobleman. Emigration to Canada had seemed preferable to Nigel Harding over penniless obscurity in dear old England. He often decried his circumstances, a mere hireling with a uniform. And a horse, if the beasts could only stay alive in this cursed climate! A far cry from the Lord of the Manor in a much more genteel existence than the one he and Nora endured in Canada.

Fort Calgary, this Godforsaken outpost they’d been assigned to when the Harding men answered a recruiting poster in the shipping office five years before, in London, left a lot to be desired. The Hardings seemed unable to completely acclimatize themselves to the altitude, about twenty five hundred feet above sea level. Or to the harsh extremes of temperature. Not fit for man nor beast; no wonder the bloody horses couldn’t stay alive!

The area was deceptive and treacherous weather-wise. A detail of men could set out early on a beautiful summer day for a rendezvous with outlying settlers, only to limp home, demoralized, in a driving blizzard a few hours later. No one knew how to deal with the weather this area dealt out. Extremes ranged from far below freezing in the winter - temperatures that make it impossible to draw a breath and take any benefit from it - to summer temperatures so hot it’s impossible to move an inch from the weight of the heat on the body.

But beautiful! Every moment, it was beautiful! And there was no crowding, no class definitions, no beggars on the streets or drunkards in the pubs. Just about everybody here seemed to be a hard working, deep thinking, progressive spirited individual. Nigel well knew how hard it was to find an individual under a uniform in peacetime. But he also knew how many young men, even older ones like himself, used the Northwest Mounted Police as a means to an end.

Sure, they did their job, but they also seemed to have underlying plans, most of these men. They were eager to make an impression, to keep order in the community and the countryside. But at the same time they were taking a look around, thinking about what part of that same countryside they’d like to own, what they would like to raise on the farmsteads and ranches they envisioned.

Behind the young couple’s back, Nigel and Nora had secretly cheered the young girl’s resolve to have her own house. They were relieved to have their own space back. They’d gotten used to the quiet of their home, just the two of them, when Earnest was back East for his training.

Nora’s open disapproval of the wife came from feelings she didn’t know how to control. She was not prepared to have her place in Earnest’s heart usurped so abruptly. She’d anticipated Earnest eventually finding a young woman, perhaps one of her friend’s daughters from England. Somehow the years passed too quickly; Earnest grew up far too soon, before she expected it or had a chance to accept the transition. She had no other children to stand in his place in her heart at the loss of this one.

Nora prayed to God daily that she would find an increase in patience for her daughter-in-law. But when she could see the need for acceptance and reassurance in the girl, she pushed her farther away instead of gathering her in. Nora knew this was not the right thing to do, but somehow she could not help herself. Not only had Emily come into her home and stolen her son, but her husband and any and all other men who were about could not keep their eyes away from Emily either. Nora’s well-kept and efficiently maintained good looks were no longer enough to awaken the men’s interest - not with Emily’s smoking, newly awakened sexuality among them.

It was not the girl’s fault men found her so remarkable, so desirable. There was a scarcity of women in and around Fort Calgary, unless one wanted to choose a native bride, and few had looked in that direction as yet. The Fort had only been in operation since 1888 – it was the same age as that girl out there! - carving a foothold for commerce and peaceful existence out of the former wilderness.

It had not been long since herds of buffalo roamed the same hill that marched up towards the south, outside the house. Now, the beautifully scenic frontier town had new hordes to contend with; the impending arrival of a million inhabitants over the next century.