Settlers of the Marsh (8 page)

He had been an onlooker so far. But to-night something had happened which he did not understand: he was a leaf borne along in the wind, a prey to things beyond his control, a fragment swept away by torrents.

That made him cling to the landscape as something abiding, something to steady him.

He cut across the corner of the slough; and when he had passed out of eye and earshot of the noisy, celebrating crowd, he stopped, raised his arms above his head, and stretched … A
lassitude
came over him: a desire to evade life's issues …

He longed to be with his mother, to feel her gnarled, calloused fingers rumpling his hair, and to hear her crooning voice droning some old tune …

And then he seemed to see her before him: a wrinkled, shrunk little face looking anxiously into his own.

He groaned.

That face with the watery, sky-blue eyes did not look for that which tormented him: what tormented him, he suddenly knew, had tormented her also; she had fought it down. Her eyes looked into himself, knowingly, reproachfully. There was pity in the look of the ancient mother: pity with him who was going astray: pity with him, not because of what assailed him from without; but pity with what he was in his heart …

It was very clear now that the torrent which swept him away, the wind that bore him whither it listed came from his innermost self. If, for what had happened to him, anybody was to blame at all, it was he …

As if to confirm it, there arose in him the vision again of that room where he sat with a woman, his wife. But no pitter-patter of little children's feet sounded down from above; nor were they sitting on opposite sides of a table in front of a fire-place. He was crouching on a low stool in front of the woman's seat; and he was leaning his head on her. And when he looked up into her face, that face bore the features and the smile of the woman who had spoken to him that very night …

Fall came. Niels “worked out.”

In many ways he was changed. Every Sunday, during the summer, he had fought a savage fight with himself. He had gone across the sandy corner of the Marsh, to the bridge; and there he was torn between two desires: the desire to see Ellen and to have her quietly, critically gaze at him out of her eyes as if she were searching for something in him; and the desire to see, and to listen to, the other woman whose look and voice sent a thrill through his body and kindled his imagination.

Invariably he had at last returned to his homestead and his tent without seeing either …

One of these women had seemed to demand; the other, to give. Yet one was competent; the other, helpless. One was a mate; the other, a toy …

When, on Monday mornings, he went to work again, fencing his claim, he shook all visions off and felt a grim sort of satisfaction at having resisted both temptations. But the fight drew sharp lines into his face and made him seem older than he was. He had become reticent again as he had perforce been during his first year in the new country. He never spoke a word beyond what was exactly needed to convey his meaning …

He had grown tremendously strong. Among the harvest crews he enjoyed, though he never fought, the reputation of being a fighter. The men who chaffed everybody else left him alone …

His outlooked also had changed. Life seemed irrelevant; success seemed idle. All he did he did mechanically.

H
E RETURNED
to his homestead bringing a team. He began to cut the trees for his buildings, clearing a little field …

And he put the buildings up, a stable and a granary which, so far, was to serve as a house …

Then he thought of going for the grain which was his as his share of Nelson's crop …

It was a cold, frosty winter morning when he set out driving his horses.

At the bridge he saw Amundsen working on the ice of the creek.

Belated rains which, in the bush, had fallen on frozen ground had caused an abundant run-off; enough to fill the creek which usually, at the time of freeze-up, consisted merely of a string of pools at the bottom of the wide trough. The water, however, had at once frozen over; and, since the bed of the creek proceeded in a succession of terraces downward, it had run out from under the frozen bridges of ice, thus creating large hollow vaults at the bottom of which the trickle of the stream still fell or ran from pool to pool.

Amundsen was working with the axe, breaking this ice-bridge so as to reach the water underneath.

Niels stopped and looked down. Amundsen nodded to him; and he returned the greeting.

“You never got the drill after all,” Niels shouted at last.

Amundsen came somewhat closer before he replied.

“No,” he said. “The beggars were at Kurtz's. Eight miles from my place. But Kelm wanted them; and Hahn: and several others. So they asked half a dollar more to come down here, the cut-throats!”

Niels felt the same odd repulsion for the man which he had always felt.

“We get a little water from the well you dug with Nelson,” Amundsen went on. “I've put the cribbing in. But it isn't enough for the stock. For a while we hauled from Lund's. But they got mad about the hay last year. There's no snow yet to speak of. So we've got to get at the creek. Going north?”

“Yes,” Niels said. “I'd better be moving.”

That was the last Niels ever saw of the man.

I
N THE WINDING CHASM
of the bush road he met Ellen who was coming with her barrels in the sleigh. She was driving the run-away team.

Niels guided his horses right into the underbrush, giving her the whole of the road.

But the girl also edged over on her side, disdaining to take advantage of him.

All the while her clear, inscrutable eyes were fixed on his face as they passed each other.

In a sudden resentment he repeated a phrase which had often tingled in his ears and which the other woman had used. “I wonder,” he muttered as he nodded his greeting, “whether you could smile, Miss Amundsen?”

She had not changed. She looked and acted exactly as she had done three years ago.

T
HEN, AS HE DROVE
over the virgin snow, he began, as usual, to argue with himself.

Why should he be angry with her? He had seen her, she him, a dozen times. All the words spoken between them counted up to a score or so … Why should she smile at him, a perfect stranger?

I
N DUE TIME
he came out on the slough, it was near the dinner hour. Nelsons might be at Lund's. He would call there to see. But when he drove up on the dam, close to the yard, he found himself the unwilling witness of a scene which made him go on.

Lund was standing in front of the stable, pitching manure on to a sleigh-box.

Mrs. Lund, a pail in her hand, was coming from the house. Neither saw Niels.

Mrs. Lund, however, caught sight of a little calf gambolling about and sprinting off into the snow-covered clearing behind the yard.

“Who's let the calf out?” she shouted angrily and ran over to the stable. The door was open.

Lund stopped in his work, leaned on his fork, and fumbled with a shaking hand at the dark glasses protecting his eyes.

“What did you let that calf out for?” she repeated.

“I didn't, mamma,” he replied.

The sleigh was gliding noiselessly over the soft, loose snow; every word sounded clearly across to Niels.

“You old thunderbuss!” she screamed. “Don't lie!”

“What?” The old man rose in arms, grasping his fork.

Mrs. Lund stopped and laughed. “Don't act silly! You can't bully me!”

But he advanced, raising the fork.

Mrs. Lund's laughter died away; and from defiance her attitude changed into one of hunted fright. “Well, I declare!” she said and dropped her pail.

The next moment they had grappled. Mrs. Lund wrested the fork from his grasp and threw it away. Then she bowled him over as if he were a child. He lay on the ground, groaning.

“Bob-beee!” Mrs. Lund's voice shrilled out, betraying undisguised alarm.

The boy came running from behind the stable.

“Quick,” shouted Mrs. Lund. “Help me get daddy to bed.”

The last Niels saw as he drove past the bluff shielding the yard was the picture of the two bending over the prostrate body and trying to lift it.

N
IELS SHIVERED
though he did not feel cold.

Could marriage lead to that? Most people would have laughed at such a scene …

Strange stories were current in the district about Lund. But everybody agreed in declaring Mrs. Lund to be “a mighty fine lady.”

In a way Niels agreed with that verdict.

Somehow he saw Olga in her. She, too, had one day been full of love, full of hope, full of happy anticipations. No doubt her husband, then her lover, had seemed the fairy prince to her. You could still see in this wreck of him that as a young man he must have been handsome. Perhaps he, too, had promised her a carefree life and a princedom in the world's domains. But how his promises had gone to pieces!

Niels thought of himself. If he had married in Sweden, he would, like the rest, have laughed at this household. He would have accepted what is as immutable and prearranged.

How chance played into life!

He had emigrated; and the mere fact that he was uprooted and transplanted had given him a second sight, had awakened powers of vision and sympathy in him which were far beyond his education and upbringing. If one single thing had been different, everything might have run a different course …

If Lund had held on to one of the places which he was said to have owned in his life, instead of giving in to adverse circumstances; or if his boy had not been drowned, success might have been his instead of failure …

What, then, was in store for him, Niels?

He could not defend himself just now against a feeling of fear: the fear of life …

A
S
,
LATE IN THE DAY
, he neared his last turn, he shook the lines over the horses' backs; and a few minutes later he was within sight of Nelson's yard.

The house looked very different as compared with a few years ago. There were three rooms now, the kitchen being the old log-shanty to which the main building had been added. The walls were of logs; but the roof was shingled.

The stable, too, had been much enlarged; and there was a granary. The yard was neatly fenced with woven wire: the gate was a real farm-gate, of bent pipe.

But nothing struck Niels so much as the pleasant look of the white-curtained windows in the house.

He alighted, went to the door, and knocked. It was a minute or so before it was opened.

“Well, I declare!” Olga greeted him. “If it isn't Mr. Lindstedt! Come in.”

Niels hardly recognised in this young woman the girl he had seen slaving behind the plow, barefooted, dishevelled, clad in rags.

She wore a loose-fitting dress of dark print, a white dusting cap, and
shoes which were almost high-heeled
.

Under his look she blushed.

“I have the horses to look after,” Niels said. “Nelson in?”

“No, Lars is out in the bush. That way, I believe. Cutting logs for a smoke-house. Put your horses in the stable, Mr. Lindstedt, and come in and get warm.”

“Thanks,” Niels replied. “I'm not cold. I think I'll walk out to Nelson. Everything all right?”

“Everything is just grand!” Olga said emphatically. “Have you had your dinner?”

“No, I haven't. But I'd like to see Nelson first. He'll knock off, I suppose. We'll come in for a bite if it isn't inconvenient.”

“All right,” Olga said.

N
ELSON GREETED NIELS
in a very cordial, though not the old way. “Hello, Lindstedt,” he sang out and shook him by the hand. Formerly he had called him Niels though Niels had never called him Lars. “Coming for your grain?” Nelson had always spoken Swedish to Niels; he was using English now.

“Well, yes,” Niels said.

“It's waiting for you. You're in no hurry, I hope? Stay overnight?”

“If it isn't too much trouble?”

“Well, I guess the wife'll fix you up. Seen her?”

“I went to the house,” Niels replied, somehow embarrassed by Nelson's way of referring to Olga.

“Find things much changed?”

“Yes. As I expected.”

“Dropped in at the old folks'?”

“No. Fact is, things don't seem to run smoothly there.”

Nelson laughed. “Guess not. They miss their slavey. We haven't seen them for several months.”

“That so?”

“Old man thinks we should both work for him now and pull him out of his hole. Well, I suppose I better knock off and call it a day.”

But Niels had seized one of the logs that lay ready to be loaded; and so they worked on for another half hour.

Then they drove back to the yard. Nelson talked.

“Tell you,” he said. “When I got my supplies from Minor, along in the fall, I came back with a wagon load of groceries, flour, etc. I put in at Lund's for the night. In the morning I hitch up. But the load seems somehow small. I start to check things over and find that I'm two bags of flour short. I in and asks the old man, Do you know anything about that flour of mine?—Flour? He says. I? What should I know about it?—Well, I says, I'm two bags short.—Must have lost them on the way, he says.—Lost them on the way, nothing! I says. I checked them over last night.—Where did you leave your wagon? he asks.—Well, you know, I says. By the hay-stack.—Maybe some Indians sneaked in and stole them, he says, lying there in his wicker chair as you know.—Indians? I says. I'll find them Indians.—And out I go and back to the load; for I had an idea. There I begin to stoke about in the hay; and sure enough, before long I pull them flour-bags out of the stack. I back to the house. Well, I says; and the old lady looks at me kind of funny. I've found the Indians. They were in the hay.—The old lady screams. Daddy, she cries, you're a disgrace to the family!” And Nelson laughed uproariously at the recital.