Ellen

A chance happening disturbed Niels still more profoundly.

He had gone to town, driving his Percheron team. The mare was in foal. Last year’s filly still ran with her. So he stayed overnight. The next day was hot; he made up his mind to attend to some business he had long postponed and to wait for the evening coolness before he started out for home . . .

Some time before dinner the train from the south was due. To put in time, he went to the station.

As is usual in small towns, half the population of the place crowded on to the platform as if in greeting or reception of the arrivals. A few—elderly or middle-aged men in shirt-sleeves—were there on business; less—ladies, these—to receive visitors or members of their households; most—young boys and girls in “citified” clothes—because the arrival of the train furnished a pretext for joining a crowd or for meeting those of the opposite sex.

To Niels it always seemed that for town-people the most important problem was what to do with their time.

Niels stood silent and alone, frowning, as the train, this “link with a wider world,” lumbered to a stop with screeching brakes and hissing steamvalves. He stood opposite the coupling of two cars. With absent-minded curiosity he scanned the passengers as they alighted.

The first to appear was a bulky, powerful man—from the studied and conscious “magnetism” of his bearing a travelling salesman. Next came two Slavic-looking men, each carrying on his back a gunny-sack full of tools; self-effacing men who slipped through the crowd as if anxious to hide. Then, a girl who was at once taken to the ample bosom of a lady and kissed. Fourthly, another young man, in glaringly polished, pointed shoes, grey-checked trousers, short enough to reveal a fascinating piece of blue silk socks, a loud, striped shirt with flowing necktie, and a tight-fitting coat of the same grey check as his trousers: his line—“ladies’ ready-to-wear”—written all over him . . .

Last, after a short wait, there came a lady dressed in the height of fashion, a long, narrow skirt enforcing a short, tripping step; a mannish summer coat of “tango” colour; and a wide lace hat—bergère style—under which a peculiarly engaging, smiling, and dimpled face looked out as if it were used to the attention she attracted.

Niels stared; and then he froze into a statue of almost indignant aloofness: that lady was Mrs. Vogel.

She, too, stared at him as she alighted.

And then, as she came straight up to him, her face broke into that smile which had once thrilled him.

“Why,” she said as she held out her hand, “this is the nicest of all surprises. Coming back as I do, almost a stranger in these parts, to be greeted by the face of a friend!”

Niels was at a loss what to say. The consciousness of old thoughts, dreams, and thrills sent a flush into his face. Awkwardly he doffed his cap when he accepted her hand which was encased in a grey suède glove. But Mrs. Vogel relieved him of the necessity of speaking.

“I’m on my way to the place in the bush,” she said; and the old expression of feminine helplessness came over her. She had looked tall and commanding on the steps of the car; now she seemed to dwindle till she was no more than a bit of humanity which needed protection. “I am selling the place and have to attend to all kinds of things. I am quite at a loss, not being a business woman. I was going to hire a livery rig. But perhaps I could get a ride with you?”

“I can give you the ride,” Niels said; “but I’m not going out till late. My Percherons must not sweat . . .”

Niels was aware that they formed the centre of a watching group. Mrs. Vogel’s appearance had become the object of the local young ladies’ absorbed attention; he himself was being scanned by the travelling salesmen . . .

A commotion arose. The conductor’s “All-aboard” rang out; and with a jerk and a great puffing of steam the train began to glide out to the north.

“That would suit me just right,” Mrs. Vogel said. “I shall have to see Mr. Thorpe, the lawyer; and I shall have to change before we start. I am just in time for dinner at the hotel, I believe.”

Shortly after, they sat in the dining room of the hotel.

When the rouged and powdered waitress came, Niels gave his order in a curt, gruff tone which was almost insulting.

Mrs. Vogel smiled; she seemed to be making fun of him: her voice, in addressing the waitress, was so pointedly sweet and measured.

“How strange,” Mrs. Vogel said after a while, “that you should be the first man I meet. Of all men you. Do you know, Niels, how often I have thought of you during these years in the city?”

Niels felt as he had felt years ago, at Nelson’s wedding, in the house that was falling to ruins in the bush: Lund’s house, ages ago . . . He almost trembled when she used his first name.

Mrs. Vogel inquired after Mrs. Lund, after others . . .

“I still have that pony and buggy,” she said. “I hope Bert Rowdle is going to buy them . . .”

“Is he the one who is taking your place?”

“Yes,” she replied. “Bert Rowdle has been farming his brother’s and my places together. His brother left a few years ago, playing hide-and-seek with his creditors, I believe. He is coming back. So Bert wants to buy . . . And you are on the old place still?”

“Yes.”

“Doing well?”

“Not too badly. I have proved up.”

“You have? That’s splendid.” It sounded like mockery. “Too bad you should still be unmarried . . .”

Niels kept silent. At last, by chance, he looked up.

Her eyes were resting on his, not mockingly now, but with a serious, glowing interest that seemed to deprive him of his speech. For the first time he noticed her hair: it was parted in the centre, rolling out in big puffs to both sides, and twisted into curly roll after roll behind. Strange that it should never have struck him before that it was coppery-red . . .

Her complexion was still that almost transparent white; her lips, full and red; her cheeks, covered with a roseate bloom. A faint, heady perfume exhaled from her . . .

When this scrutiny became embarrassing, Niels tried to recall what she had said. “How do you know?” he asked.

“I can tell.” She smiled again.

And in sudden exasperation he said, “How?”

For a moment she looked at him in silence. Then she said very slowly, “You are a conqueror, Niels; but you do not know it. With women you are a child. A woman wants to be taken, not adored. But if you are ever to marry, the woman will have to take you . . .”

Niels reddened and frowned.

“Well,” said Mrs. Vogel when the meal was finished, “when do you go?”

“I’ll come for you at six,” he said. “I’ll put plenty of hay in the box.” And it struck him as absurd to offer this lady of the city a place in the hay.

But she nodded. “So long then.”

Niels had really nothing to do. But he strolled over to the bank to inquire about his balance which he knew as well as the banker.

The manager, a slim and exceedingly polite young man by name of Regan, asked him into his private office when he saw him.

“How’s the farm?” he enquired. “You’re in a good location there, Mr. Lindstedt. They’ve never had a failure yet in that district . . . And it seems you have the right idea; always keeping a comfortable balance on the right side of the ledger . . . However, I have been wanting to say this to you. Should you at any time wish to do something for which your cash resources are insufficient, come in and talk it over with us. The chances are that we should be glad to back you.”

“I believe in going without when I cannot pay cash.”

“A good principle, very good,” Mr. Regan said. “However, if we had no credit, there would be few binders or sewing machines on our farms . . .”

“I have my binder,” Niels objected.

“No doubt. In fact, I know. You might want a tractor one day . . .”

“Not till I can grow gasoline on my fields . . . I am raising colts . . .”

“Good stock, too. They’ll make money for you. Well,” and the banker rose, chiefly in order to uphold the fiction that he was a very busy man . . . “should the occasion arise . . . Good-day, Mr. Lindstedt . . .”

Niels went to the stable to feed his horses.

Then he left town, following the road to the east, along the Muddy River, walking.

A feeling of general dissatisfaction possessed him. This was the first time he had spent more than a few hours in town. He had often had the same feeling before.

On his land he was master; he knew just how to act. Here in town, people did with him as they pleased. Store-keepers tried to sell him what he did not want; at the hotel they fed him with things he did not like. The banker with whom he had sought no interview dismissed him at his own imperious pleasure . . .

And the attitude of superiority everybody assumed . . . They were quicker at repartee—silly, stupid repartee: and they were quick at it because they did not do much else but practise it . . .

Women want to be taken, not adored . . .

Mrs. Vogel perhaps, had he wanted her, might be taken . . . Had he wanted her . . . But he had wanted her!

Yet, she had been in the city: and he had not even known it! She had simply disappeared from his horizon . . .

Would such a thing have been possible with Ellen? It would not . . .

He was impatient to get back to the farm . . . Yet he waited where he had crouched down on the bank of the little river . . .

In front of the hotel he sat in his wagon for half an hour before Mrs. Vogel appeared.

“Why, Niels,” she exclaimed, “what a team! . . . I’ll be out in a minute.”

Shortly after, she appeared again. She wore a plain skirt and a waist, carrying her coat over her arm.

When Niels reached for her suitcase, he noticed that several faces had crowded together behind the glass of the door to the lobby. She climbed over the wheel to the seat by his side.

He had never been quite so close to her before; he had never, since he had been a man, been so close to any woman on earth. And this was an artful woman. She enveloped him in a cloud of delicate scents; she smiled at him from her black, beady eyes when the horses bent into their collars and stretched the traces.

They left the town.

He felt as if he were thrown back into chaos . . .

He had thought that he had fought all this down years ago. His conquest had been a specious one. He had conquered by the aid of a fickle ally; circumstance . . . Something was still stirred in him by this woman, something low, disgraceful . . .

In spite of his twenty-nine years he was not experienced enough to know that this something would have been stirred in him by any woman . . . And this was an artful woman: artful enough not to speak . . .

The sun had set. They passed the point where the trail branched off to the east, angling over the sand-flats. This was wild land, overgrown with low brush which was washed by the almost palpable bluish light of the high half moon. Every now and then a patch of silvery-grey wolf-willow glistened softly in the dark-green cushions of symphoricarpus.

Niels slipped off the wagon. “I’ll walk for a while,” he said.

As he did so, the filly that followed her mother whisked her furry tail and shot ahead.

He took his supper out and munched away while he walked, the lines idly slung over his shoulders.

Soberly, now, the filly trotted ahead of him.

Hours went by . . . At last Niels spoke.

“I am going to stop,” he said. “I want to feed. I suppose you had better lie down;”—vaguely addressing the woman on the seat.

She nodded, almost overcome with sleep.

He pulled out on the side of the trail, in the lee of a copse of willows . . .

Slowly he stripped the harness off his horses, tied their halter-shanks to the wheels, poured oats on a piece of canvas, and spread the hay.

The woman climbed into the box of the wagon. She smiled and nearly stumbled with sleepiness.

“Won’t you lie down yourself?” she asked.

“No,” he answered. “It isn’t worth while . . .”

She smiled up at him, half asleep already, as he stood between the horses by the wagon-box; and just as she was on the point of closing her eyes, she reached languidly up with one hand, pushed his cap off, and rumpled his hair.

It was as if a stream of liquid fire had run through his veins. Completely bewildered he stepped back . . .

Grey dawn crept over the eastern world . . .

Niels who had lain down after all, on the ground, got up and stretched. Then he yawned and reached for the harness which was hanging over the tongue of the wagon.

He glanced at the woman. She was sound asleep. Somehow her artificiality was half stripped away; she looked like a relic of ancient temptations . . .

A few minutes later the wagon was jolting along; the filly nickered, prancing about on her stilt-like, heavy-jointed legs . . .

In front of him, by-and-by, rose the sun, lifting himself out of glowing vapours. All about stretched the sandy margin of the Marsh, level as a prairie field, for the hollows were filled with snow-white mists. It was chilly.

Thus Niels was nearing his homestead with unexpected freight . . .

The woman behind him stirred, awoke, sat up. Niels did not turn. Several minutes passed.

Then her voice, shot with mocking notes, “Don’t look back now. I am going to fix myself up a little.” But it sounded more like a summons to look than like anything else.

Niels chose to disobey the implication rather than the explicit words . . .

Higher and higher rose the bluff in front. The woman claimed his help in climbing forward to the seat.

“I’m going to change horses,” Niels said. “I can trot the Clydes . . .”

They reached his gate; the view on the yard widened out. In front of the stable Bobby was harnessing the other team. Beyond, in the horse-lot, the older filly set up a piercing call . . .

No sooner did Bobby see his employer than he came running to open the gate. At sight of Mrs. Vogel he stared. Then, with his high-pitched, boyish voice, he said “Hello!”

“Hello, Bobby,” Mrs. Vogel answered. “My, but you’ve grown!”

“What were you going to do?” Niels asked.

“Haul hay for the loft.”

“No, wait. I want the Clydes. Turn Jock and Nellie out. I’m taking Mrs. Vogel to her place.”

In a few minutes the change of horses was completed.

Mrs. Vogel sat on her seat and looked about, half mockingly, half in admiration.

Niels did not ask her to enter the house. He climbed back to his seat, turned, and drove off the yard. To the south, before they reached the gate, a little vista opened on to a newly built shack.

“What is that?” Mrs. Vogel asked.

“I’m going to take Sigurdsen over,” Niels answered. “We’ve built that shack for him.”

“You’ve surely made progress,” the woman said.

Silence again . . .

In a little less than an hour, following the winding bush trails, they emerged on a clearing. There were two groups of buildings: the near ones those of a pioneer homestead, log-cabin, stable, shed; the far ones a little cottage, frame-built, painted white, with a diminutive stable behind.

“This is Bert’s place,” Mrs. Vogel said. “We’ll stop here, please. In the cottage I used to live before I moved altogether into the city.”

Niels wondered why a strong man like Rowdle did not homestead rather than buy.

“Bert is lazy,” Mrs. Vogel explained. “He’s a bachelor. There were thirty acres broken on this place. He’ll never break any more . . . No, don’t drive in. Just go to the house and call Bert, please.”

Niels noticed a pig coming out through the tattered screen-door of the house, grunting. In the one-roomed cabin chickens were picking up crumbs; a second pig was contentedly lying behind a dirty couch. On a sheetless bed, covered with grey blankets that lay in a heap, there reposed the enormous girth of the man. He was just opening his eyes and jumped up.

“Hello, Lindstedt,” he said, fumbling under the bed for his shoes. “How are you?”

“I brought Mrs. Vogel over. She’s waiting outside.”

“The deuce she is,” Rowdle grumbled. “Don’t let her in. Tell her to wait till I get my pants on.”

Niels returned to the gate and reported.

Mrs. Vogel alighted. “Won’t you wait for breakfast?” she asked, smiling enigmatically.

“Seems to me,” Niels said, “I should have offered you breakfast at my place. I didn’t know what this was like.”

“No,” Mrs. Vogel smiled. “Since you never came three years ago . . . However, it’s only a hundred yards to my cottage.”

“I am anxious to get back to work.”

“Well,” said Mrs. Vogel, “don’t worry about me. Thanks for the ride. I have enjoyed it.” And she held out her hand.

August came; and harvest drew near.

Sigurdsen had moved into the shack on Niels’ farm. Niels had bought his stock . . .

Niels was working, brushing more land . . .

Yes, there could be no doubt. His farm was a success. In a material sense he was prosperous beyond his boldest expectations . . . He had made his land; it was his . . . If only . . . But that, too, had to come to a decision. It had to be decided at once; else there would be chaos . . .

On Sunday afternoon he went to see Ellen.

Ellen was waiting for him. She stood at the gate, looking down the winding trail to the south.

Was there something in his face which betrayed him?

Somehow she was different. In her face, too, there was a new expression: something of expectancy, emotion, inner struggle which had disturbed her usual balance.

He was aware of it as soon as he looked into her eye.

He knew more clearly, more convincingly that the moment was at hand. Whether he brought it or not, it was there. In the smile with which she greeted him there was something hunted . . . For the first time in their intercourse this girl awakened in him the protective instincts. More than ever before she was the only woman in the world for him . . .

In silence they went to the accustomed place, that natural bower in the fringe of the bush . . .

As they crossed the yard, imponderable things, incomprehensible waves of feeling passed to and fro between them: things too delicate for words; things somehow full of pain and anxious, disquieting anticipation: like silent discharges between summer clouds that distantly wink at each other in lightning.

The air, too, was charged; its sultriness foreboded a storm. Yet, there was not a cloud in the upper reaches of the atmosphere; only at the horizon there lay, in the far north-west, a white bank which, above the dark cliff of forest, showed a rounded, convoluted outline, its edge blushing with a golden iridescence.

The slightest breeze ambled into the clearing from the east, scarcely perceptible, yet refreshing where it could be felt.

Between the two, as the silence lengthened—between man and woman, boy and girl—the consciousness arose that the other knew of the decision which was at hand: it was almost oppressive. Some step was to be taken, had to be taken at last: it was a tragic necessity no longer to be evaded . . .

Yet neither spoke; each waited for the other. They stood by the chairs which the girl had provided.

Furtive glances stole across, to be averted forthwith. Colour came and went in two faces, imperceptible almost, yet divined.

Then the girl spoke. Her words came hurriedly, precipitately, as if to forestall the arrival of the moment; as if to postpone what was unavoidably coming; as if to plead for a term of grace.

“Shall we sit here?” she said. “Let us have a walk rather, shall we?”

Niels nodded. The appeal in her voice could not be denied.

“Sometimes,” the girl went on, still hurriedly, “the bush frightens me. I cannot find the horizon. I want to see wide, open, level spaces. Let’s go to the slough.”

Again Niels nodded. He did not trust himself to speak. There was no barrier between them: they looked at each other, as it were, stripped of all conventions, all disguises . . .

The moment was coming. It had prepared itself. It was rushing along the lane of time where neither he nor she could escape it. Yes, it was already here. It stood in front of them; and its face was not smiling; it was grimly tragical . . .

“Wait,” said the girl. “I’ll get my hat.” And she slipped past him, into the house.

Half conscious only of his movements he idled back to the yard and stood there, eyes fixed on vacancy.

Dark, green, gloomy, the bush reared all about. Aspen-leaves shivered, revealing their silvery undersides.

“I believe a storm is coming,” said the girl, somewhat steadied as she rejoined him, her hat slung by its ribbons over her arm. “I wish it would come while we are out. I like to watch a storm.”

They turned and passed into the bush road, side by side.

The tension between them grew less. The moment was coming. It did not depend upon them. Why tremble?

On and on they went; between them peace arose. Both seemed to feel that it was for the very last time: drain what you can to the dregs . . .

The storm, too, was coming. But all the clearer, all the more brilliant was the sky overhead.

First they followed the bush road; then they left it, threading a cattle path which branched off to the left. Birds fluttered up as they touched the bushes: shy birds and bold birds: waxwings, catbirds, tow-hees—these merely flitted away; blackbirds, kingbirds, and jays—these scolded at them, resenting their intrusion into the home of their young. Bush rabbits sprang up and scampered away in a panic: and both of them laughed: laughter released the tension completely.

The cattle path forked: the girl followed one, the boy another; they flitted and ran; whoever was first to arrive at the rejunction of the trails stood and waited for the other, smiling or laughing . . .

They came to the clearing of the little school.

The yard was densely overgrown with raspberry canes which held a profusion of heavy, overripe berries. They picked them, eating as they went or offering handfuls to each other. Not a word did they say, except that now and then the one or the other exclaimed, “Here!” or “Look at that!”

True enough, the moment was coming. But between them had arisen something like a silent compact not to hasten it along; to delay it, rather. That moment was fraught with pain!

They went to the building and peered in through broken window-lights; they laughed at the sight of benches and blackboards; thoughtlessly, happily, as children laugh.

They crossed the road that led north, past the school house, winding through the virgin bush. And just as they were in its centre, they caught a glimpse of a democrat coming from the south. As if in play, fleeing from pursuit, they plunged into the bush beyond. Behind a thicket of hazel-brush they crouched down, laughing, their movements as simultaneous and nearly instinctive as those of a flock of birds.

The democrat rattled up, along the trail, the horses snorting; horses are scary in the bush.

A man’s voice sang out, “Hi, you there!”

Silence.

They heard, though they could not see, that the man climbed down from his seat. They looked at each other in mock fright. Evidently the man wished to enquire about the road . . .

In a common, instinctive impulse they rose, flitted deeper into the thicket, to hide, not to be found . . .

Heavy steps crashed through the underbrush, wending this way and that.

The man’s voice again. “Well, I’ll be dog-gonned . . .”

Silence.

A woman’s voice, “You were mistaken, Jack.”

“I saw them as plain as daylight. They’re hidding, that’s all.”

“Well . . .”

The man’s steps crashed as he turned to the road. He climbed back to his seat and clicked his tongue. The horses pulled; the vehicle rolled on . . .

Breathlessly two human beings listened, their faces flushed: a boy and a girl . . .

Bent forward, shape of an arrow, a bird peered at them around a screen of foliage.

The girl sprang to her feet and laughed: a loud, mocking laugh, irresistible, so that the boy had to join her: both were flushed with guilt . . .

At the laugh, however, the horses stopped out there on the road.

Boy and girl caught their breath, listened, and once more broke cover and ran, away from the road, flitting this way and that, around thickets and tree trunks . . .

Again the girl stopped, breathless, flushed, but laughing. “Oh Niels!” she sang out, exuberantly, exultantly.

In an instant he was by her side, reaching out for her hand. “Ellen!” His voice is hoarse, intensely serious of a sudden.

“No,” she begs. “Not now. Let’s be happy!”

But she leaves him her hand.

On they go, following a wider path; sun-spots filter through the leaf-mosiac of the trees, dancing and flitting over their heads. There is hardly room for the two side by side; their shoulders touch.

The slough opens up: a wide expanse, first of meadow, recently cropped; then of sedge, interlaced with low-growing bands of willow.

Far on the other side, a cliff of forest, black, mysterious, threatening . . .

A few hundred yards in front of them rise the haystacks which they had piled a few weeks ago.

Slough and forest are steeped in sweltering sunlight and heat. Higher now looms a dark-grey mass of cloud in the north, edged with enormous, whitish scallops.

They stand and look.

Then the girl heaves a sigh.

“There’s the storm,” she says. “Let’s stay and watch. Let’s go to the hay-stacks. We can crawl in when the rain comes. Shall we?”

“Yes,” says the boy.

And they cross the edge of the slough, hand in hand.

When they reach the first stack, he scoops out huge armfuls of hay, making a hollow on the south-east side, where the rain will not strike them, a cave, overhung by a roof twenty feet thick.

“Let’s get on top,” she says.

Without a word he takes hold of one of the ropes weighted with stones which are thrown across the hay to hold it down in a wind. Bracing his feet against the flank of the stack he climbs upward, making steps as he goes by tramping; and then he reaches down with one hand and lifts the girl clear off her feet and pulls her up.

“Now wait,” he says when she has a firm foothold; and he repeats the manoeuvre, two, three times.

Then they stand on the top and laugh, looking at each other’s flushed faces and beady brows.

The girl puts her hat on, a wide-rimmed hat, the rim bent down at the sides and fastened with ribbons under her chin: her face looks out as from a cavern.

The air is breathless: even the slight, wafting flow from the east has ceased. Nature lies prostrate in expectation of the scourge that is coming, coming. The wall of cloud has differentiated: there are two, three waves of almost black; in front, a circling festoon of loose, white, flocculent manes, seething, whirling . . . A winking of light runs through the first wave of black. A distant rumbling heralds the storm . . .

The two have squatted down in the hay, forgetting themselves. They sit and look. Then a noise as of distant breakers in the surf; the roar of the sea, approaching nearer, nearer.

The bush in front through which they have come stands motionless, breathless, blackening, as the sun is obscured. Birds flit to and fro, seeking shelter, silent . . .

Then a huge suction soughs through the stems. But already the lash of the wind comes down: like the sea in a storm tree tops rise and fall, the stems bending over and down and whipping back again, tossed by enormous pressures. They dance and roll, tumble and rear, and mutely cry out as in pain. And the very next moment the wind hits the stack, snatching the breath from the lips of the two who sit there crouching. A misty veil rushes over the landscape, illumined by a bluish flash which is followed by nearer and nearer growlings and barkings.

Up rises the girl in the storm, holding on to her bonnet with both her hands, leaning back into the wind, her skirt crackling and snapping and pulling at her strong limbs. Once more she laughs, laughs into the storm and sweeps her arm over the landscape, pointing.

The first rain drops, heavy, large, but few, strike against her body. She looks at the man, the boy still crouching at her feet and calls, “Now down!”

They run to the edge of the stack, squat, slide, and make for the shelter which the boy has prepared.

Down comes the rain in a cloud-burst, forming a wall in front of them where they sit in the sheltering cove in which all the fragrance of the meadow is concentrated. Flashes of lightning break on the slough like bombshells; rattling thunder dances and springs.

On sweeps the storm; less and less rain falls; the drops begin to sparkle and glitter; the sun bursts forth. Over the bush huge clouds are lifting their wings; and a playful breeze strikes into the cave where Niels and Ellen still crouch silent . . .

Ellen is looking out, straight ahead, her eyes fixed on she knows not what.

Niels is looking at her, from close by, his face almost touching her shoulder. The longing actually to touch her, to take her in both his arms, grows so strong that his joints ache with it . . . A moment ago he still could have yielded to this longing . . .

But already something has stepped in between them: as if a distance had stepped between them, a great, infinite remoteness not to be bridged . . . As he sits there and looks, it is as if her face were receding and fading from view. And suddenly he is aware that in her eyes there are tears which are quivering on her lashes, white, sun-bleached lashes, before they fall.

The realisation of a bottomless abyss shakes him.

“Ellen,” he calls with an almost breaking voice.

The girl slowly rises. “I know,” she says. “Don’t speak. The moment has come. I know what you want to say. Oh Niels, I am going to hurt you deeply. Let it be as it is, Niels. Why can’t you?” She sobs and turns, touching his cheek with her hand. Then almost impatiently, almost angrily, “Oh God, I can’t understand it! Why has it got to be like this? I’ve seen it coming, Niels. Ever since I first saw you, years ago. I knew it would have to come to this! I knew it! I knew it! I did what I could to keep it away; but it did not help. Oh God!” she cries out once more, “I’ve had only one single friend in my life! And now I must lose him!” And her tears run freely at last; and she makes no longer any attempt to check her sobs.

Niels has risen. He is shaken to his very depths. He does not know what to do, what to say. He stands helpless, sobs pressing from within to be let out.

“Ellen . . .” he stammers at last.

At that the girl sinks down before him. “Niels,” she implores, “it is hard, oh so hard! I cannot! . . . Niels, promise . . . promise that you will let things remain as they are. Come, come . . .” She reaches for his hand and strokes it. “I shall be all alone again, Niels. Promise that you will not say another word!”

Niels stands ghastly white. His knees shake under him. Once more he stammers, “Ellen . . .”

“At least to-day, Niels,” she begs; “promise that at least to-day you will not say another word . . .”

“I won’t,” he breathes.

“Thanks,” she says, “thanks.” And she feels for her handkerchief to dry her eyes.

“Let’s go,” she says as she rises to her feet and smiles at him. “The rain’s over. It is beautiful now. Let us take the road.”

So they went home through the bush where the drops showered down upon them as the breeze ran through the leafy tops of trees.

They went in silence: Niels as through a vacant dream devoid of feeling. It was Ellen who reached for his hand as if begging forgiveness.

At Ellen’s gate they stopped.

“Niels,” Ellen said, “will you believe me when I tell you that I know? What you wish can never be. When I can, I shall tell you. If it’s any comfort to you, you may know I shall never marry. You’ve been my only friend. I’ve suffered, Niels, when sometimes you did not come. I know why you have stayed away when you did. Because you, too, felt that at last something like this would be coming. I’ve dreaded it; I’ve dreaded it more than I can tell. Let things remain as they are. Don’t leave me alone. You will come again? Promise me, Niels, promise that you will come again!”

Niels nodded and went on his way . . .

Niels sat in the granary on his farm. The house was distasteful to him . . . Bobby had gone away in the morning, on horseback, as he often did. Sigurdsen looked after the stock on such days . . .

Not only the house was distasteful to him: his yard, his stable, his farm . . . He wished it were winter and he were out, fighting the old, savage fight against the elements . . .

He did not understand what had happened to him. He did not enquire into it. It was final . . .

He was hiding like a wounded beast. Bobby might soon be back. Sigurdsen would come, hobbling about, bent on his stick . . . Niels wanted to be left alone.

The hours went by; it grew dark. What awakened him from his lethargy was the impatient lowing of his cows at the gate.

There, he thought, I have two men on the place; one I pay, the other I feed; and neither feels called upon to open the gate and to water my cattle . . .

He went and attended to them; for half an hour he pumped water into the trough. The horses had drunk it dry.

Two of the cows had to be milked. Let it go? He drove them into the cow-lot, and with an angry feeling against Bobby he went and fetched the pails . . .

Then he looked into the stable. The mangers were empty; at the noise he made the horses came pressing in through the door from the horse-lot.

He lighted a lantern and reached for a fork.

As he did so, he heard Bobby’s merry whistling from the corner of the Marsh. He had half finished his task when the boy joined him, grinning sheepishly.

“I’m late,” said Bobby. “I thought Sigurdsen would look after things. I asked him to.”

“Sigurdsen hasn’t been around,” Niels said curtly. But he felt ashamed of the slur on the old man this implied. “Better go and see whether there’s anything wrong.”

He was closing the door of the stable when Bobby returned, running. “I believe the old man’s dying,” he said.

Sigurdsen lay in his clothes, not on the bed, but on the floor, his head reversed, his legs curved back, sprawling; his body bent hollow so it did not touch the floor; his thick, swollen tongue lolling out of his mouth. A rattling noise came from his throat.

Niels and Bobby undressed him and lifted him up on his bed.

Bobby was frightened. “Is he going to die?”

“I think so. Better go to bed. I shall watch.”

Niels pulled the one chair to the side of the bed and sat down for the long night.

Why did it have to be to-day? When life was hard to bear as it was . . .

What was life anyway? A dumb shifting of forces. Grass grew and was trodden down; and it knew not why. He himself—this very afternoon there had been in him the joy of grass growing, twigs budding, blossoms opening to the air of spring. The grass had been stepped on; the twig had been broken; the blossoms nipped by frost . . .

He, Niels, a workman in God’s garden? Who was God anyway? . . .

Here lay a lump of flesh, being transformed in its agony from flesh in which dwelt thought, feeling, a soul, into flesh that would rot and feed worms till it became clay . . .

Once a woman had been, his mother. She had been young, pretty, pulsating, vibrating in every fibre with life: at best she was a heap of brittle bones . . .

Did she live on? In him, Niels? . . .

Yes, that was it! The highest we can aspire to in this life is that we feel we leave a gap behind in the lives of others when we go. To inflict pain on others in undergoing the supreme pain ourselves: that is the sum and substance of our achievement . . . If that is denied, we shiver in an utter void . . . Thus would he shiver . . .

Niels laughed in the presence of death . . .

This man had loved him. Yes, after all it was good that he could die . . . Could die without seeing the horrors that were sure to come . . .

Niels sat and watched. The body relaxed. The heart was still beating . . . And then it stopped . . .

Quietly he got up and drew a blanket over it that had been he.

An hour or so later he went to the house, wakened Bobby, and sent him to town to see the doctor and get the death certificate . . .

He held the gate open when Bobby drove out.

Then he turned his face north, to the farm where Ellen lived. He had, in a flash, made up his mind to plead once more the cause of life . . .

He found her at the house, preparing breakfast.

“Come in,” she said when she saw him at the door.

“Sigurdsen is dead,” Niels said slowly.

She looked at him with wide, haggard eyes.

He straightened. “He’s dead. Let that go. I am alive. I want to speak about myself.”

“Niels,” Ellen pleaded, “I sent you away last night. I am not going to put you off again if you insist. But had we not better wait?”

“No. I have got to know. I have to get this clear. I am quiet. There is no use in waiting.”

“Very well,” she acquiesced. “Sit down. I shall listen.”

“Ellen,” he broke out, “there’s a house on my place, the best-built, roomiest house for many miles around. In it there are things that I’ve bought through these years and which I’ve never used. There’s a sewing machine; there’s a washing machine; there are curtains, packed away; there are parcels with towels, bed-linen, table-cloths, and what not. Do you know for whom that house was built, for whom those things were bought?”

“I know,” she said, smiling sadly. “I have feared it ever . . . ever since I saw the house.”

“Feared it?” he repeated . . . “Ellen, when I filed on that homestead, I did so because it was near to you. When I fenced it, I drove your name into the ground as the future owner with every post. When I cleared my field, I did it for you. When I dug the cellar of the house, I laid it out so it would save you work. When I planned the kitchen and the dining room, I thought of nothing but saving you steps. When I bought the lumber, I felt I was taking home presents for you. Whenever I came driving over the Marsh, I saw you standing at the gate to welcome me. When I laid out the kitchen garden, I thought of you bringing in the greens. Ellen, no matter what I have done during these years, it was done with you in mind.”

An infinitely soft expression had come into the face of the girl; slowly she reached out with her hand and laid it on his where it was resting on the table that stood between them.

“Yes,” she said. “All that I know, Niels. At least I often thought so. I could not help it. What was I to do? I always feared that one day I was going to give you pain. Yet I hoped you would understand . . .”

“Understand?” he repeated. “Understand what?”

“That between me and any man there can be but friendship.”

“Friendship?” he echoed dully.

“Yes. You know I was lonesome. You know how lonesome I was. There were plenty who were willing to make me feel less lonesome. They wanted marriage. Long ago there were plenty of them. Your very friend Nelson had been among them. I turned all of them away, harshly, so that a few weeks after my father’s death I was the most lonesome woman in the district. You came. I did not turn you away. I liked you. I had liked you from the day when I first met you. I was fond of you. I am fond of you. As of a brother. I would not do anything that might hurt you if I could help myself. You must feel that. Don’t you, Niels?”—Her voice was as full of passionate pleading as his had been.

“Yes, but . . .” And in helpless non-comprehension he shrugged his shoulders.

“Oh, it is so hard to explain,” Ellen exclaimed. “Niels, I do not want to lose you. I am fighting for you with all my strength. I know a farmer needs a woman on the place. Take me as a sister. Marry another woman. But let us remain what we are!”

“Another woman . . .”

“Yes, Niels, you are thirty. You cannot but have seen other women. Surely you have sometimes thought of others but myself! Surely there are plenty of girls in the world; there are some in this settlement that will gladly be your handmaiden, that will jump at the chance of becoming the wife of a man like you.”

Niels sat and brooded. He tried to follow her thought. He even tried to visualise a fulfilment of what she suggested. His vision was a blank. He shook his head.

“Ellen,” he said, “before your father died, before I had filed on my claim, when I was living with Nelson, up in the bush, in winter, in the little shack he had; when I was fresh from the squalour and poverty of the old country—then I used to dream of a place of my own, with a comfortable house, with a living room and a roaring fire in the stove, and a good, bright lamp burning overhead, of an evening. I was sitting with a woman, my wife, in the light of that lamp, when the nightly chores were done; and we were listening to the children’s feet on the floor above as they went to bed; and we were looking and smiling at each other. Ellen, always then, in that dream, the woman was you . . . At other times, when I was thinking of my mother . . . How, even when my father was still living, she had to slave away, all day, getting wood, getting water, and taking in washing to pay for the children’s clothes—for my father was just a labourer, hiring out from sun to sun; his wages were low, not more than ten, twelve dollars a month the year around; and there were six children to feed . . . And when my father died, she had to go herself, for little wages; and some of her employers were mean to her; but others gave her a pot of beans, or the bones of a roast in addition to her wages—a Krone, a quarter, a day—to take home . . . I still fumed and raged at it in retrospection . . . And I vowed to myself that no wife of mine should ever have to work as she had done. That was why I had come to this country. And when I thought of how I would rather slave and work my fingers to the bone than let my wife, the mother of my children, do one single thing beyond what it would be a pleasure for her to do—then, for six years now, I have always thought of you as that wife. Why was that? What do you think?”

“Oh Niels . . .”

“I will tell you. It was because I loved you, loved you from the very first day that I had seen you. Do you remember? . . . There I sat, at the breakfast table; and you were busy over the stove. I kept watching you; and your father did not like it. I did not know, of course, then; but I knew later on that already I had seen in you the mate of my life . . .”

Ellen smiled a reminiscent smile and nodded. “Yes,” she said. “And then . . . Will you listen, Niels? It’s a long story; and I don’t know whether I can tell it. I don’t know whether you will understand. I have to strip myself before you. I have to show you leprous scars in my memory. I will try . . .

“What I must tell you is the story of my mother. Much of it I did not understand at the time. I was a child when these things happened. But I must speak to you as a woman . . .

“You speak of your mother . . . How she used to work and to slave. Probably you know only the least of what she had to go through. You know the outside. You were a boy. Only a girl or a woman can understand another woman. I was a very observant child, old and experienced before my time. I saw and understood many things which even my mother did not know, did not suspect I could understand. She often said, you will understand that one day, when I understood it right then. But some things I did not understand at the time. I saw them, and they lived in my memory; and I came to understand them later . . .

“Niels, if I am to make this thing clear to you, I shall have to speak to you, not as to a man, especially not a man who had hoped to be more to me than a brother. I shall have to forget that I am a young woman. There are things which even between older people are skipped in silence. If you are to understand, I must strip my soul of its secrets . . . I could not bear to have you look at me, Niels, while I tell them. But I know—I think I know what this means to you. I will do it if you wish . . .”

Niels rose and walked up and down through the room. Then he took his chair, turned it, and sat down, facing the window that looked out on the yard.

“Thanks,” she said.

“I was nine years old when we came from Sweden. My father’s people had been day labourers in the rye-districts of Soedermanland. They were prosperous in their small way. They had a little house of two rooms and a piece of land, half an acre maybe. They fattened a pig every year and kept a cow and a few hens. On the land they grew garden truck for the city.

“My father was also a farm hand as you say in this country; but he had to pay rent for the house in which we lived. There were three children, all girls; and my mother was weakly. Her illness had involved him in debt.

“Slowly, through years of discussion, against my mother’s wish, the plan to emigrate took shape. My grandfather proposed to keep mother and children while father went out to explore the land. My father declined.

“But one day he proposed to leave the children and to take only mother. At that my mother revolted. But in another year he wore her resistance down till she consented to leave the two younger girls and to take only me. I was her first-born; she would not listen to leaving me behind. She always spoke of letting the others follow as soon as possible.

“But my grandparents were very fond of children. They were not old yet. They had never had but the one child of their own. And when they agreed to take my two sisters, they made their bargain, made it with my father: they were to be in the place of father and mother to them; and my parents were not to have any rights whatever over them any more. He did not tell my mother, thinking that she would give in later when she had got used to having one child only. She never did, of course. The separation remained to her a lifelong sorrow. But as you will see, that was the least she had to bear . . .

“We came away. My father had no difficulty in finding work in this country. He was strong and healthy. I don’t know by what chance he came to Odensee. He had been working on a German estate in Sweden. He understood German well and spoke it a little; probably that was the reason. At Odensee he rented a one-roomed shack with three acres of land where he grew potatoes and raised pigs. He worked on the big farms in summer; and in winter he went to town, till he took up his homestead three years later.

“The place he rented in Odensee was part of a quarter section of almost wild land, south of the village. It belonged to an old man who had moved to town. The rest of the land was rented to a man by name of Campbell who had married a Swedish girl. He is now living north of here, on a place of his own; you may know him.

“As if it were yesterday I remember the first meeting between my mother and Mrs. Campbell. We had moved into the place a day or so before. The Campbells’ house stood a quarter of a mile east of ours, a large, unpainted frame building half gone to ruin. The man was in the cattle business; but he was not yet making money. There were three acres of land broken near the house; and he had planted them to potatoes. There were four children. The woman had to look after the little crop, for the man used his business as a pretext to be hardly ever at home. So, from the first, I got used to seeing the woman work in the potato-patch.

“Since my mother knew neither English nor German, she was lost in the settlement. She had heard that Mrs. Campbell was Swedish. And, being in a strange country the ways of which she did not know, she was anxious to become acquainted with somebody she could talk to.

“It was in the afternoon of a summer day when we crawled through the fence of our yard and crossed over through the brush to the potato-patch.

“As I said, there were four children on the place. The oldest one was a girl of seven or eight: and she was watching the smaller ones—two were twins—while she picked weeds from the rows of the plants.

“The mother, a big, bony woman, was hoeing between the rows. She did not show any pleasure at meeting my mother.

“You have four children! my mother said.

“Yes, the woman replied with an exaggerated groan of disgust; and if another were coming, I’d walk off into the bush . . .

“My mother probably betrayed surprise; for the woman laughed and added, when a woman has got to work like a man, children are just a plague . . .

“When we came home, mother cried. She was thinking of the two little ones she had left behind; I knew; and I went to her and patted her hand, begging her not to cry.

“I knew and understood more, in a childish way, than the grown-ups thought. When you change your country, at that age, it somehow gives you an insight into things and a curiosity beyond your years.

“I asked her, Mother, where do children come from?

“I had often asked her that question before, and she had always answered, God sends them!—But this time she said, When men and women live together, children come. That is nature.

“Soon after, I was sent to school and began to learn English. I also began to see many things. Soon we had a cow; and then two or three; and half a dozen pigs. And my mother was working as hard or harder than Mrs. Campbell.

“My parents spoke in my presence as if I did not exist. You have noticed that that is the rule in these settlements where houses are mere cabins in which grown-ups and children are crowded together.

“So, from many things that were said and from some that I saw I inferred that mother expected shortly to have another child and that that greatly worried her; but even more did it worry my father. He began to speak still more curtly to my mother; and he treated her as if she were at fault and had committed a crime. He prayed even more than before, both more frequently and longer. Gradually my mother began to get into a panic about her condition.

“So, one day, taking me along, she went over to see that woman in the potato-patch once more.

“A number of things were said back and forth which I remember with great distinctness but which have nothing to do with my story.

“At last Mrs. Campbell laughed out loud. Of course, she said, it’s plain to be seen by now. It’s a curse. But I can tell you I wouldn’t be caught that way. Not I! I’m wise.

“But what can you do? my mother exclaimed. He comes and begs and says that’s what God made them male and female for. And if you want to hold your man . . .

“Again the woman laughed. I see her now, standing there in the potato-patch, straight up, with her red face to the sun and her hair blowing in the wind as she put her hands on her hips and held her sides with laughing . . .

“I was only ten years old. But I tell you, I knew exactly what they were talking about. And right then I vowed I should never marry. I was furious at the woman and afraid of her.

“You’re innocent all right, she said at last contemptuously. I don’t mean it that way, child. But when I’m just about as far gone as you are now, then I go and lift heavy things; or I take the plow and walk behind it for a day. In less than a week’s time the child comes; and it’s dead. In a day or two I go to work again. Just try it. It won’t hurt you. Lots of women around here do the same.

“So, when we came home, my mother took some heavy logs, dragged them to the saw-buck, and sawed them. I begged her not to do it; but even I could see that she was desperate.

“Next day she was very sick. I was sent to the house of the German preacher in the village. And when I was allowed to come back, my mother was at work again on the land. She looked the picture of death; but she was cheerful. My father prayed more than ever.

“Once again the thing happened while we were still at Odensee. The Campbells had moved away to where they are living now; and mother had absolutely no intercourse any longer with anybody. Mother dreaded my father’s visits at home by this time.

“Then, early in the spring of the third year, we moved out here. There were no buildings. We camped. Our few things stood under the trees. There was no tent even. Nothing but the sky.

“My father began to clear the yard and to pile logs for building. Mother worked with axe and brute force, helping him. Even I had to help, lifting and pulling when the logs were too heavy for them.

“Then haying time came. My father bought a team of oxen and a mower. He had no wagon yet. The hay was carried over in huge bundles slung with ropes. Mother and I did just as much, together, as my father.

“But don’t think for a moment that I am complaining about the work. I liked it. I was strong. Already I dreamt of one day having a farm all by myself, with mother to keep me company.

“Then the stable was built; just as it stands today. My father hated make-shifts. When it was up, we moved into one end of it, the other being occupied by the cows and oxen. Late in the fall, when my father had bought a wagon, he hauled some cheap lumber and built the implement shed, just as it stands to-day. We can make out where we are, he said; but oxen and machinery cost money.

“In winter he went to town again; and we were left alone in the bush. Not a soul knew we were there. The school had not been built.

“Mother cried a good deal; more and more she confided in me, treating me as an equal. Oh, he is hard, she would say of father; as hard as God! And to think that I shall never see my little ones again!

“And she began to speak of me. You are big and strong, she said. You are as good as a boy. Don’t ever marry. Marriage makes weak . . .

“And in my childish understanding I promised fervently.

“I remember how I used to sit on the bare, frozen ground and to press my head against her knees where she sat, close to the little stove, on the only chair in the place. At night I sprang up every hour or so and replenished the stove, or we should have frozen . . .

“Towards the end of winter my father came home and began to clear land. From then on we worked with him in the bush, piling the wood and the brush, often wading through snow knee-deep. The work was much too hard for my mother; but I thrived on it. My father often praised me; but already his praise had become distasteful. There was a note of reproach in it for mother. I tried to hide how much of the work I did, how little mother.

“In spring he broke a patch of ground; and we picked the stones and piled the roots.

“That year the school was built. A teacher came out and boarded with Sterners, straight north from it . . .

“As soon as my father had seeded his patch, mother began to beg that I should be sent to school. But my father would not let me go; he wanted to build a house. Not that he thought the house so necessary; but he intended to buy a team of horses—the two old mares that I still have; it’s only ten years ago, you know—so he could haul cordwood in winter and make more money.

“The house, a one-roomed shack—it is the granary now—was not quite finished when harvest time came; there was no roof on it, no floor in it yet. My father went away; and mother and I cut the barley with the mower and tied it by hand. The cattle and the oxen could still stay outside; so we carried the bundles into the stable, to be threshed by hand when my father came home.

“Still, mother insisted on my going to school now. I went. The teacher was a young girl, not more than eighteen years old; but she let me come whenever I could. She treated me as a grown-up, as indeed I was. When I was at school—for an hour a day at most—she gave me all her time. And one day she came to see mother and told her she would put me through my entrance if I could attend for one full year; I should become a teacher myself because I was so gifted.

“But I had already made up my mind to become a farmer, though not a farmer’s wife. I liked horses and cows and pigs and chickens and could handle them. I was strong; and I was not afraid of work . . .

“When my father came home, I stopped school, of course. He brought horses along.

“It’s no use to detail to you any further the growth of the farm; you know as much of that as I do . . .

“I remember one day in the spring of the following year. Mother had been very ill for several days. She had again been lifting things; and my father had taken a little box into the bush to bury. But she had got up and made breakfast, in spite of my protest. You go and help father, she had said; and I had gone out. And when I returned to the house, my father followed me.

“This shack looks a disgrace to the place, he said in a matter-of-fact tone when he entered. You better go at white-washing it to-day.

“Mother looked a protest, appealingly.

“But he shrugged his shoulders. Poor people have to work, he said. We’ll spare you from the field. Ellen and I will attend to the seeding. I’ll mix the white-wash for you before we go.

“We had breakfast; and when my father had left the room, I lingered behind and whispered, Don’t you do it! You go to bed!

“Oh, mother moaned, I hate him! I hate him!

“But the worst is to come. The thing that makes marriage for me an impossibility; that makes the very thought of it a disgust which fills me with nausea.

“I know, Niels, if I tell it, it will ever after stand between us. I hope it will change your feelings towards me into those of a brother. I feel sure that no man can still be the lover of a woman who has spoken so plainly to him about such things.

“This house had been built meanwhile. I had grown. I was seventeen years old by that time. Mother had become a mere ghost of herself. She was dragging herself about; she could not get up for weeks at a stretch. Always she suffered from terrible backaches.

“One night when I had gone to bed in that room there I could not sleep. I was so worried that I was almost sick myself.

“Mother came in and dragged herself to the bed. It took her half an hour to undress; she lay down with a moan.

“My father followed her. I acted as if I were asleep; not in order to pry on my parents; but to save mother worry about me. My father got ready to go to bed himself. As a last thing before blowing the lamp he bent over me to see whether I was asleep. Then he knelt by his bed and prayed, loud and fervently and long.

“Suddenly I heard mother’s voice, mixed with groans, Oh John, don’t.

“I will not repeat the things my father said. An abyss opened as I lay there. The vile, jesting, jocular urgency of it; the words he used to that skeleton and ghost of a woman . . . In order to save mother, I was tempted to betray that I heard. Shame held me back . . .

“Once she said, still defending herself, You know, John, it means a child again. You know how often I have been a murderess already. John, Please! Please!

“God has been good to us, he replied; he took them . . .

“And the struggle began again, to end with the defeat of the woman . . . That night I vowed to myself: No man, whether I liked him or loathed him, was ever to have power over me!

“A few months later haying time came again. Mother went on the stack. Soon after she went to bed, never to rise again . . .

“And now, Niels, if you still can, ask me once more to be your wife. But if you do, it will cut our friendship even.”

Niels stood up.

“When death came,” Ellen went on, “as a great relief to her, you may believe it came as a relief even to me.

“Three or four days before the last my mother—to me she had become a tender, sweet, and helpless creature; to him a living indictment, I hope—mother, I say, called me and whispered, Ellen, whatever you do, never let a man come near you. You are strong and big, thank God. Make your own life, Ellen, and let nobody make it for you!

“I sank down by the side of her bed; and I lifted this hand up to God and said, mother, there is one man who is different from the others. I hope he will be my friend and brother. But I swear to God and to you he shall never be more!

“Her head sank back on the pillow; and her thin, transparent hand lay on my head.”

Niels turned and went to the door. For a moment he held the knob; then he shrugged his shoulders convulsively and went out.

Ellen sprang up and ran to the door. “Niels!”

He stopped without looking back.

“Niels,” she repeated, “promise that you will come back. Not now. Not within a day or a week. I know you can’t. But I shall be so lonesome. You must fight this down. Don’t leave me alone for the rest of my days. Promise that you will come back . . .”

“I shall try,” he stammered and left the yard.

He did not see that over that farmyard there followed him a girl, her hand pressed to her bosom, tears in her eyes; nor that, at the gate, she sank to the ground and sobbed . . .