Ellen Again

In due course of time a trial followed, conducted in a small city of the prairies.

The prisoner at the bar had refused to engage a lawyer for his defence. Nor did he utter a word which might throw light on the crime or on his motives. In plain, unequivocal terms, given in writing, he pleaded guilty to the charge of murder.

During the preliminary investigation a doubt had arisen as to his sanity. He protested strongly against that suspicion. He was perfectly sane, perfectly responsible for his actions, so he asserted, when he shot the woman; he would do so again should the occasion arise . . .

But the court appointed a lawyer for him: in capital cases a plea of guilty is valueless.

The lawyer felt that this trial might be the making of his career. He went himself into the Marsh and questioned a good many people: neighbours of the accused, Bobby, Mrs. Lund, Ellen Amundsen, Hahn, Nelson.

Thus, on the day of the trial, there appeared some twenty persons subpoenaed by the defence. The crown had only one witness as to matters of fact: Bobby Lund who had heard the shots and seen the prisoner with the gun in his hands. Apart from that it rested its case entirely on circumstantial evidence which was, indeed, amply strong enough.

The prisoner showed considerable impatience while his counsel conducted the defence. The indictment read for murder. He admitted his guilt. What more was there to be said?

But the case went its course as prescribed by law. The court, seeing that the prisoner appeared to be almost anxious to incur the maximum penalty, that of death by hanging, was all the more inclined to be exceedingly careful, to weigh every testimony: as to the prisoner’s antecedents, his character, the many good deeds ascribed to him, and the character of the murdered woman . . .

The young lawyer made the most of every favourable circumstance.

By the time the case was ready to go to the jury, no onlooker could have any doubt any longer as to the outcome. An acquittal was impossible; but so was a conviction on the charge of murder. The jury found the prisoner guilty of manslaughter with attenuating circumstances and recommended him to the mercy of the court.

The verdict read for ten years in the federal prison, with hard labour . . .

A few miles north of the great city of the plains there rises abruptly, out of the level prairie, the brow of a hill. It does not look imposing from a distance.

But as, coming from the city, you approach it, driving perhaps in a car, and as the hill rises before you, it is apt to take on, in the impression it makes on your imagination, much larger proportions than its natural dimensions would warrant.

That impression is due to the sinister suggestiveness of the work of man. For the brow of the hill is crowned with a group of buildings of truly Titanic outline.

A perpendicular wall rises up, fifty feet high, many feet thick: a smooth wall, built of limestone blocks, stretching for several hundred feet from east to west, and forming, behind, a perfect square by its enclosure. In the centre of the south end there is a gate, wide and high, but completely closed by steel bars four inches apart. A man, armed from head to foot, always paces the arched gateway behind.

On top of the walls, at every corner, there stands a small tower from which, also on top of the walls, there stretch two parapeted walks at right angles to each other, reaching halfway to the centre of each side of the square. Each of these towers offers, when such is needed, shelter to two men who, armed with rifle, revolver, and sword, walk back and forth, back and forth on their beats. Every few hours they are relieved, others mounting guard, day and night.

Yes, when you approach that hill, you cannot get near it without being challenged. Men on horseback patrol every possible approach; their mounts being swift and strong. If you are alone in your car, you may be allowed to pass unquestioned: a single person can hardly be the bringer of any danger. If there are two or three of you, you will have to state your business before being allowed to proceed on the last half mile of the journey. If a crowd is with you, you will be turned back or at least detained. Should you, by any chance ignore the challenge, your car, disabled, will run into the ditch. In any case, before you reach the walls, every eye is watching for you; every move of yours is being followed. The report of your coming has preceded you, no matter how fast you may have travelled.

Altogether, the impression these precautions make is that of a terrible, implacable grimness, like that of doom.

Inside the huge enclosure which is thus protected against any unauthorised approach, you divine more than you see: half a dozen buildings which harbour the prison, the shops annexed to it, and the offices of the administration.

Outside, nestling against the talus of the hill, there are two, three large houses, brick-built: the residences of warden, physician, chaplain.

Behind it, north of it, a little town grovels at its feet . . .

Some two hundred outcasts spend from two to thirty or forty years of their lives within that enclosure, at labour which brings them no return.

As, in the morning, they file out from the dormitory—tier upon tier of steel-barred cells where they have spent the night alone between three walls, for in front of the steel-bars which form the fourth wall a guard paces up and down—you are apt to shudder at sight of these unfortunates who walk along in single file, in groups of ten or twenty, silent, accompanied by a guard.

When, at noon, they return from the shops, silent again, in groups of ten or twenty, and in single file, they pass, in the huge kitchen which occupies the basement, along heated steel shelves on which a bowl waits for each one of them, filled with food to be taken to the cell and to be eaten there in silence, in solitude, and yet not in privacy . . .

After an hour or so, they file out again to the shops . . .

And yet, even here a human heart beats, human sympathy plans the welfare of others: the heart of the warden.

There was a time when the prisoner trembled or scowled at sight of an officer: that time is past.

To-day, when the warden appears, most of the prisoners—those for whom there is hope, hope of a future outside, or of manhood in some form inside—most of them smile.

The warden is a fearless man; he goes unarmed. He is the friend of the unfortunate. He has a way with him which gains their confidence. It was long, very long before he gained Niels Lindstedt’s confidence. But he did not give up; and gain it he did. He spoke to him often during the first two, three years . . . After that, prisoner number 187 often, as often, spoke to him.

It was the warden who made him think, remember about the past. It was the warden who slowly, slowly made him see that he was not an outcast, a being despised for what he had done. It was the warden who told him that he, too, placed in the same circumstances, might and probably would have acted as Niels had acted . . . It was the warden who held out hope that perhaps within another two, three years . . . It was the warden who corresponded for him with Bobby Lund . . .

No, said the warden, Bobby Lund would never dream of accepting the farm as a present; he had his own farm; he was looking after Niels’ stock; after his land; he was holding it in trust against his return . . . It was his, Niels’, duty to go back to this land . . .

It was the warden who spoke to him of Ellen . . .

After the fourth year Niels attended evening classes conducted by the schoolmaster of the village: high school classes. He learned something of French and Latin, of Algebra, Geometry, Science . . . He acquired a vocabulary which would enable him to read real books. He was often puzzled by the abstruseness of it all. Finally he was amused. He learned to laugh at man’s folly in puzzling out such curiosities of the mind . . . What had it all to do with the real problems of life?

But he kept at it. He even passed examinations.

And one day in his sixth year, the warden entered the blacksmith shop where Niels, at his own request, had been employed and told him that he had succeeded in his intercession with the minister of justice: the end of Niels’ term of confinement had been fixed for the spring of the following year, limiting the total time he had to serve to six years and a half . . .

Once more, during the latter days of April, Niels was on his way from Minor to the farm in the margin of the Marsh, walking. It was daytime. He had dropped off the train at noon.

Four or five miles from town he found things so changed that he could no longer follow the old-time trail athwart the sand-flats. An almost continuous settlement covered the formerly wild land over which the trail had angled. He had to go straight east, to follow roads or road allowances. Where they were not sandy, he sank to his ankles in mud. The thaw-up had just been completed.

When he reached the Range Line, he was six miles south of his farm. This was the middle of what had been the northern part of the Marsh.

The Marsh itself was also changed. Formerly the Range Line trail had followed a sandy, gravelly ridge swinging east and west. The road followed a straight line now, being graded wherever it led through lowlands, flanked by ditches which were drained by huge master-ditches running crosswise and carrying the water to the Lake.

Right at the corner, where once there had been nothing but swamp, lay two prosperous farmsteads close together; and nothing but the hedgerows of swamp alder which bordered the fields reminded of the Marsh as it had been. They, too, being deprived of the water they needed, would soon disappear . . .

Half a mile north another prosperous farmstead: a new frame house, with porch and sleeping balcony, and a huge, up-to-date barn which dwarfed the landscape round about . . .

Still further north the hovels of German and Icelandic settlers had been replaced by new buildings, some of them painted, some unpainted, but all of them bearing the imprint of truly Canadian settlements.

Niels felt intimidated. This prosperity which had invaded the Marsh was unexpected; the old pioneers had receded to the margin of civilisation; a new generation had taken hold. The change was not entirely welcome: he was of the old generation which had been evicted. On almost every farmstead he saw a garage: cars had always been his pet aversion . . .

The old familiar bluffs had been cleared away. Fields stretched in their places. About the yards straight-lined plantations of imported trees framed the clusters of buildings.

This was no longer the bush land he had loved . . .

He came to the corner of the section on which his own land lay. He stopped and put his bundle down to look about. For a moment he was not even sure it was the section . . . And yet, a lump rose in his throat: there, in the evening sun, ahead of him, stood the bluff, still bare of leaves, but towering and dominating the landscape all about. No barns could dwarf it . . .

Beyond, the cliff of the forest still fringed the creek.

He looked east.

A mile away, in the very margin of the bush which, many miles wide, bordered the west shore of the Lake, a smaller farmstead became visible to his searching eye: that was the old Bates place, the place he had bought for Bobby in the long-ago past . . . Yes, there was a small house, log-built so it seemed, a little stable, and two or three other small buildings, all of logs . . . That would be Bobby’s establishment. Bobby was married.

And ahead: where the small grove of second-growth aspens had marked his own line to the west, big, towering trees stood, a narrow strip of them, between road and fields, quiet in the evening sun . . .

He picked his bundle up and went on.

To the west, too, there were farmsteads, two in the open sand-flats—log buildings, these—how could any one make a living there? One, in the margin of the bush that fringed the creek—this one a large, ambitious establishment. That must be the old Sigurdsen place? . . .

He went on and came to his corner.

He looked at the fence: it was in good order: here and there rotting posts had recently been replaced.

Again a lump rose in his throat: he had come to a gap in the young bush fringe which he had spared when he cleared his land: through it he saw horses grazing along the edge of the field which lay black, ridged, duly fall-plowed. They were Percherons, pure-bred; he knew the breed . . . And . . . and . . . was not that aged mare there . . . that lifted her head and gazed at him . . . was not that Nellie?

Putting down his bundle, he climbed the fence. Tears were trembling in the corners of his eyes as he approached the horse, his hand outstretched. But she eyed him warily; and with a sudden motion which fully betrayed her identity—a peculiar throwing of the head, chin upward, while her ears flicked back flat on her head—she scampered away, ten, twelve younger horses breaking cover, out of the bush, and following her.

Niels laughed; his laugh was shot with tears . . .

He returned to the road and went on.

There, ahead of him, was a small gate in the fence. He did not know it; it was new.

Curiously he approached. A white sign was fastened to the gate-post by its side—a sign with blue letters . . . It bore the words “Post Office” as its legend.

He saw that a path led from the gate through the bush fringe, up to a little house . . . Should this . . . should this be the shack in which he and Bobby had lived in the past which was now so remote—the shack that had first been built for old man Sigurdsen, dead and buried these ten years and more? And who might be living there now?

But that remained to be cleared up later . . .

He went on.

Yes, there was the big gate that led on to his place; with the stile by its side; just as he had left it. His heart began to beat faster, faster . . .

Then the vista opened on his yard . . . There stood the buildings—granary, stable, cow-shed, implement shed, pig-pen, milk house, and . . . dwelling . . . There was the horse-lot, the garden behind the house, the cow-enclosure north of the entrance, in the bluff . . .

Yes, there was one thing he felt sure of: no matter what else the future might hold in joy or sorrow, this would be home: his refuge, his hermitage . . .

Slowly he stepped over the stile.

As of old he went all about the place, looked into the granary where grain—oats and barley—was stored; into the stable, empty but for one old, old horse, a Clyde that stood, blind and lame, in his stall; into the pig-pen where half a dozen pigs came grunting and sniffing to meet him; into the milk-house where tin pails were inverted over stakes driven into the earthen floor, scoured and shining . . . All was as it used to be.

He looked at the house . . . should he enter? There were new curtains on all the windows; on the lower floor the blinds were drawn.

His heart pounded like a hammer as he touched the door knob and turned it. It was almost dark inside. He entered . . .

The hall was empty. From it the staircase led up, without banisters, into the upper story where there was still a little light.

A shudder ran over him as he thought of entering the north room. No; he would go upstairs instead . . .

He climbed the steps: the door to the east room was closed; that to the west room open; the reverse of what it had been in his time.

In the west room stood his old bed, made up as if to receive a guest. The curtains were of scrim which he recognised.

Slowly he turned back to the landing . . . Slowly, hesitatingly, he opened the door to the other room: it was empty except for crates and boxes stored there . . .

From that sight Niels took courage and went down again. There, in the hall, he stood for a moment. His huge frame seemed to shrink. But at last he raised one of the blinds, went to the rear of the room, and turned the knob.

The first object that struck his sight was the old tin heater of his bachelor days.

The second one, the deal table, covered with oil-cloth.

The third, a piece of cardboard lying on it, inscribed with a blue pencil, “Welcome Home.”

He sank down on a chair, overcome with a strange feeling, it was almost happiness . . .

Lastly, he went into the kitchen. There, everything looked as if he had just left it. There were eggs in the colander on the shelf where they used to be; a smoked ham lay on the table, with the butcher knife beside it; the water pail stood on the bench by the door, filled to the brim.

Everywhere on the lower floor, too, scrim curtains were hung in the windows.

Who had put them there?

Well, who but Bobby? . . .

Bobby had tried to wipe the past out as far as Niels was concerned. He had removed whatever might remind him of it. Bobby was like a son . . .

It was chilly in the house, the season being still early. So, after a while, Niels lighted a fire in the little stove . . .

Then he sat again and mused.

It would be a lonely life . . . a life like that of his first winter in the north, in Nelson’s shack . . . Still, it would be home. He remembered how that little shanty of Nelson’s had first seemed like home to him: there he had felt anchored for the first time after his wanderings: he had played with, and rejoiced at, the thought that he had already money enough to put up such a shack for himself.

This house—a big house; but no longer the largest or best-built house for many miles around; it was over twelve years ago now since it had been built . . . Just how long was it? Yes, it must be thirteen years—this house could never be what a little shack would be . . . It would always remind him of, always oppress him with, the thought of the years which he had lived here, not alone . . .

There was that other shack on this very place. But it was occupied . . . And for the first time he wondered by whom . . .

Just then a commotion arose outside on the yard.

A voice was calling, a strong, almost masculine voice which he yet recognised as that of a woman, Mrs. Lund.

He went into the bare front room and looked out through a crack between blind and frame of a window.

There, in the darkening dusk, Mrs. Lund stood in the horse-lot, the southern gate of which she had opened. She stood upright, her hands raised to her mouth as a megaphone, calling, calling. “Come on!” she called, “come on, come on, come on!”

And the horses obeyed. They knew her. They knew her voice . . .

Slowly, through the bush beyond, they approached the gate; and when they had reached it, they tossed their heads, shot past the strong, grey-haired woman that stood there with a brief spurt of a gallop, drank at the trough, and filed into the stable, one by one. His horses . . . Percherons all . . . There were twelve of them, of all ages, with Nellie, the oldest one, following last . . .

Mrs. Lund was closing the gate; and when she had done so, she, too, went after them into the stable.

It was getting dark.

Niels felt that he should go out; but something held him back.

Yes, of course, it was Mrs. Lund who was looking after the place: it was she who lived in the shack: it was she who was keeping the post office as in the past . . .

Once more thoughts flooded in on him: he visualised things that had happened long ago.

One day in the past he had gone to Odensee to get Mrs. Lund so she would cook for the threshers on his place.

“They’ve sold me out now,” Mrs. Lund had said with reference to her little store in the village.

“Couldn’t Nelson have done something?” Niels had asked.

“Oh Nelson! He’s getting to be altogether too big for the likes of me. He has no time to be thinking of his poor mother-in-law . . . Nelson, the big cattle man. Olga, of course, would like to help . . . But there are the children; and I suppose she has her own worries, too.”

“Have you a place yet?”

“Yes,” Mrs. Lund had answered, “yes; and a good place, I think. At Judge Cameron’s, at Poplar Grove . . . But to think that at my time of life I must still go again and hire out to do housework!”

“In a few years,” Niels had suggested, “Bobby will get a place.”

And Mrs. Lund, with suddenly renewed animation, relapsing into her grandiose manner, had fallen in with him. “Yes, Mr. Lindstedt. What’s true must be true. Bobby’s a good boy. Bobby’s a clean boy, Mr. Lindstedt. Thanks to you. Bobby’s the hope of my old age. We took him from the children’s home. We gave him what we could. We kept him as if he had been our own. . . He will remember. He’ll do the right thing by me when the time has come . . .”

Had Bobby done so? No doubt he had . . .

And here she was taking care of his, Niels’ place . . .

Again Niels sat and mused . . .

“No,” the warden had said to him, one day, in the prison; “how you stand with God, I cannot tell. God keeps his own counsel. But let me remind you of the great sinner who had been a bad man all through his life; but on the cross he repented; and Christ forgave him . . . Niels, though you have sinned, I don’t think you’ve been a bad man . . .” And searchingly he had looked into his eye.

And Niels had answered, after a silence of thought, slowly, hesitatingly, “No; I believe I have tried to do what was right, in most things. I’ve been self-seeking when I was young . . . I have too often thought of my own life only . . . As for the thing that has sent me here. I don’t blame myself . . . Not for that immediate thing . . . But for what preceded it . . . For what led up to it . . . For the very beginning of it . . . Many years before it happened . . . I have long since seen that I had sinned . . .”

“Niels,” the warden had gone on, “if I’m any judge, God has forgiven you . . . The killing . . . That, too, was in the atonement . . . But as for men, you have been judged by your peers, and you have paid the penalty. You have taken life. Yet they have judged you fit to live on. What I’d like you to feel is this. When you go out of here, you can hold your head up. You must hold your head up. As far as human justice goes, you have paid the price . . .”

And yet it was hard: out there, the woman went about doing the chores on his place . . . Could he face her? But face her he must . . .

Then the front door of the house was opened.

“Anybody in here?” Mrs. Lund’s voice called.

Niels rose and stood silent, a lump in his throat, his heart pounding fast. “Yes, Mrs. Lund,” he answered at last, “I’m here, Niels . . .”

“Mis-ter-Lind-stedt,” she sang out and came running in. “Where are you? We didn’t know just when to expect you . . . I saw smoke coming from the chimney . . . It’s so dark. Where are you?”

“No,” Niels said, “don’t light a lamp yet . . .”

“Oh?” Mrs. Lund said. “Well, I won’t, then . . .”

And they shook hands in the dark.

“Sit down,” Niels said, “sit down . . .”

And Mrs. Lund sat and cried. “Excuse me, Mr. Lindstedt,” she said. “Excuse an old woman. You’ve been our benefactor when we were poor. . . . We’ve been worried about you . . .”

“How’s Bobby?” Niels asked after a while.

“Bobby? Fine. Bobby’s a farmer, Mr. Lindstedt, thanks to you. He’s doing fine. Considering, you know . . . He’s only a beginner. But he’s going to give me a home as soon as he can. It was he who thought of putting me here for the time being, so we could be together at least. I’ve got the post office again, you know. It relieved him of so much work to have me here. I’m an old farmer myself, you know. You remember how we worked on the place in the edge of the slough . . . Poor daddy, he couldn’t do much any longer. Oh, Mr. Lindstedt, he was the best husband, the very best; God have mercy on his poor soul . . . But it all went to smash; you know that, too . . . Bobby’s fine, thank the Lord . . . Not that he’s rich. He’s married. You’ve heard about that, I suppose . . . She’s a daughter of Henry Kelm, George Kelm’s brother. She’s a good girl, I can assure you, Mr. Lindstedt . . . She’s a fine girl . . . A real helper . . . And they’ve five children by now . . .”

“Five?” Niels echoed.

“Yes, sir. Five. Five little Bobbies on the place . . . Two pairs of twins, all boys . . . and one girl . . .”

Niels smiled in the dark.

“That’s as many as Nelson’s got. He’s got only five, you know. But Nelson, of course, has a car, a big one, a . . . oh, I don’t know what you call them, an Underground or something. And he’s got a new eight-roomed house, of brick . . .”

“Well, well,” Niels said. “And now, Mrs. Lund, I don’t think I’d mind any longer if you lit the lamp. You know so much better where to find it than I . . .”

Mrs. Lund bustled about excitedly; and when she came back, the two looked at each other by the light of the lamp which she was carrying in her hand.

“Well, I declare!” Mrs. Lund exclaimed. “You’re looking younger . . . younger and better than when I saw you last . . .”

She stopped; for, when she had seen him last, there had been a woman in this house, sitting in the corner of the kitchen, gossiping with her and Mrs. Schultze; she had been clad in a silk dressing gown; and she had been smiling ironically from morning till night, smiling at such trivialities as thresing . . .

But Niels merely nodded.

Mrs. Lund, on the contrary, looked older, much older than she had done at the time; though, on closer scrutiny, the impression arose perhaps chiefly from the fact that her hair was light-grey, almost white.

In Niels’ mind, far back, there hovered a question: a question which he did not dare to ask . . .

“But the changes,” Mrs. Lund went on, “the changes, Mr. Lindstedt! You won’t recognise the Marsh any longer . . . Nearly all the old settlers are gone: the Dahlbecks are gone; the Schultzes—Mr. Schultze was frozen to death the year after . . . well, you know; the Bakers, the Wagners, the Smiths . . . They proved up and sold and went . . . That’s the way it’s been going in this settlement, Mr. Lindstedt. Bobby and you, and Kelm and Ellen Amundsen. That’s all that are left of the old bunch now . . .”

Niels closed his eyes. Then he smiled.

There was one thing left for which he had to atone. He had doubted and worried, worried and doubted about that one point . . . He had come to the conclusion that, if he found the girl still living in the bush, he would take it as a sign that once more there would be peace, once more there would be some semblance of life left for him in the future . . .

Mrs. Lund saw, divined, and kept her peace . . .

At last Niels rose. “Mrs. Lund,” he said, “would you mind helping me once more with my chores? I’ll be awkward, I’m afraid. I’ve lost the knack of things. There’s the milking still to do, I suppose. And the feeding. And when we are through, we’ll go and call on Bobby . . .”

“Sure,” Mrs. Lund replied. “I’ll hustle up . . .”

There was hay in the loft of the barn, crushed oats in the bin . . . The cows came home . . .

It was eight o’clock when the chores were done. Mrs. Lund went into the house and lighted the kitchen stove . . .

Niels remained on the yard, going here and there . . . In the farthest corner, on the east side, behind pig-pens and milk-house, he came across a pile of squared timbers; timbers which he had cut and squared with Bobby in years gone by. They had been meant for a smokehouse . . . They were dry and sound . . .

He stood and mused . . .

Would he ever be able to establish a routine again? Would he ever be able to do the work on the farm? . . .

And yet, already the place was home . . .

He, Niels, forty years old . . . forty years! . . .

Mrs. Lund called for supper . . .

An hour or so later they crossed the farm, following a foot-path worn into the soil no doubt by Mrs. Lund, by Bobby, his wife and . . . his children . . . That footpath suggested that there were neighbours, friendly neighbours. There had never been any before . . .

They approached the place in the dark. Two dogs came running and barking to meet them.

They sniffed at the woman and wagged their tails; they sniffed at the man and growled.

“Down, Mickey,” Mrs. Lund called, “down! . . . The house is all dark . . . They must have gone to bed.”

In front of them a little shanty squatted low, with a lean-to, tar paper tacked to the walls all around . . . On the north side a little snow lingered, a frozen pile, showing grey in the black of the shadows about. The shanty looked hump-backed, one-eyed, crippled . . .

Mrs. Lund sang out, “Bob-beee!” It sounded like an echo of ancient memories through the night . . .

“Yes,” a voice answered from within, “just a minute.”

And a few moments later the door of the lean-to opened, and out stepped Bobby.

He was in shirt and overalls, barefooted, his hair rumpled: he looked lean and wiry even in the dark.

“Hello, mother,” he said, “come in . . .”

“Bobby,” she said, “I’m not alone . . .”

And only then Bobby noticed the broad, dark figure of the man by her side.

“Gee whiz!” he exclaimed. “It’s Niels . . . Come in.”

And he ran back into the house to light a lamp.

Niels entered the kitchen. It was a small, bare room with an old table, a bench, and three or four boxes for seats. On the east wall there were a few shelves; in the centre, a cook-stove. The joists showed; the walls were single-boarded, of box lumber tacked to scantling; the floor, of raw planks, rough, splintered, but clean, strewn with sand.

Bobby was so excited that he did not even think of properly greeting Niels nor of making excuses.

A moment later a woman entered, blinking in the light, barefooted, young, strong, but over-worked . . .

“That’s the missus,” Mrs. Lund said.

And Niels, looking at her out of kind, searching eyes, shook her hand which she gave without answering the pressure and without looking into his face.

“We’d expected you, of course,” Bobby said. “But we didn’t know the exact date . . .”

Niels looked at him. He was thin, his face not as merry as it used to be: he was older, maturer, ripened by worries, thoughts, regrets . . .

“We’d gone to bed,” Bobby went on. “To save oil, you know . . .” And he laughed.

Niels listened to that laugh. No. There was no harshness, no bitterness in it . . . He had not expected to find the poverty he saw . . .

“You’ll stay overnight?”

It was Mrs. Lund’s turn to laugh. “Nonsense, Bobby, Mr. Lindstedt has a good bed at home. Why should he sleep in your bunks? . . .”

“Well,” Bobby replied, “that’s true, too. We have no bedsteads yet,” he explained to Niels. “Or any longer, I should say. You know, four boys tear a lot of clothes. We sold our own bedstead last winter to buy shoes for the kiddies . . . But if the bunk isn’t too hard . . . We’ve got the room . . .”

Again Mrs. Lund laughed her broad, hearty laugh. “Room! It’s some room all right . . . There aren’t even panes in the window. The dogs jump in at night . . .”

Niels had been looking from one to the other. The young woman . . . yes, she was a mate . . . She had no doubt been pretty, with the prettiness of youth . . . Now she looked helpful rather . . . But was not that what was needed? . . .

He turned.

“Never mind, Mrs. Lund. I’ll stay . . .”

The young woman, clad in a thin gingham house-dress, had busied herself at the stove. She was shy, bashful in the presence of the stranger.

“Tea or coffee?” she asked Bobby, not caring to address Niels directly. And Bobby turned to Niels with an enquiring look.

“Tea,” Niels said, understanding her at once. And, to Bobby, “And now let me see the children, will you?”

They tip-toed into the adjoining room.

All five were sleeping in one of the two bunks; the other was empty . . .

For a while Niels stood and looked, by the light of the little lamp that was burning there. The boys were red-faced, fat-cheeked youngsters; the girl, somewhat thin and pale . . .

The bedding consisted of blankets, grey, none too warm; in lieu of a mattress a layer of hay was spread on the boards.

Niels looked back in his memories, on that room of Lund’s where a second-hand, defunct gentility had prevailed . . . The same poverty. But here the poverty of a beginning . . . There it had been the poverty of the end.

“We’re none too well fixed,” Bobby said.

“Well . . .” Niels pondered.

“We’ve only thirty acres so far. We’ll get things as soon as the land is paid for . . .”

“The land? . . .” But Niels broke off and turned to go back into the kitchen.

There, Mrs. Lund received him in quite her old manner. “Mr. Lindstedt,” she said, “all this does not look very prosperous yet . . . But one day . . . One day we are going to have everything as it should be. A large, good house; a hot-bed for the garden; real, up-to-date stables; and . . . Everything!”

And Bobby and Niels both nodded.

During the next few days there were many things to be discussed. Bobby had for seven years looked after the field-work on Niels’ farm. He had never touched a cent of the proceeds. He had banked it all in Niels’ name . . .

Niels insisted on a half-crop arrangement. Bobby, declining at first, had to yield in the end. Thus the rare thing happened that a pioneer farmer passed from a stage of great necessity without any transition to that of comparative affluence.

Mrs. Lund, too, was entitled to a substantial remuneration. She had taken care of his stock and yard. She accepted, as a gift, duly deeded, an acre of land on Niels’ place, to be fenced, with a three-roomed house, fully furnished, to be built in the fall . . .

In spite of these arrangements Niels found that his wealth, in money as well as in chattels, had more than doubled during his absence. Some of his horses, the drivers, for instance, Bobby had used and stabled entirely on his place. Some of the cows had been lent to neighbours, so they could milk them in return for their feed . . .

These things settled, Niels went at the work of seeding his field. And now, for the first time, he faced the day alone . . .

It was not an easy task. To drown one’s thought in labour is very difficult on the farm: everything is conducive to contemplation. No high ambitions lead you away from the present; and yet those ambitions which are indispensable, the lowly ones, are really the highest on earth: the desire for peace and harmony in yourself, your surroundings . . .

But there were no surroundings—there was no little world, no microcosm revolving within the macrocosm. There was the duty to the farm, the country, the world: cold, abstract things devoid of the living blood . . .

There was still another difficulty. Since life could be borne only if the immediate past, the last ten years, were covered with a half artificial oblivion, the past to be faced in memory was the past of his dreams . . . It was almost as painful to face as the later one . . .

So long as Niels had to avert his eye from old desires, visions, dreams, there was no foundation for his life.

One day, Mrs. Lund brought the topic of certain furniture up. She had insisted on doing the milking, in return for what little cream and eggs she needed daily. She was going from the cow-lot to the house, carrying two foaming pails, and stopped in the middle of the yard.

“Mr. Lindstedt,” she said, “what are you going to do about that furniture from the house?”

Niels winced and stopped in his tracks. He had just come in from the field and was watering his horses.

“Where . . . where is it?” he asked at last.

“It’s all piled in a little shanty in the bluff over there,” she said, pointing east. “Bobby and his wife put it up between them. It’s a mere windbreak. The rain can get in. The stuff will spoil there . . . After all, it’s worth money . . .”

“I’ll see,” Niels said slowly. “Who . . . Who suggested taking it out of the house?” For the mere fact that Mrs. Lund mentioned the thing proved that it had not been she.

Mrs. Lund laughed. “Oh,” she said, “that was an idea of Ellen Amundsen’s. The last time she was over . . .”

Niels said no more.

Next day he went into the bush and searched till he found the shanty, well hidden in willows; and, piling some brush against the wall, he set fire to it without ever looking inside . . .

Ellen!

Henceforth, while he was doing his work, not now with that passionate intensity of former years, but slowly, carefully, weighing his every move, his thought reverted more and more often to her . . . She had been over here . . . She had made suggestions . . . She had thought of him while he was away . . .

Ten years or longer ago he had left her alone . . .

His life, her life: two vessels which he had shattered at a single blow . . .

As for his life . . . there was only one thing left which he could do: gather the shattered fragments and fit them as best he might be able to do.

The nightmare of ten years he had atoned for, perhaps. But there, in that remoter past which, in his thoughts, now became more vivid, more real than the years immediately preceding the present he had done a great wrong: he had left alone a human being that had been in need of him: had left her alone because he had thought he could never be as little to her as a brother. And that human being had been she, the woman of his dreams, his vision, his love . . .

When the huge steel-gate of the prison on the brow of the hill had swung shut behind him, not many days ago, he had felt inwardly balanced; he had felt at peace. Scar-tissue had grown over his soul. It had been the peace of resignation, but it had been peace . . .

He felt himself plunged back into unrest, chaos . . .

Once more he was a stranger on his place; he was eating the bitter bread of exile . . . .

There would never be any rest for him unless the girl in the bush forgave him . . . He must try to be to her now what she had wanted him to be to her then: a brother . . .

Was he able to do so? Were all those things that had once disturbed him and her, were they dead in him? Could he face her quietly, without desire? . . . Even though she might not hold it against him that he had left her for ten years or more . . .

He tried to visualise a meeting. It never occurred to him to take into account the fact that they were both more than ten years older than they had been. Himself—like all people to whom vanity is constitutionally foreign—he did not see: he was he; the one who saw; not the one who was being seen . . .

Ellen . . .

As he tried to see her with his mind’s eye, he saw her as she had been, not ten years ago, but seventeen . . . Yet, not like that altogether, either . . .

Her body, her movements he could not bring into clear focus at all. Sometimes he had a glimpse of them: a blurred glimpse, through vapours and seething mists of passion: but a glimpse nevertheless as she had stood with him in that room of her house where she had told him her story. And whenever he caught that glimpse, even to-day, his heart beat faster . . . He reached for that vision as if he wished to hold it, to grasp it with all the tentacles of his mind. But the very next moment he realised that it had eluded him; it had vanished like a spirit into the air . . .

Her face, on the other hand, her expression, he saw very clearly, just as he had seen them on the very first morning when he and Nelson had arrived on her father’s place . . .

There it was: her eyes light-blue, her features round, her complexion a pure, Scandinavian white. Again it was her expression that held him: hers was the face of a woman, not of a girl. There was a great, ripe maturity in it; and a look as if she saw through pretences and shams and knew more of life than her age would warrant. No smile lighted her features; her eyes were stern and nearly condemnatory. But somehow, as Niels looked at her, with his mind’s eye only this time, a great desire came over him to see her in the flesh and to make her smile . . .

His throat tightened; his heart pounded as of old . . .

To think he had lost her: not as a mate—what did that matter? Had lost her as a guiding influence in his life, had lost her as a sister, a friend . . .

He, he had gone astray; had left her alone . . .

Would she want him to come back? Would she accept him now? Would she forgive him?

Yet . . . she had been here; had been thinking of him in his absence.

For a week he pondered the question, musing, probing himself, probing her . . .

Then, one day, late in the evening, when he had just finished the last round with his seeder and as he stood ready to bend down and to unhook the traces of his horses, he had a vision. He closed his eyes and stood still to see it more clearly.

The vision he saw was that of the homely face of his mother. Yet, her features were strangely blurred; as if, superimposed on them, there appeared those of another; and at last he recognised these as the features of the old man, of Sigurdsen, his neighbour whom he had loved.

Long, long ago, in another such vision, his mother had looked at him reproachfully, seriously, warningly.

And the old man, in the wanderings of his decaying mind, had betrayed to him some corner of his subliminal memories . . .

These two, in vision and memory, seemed to blend, to melt together. Both looked at him, in this new vision, out of one face in which, now his, now her lines gained the ascendency . . .

The wistful face of his mother relaxed in a knowing smile: yes, such was she who had born him . . .

The old man’s face took her place: he was moving his lips and muttered, “Hm . . . tya.”

One Sunday at last he went north, afoot.

It was a warm spring day; the leaves on the trees still dormant; tassels hanging from the aspens, grey and red . . .

Slowly he crossed the corner of the Marsh: this was the only trail that was left as it had been years ago.

For a while he stood on the bridge, a new concrete bridge which had taken the place of the old, wooden structure . . .

A mile from the creek he passed a large clearing to the right: Kelm’s place which he had helped to clear. A huge barn with a hip-roof glanced over the trees; a small, well-built frame house nestled in a bluff . . .

Farther on another farmstead, to the left, quite new: a square clearing, bare, with the house in the centre; the other buildings of logs . . .

Then bush, bush, as of old . . .

Once, Niels reflected, the settlement of the Marsh had been an out-post of the settlement in the bush: that was now reversed. The settlement on the Marsh was so much denser . . .

All seemed unchanged.

He came to the corner of Ellen’s yard. As soon as the view opened up, he stopped and stood.

Yes, it was the old place entirely: house, granary, stable, implement shed. One single change: the well which he and Nelson had dug had a pump; and the pump was connected up with a windmill.

All about reared the bush . . .

Even that small change spoke of years that had run down the river of time . . .

For a long while Niels stood and waited, trying to calm the turmoil in his heart . . .

He came like the prodigal son . . .

At last he went on.

He came to the gate, opened it, and entered the yard which was still covered by the short, clean sward of chickweed.

A dog sprang out of the barn, barked, and ran back; out again and in once more. It was a young dog, a bitch; and when Niels could look into the open door of the stable, her strange, fierce behaviour was explained; a litter of pups played there, in the drive-way . . .

He knocked at the door of the house.

A voice. “Come in.” Ellen’s voice.

He opened, entered, stood . . .

Their eyes met. Niels lowered his.

What he had seen, shook him like an invisible hand; it hit him like a hammer blow at his heart. He could not bear it. He stood like one accused, like one pleading guilty . . .

What he had seen was this.

Behind the table—the same table at which, seventeen years ago, one winter morning, he had eaten his breakfast—on a straight-backed chair, sat a middle-aged woman, knitting, with shell-rimmed glasses on her eyes. Her features were no longer round; they were square; but her complexion was still that pure, Scandinavian white: her hair, straw-yellow, streaked with grey . . . But now as then it was the expression that held him: hers was the face of a girl, not a woman; it was stern, to be sure; but in this sternness lay hidden the dream, the unfulfilled, uncompromising dream of a virgin child . . . No smile lighted her features. Her eyes looked searchingly out from behind her glasses: searchingly, questioningly, expectantly. There was nothing in them that seemed to condemn; they seemed to wonder and—what was hardest to bear—they were full of sympathy . . .

Then her voice, clear, high-pitched, not quite steady, “You have come . . .!” as if awed.

She had risen. Without looking, Niels was aware of her figure. A somewhat flat bust; wide, round hips . . .

When he did look, she had removed her glasses; her eyes, light-blue, were fixed on him, probingly, with infinite pity . . .

“Yes,” he said, falteringly, “I have come . . . as a brother . . .”

She came forward, leaving her work on the table, and moved a chair.

“I’ve been waiting,” she said, her voice still unsteady. “I’ve been waiting, Niels. I’ve waited twelve years . . .”

At that Niels broke down. He sat on the chair she had touched, his head bent, fighting for composure. And after several minutes, “Ellen . . .”

“I know,” she said and nodded. “No need to tell me. You’ve suffered . . .”

Silence.

He sat; she stood, very near.

“Shall we go?” she said at last, steadier now. “Behind the house, where we used to sit?”

Niels rose, took a chair, and turned to the door.

She picked her knitting up, adjusted her glasses, and followed.

When they arrived in the little natural bower formed by hazel brush and plum trees, he squatted down on the grass as he had done one day in haying time, ten, twelve years ago . . .

All about reared the bush. Tremulous stood the aspens, their buds just breaking, tasselled in grey and red. The plum trees, too, had the white buds of their blossoms just bursting. The air was spring-cool . . .

They sat in silence, a long, long while . . .

Once Niels tried to speak. His first attempt failed. His voice was hoarse, husky: it sounded so strange.

He tried again. “Ellen,” he said, “can you forgive?”

She looked up; he went silent.

“You came,” she said softly. “No need to speak . . .”

And so they sat on, now and then scanning each other, sometimes furtively, sometimes openly. They were feeling their way into a changed present; what they found in each other was the past. . . .

They sat for hours; till, under the westering sun, the air became chilly.

Ellen spoke. “Come,” she said. “Let’s go to the house. I’ll get supper.”

And once more Niels sat silent, in the corner of the room this time, behind the table, in the shadow of the wall. That shadow, too, was the shadow of the past.

Happiness almost ancient and a sense of infinite sorrow which was new were mixed in the mute abandonment to his feelings in which he sat there. The sorrow was at the lapse of time; the old, never ending sorrow that what was is no more; the happiness, at the bridging of the gulf of years, accomplished without words, without explanations . . .

As Ellen moved about, laying the cloth, heating water, breaking eggs—doing the small, trivial things of life, in the dusk: not with her former quick grace any longer, but with a pensive, quiet deliberation—his memory re-awoke: he saw her again as she had been in the years of their intimacy, their brotherhood: she was she, after all: the only woman . . .

He lulled his heart with a dream that was new: the dream of the restful perpetuation of this state of dusk, of mutual wordless comprehension, of dispassionate friendship, brotherly love . . .

The evening passed. Not many words were interchanged. Words were not needed.

Then, in the still early night, they went to the gate. There, separated from each other by the fence, they stood for a moment.

Ellen spoke. “Niels, I’ve waited for you. I knew you would come. Life will be bearable after this; it has been bearable the last ten years only through expectation . . . I want to say one more thing, Niels. I have been to blame towards you . . . Can you forgive? . . .”

Niels threw his hands up, a vague gesture to silence her. “Don’t . . . Don’t . . . If you speak that way, I cannot bear it . . . The wrong that was done was all on my side. I have repented . . .”

“Not all,” Ellen said, her voice shaking, “not chiefly, even . . .” And after a short silence, she added, “You will come again?”

Niels nodded silently, unseen. But in a chance motion his hand touched hers; and they knew . . .

Once more, during the week, Niels tried to drown his dreams in work. Once more he did what he had done many years ago: he worked passionately, as if his very existence depended on doing more than he could.

The smaller trees in the bluff blossomed forth: clouds of white blossoms: the leaves were hanging from the poplar twigs, weak, as if tired; young, helpless; before them the whole of summer lay, the summer of life.

In Niels’ heart there was a strange struggle, a readjustment of many thoughts, feelings, anticipations.

It was a painful process: as if the parts of a broken limb were being fitted together, slowly, tentatively, by a skilled but callous physician who did not seem to succeed. It was as if some part were missing; or rather as if a superfluous part were there, preventing the perfect joint. And that superfluous part which prevented the past and the future from fitting together was a strange, new hope—a hope which it was almost painful to feel and altogether forbidden to face.

It was a mere adumbration of the thought of a possible outcome, a mere foreshadowing of a state of things that might, might come about like a miracle hardly to be visualised. It was at once suppressed with a beating of the heart, a scarlet flooding of the brain . . . To face it seemed equivalent to precluding it: it was such a tender, delicate thing of a hope . . . .

Niels felt like a convalescent who has, for many weeks and months, been forbidden to move and who, tentatively, first stirs a finger and then a hand . . . furtively, almost ashamed of the realisation of powers in him returning, re-awaking . . . He felt as if he must hold still so as not to frighten away what was preparing in him: a new health, a new strength, a new hope, a new life . . .

He saw the week going by, sometimes impatiently, sometimes in fear, always with pulse beating faster, with heart a-flutter, articulate thought blurred out, eye clouded.

And yet he said to himself, once, twice, a dozen times, “I am her brother . . . Nothing must interfere. I am her brother and nothing else . . .”

The days went by: the marvel of passing time.

Another Sunday, with white clouds sailing: a Sunday in June.

Ellen stands at the gate, looking along the road which is still no more than a bush trail.

They look at each other as they meet; and they blush.

Ellen swings the little gate open and turns; he follows.

Both know; and each knows that the other knows . . .

A new, strange thing has happened between them. Expectancy is in their eyes, emotion. They see that coming which makes their hearts beat—that which is like a memory of old times, long past. But it is not with fear that their pulse is quickened . . . It is with an anticipation which neither of them is unwilling to prolong; for behind that anticipation there stands a certainty . . .

Again, as they cross the yard in silence, going to the accustomed place—that natural bower in the fringe of the bush—imponderable things, incomprehensible waves of feeling pass to and fro between them: things too delicate for words: things somehow full of joy and disquieting though not unpleasurable expectation.

Spring breezes amble through the bush; a meadow lark sings on the nearby clearing; robins chase each other in the grass.

And as the silence lengthens between them, between man and woman, the consciousness arises in each that the other knows his inmost thought: that both have secretly, almost reluctantly, faced the same hope . . .

Colour comes and goes in their faces, imperceptible almost—not seen by either, for they avoid each other’s eyes—yet divined.

And as they stand there, by the chairs which the woman has provided, a memory rises, flushing her face with a scarlet flood . . .

She speaks as if she would ward it off; she speaks hurriedly, like a girl, precipitately; and her words are the same as they were ten, twelve years ago. “Shall we sit here?” she says. “Let us have a walk rather, shall we?”

Niels nods. Her words are expression of his thought or his desire unformed; he does not think in articulate terms . . .

“The bush hides,” she says. “It shelters, protects, it has served me well . . . But sometimes I wish I had a vista through it, out on the plains, to the horizon. I want to see wide, open, level spaces. Let us go to the slough . . .”

Again Niels nods. He does not trust himself to speak. His voice would seem so strange: it would break a spell. There is no barrier between them which would need to be bridged by words. They are not looking at each other: they are one.

“Wait,” says the girl. “I will get my hat.”

And she slips past him, into the house.

He idles back to the yard. The blood sings in his veins; he stands, strangely aglow.

Light-green, virgin, the bush rears all about. Aspen leaves shiver, reflecting little points of light from their still glossy surface.

“I love spring,” says the girl as she rejoins him, her hat slung by its ribbons over her arm. She was still speaking toward the coming moment off, saying anything that came to hand, at random. “I wish it were always spring . . .”

They pass through the gate and on to the bush road, turning north, side by side.

Again, between them, the tension grows less. What has happened between them is a beginning; it is not the end . . . What must come will come; there is much to follow. Why tremble? Why hasten it? To be merely alive is joy enough . . .

First they follow the bush road; then they leave it, threading a cattle path that branches off to the left where the road bends eastward.

Birds flutter up as they touch the bushes. They flit away, looking curiously at the intruding pair . . .

The cattle-path forks: the girl follows one branch, the man another. They do not flit and run: they go quietly, sedately. Still they avoid each other’s eye; but each knows that the other is flushed, that his face smiles, with a strange, almost otherworldly smile. Whoever arrives first at the rejunction of the trails waits for the other: the other is coming . . .

Thus they reach the little school and look about. The yard is cleared; no brambles cover it any longer. Around the building the ground is bare, vegetation being worn down by many feet. They stand and look, their feelings half joy half sorrow . . .

They go to the windows of the school house and peer in. They do not laugh; but they smile at sight of benches and blackboards.

Then they go on, quietly, reminiscently. No need for words. Between them there stands the past; not as a barrier now; as a bond.

These two have been parted; and parting has opened their eyes. They have suffered; suffering has made them sweet, not made them bitter. Life has involved them in guilt; regret and repentance have led them together; they know that never again must they part. It is not passion that will unite them; what will unite them is love. . . .

They are older. Both feel it. Older than they were when they threaded these thickets before. They are quieter, less apt to rush at conclusions, to close in a struggle with life . . .

They come out to the slough and see the horizon, far in the north. They stand and look. Both think of a haystack that stood in the meadow, a few hundred yards in front. There is no hay-stack there now: it is spring, not autumn.

“Shall we sit?” says the girl.

They find a place in the grass, with a fallen tree for a back-rest.

They sit and look out, as if in a resurrection of what was dead.

The man has turned. He was conscious of something in the girl by his side . . . of something disturbing or perhaps disturbed. He looks at her face which is held straight ahead, almost rigid. Something works in her features; and between the lashes of her light-blue eyes—white, sun-bleached lashes—there quivers a tear.

“Ellen,” he says, his voice a-tremble.

“Niels,” she replies, “it is time we make up for what we have done in the past . . . I have something to say to you, Niels. I should have thought of it twelve years ago; but I did not know it then. Yet I knew it the moment you had left my yard. Only I did not trust my own knowledge. Niels, I, too, am a woman. I, too, need more than mere brotherhood. The years go by; we both are passing through life. There is nothing that will remain when we are gone . . .”

“Ellen,” he says again and presses her small, shapely, calloused hand in his own large one . . .

“I know,” she says. “Don’t speak. I have more to say. I have been to blame . . . I should not have said at the time, what you wish can never be. I should have said, what you wish cannot be so long as I live under the shadow of my mother’s life. But if you can wait . . . For, Niels, I knew then as I know now that it is my destiny and my greatest need to have children, children . . . And I knew then as I know now that there is no man living on earth from whom I could accept them if not you . . . I thought I could live my life as a protest against the life my mother had lived. I had loved her and she was dead . . . I should have known . . . Had she been living, the mistake would never have been made . . .”

Again the man by her side presses her hand. Their shoulders touch. Not with the fleeting touch as in the bush. They are leaning against each other, quietly, trustingly, in peace with the world.

The man speaks, slowly, softly, his head bent low. “Do you think we can live down what lies in between?”

“Niels,” she says, “I’ve had more than six years time to think that over. I believe we can. And whether we can or not, we must try . . .”

An hour or so later they rise and walk home through the dusk. They do not kiss. Their lips have not touched. But their arms rest in each other; their fingers are intertwined . . .

As they go, a vision arises between them, shared by both.