Settlers of the Marsh (7 page)
He knew that he wanted her; that he desired only one thing: to melt that ice which seemed to surround her; to beat down those barriers which defended her against him; yes, finally, with a realisation that made his very body tremble and shake, that sent his blood red-hot to his brain, he became conscious of the ultimate, supreme, physical desire: he wanted to feel her head sinking on his shoulder, her body yielding to his embrace â¦
When he came home after such a paroxysm of passion and despair, he threw himself down on his hard willow-bed on the ground; and he told himself that this would not do; that no girl, no woman was ever wooed from a distance.
How was he to get near her? Her father? No father was ever an obstacle between man and girl â¦
It was she, she alone who kept him away: who kept the world away, and with the world him: for he was merely a part of that world: not a hero who came, acclaimed by the multitudes, borne high on the shoulders of his followers â¦
H
AYING TIME
. In return for the help of Bobby and Mrs. Lund, Niels was putting up a stack at the post office â¦
In the midst of this work Nelson and Olga were married. Niels was one of the groom's “best men.”
The wedding was no elaborate affair. It took place at the end of the regular service in the German church at Odensee. The pastor, in courtesy to the young people, merely changed into English for the ceremony. When it was over, everybody who cared to do so returned to Lund's where a supper was prepared for which Mrs. Lund had boiled a ham.
Niels had not made many friends. He was not a “mixer.” Amidst the general joking and celebrating, he again stood apart, in the back of the room.
He could not help thinking of himself as he had stood in this same house three years ago, a newcomer, shy, little sure of himself, full of longings as yet undefined â¦
He looked down on his surroundings with the same critical look.
There was
the bride, a bare nineteen years old;
and somehow he felt that she must be glad to escape. Lunds might have had a past; Nelson was sure to have a future. For some time already the girl had been indifferent to the worries of her old home.
Niels could not help wondering at the fact that Nelson, young, strong, ambitious, industrious as he was, should have picked the mate of his life from this house. Yet, when he scanned the bride's face, he could not help feeling, either, that she would do as her husband wished; that she was sure to put forth her very best effort to make him an acceptable home â¦
Mrs. Lund, as she worked over the stove, kept softly crying to herself. No doubt she saw her own youth in her daughter â¦
Niels no longer blamed her for the state of her house. The mere fact that she felt the need of referring to better days in the certain past and the possible future showed that she was only too conscious of the fearful shortcomings of the present. Who, from morning to night, walks with bare, bleeding feet over meadow and stubble forgets about niceties, about scrubbing and polishing things â¦
Niels looked for Mr. Lund whom he discovered, as usual, reclining in the far corner of the room. There he sat, shading his eyes; and a singularly insincere smile played about his decaying teeth. It was almost visible that he hated to see his daughter go: it meant two strong arms less on the place, not of his own. When anybody spoke to him, his smile lighted up to an almost transparent artificiality which bared the gums above and below the yellow teeth, behind the straggling, grey hairs of his moustache â¦
Then, when Niels' eye returned to the groups about the table, along the north wall of the room, it passed over a face which seemed to arrest it. The smiling eyes were fixed on him, showing warm and flattering interest. They were Mrs. Vogel's. For a moment Niels looked at her absent-mindedly. Strange to say, while he did so, his thought reverted to Ellen. She and her father had been at church; he had seen her go over, after the ceremony, to speak to the bride. Of course, she had not come along with the crowd. Niels wondered how she might speak to another girl.
And then he realised that it was he at whom Mrs. Vogel was smiling, her whole face dimpled up. She was sitting close to the opposite wall, between door and window; and just as he was awaking to the summons which her eyes held, she put one hand on top of a trunk which stood between her chair and the “post-office-table.”
It would have been rude not to obey the summons. Yet, as he went over and sat down by her side, he felt as if he were being entrapped: he felt what was almost a foreboding of disaster. Never in his life had he felt like that; and the memory of this feeling was to come back to him, many years later, when his terrible destiny had overtaken him. Had he obeyed a hardly articulate impulse, he would at once have got up again and gone out.
For a minute or so Mrs. Vogel did not speak but looked at him with a sidelong glance, intensely feminine, nearly coquettish, and full of smiling scrutiny. Niels had never before been looked at in that way. He had never met a woman like her.
“Is it possible,” she said at last, “that you are the boy whom I saw here three years ago?” Her voice, too, was smiling, caressing, almost, triumphantly disarming.
Niels felt confused. He reddened. He wished to flee; but the strength had gone out of his limbs. His lips said, mechanically, “Have I changed?”
She laughed: a light, silvery,
falsetto
laugh: the laugh of a woman perfectly sure of herself and very superior to her interlocutor. “Changed?” she repeated. “I should say so. You were a boy then; now you are a man.”
Niels' head was glowing. “I am older.”
“Partly,” she conceded. “You have learned to speak, too. When I first met you, you were dumb.”
“I did not know any English.”
“Where did you learn?”
“I took lessons. At night-school in Minor.”
“From a lady?”
“No, a man.”
“Well, your English is so good that I felt sure it had been a lady⦠You are changed altogether. You are a man with a future. Your shoulders have broadened. Your lips have become straight and firm. You have grown a moustache. I felt sure only a woman could have worked the change ⦔
Flee, Niels' genius seemed to whisper. Flee from temptation! His ears tingled; his scalp felt hot. Her laughter sounded to him as if it came from a distance. There was mockery in it.
“I wonder,” she said suddenly, “whether you could smile, Mr. Lindstedt?”
This shocked him. He felt as if somebody were piling a crushing weight on him; or as if he were being stripped of his disguises. His chastity felt attacked. He wanted to get away and looked helplessly at the crowd.
But she had chosen her place well.
The sun was sinking to the west; the bright, red glow which fell through the open door stood like a screen between them and the rest. They were in the shadow of the wall. Theirs was a side-play, acted in a niche and off the stage â¦
Niels frowned ⦠And the woman laughed. As if to favour her and to separate them still more from the others, somebody started the old, screeching
grammophone
going.
Mrs. Vogel's face became serious. She lowered her eyes as if she herself were embarrassed. When she spoke, her voice was a whisper. “I hear we are going to be neighbours?”
Niels felt relieved. This was neutral ground. “Is that so?” he asked rather readily.
Mrs. Vogel looked at him. Her demure air had dropped. The mockery in her eyes was undisguised, “Why don't you ask at least where I live. Or do you know?”
“No,” he said brusquely.
“Ask then!” Look and laugh challenged him.
Niels frowned in rebellion; but he asked, though ungraciously.
“Two miles south of here,” she replied, whispering, as if imparting a secret. “Of course, I don't always live there. Mostly I live in the city. But I have the place ⦠Go north from your corner, across the bridge; then, instead of continuing north, along the trail which would lead you to Amundsen's, turn to the east, along the first logging trail. Three miles from the bridge you will find me. Apart from Sigurdsen who does not count I am your nearest neighbour now ⦔
There was a pauseâan awkward pause, awkward for Niels. Mrs. Vogel seemed to enjoy it; she looked at him sideways with a quiet smile â¦
Chance came to his aid. Mrs. Lund had asked some of the men to arrange the tables for supper. Niels got up. “I suppose I had better lend a hand ⦔
But he found that his help was not needed. So, in order to save himself, he slipped out of the door and crossed the yard to where the children were playing about the hay-stack.
B
OBBY, NOW A FINE LAD
of fourteen, was teasing a little girl of four or five. He stood in front of the hay-stack and shouted, “Now, May, watch out. I'm going to blow the haystack over. Watch.” And he blew his cheeks up to perfect rotundity.
“Don't, Bobby, don't!” the little girl cried, with the tears very near the surface.
“Then I'll blow you over,” he threatened, veering about.
But the little girl ran away, screaming.
And Bobby followed her, protesting that he was merely “fooling.”
Niels felt as if he were waking up from a terrible dream. He passed his hand over his forehead and went to the stable.
There he met Nelson who was coming back from the gate where the teams were tied.
“Getting rather thick with the widow?” Nelson asked, grinning.
Niels coloured; and the consciousness angered him. “Nonsense,” he said.
“I watched you. Better be careful. She's
set her cap for
you ⦠What do you intend to do next?”
“Fence,” Niels replied.
“Going to buy horses in the fall?”
“I think so.”
“Well, you've got the hay; good hay, too; and lots of it. I'm glad you fixed the Lunds up. Better hold on to what you'll have to spare. Hay's going to be scarce. There's none in the west.”
“I have no intention of selling,” Niels said. “Maybe in spring ⦠Going to work out this fall?”
“Hardly. I've got my hands full on my own place. Thirty-five acres to plow ⦠And then ⦠when a man's married ⦠What am I to do with your share of the barley from the new breaking?”
“Can you hold it for me?”
“Sure. If you buy horses, better keep it. Well, I'll have to go in. So long.” And he went to the house.
S
OMEHOW NIELS FELT
that a barrier had arisen between him and his friend. So far they had had their interests in common. Nelson had stepped aside; he was going to live in a world from which Niels was excluded. Niels was left alone. He felt in need of the company of one whom he could trust, on whom he could rely, who would understand the turmoil in his heart without an explanation in so many words.
While he stood there, under the giant spruce tree, and looked across the
slough
at the amber glow of the sky, his thought went back, with affection, to old man Sigurdsen. His world, his workaday world of toil and worry, seemed suddenly so sane as compared with his own world of passion, desire, and longing â¦
At supper, he sat next to Hahn, the German, and his wife; but he did not take part in the general conversation â¦
Mrs. Vogel sat at the other end of the table. Niels looked at her once or twice; but she seemed to avoid his eye; and it suited him so. He was still angry at himself, for an inexplicable feeling of guilt that possessed him. She looked very lovely, he thought; but she looked like sin. She was incomprehensible to him â¦
When the grown-ups had finished their supper, they made room for the children.
While the groups thus re-arranged themselves, a sudden commotion arose. Somebody called for Nelson, somebody else, for the bride. They were not to be found.
Then a small, unobtrusive man who had gone out came running to the door.
“Come on,” he shouted; “they're going.”
And everybody rushed to the door.
In the confusion which followed Niels reached for his cap and caught Bobby by the shoulder.
“I'm going too,” he said to the boy. “Tell your mother I'll be back in the morning to finish the hay.”
“All right,” said Bobby and squirmed away in the crush.
Nelson was standing in his
wagon-box
and backed his horses out of the row at the fence. The bride sat on the spring-seat and looked over her shoulder at the crowd which came running.
Everybody had grabbed something, a broken plate, a dish, an old shoe, a handful of rice. Niels was caught in the general onrush and ran with the rest.
A shower of things was thrown after the couple both of whom were laughing and replying to the bantering jokes flung at them from the rear.
Niels felt that part of his life was driving away with them as they swung out on the dam and away into darkness â¦
For a moment the crowd of guests lingered at the gate where Mrs. Lund stood crying unrestrainedly.
Suddenly Niels felt a hand on his arm. Mrs. Vogel stood by him.
“You are going?” She smiled up at him. “Don't forget. North across the bridge. Then east along the first logging trail. Three miles from the bridge. A white cottage. Sooner or later you'll come. Come soon. Before I return to the city. I am a lonely woman, you know ⦔ And, nodding at him, she lost herself in the crowd.
W
HAT DID IT
all mean?
Without waiting for anybody Niels dodged behind the log-shack which served as a smithy and into the thick bluff beyond.
A plank was lying across the ditch. It was almost dark. The air was strangely quiet for a summer day in the north. The atmosphere was saturated with the smell of hay from the edge of the slough â¦
Beyond, tall, ghostly, white stems of
aspens
loomed up, shutting out the world â¦
Already, though he had thought he could never root in this country, the pretty junipers of Sweden had been replaced in his affections by the more virile and fertile growth of the Canadian north. The short, ardent summer and the long, violent winter had captivated him: there was something heady in the quick pulse of the seasons â¦