Willa Cather Page 8

  Little Signa, who was waiting on the table, giggled and fled to the kitchen. Alexandra’s eyes twinkled. “That was too much for Signa, Lou. We all know that Ivar’s perfectly harmless. The girls would as soon expect me to chase them with an axe.”

  Lou flushed and signaled to his wife. “All the same, the neighbors will be having a say about it before long. He may burn anybody’s barn. It’s only necessary for one property-owner in the township to make complaint, and he’ll be taken up by force. You’d better send him yourself and not have any hard feelings.”

  Alexandra helped one of her little nephews to gravy. “Well, Lou, if any of the neighbors try that, I’ll have myself appointed Ivar’s guardian and take the case to court, that’s all. I am perfectly satisfied with him.”

  “Pass the preserves, Lou,” said Annie in a warning tone. She had reasons for not wishing her husband to cross Alexandra too openly. “But don’t you sort of hate to have people see him around here, Alexandra?” she went on with persuasive smoothness. “He is a disgraceful object, and you’re fixed up so nice now. It sort of makes people distant with you, when they never know when they’ll hear him scratching about. My girls are afraid as death of him, aren’t you, Milly, dear?”

  Milly was fifteen, fat and jolly and pompadoured, with a creamy complexion, square white teeth, and a short upper lip. She looked like her grandmother Bergson, and had her comfortable and comfort-loving nature. She grinned at her aunt, with whom she was a great deal more at ease than she was with her mother. Alexandra winked a reply.

  “Milly needn’t be afraid of Ivar. She’s an especial favorite of his. In my opinion Ivar has just as much right to his own way of dressing and thinking as we have. But I’ll see that he doesn’t bother other people. I’ll keep him at home, so don’t trouble any more about him, Lou. I’ve been wanting to ask you about your new bathtub. How does it work?”

  Annie came to the fore to give Lou time to recover himself. “Oh, it works something grand! I can’t keep him out of it. He washes himself all over three times a week now, and uses all the hot water. I think it’s weakening to stay in as long as he does. You ought to have one, Alexandra.”

  “I’m thinking of it. I might have one put in the barn for Ivar, if it will ease people’s minds. But before I get a bathtub, I’m going to get a piano for Milly.”

  Oscar, at the end of the table, looked up from his plate. “What does Milly want of a pianny? What’s the matter with her organ? She can make some use of that, and play in church.”

  Annie looked flustered. She had begged Alexandra not to say anything about this plan before Oscar, who was apt to be jealous of what his sister did for Lou’s children. Alexandra did not get on with Oscar’s wife at all. “Milly can play in church just the same, and she’ll still play on the organ. But practising on it so much spoils her touch. Her teacher says so,” Annie brought out with spirit.

  Oscar rolled his eyes. “Well, Milly must have got on pretty good if she’s got past the organ. I know plenty of grown folks that ain’t,” he said bluntly.

  Annie threw up her chin. “She has got on good, and she’s going to play for her commencement when she graduates in town next year.”

  “Yes,” said Alexandra firmly, “I think Milly deserves a piano. All the girls around here have been taking lessons for years, but Milly is the only one of them who can ever play anything when you ask her. I’ll tell you when I first thought I would like to give you a piano, Milly, and that was when you learned that book of old Swedish songs that your grandfather used to sing. He had a sweet tenor voice, and when he was a young man he loved to sing. I can remember hearing him singing with the sailors down in the shipyard, when I was no bigger than Stella here,” pointing to Annie’s younger daughter.

  Milly and Stella both looked through the door into the sitting-room, where a crayon portrait of John Bergson hung on the wall. Alexandra had had it made from a little photograph, taken for his friends just before he left Sweden; a slender man of thirty-five, with soft hair curling about his high forehead, a drooping mustache, and wondering, sad eyes that looked forward into the distance, as if they already beheld the New World.

  After dinner Lou and Oscar went to the orchard to pick cherries—they had neither of them had the patience to grow an orchard of their own—and Annie went down to gossip with Alexandra’s kitchen girls while they washed the dishes. She could always find out more about Alexandra’s domestic economy from the prattling maids than from Alexandra herself, and what she discovered she used to her own advantage with Lou. On the Divide, farmers’ daughters no longer went out into service, so Alexandra got her girls from Sweden, by paying their fare over. They stayed with her until they married, and were replaced by sisters or cousins from the old country.

  Alexandra took her three nieces into the flower garden. She was fond of the little girls, especially of Milly, who came to spend a week with her aunt now and then, and read aloud to her from the old books about the house, or listened to stories about the early days on the Divide. While they were walking among the flower beds, a buggy drove up the hill and stopped in front of the gate. A man got out and stood talking to the driver. The little girls were delighted at the advent of a stranger, some one from very far away, they knew by his clothes, his gloves, and the sharp, pointed cut of his dark beard. The girls fell behind their aunt and peeped out at him from among the castor beans. The stranger came up to the gate and stood holding his hat in his hand, smiling, while Alexandra advanced slowly to meet him. As she approached he spoke in a low, pleasant voice.

  “Don’t you know me, Alexandra? I would have known you, anywhere.”

  Alexandra shaded her eyes with her hand. Suddenly she took a quick step forward. “Can it be!” she exclaimed with feeling; “can it be that it is Carl Linstrum? Why, Carl, it is!” She threw out both her hands and caught his across the gate. “Sadie, Milly, run tell your father and Uncle Oscar that our old friend Carl Linstrum is here. Be quick! Why, Carl, how did it happen? I can’t believe this!” Alexandra shook the tears from her eyes and laughed.

  The stranger nodded to his driver, dropped his suitcase inside the fence, and opened the gate. “Then you are glad to see me, and you can put me up overnight? I couldn’t go through this country without stopping off to have a look at you. How little you have changed! Do you know, I was sure it would be like that. You simply couldn’t be different. How fine you are!” He stepped back and looked at her admiringly.

  Alexandra blushed and laughed again. “But you yourself, Carl—with that beard—how could I have known you? You went away a little boy.” She reached for his suitcase and when he intercepted her she threw up her hands. “You see, I give myself away. I have only women come to visit me, and I do not know how to behave. Where is your trunk?”

  “It’s in Hanover. I can stay only a few days. I am on my way to the coast.”

  They started up the path. “A few days? After all these years!” Alexandra shook her finger at him. “See this, you have walked into a trap. You do not get away so easy.” She put her hand affectionately on his shoulder. “You owe me a visit for the sake of old times. Why must you go to the coast at all?”

  “Oh, I must! I am a fortune hunter. From Seattle I go on to Alaska.”

  “Alaska?” She looked at him in astonishment. “Are you going to paint the Indians?”

  “Paint?” the young man frowned. “Oh! I’m not a painter, Alexandra. I’m an engraver. I have nothing to do with painting.”

  “But on my parlor wall I have the paintings—”

  He interrupted nervously. “Oh, water-color sketches—done for amusement. I sent them to remind you of me, not because they were good. What a wonderful place you have made of this, Alexandra.” He turned and looked back at the wide, map-like prospect of field and hedge and pasture. “I would never have believed it could be done. I’m disappointed in my own eye, in my imagination.”

  At this moment Lou and Oscar came up the hill from the orchard. They did not quicken the
ir pace when they saw Carl; indeed, they did not openly look in his direction. They advanced distrustfully, and as if they wished the distance were longer.

  Alexandra beckoned to them. “They think I am trying to fool them. Come, boys, it’s Carl Linstrum, our old Carl!”

  Lou gave the visitor a quick, sidelong glance and thrust out his hand. “Glad to see you.”

  Oscar followed with “How d’ do.” Carl could not tell whether their offishness came from unfriendliness or from embarrassment. He and Alexandra led the way to the porch.

  “Carl,” Alexandra explained, “is on his way to Seattle. He is going to Alaska.”

  Oscar studied the visitor’s yellow shoes. “Got business there?” he asked.

  Carl laughed. “Yes, very pressing business. I’m going there to get rich. Engraving’s a very interesting profession, but a man never makes any money at it. So I’m going to try the goldfields.”

  Alexandra felt that this was a tactful speech, and Lou looked up with some interest. “Ever done anything in that line before?”

  “No, but I’m going to join a friend of mine who went out from New York and has done well. He has offered to break me in.”

  “Turrible cold winters, there, I hear,” remarked Oscar. “I thought people went up there in the spring.”

  “They do. But my friend is going to spend the winter in Seattle and I am to stay with him there and learn something about prospecting before we start north next year.”

  Lou looked skeptical. “Let’s see, how long have you been away from here?”

  “Sixteen years. You ought to remember that, Lou, for you were married just after we went away.”

  “Going to stay with us some time?” Oscar asked.

  “A few days, if Alexandra can keep me.”

  “I expect you’ll be wanting to see your old place,” Lou observed more cordially. “You won’t hardly know it. But there’s a few chunks of your old sod house left. Alexandra wouldn’t never let Frank Shabata plough over it.”

  Annie Lee, who, ever since the visitor was announced, had been touching up her hair and settling her lace and wishing she had worn another dress, now emerged with her three daughters and introduced them. She was greatly impressed by Carl’s urban appearance, and in her excitement talked very loud and threw her head about. “And you ain’t married yet? At your age, now! Think of that! You’ll have to wait for Milly. Yes, we’ve got a boy, too. The youngest. He’s at home with his grandma. You must come over to see mother and hear Milly play. She’s the musician of the family. She does pyrography, too. That’s burnt wood, you know. You wouldn’t believe what she can do with her poker. Yes, she goes to school in town, and she is the youngest in her class by two years.”

  Milly looked uncomfortable and Carl took her hand again. He liked her creamy skin and happy, innocent eyes, and he could see that her mother’s way of talking distressed her. “I’m sure she’s a clever little girl,” he murmured, looking at her thoughtfully. “Let me see—Ah, it’s your mother that she looks like, Alexandra. Mrs. Bergson must have looked just like this when she was a little girl. Does Milly run about over the country as you and Alexandra used to, Annie?”

  Milly’s mother protested. “Oh, my, no! Things has changed since we was girls. Milly has it very different. We are going to rent the place and move into town as soon as the girls are old enough to go out into company. A good many are doing that here now. Lou is going into business.”

  Lou grinned. “That’s what she says. You better go get your things on. Ivar’s hitching up,” he added, turning to Annie.

  Young farmers seldom address their wives by name. It is always “you,” or “she.”

  Having got his wife out of the way, Lou sat down on the step and began to whittle. “Well, what do folks in New York think of William Jennings Bryan?” Lou began to bluster, as he always did when he talked politics. “We gave Wall Street a scare in ninety-six, all right, and we’re fixing another to hand them. Silver wasn’t the only issue,” he nodded mysteriously. “There’s a good many things got to be changed. The West is going to make itself heard.”

  Carl laughed. “But, surely, it did do that, if nothing else.”

  Lou’s thin face reddened up to the roots of his bristly hair. “Oh, we’ve only begun. We’re waking up to a sense of our responsibilities, out here, and we ain’t afraid, neither. You fellows back there must be a tame lot. If you had any nerve you’d get together and march down to Wall Street and blow it up. Dynamite it, I mean,” with a threatening nod.

  He was so much in earnest that Carl scarcely knew how to answer him. “That would be a waste of powder. The same business would go on in another street. The street doesn’t matter. But what have you fellows out here got to kick about? You have the only safe place there is. Morgan himself couldn’t touch you. One only has to drive through this country to see that you’re all as rich as barons.”

  “We have a good deal more to say than we had when we were poor,” said Lou threateningly. “We’re getting on to a whole lot of things.”

  As Ivar drove a double carriage up to the gate, Annie came out in a hat that looked like the model of a battleship. Carl rose and took her down to the carriage, while Lou lingered for a word with his sister.

  “What do you suppose he’s come for?” he asked, jerking his head toward the gate.

  “Why, to pay us a visit. I’ve been begging him to for years.”

  Oscar looked at Alexandra. “He didn’t let you know he was coming?”

  “No. Why should he? I told him to come at any time.”

  Lou shrugged his shoulders. “He doesn’t seem to have done much for himself. Wandering around this way!”

  Oscar spoke solemnly, as from the depths of a cavern. “He never was much account.”

  Alexandra left them and hurried down to the gate where Annie was rattling on to Carl about her new dining-room furniture. “You must bring Mr. Linstrum over real soon, only be sure to telephone me first,” she called back, as Carl helped her into the carriage. Old Ivar, his white head bare, stood holding the horses. Lou came down the path and climbed into the front seat, took up the reins, and drove off without saying anything further to any one. Oscar picked up his youngest boy and trudged off down the road, the other three trotting after him. Carl, holding the gate open for Alexandra, began to laugh. “Up and coming on the Divide, eh, Alexandra?” he cried gayly.

  IV

  Carl had changed, Alexandra felt, much less than one might have expected. He had not become a trim, self-satisfied city man. There was still something homely and wayward and definitely personal about him. Even his clothes, his Norfolk coat and his very high collars, were a little unconventional. He seemed to shrink into himself as he used to do; to hold himself away from things, as if he were afraid of being hurt. In short, he was more self-con-scious than a man of thirty-five is expected to be. He looked older than his years and not very strong. His black hair, which still hung in a triangle over his pale forehead, was thin at the crown, and there were fine, relentless lines about his eyes. His back, with its high, sharp shoulders, looked like the back of an over-worked German professor off on his holiday. His face was intelligent, sensitive, unhappy.

  That evening after supper, Carl and Alexandra were sitting by the clump of castor beans in the middle of the flower garden. The gravel paths glittered in the moonlight, and below them the fields lay white and still.

  “Do you know, Alexandra,” he was saying, “I’ve been thinking how strangely things work out. I’ve been away engraving other men’s pictures, and you’ve stayed at home and made your own.” He pointed with his cigar toward the sleeping landscape. “How in the world have you done it? How have your neighbors done it?”

  “We hadn’t any of us much to do with it, Carl. The land did it. It had its little joke. It pretended to be poor because nobody knew how to work it right; and then, all at once, it worked itself. It woke up out of its sleep and stretched itself, and it was so big, so rich, that we suddenly fou
nd we were rich, just from sitting still. As for me, you remember when I began to buy land. For years after that I was always squeezing and borrowing until I was ashamed to show my face in the banks. And then, all at once, men began to come to me offering to lend me money—and I didn’t need it! Then I went ahead and built this house. I really built it for Emil. I want you to see Emil, Carl. He is so different from the rest of us!”

  “How different?”

  “Oh, you’ll see! I’m sure it was to have sons like Emil, and to give them a chance, that father left the old country. It’s curious, too; on the outside Emil is just like an American boy,—he graduated from the State University in June, you know,—but underneath he is more Swedish than any of us. Sometimes he is so like father that he frightens me; he is so violent in his feelings like that.”

  “Is he going to farm here with you?”

  “He shall do whatever he wants to,” Alexandra declared warmly. “He is going to have a chance, a whole chance; that’s what I’ve worked for. Sometimes he talks about studying law, and sometimes, just lately, he’s been talking about going out into the sand hills and taking up more land. He has his sad times, like father. But I hope he won’t do that. We have land enough, at last!” Alexandra laughed.

  “How about Lou and Oscar? They’ve done well, haven’t they?”

  “Yes, very well; but they are different, and now that they have farms of their own I do not see so much of them. We divided the land equally when Lou married. They have their own way of doing things, and they do not altogether like my way, I am afraid. Perhaps they think me too independent. But I have had to think for myself a good many years and am not likely to change. On the whole, though, we take as much comfort in each other as most brothers and sisters do. And I am very fond of Lou’s oldest daughter.”

  “I think I liked the old Lou and Oscar better, and they probably feel the same about me. I even, if you can keep a secret,”—Carl leaned forward and touched her arm, smiling,—”I even think I liked the old country better. This is all very splendid in its way, but there was something about this country when it was a wild old beast that has haunted me all these years. Now, when I come back to all this milk and honey, I feel like the old German song, ‘Wo bist du, wo bist du, mein geliebtest Land?’—Do you ever feel like that, I wonder?”