Emil looked at the outline of his sister’s head in the dim light. They were sitting close together and he somehow felt that she could hear his thoughts. He was silent for a moment, and then said in an embarrassed tone, “Why, no, certainly not. You ought to do whatever you want to. I’ll always back you.”
“But it would seem a little bit ridiculous to you if I married Carl?”
Emil fidgeted. The issue seemed to him too far-fetched to warrant discussion. “Why, no. I should be surprised if you wanted to. I can’t see exactly why. But that’s none of my business. You ought to do as you please. Certainly you ought not to pay any attention to what the boys say.”
Alexandra sighed. “I had hoped you might understand, a little, why I do want to. But I suppose that’s too much to expect. I’ve had a pretty lonely life, Emil. Besides Marie, Carl is the only friend I have ever had.”
Emil was awake now; a name in her last sentence roused him. He put out his hand and took his sister’s awkwardly. “You ought to do just as you wish, and I think Carl’s a fine fellow. He and I would always get on. I don’t believe any of the things the boys say about him, honest I don’t. They are suspicious of him because he’s intelligent. You know their way. They’ve been sore at me ever since you let me go away to college. They’re always trying to catch me up. If I were you, I wouldn’t pay any attention to them. There’s nothing to get upset about. Carl’s a sensible fellow. He won’t mind them.”
“I don’t know. If they talk to him the way they did to me, I think he’ll go away.”
Emil grew more and more uneasy. “Think so? Well, Marie said it would serve us all right if you walked off with him.”
“Did she? Bless her little heart! SHE would.” Alexandra’s voice broke.
Emil began unlacing his leggings. “Why don’t you talk to her about it? There’s Carl, I hear his horse. I guess I’ll go upstairs and get my boots off. No, I don’t want any supper. We had supper at five o’clock, at the fair.”
Emil was glad to escape and get to his own room. He was a little ashamed for his sister, though he had tried not to show it. He felt that there was something indecorous in her proposal, and she did seem to him somewhat ridiculous. There was trouble enough in the world, he reflected, as he threw himself upon his bed, without people who were forty years old imagining they wanted to get married. In the darkness and silence Emil was not likely to think long about Alexandra. Every image slipped away but one. He had seen Marie in the crowd that afternoon. She sold candy at the fair. WHY had she ever run away with Frank Shabata, and how could she go on laughing and working and taking an interest in things? Why did she like so many people, and why had she seemed pleased when all the French and Bohemian boys, and the priest himself, crowded round her candy stand? Why did she care about any one but him? Why could he never, never find the thing he looked for in her playful, affectionate eyes?
Then he fell to imagining that he looked once more and found it there, and what it would be like if she loved him, — she who, as Alexandra said, could give her whole heart. In that dream he could lie for hours, as if in a trance. His spirit went out of his body and crossed the fields to Marie Shabata.
At the University dances the girls had often looked wonderingly at the tall young Swede with the fine head, leaning against the wall and frowning, his arms folded, his eyes fixed on the ceiling or the floor. All the girls were a little afraid of him. He was distinguished-looking, and not the jollying kind. They felt that he was too intense and preoccupied. There was something queer about him. Emil’s fraternity rather prided itself upon its dances, and sometimes he did his duty and danced every dance. But whether he was on the floor or brooding in a corner, he was always thinking about Marie Shabata. For two years the storm had been gathering in him.
XII
Carl came into the sitting-room while Alexandra was lighting the lamp. She looked up at him as she adjusted the shade. His sharp shoulders stooped as if he were very tired, his face was pale, and there were bluish shadows under his dark eyes. His anger had burned itself out and left him sick and disgusted.
“You have seen Lou and Oscar?” Alexandra asked.
“Yes.” His eyes avoided hers.
Alexandra took a deep breath. “And now you are going away. I thought so.”
Carl threw himself into a chair and pushed the dark lock back from his forehead with his white, nervous hand. “What a hopeless position you are in, Alexandra!” he exclaimed feverishly. “It is your fate to be always surrounded by little men. And I am no better than the rest. I am too little to face the criticism of even such men as Lou and Oscar. Yes, I am going away; tomorrow. I cannot even ask you to give me a promise until I have something to offer you. I thought, perhaps, I could do that; but I find I can’t.”
“What good comes of offering people things they don’t need?” Alexandra asked sadly. “I don’t need money. But I have needed you for a great many years. I wonder why I have been permitted to prosper, if it is only to take my friends away from me.”
“I don’t deceive myself,” Carl said frankly. “I know that I am going away on my own account. I must make the usual effort. I must have something to show for myself. To take what you would give me, I should have to be either a very large man or a very small one, and I am only in the middle class.”
Alexandra sighed. “I have a feeling that if you go away, you will not come back. Something will happen to one of us, or to both. People have to snatch at happiness when they can, in this world. It is always easier to lose than to find. What I have is yours, if you care enough about me to take it.”
Carl rose and looked up at the picture of John Bergson. “But I can’t, my dear, I can’t! I will go North at once. Instead of idling about in California all winter, I shall be getting my bearings up there. I won’t waste another week. Be patient with me, Alexandra. Give me a year!”
“As you will,” said Alexandra wearily. “All at once, in a single day, I lose everything; and I do not know why. Emil, too, is going away.” Carl was still studying John Bergson’s face and Alexandra’s eyes followed his. “Yes,” she said, “if he could have seen all that would come of the task he gave me, he would have been sorry. I hope he does not see me now. I hope that he is among the old people of his blood and country, and that tidings do not reach him from the New World.”
Part III. Winter Memories
I
Winter has settled down over the Divide again; the season in which Nature recuperates, in which she sinks to sleep between the fruitfulness of autumn and the passion of spring. The birds have gone. The teeming life that goes on down in the long grass is exterminated. The prairie-dog keeps his hole. The rabbits run shivering from one frozen garden patch to another and are hard put to it to find frost-bitten cabbage-stalks. At night the coyotes roam the wintry waste, howling for food. The variegated fields are all one color now; the pastures, the stubble, the roads, the sky are the same leaden gray. The hedgerows and trees are scarcely perceptible against the bare earth, whose slaty hue they have taken on. The ground is frozen so hard that it bruises the foot to walk in the roads or in the ploughed fields. It is like an iron country, and the spirit is oppressed by its rigor and melancholy. One could easily believe that in that dead landscape the germs of life and fruitfulness were extinct forever.
Alexandra has settled back into her old routine. There are weekly letters from Emil. Lou and Oscar she has not seen since Carl went away. To avoid awkward encounters in the presence of curious spectators, she has stopped going to the Norwegian Church and