Vandemark's Folly Part 35

"Yes," said Magnus gravely, "dat beat me, Yake."

He bowed his head in thought for a while, and then looked up.

"Ay can't go to her, Yake. Ay can't go to her. But you go, Yake; you go.

An' you tal her--dat Magnus Thorkelson--Norsky Thorkelson--bane ready to do what he can for her. All he can do. Tal her Magnus ready to live or die for her. You tal her dat, Yake!"

I had to think over this a few days before I could begin to guess what it meant; and three days after, she came to see me. It was a Sunday right after harvest. I had put on my new clothes thinking to go to hear Elder Thornd.y.k.e preach, but when I thought that I had no longer any pleasure in the thought of Virginia, no chance ever to have her for my wife, no dreams of her for the future even, I sat in a sort of stupor until it was too late to go, and then I walked out to look at things.

The upland phlox, we called them pinks, were gone; the roses had fallen and were represented by green haws, turning to red; the upland scarlet lilies were vanished; but the tall lilies of the moist places were flaming like yellow stars over the tall gra.s.s, each with its six dusty anthers whirling like little windmills about its red stigma; and beside these lilies, with their spotted petals turned back to their roots, stood the clumps of purple marsh phlox; while towering over them all were the tall rosin-weeds with their yellow blossoms like sunflowers, and the Indian medicine plant waving purple plumes. There was a sense of autumn in the air. Far off across the marsh I saw that the settlers had their wheat in symmetrical beehive-shaped stacks while mine stood in the shock, my sloping hillside slanting down to the marsh freckled with the shocks until it looked dark--the almost sure sign of a bountiful crop.

And as I looked at this scene of plenty, I sickened at it. What use to me were wheat in the shock, hay in the stack, cattle on the prairie, corn already hiding the ground? Nothing! Less than nothing: for I had lost the thing for which I had worked--lost it before I had claimed it.

I sat down and saw the opposite side of the marsh swim in my tears.

4

And then Rowena came into my view as she pa.s.sed the house. I hastily dried my eyes, and went to meet her, astonished, for she was alone. She was riding one of Gowdy's horses, and had that badge of distinction in those days, a side-saddle and a riding habit. She looked very distinguished, as she rode slowly toward me, her long skirt hanging below her feet, one knee crooked about the saddle horn, the other in the stirrup. I had not seen a woman riding thus since the time I had watched them sweeping along in all their style in Albany or Buffalo. She came up to me and stopped, looking at me without a word.

"Why of all things!" I said. "Rowena, is this you!"

"What's left of me," said she.

I stood looking at her for a minute, thinking of what her father and mother had said, and finally trying to figure out what seemed to be a great change in her. There was something new in her voice, and her manner of looking at me as she spoke; and something strange in the way she looked out of her eyes. Her face was a little paler than it used to be, as if she had been indoors more; but there was a pink flush in her cheeks that made her look prettier than I had ever seen her. Her eyes were bright as if with tears just trembling to fall, rather than with the old glint of defiance or high spirits; but she smiled and laughed more than ever I had seen her do. She acted as if she was in high spirits, as I have seen even very quiet girls in the height of the fun and frolic of a dance or sleigh-ride. When she was silent for a moment, though, her mouth drooped as if in some sort of misery; and it was not until our eyes met that the laughing expression came over her face, as if she was gay only when she knew she was watched. She seemed older--much older.

Somehow, all at once there came into my mind the memory of the woman away back there in Buffalo, who had taken me, a sleepy, lonely, neglected little boy, to her room, put me to bed, and been driven from the fearful place in which she lived, because of it. I have finally thought of the word to describe what I felt in both these cases--desperation; desperation, and the feeling of pursuit and flight.

I did not even feel all this as I stood looking at Rowena, sitting on her horse so prettily that summer day at my farm; I only felt puzzled and a little pitiful for her--all the more, I guess, because of her nice clothes and her side-saddle.

"Well, Mr. Vandemark," said she, finally, "I don't hear the perprietor of the estate say anything about lighting and stayin' a while.' Help me down, Jake!"

I swung her from the saddle and tied her horse. I stopped to put a halter on him, unsaddle him, and give him hay. I wanted time to think; but I do not remember that I had done much if any thinking when I got back to the house, and found that she had taken off her long skirt and was sitting on the little stoop in front of my door. She wore the old ap.r.o.n, and as I came up to her, she spread it out with her hands to call my attention to it.

"You see, Jake, I've come to work. Show me the morning's dishes, an'

I'll wash 'em. Or maybe you want bread baked? It wouldn't be breakin'

the Sabbath to mix up a bakin' for a poor ol' bach like you, would it?

I'm huntin' work. Show it to me."

I showed her how clean everything was, taking pride in my housekeeping; and when she seemed not over-pleased with this, I had in all honesty to tell her how much I was indebted to Mrs. Thornd.y.k.e for it.

"The preacher's wife?" she asked sharply. "An' that adopted daughter o'

theirn, Buck Gowdy's sister-in-law, eh?"

I wished I could have admitted this; but I had to explain that Virginia had not been there. For some reason she seemed in better spirits when she learned this. When it came time for dinner, which on Sunday was at one o'clock, she insisted on getting the meal; and seemed to be terribly anxious for fear everything might not be good. It was a delicious meal, and to see her preparing it, and then clearing up the table and washing the dishes gave me quite a thrill. It was so much like what I had seen in my visions--and so different.

"Now," said she, coming and sitting down by me, and laying her hand on mine, "ain't this more like it? Don't that beat doing everything yourself? If you'd only try havin' me here a week, n.o.body could hire you to go back to bachin' it ag'in. Think how nice it would be jest to go out an' do your ch.o.r.es in the morning, an' when you come in with the milk, find a nice breakfast all ready to set down to. Wouldn't that be more like livin'?"

"Yes," I said, "it--it would."

"That come hard," said she, squeezing my hand, "like makin' a little boy own up he likes a girl. I guess I won't ask you the next thing."

"What was the next thing, Rowena?"

"W'y, if it wouldn't be kind o' nice to have some one around, even if she wa'n't very pretty, and was ignorant, if she was willin' to learn, an' would always be good to you, to have things kind o' cheerful at night--your supper ready; a light lit; dry boots warmed by the stove; your bed made up nice, and maybe warmed when it was cold: even if she happened to be wearin' an old apern like this--if you knowed she was thinkin' in her thankful heart of the bashful boy that give it to her back along the road when she was ragged and ashamed of herself every time a stranger looked at her!"

Dumbhead as I was I sat mute, and looked as blank as an idiot. In all this description of hers I was struck by the resemblance between her vision and mine; but I was dreaming of some one else. She looked at me a moment, and took her hand away. She seemed hurt, and I thought I saw her wiping her eyes. I could not believe that she was almost asking me to marry her, it seemed so beyond belief--and I was joked so much about the girls, and about getting me a wife that it seemed this must be just banter, too. And yet, there was something a little pitiful in it, especially when she spoke again about my little gift to her so long ago.

"I never looked your place over," said she at last. "That's what I come over fur. Show it to me, Jacob?"

This delighted me. We looked first at the wheat, and the corn, and some of my cattle were near enough so that we went and looked at them, too. I told her where I had got every one of them. We looked at the chickens and the ducks; and the first brood of young turkeys I ever had. I showed her all my elms, maples, ba.s.swoods, and other forest trees which I had brought from the timber, and even the two pines I had made live, then not over a foot high.

I just now came in from looking at them, and find them forty feet high as I write this, with their branches resting on the ground in a great brown ring carpeted with needles as they are in the pineries.

We sat down on the blue-gra.s.s under what is now the big cottonwood in front of the house. I had stuck this in the sod a little twig not two feet long, and now it was ten or twelve feet high, and made a very little shade, to be sure, but wasn't I proud of my own shade trees! Oh, you can't understand it; for you can not realize the beauty of shade on that great sun-bathed prairie, or the promise in the changing shadows under that little tree!

Rowena leaned back against the gray-green trunk, and patted the turf beside her for me to be seated.

Every circ.u.mstance of this strange day comes back to me as I think of it, and of what followed. I remember just how the poor girl looked as she sat leaning against the tree, her cheeks flushed by the heat of the summer afternoon, that look of distress in her eyes as she looked around so brightly and with so gay an air over my little kingdom. As she sat there she loosened her belt and took a long breath as if relieved in her weariness at the long ramble we had taken.

"I never have had a home," she said. "I never had no idee how folk that have got things lived--till I went over--over to that--that h.e.l.l-hole there!" And she waved her hand over toward Blue-gra.s.s Manor. I was startled at her fierce manner and words.

"Your folks come along here the other day," I said, to turn the subject, I guess.

"Did they?" she asked, with a little gasp. "What did they say?"

"They said they were headed for Pike's Peak."

"The old story," she said. "Huntin' f'r the place where the hawgs run around ready baked, with knives an' forks stuck in 'em. I wish to G.o.d I was with 'em!"

Here she stopped for a while and sat with her hands twisted together in her lap. Finally, "Did they say anything about me, Jacob?"

"I thought," said I, "that they talked as if you'd had a fuss."

"Yes," she said. "They're all I've got. They hain't much, I reckon, but they're as good as I be, I s'pose. Yes, a lot better. They're my father an' my mother, an' my brothers. In their way--in our way--they was always, as good to me as they knowed how. I remember when ma used to kiss me, and pa held me on his lap. Do you remember he's got one finger off? I used to play with his fingers, an' try to build 'em up into a house, while he set an' told about new places he was goin' to to git rich. I wonder if the time'll ever come ag'in when I can set on any one's lap an' be kissed without any harm in it!"

There was no false gaiety in her face now, as she sat and looked off over the marsh from the brow of the hill-slope. A feeling of coming evil swept over me as I looked at her, like that which goes through the nerves of the cattle when a tornado is coming. I remembered now the silence of her brothers when her father and mother had said that she was no longer a member of their family, and was not going with them to "the Speak."

The comical threat of the old man that he would will his property away from her did not sound so funny now; for there must have been something more than an ordinary family disagreement to have made them feel thus. I recalled the pained look in Ma Fewkes's face, as she sat with her shoulder-blades drawn together and cast Rowena out from the strange family circle. What could it be? I turned my back to her as I sat on the ground; and she took me by the shoulders, pulled me down so that my head was lying in her lap, and began smoothing my hair back from my forehead with a very caressing touch.

"Well," said she, "we wun't spoil our day by talkin' of my troubles.

This place here is heaven, to me, so quiet, so clean, so good! Le's not spoil it."

And before I knew what she meant to do, she stooped down and kissed me on the lips--kissed me several times. I can not claim that I was offended, she was so pretty, so rosy, so young and attractive; but at the same time, I was a little scared. I wanted to end this situation; so, pretty soon, I proposed that we go down to see where I kept my milk.

I felt like calling her attention to the fact that it was getting well along in the afternoon, and that she would be late home if she did not start soon; but that would not be very friendly, and I did not want to hurt her feelings. So we went down to the spring at the foot of the hill, where the secret lay of my nice, firm, sweet b.u.t.ter. She did not seem very much interested, even when I showed her the tank in which the pans of milk stood in the cool water. She soon went over to a big granite boulder left there by the glaciers ages ago when the hill was made by the melting ice dropping its earth and gravel, and sat down as if to rest. So I went and sat beside her.

"Jacob," said she, with a sort of gasp, "you wonder why I kissed you up there, don't you?"

I should not have confessed this when I was young, for it is not the man's part I played; but I blushed, and turned my face away.

"I love you, Jacob!" she took my hand as she said this, and with her other hand turned my face toward her. "I want you to marry me. Will you, Jacob? I--I--I need you. I'll be good to you, Jake. Don't say no! Don't say no, for G.o.d's sake!"

Then the tragic truth seemed to dawn on me, or rather it came like a flash; and I turned and looked at her as I had not done before. I am slow, or I should have known when her father and mother had spoken as they did; but now I could see. I could see why she needed me. As an unsophisticated boy, I had been blind in my failure to see something new and unexpected to me in human relations; but once it came to me, it was plain. I was a stockman, as well as a boy; and my life was closely related to the mysterious processes by which the world is filled with successive generations of living beings. I was like a family physician to my animals; and wise in their days and generations. Rowena was explained to me in a flash of lightning by my every-day experiences; she was swept within the current of my knowledge.