Settlers of the Marsh

by Frederick Philip Grove

  “But then, during the latter part of the first summer, I became conscious of the fact—I was for ever brooding—that it was always I who came to you … never you who came to me. A suspicion took hold of me. I began to doubt you. I began to doubt your love. More and more life became a drudgery. I thought of a test. That was why I went to the city. I needed a recreation, it is true, a change. I sought my old company. It seemed hard to return to this place in the wilderness. Yet, I longed for you. But I made up my mind, when I did return, to withdraw, to wait for you, not to go to you again. You did not come. You let me drift, no matter where. Half from resentment, half from a desire to test you further, I stopped the work I had been doing. I waited; oh, so anxiously I waited for you to scold, to get angry, to beat me if need be … Just to show that you did care, that I was not simply a nothing, a figure-head, an encumbrance to you …

  “You did nothing of the kind. It left you indifferent …

  “I was not needed. Why was I here? Why was I sacrificing everything I had valued: the colour, the gayness, the zest of life for a man to whom I was nothing? Who perhaps hated me, had hated me ever since I had been his wife? And I became aware of the possibility that perhaps one day I might come to hate you.

  “When the Nelsons came, my resentment grew too strong for me. As yet, even then, it was half done on purpose when I insulted you. The insult glanced off.

  “I made another test. Again I went to the city. I wanted you to say no, then; that I could not go. I wanted you to be surprised that I asked for Bobby to drive me to town. You agreed to everything; as if it were the most natural thing for me to travel alone all over the country. I stayed away much longer than could possibly be necessary to have any number of teeth attended to. I wanted you to question me; or to get angry. You met me with a grin. My heart froze against you. When I got back, I shut myself up in my room.

  “Yes I made still a third test. I went to the city at Easter. I used no pretext. I simply announced I was going. For half a year I had been living like an unmarried woman that has never known a man. What did you think I was made of? Did you think mine was the nature of a fish? You stirred neither hand nor foot. You did not say a word. You did not even object to my going.

  “I went; and I threw myself away in the city. So far the men had been courting me; now I courted them. Some of them were poor. I had plenty of money from the first two trips left. I had never been inside a dentist’s office. My stay had not cost me a cent. I had lived with friends. I entertained men this time, with your money … I threw myself away, body and all. It was nothing to me. I thought it would mean much to you. I revelled in my revenge …

  “And yet, Niels, even then I could not get rid of the thought of you. I still saw you when I was in the arms of another.…

  “I might have stayed away, then I came back. I still hoped … Nothing. Nothing.

  “And now, Niels, will you let me go? My feeling for you is dead; you are nothing to me any longer, not that much … You are only a husband whom I married by mistake, somewhat ridiculous, and very hateful … Yes, I hate you, I hate you … Will you let me go?”

  The man at the door had listened aghast. He did not understand. He felt as if he had been walking along an abyss, blindfolded. He shivered. Fever burned in him. Sweat broke out on his brow. He stared …

  “Niels,” she went on once more, “will you let me go? This time I shall not come back. I want to live, not to stagnate. I want to feel that I can go from this house as I used to go from my cottage in the bush. I want you to be a memory only. I want you to be the past …

  “I do not ask you for money. I have money of my own. If you want a divorce, I am willing. You can throw the guilt on me. But then I demand to be paid for it. You have no proofs. I am willing to furnish them, for a consideration.

  “If you don’t want a divorce, I have a hold on you. I may ask for money at a later time. You are well-to-do. You are getting richer every day because you have no wants … I have known too well what it is to be without money not to appreciate it …

  “All this I intended to write to you. Don’t think that I do not want you to see the whole of the situation.

  “And now, once more, will you let me go?”

  All this went past Niels. He did not catch a word of it at the time: much later only did some of the things she had said come back to him as out of an evil dream. One fact stood out: she had given her body …

  As in a spasm he answered, “I will not.”

  She looked at him, questioningly, almost curiously. Then she shrugged her shoulders.

  He saw her dimly. In this conflict of two human natures such trifles as her appearance, the exaggeration of her make-up—too absurd to be taken notice of—angered him. He would have liked to strip all that costly tinsel off her, with one rough touch to wipe paint and powder down, so she would stand there, the bare, ugly, life-worn specimen of humanity she appeared to him to be under her mask. He might have pitied her then.

  Her face hardened. “Niels,” she said, “I warn you. It will go hard with you and me. I cannot stay here, a prisoner, condemned to a life-sentence. I won’t.”

  “You are not going to leave this place if I can help it,” he said doggedly.

  “Listen,” she flared up, “I have tried to make you understand. I have failed. I wanted to show you a last mercy by leaving. You prove to me that you are mean, brutal, revengeful. You think you have power over me. I’ll show you that you have not. For the last time, will you let me go?”

  “No.”

  “Then listen.” She stood up. “From now on I shall live to get even with you. I don’t want to leave any longer. I shall stay. I can hit you harder here. You don’t need to lock doors.

  You have made me live through hell. I shall give you a taste of the same thing now. You don’t know yet why people have not called. You will know one day. I, too, have powers. I have borne what I could. I can bear no more. People here are coarse and vulgar. They are not to my taste. I’ll overlook that for the sake of revenge. You have made your bed. You must lie in it. This house, the White Range Line House as they call it, is going to be a famous house on the Marsh; its name is going to be a by-word ringing through the countryside; and you are going to be the laughing-stock of the settlement. Mark my words, you will rue this day!”

  With that she ran out into the hall and up the stairs, leaving him alone.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  BOBBY

  Again there were drives, drives, drives; for Niels started work in the bush right after plowing … As always when he was driving, there was time to think, to brood …

  At the very first, when his wife’s revelations had hit him like so many hammer-blows, he had been stunned. Then, in life’s first reaction against injury and death, he had been subject to sudden fits of rage, sudden wellings-up in him of primeval impulses, of the desire to kill, to crush …

  At such moments he had indulged in horrible imaginings. He had felt as if he could have looked on while the woman perished under frightful tortures; as if he could have laughed at her contortions; as if he could have revelled in her agony.

  But those had been no more than impulses, comparable to brief eruptions of a volcano which yet show what is hidden underneath.

  He had kept away from his house when his wife was about, entering it only in the early morning and at night. He and Bobby were “baching it” in the shack, living as once they had lived together in the house. Meanwhile they worked at what had to be done: they dug potatoes, replaced rotting fence-posts, squared logs for a smokehouse and a larger granary; they went together into the bush.

  Niels was watching his house …

  It never occurred to him yet not to blame his wife for doing what it was her nature to do; not to judge her and to find her guilty …

  But, as soon as the driving started, he went to work, unconsciously, at finding a new path through the tangled labyrinth of his life.

  What was the problem?

  He came to see that
the real problem was very complicated. Judging her guilty, he demanded repentance and atonement. But he could not demand anything of her because she did not acknowledge his right to demand: he had no authority over her.

  She was planning revenge. Revenge for what? No doubt for a wrong she thought had been done her.

  Had he, Niels wronged the woman, intentionally or not? That was the great question.

  She was right in reproaching him with weakness: he had fallen. But, once he had fallen, could he have acted otherwise than he had done? Could he have simulated feelings which he did not have?

  The whole marriage, the whole antecedents of this marriage were immoral …

  So it all came back to this that he should not have fallen …

  But suppose a man had fallen, what was he to do?

  Suppose he had simulated feelings which he did not have … Suppose—unlikely as such an outcome must be—he had succeeded in deceiving the woman into the belief that he really loved her …

  He would have had to bear the burden of that deceit to his grave!

  Could he have stood up under such a strain? He could not. His marriage would have been worse than concubinage: it would have been prostitution on his part!

  What had his resolutions amounted to, his good intentions of a year ago? To this that he had intended to buy her off.

  He had strongly, forcibly realised that he was not the only sufferer. But he had not been willing—because he had been unable—to give her what she wanted, what she was looking for in him. He had been willing, instead, to give her money to go to the city with, provided she remained faithful to him …

  He had been fool enough not to see as he saw it now that no man can afford to let his wife go anywhere alone unless he can trust her; and, of course, he can trust her only if he knows that she can trust him, in everything, absolutely: he can trust her only if not only she loves him but if he loves her, and if she knows it, of positive knowledge …

  To make the best of a bad bargain! What folly! He saw clearly now that nobody, in this relationship of marriage, can ever make the best of a bad bargain. It is all or nothing. Give all and take all. If you cannot do that, stand back and refrain.

  But then, he had not refrained. He had taken her …

  No matter where he turned in his agony, he saw no help for it; he saw no way out.

  Once more, when this utter hopelessness of the situation became clear to him, he hardened his heart. He could not help himself; he was he; he could not act or speak except according to laws inherent in him.

  What must happen would happen. He had sinned. He saw no atonement. None, nowhere.

  And what about his life? What was its justification? No justification existed … Except perhaps, perhaps in helping others? …

  ON ONE OF HIS FIRST DRIVES to town he met the ox-team of the new German settler, Dahlbeck by name.

  On the wagon-truck drawn by the slow, plodding beasts rested a sand-box without a seat. The man sat on the edge of the box, his feet dangling between the wheels.

  In front, on a little pile of straw, reposed a woman. The back of the low box was piled with bundles holding her belongings.

  It was the big, strapping girl of the first farm to town; the one that had once looked at him when she had stood at the pump …

  She was lying down as the two teams approached each other; but she sat up as Niels drew near.

  Somehow, at his sight, a change took place in her expression. She recognised him. Her nonchalance dropped; and though she remained sitting, she seemed to rock herself on her hips. A provoking, challenging quality crept into the open smile with which she stared at him …

  The man’s stern face, narrow, hatchet-shaped, also underwent a change, discernible in shadings only. In that change there was betrayed a feeling of restraint, almost of shame. It looked as if he would have liked to interfere, to call the woman to order; as if he felt embarrassed at his own failure to do so. His nod, in answer to Niels’, was almost forbidding.

  Niels liked the man for that nod. He read his mind in it.

  This man was a slave of passion. He would have preferred freedom; but he was a slave. The woman dominated, swayed, attracted, repelled him as she pleased. The woman was his evil genius …

  All that Niels read in a glance and a nod …

  SLOWLY, SLOWLY, a new development traced itself out in the White Range Line House.

  It was not often that Niels even saw his wife in the early part of the winter. Still more than before Mrs. Lindstedt led an indoor life. It seemed she never left the house any more …

  Niels provided for everything she might possibly need to carry on a purely animal existence. He saw to it that there was bread—Mrs. Schultze baked it; he gathered the eggs and skimmed the milk; he watched the flourbag, the potatoes, the smoked meat. He carried wood and water in.

  All this he did either before day-break or after nightfall.

  He knew that upstairs, in that room on the east side of the house, there lay or sat a woman, his wife, spinning off her hours, her days, her weeks … For a long time he did not even hear her.

  The only signs of her life consisted in the slow, slow dwindling of the supply of flour; in the disappearance of an egg or two a day from the colander on the kitchen shelf; in the fact that at night there was a little less water in the pail on the bench by the door … Only once or twice—very rarely—there was a light burning in the room upstairs, in the morning or at night …

  It would almost seem as if she watched for his appearance on the yard to extinguish even her lamp.

  The only intercourse between the two, and that an indirect intercourse, consisted in this that once a week he took her mail which continued to arrive with great regularity and deposited it on the deal table in the hall whenever Bobby brought it from the office. When he looked for it the next time—as he never failed to do—it was gone. Whether she answered any of the letters or not; and if so, how, Niels did not learn …

  THEN, SHORTLY BEFORE CHRISTMAS, a chance meeting came about in the kitchen.

  Niels entered, rather later in the evening than usual, carrying a pail of milk to take it down into the cellar. It was quite dark inside and outside. Yet Niels knew that he had left the lamp burning on the table. Perhaps, when he went out, the draft had extinguished it. He set his pail down by the door and felt for matches. As he did so, his hand touched the hot glass of the lamp. A gasp escaped him; and the same moment there was the swish of clothes, quite nearby, as of somebody running. Then the crash of a falling chair and a half-suppressed cry.

  He found the matches, removed, still in the dark, the chimney from the burner, struck his match, and lighted the lamp.

  As he turned, he saw his wife in the corner behind the door. Apparently she had come down, thinking that he had finished the evening chores and had left the light burning by mistake. When she had heard him approaching over the crunching snow, she had blown the lamp and tried to escape without being seen. In the dark she had missed the door …

  He looked at her; and she, with a defiant toss of her head, gathered her wraps which had half fallen about her and fled. He heard her passing through the dining room, into the hall, and up the stairs.

  It was a meeting of no more than a quarter minute. But in those few seconds Niels had seen a number of things.

  She had been in her nightgown, with a dressing gown thrown over her shoulders. The dressing gown was of light blue silk; the nightgown, of pink organdie or some other light, filmy material, profusely adorned with lace.

  But the face!

  For the fraction of a second he had thought it was the face of a perfect stranger. It had been that of an aging woman, yellow, lined with sharp wrinkles and black hollows under the eyes, the lips pale like the face … She had been without her make-up …

  AFTER CHRISTMAS, one day, while he was attending to his chores, a second meeting took place.

  This time the mere fact of the meeting was hard to explain. The first time it had been accident
al; this time there could be no doubt that it was intentional. Since their first encounter Niels had made it a point to give ample warning of his presence whenever he entered the house.

  On this particular night he had gone down into the cellar, carrying the kitchen lamp and rattling the tin pails which he had previously scalded in the kitchen.

  He was dipping the cream off the morning’s milk when she, too, came down, carrying her own lamp in one hand and a little dish in the other. She took no notice of him but passed him by as if he did not exist.

  Again she was in undress for the night, with a gown thrown over her shoulders. Again her face, that of an aging woman, aged by God knew what, stood in strange contrast, an incomprehensible, almost uncanny contrast, to her appearance; it was so yellow, lined …

  Neither said a word. When she returned upstairs, Niels finished his work in the cellar, feeling guilty, down-cast, despondent. He took the skimmed milk to the kitchen to leave it there, ready for the morning when it would be fed to the pigs. Then he went out to bring in a few armfuls of wood for the heater in the dining room. He noticed, before he went out, that there was a light in that room; yet he never thought anything but that she, knowing he would come back, had simply left the lamp burning when she went upstairs.