Settlers of the Marsh

by Frederick Philip Grove

  He shuddered. What was he to do?

  He could not go to the hay-slough alone this morning.

  Niels had not said a word. He had thrown the rifle over his shoulder and gone to the shack, slowly, steadily, soberly. There, he had flung himself on the bed, in his clothes, vouchsafing no information, inviting no question, answering no enquiring look …

  “Don’t you want breakfast?” Bobby had asked.

  Niels had already been asleep.

  Bobby went all around the house. The east window of the dining room, on the north side, was open.

  Should he look in? He could fetch the saw-buck or a truss from the milk-house to stand on.

  He did not go. He was afraid to look in.

  He returned to the yard, picked the rifle up where he had left it leaning against the stable, broke the barrel, and emptied the remaining shells into his hand.

  Something frightful had happened. What?

  He felt disconsolate.

  Niels had never owned shotgun or rifle.

  But one day, in winter, a year or two ago, Bobby and Niels had been coming from the shack; and there, in the first, frosty light of the morning, they had seen a moose standing at the far corner of the garden-lot, head thrown high, mobile nostrils aquiver to catch a scent … Both men had stopped in their tracks. Then Bobby, bending down, had picked up a stick and sprung forward, levelling it like a gun at his shoulder, shouting, “Bang … Bang!” Whereupon the noble animal, all nerves and trembling muscle, had reared up and disappeared in long, graceful bounds. “What a pity,” Bobby had exclaimed, “that we haven’t a gun!” Niels had shrugged his shoulders. But the next time he had gone to town he had brought back this rifle for Bobby. It had never been used except for practice and in fun …

  If it had not been for him, Bobby, there would have been no fire-arms on the place …

  Many times, during the forenoon, Bobby went to the shack. Niels never stirred.

  Bobby became hungry. But Niels needed the rest. He merely fetched some bread and a cup, went to the pump, drew fresh water, and sat down to munch his crusts …

  Bobby had no education. If you had asked him what a tragedy is, he could not have answered. But he felt that a tragedy had been enacted in the house …

  Niels had been young, strong, enormously strong, handsome, clean, competent … yes, and good! Bobby had seen his decaying, slowly, steadily, irrevocably. Now that he came to think about it and looked back at what he had been during the last few months, he felt profoundly shaken; he felt shattered in his belief in the firm foundations of life … His own life would have to be lived under the shadow of what had happened to Niels, of what would happen to him … He could never be the same carefree boy again …

  He had often, of late, heard Niels mutter certain words. On this summer day they took a meaning for Bobby. “And he that increaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow …”

  He had been happy, constitutionally happy. He would never be quite so happy again; but he would be more thoughtful …

  More thoughtful? Had he not been thoughtful enough in the past?

  On the contrary, had he been thoughtful in his relation to Niels? Had he not often, of late, been impatient with him? Had he not shrunk from the careless, untidy habits into which he had fallen?

  Bobby, young as he was, came to know the bitterness of regret and repentence …

  Several times he rose, walked about, fought down his sobs …

  Niels lay like a log.

  All life on the Marsh would be changed …

  Slowly the sun rode on and finally sank to the west.

  AT LAST, late in the evening, when his rays came almost parallel with the ground, Niels awoke.

  He raised himself till he was sitting on his bed, his feet on the floor, his shoulders curved forward, his hands lying by his sides. As Bobby darkened the door, he looked up. His eye was clear; but his look came from another world.

  “It’s evening, is it? “he asked. His voice, too, sounded as from an infinite distance.

  Bobby nodded, a lump in his throat.

  “Get something to eat,” Niels said without stirring.

  Bobby began to work as if a great deal depended on his speed. His hands shook. He dropped this, spilt that. He started a fire, fried eggs, made tea.

  Niels got up, slowly, heavily, stretched himself, and went out to where the wash-basin stood on a homemade bench.

  There he washed, slowly, painstakingly, splashing and brushing for fully five minutes.

  With the same painstaking care he dried face, neck, arms.

  When he re-entered the shack, he sat down at the table, heavily, as if his weight had increased tenfold.

  Bobby, too, sat down. But he could not eat for the dull, numbing excitement that was in him.

  Every now and then, while Niels satisfied his appetite, eating slowly, but in great, enormous bites, his eye rested for a moment on the boy.

  He finished and made an attempt to rise: the attempt failed or was given up. At last he pointed over the table, with a sweep of his arm.

  “Clear that off.”

  When Bobby, working feverishly, had done so, Niels added, “Bring pen and ink. And the bundle of papers from the cupboard.”

  Niels lifted his arms on to the table as if they were weighted with lead.

  He tore the string that held the bundle of papers and picked out his cheque-book and a large, folded parchment. He tried to remove the stopper from the ink bottle. Failing, he said, “Open that.”

  He dipped the pen and began to write, in large, stiff, unwieldy scrawls. When he had finished, he wheeled about on his chair, nearly falling.

  “Bobby,” he said as if speaking, too, were very difficult, “there’s the patent for my land. It’s yours. With all that’s on it. Here’s a cheque. There’s something owing on the other quarter. It’s the full amount. I won’t be back.”

  “Niels,” Bobby cried, almost choking with sobs, “what have you done?”

  “I?” Niels said with a sudden flicker in his eye. “I have killed my wife.”

  “O God!” Bobby groaned. “I was afraid that was it.”

  “Afraid?” Niels said slowly and sternly. “What have you to be afraid of? You’ve been a son to me. I leave you my property.”

  “Niels,” Bobby cried. He would have liked to throw himself on this man, to hold him, to shield him with his body.

  Niels waved him back.

  “Niels,” Bobby cried again, “what are you going to do? You must hide …”

  “Hide? No. I am going to town.”

  And slowly, heavily he rose and went to the door, Bobby was beside himself.

  Niels turned back, swallowing two, three times.

  “Bobby,” he said at last, “you’ve been a son to me. I want … I want to thank you …”

  “Don’t!” Bobby cried, flinging his arms up. “I can’t stand it …”

  “Stand it?” Niels repeated. “I am going to town to hand myself over.” He took a step or two till he stood in the middle of the little clearing. “Don’t try to hold me. Don’t follow me.”

  Bobby did not move. He stared at the man.

  Niels stood for another few minutes, his lips muttering words.

  Then, mastering his refractory body, he pulled himself up; and for a moment his voice became articulate and distinct, though not loud.

  “… Hanged by the neck until dead …”

  Everything seemed to turn about Bobby.

  Then, when he looked again, the man on the clearing was gone.

  CHAPTER SIX

  ELLEN AGAIN

  In due course of time a trial followed, conducted in a small city of the prairies.

  The prisoner at the bar had refused to engage a lawyer for his defence. Nor did he utter a word which might throw light on the crime or on his motives. In plain, unequivocal terms, given in writing, he pleaded guilty to the charge of murder.

  During the preliminary investigation a doubt had arisen as to his sanity.
He protested strongly against that suspicion. He was perfectly sane, perfectly responsible for his actions, so he asserted, when he shot the woman; he would do so again should the occasion arise …

  But the court appointed a lawyer for him: in capital cases a plea of guilty is valueless.

  The lawyer felt that this trial might be the making of his career. He went himself into the Marsh and questioned a good many people: neighbours of the accused, Bobby, Mrs. Lund, Ellen Amundsen, Hahn, Nelson.

  Thus, on the day of the trial, there appeared some twenty persons subpoenaed by the defence. The crown had only one witness as to matters of fact: Bobby Lund who had heard the shots and seen the prisoner with the gun in his hands. Apart from that it rested its case entirely on circumstantial evidence which was, indeed, amply strong enough.

  The prisoner showed considerable impatience while his counsel conducted the defence. The indictment read for murder. He admitted his guilt. What more was there to be said?

  But the case went its course as prescribed by law. The court, seeing that the prisoner appeared to be almost anxious to incur the maximum penalty, that of death by hanging, was all the more inclined to be exceedingly careful, to weigh every testimony: as to the prisoner’s antecedents, his character, the many good deeds ascribed to him, and the character of the murdered woman …

  The young lawyer made the most of every favourable circumstance.

  By the time the case was ready to go to the jury, no onlooker could have any doubt any longer as to the outcome. An acquittal was impossible; but so was a conviction on the charge of murder. The jury found the prisoner guilty of manslaughter with attenuating circumstances and recommended him to the mercy of the court.

  The verdict read for ten years in the federal prison, with hard labour …

  A FEW MILES NORTH of the great city of the plains there rises abruptly, out of the level prairie, the brow of a hill. It does not look imposing from a distance.

  But as, coming from the city, you approach it, driving perhaps in a car, and as the hill rises before you, it is apt to take on, in the impression it makes on your imagination, much larger proportions than its natural dimensions would warrant.

  That impression is due to the sinister suggestiveness of the work of man. For the brow of the hill is crowned with a group of buildings of truly Titanic outline.

  A perpendicular wall rises up, fifty feet high, many feet thick: a smooth wall, built of limestone blocks, stretching for several hundred feet from east to west, and forming, behind, a perfect square by its enclosure. In the centre of the south end there is a gate, wide and high, but completely closed by steel bars four inches apart. A man, armed from head to foot, always paces the arched gateway behind.

  On top of the walls, at every corner, there stands a small tower from which, also on top of the walls, there stretch two parapeted walks at right angles to each other, reaching halfway to the centre of each side of the square. Each of these towers offers, when such is needed, shelter to two men who, armed with rifle, revolver, and sword, walk back and forth, back and forth on their beats. Every few hours they are relieved, others mounting guard, day and night.

  Yes, when you approach that hill, you cannot get near it without being challenged. Men on horseback patrol every possible approach; their mounts being swift and strong. If you are alone in your car, you may be allowed to pass unquestioned: a single person can hardly be the bringer of any danger. If there are two or three of you, you will have to state your business before being allowed to proceed on the last half mile of the journey. If a crowd is with you, you will be turned back or at least detained. Should you, by any chance ignore the challenge, your car, disabled, will run into the ditch. In any case, before you reach the walls, every eye is watching for you; every move of yours is being followed. The report of your coming had preceded you, no matter how fast you may have travelled.

  Altogether, the impression these precautions make is that of a terrible, implacable grimness, like that of doom.

  Inside the huge enclosure which is thus protected against any unauthorised approach, you divine more than you see: half a dozen buildings which harbour the prison, the shops annexed to it, and the offices of the administration.

  Outside, nestling against the talus of the hill, there are two, three large houses, brickbuilt: the residences of warden, physician, chaplain.

  Behind it, north of it, a little town grovels at its feet …

  SOME TWO HUNDRED OUTCASTS spend from two to thirty or forty years of their lives within that enclosure, at labour which brings them no return.

  As, in the morning, they file out from the dormitory—tier upon tier of steel-barred cells where they have spent the night alone between three walls, for in front of the steel-bars which form the fourth wall a guard paces up and down—you are apt to shudder at sight of these unfortunates who walk along in single file, in groups of ten or twenty, silent, accompanied by a guard.

  When, at noon, they return from the shops, silent again, in groups of ten or twenty, and in single file, they pass, in the huge kitchen which occupies the basement, along heated steel shelves on which a bowl waits for each one of them, filled with food to be taken to the cell and to be eaten there in silence, in solitude, and yet not in privacy …

  After an hour or so, they file out again to the shops …

  And yet, even here a human heart beats, human sympathy plans the welfare of others: the heart of the warden.

  There was a time when the prisoner trembled or scowled at sight of an officer: that time is past.

  To-day, when the warden appears, most of the prisoners—those for whom there is hope, hope of a future outside, or of manhood in some form inside—most of them smile.

  The warden is a fearless man; he goes unarmed. He is the friend of the unfortunate. He has a way with him which gains their confidence.

  IT WAS LONG, very long before he gained Niels Lindstedt’s confidence. But he did not give up; and gain it he did. He spoke to him often during the first two, three years … After that, prisoner number 187 often, as often, spoke to him.

  It was the warden who made him think, remember about the past. It was the warden who slowly, slowly made him see that he was not an outcast, a being despised for what he had done. It was the warden who told him that he, too, placed in the same circumstances, might and probably would have acted as Niels had acted … It was the warden who held out hope that perhaps within another two, three years … It was the warden who corresponded for him with Bobby Lund …

  No, said the warden, Bobby Lund would never dream of accepting the farm as a present; he had his own farm; he was looking after Niels’ stock; after his land; he was holding it in trust against his return … It was his, Niels’, duty to go back to this land …

  It was the warden who spoke to him of Ellen …

  AFTER THE FOURTH YEAR Niels attended evening classes conducted by the schoolmaster of the village: high school classes. He learned something of French and Latin, of Algebra, Geometry, Science … He acquired a vocabulary which would enable him to read real books. He was often puzzled by the abstruseness of it all. Finally he was amused. He learned to laugh at man’s folly in puzzling out such curiosities of the mind … What had it all to do with the real problems of life?

  But he kept at it. He even passed examinations.

  And one day in his sixth year, the warden entered the blacksmith shop where Niels, at his own request, had been employed and told him that he had succeeded in his intercession with the minister of justice: the end of Niels’ term of confinement had been fixed for the spring of the following year, limiting the total time he had to serve to six years and a half …

  ONCE MORE, during the latter days of April, Niels was on his way from Minor to the farm in the margin of the Marsh, walking. It was daytime. He had dropped off the train at noon.

  Four or five miles from town he found things so changed that he could no longer follow the old-time trail athwart the sand-flats. An almost continuous settle
ment covered the formerly wild land over which the trail had angled. He had to go straight east, to follow roads or road allowances. Where they were not sandy, he sank to his ankles in mud. The thaw-up had just been completed.

  When he reached the Range Line, he was six miles south of his farm. This was the middle of what had been the northern part of the Marsh.

  The Marsh itself was also changed. Formerly the Range Line trail had followed a sandy, gravelly ridge swinging east and west. The road followed a straight line now, being graded wherever it led through lowlands, flanked by ditches which were drained by huge master-ditches running crosswise and carrying the water to the Lake.

  Right at the corner, where once there had been nothing but swamp, lay two prosperous farmsteads close together; and nothing but the hedgerows of swamp alder which bordered the fields reminded of the Marsh as it had been. They, too, being deprived of the water they needed, would soon disappear …

  Half a mile north another prosperous farmstead: a new farm house, with porch and sleeping balcony, and a huge, up-to-date barn which dwarfed the landscape round about …

  Still further north the hovels of German and Icelandic settlers had been replaced by new buildings, some of them painted, some unpainted, but all of them bearing the imprint of truly Canadian settlements.