Settlers of the Marsh

by Frederick Philip Grove

  He, Niels, forty years old … forty years! …

  Mrs. Lund called for supper …

  AN HOUR OR SO later they crossed the farm, following a foot-path worn into the soil no doubt by Mrs. Lund, by Bobby, his wife and … his children … That footpath suggested that there were neighbours, friendly neighbours. There had never been any before …

  They approached the place in the dark. Two dogs came running and barking to meet them.

  They sniffed at the woman and wagged their tails; they sniffed at the man and growled.

  “Down, Mickey,” Mrs. Lund called, “down! … The house is all dark … They must have gone to bed.”

  In front of them a little shanty squatted low, with a lean-to, tar paper tacked to the walls all around … On the north side a little snow lingered, a frozen pile, showing grey in the black of the shadows about. The shanty looked hump-backed, one-eyed, crippled …

  Mrs. Lund sang out, “Bob-beee!” It sounded like an echo of ancient memories through the night …

  “Yes,” a voice answered from within, “just a minute.”

  And a few moments later the door of the lean-to opened, and out stepped Bobby.

  He was in shirt and overalls, barefooted, his hair rumpled: he looked lean and wiry even in the dark.

  “Hello, mother,” he said, “come in …”

  “Bobby,” she said, “I’m not alone …”

  And only then Bobby noticed the broad, dark figure of the man by her side.

  “Gee whiz!” he exclaimed. “It’s Niels … Come in.”

  And he ran back into the house to light a lamp.

  Niels entered the kitchen. It was a small, bare room with an old table, a bench, and three or four boxes for seats. On the east wall there were a few shelves; in the centre, a cookstove. The joists showed; the walls were single-boarded, of box lumber tacked to scantling; the floor, of raw planks, rough, splintered, but clean, strewn with sand.

  Bobby was so excited that he did not even think of properly greeting Niels nor of making excuses.

  A moment later a woman entered, blinking in the light, barefooted, young, strong, but over-worked …

  “That’s the missus,” Mrs. Lund said.

  And Niels, looking at her out of kind, searching eyes, shook her hand which she gave without answering the pressure and without looking into his face.

  “We’d expected you, of course,” Bobby said. “But we didn’t know the exact date …”

  Niels looked at him. He was thin, his face not as merry as it used to be: he was older, maturer, ripened by worries, thoughts, regrets …

  “We’d gone to bed,” Bobby went on. “To save oil, you know …” And he laughed.

  Niels listened to that laugh. No. There was no harshness, no bitterness in it … He had not expected to find the poverty he saw …

  “You’ll stay overnight?”

  It was Mrs. Lund’s turn to laugh. “Nonsense, Bobby, Mr. Lindstedt has a good bed at home. Why should he sleep in your bunks? …”

  “Well,” Bobby replied, “that’s true, too. We have no bedsteads yet,” he explained to Niels. “Or any longer, I should say. You know, four boys tear a lot of clothes. We sold our own bedstead last winter to buy shoes for the kiddies … But if the bunk isn’t too hard … We’ve got the room …”

  Again Mrs. Lund laughed her broad, hearty laugh. “Room! It’s some room all right … There aren’t even panes in the window. The dogs jump in at night …”

  Niels had been looking from one to the other. The young woman … yes, she was a mate … She had no doubt been pretty, with the prettiness of youth … Now she looked helpful rather … But was not that what was needed?” …

  He turned.

  “Never mind, Mrs. Lund. I’ll stay …”

  The young woman, clad in a thin gingham house-dress, had busied herself at the stove. She was shy, bashful in the presence of the stranger.

  “Tea or coffee?” she asked Bobby, not caring to address Niels directly. And Bobby turned to Niels with an enquiring look.

  “Tea,” Niels said, understanding her at once. And, to Bobby, “And now let me see the children, will you?”

  They tip-toed into the adjoining room.

  All five were sleeping in one of the two bunks; the other was empty …

  For a while Niels stood and looked, by the light of the little lamp that was burning there. The boys were red-faced, fat-cheeked youngsters; the girl, somewhat thin and pale …

  The bedding consisted of blankets, grey, none too warm; in lieu of a mattress a layer of hay was spread on the boards.

  Niels looked back in his memories, on that room of Lund’s where a second-hand, defunct gentility had prevailed … The same poverty. But here the poverty of a beginning … There it had been the poverty of the end.

  “We’re none too well fixed,” Bobby said.

  “Well …” Niels pondered.

  “We’ve only thirty acres so far. We’ll get things as soon as the land is paid for …”

  “The land? …” But Niels broke off and turned to go back into the kitchen.

  There, Mrs. Lund received him in quite her old manner. “Mr. Lindstedt,” she said, “all this does not look very prosperous yet … But one day … One day we are going to have everything as it should be. A large, good house; a hot-bed for the garden; real, up-to-date stables; and … Everything!”

  And Bobby and Niels both nodded.

  DURING THE NEXT FEW DAYS there were many things to be discussed. Bobby had for seven years looked after the field-work on Niels’ farm. He had never touched a cent of the proceeds. He had banked it all in Niels’ name …

  Niels insisted on a half-crop arrangement. Bobby, declining at first, had to yield in the end. Thus the rare thing happened that a pioneer farmer passed from a stage of great necessity without any transition to that of comparative affluence.

  Mrs. Lund, too, was entitled to a substantial remuneration. She had taken care of his stock and yard. She accepted, as a gift, duly deeded, an acre of land on Niels’ place, to be fenced, with a three-roomed house, fully furnished, to be built in the fall …

  In spite of these arrangements Niels found that his wealth, in money as well as in chattels, had more than doubled during his absence. Some of his horses, the drivers, for instance, Bobby had used and stabled entirely on his place. Some of the cows had been lent to neighbours, so they could milk them in return for their feed …

  THESE THINGS SETTLED, Niels went at the work of seeding his field. And now, for the first time, he faced the day alone …

  It was not an easy task. To drown one’s thought in labour is very difficult on the farm: everything is conducive to contemplation. No high ambitions lead you away from the present; and yet those ambitions which are indispensible, the lowly ones, are really the highest on earth: the desire for peace and harmony in yourself, your surroundings …

  But there were no surroundings—there was no little world, no microcosm revolving within the macrocosm. There was the duty to the farm, the country, the world: cold, abstract things devoid of the living blood …

  There was still another difficulty. Since life could be borne only if the immediate past, the last ten years, were covered with a half artificial oblivion, the past to be faced in memory was the past of his dreams … It was almost as painful to face as the later one …

  So long as Niels had to avert his eye from old desires, visions, dreams, there was no foundation for his life.

  One day, Mrs. Lund brought the topic of certain furniture up. She had insisted on doing the milking, in return for what little cream and eggs she needed daily. She was going from the cow-lot to the house, carrying two foaming pails, and stopped in the middle of the yard.

  “Mr. Lindstedt,” she said, “what are you going to do about that furniture from the house?”

  Niels winced and stopped in his tracks. He had just come in from the field and was watering his horses.

  “Where … where is it?” he asked at
last.

  “It’s all piled in a little shanty in the bluff over there,” she said, pointing east. “Bobby and his wife put it up between them. It’s a mere windbreak. The rain can get in. The stuff will spoil there … After all, it’s worth money …”

  “I’ll see,” Niels said slowly. “Who … Who suggested taking it out of the house?” For the mere fact that Mrs. Lund mentioned the thing proved that it had not been she.

  Mrs. Lund laughed. “Oh,” she said, “that was an idea of Ellen Amundsen’s. The last time she was over …”

  Niels said no more.

  Next day he went into the bush and searched till he found the shanty, well hidden in willows; and, piling some brush against the wall, he set fire to it without ever looking inside …

  ELLEN!

  Henceforth, while he was doing his work, not now with that passionate intensity of former years, but slowly, carefully, weighing his every move, his thought reverted more and more often to her … She had been over here … She had made suggestions … She had thought of him while he was away …

  Ten years or longer ago he had left her alone …

  His life, her life: two vessels which he had shattered at a single blow …

  As for his life … there was only one thing left which he could do: gather the shattered fragments and fit them as best he might be able to do.

  The nightmare of ten years he had atoned for, perhaps. But there, in that remoter past which, in his thoughts, now became more vivid, more real than the years immediately preceding the present he had done a great wrong: he had left alone a human being that had been in need of him: had left her alone because he had thought he could never be as little to her as a brother. And that human being had been she, the woman of his dreams, his vision, his love …

  When the huge steel-gate of the prison on the brow of the hill had swung shut behind him, not many days ago, he had felt inwardly balanced; he had felt at peace. Scar-tissue had grown over his soul. It had been the peace of resignation, but it had been peace …

  He felt himself plunged back into unrest, chaos …

  Once more he was a stranger on his place; he was eating the bitter bread of exile.…

  There would never be any rest for him unless the girl in the bush forgave him … He must try to be to her now what she had wanted him to be to her then: a brother …

  Was he able to do so? Were all those things that had once disturbed him and her, were they dead in him? Could he face her quietly, without desire? … Even though she might not hold it against him that he had left her for ten years or more …

  He tried to visualise a meeting. It never occurred to him to take into account the fact that they were both more than ten years older than they had been. Himself—like all people to whom vanity is constitutionally foreign—he did not see: he was he; the one who saw; not the one who was being seen …

  Ellen …

  As he tried to see her with his mind’s eye, he saw her as she had been, not ten years ago, but seventeen …Yet, not like that altogether, either …

  Her body, her movements he could not bring into clear focus at all. Sometimes he had a glimpse of them: a blurred glimpse, through vapours and seething mists of passion: but a glimpse nevertheless as she had stood with him in that room of her house where she had told him her story. And whenever he caught that glimpse, even to-day, his heart beat faster … He reached for that vision as if he wished to hold it, to grasp it with all the tentacles of his mind. But the very next moment he realised that it had eluded him; it had vanished like a spirit into the air …

  Her face, on the other hand, her expression, he saw very clearly, just as he had seen them on the very first morning when he and Nelson had arrived on her father’s place …

  There it was: her eyes light-blue, her features round, her complexion a pure, Scandinavian white. Again it was her expression that held him: hers was the face of a woman, not of a girl. There was a great, ripe maturity in it; and a look as if she saw through pretences and shams and knew more of life than her age would warrant. No smile lighted her features; her eyes were stern and nearly condemnatory. But somehow, as Niels looked at her, with his mind’s eye only this time, a great desire came over him to see her in the flesh and to make her smile …

  His throat tightened; his heart pounded as of old …

  To think he had lost her: not as a mate—what did that matter? Had lost her as a guiding influence in his life, had lost her as a sister, a friend …

  He, he had gone astray; had left her alone …

  Would she want him to come back? Would she accept him now? Would she forgive him?

  Yet … she had been here; had been thinking of him in his absence.

  For a week he pondered the question, musing, probing himself, probing her …

  THEN, ONE DAY, late in the evening, when he had just finished the last round with his seeder and as he stood ready to bend down and to unhook the traces of his horses, he had a vision. He closed his eyes and stood still to see it more clearly.

  The vision he saw was that of the homely face of his mother. Yet, her features were strangely blurred; as if, superimposed on them, there appeared those of another; and at last he recognised these as the features of the old man, of Sigurdsen, his neighbour whom he had loved.

  Long, long ago, in another such vision, his mother had looked at him reproachfully, seriously, warningly.

  And the old man, in the wanderings of his decaying mind, had betrayed to him some corner of his subliminal memories …

  These two, in vision and memory, seemed to blend, to melt together. Both looked at him, in this new vision, out of one face in which, now his, now her lines gained the ascendency …

  The wistful face of his mother relaxed in a knowing smile: yes, such was she who had born him …

  The old man’s face took her place: he was moving his lips and muttered, “Hm … tya.”

  ONE SUNDAY at last he went north, afoot.

  It was a warm spring day; the leaves on the trees still dormant; tassels hanging from the aspens, grey and red …

  Slowly he crossed the corner of the Marsh: this was the only trail that was left as it had been years ago.

  For a while he stood on the bridge, a new concrete bridge which had taken the place of the old, wooden structure …

  A mile from the creek he passed a large clearing to the right: Kelm’s plate which he had helped to clear. A huge barn with a hip-roof glanced over the trees; a small, well-built frame house nestled in a bluff …

  Farther on another farmstead, to the left, quite new: a square clearing, bare, with the house in the centre; the other buildings of logs …

  Then bush, bush, as of old …

  Once, Niels reflected, the settlement of the Marsh had been an out-post of the settlement in the bush: that was now reversed. The settlement on the Marsh was so much denser …

  All seemed unchanged.

  He came to the corner of Ellen’s yard. As soon as the view opened up, he stopped and stood.

  Yes, it was the old place entirely: house, granary, stable, implement shed. One single change: the well which he and Nelson had dug had a pump; and the pump was connected up with a windmill.

  All about reared the bush …

  Even that small change spoke of years that had run down the river of time …

  For a long while Niels stood and waited, trying to calm the turmoil in his heart …

  He came like the prodigal son …

  At last he went on.

  He came to the gate, opened it, and entered the yard which was still covered by the short, clean sward of chickweed.

  A dog sprang out of the barn, barked, and ran back; out again and in once more. It was a young dog, a bitch; and when Niels could look into the open door of the stable, her strange, fierce behaviour was explained; a litter of pups played there, in the drive-way …

  He knocked at the door of the house.

  A voice. “Come in.” Ellen’s voice.

  H
e opened, entered, stood …

  Their eyes met. Niels lowered his.

  What he had seen, shook him like an invisible hand; it hit him like a hammer blow at his heart. He could not bear it. He stood like one accused, like one pleading guilty …

  What he had seen was this.

  Behind the table—the same table at which, seventeen years ago, one winter morning, he had eaten his breakfast—on a straight-backed chair, sat a middle-aged woman, knitting, with shell-rimmed glasses on her eyes. Her features were no longer round; they were square; but her complexion was still that pure, Scandinavian white: her hair, strawyellow, streaked with grey … But now as then it was the expression that held him: hers was the face of a girl, not a woman; it was stern, to be sure; but in this sternness lay hidden the dream, the unfulfilled, uncompromising dream of a virgin child … No smile lighted her features. Her eyes looked searchingly out from behind her glasses: searchingly, questioningly, expectantly. There was nothing in them that seemed to condemn; they seemed to wonder and—what was hardest to bear—they were full of sympathy …

  Then her voice, clear, high-pitched, not quite steady, “You have come …!” as if awed.

  She had risen. Without looking, Niels was aware of her figure. A somewhat flat bust; wide, round hips …

  When he did look, she had removed her glasses; her eyes, light-blue, were fixed on him, probingly, with infinite pity …