by Willa Cather
“Humph!” Nils thought. “No wonder the man never talks, when he can butt his ideas into you like that without ever saying a word. I suppose he uses that kind of smokeless powder on his wife all the time. But I guess she has her innings.” He chuckled, and Olaf looked up. “Never mind me, Olaf. I laugh without knowing why, like little Eric. He’s another cheerful dog.”
“Eric,” said Olaf slowly, “is a spoiled kid. He’s just let his mother’s best cow go dry because he don’t milk her right. I was hoping you’d take him away somewhere and put him into business. If he don’t do any good among strangers, he never will.” This was a long speech for Olaf, and as he finished it he climbed into his buggy.
Nils shrugged his shoulders. “Same old tricks,” he thought. “Hits from behind you every time. What a whale of a man!” He turned and went round to the kitchen, where his mother was scolding little Eric for letting the gasoline get low.
IV
Joe Vavrika’s saloon was not in the county-seat, where Olaf and Mrs. Ericson did their trading, but in a cheerfuller place, a little Bohemian settlement which lay at the other end of the county, ten level miles north of Olaf’s farm. Clara rode up to see her father almost every day. Vavrika’s house was, so to speak, in the back yard of his saloon. The garden between the two buildings was inclosed by a high board fence as tight as a partition, and in summer Joe kept beer tables and wooden benches among the gooseberry bushes under his little cherry tree. At one of these tables Nils Ericson was seated in the late afternoon, three days after his return home. Joe had gone in to serve a customer, and Nils was lounging on his elbows, looking rather mournfully into his half-emptied pitcher, when he heard a laugh across the little garden. Clara, in her riding-habit, was standing at the back door of the house, under the grapevine trellis that old Joe had grown there long ago. Nils rose.
“Come out and keep your father and me company. We’ve been gossiping all afternoon. Nobody to bother us but the flies.”
She shook her head. “No, I never come out here any more. Olaf doesn’t like it. I must live up to my position, you know.”
“You mean to tell me you never come out and chat with the boys, as you used to? He has tamed you! Who keeps up these flowerbeds?”
“I come out on Sundays, when father is alone, and read the Bohemian papers to him. But I am never here when the bar is open. What have you two been doing?”
“Talking, as I told you. I’ve been telling him about my travels. I find I can’t talk much at home, not even to Eric.”
Clara reached up and poked with her riding-whip at a white moth that was fluttering in the sunlight among the vine leaves. “I suppose you will never tell me about all those things.”
“Where can I tell them? Not in Olaf’s house, certainly. What’s the matter with our talking here?” He pointed persuasively with his hat to the bushes and the green table, where the flies were singing lazily above the empty beer-glasses.
Clara shook her head weakly. “No, it wouldn’t do. Besides, I am going now.”
“I’m on Eric’s mare. Would you be angry if I overtook you?”
Clara looked back and laughed. “You might try and see. I can leave you if I don’t want you. Eric’s mare can’t keep up with Norman.”
Nils went into the bar and attempted to pay his score. Big Joe, six feet four, with curly yellow hair and mustache, clapped him on the shoulder. “Not a God-damn a your money go in my drawer, you hear? Only next time you bring your flute, te-te-te-te-te-ty.” Joe wagged his fingers in imitation of the flute player’s position. “My Clara, she come all-a-time Sundays an’ play for me. She not like to play at Ericson’s place.” He shook his yellow curls and laughed. “Not a God-damn a fun at Ericson’s. You come a Sunday. You like-a fun. No forget de flute.” Joe talked very rapidly and always tumbled over his English. He seldom spoke it to his customers, and had never learned much.
Nils swung himself into the saddle and trotted to the west end of the village, where the houses and gardens scattered into prairie-land and the road turned south. Far ahead of him, in the declining light, he saw Clara Vavrika’s slender figure, loitering on horseback. He touched his mare with the whip, and shot along the white, level road, under the reddening sky. When he overtook Olaf’s wife he saw that she had been crying. “What’s the matter, Clara Vavrika?” he asked kindly.
“Oh, I get blue sometimes. It was awfully jolly living there with father. I wonder why I ever went away.”
Nils spoke in a low, kind tone that he sometimes used with women: “That’s what I’ve been wondering these many years. You were the last girl in the country I’d have picked for a wife for Olaf. What made you do it, Clara?”
“I suppose I really did it to oblige the neighbors,”—Clara tossed her head. “People were beginning to wonder.”
“To wonder?”
“Yes—why I didn’t get married. I suppose I didn’t like to keep them in suspense. I’ve discovered that most girls marry out of consideration for the neighborhood.”
Nils bent his head toward her and his white teeth flashed. “I’d have gambled that one girl I knew would say, ‘Let the neighborhood be damned.’”
Clara shook her head mournfully. “You see, they have it on you, Nils; that is, if you’re a woman. They say you’re beginning to go off. That’s what makes us get married: we can’t stand the laugh.”
Nils looked sideways at her. He had never seen her head droop before. Resignation was the last thing he would have expected of her. “In your case, there wasn’t something else?”
“Something else?”
“I mean, you didn’t do it to spite somebody? Somebody who didn’t come back?”
Clara drew herself up. “Oh, I never thought you’d come back. Not after I stopped writing to you, at least. That was all over, long before I married Olaf.”
“It never occurred to you, then, that the meanest thing you could do to me was marry Olaf?”
Clara laughed. “No; I didn’t know you were so fond of Olaf.”
Nils smoothed his horse’s mane with his glove. “You know, Clara Vavrika, you are never going to stick it out. You’ll cut away some day, and I’ve been thinking you might as well cut away with me.”
Clara threw up her chin. “Oh, you don’t know me as well as you think. I won’t cut away. Sometimes, when I’m with father, I feel like it. But I can hold out as long as the Ericsons can. They’ve never got the best of me yet, and one can live, so long as one isn’t beaten. If I go back to father, it’s all up with Olaf in politics. He knows that, and he never goes much beyond sulking. I’ve as much wit as the Ericsons. I’ll never leave them unless I can show them a thing or two.”
“You mean unless you can come it over them?”
“Yes—unless I go away with a man who is cleverer than they are, and who has more money.”
Nils whistled. “Dear me, you are demanding a good deal. The Ericsons, take the lot of them, are a bunch to beat. But I should think the excitement of tormenting them would have worn off by this time.”
“It has, I’m afraid,” Clara admitted mournfully.
“Then why don’t you cut away? There are more amusing games than this in the world. When I came home I thought it might amuse me to bully a few quarter sections out of the Ericsons; but I’ve almost decided I can get more fun for my money somewhere else.”
Clara took in her breath sharply. “Ah, you have got the other will! That was why you came home!”
“No, it wasn’t. I came home to see how you were getting on with Olaf.”
Clara struck her horse with the whip, and in a bound she was far ahead of him. Nils dropped one word, “Damn!” and whipped after her; but she leaned forward in her saddle and fairly cut the wind. Her long riding-skirt rippled in the still air behind her. The sun was just sinking behind the stubble in a vast, clear sky, an
d the shadows drew across the fields so rapidly that Nils could scarcely keep in sight the dark figure on the road. When he overtook her he caught her horse by the bridle. Norman reared, and Nils was frightened for her; but Clara kept her seat.
“Let me go, Nils Ericson!” she cried. “I hate you more than any of them. You were created to torture me, the whole tribe of you—to make me suffer in every possible way.”
She struck her horse again and galloped away from him. Nils set his teeth and looked thoughtful. He rode slowly home along the deserted road, watching the stars come out in the clear violet sky. They flashed softly into the limpid heavens, like jewels let fall into clear water. They were a reproach, he felt, to a sordid world. As he turned across the sand creek, he looked up at the North Star and smiled, as if there were an understanding between them. His mother scolded him for being late for supper.
V
On Sunday afternoon Joe Vavrika, in his shirt-sleeves and carpet-slippers, was sitting in his garden, smoking a long-tasseled porcelain pipe with a hunting scene painted on the bowl. Clara sat under the cherry tree, reading aloud to him from the weekly Bohemian papers. She had worn a white muslin dress under her riding-habit, and the leaves of the cherry tree threw a pattern of sharp shadows over her skirt. The black cat was dozing in the sunlight at her feet, and Joe’s dachshund was scratching a hole under the scarlet geraniums and dreaming of badgers. Joe was filling his pipe for the third time since dinner, when he heard a knocking on the fence. He broke into a loud guffaw and unlatched the little door that led into the street. He did not call Nils by name, but caught him by the hand and dragged him in. Clara stiffened and the color deepened under her dark skin. Nils, too, felt a little awkward. He had not seen her since the night when she rode away from him and left him alone on the level road between the fields. Joe dragged him to the wooden bench beside the green table.
“You bring de flute,” he cried, tapping the leather case under Nils’ arm. “Ah, das-a good! Now we have some liddle fun like old times. I got somet’ing good for you.” Joe shook his finger at Nils and winked his blue eye, a bright clear eye, full of fire, though the tiny blood-vessels on the ball were always a little distended. “I got somet’ing for you from”—he paused and waved his hand—“Hongarie. You know Hongarie? You wait!” He pushed Nils down on the bench, and went through the back door of his saloon.
Nils looked at Clara, who sat frigidly with her white skirts drawn tight about her. “He didn’t tell you he had asked me to come, did he? He wanted a party and proceeded to arrange it. Isn’t he fun? Don’t be cross; let’s give him a good time.”
Clara smiled and shook out her skirt. “Isn’t that like father? And he has sat here so meekly all day. Well, I won’t pout. I’m glad you came. He doesn’t have very many good times now any more. There are so few of his kind left. The second generation are a tame lot.”
Joe came back with a flask in one hand and three wine-glasses caught by the stems between the fingers of the other. These he placed on the table with an air of ceremony, and, going behind Nils, held the flask between him and the sun, squinting into it admiringly. “You know dis, Tokai? A great friend of mine, he bring dis to me, a present out of Hongarie. You know how much it cost, dis wine? Chust so much what it weigh in gold. Nobody but de nobles drink him in Bohemie. Many, many years I save him up, dis Tokai.” Joe whipped out his official corkscrew and delicately removed the cork. “De old man die what bring him to me, an’ dis wine he lay on his belly in my cellar an’ sleep. An’ now,” carefully pouring out the heavy yellow wine, “an’ now he wake up; and maybe he wake us up, too!” He carried one of the glasses to his daughter and presented it with great gallantry.
Clara shook her head, but, seeing her father’s disappointment, relented. “You taste it first. I don’t want so much.”
Joe sampled it with a beatific expression, and turned to Nils. “You drink him slow, dis wine. He very soft, but he go down hot. You see!”
After a second glass Nils declared that he couldn’t take any more without getting sleepy. “Now get your fiddle, Vavrika,” he said as he opened his flute-case.
But Joe settled back in his wooden rocker and wagged his big carpet-slipper. “No-no-no-no-no-no-no! No play fiddle now any more: too much ache in de finger,” waving them, “all-a-time rheumatiz. You play de flute, te-tety-te-tety-te. Bohemie songs.”
“I’ve forgotten all the Bohemian songs I used to play with you and Johanna. But here’s one that will make Clara pout. You remember how her eyes used to snap when we called her the Bohemian Girl?” Nils lifted his flute and began “When Other Lips and Other Hearts,” and Joe hummed the air in a husky baritone, waving his carpet-slipper. “Oh-h-h, das-a fine music,” he cried, clapping his hands as Nils finished. “Now ‘Marble Halls, Marble Halls’! Clara, you sing him.”
Clara smiled and leaned back in her chair, beginning softly: “I dreamt that I dwelt in ma-a-arble halls, With vassals and serfs at my knee,” and Joe hummed like a big bumble-bee.
“There’s one more you always played,” Clara said quietly; “I remember that best.” She locked her hands over her knee and began “The Heart Bowed Down,” and sang it through without groping for the words. She was singing with a good deal of warmth when she came to the end of the old song: “For memory is the only friend That grief can call its own.”
Joe flashed out his red silk handkerchief and blew his nose, shaking his head. “No-no-no-no-no-no-no! Too sad, too sad! I not like-a dat. Play quick somet’ing gay now.”
Nils put his lips to the instrument, and Joe lay back in his chair, laughing and singing. “Oh, Evelina, Sweet Evelina!” Clara laughed, too. Long ago, when she and Nils went to high school, the model student of their class was a very homely girl in thick spectacles. Her name was Evelina Oleson; she had a long, swinging walk which somehow suggested the measure of that song, and they used mercilessly to sing it at her.”
“Dat ugly Oleson girl, she teach in de school,” Joe gasped, “an’ she still walk chust like dat, yup-a, yup-a, yup-a, chust like a camel she go! Now, Nils, we have some more li’l drink. Oh, yes-yes-yes-yes-yes-yes-yes! Dis time you haf to drink, and Clara she haf to, so she show she not jealous. So, we all drink to your girl. You not tell her name, eh? No-no-no, I no make you tell. She pretty, eh? She make good sweetheart? I bet!” Joe winked and lifted his glass. “How soon you get married?”
Nils screwed up his eyes. “That I don’t know. When she says.”
Joe threw out his chest. “Das-a way boys talks. No way for mans. Mans say, ‘You come to de church, an’ get a hurry on you.’ Das-a way mans talks.”
“Maybe Nils hasn’t got enough to keep a wife,” put in Clara ironically. “How about that, Nils?” she asked him frankly, as if she wanted to know.
Nils looked at her coolly, raising one eyebrow. “Oh, I can keep her, all right.”
“The way she wants to be kept?”
“With my wife, I’ll decide that,” replied Nils calmly. “I’ll give her what’s good for her.”
Clara made a wry face. “You’ll give her the strap, I expect, like old Peter Oleson gave his wife.”
“When she needs it,” said Nils lazily, locking his hands behind his head and squinting up through the leaves of the cherry tree. “Do you remember the time I squeezed the cherries all over your clean dress, and Aunt Johanna boxed my ears for me? My gracious, weren’t you mad! You had both hands full of cherries, and I squeezed ’em and made the juice fly all over you. I liked to have fun with you; you’d get so mad.”
“We did have fun, didn’t we? None of the other kids ever had so much fun. We knew how to play.”
Nils dropped his elbows on the table and looked steadily across at her. “I’ve played with lots of girls since, but I haven’t found one who was such good fun.”
Clara laughed. The late afternoon sun was shining full in her face, an
d deep in the back of her eyes there shone something fiery, like the yellow drops of Tokai in the brown glass bottle. “Can you still play, or are you only pretending?”
“I can play better than I used to, and harder.”
“Don’t you ever work, then?” She had not intended to say it. It slipped out because she was confused enough to say just the wrong thing.
“I work between times.” Nils’ steady gaze still beat upon her. “Don’t you worry about my working, Mrs. Ericson. You’re getting like all the rest of them.” He reached his brown, warm hand across the table and dropped it on Clara’s, which was cold as an icicle. “Last call for play, Mrs. Ericson!” Clara shivered, and suddenly her hands and cheeks grew warm. Her fingers lingered in his a moment, and they looked at each other earnestly. Joe Vavrika had put the mouth of the bottle to his lips and was swallowing the last drops of the Tokai, standing. The sun, just about to sink behind his shop, glistened on the bright glass, on his flushed face and curly yellow hair. “Look,” Clara whispered; “that’s the way I want to grow old.”
VI
On the day of Olaf Ericson’s barn-raising, his wife, for once in a way, rose early. Johanna Vavrika had been baking cakes and frying and boiling and spicing meats for a week beforehand, but it was not until the day before the party was to take place that Clara showed any interest in it. Then she was seized with one of her fitful spasms of energy, and took the wagon and little Eric and spent the day on Plum Creek, gathering vines and swamp goldenrod to decorate the barn.
By four o’clock in the afternoon buggies and wagons began to arrive at the big unpainted building in front of Olaf’s house. When Nils and his mother came at five, there were more than fifty people in the barn, and a great drove of children. On the ground floor stood six long tables, set with the crockery of seven flourishing Ericson families, lent for the occasion. In the middle of each table was a big yellow pumpkin, hollowed out and filled with woodbine. In one corner of the barn, behind a pile of green-and-white-striped watermelons, was a circle of chairs for the old people; the younger guests sat on bushel measures or barbed-wire spools, and the children tumbled about in the haymow. The box-stalls Clara had converted into booths. The framework was hidden by goldenrod and sheaves of wheat, and the partitions were covered with wild grapevines full of fruit. At one of these Johanna Vavrika watched over her cooked meats, enough to provision an army; and at the next her kitchen girls had ranged the ice-cream freezers, and Clara was already cutting pies and cakes against the hour of serving. At the third stall, little Hilda, in a bright pink lawn dress, dispensed lemonade throughout the afternoon. Olaf, as a public man, had thought it inadvisable to serve beer in his barn; but Joe Vavrika had come over with two demijohns concealed in his buggy, and after his arrival the wagon-shed was much frequented by the men.