sea. It is not easy for men that have spent their youths fishing in
the Northern seas to be content with following a plow, and men that
have served in the Austrian army hate hard work and coarse clothing
and the loneliness of the plains, and long for marches and
excitement and tavern company and pretty barmaids. After a man has
passed his fortieth birthday it is not easy for him to change the
habits and conditions of his life. Most men bring with them to the
Divide only the dregs of the lives that they have squandered in
other lands and among other peoples.
Canute Canuteson was as mad as any of them, but his madness did not
take the form of suicide or religion but of alcohol. He had always
taken liquor when he wanted it, as all Norwegians do, but after his
first year of solitary life he settled down to it steadily. He
exhausted whisky after a while, and went to alcohol, because its
effects were speedier and surer. He was a big man with a terrible
amount of resistant force, and it took a great deal of alcohol even
to move him. After nine years of drinking, the quantities he could
take would seem fabulous to an ordinary drinking man. He never let
it interfere with his work, he generally drank at night and on
Sundays. Every night, as soon as his chores were done, he began to
drink. While he was able to sit up he would play on his mouth harp
or hack away at his window sills with his jack knife. When the
liquor went to his head he would lie down on his bed and stare out
of the window until he went to sleep. He drank alone and in solitude
not for pleasure or good cheer, but to forget the awful loneliness
and level of the Divide. Milton made a sad blunder when he put
mountains in hell. Mountains postulate faith and aspiration. All
mountain peoples are religious. It was the cities of the plains
that, because of their utter lack of spirituality and the mad
caprice of their vice, were cursed of God.
Alcohol is perfectly consistent in its effects upon man. Drunkenness
is merely an exaggeration. A foolish man drunk becomes maudlin; a
bloody man, vicious; a coarse man, vulgar. Canute was none of these,
but he was morose and gloomy, and liquor took him through all the
hells of Dante. As he lay on his giant’s bed all the horrors of this
world and every other were laid bare to his chilled senses. He was a
man who knew no joy, a man who toiled in silence and bitterness. The
skull and the serpent were always before him, the symbols of eternal
futileness and of eternal hate.
When the first Norwegians near enough to be called neighbors came,
Canute rejoiced, and planned to escape from his bosom vice. But he
was not a social man by nature and had not the power of drawing out
the social side of other people. His new neighbors rather feared him
because of his great strength and size, his silence and his lowering
brows. Perhaps, too, they knew that he was mad, mad from the eternal
treachery of the plains, which every spring stretch green and rustle
with the promises of Eden, showing long grassy lagoons full of clear
water and cattle whose hoofs are stained with wild roses. Before
autumn the lagoons are dried up, and the ground is burnt dry and
hard until it blisters and cracks open.
So instead of becoming a friend and neighbor to the men that settled
about him, Canute became a mystery and a terror. They told awful
stories of his size and strength and of the alcohol he drank. They
said that one night, when he went out to see to his horses just
before he went to bed, his steps were unsteady and the rotten planks
of the floor gave way and threw him behind the feet of a fiery young
stallion. His foot was caught fast in the floor, and the nervous
horse began kicking frantically. When Canute felt the blood
trickling down in his eyes from a scalp wound in his head, he roused
himself from his kingly indifference, and with the quiet stoical
courage of a drunken man leaned forward and wound his arms about the
horse’s hind legs and held them against his breast with crushing
embrace. All through the darkness and cold of the night he lay
there, matching strength against strength. When little Jim Peterson
went over the next morning at four o’clock to go with him to the
Blue to cut wood, he found him so, and the horse was on its fore
knees, trembling and whinnying with fear. This is the story the
Norwegians tell of him, and if it is true it is no wonder that they
feared and hated this Holder of the Heels of Horses.
One spring there moved to the next “eighty” a family that made a
great change in Canute’s life. Ole Yensen was too drunk most of the
time to be afraid of any one, and his wife Mary was too garrulous to
be afraid of any one who listened to her talk, and Lena, their
pretty daughter, was not afraid of man nor devil. So it came about
that Canute went over to take his alcohol with Ole oftener than he
took it alone. After a while the report spread that he was going to
marry Yensen’s daughter, and the Norwegian girls began to tease Lena
about the great bear she was going to keep house for. No one could
quite see how the affair had come about, for Canute’s tactics of
courtship were somewhat peculiar. He apparently never spoke to her
at all: he would sit for hours with Mary chattering on one side of
him and Ole drinking on the other and watch Lena at her work. She
teased him, and threw flour in his face and put vinegar in his
coffee, but he took her rough jokes with silent wonder, never even
smiling. He took her to church occasionally, but the most watchful
and curious people never saw him speak to her. He would sit staring
at her while she giggled and flirted with the other men.
Next spring Mary Lee went to town to work in a steam laundry. She
came home every Sunday, and always ran across to Yensens to startle
Lena with stories of ten cent theaters, firemen’s dances, and all
the other esthetic delights of metropolitan life. In a few weeks
Lena’s head was completely turned, and she gave her father no rest
until he let her go to town to seek her fortune at the ironing
board. From the time she came home on her first visit she began to
treat Canute with contempt. She had bought a plush cloak and kid
gloves, had her clothes made by the dress-maker, and assumed airs
and graces that made the other women of the neighborhood cordially
detest her. She generally brought with her a young man from town who
waxed his mustache and wore a red necktie, and she did not even
introduce him to Canute.
The neighbors teased Canute a good deal until he knocked one of them
down. He gave no sign of suffering from her neglect except that he
drank more and avoided the other Norwegians more carefully than
ever. He lay around in his den and no one knew what he felt or
thought, but little Jim Peterson, who had seen him glowering at Lena
in church one Sunday when she was there with the town man, said that
he would not give an acre of his wheat for Lena’s life or the town
statement was an exceedingly strong one.
Canute had bought a new suit of clothes that looked as nearly like
the town man’s as possible. They had cost him half a millet crop;
for tailors are not accustomed to fitting giants and they charge for
it. He had hung those clothes in his shanty two months ago and had
never put them on, partly from fear of ridicule, partly from
discouragement, and partly because there was something in his own
soul that revolted at the littleness of the device.
Lena was at home just at this time. Work was slack in the laundry
and Mary had not been well, so Lena stayed at home, glad enough to
get an opportunity to torment Canute once more.
She was washing in the side kitchen, singing loudly as she worked.
Mary was on her knees, blacking the stove and scolding violently
about the young man who was coming out from town that night. The
young man had committed the fatal error of laughing at Mary’s
ceaseless babble and had never been forgiven.
“He is no good, and you will come to a bad end by running with him!
I do not see why a daughter of mine should act so. I do not see why
the Lord should visit such a punishment upon me as to give me such a
daughter. There are plenty of good men you can marry.”
Lena tossed her head and answered curtly, “I don’t happen to want to
marry any man right away, and so long as Dick dresses nice and has
plenty of money to spend, there is no harm in my going with him.”
“Money to spend? Yes, and that is all he does with it I’ll be bound.
You think it very fine now, but you will change your tune when you
have been married five years and see your children running naked and
your cupboard empty. Did Anne Hermanson come to any good end by
marrying a town man?”
“I don’t know anything about Anne Hermanson, but I know any of the
laundry girls would have Dick quick enough if they could get him.”
“Yes, and a nice lot of store clothes huzzies you are too. Now there
is Canuteson who has an ‘eighty’ proved up and fifty head of cattle
and----”
“And hair that ain’t been cut since he was a baby, and a big dirty
beard, and he wears overalls on Sundays, and drinks like a pig.
Besides he will keep. I can have all the fun I want, and when I am
old and ugly like you he can have me and take care of me. The Lord
knows there ain’t nobody else going to marry him.”
Canute drew his hand back from the latch as though it were red hot.
He was not the kind of a man to make a good eavesdropper, and he
wished he had knocked sooner. He pulled himself together and struck
the door like a battering ram. Mary jumped and opened it with a
screech.
“God! Canute, how you scared us! I thought it was crazy Lou,—he has
been tearing around the neighborhood trying to convert folks. I am
afraid as death of him. He ought to be sent off, I think. He is just
as liable as not to kill us all, or burn the barn, or poison the
dogs. He has been worrying even the poor minister to death, and he
laid up with the rheumatism, too! Did you notice that he was too
sick to preach last Sunday? But don’t stand there in the cold,—come
in. Yensen isn’t here, but he just went over to Sorenson’s for the
mail; he won’t be gone long. Walk right in the other room and sit
down.”
Canute followed her, looking steadily in front of him and not
noticing Lena as he passed her. But Lena’s vanity would not allow
him to pass unmolested. She took the wet sheet she was wringing out
and cracked him across the face with it, and ran giggling to the
other side of the room. The blow stung his cheeks and the soapy
water flew in his eyes, and he involuntarily began rubbing them with
his hands. Lena giggled with delight at his discomfiture, and the
wrath in Canute’s face grew blacker than ever. A big man humiliated
is vastly more undignified than a little one. He forgot the sting of
his face in the bitter consciousness that he had made a fool of
himself. He stumbled blindly into the living room, knocking his head
against the door jamb because he forgot to stoop. He dropped into a
chair behind the stove, thrusting his big feet back helplessly on
either side of him.
Ole was a long time in coming, and Canute sat there, still and
silent, with his hands clenched on his knees, and the skin of his
face seemed to have shriveled up into little wrinkles that trembled
when he lowered his brows. His life had been one long lethargy of
solitude and alcohol, but now he was awakening, and it was as when
the dumb stagnant heat of summer breaks out into thunder.
When Ole came staggering in, heavy with liquor, Canute rose at once.
“Yensen,” he said quietly, “I have come to see if you will let me
marry your daughter today.”
“Today!” gasped Ole.
“Yes, I will not wait until tomorrow. I am tired of living alone.”
Ole braced his staggering knees against the bedstead, and stammered
eloquently: “Do you think I will marry my daughter to a drunkard? a
man who drinks raw alcohol? a man who sleeps with rattle snakes? Get
out of my house or I will kick you out for your impudence.” And Ole
began looking anxiously for his feet.
Canute answered not a word, but he put on his hat and went out into
the kitchen. He went up to Lena and said without looking at her,
“Get your things on and come with me!”
The tones of his voice startled her, and she said angrily, dropping
the soap, “Are you drunk?”
“If you do not come with me, I will take you,—you had better come,”
said Canute quietly.
She lifted a sheet to strike him, but he caught her arm roughly and
wrenched the sheet from her. He turned to the wall and took down a
hood and shawl that hung there, and began wrapping her up. Lena
scratched and fought like a wild thing. Ole stood in the door,
cursing, and Mary howled and screeched at the top of her voice. As
for Canute, he lifted the girl in his arms and went out of the
house. She kicked and struggled, but the helpless wailing of Mary
and Ole soon died away in the distance, and her face was held down
tightly on Canute’s shoulder so that she could not see whither he
was taking her. She was conscious only of the north wind whistling
in her ears, and of rapid steady motion and of a great breast that
heaved beneath her in quick, irregular breaths. The harder she
struggled the tighter those iron arms that had held the heels of
horses crushed about her, until she felt as if they would crush the
breath from her, and lay still with fear. Canute was striding across
the level fields at a pace at which man never went before, drawing
the stinging north wind into his lungs in great gulps. He walked
with his eyes half closed and looking straight in front of him, only
lowering them when he bent his head to blow away the snow flakes
that settled on her hair. So it was that Canute took her to his
home, even as his bearded barbarian ancestors took the fair
frivolous women of the South in their hairy arms and bore them down
to their war ships. For ever and anon the soul becomes weary of the
conventions that are not of it, and with a single stroke shatters
the civilized lies with which it is unable to cope, and the strong
arm reaches out and takes by force what it cannot win by cunning.
When Canute reached his shanty he placed the girl upon a chair,
where she sat sobbing. He stayed only a few minutes. He filled the
stove with wood and lit the lamp, drank a huge swallow of alcohol
and put the bottle in his pocket. He paused a moment, staring
heavily at the weeping girl, then he went off and locked the door
and disappeared in the gathering gloom of the night.
Wrapped in flannels and soaked with turpentine, the little Norwegian
preacher sat reading his Bible, when he heard a thundering knock at
his door, and Canute entered, covered with snow and with his beard
frozen fast to his coat.
“Come in, Canute, you must be frozen,” said the little man, shoving
a chair towards his visitor.
Canute remained standing with his hat on and said quietly, “I want
you to come over to my house tonight to marry me to Lena Yensen.”
“Have you got a license, Canute?”
“No, I don’t want a license. I want to be married.”
“But I can’t marry you without a license, man. It would not be
legal.”
A dangerous light came in the big Norwegian’s eye. “I want you to
come over to my house to marry me to Lena Yensen.”
“No, I can’t, it would kill an ox to go out in a storm like this,
and my rheumatism is bad tonight.”
“Then if you will not go I must take you,” said Canute with a sigh.
He took down the preacher’s bearskin coat and bade him put it on
while he hitched up his buggy. He went out and closed the door
softly after him. Presently he returned and found the frightened
minister crouching before the fire with his coat lying beside him.
Canute helped him put it on and gently wrapped his head in his big
muffler. Then he picked him up and carried him out and placed him in
his buggy. As he tucked the buffalo robes around him he said: “Your
horse is old, he might flounder or lose his way in this storm. I
will lead him.”
The minister took the reins feebly in his hands and sat shivering
A Collection of Stories, Reviews and Essays Page 2