Settlers of the Marsh

by Frederick Philip Grove

  It was a mild, spring-like day in November, with snow on the ground …

  As he neared that farm, a strong, full-bosomed girl came from the house and walked across the yard to the pump which stood close to the road, in the corner between barn and fence. With an absent-minded look he noticed that she was peering out for him as he approached.

  She was rocking herself on quivering hips as she went. With a few quick strokes of the handle she filled the wooden bucket and then stood, looking at Niels.

  In a perverse impulse he stopped his horses right in front of the gate to rest them.

  The girl wore shoes; but her legs were bare.

  As he stopped, she turned, picked her bucket up, and laughed at him. With her free hand she reached around and raised her skirt, so that her bare legs showed behind to above her knees; and then she walked off, rocking herself on her hips and throwing provocative glances over her shoulder at him where he stood by the side of his load.

  A trifle. What troubled him in retrospection was that his first impulse had been to call to her or to run after her. Worse: whenever he pictured that scene to himself—and in spite of all endeavours he did so, often—a wave of hot blood ran through him: he wished for a recurrence of the incident …

  Then he took himself in hand, started his horses, and muttered, “I am going to the dogs …”

  ONCE HE FELL in with Hahn. Hahn, too, was hauling wheat to Minor, in spite of the fact that he had an elevator closer by. “I’ve got a friend in Minor,” he said in explanation.

  He came up with Niels when the latter was resting his horses. He tied his own team behind and climbed on to Niels’ load …

  Niels sat in silence; Hahn talked.

  “There’s one thing about you, Lindstedt,” he said after a while, “which I can’t understand. You’re getting to be pretty prosperous. Nelson and you are the two most successful fellows among the new settlers. Nelson’s married. You haven’t even got a woman on the place …”

  Niels’ laugh was bitter; but he said nothing.

  “Doesn’t it bother you?” Hahn asked.

  Niels looked his non-comprehension. “What?”

  Hahn laughed, embarrassed. “Well … a man needs a woman, doesn’t he?”

  “Perhaps he does.”

  “Look here,” Hahn exclaimed, “I’m butting into things that are none of my business. But I’d like to know. Do you go to the town or the city?”

  “I’ve never been to the city,” Niels said. “I go to town when I’ve got business there …”

  “You mean to say you never see a woman …?”

  “I see them …”

  “But you don’t … you don’t …”

  Niels frowned. “I don’t see what you mean …”

  Hahn laughed and slapped his thigh. “Say,” he exclaimed, “you’re a corker! I like you for that … Do you mean to say you’ve never touched a woman? …”

  “You know,” Niels said after a while, “I’m unmarried.”

  Hahn laughed as if in expostulation to the sky …

  IN TOWN, Hahn stayed with Niels. It was evening. Dusk was rising fast.

  A short distance beyond the hotel they met three ladies who were still more conspicuously powdered and painted than the ordinary young ladies of western towns. They were dressed in aggressively fashionable style; and they smiled at the two men as they passed them.

  “By gosh,” Hahn whispered. “Let’s hook in, Lindstedt.”

  “What do you mean?” Niels asked, reddening.

  “Let’s turn and go after them.”

  “What for?”

  “By jingo,” Hahn laughed. “You’re as innocent as a new-born babe. They’re from the city; they’re … I don’t know enough English to find a word that’s decent enough for your tender ears … One of them’ll be your wife … for an hour or so …”

  “Do you mean,” Niels hesitated, “they’re whores?”

  “Yes,” Hahn said, greatly relieved, “that’s it.”

  “I don’t intend to marry a whore.”

  “Man alive!” Hahn fairly shouted. “Ock! What’s the use!” And he turned on his heels and left him.

  ON THE WAY HOME, during the night, Niels brought the topic up. “Hahn,” he said, “is the friend you have in town a woman?”

  Hahn laughed. “Of course,” he said.

  “But you’re married …”

  “Well,” Hahn explained, “I’m young and strong. I need something younger and fresher … So long as the wife doesn’t know, it doesn’t hurt her. That’s why I go to town and not to the Hefter woman …”

  “Who’s that?” Niels asked brusquely.

  “Don’t you know? Two and a half miles west of my corner … Plenty of customers, nothing to worry about. Amundsen used to go there. Baker. Smith. The boys from the English settlement. That’s where Bobby spends most of his Sundays …”

  Niels sat up as if stung by a needle. “Bobby?”

  “What I don’t understand,” Hahn went on, “is that you should have lived here for years and never seen anything of it. There’s one like that Hefter woman in every district. If there weren’t, the boys wouldn’t leave the girls alone. There’s one in yours …”

  Bobby! Niels felt responsible for the boy.

  THE NEXT TIME Bobby asked for the loan of a horse Niels refused it. “Not if you want to go to bad places,” he said. “Whenever you want to see your mother, you can have it.”

  Bobby was as red as blood. “I’ll stay at home,” he said, slinking off.

  From that day on Niels owned the boy body and soul.

  AGAIN BLIZZARDS BLEW; snow enveloped the world; blinding winter suns threw an ineffectual glare, over Marsh and bush; a new year ticked off its hours, days, and weeks.

  Bobby and Niels worked in the bush, clearing land for Kelm.

  Driving, driving …

  NIELS HAD COME to think without bitterness of Ellen; but he felt he could never see her again …

  When he glimpsed at his old dream, a lump rose in his throat. His muscles tightened when he turned his thoughts away …

  This gradual negation of his old dream had a curious effect on others: it gave him such an air of superiority over his environment that the few words which he still had to speak were listened to almost with deference. They seemed to come out of vast hidden caverns of meaning. His face, scored and lined so that it sometimes seemed outright ugly, held all in awe, some in terror. Once he heard a man say to Bobby, “I shouldn’t care to work for that fellow. I’d be scared of him.”

  The truth was, lightning flashes of pain sometimes went through his look, giving him the appearance of one insane; or of one who communed with different worlds …

  A new dream rose: a longing to leave and to go to the very margin of civilisation, there to clear a new place and when it was cleared and people began to settle about it, to move on once more, again to the very edge of pioneerdom, and to start it all over anew … That way his enormous strength would still have a meaning. Woman would have no place in his life.

  He looked upon himself as belonging to a special race—a race not comprised in any limited nation, but on that crossed-sectioned all nations: a race doomed to everlasting extinction and yet recruited out of the wastage of all other nations …

  But, of course, it was only the dream of the slave who dreams of freedom …

  ONCE MORE the thaw-up came. The roads were a morass, the fields a mire …

  Niels had to go to town for repairs to some of his implements. A blind chance happening, a breakage on his wagon, forced him to stay in town overnight.

  He walked the streets. It was warm, almost summer-like: a night that made you feel tired; a night to relax in; a night to stretch, to saunter and linger about …

  From the hotel he went east, in the direction of the little park in the bend of the river …

  One store-window still showed light: that of the drugstore. Aimlessly Niels stopped in front of it, looking at the display of soaps, face
-powders, and similar toilet goods …

  Something within him stirred, something hidden, shameful … He turned.

  That very moment the door opened, and out stepped a lady. She was on the point of passing him by with a casual glance; but she stood arrested.

  Out of a dream, a dismal dream, almost forgotten, sunk in the past, a voice accosted him as he touched his cap.

  “Well,” the voice said, “if it isn’t Niels, of all people! Why, this is nice. I came in from the city to-day, on business regarding my place. I am waiting for the midnight train. Were you out for a walk?”

  “Oh, I don’t know …” There was nothing of his ancient hostility against the woman in his voice.

  “Well,” she smiled up at him, “let’s have that walk anyway. Or are you going out again to-night?”

  “No … I am staying at the boarding house …”

  “Good,” she exclaimed; and without hesitation she put her hand in his arm and led him along. “How are things?”

  “Pretty much as ever …”

  She laughed: that old, light, silvery laugh of hers; she had not changed.

  At the touch of her hand a warm, exciting and yet benumbing current seemed to flow from his arm through his body: a current which slowly wore down resistance …

  They came to the end of the street.

  “How about the park?” she asked. “Is it dry enough to go in?”

  “It’s dry enough, I think …”

  So she led him on, crossed the road and entered a foot-path.

  There, in the darkness, it seemed that the touch of the hand became a touch of a body. Her head brushed his shoulder …

  The path wound about, hardly visible in the moonless night. To the left the trees opened up where the river flowed, starlight dimly reflected from its surface; slight, gurgling sounds came up from the margin where there was still a ledge of snow-covered ice …

  The hold on his arm relaxed; the woman stood in front of him, her head bent back, her face raised to his.

  Intensely whispered came the words, “Kiss me!”

  Not knowing what he did, he bent down and kissed her; and then, in a paroxysm of passion, he crushed her against his body, released her, and ran off into the night …

  TWO, THREE HOURS LATER, when he had walked the road for many miles, till his joints began to ache, he returned to the boarding house. He had no intention of going to bed. He wanted to sit down for a while and then to leave town, letting his business go …

  He had done what he had never done before: he had touched a woman: the touch had set his blood aflame. He almost hated the woman for what she had done to him. He wanted oblivion: he wanted death-in-life; and she had kindled in him that which he had hardly known to exist: she had given a meaning and a direction to stirrings within him, to strange, incomprehensible impulses. His instinct urged him to flight: it was impossible that he should see her again. All this was dimly felt, not distinctly told off in thought.

  In the lobby of the hotel there were still some loungers. One or two he knew: the doctor, a merchant. They would speak to him …

  He stood undecided. Should he go to the stable instead? No; he had paid for his room; there he would be alone …

  The loungers got up from their chairs. It was a minute or so till midnight … At midnight the lights would be turned off; he would not be able to see the number of the door to his room …

  He ran up the stairs; into the uncarpeted corridor where his steps resounded loudly.

  He was too late; that very moment the lights went out. He was just aware, before he stood in utter darkness, that somewhere along the corridor a door had opened.

  The very next moment he felt two warm, bare arms about his neck; and a warm, soft, fragrant body seemed to envelop his. A hand closed his mouth; he was drawn forward; he yielded …

  IT WAS LATE on the evening of the third day, on Saturday night, that Niels returned to his farm. Bobby had already milked the cows and fed the horses. When he heard Niels calling at the gate, he ran to meet him.

  “Hello,” he sang out, “I …” And he went silent, for he saw the woman on the seat, by the side of his employer.

  He swung the gate open and greeted her, smiling in his embarrassed way. “Hello, Mrs. Vogel.”

  She laughed; and then she corrected him. “I am afraid you’ll have to say Mrs. Lindstedt after this.”

  Bobby’s eyes widened till they stared.

  Niels sat stiffly and looked straight ahead, without smiling. He was not a tall man; but his breadth of shoulder made him look almost colossal in the darkness, by the side of her.

  “Well,” said the woman, laughing again, as the horses pulled, “why don’t you say something? … Congratulate me and … him?”

  But Bobby said nothing. He was very red as, at the stable, he bent over the traces to unhook them.

  Niels sprang to the ground, went heavily to the other side of the wagon, and helped his wife to alight. Then he reached for the two suitcases and led the way to the house. The woman followed.

  “So this is the famous White Range Line House?” she said as they entered.

  And for the first time Niels spoke. “You will have to put up with things,” he said. “This is a bachelor’s establishment. We shall get order into it shortly.” His speech was brief but not unkind.

  In the north room a lamp was burning; its glass was smoky. The four chairs were plain, straight-backed kitchen chairs; it held two beds and a deal table. Overalls and other workingman’s apparel were strewn on floor and furniture.

  The woman looked about. “That is the kitchen?”

  Niels went in, struck a match, and lighted a lamp.

  The kitchen held a stove, two chairs, another deal table, and a small array of enamelled pots and dishes, most of them unwashed. A colander contained some eggs, a bag some potatoes, a large baking tin some soggy biscuits, a box by the stove some wood, and a pail on the bench by the door fresh water in which a dipper floated about …

  She smiled at it all and nodded.

  “How about Bobby?” she asked.

  “I’ll see,” Niels said and left her alone.

  HE WENT OUT and stood a moment in the darkness, musing. Then he crossed the yard to the stable.

  Bobby had watered the horses and was stripping the harness off their backs, by the light of a lantern. Jock, the Percheron gelding, nickered at sight of his master. Niels stepped in by his side and patted his breast. He seemed lost in thought …

  Bobby poured oats for the Clydes. Niels took a fork to go for hay.

  “How about the sloughs?” he asked of Bobby when they had finished. “Dry enough to plow?”

  “I think so.”

  “All right. By the way, you will have to move to the shack.”

  “To-night?”

  “Just as well. And you’ll have to help me in the house for an hour or so. You’ll get your meals there, of course … I’ll raise you five dollars …”

  “Well,” Bobby said … “Thanks.”

  In the house, they carried one of the beds upstairs; another bed which was stored there they put together. The things that littered rooms and landing they removed into the west room which Niels locked.

  When they had finished, the east room bore some resemblance to a civilised bed-room though it still looked bare. His own bed Niels had placed on the landing, in front of the door which was locked.

  They were looking at their work and finding it good when the woman’s voice rang out, “Will you men be ready for supper in about fifteen minutes?”

  “I think so,” Niels replied.

  “I’ve had my supper,” Bobby called.

  “Well, have another,” the voice said, laughing.

  They went down and loaded up with Bobby’s things. “You’ll have to use a lantern,” Niels said, “till there’s time to send to town for a lamp. I forgot.”

  “That’s all right.” And Bobby shouldered his mattress.

  AT SUPPER, which had been set on the
oil-cloth-covered table in the large, bare north room, Bobby kept casting furtive glances at the woman presiding.

  She had changed into a silky sort of dressing gown the like of which he had never seen in his life. When she reached for anything on the table, she gathered the wide, flowing sleeve with the other hand to prevent its brushing over the dishes. The lapping panel of the gown that covered her breast fell back as she did so and revealed a white, round shoulder with a pink silk ribbon over it and the lace-trimmed edge of some undergarment below her throat. When she saw Bobby’s stare, she smiled and folded the panel back into place.

  Bobby looked at Niels who sat there sternly, looking straight ahead and chewing absentmindedly a freshly baked biscuit. When Bobby pushed his chair back and rose, his eye fell on a suitcase standing open by the wall—the contents of which, the appurtenances of modern feminity, made him blush to the roots of his hair.

  Awkwardly he stumbled out and mumbled, “Good-night.”

  ON SUNDAY many things were done in the house, Bobby being banished to stable and shack.

  Niels looked forbidding; Mrs. Lindstedt went about the rooms, busy with curtains and things.

  Bobby felt lost and went at last to call on the new neighbours to the south …