VII
Marie's father, Albert Tovesky, was one of the more intelligentBohemians who came West in the early seventies. He settled in Omahaand became a leader and adviser among his people there. Marie washis youngest child, by a second wife, and was the apple of his eye.She was barely sixteen, and was in the graduating class of theOmaha High School, when Frank Shabata arrived from the old countryand set all the Bohemian girls in a flutter. He was easily thebuck of the beer-gardens, and on Sunday he was a sight to see, withhis silk hat and tucked shirt and blue frock-coat, wearing glovesand carrying a little wisp of a yellow cane. He was tall and fair,with splendid teeth and close-cropped yellow curls, and he wore aslightly disdainful expression, proper for a young man with highconnections, whose mother had a big farm in the Elbe valley. Therewas often an interesting discontent in his blue eyes, and everyBohemian girl he met imagined herself the cause of that unsatisfiedexpression. He had a way of drawing out his cambric handkerchiefslowly, by one corner, from his breast-pocket, that was melancholyand romantic in the extreme. He took a little flight with eachof the more eligible Bohemian girls, but it was when he was withlittle Marie Tovesky that he drew his handkerchief out most slowly,and, after he had lit a fresh cigar, dropped the match mostdespairingly. Any one could see, with half an eye, that his proudheart was bleeding for somebody.
One Sunday, late in the summer after Marie's graduation, she metFrank at a Bohemian picnic down the river and went rowing with himall the afternoon. When she got home that evening she went straightto her father's room and told him that she was engaged to Shabata.Old Tovesky was having a comfortable pipe before he went to bed.When he heard his daughter's announcement, he first prudentlycorked his beer bottle and then leaped to his feet and had a turnof temper. He characterized Frank Shabata by a Bohemian expressionwhich is the equivalent of stuffed shirt.
"Why don't he go to work like the rest of us did? His farm in theElbe valley, indeed! Ain't he got plenty brothers and sisters?It's his mother's farm, and why don't he stay at home and help her?Haven't I seen his mother out in the morning at five o'clock withher ladle and her big bucket on wheels, putting liquid manure onthe cabbages? Don't I know the look of old Eva Shabata's hands?Like an old horse's hoofs they are--and this fellow wearing glovesand rings! Engaged, indeed! You aren't fit to be out of school,and that's what's the matter with you. I will send you off to theSisters of the Sacred Heart in St. Louis, and they will teach yousome sense, _I_ guess!"
Accordingly, the very next week, Albert Tovesky took his daughter,pale and tearful, down the river to the convent. But the way tomake Frank want anything was to tell him he couldn't have it. Hemanaged to have an interview with Marie before she went away,and whereas he had been only half in love with her before, he nowpersuaded himself that he would not stop at anything. Marie tookwith her to the convent, under the canvas lining of her trunk, theresults of a laborious and satisfying morning on Frank's part; noless than a dozen photographs of himself, taken in a dozen differentlove-lorn attitudes. There was a little round photograph for herwatch-case, photographs for her wall and dresser, and even longnarrow ones to be used as bookmarks. More than once the handsomegentleman was torn to pieces before the French class by an indignantnun.
Marie pined in the convent for a year, until her eighteenth birthdaywas passed. Then she met Frank Shabata in the Union Station inSt. Louis and ran away with him. Old Tovesky forgave his daughterbecause there was nothing else to do, and bought her a farm inthe country that she had loved so well as a child. Since then herstory had been a part of the history of the Divide. She and Frankhad been living there for five years when Carl Linstrum came backto pay his long deferred visit to Alexandra. Frank had, on thewhole, done better than one might have expected. He had flunghimself at the soil with savage energy. Once a year he went toHastings or to Omaha, on a spree. He stayed away for a week ortwo, and then came home and worked like a demon. He did work; ifhe felt sorry for himself, that was his own affair.