IV
Carl had changed, Alexandra felt, much less than one might haveexpected. He had not become a trim, self-satisfied city man. Therewas still something homely and wayward and definitely personalabout him. Even his clothes, his Norfolk coat and his very highcollars, were a little unconventional. He seemed to shrink intohimself as he used to do; to hold himself away from things, as ifhe were afraid of being hurt. In short, he was more self-consciousthan a man of thirty-five is expected to be. He looked older thanhis years and not very strong. His black hair, which still hungin a triangle over his pale forehead, was thin at the crown, andthere were fine, relentless lines about his eyes. His back, withits high, sharp shoulders, looked like the back of an over-workedGerman professor off on his holiday. His face was intelligent,sensitive, unhappy.
That evening after supper, Carl and Alexandra were sitting by theclump of castor beans in the middle of the flower garden. Thegravel paths glittered in the moonlight, and below them the fieldslay white and still.
"Do you know, Alexandra," he was saying, "I've been thinking howstrangely things work out. I've been away engraving other men'spictures, and you've stayed at home and made your own." He pointedwith his cigar toward the sleeping landscape. "How in the worldhave you done it? How have your neighbors done it?"
"We hadn't any of us much to do with it, Carl. The land did it.It had its little joke. It pretended to be poor because nobodyknew how to work it right; and then, all at once, it worked itself.It woke up out of its sleep and stretched itself, and it was so big,so rich, that we suddenly found we were rich, just from sittingstill. As for me, you remember when I began to buy land. Foryears after that I was always squeezing and borrowing until I wasashamed to show my face in the banks. And then, all at once, menbegan to come to me offering to lend me money--and I didn't needit! Then I went ahead and built this house. I really built itfor Emil. I want you to see Emil, Carl. He is so different fromthe rest of us!"
"How different?"
"Oh, you'll see! I'm sure it was to have sons like Emil, and togive them a chance, that father left the old country. It's curious,too; on the outside Emil is just like an American boy,--he graduatedfrom the State University in June, you know,--but underneath he ismore Swedish than any of us. Sometimes he is so like father thathe frightens me; he is so violent in his feelings like that."
"Is he going to farm here with you?"
"He shall do whatever he wants to," Alexandra declared warmly. "Heis going to have a chance, a whole chance; that's what I've workedfor. Sometimes he talks about studying law, and sometimes, justlately, he's been talking about going out into the sand hills andtaking up more land. He has his sad times, like father. But Ihope he won't do that. We have land enough, at last!" Alexandralaughed.
"How about Lou and Oscar? They've done well, haven't they?"
"Yes, very well; but they are different, and now that they havefarms of their own I do not see so much of them. We divided theland equally when Lou married. They have their own way of doingthings, and they do not altogether like my way, I am afraid. Perhapsthey think me too independent. But I have had to think for myselfa good many years and am not likely to change. On the whole,though, we take as much comfort in each other as most brothers andsisters do. And I am very fond of Lou's oldest daughter."
"I think I liked the old Lou and Oscar better, and they probablyfeel the same about me. I even, if you can keep a secret,"--Carlleaned forward and touched her arm, smiling,--"I even think I likedthe old country better. This is all very splendid in its way,but there was something about this country when it was a wild oldbeast that has haunted me all these years. Now, when I come backto all this milk and honey, I feel like the old German song, 'Wobist du, wo bist du, mein geliebtest Land?'--Do you ever feel likethat, I wonder?"
"Yes, sometimes, when I think about father and mother and thosewho are gone; so many of our old neighbors." Alexandra paused andlooked up thoughtfully at the stars. "We can remember the graveyardwhen it was wild prairie, Carl, and now--"
"And now the old story has begun to write itself over there," saidCarl softly. "Isn't it queer: there are only two or three humanstories, and they go on repeating themselves as fiercely as if theyhad never happened before; like the larks in this country, thathave been singing the same five notes over for thousands of years."
"Oh, yes! The young people, they live so hard. And yet I sometimesenvy them. There is my little neighbor, now; the people who boughtyour old place. I wouldn't have sold it to any one else, but Iwas always fond of that girl. You must remember her, little MarieTovesky, from Omaha, who used to visit here? When she was eighteenshe ran away from the convent school and got married, crazy child!She came out here a bride, with her father and husband. He hadnothing, and the old man was willing to buy them a place and setthem up. Your farm took her fancy, and I was glad to have her sonear me. I've never been sorry, either. I even try to get alongwith Frank on her account."
"Is Frank her husband?"
"Yes. He's one of these wild fellows. Most Bohemians aregood-natured, but Frank thinks we don't appreciate him here, Iguess. He's jealous about everything, his farm and his horses andhis pretty wife. Everybody likes her, just the same as when shewas little. Sometimes I go up to the Catholic church with Emil,and it's funny to see Marie standing there laughing and shakinghands with people, looking so excited and gay, with Frank sulkingbehind her as if he could eat everybody alive. Frank's not a badneighbor, but to get on with him you've got to make a fuss overhim and act as if you thought he was a very important person allthe time, and different from other people. I find it hard to keepthat up from one year's end to another."
"I shouldn't think you'd be very successful at that kind of thing,Alexandra." Carl seemed to find the idea amusing.
"Well," said Alexandra firmly, "I do the best I can, on Marie'saccount. She has it hard enough, anyway. She's too young andpretty for this sort of life. We're all ever so much older andslower. But she's the kind that won't be downed easily. She'llwork all day and go to a Bohemian wedding and dance all night, anddrive the hay wagon for a cross man next morning. I could stay bya job, but I never had the go in me that she has, when I was goingmy best. I'll have to take you over to see her to-morrow."
Carl dropped the end of his cigar softly among the castor beans andsighed. "Yes, I suppose I must see the old place. I'm cowardlyabout things that remind me of myself. It took courage to comeat all, Alexandra. I wouldn't have, if I hadn't wanted to see youvery, very much."
Alexandra looked at him with her calm, deliberate eyes. "Why doyou dread things like that, Carl?" she asked earnestly. "Why areyou dissatisfied with yourself?"
Her visitor winced. "How direct you are, Alexandra! Just likeyou used to be. Do I give myself away so quickly? Well, you see,for one thing, there's nothing to look forward to in my profession.Wood-engraving is the only thing I care about, and that had gone outbefore I began. Everything's cheap metal work nowadays, touchingup miserable photographs, forcing up poor drawings, and spoiling goodones. I'm absolutely sick of it all." Carl frowned. "Alexandra,all the way out from New York I've been planning how I coulddeceive you and make you think me a very enviable fellow, and hereI am telling you the truth the first night. I waste a lot of timepretending to people, and the joke of it is, I don't think I everdeceive any one. There are too many of my kind; people know us onsight."
Carl paused. Alexandra pushed her hair back from her brow with apuzzled, thoughtful gesture. "You see," he went on calmly, "measuredby your standards here, I'm a failure. I couldn't buy even one ofyour cornfields. I've enjoyed a great many things, but I've gotnothing to show for it all."
"But you show for it yourself, Carl. I'd rather have had yourfreedom than my land."
Carl shook his head mournfully. "Freedom so often means that oneisn't needed anywhere. Here you are an individual, you have abackground of your own, you would be missed. But off there in thecities there are thousands of rolling stones like me. We are allalike; we have no ties, we know nobod
y, we own nothing. When oneof us dies, they scarcely know where to bury him. Our landlady andthe delicatessen man are our mourners, and we leave nothing behindus but a frock-coat and a fiddle, or an easel, or a typewriter, orwhatever tool we got our living by. All we have ever managed todo is to pay our rent, the exorbitant rent that one has to pay fora few square feet of space near the heart of things. We have nohouse, no place, no people of our own. We live in the streets,in the parks, in the theatres. We sit in restaurants and concerthalls and look about at the hundreds of our own kind and shudder."
Alexandra was silent. She sat looking at the silver spot the moonmade on the surface of the pond down in the pasture. He knew thatshe understood what he meant. At last she said slowly, "And yet Iwould rather have Emil grow up like that than like his two brothers.We pay a high rent, too, though we pay differently. We grow hardand heavy here. We don't move lightly and easily as you do, andour minds get stiff. If the world were no wider than my cornfields,if there were not something beside this, I wouldn't feel that itwas much worth while to work. No, I would rather have Emil likeyou than like them. I felt that as soon as you came."
"I wonder why you feel like that?" Carl mused.
"I don't know. Perhaps I am like Carrie Jensen, the sister of oneof my hired men. She had never been out of the cornfields, and afew years ago she got despondent and said life was just the samething over and over, and she didn't see the use of it. After shehad tried to kill herself once or twice, her folks got worried andsent her over to Iowa to visit some relations. Ever since she'scome back she's been perfectly cheerful, and she says she's contentedto live and work in a world that's so big and interesting. Shesaid that anything as big as the bridges over the Platte and theMissouri reconciled her. And it's what goes on in the world thatreconciles me."