PART V.

Alexandra

I

Ivar was sitting at a cobbler’s bench in the barn, mending harness by

the light of a lantern and repeating to himself the 101st Psalm. It was

only five o’clock of a mid-October day, but a storm had come up in the

afternoon, bringing black clouds, a cold wind and torrents of rain. The

old man wore his buffalo-skin coat, and occasionally stopped to warm

his fingers at the lantern. Suddenly a woman burst into the shed, as if

she had been blown in, accompanied by a shower of rain-drops. It was

Signa, wrapped in a man’s overcoat and wearing a pair of boots over her

shoes. In time of trouble Signa had come back to stay with her

mistress, for she was the only one of the maids from whom Alexandra

would accept much personal service. It was three months now since the

news of the terrible thing that had happened in Frank Shabata’s orchard

had first run like a fire over the Divide. Signa and Nelse were staying

on with Alexandra until winter.

“Ivar,” Signa exclaimed as she wiped the rain from her face, “do you

know where she is?”

The old man put down his cobbler’s knife. “Who, the mistress?”

“Yes. She went away about three o’clock. I happened to look out of the

window and saw her going across the fields in her thin dress and

sun-hat. And now this storm has come on. I thought she was going to

Mrs. Hiller’s, and I telephoned as soon as the thunder stopped, but she

had not been there. I’m afraid she is out somewhere and will get her

death of cold.”

Ivar put on his cap and took up the lantern. “_Ja_, _ja_, we will see.

I will hitch the boy’s mare to the cart and go.”

Signa followed him across the wagon-shed to the horses’ stable. She was

shivering with cold and excitement. “Where do you suppose she can be,

Ivar?”

The old man lifted a set of single harness carefully from its peg. “How

should I know?”

“But you think she is at the graveyard, don’t you?” Signa persisted.

“So do I. Oh, I wish she would be more like herself! I can’t believe

it’s Alexandra Bergson come to this, with no head about anything. I

have to tell her when to eat and when to go to bed.”

“Patience, patience, sister,” muttered Ivar as he settled the bit in

the horse’s mouth. “When the eyes of the flesh are shut, the eyes of

the spirit are open. She will have a message from those who are gone,

and that will bring her peace. Until then we must bear with her. You

and I are the only ones who have weight with her. She trusts us.”

“How awful it’s been these last three months.” Signa held the lantern

so that he could see to buckle the straps. “It don’t seem right that we

must all be so miserable. Why do we all have to be punished? Seems to

me like good times would never come again.”

Ivar expressed himself in a deep sigh, but said nothing. He stooped and

took a sandburr from his toe.

“Ivar,” Signa asked suddenly, “will you tell me why you go barefoot?

All the time I lived here in the house I wanted to ask you. Is it for a

penance, or what?”

“No, sister. It is for the indulgence of the body. From my youth up I

have had a strong, rebellious body, and have been subject to every kind

of temptation. Even in age my temptations are prolonged. It was

necessary to make some allowances; and the feet, as I understand it,

are free members. There is no divine prohibition for them in the Ten

Commandments. The hands, the tongue, the eyes, the heart, all the

bodily desires we are commanded to subdue; but the feet are free

members. I indulge them without harm to any one, even to trampling in

filth when my desires are low. They are quickly cleaned again.”

Signa did not laugh. She looked thoughtful as she followed Ivar out to

the wagon-shed and held the shafts up for him, while he backed in the

mare and buckled the hold-backs. “You have been a good friend to the

mistress, Ivar,” she murmured.

“And you, God be with you,” replied Ivar as he clambered into the cart

and put the lantern under the oilcloth lap-cover. “Now for a ducking,

my girl,” he said to the mare, gathering up the reins.

As they emerged from the shed, a stream of water, running off the

thatch, struck the mare on the neck. She tossed her head indignantly,

then struck out bravely on the soft ground, slipping back again and

again as she climbed the hill to the main road. Between the rain and

the darkness Ivar could see very little, so he let Emil’s mare have the

rein, keeping her head in the right direction. When the ground was

level, he turned her out of the dirt road upon the sod, where she was

able to trot without slipping.

Before Ivar reached the graveyard, three miles from the house, the

storm had spent itself, and the downpour had died into a soft, dripping

rain. The sky and the land were a dark smoke color, and seemed to be

coming together, like two waves. When Ivar stopped at the gate and

swung out his lantern, a white figure rose from beside John Bergson’s

white stone.

The old man sprang to the ground and shuffled toward the gate calling,

“Mistress, mistress!”

Alexandra hurried to meet him and put her hand on his shoulder.

“_Tyst!_ Ivar. There’s nothing to be worried about. I’m sorry if I’ve

scared you all. I didn’t notice the storm till it was on me, and I

couldn’t walk against it. I’m glad you’ve come. I am so tired I didn’t

know how I’d ever get home.”

Ivar swung the lantern up so that it shone in her face. “_Gud!_ You are

enough to frighten us, mistress. You look like a drowned woman. How

could you do such a thing!”

Groaning and mumbling he led her out of the gate and helped her into

the cart, wrapping her in the dry blankets on which he had been

sitting.

Alexandra smiled at his solicitude. “Not much use in that, Ivar. You

will only shut the wet in. I don’t feel so cold now; but I’m heavy and

numb. I’m glad you came.”

Ivar turned the mare and urged her into a sliding trot. Her feet sent

back a continual spatter of mud.

Alexandra spoke to the old man as they jogged along through the sullen

gray twilight of the storm. “Ivar, I think it has done me good to get

cold clear through like this, once. I don’t believe I shall suffer so

much any more. When you get so near the dead, they seem more real than

the living. Worldly thoughts leave one. Ever since Emil died, I’ve

suffered so when it rained. Now that I’ve been out in it with him, I

shan’t dread it. After you once get cold clear through, the feeling of

the rain on you is sweet. It seems to bring back feelings you had when

you were a baby. It carries you back into the dark, before you were

born; you can’t see things, but they come to you, somehow, and you know

them and aren’t afraid of them. Maybe it’s like that with the dead. If

they feel anything at all, it’s the old things, before they were born,

that comfort people like the feeling of their own bed does when they

are little.”

“Mistress,” said Ivar reproachfully, “those are bad thoughts. The dead

are in Paradise.”

Then he hung his head, for he did not believe that Emil was in

Paradise.

When they got home, Signa had a fire burning in the sitting-room stove.

She undressed Alexandra and gave her a hot footbath, while Ivar made

ginger tea in the kitchen. When Alexandra was in bed, wrapped in hot

blankets, Ivar came in with his tea and saw that she drank it. Signa

asked permission to sleep on the slat lounge outside her door.

Alexandra endured their attentions patiently, but she was glad when

they put out the lamp and left her. As she lay alone in the dark, it

occurred to her for the first time that perhaps she was actually tired

of life. All the physical operations of life seemed difficult and

painful. She longed to be free from her own body, which ached and was

so heavy. And longing itself was heavy: she yearned to be free of that.

As she lay with her eyes closed, she had again, more vividly than for

many years, the old illusion of her girlhood, of being lifted and

carried lightly by some one very strong. He was with her a long while

this time, and carried her very far, and in his arms she felt free from

pain. When he laid her down on her bed again, she opened her eyes, and,

for the first time in her life, she saw him, saw him clearly, though

the room was dark, and his face was covered. He was standing in the

doorway of her room. His white cloak was thrown over his face, and his

head was bent a little forward. His shoulders seemed as strong as the

foundations of the world. His right arm, bared from the elbow, was dark

and gleaming, like bronze, and she knew at once that it was the arm of

the mightiest of all lovers. She knew at last for whom it was she had

waited, and where he would carry her. That, she told herself, was very

well. Then she went to sleep.

Alexandra wakened in the morning with nothing worse than a hard cold

and a stiff shoulder. She kept her bed for several days, and it was

during that time that she formed a resolution to go to Lincoln to see

Frank Shabata. Ever since she last saw him in the courtroom, Frank’s

haggard face and wild eyes had haunted her. The trial had lasted only

three days. Frank had given himself up to the police in Omaha and

pleaded guilty of killing without malice and without premeditation. The

gun was, of course, against him, and the judge had given him the full

sentence,—ten years. He had now been in the State Penitentiary for a

month.

Frank was the only one, Alexandra told herself, for whom anything could

be done. He had been less in the wrong than any of them, and he was

paying the heaviest penalty. She often felt that she herself had been

more to blame than poor Frank. From the time the Shabatas had first

moved to the neighboring farm, she had omitted no opportunity of

throwing Marie and Emil together. Because she knew Frank was surly

about doing little things to help his wife, she was always sending Emil

over to spade or plant or carpenter for Marie. She was glad to have

Emil see as much as possible of an intelligent, city-bred girl like

their neighbor; she noticed that it improved his manners. She knew that

Emil was fond of Marie, but it had never occurred to her that Emil’s

feeling might be different from her own. She wondered at herself now,

but she had never thought of danger in that direction. If Marie had

been unmarried,—oh, yes! Then she would have kept her eyes open. But

the mere fact that she was Shabata’s wife, for Alexandra, settled

everything. That she was beautiful, impulsive, barely two years older

than Emil, these facts had had no weight with Alexandra. Emil was a

good boy, and only bad boys ran after married women.

Now, Alexandra could in a measure realize that Marie was, after all,

Marie; not merely a “married woman.” Sometimes, when Alexandra thought

of her, it was with an aching tenderness. The moment she had reached

them in the orchard that morning, everything was clear to her. There

was something about those two lying in the grass, something in the way

Marie had settled her cheek on Emil’s shoulder, that told her

everything. She wondered then how they could have helped loving each

other; how she could have helped knowing that they must. Emil’s cold,

frowning face, the girl’s content—Alexandra had felt awe of them, even

in the first shock of her grief.

The idleness of those days in bed, the relaxation of body which

attended them, enabled Alexandra to think more calmly than she had done

since Emil’s death. She and Frank, she told herself, were left out of

that group of friends who had been overwhelmed by disaster. She must

certainly see Frank Shabata. Even in the courtroom her heart had

grieved for him. He was in a strange country, he had no kinsmen or

friends, and in a moment he had ruined his life. Being what he was, she

felt, Frank could not have acted otherwise. She could understand his

behavior more easily than she could understand Marie’s. Yes, she must

go to Lincoln to see Frank Shabata.

The day after Emil’s funeral, Alexandra had written to Carl Linstrum; a

single page of notepaper, a bare statement of what had happened. She

was not a woman who could write much about such a thing, and about her

own feelings she could never write very freely. She knew that Carl was

away from post-offices, prospecting somewhere in the interior. Before

he started he had written her where he expected to go, but her ideas

about Alaska were vague. As the weeks went by and she heard nothing

from him, it seemed to Alexandra that her heart grew hard against Carl.

She began to wonder whether she would not do better to finish her life

alone. What was left of life seemed unimportant.

II

Late in the afternoon of a brilliant October day, Alexandra Bergson,

dressed in a black suit and traveling-hat, alighted at the Burlington

depot in Lincoln. She drove to the Lindell Hotel, where she had stayed

two years ago when she came up for Emil’s Commencement. In spite of her

usual air of sureness and self-possession, Alexandra felt ill at ease

in hotels, and she was glad, when she went to the clerk’s desk to

register, that there were not many people in the lobby. She had her

supper early, wearing her hat and black jacket down to the dining-room

and carrying her handbag. After supper she went out for a walk.

It was growing dark when she reached the university campus. She did not

go into the grounds, but walked slowly up and down the stone walk

outside the long iron fence, looking through at the young men who were

running from one building to another, at the lights shining from the

armory and the library. A squad of cadets were going through their

drill behind the armory, and the commands of their young officer rang

out at regular intervals, so sharp and quick that Alexandra could not

understand them. Two stalwart girls came down the library steps and out

through one of the iron gates. As they passed her, Alexandra was

pleased to hear them speaking Bohemian to each other. Every few moments

a boy would come running down the flagged walk and dash out into the

street as if he were rushing to announce some wonder to the world.

Alexandra felt a great tenderness for them all. She wished one of them

would stop and speak to her. She wished she could ask them whether they

had known Emil.

As she lingered by the south gate she actually did encounter one of the

boys. He had on his drill cap and was swinging his books at the end of

a long strap. It was dark by this time; he did not see her and ran

against her. He snatched off his cap and stood bareheaded and panting.

“I’m awfully sorry,” he said in a bright, clear voice, with a rising

inflection, as if he expected her to say something.

“Oh, it was my fault!” said Alexandra eagerly. “Are you an old student

here, may I ask?”

“No, ma’am. I’m a Freshie, just off the farm. Cherry County. Were you

hunting somebody?”

“No, thank you. That is—” Alexandra wanted to detain him. “That is, I

would like to find some of my brother’s friends. He graduated two years

ago.”

“Then you’d have to try the Seniors, wouldn’t you? Let’s see; I don’t

know any of them yet, but there’ll be sure to be some of them around

the library. That red building, right there,” he pointed.

“Thank you, I’ll try there,” said Alexandra lingeringly.

“Oh, that’s all right! Good-night.” The lad clapped his cap on his head

and ran straight down Eleventh Street. Alexandra looked after him

wistfully.

She walked back to her hotel unreasonably comforted. “What a nice voice

that boy had, and how polite he was. I know Emil was always like that

to women.” And again, after she had undressed and was standing in her

nightgown, brushing her long, heavy hair by the electric light, she

remembered him and said to herself, “I don’t think I ever heard a nicer

voice than that boy had. I hope he will get on well here. Cherry

County; that’s where the hay is so fine, and the coyotes can scratch

down to water.”

At nine o’clock the next morning Alexandra presented herself at the

warden’s office in the State Penitentiary. The warden was a German, a

ruddy, cheerful-looking man who had formerly been a harness-maker.

Alexandra had a letter to him from the German banker in Hanover. As he

glanced at the letter, Mr. Schwartz put away his pipe.

“That big Bohemian, is it? Sure, he’s gettin’ along fine,” said Mr.

Schwartz cheerfully.

“I am glad to hear that. I was afraid he might be quarrelsome and get

himself into more trouble. Mr. Schwartz, if you have time, I would like

to tell you a little about Frank Shabata, and why I am interested in

him.”

The warden listened genially while she told him briefly something of

Frank’s history and character, but he did not seem to find anything

unusual in her account.

“Sure, I’ll keep an eye on him. We’ll take care of him all right,” he

said, rising. “You can talk to him here, while I go to see to things in

the kitchen. I’ll have him sent in. He ought to be done washing out his

cell by this time. We have to keep ’em clean, you know.”

The warden paused at the door, speaking back over his shoulder to a

pale young man in convicts’ clothes who was seated at a desk in the

corner, writing in a big ledger.

“Bertie, when 1037 is brought in, you just step out and give this lady

a chance to talk.”

The young man bowed his head and bent over his ledger again.

When Mr. Schwartz disappeared, Alexandra thrust her black-edged

handkerchief nervously into her handbag. Coming out on the streetcar

she had not had the least dread of meeting Frank. But since she had

been here the sounds and smells in the corridor, the look of the men in

convicts’ clothes who passed the glass door of the warden’s office,

affected her unpleasantly.

The warden’s clock ticked, the young convict’s pen scratched busily in

the big book, and his sharp shoulders were shaken every few seconds by

a loose cough which he tried to smother. It was easy to see that he was

a sick man. Alexandra looked at him timidly, but he did not once raise

his eyes. He wore a white shirt under his striped jacket, a high

collar, and a necktie, very carefully tied. His hands were thin and

white and well cared for, and he had a seal ring on his little finger.

When he heard steps approaching in the corridor, he rose, blotted his

book, put his pen in the rack, and left the room without raising his

eyes. Through the door he opened a guard came in, bringing Frank

Shabata.

“You the lady that wanted to talk to 1037? Here he is. Be on your good

behavior, now. He can set down, lady,” seeing that Alexandra remained

standing. “Push that white button when you’re through with him, and

I’ll come.”

The guard went out and Alexandra and Frank were left alone.

Alexandra tried not to see his hideous clothes. She tried to look

straight into his face, which she could scarcely believe was his. It

was already bleached to a chalky gray. His lips were colorless, his

fine teeth looked yellowish. He glanced at Alexandra sullenly, blinked

as if he had come from a dark place, and one eyebrow twitched

continually. She felt at once that this interview was a terrible ordeal

to him. His shaved head, showing the conformation of his skull, gave

him a criminal look which he had not had during the trial.

Alexandra held out her hand. “Frank,” she said, her eyes filling

suddenly, “I hope you’ll let me be friendly with you. I understand how

you did it. I don’t feel hard toward you. They were more to blame than

you.”

Frank jerked a dirty blue handkerchief from his trousers pocket. He had

begun to cry. He turned away from Alexandra. “I never did mean to do

not’ing to dat woman,” he muttered. “I never mean to do not’ing to dat

boy. I ain’t had not’ing ag’in’ dat boy. I always like dat boy fine.

An’ then I find him—” He stopped. The feeling went out of his face and

eyes. He dropped into a chair and sat looking stolidly at the floor,

his hands hanging loosely between his knees, the handkerchief lying

across his striped leg. He seemed to have stirred up in his mind a

disgust that had paralyzed his faculties.

“I haven’t come up here to blame you, Frank. I think they were more to

blame than you.” Alexandra, too, felt benumbed.

Frank looked up suddenly and stared out of the office window. “I guess

dat place all go to hell what I work so hard on,” he said with a slow,

bitter smile. “I not care a damn.” He stopped and rubbed the palm of

his hand over the light bristles on his head with annoyance. “I no can

t’ink without my hair,” he complained. “I forget English. We not talk

here, except swear.”

Alexandra was bewildered. Frank seemed to have undergone a change of

personality. There was scarcely anything by which she could recognize

her handsome Bohemian neighbor. He seemed, somehow, not altogether

human. She did not know what to say to him.

“You do not feel hard to me, Frank?” she asked at last.

Frank clenched his fist and broke out in excitement. “I not feel hard

at no woman. I tell you I not that kind-a man. I never hit my wife. No,

never I hurt her when she devil me something awful!” He struck his fist

down on the warden’s desk so hard that he afterward stroked it

absently. A pale pink crept over his neck and face. “Two, t’ree years I

know dat woman don’ care no more ’bout me, Alexandra Bergson. I know

she after some other man. I know her, oo-oo! An’ I ain’t never hurt

her. I never would-a done dat, if I ain’t had dat gun along. I don’

know what in hell make me take dat gun. She always say I ain’t no man

to carry gun. If she been in dat house, where she ought-a been—But das

a foolish talk.”

Frank rubbed his head and stopped suddenly, as he had stopped before.

Alexandra felt that there was something strange in the way he chilled

off, as if something came up in him that extinguished his power of

feeling or thinking.

“Yes, Frank,” she said kindly. “I know you never meant to hurt Marie.”

Frank smiled at her queerly. His eyes filled slowly with tears. “You

know, I most forgit dat woman’s name. She ain’t got no name for me no

more. I never hate my wife, but dat woman what make me do dat—Honest to

God, but I hate her! I no man to fight. I don’ want to kill no boy and

no woman. I not care how many men she take under dat tree. I no care

for not’ing but dat fine boy I kill, Alexandra Bergson. I guess I go

crazy sure ’nough.”

Alexandra remembered the little yellow cane she had found in Frank’s

clothes-closet. She thought of how he had come to this country a gay

young fellow, so attractive that the prettiest Bohemian girl in Omaha

had run away with him. It seemed unreasonable that life should have

landed him in such a place as this. She blamed Marie bitterly. And why,

with her happy, affectionate nature, should she have brought

destruction and sorrow to all who had loved her, even to poor old Joe

Tovesky, the uncle who used to carry her about so proudly when she was

a little girl? That was the strangest thing of all. Was there, then,

something wrong in being warm-hearted and impulsive like that?

Alexandra hated to think so. But there was Emil, in the Norwegian

graveyard at home, and here was Frank Shabata. Alexandra rose and took

him by the hand.

“Frank Shabata, I am never going to stop trying until I get you

pardoned. I’ll never give the Governor any peace. I know I can get you

out of this place.”

Frank looked at her distrustfully, but he gathered confidence from her

face. “Alexandra,” he said earnestly, “if I git out-a here, I not

trouble dis country no more. I go back where I come from; see my

mother.”

Alexandra tried to withdraw her hand, but Frank held on to it

nervously. He put out his finger and absently touched a button on her

black jacket. “Alexandra,” he said in a low tone, looking steadily at

the button, “you ain’ t’ink I use dat girl awful bad before—”

“No, Frank. We won’t talk about that,” Alexandra said, pressing his

hand. “I can’t help Emil now, so I’m going to do what I can for you.

You know I don’t go away from home often, and I came up here on purpose

to tell you this.”

The warden at the glass door looked in inquiringly. Alexandra nodded,

and he came in and touched the white button on his desk. The guard

appeared, and with a sinking heart Alexandra saw Frank led away down

the corridor. After a few words with Mr. Schwartz, she left the prison

and made her way to the street-car. She had refused with horror the

warden’s cordial invitation to “go through the institution.” As the car

lurched over its uneven roadbed, back toward Lincoln, Alexandra thought

of how she and Frank had been wrecked by the same storm and of how,

although she could come out into the sunlight, she had not much more

left in her life than he. She remembered some lines from a poem she had

liked in her schooldays:—

Henceforth the world will only be

A wider prison-house to me,—

and sighed. A disgust of life weighed upon her heart; some such feeling

as had twice frozen Frank Shabata’s features while they talked

together. She wished she were back on the Divide.

When Alexandra entered her hotel, the clerk held up one finger and

beckoned to her. As she approached his desk, he handed her a telegram.

Alexandra took the yellow envelope and looked at it in perplexity, then

stepped into the elevator without opening it. As she walked down the

corridor toward her room, she reflected that she was, in a manner,

immune from evil tidings. On reaching her room she locked the door, and

sitting down on a chair by the dresser, opened the telegram. It was

from Hanover, and it read:—

Arrived Hanover last night. Shall wait here until you come. Please

hurry.

CARL LINSTRUM.

Alexandra put her head down on the dresser and burst into tears.

III

The next afternoon Carl and Alexandra were walking across the fields

from Mrs. Hiller’s. Alexandra had left Lincoln after midnight, and Carl

had met her at the Hanover station early in the morning. After they

reached home, Alexandra had gone over to Mrs. Hiller’s to leave a

little present she had bought for her in the city. They stayed at the

old lady’s door but a moment, and then came out to spend the rest of

the afternoon in the sunny fields.

Alexandra had taken off her black traveling suit and put on a white

dress; partly because she saw that her black clothes made Carl

uncomfortable and partly because she felt oppressed by them herself.

They seemed a little like the prison where she had worn them yesterday,

and to be out of place in the open fields. Carl had changed very

little. His cheeks were browner and fuller. He looked less like a tired

scholar than when he went away a year ago, but no one, even now, would

have taken him for a man of business. His soft, lustrous black eyes,

his whimsical smile, would be less against him in the Klondike than on

the Divide. There are always dreamers on the frontier.

Carl and Alexandra had been talking since morning. Her letter had never

reached him. He had first learned of her misfortune from a San

Francisco paper, four weeks old, which he had picked up in a saloon,

and which contained a brief account of Frank Shabata’s trial. When he

put down the paper, he had already made up his mind that he could reach

Alexandra as quickly as a letter could; and ever since he had been on

the way; day and night, by the fastest boats and trains he could catch.

His steamer had been held back two days by rough weather.

As they came out of Mrs. Hiller’s garden they took up their talk again

where they had left it.

“But could you come away like that, Carl, without arranging things?

Could you just walk off and leave your business?” Alexandra asked.

Carl laughed. “Prudent Alexandra! You see, my dear, I happen to have an

honest partner. I trust him with everything. In fact, it’s been his

enterprise from the beginning, you know. I’m in it only because he took

me in. I’ll have to go back in the spring. Perhaps you will want to go

with me then. We haven’t turned up millions yet, but we’ve got a start

that’s worth following. But this winter I’d like to spend with you. You

won’t feel that we ought to wait longer, on Emil’s account, will you,

Alexandra?”

Alexandra shook her head. “No, Carl; I don’t feel that way about it.

And surely you needn’t mind anything Lou and Oscar say now. They are

much angrier with me about Emil, now, than about you. They say it was

all my fault. That I ruined him by sending him to college.”

“No, I don’t care a button for Lou or Oscar. The moment I knew you were

in trouble, the moment I thought you might need me, it all looked

different. You’ve always been a triumphant kind of person.” Carl

hesitated, looking sidewise at her strong, full figure. “But you do

need me now, Alexandra?”

She put her hand on his arm. “I needed you terribly when it happened,

Carl. I cried for you at night. Then everything seemed to get hard

inside of me, and I thought perhaps I should never care for you again.

But when I got your telegram yesterday, then—then it was just as it

used to be. You are all I have in the world, you know.”

Carl pressed her hand in silence. They were passing the Shabatas’ empty

house now, but they avoided the orchard path and took one that led over

by the pasture pond.

“Can you understand it, Carl?” Alexandra murmured. “I have had nobody

but Ivar and Signa to talk to. Do talk to me. Can you understand it?

Could you have believed that of Marie Tovesky? I would have been cut to

pieces, little by little, before I would have betrayed her trust in

me!”

Carl looked at the shining spot of water before them. “Maybe she was

cut to pieces, too, Alexandra. I am sure she tried hard; they both did.

That was why Emil went to Mexico, of course. And he was going away

again, you tell me, though he had only been home three weeks. You

remember that Sunday when I went with Emil up to the French Church

fair? I thought that day there was some kind of feeling, something

unusual, between them. I meant to talk to you about it. But on my way

back I met Lou and Oscar and got so angry that I forgot everything

else. You mustn’t be hard on them, Alexandra. Sit down here by the pond

a minute. I want to tell you something.”

They sat down on the grass-tufted bank and Carl told her how he had

seen Emil and Marie out by the pond that morning, more than a year ago,

and how young and charming and full of grace they had seemed to him.

“It happens like that in the world sometimes, Alexandra,” he added

earnestly. “I’ve seen it before. There are women who spread ruin around

them through no fault of theirs, just by being too beautiful, too full

of life and love. They can’t help it. People come to them as people go

to a warm fire in winter. I used to feel that in her when she was a

little girl. Do you remember how all the Bohemians crowded round her in

the store that day, when she gave Emil her candy? You remember those

yellow sparks in her eyes?”

Alexandra sighed. “Yes. People couldn’t help loving her. Poor Frank

does, even now, I think; though he’s got himself in such a tangle that

for a long time his love has been bitterer than his hate. But if you

saw there was anything wrong, you ought to have told me, Carl.”

Carl took her hand and smiled patiently. “My dear, it was something one

felt in the air, as you feel the spring coming, or a storm in summer. I

didn’t _see_ anything. Simply, when I was with those two young things,

I felt my blood go quicker, I felt—how shall I say it?—an acceleration

of life. After I got away, it was all too delicate, too intangible, to

write about.”

Alexandra looked at him mournfully. “I try to be more liberal about

such things than I used to be. I try to realize that we are not all

made alike. Only, why couldn’t it have been Raoul Marcel, or Jan

Smirka? Why did it have to be my boy?”

“Because he was the best there was, I suppose. They were both the best

you had here.”

The sun was dropping low in the west when the two friends rose and took

the path again. The straw-stacks were throwing long shadows, the owls

were flying home to the prairie-dog town. When they came to the corner

where the pastures joined, Alexandra’s twelve young colts were

galloping in a drove over the brow of the hill.

“Carl,” said Alexandra, “I should like to go up there with you in the

spring. I haven’t been on the water since we crossed the ocean, when I

was a little girl. After we first came out here I used to dream

sometimes about the shipyard where father worked, and a little sort of

inlet, full of masts.” Alexandra paused. After a moment’s thought she

said, “But you would never ask me to go away for good, would you?”

“Of course not, my dearest. I think I know how you feel about this

country as well as you do yourself.” Carl took her hand in both his own

and pressed it tenderly.

“Yes, I still feel that way, though Emil is gone. When I was on the

train this morning, and we got near Hanover, I felt something like I

did when I drove back with Emil from the river that time, in the dry

year. I was glad to come back to it. I’ve lived here a long time. There

is great peace here, Carl, and freedom.... I thought when I came out of

that prison, where poor Frank is, that I should never feel free again.

But I do, here.” Alexandra took a deep breath and looked off into the

red west.

“You belong to the land,” Carl murmured, “as you have always said. Now

more than ever.”

“Yes, now more than ever. You remember what you once said about the

graveyard, and the old story writing itself over? Only it is we who

write it, with the best we have.”

They paused on the last ridge of the pasture, overlooking the house and

the windmill and the stables that marked the site of John Bergson’s

homestead. On every side the brown waves of the earth rolled away to

meet the sky.

“Lou and Oscar can’t see those things,” said Alexandra suddenly.

“Suppose I do will my land to their children, what difference will that

make? The land belongs to the future, Carl; that’s the way it seems to

me. How many of the names on the county clerk’s plat will be there in

fifty years? I might as well try to will the sunset over there to my

brother’s children. We come and go, but the land is always here. And

the people who love it and understand it are the people who own it—for

a little while.”

Carl looked at her wonderingly. She was still gazing into the west, and

in her face there was that exalted serenity that sometimes came to her

at moments of deep feeling. The level rays of the sinking sun shone in

her clear eyes.

“Why are you thinking of such things now, Alexandra?”

“I had a dream before I went to Lincoln—But I will tell you about that

afterward, after we are married. It will never come true, now, in the

way I thought it might.” She took Carl’s arm and they walked toward the

gate. “How many times we have walked this path together, Carl. How many

times we will walk it again! Does it seem to you like coming back to

your own place? Do you feel at peace with the world here? I think we

shall be very happy. I haven’t any fears. I think when friends marry,

they are safe. We don’t suffer like—those young ones.” Alexandra ended

with a sigh.

They had reached the gate. Before Carl opened it, he drew Alexandra to

him and kissed her softly, on her lips and on her eyes.

She leaned heavily on his shoulder. “I am tired,” she murmured. “I have

been very lonely, Carl.”

They went into the house together, leaving the Divide behind them,

under the evening star. Fortunate country, that is one day to receive

hearts like Alexandra’s into its bosom, to give them out again in the

yellow wheat, in the rustling corn, in the shining eyes of youth!