Читать книгу The Yoke of Life - Frederick Philip Grove - Страница 6

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NEW STIRRINGS

But things did not go well.

On the eighth of August the heat had been unbearable from early in the morning on, with the air so surcharged with moisture that the perspiration of the body did not evaporate, standing in beads on forehead and hands and causing acute discomfort. Such is the atmosphere before the grand spectacular events of summer on the prairies: tornado, thunder-storm, or hail.

Shortly after dinner there was an indefinable change. No wind sprang up; but the aspen leaves trembled as in the spasm of a sob.

Then, suddenly, things began to develop fast. Huge, vaulted clouds rose into the sky as if from nowhere. Quick little rushes of wind flitted this way and that; and there was a noticeable fall in temperature. A flash of lightning winked over the darkening landscape, followed by an unearthly silence.

Every manifestation of the powers above entered the vast, still dome of the sky as words spoken behind the wings enter a darkened stage. Yet this stage was not dark but rather lighted with a weird, incomprehensible radiance which made colours and details of form stand out with marvellous brilliance and distinctness and at an enormous distance. From the correction line, where Mr. Crawford's cottage stood, an upland meadow in the Dusky Mountains to the west showed, under the lid of the clouds, like an emerald in the black velvet of the forest. It was over thirty miles away.

A seething, whitish festoon of cloud drew nearer from the north-west, rolling along like a cylindrical, revolving broom. Every now and then it was whitely illumined by a flash which was at last followed by nearer and nearer thunder.

Abruptly, then, with a fierce onslaught of wind which bent the young poplars everywhere to the breaking point, there was a drumming noise which rapidly increased in volume. Everywhere hail rebounded from the ground, from everything that offered resistance. The first hailstones melted as soon as they touched the heat-saturated soil where they had flattened the lowlier plants. Then, with the size of the stones increasing till they were as large as sparrows' eggs, they began to cover the ground. The leaves of the trees were first shredded, then torn off, and pounded into a pulp.

A white terror of light seemed to rend the world asunder and to stab every eye, followed by a fierce, rattling peal which made the hearer tremble by virtue of its diabolical significance.

Thus the hail continued to fall for half an hour, drumming down on all the landscape.

When it was over, ice lay four inches deep on the ground. The world seemed to stand in ruins. Everywhere the green screen of foliage was gone; once more the black, charred stumps stood out in bold relief. The atmosphere was chilled as by the first snow-fall of a coming winter; yet there was the smell of crushed green things in the air.

Man ventured out to look at his losses.

A mile west of the school, Hausman and Willy, his oldest son, were standing on the bush road which led south and staring at what had been a wheat field.

Hausman, tall, slender, sallow, and pock-pitten, shrugged his shoulders and mumbled, "That's what was to put shoes on the children's feet; and clothes on the back of the woman. A man works and works till he's worn out. The crop grows fine. Wheat is two dollars. Hail wipes it out. Take a rope and go into the bush . . ."

Two and a half miles farther east, Kolm and Len were working, up to their knees in mud and water, to raise the sheep shed on to some stones. Dead chickens were lying about in the yard as if they had been killed by lightning. A cow lowed by the side of her calf which had been slain. The sheep bleated in a panic. In the house, not a pane of glass had been left whole.

Kolm, too, was talking, half to himself, half to Len. "That should make those bloodsuckers shake in their boots!" he said. "They are waiting to get their interest and a payment on capital account! Why don't they say, We've got a common stake in the country, you and I. You give the work; we give the tools; we shall share the profit and the loss! But the hail doesn't hit them. I lose all; they nothing. They merely add the interest to the principal and have a better strangle-hold on me."

Len listened but did not stop in his work.

At night, in order to be alone for a moment and to surrender himself to his feelings, he went behind the barn and stood there, barefooted, shivering in the chill that seemed to breathe from the bush. A rebellious impulse made him assert that even now he would not acknowledge defeat: far countries he was going to see with his eyes: strange thoughts he was going to master with his mind: all the beauty there was in the world he was going to grasp with his soul! . . .

When his stepfather called, "Len, time to start milking!" he had to clear his throat before he could answer, "Yes, father, I'm coming."

A few weeks later, the Kolms were sitting in the living room of the house and entertaining a guest.

This guest was Mr. Joseph, a thick-set, broad-shouldered man of thirty-five or so, with small, blue eyes looking out into the world, half scared, half with a cunning alertness. The sparse hairs of his short, brown moustache seemed to grow in all directions at once. He wore a blue suit of old-country cut, built for a life-time. The cloth was so thick and heavy that the seams had never yet flattened out.

He had come along with the Kolms from Macdonald School where services had been conducted in the morning by the Lutheran pastor of Odensee, a small Russo-German village south-east of Macdonald.

Mr. Joseph was a recent settler who had "homesteaded" a quarter section in the bush three miles north-west of Kolm's place. The conversation was carried on in German.

"You walked?" Kolm exclaimed at a certain point in the conversation.

"Yes," Joseph replied. "It took a week. They have a government office in the city. They advised me to go to the bush in the winter. I don't know . . ." He shrugged his shoulders and looked from one to the other.

"And you walked home again?" Kolm's mind had clung to this one fact, amazing to him.

"Yea. They'd have given me a ticket if I had signed down. You get your transportation both ways. McDougall is halfway to Deer River; that's where the camp is, close to Elk Lake. But I don't want to be alone. It is bad enough here. I keep thinking of my family over there."

"Pretty bad," Kolm nodded. "Heard from them recently?"

"Not a word for over a year. The Russian mail goes through Germany."

"Yea," Kolm said. "And nothing comes through. How many children, did you say?"

"Six. And two are big boys by now. Eight or nine years old."

"What did you say they'll pay you there in the bush?"

"Thirty-five dollars a month and board. But I'm afraid to go so far alone."

"Len," Kolm called as if the boy had been far away and not sitting next to him in the same room.

"Yes, father?"

"How'd you like to go along with Joseph?"

"Might be all right."

"How'd he suit you?" Kolm asked his guest.

"Will they take him?" Joseph asked hesitatingly.

"Why not?"

"He's only eighteen. As far as I'm concerned, he'd be all right. He speaks English."

"Sure," Kolm said.

Joseph pondered. "I'll tell you," he said at last. "If Len promises to meet me at McDougall when I pass through, I'll go back to the city and see."

"What? Walk in again?"

"Sure. That's nothing."

"What do you say, Len?"

"All right," the boy replied.

"Six months at thirty-five dollars. That would pay the interest if nothing else."

"They might not pay him so much," Joseph suggested.

"Well, say at thirty!"

"I'll see," Joseph said.

"How about your wood?" Mrs. Kolm asked, looking up from where she had been sitting idle by the window.

"Well?" Kolm asked sharply; she was interfering in things which did not concern her.

"Who's going to haul it?" she asked ironically; she liked to disturb her husband's plans.

"Who? Who's there but Charlie?"

"Charlie? Charlie can't handle a team."

"Time he'd learn," Kolm replied undisturbedly.

This pleased Charlie greatly. He nudged Len with his elbow.

"Come on," he whispered. And the two boys slipped out.

There was no snow on the ground yet. It was the season of the Indian summer though the landscape, deprived, by the hail, of its veil of green, looked wintry and bare.

"Say," Charlie said, hopping and fidgeting as soon as they were in the yard. "I am going to haul. Did you hear?"

"Yes," Len said. "You won't like it so well after awhile."

"Pshaw! Why not?"

"It's cold in winter."

"I'll get mitts. And Bill Hausman is going to haul. I'll be going with him."

"Yes," Len said, "you can tie your horses behind his load."

"And sit with Bill!"

"You'll miss school."

"Doesn't matter!" Charlie said. "I'm nearly fifteen."

Whenever the boys were alone, they spoke English.

"You better go in," Len said callously. "I want to have a walk."

"I'll come along," Charlie begged, springing from the toes of one foot to those of the other and kicking his heels.

"No," Len said shortly, "you won't."

"You can't go without asking!" That was Charlie's revenge for Len's refusal of his company.

Len went abruptly into the house.

As he often did these days, he felt the need for solitude, for introspection, for an observation of his natural surroundings, undisturbed by any human presence.

Shortly after, he left the yard and crossed the road.

The warm, bronzed air of the fall lay over the bush. In its aisles Len lost himself. Vague things were astir in him: things which he could not have shared with another.

He was eighteen years old. His body had, during the last few years, gone through an astonishing development. Seen alone, he looked tall and sturdy. It was only when seen with other boys of his age, Willy Hausman, for instance, that he still looked undersized and flat of chest. Yet his features had remained thin, his nose peaked. His movements were awkward with the angularity of adolescence.

For awhile, as he threaded the bush at random, his thoughts remained articulate, concerned with the two men in the house. If he could have had his choice, he would have gone to school. But he knew that that could not be; and he had accepted the fact. It would be work in the bush. Heavy work. Well, he was not afraid of heavy work; at home or elsewhere, what did it matter? To go away and to see something of the world meant adventure. Distance had the glimmer of fairylands; travel, the allurements of the ideal. Perfection was anywhere but at home. Even a trip to McDougall or Poplar Grove had about it something exotic. Poplar Grove was only three miles from the great Lake, and it had long been a dream of his to see that lake one day. In towns people lived a different life; more comfortable, more indolent. The peculiar kind of schooling he had gone through had made Len a dreamer of dreams. Vistas had opened into strange realms of the mind. He did not question their value; they lured him. Others had gone the mysterious paths of knowledge: how could he think but that for him, too, they were worth going?

Life stretched ahead: life at this stage of adolescence is something mysterious. There was much to do; there was also much time to do it in: years and years! What did it matter if he lost a winter?

Yes, he would go. He would travel into foreign parts and mingle with men from all over the country. He would sit at camp fires at night; he would listen to much that others had to tell.

These things flitted past his mind in half-discerned outlines: snatches of thought, feeling, perception. His whole being seemed to float in a sea of unknown things: the world was wide and infinite in his mind.

Having gone at random, swayed and dominated by an obscure reaching out of the impulses urging in him towards life, he found himself at the edge of the Big Slough. South, in the margin of the bush which seemed to curve away into infinity a small white spot appeared: Mr. Crawford's cottage. Len realised with a pang that nothing drew him there. Mr. Crawford had done much for him in the past; no doubt he would do more for him in the future; but in the poignant present he had no place. Mr. Crawford represented mind, not soul; in Len it was the soul which was awaking.

He sat down on a log, feeling vaguely unhappy. A longing was in him, unrecognised as such: a first adumbration that a human being is, in mind and soul, imperfect by itself; that somewhere in this world it must find its complement. A half is seeking the other half which will complete it into a self-contained whole. The first wing-reaches of this awaking are always painful: they are never understood by the one who suffers from them. If they were, the purpose of life would be thwarted. They are the most delicate thing there is in human growth: more delicate in a boy than in a girl; and the most disastrous thing that can happen to the young, emerging soul is to have its mysterious stirrings coarsely explained.

Vaguely Len rose and went on. A strange, bitter-sweet unrest seemed to impel him.

Beyond the slough, the bush stood virgin, bare, mysterious: it was dead and living at the same time; for the trees, prematurely deprived of their leaves by the hail, were trying to repair the damage done. Buds that had been only half developed when the hail broke the protecting leaves had swollen with the pressure of the sap deflected into them, in order to put forth a new crop of belated leaves. The boy did not know this; his knowledge of nature was not theoretic; it was pragmatic, taking the facts and interpreting them in terms of moods.

It was the first time that he experienced anything like this, a longing for a sympathy in nature. As, by the lack of a teacher's guidance, his mind had been delayed in applying its growth to the task of acquiring formal knowledge, thereby giving it a power to grasp which was hampered only by his incomplete mastery of mechanical details, thus his soul, too, had failed to find objects to expend its energies on till it had grown in strength and was now flooding even his physical consciousness.

The aspect of these woods with their irregular border-line along the slough—here receding and forming a bay, there jutting boldly forward into a bluff—seemed to give that repose; he went on.

His age, full of enigmatic developments concentrated into a few hours, saturated with what is commonly spread out over years of scarcely perceptible unfolding, was preëminently that of the mythic poets who project into nature the procreations of that awe in which they stand of themselves, in the forms of fabulous concrescences of incongruous parts which they harmonise into imaginable wholes.

Len had hardly entered the bush on the east side of the slough when he stood arrested. His heart was pounding so that he could hear its thud; he felt the tremour of its beat running through his frame. He stared straight ahead. Among the bare boles of the snow-white aspens, dead and yet alive, he seemed to discern a shape. It was a fabulous creature: the body that of a large deer; the head almost that of a small but nobly-shaped horse, especially in its gesture of startled attention; and from its forehead there sprang a single horn, spirally wound or twisted, but perfectly straight, and ending in a fine point three feet above the head. The glassy and immovable eye of the creature seemed to have gathered in it the whole essence of shy, wild nature with which our northern woods surprise us. Even in summer these woods seem to be pervaded with a chilly, virgin atmosphere; slight shivers seem to run through them: such shivers as run through the wild horse of the prairie when it first feels the touch of bridle or rope.

In a moment the vision he had seen was gone; it had resolved itself into what he knew by the name of a jumping deer. Standing as it did among the small growth of young aspen boles, beyond a thicket of older trees, it had appeared, as to size, hugely exaggerated: the horn on its forehead was no more than the branch of one of the boles. But, as the picture which he had seen decomposed itself into its elements, Len felt sorry with that sadness which overcomes us when we see or hear a beautiful marvel rationally explained.

Two or three years ago he would have been thrilled by that rational explanation: then the most wonderful thing in his experience had been the awaking of the mind which found delight even in the multiplication table. Now he was ready to scorn and spurn the merely reasonable things. The unexplainable made its appeal: poetry, mystic significance, religious symbolism. But, since he had not yet entered the realm of literature, his urge was denied its natural outlet.

He went on; and as he did so, the rational explanation of what he had seen fell away; the vision itself remained.

Again he sat down; there was no real thought in him; nothing proceeding from one definite point to another. His soul swayed to the slightest adumbration of things seen or heard. Sometimes, of an evening, when the air was almost breathless with stillness, the notes of an accordion would float over the bush, played somewhere in a new clearing by one who was alone as Len's soul. As he sat there in the bush, on a half-decayed tree trunk, absent-mindedly breaking fragments of bark and throwing them aimlessly on the ground, detached notes and bars seemed actually to reach his ear; he could not have told whether he heard them or merely imagined he did. With them, little bits of visions arose and flitted away again; persistent among them being one which might, to a more experienced eye, have revealed their origin. It was the sight of the edge of a dress on a slender, girlish bosom, rising, falling in the rhythm of a breath; it was followed by that of a blushing throat, thin and white, anæmically white, making the flood of colour surging out of a body all the more of a marvel.

At last, when this vision arose once more, it became so disturbing that Len got to his feet. With half-closed eyes and half-parted lips he stood and held his breath, conscious that he himself blushed all over his body, the blood slowly rising into his face with a feeling of heat.

Suddenly the eternal wonder of the growing being seemed as of its own accord to take a direction. Something in him seemed to whisper, "Ye shall be as God, knowing good and evil!"

For some reason which he avoided explaining to himself, he turned west and began to step briskly along. He looked up at the sun. It might be three o'clock. He was glad it was not yet time to go home.

Half an hour later he came, still threading the poplar forest, to Hausman's line fence. He was on the point of turning back; for he seemed half aware that he had obeyed a shameful impulse. But after a moment's hesitation he climbed the fence and passed on, over half-cleared ground from which all large timber had been removed. South of him the young bush thinned out entirely: beyond, lay the strip of Hausman's field. There, walking would have been easier; but he was reluctant to emerge into the open space, as if he were bent on a furtive errand. Then he came to the yard fence and stopped.

South of the cabin he saw two or three groups of children: Willy with other boys of his age, was sitting on the tongue of a wagon; Lydia carried a baby, tossing it up and down; the smaller children were playing hide-and-seek about the barn. A dog was chasing about, worrying a rag which Ernest tried to pull away. The Hausmans, too, had callers—as who had not in the bush on church days?

As Len stood there, looking on and half wishing to join the others, yet hesitating to do so, Lydia suddenly called one of the older girls who, in their white muslin dresses, were sitting on a bench. Len could distinctly hear her voice.

"Minnie," she said, "you take the baby for awhile, will you?"

And Minnie did.

Lydia went to the back of the yard, past the well and the granary which was, as is often the case on a pioneer homestead, the best-built structure on the place.

Len knew he had come to see her. Some obscure instinct told him that she could interpret for him what he had felt that afternoon; and, having scarcely passed the stage where a boy looks with contempt on girls and would not for the world let others see that they interest him, he hesitated about entering the yard. But he waited.

For five minutes he waited in vain. Then a dry, crackling sound of breaking twigs startled him in his rear. He veered about; and there stood Lydia, thin, slender, delicate like the deer he had seen.

"I saw you from the yard," she said; and a blush, rising from her bare throat, spread slowly over her face.

Len, looking at her, remembered his own blush earlier in the day, when he had felt himself blushing all over his body. A strange weakness came over him. But he controlled himself and deliberately falsified his attitude by assuming a swagger in his gait as he approached her. "Let's go for a walk," he said.

"All right," the girl answered shyly, smiling up into his face. She was fully as tall as Len; but her narrow, sloping shoulders made her look frail and extremely light. Something of the blush still lingered in her face which now looked very alluring in white and rose. Her smooth, flaxen hair, gathered in a knot above the nape of her neck, had, from the shadows cast by the boles, dark-golden glimmers in it. Len had never seen her like that: she was a bud opening in the summer air. Last winter she had still worn her hair in two long braids.

She was stepping along ahead of him. He had a near view of her neck where a few short, silky hairs were curling into the hollow of the nape; and as he looked at them, his heart began to pound.

She wore a dress of white lawn, much worn with many washings and somewhat ill-fitting, too; but that Len did not see. To him she looked surprisingly beautiful and alluring. He was glad he had come. Reality excelled all visions.

They went on in silence, winding their way through the bush. There seemed to be nothing in the whole world to speak about. Yet speech seemed imperative. They might have done what they longed to do and never said a word: what they longed to do was to touch each other; but neither dared.

At last, when they came to the edge of the field, Lydia stopped; the moment she did so, Len felt he must speak and cleared his throat.

"Are you going to go to school next winter?"

"I may." She lowered her eyes. "Let's sit for awhile," she added, pointing to the fallen trunk of a tree. "Are you?"

"No." Deliberately he put a note of indifference into his voice. "I am going away."

She looked up.

"To Deer River. To work in a lumber camp."

"Deer River? Where is that?"

"North-west. Two hundred miles from here."

A silence fell. "When?" Lydia breathed.

"I don't know. Soon. I am going with Joseph." As, before, he had forced a swagger into his gait, so he now forced a swagger into his voice. He acted under an impulse to worry and torture her. But with a quick glance at her face he saw that all her colour had disappeared. Yet he felt a savage satisfaction. "I suppose you are glad?" he asked.

"Why should I be glad?"

"Oh," he said. "Just so."

She stared at him, her dark-blue eyes wide open.

"You like Henry Kugler. I'll be out of the way."

"No," she replied with the ghost of a voice. "I don't like him."

"He's strong."

"He's a bully."

Len's feeling of satisfaction deepened.

"You," she hesitated. "You seem to be glad you won't go to school?"

He stretched a leg in front of him. "I can't be going to school forever. I am getting too old to sit with the kids. A man's got to make his living."

The girl was silent. "Then," she said after awhile, not without a note of coquetry, "I don't think I want to go either."

They looked at each other and reddened.

Len rose and stepped close till his hand touched her shoulder. At that they shrank from each other. Yet, when he sat down again, it was close to her.

"I thought you were fond of learning?" she asked.

"Yes," Len said with an effect as if he were dropping a mask. "It's all nonsense. I didn't mean what I said. I don't know whether I want to go or not. I shall have to, I think. But I'd rather stay, now." Slowly and tentatively he lifted his hand behind her and put it about her shoulders.

Bending forward and contracting, as it were, she sank into his arms. They kissed and drew apart again.

For a long while they sat by each other, a half-guilty look in their eyes. Then, as if by no volition of their own, their fingers met; and an electric current passed from one to the other.

Len cleared his throat. "Lydia, I shall have to go. I should prefer to go to school. I want to be a teacher. Oh, I don't know. Mr. Crawford does not think I should be a farmer. I am not very strong. And I should like to learn. I should like to learn all there is to be learned and be a great man. But it is a long way off. I should have to go to school for three more years. Then I could teach; and that, Mr. Crawford says, is only a beginning. But if I get that far, I should have a chance. To get there, I'd do anything on earth. I think I shall work at my books even in the lumber camp."

"Yes," she whispered, "you've always done well."

"It isn't that. Others do well; but they do it by hard work. I can't express what I mean." He looked at the sun and rose.

Eyes lowered, she did likewise and waited.

Len, seeing it, hesitated himself. His mind was groping about for something to say which might convey a fraction of what he felt. Nothing seemed adequate. His breast expanded; he stammered, "Lydia, will you think of me when I'm gone?"

"Always," she whispered half audibly.

Once more they stood.

Then, with a look and a smile at each other, they parted.

But they had not gone a dozen paces before Len turned. "Lydia!"

"Yes?" She had known that there must be something to follow.

"Will you meet me again? Here? Next Sunday?"

That did not release the tension; but it was something to look forward to. "I'll wait for you here," she said and nodded.

When next they looked back, the bush stood between them.

Len gained the road and stepped out briskly. It was the time of the evening when the sun, though still shining, has lost his power to illumine and to heat. Nighthawks were circling through the quiet air, veering and careening in their bold, freaky flight. In Len, a sweet, cool, chaste exaltation arose, in keeping with the quality of the hour.

He passed the cross-roads leading north to where the Dicks lived, the youngest in age of the settlers in this district. A fleeting thought of Helen Dick crossed his mind. She was a mere child; he was old and wise, knowing much of life; that life which he was going to conquer!

He went on and on and came in sight of the yard and house which had been home to him. Since he had left the place a few hours ago, he had sailed the seven seas and been away for years. He was changed: strong, yet weary: an adventurer coming home from a raid. He could have sung out to announce his coming; for in him sang the blood of youth.

The house, in the evening light, looked unchanged, unchangeable, homelike, sheltered; it suggested a family circle, protection, rest. He carried a secret in his heart which nobody shared who lived in that house.

That moment his stepfather issued from the door, preceded by the guest of the afternoon. They came to the open gate and stopped, conversing. They looked grey and dark down there, as if they had arrayed themselves on purpose to fit and blend into the evening landscape.

Len slanted down from the grade. He had to pass by them.

But his stepfather spoke. "Well, you got back, did you? Wait a moment. I have talked it over with Joseph. He'll see whether he can get you a job with that outfit. Maybe you have thought it over yourself? He wants you to repeat that you are willing to go. You are not afraid to leave home, are you?"

"No. I'm not afraid."

"And you'll go?"

"Yes, I'll go."

"That's all right, then," Kolm concluded, and looked at his guest.

"I guess so," Joseph said. "I'll start tomorrow. I'll write when he is to meet me."

Len went on, feeling all of a sudden committed.