Chapter: Winter has settled down over the Divide again; the season in
which Nature recuperates, in which she sinks to sleep between the
fruitfulness of autumn and the passion of spring. The birds have
gone. The teeming life that goes on down in the long grass is
exterminated. The prairie-dog keeps his hole. The rabbits run
shivering from one frozen garden patch to another and are hard put
to it to find frost-bitten cabbage-stalks. At night the coyotes
roam the wintry waste, howling for food. The variegated fields
are all one color now; the pastures, the stubble, the roads, the
sky are the same leaden gray. The hedgerows and trees are scarcely
perceptible against the bare earth, whose slaty hue they have taken
on. The ground is frozen so hard that it bruises the foot to walk
in the roads or in the ploughed fields. It is like an iron country,
and the spirit is oppressed by its rigor and melancholy. One could
easily believe that in that dead landscape the germs of life and
fruitfulness were extinct forever.

Alexandra has settled back into her old routine. There are weekly
letters from Emil. Lou and Oscar she has not seen since Carl
went away. To avoid awkward encounters in the presence of curious
spectators, she has stopped going to the Norwegian Church and drives
up to the Reform Church at Hanover, or goes with Marie Shabata to
the Catholic Church, locally known as "the French Church." She has
not told Marie about Carl, or her differences with her brothers.
She was never very communicative about her own affairs, and when
she came to the point, an instinct told her that about such things
she and Marie would not understand one another.

Old Mrs. Lee had been afraid that family misunderstandings might
deprive her of her yearly visit to Alexandra. But on the first day
of December Alexandra telephoned Annie that to-morrow she would
send Ivar over for her mother, and the next day the old lady arrived
with her bundles. For twelve years Mrs. Lee had always entered
Alexandra's sitting-room with the same exclamation, "Now we be yust-a
like old times!" She enjoyed the liberty Alexandra gave her, and
hearing her own language about her all day long. Here she could
wear her nightcap and sleep with all her windows shut, listen
to Ivar reading the Bible, and here she could run about among the
stables in a pair of Emil's old boots. Though she was bent almost
double, she was as spry as a gopher. Her face was as brown as if
it had been varnished, and as full of wrinkles as a washerwoman's
hands. She had three jolly old teeth left in the front of her
mouth, and when she grinned she looked very knowing, as if when
you found out how to take it, life wasn't half bad. While she and
Alexandra patched and pieced and quilted, she talked incessantly
about stories she read in a Swedish family paper, telling the plots
in great detail; or about her life on a dairy farm in Gottland
when she was a girl. Sometimes she forgot which were the printed
stories and which were the real stories, it all seemed so far away.
She loved to take a little brandy, with hot water and sugar, before
she went to bed, and Alexandra always had it ready for her. "It
sends good dreams," she would say with a twinkle in her eye.

When Mrs. Lee had been with Alexandra for a week, Marie Shabata
telephoned one morning to say that Frank had gone to town for the
day, and she would like them to come over for coffee in the afternoon.
Mrs. Lee hurried to wash out and iron her new cross-stitched apron,
which she had finished only the night before; a checked gingham
apron worked with a design ten inches broad across the bottom;
a hunting scene, with fir trees and a stag and dogs and huntsmen.
Mrs. Lee was firm with herself at dinner, and refused a second
helping of apple dumplings. "I ta-ank I save up," she said with
a giggle.

At two o'clock in the afternoon Alexandra's cart drove up to the
Shabatas' gate, and Marie saw Mrs. Lee's red shawl come bobbing up
the path. She ran to the door and pulled the old woman into the
house with a hug, helping her to take off her wraps while Alexandra
blanketed the horse outside. Mrs. Lee had put on her best black
satine dress--she abominated woolen stuffs, even in winter--and
a crocheted collar, fastened with a big pale gold pin, containing
faded daguerreotypes of her father and mother. She had not worn
her apron for fear of rumpling it, and now she shook it out and
tied it round her waist with a conscious air. Marie drew back and
threw up her hands, exclaiming, "Oh, what a beauty! I've never
seen this one before, have I, Mrs. Lee?"

The old woman giggled and ducked her head. "No, yust las' night I
ma-ake. See dis tread; verra strong, no wa-ash out, no fade. My
sister send from Sveden. I yust-a ta-ank you like dis."

Marie ran to the door again. "Come in, Alexandra. I have been
looking at Mrs. Lee's apron. Do stop on your way home and show it
to Mrs. Hiller. She's crazy about cross-stitch."

While Alexandra removed her hat and veil, Mrs. Lee went out to the
kitchen and settled herself in a wooden rocking-chair by the stove,
looking with great interest at the table, set for three, with a white
cloth, and a pot of pink geraniums in the middle. "My, a-an't you
gotta fine plants; such-a much flower. How you keep from freeze?"

She pointed to the window-shelves, full of blooming fuchsias and
geraniums.

"I keep the fire all night, Mrs. Lee, and when it's very cold I put
them all on the table, in the middle of the room. Other nights I
only put newspapers behind them. Frank laughs at me for fussing,
but when they don't bloom he says, 'What's the matter with the
darned things?'--What do you hear from Carl, Alexandra?"

"He got to Dawson before the river froze, and now I suppose I won't
hear any more until spring. Before he left California he sent me
a box of orange flowers, but they didn't keep very well. I have
brought a bunch of Emil's letters for you." Alexandra came out
from the sitting-room and pinched Marie's cheek playfully. "You
don't look as if the weather ever froze you up. Never have colds,
do you? That's a good girl. She had dark red cheeks like this
when she was a little girl, Mrs. Lee. She looked like some queer
foreign kind of a doll. I've never forgot the first time I saw
you in Mieklejohn's store, Marie, the time father was lying sick.
Carl and I were talking about that before he went away."

"I remember, and Emil had his kitten along. When are you going to
send Emil's Christmas box?"

"It ought to have gone before this. I'll have to send it by mail
now, to get it there in time."

Marie pulled a dark purple silk necktie from her workbasket. "I
knit this for him. It's a good color, don't you think? Will you
please put it in with your things and tell him it's from me, to
wear when he goes serenading."

Alexandra laughed. "I don't believe he goes serenading much. He
says in one letter that the Mexican ladies are said to be very
beautiful, but that don't seem to me very warm praise."

Marie tossed her head. "Emil can't fool me. If he's bought a
guitar, he goes serenading. Who wouldn't, with all those Spanish
girls dropping flowers down from their windows! I'd sing to them
every night, wouldn't you, Mrs. Lee?"

The old lady chuckled. Her eyes lit up as Marie bent down and
opened the oven door. A delicious hot fragrance blew out into the
tidy kitchen. "My, somet'ing smell good!" She turned to Alexandra
with a wink, her three yellow teeth making a brave show, "I ta-ank
dat stop my yaw from ache no more!" she said contentedly.

Marie took out a pan of delicate little rolls, stuffed with stewed
apricots, and began to dust them over with powdered sugar. "I hope
you'll like these, Mrs. Lee; Alexandra does. The Bohemians always
like them with their coffee. But if you don't, I have a coffee-cake
with nuts and poppy seeds. Alexandra, will you get the cream jug?
I put it in the window to keep cool."

"The Bohemians," said Alexandra, as they drew up to the table,
"certainly know how to make more kinds of bread than any other
people in the world. Old Mrs. Hiller told me once at the church
supper that she could make seven kinds of fancy bread, but Marie
could make a dozen."

Mrs. Lee held up one of the apricot rolls between her brown thumb
and forefinger and weighed it critically. "Yust like-a fedders,"
she pronounced with satisfaction. "My, a-an't dis nice!" she
exclaimed as she stirred her coffee. "I yust ta-ake a liddle yelly
now, too, I ta-ank."

Alexandra and Marie laughed at her forehandedness, and fell to
talking of their own affairs. "I was afraid you had a cold when
I talked to you over the telephone the other night, Marie. What
was the matter, had you been crying?"

"Maybe I had," Marie smiled guiltily. "Frank was out late that
night. Don't you get lonely sometimes in the winter, when everybody
has gone away?"

"I thought it was something like that. If I hadn't had company,
I'd have run over to see for myself. If you get down-hearted, what
will become of the rest of us?" Alexandra asked.

"I don't, very often. There's Mrs. Lee without any coffee!"

Later, when Mrs. Lee declared that her powers were spent, Marie
and Alexandra went upstairs to look for some crochet patterns the
old lady wanted to borrow. "Better put on your coat, Alexandra.
It's cold up there, and I have no idea where those patterns are. I
may have to look through my old trunks." Marie caught up a shawl
and opened the stair door, running up the steps ahead of her guest.
"While I go through the bureau drawers, you might look in those
hat-boxes on the closet-shelf, over where Frank's clothes hang.
There are a lot of odds and ends in them."

She began tossing over the contents of the drawers, and Alexandra
went into the clothes-closet. Presently she came back, holding a
slender elastic yellow stick in her hand.

"What in the world is this, Marie? You don't mean to tell me Frank
ever carried such a thing?"

Marie blinked at it with astonishment and sat down on the floor.
"Where did you find it? I didn't know he had kept it. I haven't
seen it for years."

"It really is a cane, then?"

"Yes. One he brought from the old country. He used to carry it
when I first knew him. Isn't it foolish? Poor Frank!"

Alexandra twirled the stick in her fingers and laughed. "He must
have looked funny!"

Marie was thoughtful. "No, he didn't, really. It didn't seem out
of place. He used to be awfully gay like that when he was a young
man. I guess people always get what's hardest for them, Alexandra."
Marie gathered the shawl closer about her and still looked hard at
the cane. "Frank would be all right in the right place," she said
reflectively. "He ought to have a different kind of wife, for one
thing. Do you know, Alexandra, I could pick out exactly the right
sort of woman for Frank--now. The trouble is you almost have
to marry a man before you can find out the sort of wife he needs;
and usually it's exactly the sort you are not. Then what are you
going to do about it?" she asked candidly.

Alexandra confessed she didn't know. "However," she added, "it
seems to me that you get along with Frank about as well as any
woman I've ever seen or heard of could."

Marie shook her head, pursing her lips and blowing her warm breath
softly out into the frosty air. "No; I was spoiled at home. I
like my own way, and I have a quick tongue. When Frank brags, I
say sharp things, and he never forgets. He goes over and over it
in his mind; I can feel him. Then I'm too giddy. Frank's wife
ought to be timid, and she ought not to care about another living
thing in the world but just Frank! I didn't, when I married him,
but I suppose I was too young to stay like that." Marie sighed.

Alexandra had never heard Marie speak so frankly about her husband
before, and she felt that it was wiser not to encourage her. No
good, she reasoned, ever came from talking about such things, and
while Marie was thinking aloud, Alexandra had been steadily searching
the hat-boxes. "Aren't these the patterns, Maria?"

Maria sprang up from the floor. "Sure enough, we were looking
for patterns, weren't we? I'd forgot about everything but Frank's
other wife. I'll put that away."

She poked the cane behind Frank's Sunday clothes, and though she
laughed, Alexandra saw there were tears in her eyes.

When they went back to the kitchen, the snow had begun to fall,
and Marie's visitors thought they must be getting home. She went
out to the cart with them, and tucked the robes about old Mrs.
Lee while Alexandra took the blanket off her horse. As they drove
away, Marie turned and went slowly back to the house. She took up
the package of letters Alexandra had brought, but she did not read
them. She turned them over and looked at the foreign stamps, and
then sat watching the flying snow while the dusk deepened in the
kitchen and the stove sent out a red glow.

Marie knew perfectly well that Emil's letters were written more for
her than for Alexandra. They were not the sort of letters that a
young man writes to his sister. They were both more personal and
more painstaking; full of descriptions of the gay life in the old
Mexican capital in the days when the strong hand of Porfirio Diaz
was still strong. He told about bull-fights and cock-fights,
churches and FIESTAS, the flower-markets and the fountains, the
music and dancing, the people of all nations he met in the Italian
restaurants on San Francisco Street. In short, they were the kind
of letters a young man writes to a woman when he wishes himself
and his life to seem interesting to her, when he wishes to enlist
her imagination in his behalf.

Marie, when she was alone or when she sat sewing in the evening,
often thought about what it must be like down there where Emil was;
where there were flowers and street bands everywhere, and carriages
rattling up and down, and where there was a little blind boot-black
in front of the cathedral who could play any tune you asked for
by dropping the lids of blacking-boxes on the stone steps. When
everything is done and over for one at twenty-three, it is pleasant
to let the mind wander forth and follow a young adventurer who has
life before him. "And if it had not been for me," she thought,
"Frank might still be free like that, and having a good time making
people admire him. Poor Frank, getting married wasn't very good
for him either. I'm afraid I do set people against him, as he says.
I seem, somehow, to give him away all the time. Perhaps he would
try to be agreeable to people again, if I were not around. It
seems as if I always make him just as bad as he can be."

Later in the winter, Alexandra looked back upon that afternoon as
the last satisfactory visit she had had with Marie. After that
day the younger woman seemed to shrink more and more into herself.
When she was with Alexandra she was not spontaneous and frank
as she used to be. She seemed to be brooding over something, and
holding something back. The weather had a good deal to do with
their seeing less of each other than usual. There had not been
such snowstorms in twenty years, and the path across the fields was
drifted deep from Christmas until March. When the two neighbors
went to see each other, they had to go round by the wagon-road,
which was twice as far. They telephoned each other almost every
night, though in January there was a stretch of three weeks when
the wires were down, and when the postman did not come at all.

Marie often ran in to see her nearest neighbor, old Mrs. Hiller,
who was crippled with rheumatism and had only her son, the lame
shoemaker, to take care of her; and she went to the French Church,
whatever the weather. She was a sincerely devout girl. She prayed
for herself and for Frank, and for Emil, among the temptations of
that gay, corrupt old city. She found more comfort in the Church
that winter than ever before. It seemed to come closer to her,
and to fill an emptiness that ached in her heart. She tried to
be patient with her husband. He and his hired man usually played
California Jack in the evening. Marie sat sewing or crocheting and
tried to take a friendly interest in the game, but she was always
thinking about the wide fields outside, where the snow was drifting
over the fences; and about the orchard, where the snow was falling
and packing, crust over crust. When she went out into the dark
kitchen to fix her plants for the night, she used to stand by the
window and look out at the white fields, or watch the currents of
snow whirling over the orchard. She seemed to feel the weight of
all the snow that lay down there. The branches had become so hard
that they wounded your hand if you but tried to break a twig. And
yet, down under the frozen crusts, at the roots of the trees, the
secret of life was still safe, warm as the blood in one's heart;
and the spring would come again! Oh, it would come again!




If Alexandra had had much imagination she might have guessed what
was going on in Marie's mind, and she would have seen long before
what was going on in Emil's. But that, as Emil himself had more
than once reflected, was Alexandra's blind side, and her life had
not been of the kind to sharpen her vision. Her training had all
been toward the end of making her proficient in what she had undertaken
to do. Her personal life, her own realization of herself, was
almost a subconscious existence; like an underground river that
came to the surface only here and there, at intervals months apart,
and then sank again to flow on under her own fields. Nevertheless,
the underground stream was there, and it was because she had so much
personality to put into her enterprises and succeeded in putting
it into them so completely, that her affairs prospered better than
those of her neighbors.

There were certain days in her life, outwardly uneventful, which
Alexandra remembered as peculiarly happy; days when she was close
to the flat, fallow world about her, and felt, as it were, in her
own body the joyous germination in the soil. There were days,
too, which she and Emil had spent together, upon which she loved
to look back. There had been such a day when they were down on
the river in the dry year, looking over the land. They had made
an early start one morning and had driven a long way before noon.
When Emil said he was hungry, they drew back from the road, gave
Brigham his oats among the bushes, and climbed up to the top of a
grassy bluff to eat their lunch under the shade of some little elm
trees. The river was clear there, and shallow, since there had
been no rain, and it ran in ripples over the sparkling sand. Under
the overhanging willows of the opposite bank there was an inlet where
the water was deeper and flowed so slowly that it seemed to sleep
in the sun. In this little bay a single wild duck was swimming and
diving and preening her feathers, disporting herself very happily
in the flickering light and shade. They sat for a long time,
watching the solitary bird take its pleasure. No living thing
had ever seemed to Alexandra as beautiful as that wild duck. Emil
must have felt about it as she did, for afterward, when they were
at home, he used sometimes to say, "Sister, you know our duck down
there--" Alexandra remembered that day as one of the happiest in
her life. Years afterward she thought of the duck as still there,
swimming and diving all by herself in the sunlight, a kind of
enchanted bird that did not know age or change.

Most of Alexandra's happy memories were as impersonal as this one;
yet to her they were very personal. Her mind was a white book,
with clear writing about weather and beasts and growing things.
Not many people would have cared to read it; only a happy few.
She had never been in love, she had never indulged in sentimental
reveries. Even as a girl she had looked upon men as work-fellows.
She had grown up in serious times.

There was one fancy indeed, which persisted through her girlhood.
It most often came to her on Sunday mornings, the one day in
the week when she lay late abed listening to the familiar morning
sounds; the windmill singing in the brisk breeze, Emil whistling
as he blacked his boots down by the kitchen door. Sometimes, as
she lay thus luxuriously idle, her eyes closed, she used to have
an illusion of being lifted up bodily and carried lightly by some
one very strong. It was a man, certainly, who carried her, but
he was like no man she knew; he was much larger and stronger and
swifter, and he carried her as easily as if she were a sheaf of
wheat. She never saw him, but, with eyes closed, she could feel
that he was yellow like the sunlight, and there was the smell of
ripe cornfields about him. She could feel him approach, bend over
her and lift her, and then she could feel herself being carried
swiftly off across the fields. After such a reverie she would rise
hastily, angry with herself, and go down to the bath-house that
was partitioned off the kitchen shed. There she would stand in a
tin tub and prosecute her bath with vigor, finishing it by pouring
buckets of cold well-water over her gleaming white body which no
man on the Divide could have carried very far.

As she grew older, this fancy more often came to her when she was
tired than when she was fresh and strong. Sometimes, after she had
been in the open all day, overseeing the branding of the cattle or
the loading of the pigs, she would come in chilled, take a concoction
of spices and warm home-made wine, and go to bed with her body
actually aching with fatigue. Then, just before she went to sleep,
she had the old sensation of being lifted and carried by a strong
being who took from her all her bodily weariness.




PART IV. The White Mulberry Tree




The French Church, properly the Church of Sainte-Agnes, stood
upon a hill. The high, narrow, red-brick building, with its tall
steeple and steep roof, could be seen for miles across the wheatfields,
though the little town of Sainte-Agnes was completely hidden away
at the foot of the hill. The church looked powerful and triumphant
there on its eminence, so high above the rest of the landscape,
with miles of warm color lying at its feet, and by its position and
setting it reminded one of some of the churches built long ago in
the wheat-lands of middle France.

Late one June afternoon Alexandra Bergson was driving along one
of the many roads that led through the rich French farming country
to the big church. The sunlight was shining directly in her face,
and there was a blaze of light all about the red church on the
hill. Beside Alexandra lounged a strikingly exotic figure in a
tall Mexican hat, a silk sash, and a black velvet jacket sewn with
silver buttons. Emil had returned only the night before, and his
sister was so proud of him that she decided at once to take him up
to the church supper, and to make him wear the Mexican costume he
had brought home in his trunk. "All the girls who have stands are
going to wear fancy costumes," she argued, "and some of the boys.
Marie is going to tell fortunes, and she sent to Omaha for a Bohemian
dress her father brought back from a visit to the old country.
If you wear those clothes, they will all be pleased. And you must
take your guitar. Everybody ought to do what they can to help
along, and we have never done much. We are not a talented family."

The supper was to be at six o'clock, in the basement of the church,
and afterward there would be a fair, with charades and an auction.
Alexandra had set out from home early, leaving the house to Signa
and Nelse Jensen, who were to be married next week. Signa had
shyly asked to have the wedding put off until Emil came home.

Alexandra was well satisfied with her brother. As they drove
through the rolling French country toward the westering sun and the
stalwart church, she was thinking of that time long ago when she
and Emil drove back from the river valley to the still unconquered
Divide. Yes, she told herself, it had been worth while; both Emil
and the country had become what she had hoped. Out of her father's
children there was one who was fit to cope with the world, who had
not been tied to the plow, and who had a personality apart from the
soil. And that, she reflected, was what she had worked for. She
felt well satisfied with her life.

When they reached the church, a score of teams were hitched in
front of the basement doors that opened from the hillside upon the
sanded terrace, where the boys wrestled and had jumping-matches.
Amedee Chevalier, a proud father of one week, rushed out and
embraced Emil. Amedee was an only son,--hence he was a very rich
young man,--but he meant to have twenty children himself, like
his uncle Xavier. "Oh, Emil," he cried, hugging his old friend
rapturously, "why ain't you been up to see my boy? You come
to-morrow, sure? Emil, you wanna get a boy right off! It's the
greatest thing ever! No, no, no! Angel not sick at all. Everything
just fine. That boy he come into this world laughin', and he been
laughin' ever since. You come an' see!" He pounded Emil's ribs
to emphasize each announcement.

Emil caught his arms. "Stop, Amedee. You're knocking the wind out
of me. I brought him cups and spoons and blankets and moccasins
enough for an orphan asylum. I'm awful glad it's a boy, sure
enough!"

The young men crowded round Emil to admire his costume and to tell
him in a breath everything that had happened since he went away.
Emil had more friends up here in the French country than down on
Norway Creek. The French and Bohemian boys were spirited and jolly,
liked variety, and were as much predisposed to favor anything new
as the Scandinavian boys were to reject it. The Norwegian and
Swedish lads were much more self-centred, apt to be egotistical
and jealous. They were cautious and reserved with Emil because he
had been away to college, and were prepared to take him down if he
should try to put on airs with them. The French boys liked a bit
of swagger, and they were always delighted to hear about anything
new: new clothes, new games, new songs, new dances. Now they
carried Emil off to show him the club room they had just fitted up
over the post-office, down in the village. They ran down the hill
in a drove, all laughing and chattering at once, some in French,
some in English.

Alexandra went into the cool, whitewashed basement where the women
were setting the tables. Marie was standing on a chair, building
a little tent of shawls where she was to tell fortunes. She sprang
down and ran toward Alexandra, stopping short and looking at her
in disappointment. Alexandra nodded to her encouragingly.

"Oh, he will be here, Marie. The boys have taken him off to show
him something. You won't know him. He is a man now, sure enough.
I have no boy left. He smokes terrible-smelling Mexican cigarettes
and talks Spanish. How pretty you look, child. Where did you get
those beautiful earrings?"

"They belonged to father's mother. He always promised them to me.
He sent them with the dress and said I could keep them."

Marie wore a short red skirt of stoutly woven cloth, a white bodice
and kirtle, a yellow silk turban wound low over her brown curls,
and long coral pendants in her ears. Her ears had been pierced
against a piece of cork by her great-aunt when she was seven years
old. In those germless days she had worn bits of broom-straw, plucked
from the common sweeping-broom, in the lobes until the holes were
healed and ready for little gold rings.

When Emil came back from the village, he lingered outside on the
terrace with the boys. Marie could hear him talking and strumming
on his guitar while Raoul Marcel sang falsetto. She was vexed
with him for staying out there. It made her very nervous to hear
him and not to see him; for, certainly, she told herself, she was
not going out to look for him. When the supper bell rang and the
boys came trooping in to get seats at the first table, she forgot
all about her annoyance and ran to greet the tallest of the crowd,
in his conspicuous attire. She didn't mind showing her embarrassment
at all. She blushed and laughed excitedly as she gave Emil her
hand, and looked delightedly at the black velvet coat that brought
out his fair skin and fine blond head. Marie was incapable of being
lukewarm about anything that pleased her. She simply did not know
how to give a half-hearted response. When she was delighted, she
was as likely as not to stand on her tip-toes and clap her hands.
If people laughed at her, she laughed with them.

"Do the men wear clothes like that every day, in the street?" She
caught Emil by his sleeve and turned him about. "Oh, I wish I lived
where people wore things like that! Are the buttons real silver?
Put on the hat, please. What a heavy thing! How do you ever wear
it? Why don't you tell us about the bull-fights?"

She wanted to wring all his experiences from him at once, without
waiting a moment. Emil smiled tolerantly and stood looking down at
her with his old, brooding gaze, while the French girls fluttered
about him in their white dresses and ribbons, and Alexandra watched
the scene with pride. Several of the French girls, Marie knew, were
hoping that Emil would take them to supper, and she was relieved
when he took only his sister. Marie caught Frank's arm and dragged
him to the same table, managing to get seats opposite the Bergsons,
so that she could hear what they were talking about. Alexandra
made Emil tell Mrs. Xavier Chevalier, the mother of the twenty,
about how he had seen a famous matador killed in the bull-ring.
Marie listened to every word, only taking her eyes from Emil to
watch Frank's plate and keep it filled. When Emil finished his
account,--bloody enough to satisfy Mrs. Xavier and to make her
feel thankful that she was not a matador,--Marie broke out with
a volley of questions. How did the women dress when they went to
bull-fights? Did they wear mantillas? Did they never wear hats?

After supper the young people played charades for the amusement
of their elders, who sat gossiping between their guesses. All the
shops in Sainte-Agnes were closed at eight o'clock that night, so
that the merchants and their clerks could attend the fair. The
auction was the liveliest part of the entertainment, for the French
boys always lost their heads when they began to bid, satisfied that
their extravagance was in a good cause. After all the pincushions
and sofa pillows and embroidered slippers were sold, Emil precipitated
a panic by taking out one of his turquoise shirt studs, which every
one had been admiring, and handing it to the auctioneer. All the
French girls clamored for it, and their sweethearts bid against
each other recklessly. Marie wanted it, too, and she kept making
signals to Frank, which he took a sour pleasure in disregarding.
He didn't see the use of making a fuss over a fellow just because
he was dressed like a clown. When the turquoise went to Malvina
Sauvage, the French banker's daughter, Marie shrugged her shoulders
and betook herself to her little tent of shawls, where she began
to shuffle her cards by the light of a tallow candle, calling out,
"Fortunes, fortunes!"

The young priest, Father Duchesne, went first to have his fortune
read. Marie took his long white hand, looked at it, and then
began to run off her cards. "I see a long journey across water for
you, Father. You will go to a town all cut up by water; built on
islands, it seems to be, with rivers and green fields all about.
And you will visit an old lady with a white cap and gold hoops in
her ears, and you will be very happy there."

"Mais, oui," said the priest, with a melancholy smile. "C'est
L'Isle-Adam, chez ma mere. Vous etes tres savante, ma fille." He
patted her yellow turban, calling, "Venez donc, mes garcons! Il
y a ici une veritable clairvoyante!"

Marie was clever at fortune-telling, indulging in a light irony
that amused the crowd. She told old Brunot, the miser, that he
would lose all his money, marry a girl of sixteen, and live happily
on a crust. Sholte, the fat Russian boy, who lived for his stomach,
was to be disappointed in love, grow thin, and shoot himself from
despondency. Amedee was to have twenty children, and nineteen of
them were to be girls. Amedee slapped Frank on the back and asked
him why he didn't see what the fortune-teller would promise him.
But Frank shook off his friendly hand and grunted, "She tell my
fortune long ago; bad enough!" Then he withdrew to a corner and
sat glowering at his wife.

Frank's case was all the more painful because he had no one
in particular to fix his jealousy upon. Sometimes he could have
thanked the man who would bring him evidence against his wife.
He had discharged a good farm-boy, Jan Smirka, because he thought
Marie was fond of him; but she had not seemed to miss Jan when
he was gone, and she had been just as kind to the next boy. The
farm-hands would always do anything for Marie; Frank couldn't find
one so surly that he would not make an effort to please her. At
the bottom of his heart Frank knew well enough that if he could once
give up his grudge, his wife would come back to him. But he could
never in the world do that. The grudge was fundamental. Perhaps
he could not have given it up if he had tried. Perhaps he got more
satisfaction out of feeling himself abused than he would have got
out of being loved. If he could once have made Marie thoroughly
unhappy, he might have relented and raised her from the dust. But
she had never humbled herself. In the first days of their love
she had been his slave; she had admired him abandonedly. But the
moment he began to bully her and to be unjust, she began to draw
away; at first in tearful amazement, then in quiet, unspoken disgust.
The distance between them had widened and hardened. It no longer
contracted and brought them suddenly together. The spark of her
life went somewhere else, and he was always watching to surprise
it. He knew that somewhere she must get a feeling to live upon,
for she was not a woman who could live without loving. He wanted
to prove to himself the wrong he felt. What did she hide in her
heart? Where did it go? Even Frank had his churlish delicacies;
he never reminded her of how much she had once loved him. For that
Marie was grateful to him.

While Marie was chattering to the French boys, Amedee called Emil
to the back of the room and whispered to him that they were going
to play a joke on the girls. At eleven o'clock, Amedee was to go
up to the switchboard in the vestibule and turn off the electric
lights, and every boy would have a chance to kiss his sweetheart
before Father Duchesne could find his way up the stairs to turn the
current on again. The only difficulty was the candle in Marie's
tent; perhaps, as Emil had no sweetheart, he would oblige the boys
by blowing out the candle. Emil said he would undertake to do
that.

At five minutes to eleven he sauntered up to Marie's booth, and
the French boys dispersed to find their girls. He leaned over the
card-table and gave himself up to looking at her. "Do you think
you could tell my fortune?" he murmured. It was the first word he
had had alone with her for almost a year. "My luck hasn't changed
any. It's just the same."

Marie had often wondered whether there was anyone else who could
look his thoughts to you as Emil could. To-night, when she met his
steady, powerful eyes, it was impossible not to feel the sweetness
of the dream he was dreaming; it reached her before she could shut
it out, and hid itself in her heart. She began to shuffle her
cards furiously. "I'm angry with you, Emil," she broke out with
petulance. "Why did you give them that lovely blue stone to sell?
You might have known Frank wouldn't buy it for me, and I wanted it
awfully!"

Emil laughed shortly. "People who want such little things surely
ought to have them," he said dryly. He thrust his hand into the
pocket of his velvet trousers and brought out a handful of uncut
turquoises, as big as marbles. Leaning over the table he dropped
them into her lap. "There, will those do? Be careful, don't let
any one see them. Now, I suppose you want me to go away and let
you play with them?"

Marie was gazing in rapture at the soft blue color of the stones.
"Oh, Emil! Is everything down there beautiful like these? How
could you ever come away?"

At that instant Amedee laid hands on the switchboard. There was a
shiver and a giggle, and every one looked toward the red blur that
Marie's candle made in the dark. Immediately that, too, was gone.
Little shrieks and currents of soft laughter ran up and down the
dark hall. Marie started up,--directly into Emil's arms. In the
same instant she felt his lips. The veil that had hung uncertainly
between them for so long was dissolved. Before she knew what she
was doing, she had committed herself to that kiss that was at once
a boy's and a man's, as timid as it was tender; so like Emil and
so unlike any one else in the world. Not until it was over did
she realize what it meant. And Emil, who had so often imagined
the shock of this first kiss, was surprised at its gentleness and
naturalness. It was like a sigh which they had breathed together;
almost sorrowful, as if each were afraid of wakening something in
the other.

When the lights came on again, everybody was laughing and shouting,
and all the French girls were rosy and shining with mirth. Only
Marie, in her little tent of shawls, was pale and quiet. Under her
yellow turban the red coral pendants swung against white cheeks.
Frank was still staring at her, but he seemed to see nothing. Years
ago, he himself had had the power to take the blood from her cheeks
like that. Perhaps he did not remember--perhaps he had never
noticed! Emil was already at the other end of the hall, walking
about with the shoulder-motion he had acquired among the Mexicans,
studying the floor with his intent, deep-set eyes. Marie began to
take down and fold her shawls. She did not glance up again. The
young people drifted to the other end of the hall where the guitar
was sounding. In a moment she heard Emil and Raoul singing:--


"Across the Rio Grand-e There lies a sunny land-e, My bright-eyed
Mexico!"


Alexandra Bergson came up to the card booth. "Let me help you,
Marie. You look tired."

She placed her hand on Marie's arm and felt her shiver. Marie
stiffened under that kind, calm hand. Alexandra drew back, perplexed
and hurt.

There was about Alexandra something of the impervious calm of the
fatalist, always disconcerting to very young people, who cannot
feel that the heart lives at all unless it is still at the mercy
of storms; unless its strings can scream to the touch of pain.




Signa's wedding supper was over. The guests, and the tiresome
little Norwegian preacher who had performed the marriage ceremony,
were saying good-night. Old Ivar was hitching the horses to the
wagon to take the wedding presents and the bride and groom up to
their new home, on Alexandra's north quarter. When Ivar drove up
to the gate, Emil and Marie Shabata began to carry out the presents,
and Alexandra went into her bedroom to bid Signa good-bye and to
give her a few words of good counsel. She was surprised to find
that the bride had changed her slippers for heavy shoes and was
pinning up her skirts. At that moment Nelse appeared at the gate
with the two milk cows that Alexandra had given Signa for a wedding
present.

Alexandra began to laugh. "Why, Signa, you and Nelse are to ride
home. I'll send Ivar over with the cows in the morning."

Signa hesitated and looked perplexed. When her husband called her,
she pinned her hat on resolutely. "I ta-ank I better do yust like
he say," she murmured in confusion.

Alexandra and Marie accompanied Signa to the gate and saw the
party set off, old Ivar driving ahead in the wagon and the bride
and groom following on foot, each leading a cow. Emil burst into
a laugh before they were out of hearing.

"Those two will get on," said Alexandra as they turned back to the
house. "They are not going to take any chances. They will feel
safer with those cows in their own stable. Marie, I am going to
send for an old woman next. As soon as I get the girls broken in,
I marry them off."

"I've no patience with Signa, marrying that grumpy fellow!" Marie
declared. "I wanted her to marry that nice Smirka boy who worked
for us last winter. I think she liked him, too."

"Yes, I think she did," Alexandra assented, "but I suppose she was
too much afraid of Nelse to marry any one else. Now that I think
of it, most of my girls have married men they were afraid of. I
believe there is a good deal of the cow in most Swedish girls.
You high-strung Bohemian can't understand us. We're a terribly
practical people, and I guess we think a cross man makes a good
manager."

Marie shrugged her shoulders and turned to pin up a lock of hair
that had fallen on her neck. Somehow Alexandra had irritated her
of late. Everybody irritated her. She was tired of everybody. "I'm
going home alone, Emil, so you needn't get your hat," she said as
she wound her scarf quickly about her head. "Good-night, Alexandra,"
she called back in a strained voice, running down the gravel walk.

Emil followed with long strides until he overtook her. Then she began
to walk slowly. It was a night of warm wind and faint starlight,
and the fireflies were glimmering over the wheat.

"Marie," said Emil after they had walked for a while, "I wonder if
you know how unhappy I am?"

Marie did not answer him. Her head, in its white scarf, drooped
forward a little.

Emil kicked a clod from the path and went on:--

"I wonder whether you are really shallow-hearted, like you seem?
Sometimes I think one boy does just as well as another for you.
It never seems to make much difference whether it is me or Raoul
Marcel or Jan Smirka. Are you really like that?"

"Perhaps I am. What do you want me to do? Sit round and cry all
day? When I've cried until I can't cry any more, then--then I must
do something else."

"Are you sorry for me?" he persisted.

"No, I'm not. If I were big and free like you, I wouldn't let
anything make me unhappy. As old Napoleon Brunot said at the fair,
I wouldn't go lovering after no woman. I'd take the first train
and go off and have all the fun there is."

"I tried that, but it didn't do any good. Everything reminded me.
The nicer the place was, the more I wanted you." They had come to
the stile and Emil pointed to it persuasively. "Sit down a moment,
I want to ask you something." Marie sat down on the top step and
Emil drew nearer. "Would you tell me something that's none of my
business if you thought it would help me out? Well, then, tell
me, PLEASE tell me, why you ran away with Frank Shabata!"

Marie drew back. "Because I was in love with him," she said firmly.

"Really?" he asked incredulously.

"Yes, indeed. Very much in love with him. I think I was the one
who suggested our running away. From the first it was more my
fault than his."

Emil turned away his face.

"And now," Marie went on, "I've got to remember that. Frank is
just the same now as he was then, only then I would see him as I
wanted him to be. I would have my own way. And now I pay for it."

"You don't do all the paying."

"That's it. When one makes a mistake, there's no telling where
it will stop. But you can go away; you can leave all this behind
you."

"Not everything. I can't leave you behind. Will you go away with
me, Marie?"

Marie started up and stepped across the stile. "Emil! How wickedly
you talk! I am not that kind of a girl, and you know it. But what
am I going to do if you keep tormenting me like this!" she added
plaintively.

"Marie, I won't bother you any more if you will tell me just
one thing. Stop a minute and look at me. No, nobody can see us.
Everybody's asleep. That was only a firefly. Marie, STOP and tell
me!"

Emil overtook her and catching her by the shoulders shook her
gently, as if he were trying to awaken a sleepwalker.

Marie hid her face on his arm. "Don't ask me anything more. I
don't know anything except how miserable I am. And I thought it
would be all right when you came back. Oh, Emil," she clutched his
sleeve and began to cry, "what am I to do if you don't go away? I
can't go, and one of us must. Can't you see?"

Emil stood looking down at her, holding his shoulders stiff and
stiffening the arm to which she clung. Her white dress looked
gray in the darkness. She seemed like a troubled spirit, like some
shadow out of the earth, clinging to him and entreating him to give
her peace. Behind her the fireflies were weaving in and out over
the wheat. He put his hand on her bent head. "On my honor, Marie,
if you will say you love me, I will go away."

She lifted her face to his. "How could I help it? Didn't you
know?"

Emil was the one who trembled, through all his frame. After he
left Marie at her gate, he wandered about the fields all night,
till morning put out the fireflies and the stars.




One evening, a week after Signa's wedding, Emil was kneeling before
a box in the sitting-room, packing his books. From time to time
he rose and wandered about the house, picking up stray volumes and
bringing them listlessly back to his box. He was packing without
enthusiasm. He was not very sanguine about his future. Alexandra
sat sewing by the table. She had helped him pack his trunk in
the afternoon. As Emil came and went by her chair with his books,
he thought to himself that it had not been so hard to leave his
sister since he first went away to school. He was going directly
to Omaha, to read law in the office of a Swedish lawyer until
October, when he would enter the law school at Ann Arbor. They
had planned that Alexandra was to come to Michigan--a long journey
for her--at Christmas time, and spend several weeks with him.
Nevertheless, he felt that this leave-taking would be more final
than his earlier ones had been; that it meant a definite break with
his old home and the beginning of something new--he did not know
what. His ideas about the future would not crystallize; the more
he tried to think about it, the vaguer his conception of it became.
But one thing was clear, he told himself; it was high time that he
made good to Alexandra, and that ought to be incentive enough to
begin with.

As he went about gathering up his books he felt as if he were
uprooting things. At last he threw himself down on the old slat
lounge where he had slept when he was little, and lay looking up
at the familiar cracks in the ceiling.

"Tired, Emil?" his sister asked.

"Lazy," he murmured, turning on his side and looking at her. He
studied Alexandra's face for a long time in the lamplight. It had
never occurred to him that his sister was a handsome woman until
Marie Shabata had told him so. Indeed, he had never thought of
her as being a woman at all, only a sister. As he studied her bent
head, he looked up at the picture of John Bergson above the lamp.
"No," he thought to himself, "she didn't get it there. I suppose
I am more like that."

"Alexandra," he said suddenly, "that old walnut secretary you use
for a desk was father's, wasn't it?"

Alexandra went on stitching. "Yes. It was one of the first things
he bought for the old log house. It was a great extravagance
in those days. But he wrote a great many letters back to the old
country. He had many friends there, and they wrote to him up to the
time he died. No one ever blamed him for grandfather's disgrace.
I can see him now, sitting there on Sundays, in his white shirt,
writing pages and pages, so carefully. He wrote a fine, regular
hand, almost like engraving. Yours is something like his, when
you take pains."

"Grandfather was really crooked, was he?"

"He married an unscrupulous woman, and then--then I'm afraid he
was really crooked. When we first came here father used to have
dreams about making a great fortune and going back to Sweden to
pay back to the poor sailors the money grandfather had lost."

Emil stirred on the lounge. "I say, that would have been worth
while, wouldn't it? Father wasn't a bit like Lou or Oscar, was
he? I can't remember much about him before he got sick."

"Oh, not at all!" Alexandra dropped her sewing on her knee. "He
had better opportunities; not to make money, but to make something
of himself. He was a quiet man, but he was very intelligent. You
would have been proud of him, Emil."

Alexandra felt that he would like to know there had been a man of
his kin whom he could admire. She knew that Emil was ashamed of
Lou and Oscar, because they were bigoted and self-satisfied. He
never said much about them, but she could feel his disgust. His
brothers had shown their disapproval of him ever since he first
went away to school. The only thing that would have satisfied them
would have been his failure at the University. As it was, they
resented every change in his speech, in his dress, in his point of
view; though the latter they had to conjecture, for Emil avoided
talking to them about any but family matters. All his interests
they treated as affectations.

Alexandra took up her sewing again. "I can remember father when
he was quite a young man. He belonged to some kind of a musical
society, a male chorus, in Stockholm. I can remember going with
mother to hear them sing. There must have been a hundred of them,
and they all wore long black coats and white neckties. I was
used to seeing father in a blue coat, a sort of jacket, and when I
recognized him on the platform, I was very proud. Do you remember
that Swedish song he taught you, about the ship boy?"

"Yes. I used to sing it to the Mexicans. They like anything
different." Emil paused. "Father had a hard fight here, didn't
he?" he added thoughtfully.

"Yes, and he died in a dark time. Still, he had hope. He believed
in the land."

"And in you, I guess," Emil said to himself. There was another
period of silence; that warm, friendly silence, full of perfect
understanding, in which Emil and Alexandra had spent many of their
happiest half-hours.

At last Emil said abruptly, "Lou and Oscar would be better off if
they were poor, wouldn't they?"

Alexandra smiled. "Maybe. But their children wouldn't. I have
great hopes of Milly."

Emil shivered. "I don't know. Seems to me it gets worse as it
goes on. The worst of the Swedes is that they're never willing
to find out how much they don't know. It was like that at the
University. Always so pleased with themselves! There's no getting
behind that conceited Swedish grin. The Bohemians and Germans were
so different."

"Come, Emil, don't go back on your own people. Father wasn't
conceited, Uncle Otto wasn't. Even Lou and Oscar weren't when they
were boys."

Emil looked incredulous, but he did not dispute the point. He
turned on his back and lay still for a long time, his hands locked
under his head, looking up at the ceiling. Alexandra knew that he
was thinking of many things. She felt no anxiety about Emil. She
had always believed in him, as she had believed in the land. He
had been more like himself since he got back from Mexico; seemed
glad to be at home, and talked to her as he used to do. She had
no doubt that his wandering fit was over, and that he would soon
be settled in life.

"Alexandra," said Emil suddenly, "do you remember the wild duck we
saw down on the river that time?"

His sister looked up. "I often think of her. It always seems to
me she's there still, just like we saw her."

"I know. It's queer what things one remembers and what things one
forgets." Emil yawned and sat up. "Well, it's time to turn in."
He rose, and going over to Alexandra stooped down and kissed her
lightly on the cheek. "Good-night, sister. I think you did pretty
well by us."

Emil took up his lamp and went upstairs. Alexandra sat finishing
his new nightshirt, that must go in the top tray of his trunk.




The next morning Angelique, Amedee's wife, was in the kitchen baking
pies, assisted by old Mrs. Chevalier. Between the mixing-board
and the stove stood the old cradle that had been Amedee's, and in
it was his black-eyed son. As Angelique, flushed and excited, with
flour on her hands, stopped to smile at the baby, Emil Bergson rode
up to the kitchen door on his mare and dismounted.

"'Medee is out in the field, Emil," Angelique called as she ran
across the kitchen to the oven. "He begins to cut his wheat to-day;
the first wheat ready to cut anywhere about here. He bought a new
header, you know, because all the wheat's so short this year. I
hope he can rent it to the neighbors, it cost so much. He and his
cousins bought a steam thresher on shares. You ought to go out and
see that header work. I watched it an hour this morning, busy as
I am with all the men to feed. He has a lot of hands, but he's
the only one that knows how to drive the header or how to run the
engine, so he has to be everywhere at once. He's sick, too, and
ought to be in his bed."

Emil bent over Hector Baptiste, trying to make him blink his round,
bead-like black eyes. "Sick? What's the matter with your daddy,
kid? Been making him walk the floor with you?"

Angelique sniffed. "Not much! We don't have that kind of babies.
It was his father that kept Baptiste awake. All night I had to be
getting up and making mustard plasters to put on his stomach. He
had an awful colic. He said he felt better this morning, but I
don't think he ought to be out in the field, overheating himself."

Angelique did not speak with much anxiety, not because she was
indifferent, but because she felt so secure in their good fortune.
Only good things could happen to a rich, energetic, handsome young
man like Amedee, with a new baby in the cradle and a new header in
the field.

Emil stroked the black fuzz on Baptiste's head. "I say, Angelique,
one of 'Medee's grandmothers, 'way back, must have been a squaw.
This kid looks exactly like the Indian babies."

Angelique made a face at him, but old Mrs. Chevalier had been
touched on a sore point, and she let out such a stream of fiery
PATOIS that Emil fled from the kitchen and mounted his mare.

Opening the pasture gate from the saddle, Emil rode across the field
to the clearing where the thresher stood, driven by a stationary
engine and fed from the header boxes. As Amedee was not on the
engine, Emil rode on to the wheatfield, where he recognized, on
the header, the slight, wiry figure of his friend, coatless, his
white shirt puffed out by the wind, his straw hat stuck jauntily
on the side of his head. The six big work-horses that drew, or
rather pushed, the header, went abreast at a rapid walk, and as they
were still green at the work they required a good deal of management
on Amedee's part; especially when they turned the corners, where
they divided, three and three, and then swung round into line again
with a movement that looked as complicated as a wheel of artillery.
Emil felt a new thrill of admiration for his friend, and with it
the old pang of envy at the way in which Amedee could do with his
might what his hand found to do, and feel that, whatever it was,
it was the most important thing in the world. "I'll have to bring
Alexandra up to see this thing work," Emil thought; "it's splendid!"

When he saw Emil, Amedee waved to him and called to one of his
twenty cousins to take the reins. Stepping off the header without
stopping it, he ran up to Emil who had dismounted. "Come along,"
he called. "I have to go over to the engine for a minute. I gotta
green man running it, and I gotta to keep an eye on him."

Emil thought the lad was unnaturally flushed and more excited than
even the cares of managing a big farm at a critical time warranted.
As they passed behind a last year's stack, Amedee clutched at his
right side and sank down for a moment on the straw.

"Ouch! I got an awful pain in me, Emil. Something's the matter
with my insides, for sure."

Emil felt his fiery cheek. "You ought to go straight to bed,
'Medee, and telephone for the doctor; that's what you ought to do."

Amedee staggered up with a gesture of despair. "How can I? I got
no time to be sick. Three thousand dollars' worth of new machinery
to manage, and the wheat so ripe it will begin to shatter next
week. My wheat's short, but it's gotta grand full berries. What's
he slowing down for? We haven't got header boxes enough to feed
the thresher, I guess."

Amedee started hot-foot across the stubble, leaning a little to the
right as he ran, and waved to the engineer not to stop the engine.

Emil saw that this was no time to talk about his own affairs. He
mounted his mare and rode on to Sainte-Agnes, to bid his friends
there good-bye. He went first to see Raoul Marcel, and found him
innocently practising the "Gloria" for the big confirmation service
on Sunday while he polished the mirrors of his father's saloon.

As Emil rode homewards at three o'clock in the afternoon, he saw
Amedee staggering out of the wheatfield, supported by two of his
cousins. Emil stopped and helped them put the boy to bed.

 Winter covers the Divide. It is a hard country still in the winter, and it is difficult to imagine the spring. Alexandra receives weekly letters from Emil, and she still has not seen Oscar or Lou. She avoids the Norwegian Church, and though she spends as much time as possible with Marie, she has not spoken with her about Carl. Despite her conflict with Lou, Alexandra invites Mrs. Lee, Lou's mother-in-law, for a long visit. Alexandra lets her do all the old-time things that she loves, and she enjoys the visit. A week into her visit, Marie invites the two women for coffee when Frank is in town. They update each other on the state of the traveling men in their lives. Alexandra notes that she hasn't heard from Carl since he left Washington for Alaska. She also allows Marie to read Emil's letters. Marie gives Alexandra a purple necktie to put in Emil's Christmas package, joking that he can wear it while seducing girls. Marie also talks, as she looks through old things, about her fondness for her early love with Frank and hints at her current unhappiness. She keeps Emil's letters, understanding that they are more for her than Alexandra. Over the course of the winter, winter weighs heavily on Marie begins to grow less happy and Alexandra becomes less happy with their visits. Marie spends more time with her neighbor, Mrs. Hiller, and she goes to Church frequently. She attempts to be friendly and pleasant to her husband, but without much avail. Emil returns from Mexico and Alexandra insists that he accompany her to a supper and auction at the French Church. As it is a costume party, she tells him to wear Mexican garb and bring his guitar to play. Signa and Nelse Jenson, who are to be married in a week, keep an eye on the house while Emil meets with old friends, including Amedee, who is newly a father. Alexandra is content that Emil seems to have developed an identity apart from the land and the plow. Alexandra meets Marie-who is dressed in an old Bohemian costume-at the church and tells her of Emil's presence. Marie is impatient to meet with Emil and questions him about Mexico, meanwhile dragging Frank to sit with the Bergsons at dinner. After supper and charades there is an auction, during which Emil spontaneously auctions off one of his turquoise shirt studs, which Marie begs Frank to buy for her. Marie then tells fortunes in a booth, entertaining the crowd. This irritates Frank: he's jealous of Marie though without a clear reason. Amedee organizes a prank to cut the electricity at eleven p.m. so the boys can kiss their sweethearts in the dark. He recommends that Emil, who has no girl, blow out the candle in Marie's fortune tent, and Emil does so after she tells his fortune; he blows out the candle and kisses Marie. When the lights go back on, Frank stares at Marie, who is white-faced. Emil retreats and plays the guitar while she hastily packs up her tent, avoiding all contact. Signa and Nelse are married and both Alexandra and Marie object to their immediate practicality following the wedding-e.g. Nelse has Signa wear work clothes and insists on taking Alexandra's wedding gift, two cows, immediately instead of waiting for delivery. Marie opines that Signa should have married, Smirka, a previous worker, and is irritated when Alexandra says that marrying Nelse was a pragmatic decision. Marie walks home alone, only to be overtaken by Emil, who tries to convince her to leave Frank and go away with him. Marie, distraught, tells him that she could never do such a thing. She explains that she once loved Frank and cannot leave him. They part under these distressing circumstances. After Marie refuses to hear him, Emil packs his books to leave a week later, preparing to take a law degree in Ann Arbor after working for a Swedish lawyer in Omaha. Alexandra plans to visit him next Christmas and Emil feels as though he is finally breaking with his childhood. He lies on his childhood bed and he thinks about Alexandra, considering that he never thought of her as attractive, just as his sister. They talk together about John Bergson and their Swedish heritage and Emil grows gloomy. Alexandra doesn't worry about him despite his moodiness; she feels certain of his success. Emil suddenly recalls the wild duck they once saw on a walk, and they agree that they often think of it. The next morning Emil makes his goodbyes. At Amedee's home, he finds Angelique, Mrs. Chevalier and Amedee's son in the kitchen and teases them amiably. He learns that Amedee is out in the field supervising the harvest, despite an illness, for he has a new, very expensive machine that only he knows how to drive. Emil meets Amedee in the fields and, noticing that his friend is in pain, suggests that he see a doctor. Amedee dismisses his concern. Emil departs only to see, on his way home, two workmen carrying Amedee from the fields. Emil rushes to help them.

