Chapter: Carl had changed, Alexandra felt, much less than one might have
expected. He had not become a trim, self-satisfied city man. There
was still something homely and wayward and definitely personal
about him. Even his clothes, his Norfolk coat and his very high
collars, were a little unconventional. He seemed to shrink into
himself as he used to do; to hold himself away from things, as if
he were afraid of being hurt. In short, he was more self-conscious
than a man of thirty-five is expected to be. He looked older than
his years and not very strong. His black hair, which still hung
in a triangle over his pale forehead, was thin at the crown, and
there were fine, relentless lines about his eyes. His back, with
its high, sharp shoulders, looked like the back of an over-worked
German professor off on his holiday. His face was intelligent,
sensitive, unhappy.

That evening after supper, Carl and Alexandra were sitting by the
clump of castor beans in the middle of the flower garden. The
gravel paths glittered in the moonlight, and below them the fields
lay white and still.

"Do you know, Alexandra," he was saying, "I've been thinking how
strangely things work out. I've been away engraving other men's
pictures, and you've stayed at home and made your own." He pointed
with his cigar toward the sleeping landscape. "How in the world
have you done it? How have your neighbors done it?"

"We hadn't any of us much to do with it, Carl. The land did it.
It had its little joke. It pretended to be poor because nobody
knew how to work it right; and then, all at once, it worked itself.
It woke up out of its sleep and stretched itself, and it was so big,
so rich, that we suddenly found we were rich, just from sitting
still. As for me, you remember when I began to buy land. For
years after that I was always squeezing and borrowing until I was
ashamed to show my face in the banks. And then, all at once, men
began to come to me offering to lend me money--and I didn't need
it! Then I went ahead and built this house. I really built it
for Emil. I want you to see Emil, Carl. He is so different from
the rest of us!"

"How different?"

"Oh, you'll see! I'm sure it was to have sons like Emil, and to
give them a chance, that father left the old country. It's curious,
too; on the outside Emil is just like an American boy,--he graduated
from the State University in June, you know,--but underneath he is
more Swedish than any of us. Sometimes he is so like father that
he frightens me; he is so violent in his feelings like that."

"Is he going to farm here with you?"

"He shall do whatever he wants to," Alexandra declared warmly. "He
is going to have a chance, a whole chance; that's what I've worked
for. Sometimes he talks about studying law, and sometimes, just
lately, he's been talking about going out into the sand hills and
taking up more land. He has his sad times, like father. But I
hope he won't do that. We have land enough, at last!" Alexandra
laughed.

"How about Lou and Oscar? They've done well, haven't they?"

"Yes, very well; but they are different, and now that they have
farms of their own I do not see so much of them. We divided the
land equally when Lou married. They have their own way of doing
things, and they do not altogether like my way, I am afraid. Perhaps
they think me too independent. But I have had to think for myself
a good many years and am not likely to change. On the whole,
though, we take as much comfort in each other as most brothers and
sisters do. And I am very fond of Lou's oldest daughter."

"I think I liked the old Lou and Oscar better, and they probably
feel the same about me. I even, if you can keep a secret,"--Carl
leaned forward and touched her arm, smiling,--"I even think I liked
the old country better. This is all very splendid in its way,
but there was something about this country when it was a wild old
beast that has haunted me all these years. Now, when I come back
to all this milk and honey, I feel like the old German song, 'Wo
bist du, wo bist du, mein geliebtest Land?'--Do you ever feel like
that, I wonder?"

"Yes, sometimes, when I think about father and mother and those
who are gone; so many of our old neighbors." Alexandra paused and
looked up thoughtfully at the stars. "We can remember the graveyard
when it was wild prairie, Carl, and now--"

"And now the old story has begun to write itself over there," said
Carl softly. "Isn't it queer: there are only two or three human
stories, and they go on repeating themselves as fiercely as if they
had never happened before; like the larks in this country, that
have been singing the same five notes over for thousands of years."

"Oh, yes! The young people, they live so hard. And yet I sometimes
envy them. There is my little neighbor, now; the people who bought
your old place. I wouldn't have sold it to any one else, but I
was always fond of that girl. You must remember her, little Marie
Tovesky, from Omaha, who used to visit here? When she was eighteen
she ran away from the convent school and got married, crazy child!
She came out here a bride, with her father and husband. He had
nothing, and the old man was willing to buy them a place and set
them up. Your farm took her fancy, and I was glad to have her so
near me. I've never been sorry, either. I even try to get along
with Frank on her account."

"Is Frank her husband?"

"Yes. He's one of these wild fellows. Most Bohemians are
good-natured, but Frank thinks we don't appreciate him here, I
guess. He's jealous about everything, his farm and his horses and
his pretty wife. Everybody likes her, just the same as when she
was little. Sometimes I go up to the Catholic church with Emil,
and it's funny to see Marie standing there laughing and shaking
hands with people, looking so excited and gay, with Frank sulking
behind her as if he could eat everybody alive. Frank's not a bad
neighbor, but to get on with him you've got to make a fuss over
him and act as if you thought he was a very important person all
the time, and different from other people. I find it hard to keep
that up from one year's end to another."

"I shouldn't think you'd be very successful at that kind of thing,
Alexandra." Carl seemed to find the idea amusing.

"Well," said Alexandra firmly, "I do the best I can, on Marie's
account. She has it hard enough, anyway. She's too young and
pretty for this sort of life. We're all ever so much older and
slower. But she's the kind that won't be downed easily. She'll
work all day and go to a Bohemian wedding and dance all night, and
drive the hay wagon for a cross man next morning. I could stay by
a job, but I never had the go in me that she has, when I was going
my best. I'll have to take you over to see her to-morrow."

Carl dropped the end of his cigar softly among the castor beans and
sighed. "Yes, I suppose I must see the old place. I'm cowardly
about things that remind me of myself. It took courage to come
at all, Alexandra. I wouldn't have, if I hadn't wanted to see you
very, very much."

Alexandra looked at him with her calm, deliberate eyes. "Why do
you dread things like that, Carl?" she asked earnestly. "Why are
you dissatisfied with yourself?"

Her visitor winced. "How direct you are, Alexandra! Just like
you used to be. Do I give myself away so quickly? Well, you see,
for one thing, there's nothing to look forward to in my profession.
Wood-engraving is the only thing I care about, and that had gone out
before I began. Everything's cheap metal work nowadays, touching
up miserable photographs, forcing up poor drawings, and spoiling good
ones. I'm absolutely sick of it all." Carl frowned. "Alexandra,
all the way out from New York I've been planning how I could
deceive you and make you think me a very enviable fellow, and here
I am telling you the truth the first night. I waste a lot of time
pretending to people, and the joke of it is, I don't think I ever
deceive any one. There are too many of my kind; people know us on
sight."

Carl paused. Alexandra pushed her hair back from her brow with a
puzzled, thoughtful gesture. "You see," he went on calmly, "measured
by your standards here, I'm a failure. I couldn't buy even one of
your cornfields. I've enjoyed a great many things, but I've got
nothing to show for it all."

"But you show for it yourself, Carl. I'd rather have had your
freedom than my land."

Carl shook his head mournfully. "Freedom so often means that one
isn't needed anywhere. Here you are an individual, you have a
background of your own, you would be missed. But off there in the
cities there are thousands of rolling stones like me. We are all
alike; we have no ties, we know nobody, we own nothing. When one
of us dies, they scarcely know where to bury him. Our landlady and
the delicatessen man are our mourners, and we leave nothing behind
us but a frock-coat and a fiddle, or an easel, or a typewriter, or
whatever tool we got our living by. All we have ever managed to
do is to pay our rent, the exorbitant rent that one has to pay for
a few square feet of space near the heart of things. We have no
house, no place, no people of our own. We live in the streets,
in the parks, in the theatres. We sit in restaurants and concert
halls and look about at the hundreds of our own kind and shudder."

Alexandra was silent. She sat looking at the silver spot the moon
made on the surface of the pond down in the pasture. He knew that
she understood what he meant. At last she said slowly, "And yet I
would rather have Emil grow up like that than like his two brothers.
We pay a high rent, too, though we pay differently. We grow hard
and heavy here. We don't move lightly and easily as you do, and
our minds get stiff. If the world were no wider than my cornfields,
if there were not something beside this, I wouldn't feel that it
was much worth while to work. No, I would rather have Emil like
you than like them. I felt that as soon as you came."

"I wonder why you feel like that?" Carl mused.

"I don't know. Perhaps I am like Carrie Jensen, the sister of one
of my hired men. She had never been out of the cornfields, and a
few years ago she got despondent and said life was just the same
thing over and over, and she didn't see the use of it. After she
had tried to kill herself once or twice, her folks got worried and
sent her over to Iowa to visit some relations. Ever since she's
come back she's been perfectly cheerful, and she says she's contented
to live and work in a world that's so big and interesting. She
said that anything as big as the bridges over the Platte and the
Missouri reconciled her. And it's what goes on in the world that
reconciles me."

 The chapter opens with Alexandra's observations on Carl. He doesn't seemed to have changed as much as you would expect; his clothes are still a little odd, and he still seems withdrawn, sensitive and unhappy. Later on the same evening of his arrival, Carl and Alexandra are chatting out in the flower garden. He asks her how she's managed to be so successful. Alexandra tells him that the land did it all; it played its own "joke" on them by being poor, and then turned around and made her rich . All she had to do was borrow and save until she had bought up all this land. Eventually, she decided to build her house, but really, she says, she built it for Emil. Alexandra goes on to say how different Emil is from the rest of the family. In some ways, he's just like any American boy, who went to an American university. In other ways, though, he is like her father, very Swedish, very "violent in his feelings" . Carl asks whether Emil will stay and help her farm, and Alexandra proclaims that Emil will do whatever he wishes. He's been talking about law, or buying up his own land. And what about Lou and Oscar? Well, Alexandra tells him, they have their own land and they're doing well, though they don't approve of Alexandra's ways. They think she's too independent, she figures. But she's not likely to change, since she's been thinking for herself all these years. The conversation turns to the old country, before farming really took hold in the Divide. Carl admits that he prefers the "wild old beast," the country that gave everyone so much grief and which has been haunting him since he left . Alexandra agrees. She still remembers when the graveyard was just another part of the prairie, but now, as Carl says, the stories have started to repeat themselves again among the young people. Alexandra is reminded of young Marie Tovesky, who ran away from the convent school at 18 and married Frank Shabata. She's glad they moved to the Linstrums' old farm. Alexandra is happy to have her near. She admits that she envies young people, like Marie. Carl asks about Frank. Alexandra calls him "one of these wild fellows," who is jealous about everything, especially his wife. Marie is outgoing and everyone likes her, which makes life difficult for Frank. Alexandra says she tries to help by making Frank feel like he's really important. Carl finds it hard to believe that she's all that good at it. She admits that she only does it for Marie's sake. Alexandra only has good things to say about Marie; the girl can work all day and still have energy to go to a Bohemian wedding and dance all night. Alexandra never had that kind of fire. Carl wants to see his old place, after all. He's scared to see it, to see something that reminds him of himself. He tells Alexandra that he wouldn't have come at all if he didn't really want to see her. She asks him why he's so unhappy with himself. He breaks it down for her--he hates his job. There's no future in engraving. He planned the whole way to try and convince her that he's a big shot, but he can't help telling her the truth. He's a failure, he says. He's worked all these years but couldn't even buy a cornfield on the Divide. Alexandra doesn't agree. Carl has had his freedom, and Alexandra would have rather had that than all her land. Freedom, Carl says, often means not being needed, being an anonymous member of the masses, making money just to survive and pay a rent that's way too high. She would never want that. But their situation isn't all that much better, Alexandra replies. People out on the Divide become stagnant, "hard and heavy," and they lose the ability to think about higher things . She wishes that Emil could have some of the freedom that Carl has had, to go to the world beyond the cornfields. And, she adds, if that world out there didn't exist, she wouldn't see a point in going on. When Carl wonders aloud why it is that she feels that way, Alexandra tells the story of Carrie Jensen, the daughter of one of her farmhands, who got tired of the cornfields, grew unhappy, and tried to kill herself. Her parents sent her to Iowa to visit some family, and she returned more cheerful than ever before. Just seeing the world beyond Hanover gave her a sense that there was something to live for. Alexandra feels the same way.

