Chapter: CHAPTER XXVI


CAROL'S liveliest interest was in her walks with the baby. Hugh wanted
to know what the box-elder tree said, and what the Ford garage said, and
what the big cloud said, and she told him, with a feeling that she was
not in the least making up stories, but discovering the souls of things.
They had an especial fondness for the hitching-post in front of the
mill. It was a brown post, stout and agreeable; the smooth leg of it
held the sunlight, while its neck, grooved by hitching-straps, tickled
one's fingers. Carol had never been awake to the earth except as a show
of changing color and great satisfying masses; she had lived in people
and in ideas about having ideas; but Hugh's questions made her attentive
to the comedies of sparrows, robins, blue jays, yellowhammers; she
regained her pleasure in the arching flight of swallows, and added to it
a solicitude about their nests and family squabbles.

She forgot her seasons of boredom. She said to Hugh, "We're two fat
disreputable old minstrels roaming round the world," and he echoed her,
"Roamin' round--roamin' round."

The high adventure, the secret place to which they both fled joyously,
was the house of Miles and Bea and Olaf Bjornstam.

Kennicott steadily disapproved of the Bjornstams. He protested, "What
do you want to talk to that crank for?" He hinted that a former "Swede
hired girl" was low company for the son of Dr. Will Kennicott. She did
not explain. She did not quite understand it herself; did not know that
in the Bjornstams she found her friends, her club, her sympathy and her
ration of blessed cynicism. For a time the gossip of Juanita Haydock and
the Jolly Seventeen had been a refuge from the droning of Aunt Bessie,
but the relief had not continued. The young matrons made her nervous.
They talked so loud, always so loud. They filled a room with
clashing cackle; their jests and gags they repeated nine times over.
Unconsciously, she had discarded the Jolly Seventeen, Guy Pollock, Vida,
and every one save Mrs. Dr. Westlake and the friends whom she did not
clearly know as friends--the Bjornstams.

To Hugh, the Red Swede was the most heroic and powerful person in the
world. With unrestrained adoration he trotted after while Miles fed the
cows, chased his one pig--an animal of lax and migratory instincts--or
dramatically slaughtered a chicken. And to Hugh, Olaf was lord among
mortal men, less stalwart than the old monarch, King Miles, but more
understanding of the relations and values of things, of small sticks,
lone playing-cards, and irretrievably injured hoops.

Carol saw, though she did not admit, that Olaf was not only more
beautiful than her own dark child, but more gracious. Olaf was a Norse
chieftain: straight, sunny-haired, large-limbed, resplendently amiable
to his subjects. Hugh was a vulgarian; a bustling business man. It was
Hugh that bounced and said "Let's play"; Olaf that opened luminous blue
eyes and agreed "All right," in condescending gentleness. If Hugh batted
him--and Hugh did bat him--Olaf was unafraid but shocked. In magnificent
solitude he marched toward the house, while Hugh bewailed his sin and
the overclouding of august favor.

The two friends played with an imperial chariot which Miles had made out
of a starch-box and four red spools; together they stuck switches into
a mouse-hole, with vast satisfaction though entirely without known
results.

Bea, the chubby and humming Bea, impartially gave cookies and scoldings
to both children, and if Carol refused a cup of coffee and a wafer of
buttered knackebrod, she was desolated.

Miles had done well with his dairy. He had six cows, two hundred
chickens, a cream separator, a Ford truck. In the spring he had built a
two-room addition to his shack. That illustrious building was to Hugh a
carnival. Uncle Miles did the most spectacular, unexpected things: ran
up the ladder; stood on the ridge-pole, waving a hammer and singing
something about "To arms, my citizens"; nailed shingles faster than
Aunt Bessie could iron handkerchiefs; and lifted a two-by-six with Hugh
riding on one end and Olaf on the other. Uncle Miles's most ecstatic
trick was to make figures not on paper but right on a new pine board,
with the broadest softest pencil in the world. There was a thing worth
seeing!

The tools! In his office Father had tools fascinating in their shininess
and curious shapes, but they were sharp, they were something called
sterized, and they distinctly were not for boys to touch. In fact it
was a good dodge to volunteer "I must not touch," when you looked at the
tools on the glass shelves in Father's office. But Uncle Miles, who
was a person altogether superior to Father, let you handle all his kit
except the saws. There was a hammer with a silver head; there was a
metal thing like a big L; there was a magic instrument, very precious,
made out of costly red wood and gold, with a tube which contained a
drop--no, it wasn't a drop, it was a nothing, which lived in the water,
but the nothing LOOKED like a drop, and it ran in a frightened way
up and down the tube, no matter how cautiously you tilted the magic
instrument. And there were nails, very different and clever--big
valiant spikes, middle-sized ones which were not very interesting, and
shingle-nails much jollier than the fussed-up fairies in the yellow
book.


II


While he had worked on the addition Miles had talked frankly to Carol.
He admitted now that so long as he stayed in Gopher Prairie he would
remain a pariah. Bea's Lutheran friends were as much offended by his
agnostic gibes as the merchants by his radicalism. "And I can't seem to
keep my mouth shut. I think I'm being a baa-lamb, and not springing any
theories wilder than 'c-a-t spells cat,' but when folks have gone, I
re'lize I've been stepping on their pet religious corns. Oh, the mill
foreman keeps dropping in, and that Danish shoemaker, and one fellow
from Elder's factory, and a few Svenskas, but you know Bea: big
good-hearted wench like her wants a lot of folks around--likes to fuss
over 'em--never satisfied unless she tiring herself out making coffee
for somebody.

"Once she kidnapped me and drug me to the Methodist Church. I goes in,
pious as Widow Bogart, and sits still and never cracks a smile while
the preacher is favoring us with his misinformation on evolution. But
afterwards, when the old stalwarts were pumphandling everybody at the
door and calling 'em 'Brother' and 'Sister,' they let me sail right by
with nary a clinch. They figure I'm the town badman. Always will be, I
guess. It'll have to be Olaf who goes on. 'And sometimes----Blamed if I
don't feel like coming out and saying, 'I've been conservative. Nothing
to it. Now I'm going to start something in these rotten one-horse
lumber-camps west of town.' But Bea's got me hypnotized. Lord, Mrs.
Kennicott, do you re'lize what a jolly, square, faithful woman she is?
And I love Olaf----Oh well, I won't go and get sentimental on you.

"Course I've had thoughts of pulling up stakes and going West. Maybe
if they didn't know it beforehand, they wouldn't find out I'd ever been
guilty of trying to think for myself. But--oh, I've worked hard, and
built up this dairy business, and I hate to start all over again, and
move Bea and the kid into another one-room shack. That's how they get
us! Encourage us to be thrifty and own our own houses, and then, by
golly, they've got us; they know we won't dare risk everything by
committing lez--what is it? lez majesty?--I mean they know we won't be
hinting around that if we had a co-operative bank, we could get along
without Stowbody. Well----As long as I can sit and play pinochle with
Bea, and tell whoppers to Olaf about his daddy's adventures in the
woods, and how he snared a wapaloosie and knew Paul Bunyan, why, I
don't mind being a bum. It's just for them that I mind. Say! Say! Don't
whisper a word to Bea, but when I get this addition done, I'm going to
buy her a phonograph!"

He did.

While she was busy with the activities her work-hungry muscles
found--washing, ironing, mending, baking, dusting, preserving, plucking
a chicken, painting the sink; tasks which, because she was Miles's full
partner, were exciting and creative--Bea listened to the phonograph
records with rapture like that of cattle in a warm stable. The addition
gave her a kitchen with a bedroom above. The original one-room shack was
now a living-room, with the phonograph, a genuine leather-upholstered
golden-oak rocker, and a picture of Governor John Johnson.

In late July Carol went to the Bjornstams' desirous of a chance to
express her opinion of Beavers and Calibrees and Joralemons. She found
Olaf abed, restless from a slight fever, and Bea flushed and dizzy but
trying to keep up her work. She lured Miles aside and worried:

"They don't look at all well. What's the matter?"

"Their stomachs are out of whack. I wanted to call in Doc Kennicott, but
Bea thinks the doc doesn't like us--she thinks maybe he's sore because
you come down here. But I'm getting worried."

"I'm going to call the doctor at once."

She yearned over Olaf. His lambent eyes were stupid, he moaned, he
rubbed his forehead.

"Have they been eating something that's been bad for them?" she
fluttered to Miles.

"Might be bum water. I'll tell you: We used to get our water at Oscar
Eklund's place, over across the street, but Oscar kept dinging at me,
and hinting I was a tightwad not to dig a well of my own. One time
he said, 'Sure, you socialists are great on divvying up other folks'
money--and water!' I knew if he kept it up there'd be a fuss, and I
ain't safe to have around, once a fuss starts; I'm likely to forget
myself and let loose with a punch in the snoot. I offered to pay Oscar
but he refused--he'd rather have the chance to kid me. So I starts
getting water down at Mrs. Fageros's, in the hollow there, and I don't
believe it's real good. Figuring to dig my own well this fall."

One scarlet word was before Carol's eyes while she listened. She fled to
Kennicott's office. He gravely heard her out; nodded, said, "Be right
over."

He examined Bea and Olaf. He shook his head. "Yes. Looks to me like
typhoid."

"Golly, I've seen typhoid in lumber-camps," groaned Miles, all the
strength dripping out of him. "Have they got it very bad?"

"Oh, we'll take good care of them," said Kennicott, and for the first
time in their acquaintance he smiled on Miles and clapped his shoulder.

"Won't you need a nurse?" demanded Carol.

"Why----" To Miles, Kennicott hinted, "Couldn't you get Bea's cousin,
Tina?"

"She's down at the old folks', in the country."

"Then let me do it!" Carol insisted. "They need some one to cook for
them, and isn't it good to give them sponge baths, in typhoid?"

"Yes. All right." Kennicott was automatic; he was the official, the
physician. "I guess probably it would be hard to get a nurse here in
town just now. Mrs. Stiver is busy with an obstetrical case, and that
town nurse of yours is off on vacation, ain't she? All right, Bjornstam
can spell you at night."

All week, from eight each morning till midnight, Carol fed them, bathed
them, smoothed sheets, took temperatures. Miles refused to let her cook.
Terrified, pallid, noiseless in stocking feet, he did the kitchen work
and the sweeping, his big red hands awkwardly careful. Kennicott came
in three times a day, unchangingly tender and hopeful in the sick-room,
evenly polite to Miles.

Carol understood how great was her love for her friends. It bore
her through; it made her arm steady and tireless to bathe them.
What exhausted her was the sight of Bea and Olaf turned into flaccid
invalids, uncomfortably flushed after taking food, begging for the
healing of sleep at night.

During the second week Olaf's powerful legs were flabby. Spots of a
viciously delicate pink came out on his chest and back. His cheeks sank.
He looked frightened. His tongue was brown and revolting. His confident
voice dwindled to a bewildered murmur, ceaseless and racking.

Bea had stayed on her feet too long at the beginning. The moment
Kennicott had ordered her to bed she had begun to collapse. One early
evening she startled them by screaming, in an intense abdominal pain,
and within half an hour she was in a delirium. Till dawn Carol was
with her, and not all of Bea's groping through the blackness of
half-delirious pain was so pitiful to Carol as the way in which Miles
silently peered into the room from the top of the narrow stairs.
Carol slept three hours next morning, and ran back. Bea was altogether
delirious but she muttered nothing save, "Olaf--ve have such a good
time----"

At ten, while Carol was preparing an ice-bag in the kitchen, Miles
answered a knock. At the front door she saw Vida Sherwin, Maud Dyer, and
Mrs. Zitterel, wife of the Baptist pastor. They were carrying grapes,
and women's-magazines, magazines with high-colored pictures and
optimistic fiction.

"We just heard your wife was sick. We've come to see if there isn't
something we can do," chirruped Vida.

Miles looked steadily at the three women. "You're too late. You can't
do nothing now. Bea's always kind of hoped that you folks would come see
her. She wanted to have a chance and be friends. She used to sit waiting
for somebody to knock. I've seen her sitting here, waiting. Now----Oh,
you ain't worth God-damning." He shut the door.

All day Carol watched Olaf's strength oozing. He was emaciated. His ribs
were grim clear lines, his skin was clammy, his pulse was feeble but
terrifyingly rapid. It beat--beat--beat in a drum-roll of death. Late
that afternoon he sobbed, and died.

Bea did not know it. She was delirious. Next morning, when she went,
she did not know that Olaf would no longer swing his lath sword on the
door-step, no longer rule his subjects of the cattle-yard; that Miles's
son would not go East to college.

Miles, Carol, Kennicott were silent. They washed the bodies together,
their eyes veiled.

"Go home now and sleep. You're pretty tired. I can't ever pay you back
for what you done," Miles whispered to Carol.

"Yes. But I'll be back here tomorrow. Go with you to the funeral," she
said laboriously.

When the time for the funeral came, Carol was in bed, collapsed. She
assumed that neighbors would go. They had not told her that word of
Miles's rebuff to Vida had spread through town, a cyclonic fury.

It was only by chance that, leaning on her elbow in bed, she glanced
through the window and saw the funeral of Bea and Olaf. There was
no music, no carriages. There was only Miles Bjornstam, in his black
wedding-suit, walking quite alone, head down, behind the shabby hearse
that bore the bodies of his wife and baby.

An hour after, Hugh came into her room crying, and when she said as
cheerily as she could, "What is it, dear?" he besought, "Mummy, I want
to go play with Olaf."

That afternoon Juanita Haydock dropped in to brighten Carol. She said,
"Too bad about this Bea that was your hired girl. But I don't waste
any sympathy on that man of hers. Everybody says he drank too much, and
treated his family awful, and that's how they got sick."

 Carol takes Hugh for a walk. Hugh's interest in nature makes her forget her boredom when she is with him. They both love to go to Bea's house. Carol finds companionship in the Bjornstams. Hugh admires Bjornstam and loves Olaf. Carol feels that Olaf looks regal like a king and that Hugh appears like a common businessman in his presence. Hugh suggests the game and Olaf condescends to play. Bjornstam makes a chariot for them out of a starch box and four red spools. Bea treats the children equally and loves to be hospitable. Bjornstam is prosperous. He now has six cows, two hundred chickens and a ford truck. He has added two more rooms to his shack. Hugh loves every activity of Bjornstam -like chasing the pigs and slaughtering the chicken. Hugh loves to watch his tools. Bjornstam allows him to touch the tools, the thing, which he is never allowed to do in his father's office. Bjornstam tells Carol that as long as they lived in Gopher Prairie he will not be respected. Bea loves to entertain so he feels sad to see that her desire is not fulfilled. He tells her how Bea had taken him to the church once. But even there he was being ignored. So he knows that his reputation as a bad man is permanent. He also tells her that he does not mind it as long as he has Olaf to play with. He buys a phonograph for Bea. Bea is a hard working woman and she enjoys the work. Carol goes to their house to tell them all about Joralemon and finds both Bea and Olaf sick with fever. She learns from Bjornstam that he used to get water from Oscar Eklund's well. Since he kept teasing Bjornstam constantly about being too stingy to dig his own well, he offered him money. But Oscar refused to accept it so he had to take water from Mrs. Fageros's which was not good. Dr. Kennicott comes and diagnoses their ailment as typhoid. Bea's cousin Tina is away at the country. So Carol starts nursing Bea and Olaf from eight in the morning till midnight. She feeds them, bathes them, and takes their temperature and smoothes their bed sheet. Bjornstam does the cooking and the sweeping. Dr. Kennicott attends them three times a day and is tender and hopeful to the patients and polite to Bjornstam. The condition of the patients worsens steadily and Bea even becomes delirious. Carol hardly sleeps for three hours and runs back to nurse them. In the second week of the illness Vida, Maud Dyer and Mrs. Zitterel call bearing grapes and women's magazines. They tell Bjornstam that they came to see if there was anything they could do for Bea. He tells them that it was too late to do anything for her. He also tells them that when she was well she eagerly waited for them to call, to make friends with them. He adds that they never came and shuts the door. They go away feeling insulted. Olaf dies that afternoon. Bea dies the next morning. Bjornstam, Kennicott and Carol wash the bodies. Bjornstam tells Carol to go home and sleep. She says she will be back for the funeral. But the next morning she lies too exhausted to get up. Through the window she sees Bjornstam walking alone behind the bodies of Bea and Olaf. That afternoon Juanita calls on Carol and tells her that Bea and Olaf died because Bjornstam drank too much and ill-treated them.

