Mrs. Olaf Ericson--Clara Vavrika, as many people still called her--was
moving restlessly about her big bare house that morning. Her husband had
left for the county town before his wife was out of bed--her lateness
in rising was one of the many things the Ericson family had against her.
Clara seldom came downstairs before eight o'clock, and this morning
she was even later, for she had dressed with unusual care. She put
on, however, only a tight-fitting black dress, which people thereabouts
thought very plain. She was a tall, dark woman of thirty, with a rather
sallow complexion and a touch of dull salmon red in her cheeks, where
the blood seemed to burn under her brown skin. Her hair, parted evenly
above her low forehead, was so black that there were distinctly blue
lights in it. Her black eyebrows were delicate half-moons and her lashes
were long and heavy. Her eyes slanted a little, as if she had a strain
of Tartar or gypsy blood, and were sometimes full of fiery determination
and sometimes dull and opaque. Her expression was never altogether
amiable; was often, indeed, distinctly sullen, or, when she was
animated, sarcastic. She was most attractive in profile, for then one
saw to advantage her small, well-shaped head and delicate ears, and felt
at once that here was a very positive, if not an altogether pleasing,
personality.
The entire management of Mrs. Olaf's household devolved upon her aunt,
Johanna Vavrika, a superstitious, doting woman of fifty. When Clara
was a little girl her mother died, and Johanna's life had been spent
in ungrudging service to her niece. Clara, like many self-willed and
discontented persons, was really very apt, without knowing it, to do
as other people told her, and to let her destiny be decided for her
by intelligences much below her own. It was her Aunt Johanna who had
humoured and spoiled her in her girlhood, who had got her off to Chicago
to study piano, and who had finally persuaded her to marry Olaf Ericson
as the best match she would be likely to make in that part of the
country. Johanna Vavrika had been deeply scarred by smallpox in the old
country. She was short and fat, homely and jolly and sentimental.
She was so broad, and took such short steps when she walked, that her
brother, Joe Vavrika, always called her his duck. She adored her niece
because of her talent, because of her good looks and masterful ways, but
most of all because of her selfishness.
Clara's marriage with Olaf Ericson was Johanna's particular triumph. She
was inordinately proud of Olaf's position, and she found a sufficiently
exciting career in managing Clara's house, in keeping it above the
criticism of the Ericsons, in pampering Olaf to keep him from finding
fault with his wife, and in concealing from every one Clara's domestic
infelicities. While Clara slept of a morning, Johanna Vavrika was
bustling about, seeing that Olaf and the men had their breakfast, and
that the cleaning or the butter-making or the washing was properly begun
by the two girls in the kitchen. Then, at about eight o'clock, she would
take Clara's coffee up to her, and chat with her while she drank it,
telling her what was going on in the house. Old Mrs. Ericson frequently
said that her daughter-in-law would not know what day of the week it
was if Johanna did not tell her every morning. Mrs. Ericson despised and
pitied Johanna, but did not wholly dislike her. The one thing she hated
in her daughter-in-law above everything else was the way in which Clara
could come it over people. It enraged her that the affairs of her son's
big, barnlike house went on as well as they did, and she used to feel
that in this world we have to wait overlong to see the guilty punished.
“Suppose Johanna Vavrika died or got sick?” the old lady used to say to
Olaf. “Your wife wouldn't know where to look for her own dish-cloth.”
Olaf only shrugged his shoulders. The fact remained that Johanna did not
die, and, although Mrs. Ericson often told her she was looking poorly,
she was never ill. She seldom left the house, and she slept in a little
room off the kitchen. No Ericson, by night or day, could come prying
about there to find fault without her knowing it. Her one weakness was
that she was an incurable talker, and she sometimes made trouble without
meaning to.
This morning Clara was tying a wine-coloured ribbon about her throat
when Johanna appeared with her coffee. After putting the tray on a
sewing table, she began to make Clara's bed, chattering the while in
Bohemian.
“Well, Olaf got off early, and the girls are baking. I'm going down
presently to make some poppy-seed bread for Olaf. He asked for prune
preserves at breakfast, and I told him I was out of them, and to bring
some prunes and honey and cloves from town.”
Clara poured her coffee. “Ugh! I don't see how men can eat so much sweet
stuff. In the morning, too!”
Her aunt chuckled knowingly. “Bait a bear with honey, as we say in the
old country.”
“Was he cross?” her niece asked indifferently.
“Olaf? Oh, no! He was in fine spirits. He's never cross if you know how
to take him. I never knew a man to make so little fuss about bills. I
gave him a list of things to get a yard long, and he didn't say a word;
just folded it up and put it in his pocket.”
“I can well believe he didn't say a word,” Clara remarked with a shrug.
“Some day he'll forget how to talk.”
“Oh, but they say he's a grand speaker in the Legislature. He knows
when to keep quiet. That's why he's got such influence in politics. The
people have confidence in him.” Johanna beat up a pillow and held it
under her fat chin while she slipped on the case. Her niece laughed.
“Maybe we could make people believe we were wise, Aunty, if we held our
tongues. Why did you tell Mrs. Ericson that Norman threw me again last
Saturday and turned my foot? She's been talking to Olaf.”
Johanna fell into great confusion. “Oh, but, my precious, the old lady
asked for you, and she's always so angry if I can't give an excuse.
Anyhow, she needn't talk; she's always tearing up something with that
motor of hers.”
When her aunt clattered down to the kitchen, Clara went to dust the
parlour. Since there was not much there to dust, this did not take very
long. Olaf had built the house new for her before their marriage, but
her interest in furnishing it had been short-lived. It went, indeed,
little beyond a bathtub and her piano. They had disagreed about almost
every other article of furniture, and Clara had said she would rather
have her house empty than full of things she didn't want. The house was
set in a hillside, and the west windows of the parlour looked out above
the kitchen yard thirty feet below. The east windows opened directly
into the front yard. At one of the latter, Clara, while she was dusting,
heard a low whistle. She did not turn at once, but listened intently as
she drew her cloth slowly along the round of a chair. Yes, there it was: