She turned and saw Nils Ericson laughing in the sunlight, his hat in his
hand, just outside the window. As she crossed the room he leaned against
the wire screen. “Aren't you at all surprised to see me, Clara Vavrika?”
“No; I was expecting to see you. Mother Ericson telephoned Olaf last
night that you were here.”
Nils squinted and gave a long whistle. “Telephoned? That must have been
while Eric and I were out walking. Isn't she enterprising? Lift this
screen, won't you?”
Clara lifted the screen, and Nils swung his leg across the window-sill.
As he stepped into the room she said: “You didn't think you were going
to get ahead of your mother, did you?”
He threw his hat on the piano. “Oh, I do sometimes. You see, I'm ahead
of her now. I'm supposed to be in Anders' wheat-field. But, as we were
leaving, Mother ran her car into a soft place beside the road and sank
up to the hubs. While they were going for the horses to pull her out,
I cut away behind the stacks and escaped.” Nils chuckled. Clara's dull
eyes lit up as she looked at him admiringly.
“You've got them guessing already. I don't know what your mother said
to Olaf over the telephone, but be came back looking as if he'd seen
a ghost, and he didn't go to bed until a dreadful hour--ten o'clock, I
should think. He sat out on the porch in the dark like a graven image.
It had been one of his talkative days, too.” They both laughed, easily
and lightly, like people who have laughed a great deal together; but
they remained standing.
“Anders and Otto and Peter looked as if they had seen ghosts, too, over
in the threshing field. What's the matter with them all?”
Clara gave him a quick, searching look. “Well, for one thing, they've
always been afraid you have the other will.”
Nils looked interested. “The other will?”
“Yes. A later one. They knew your father made another, but they never
knew what he did with it. They almost tore the old house to pieces
looking for it. They always suspected that he carried on a clandestine
correspondence with you, for the one thing he would do was to get his
own mail himself. So they thought he might have sent the new will to
you for safekeeping. The old one, leaving everything to your mother, was
made long before you went away, and it's understood among them that it
cuts you out--that she will leave all the property to the others. Your
father made the second will to prevent that. I've been hoping you
had it. It would be such fun to spring it on them.” Clara laughed
mirthfully, a thing she did not often do now.
Nils shook his head reprovingly. “Come, now, you're malicious.”
“No, I'm not. But I'd like something to happen to stir them all up, just
for once. There never was such a family for having nothing ever happen
to them but dinner and threshing. I'd almost be willing to die, just to
have a funeral. _You_ wouldn't stand it for three weeks.”
Nils bent over the piano and began pecking at the keys with the finger
of one hand. “I wouldn't? My dear young lady, how do you know what I can
stand? _You_ wouldn't wait to find out.”
Clara flushed darkly and frowned. “I didn't believe you would ever come
back--” she said defiantly.
“Eric believed I would, and he was only a baby when I went away.
However, all's well that ends well, and I haven't come back to be a
skeleton at the feast. We mustn't quarrel. Mother will be here with a
search warrant pretty soon.” He swung round and faced her, thrusting his
hands into his coat pockets. “Come, you ought to be glad to see me, if
you want something to happen. I'm something, even without a will. We can
have a little fun, can't we? I think we can!”
She echoed him, “I think we can!” They both laughed and their eyes
sparkled. Clara Vavrika looked ten years younger than when she had put
the velvet ribbon about her throat that morning.
“You know, I'm so tickled to see mother,” Nils went on. “I didn't know
I was so proud of her. A regular pile driver. How about little pigtails,
down at the house? Is Olaf doing the square thing by those children?”
Clara frowned pensively. “Olaf has to do something that looks like the
square thing, now that he's a public man!” She glanced drolly at Nils.
“But he makes a good commission out of it. On Sundays they all get
together here and figure. He lets Peter and Anders put in big bills for
the keep of the two boys, and he pays them out of the estate. They are
always having what they call accountings. Olaf gets something out of
it, too. I don't know just how they do it, but it's entirely a family
matter, as they say. And when the Ericsons say that--” Clara lifted her
eyebrows.
Just then the angry _honk-honk_ of an approaching motor sounded from
down the road. Their eyes met and they began to laugh. They laughed as
children do when they can not contain themselves, and can not explain
the cause of their mirth to grown people, but share it perfectly
together. When Clara Vavrika sat down at the piano after he was gone,
she felt that she had laughed away a dozen years. She practised as if
the house were burning over her head.
When Nils greeted his mother and climbed into the front seat of the
motor beside her, Mrs. Ericson looked grim, but she made no comment
upon his truancy until she had turned her car and was retracing her
revolutions along the road that ran by Olaf's big pasture. Then she
remarked dryly:
“If I were you I wouldn't see too much of Olaf's wife while you are
here. She's the kind of woman who can't see much of men without getting
herself talked about. She was a good deal talked about before he married
her.”
“Hasn't Olaf tamed her?” Nils asked indifferently.
Mrs. Ericson shrugged her massive shoulders. “Olaf don't seem to have
much luck, when it comes to wives. The first one was meek enough, but
she was always ailing. And this one has her own way. He says if he
quarreled with her she'd go back to her father, and then he'd lose the
Bohemian vote. There are a great many Bohunks in this district. But when
you find a man under his wife's thumb you can always be sure there's a
soft spot in him somewhere.”
Nils thought of his own father, and smiled. “She brought him a good deal
of money, didn't she, besides the Bohemian vote?”
Mrs. Ericson sniffed. “Well, she has a fair half section in her own
name, but I can't see as that does Olaf much good. She will have a good
deal of property some day, if old Vavrika don't marry again. But I don't
consider a saloonkeeper's money as good as other people's money.”
Nils laughed outright. “Come, Mother, don't let your prejudices carry
you that far. Money's money. Old Vavrika's a mighty decent sort of
saloonkeeper. Nothing rowdy about him.”
Mrs. Ericson spoke up angrily. “Oh, I know you always stood up for them!
But hanging around there when you were a boy never did you any good,
Nils, nor any of the other boys who went there. There weren't so many
after her when she married Olaf, let me tell you. She knew enough to
grab her chance.”
Nils settled back in his seat. “Of course I liked to go there, Mother,
and you were always cross about it. You never took the trouble to find
out that it was the one jolly house in this country for a boy to go to.
All the rest of you were working yourselves to death, and the houses
were mostly a mess, full of babies and washing and flies. Oh, it was all
right--I understand that; but you are young only once, and I happened
to be young then. Now, Vavrika's was always jolly. He played the violin,
and I used to take my flute, and Clara played the piano, and
Johanna used to sing Bohemian songs. She always had a big supper for
us--herrings and pickles and poppy-seed bread, and lots of cake and
preserves. Old Joe had been in the army in the old country, and he could
tell lots of good stories. I can see him cutting bread, at the head of
the table, now. I don't know what I'd have done when I was a kid if it
hadn't been for the Vavrikas, really.”
“And all the time he was taking money that other people had worked hard
in the fields for,” Mrs. Ericson observed.
“So do the circuses, Mother, and they're a good thing. People ought to
get fun for some of their money. Even father liked old Joe.”
“Your father,” Mrs. Ericson said grimly, “liked everybody.”
As they crossed the sand creek and turned into her own place, Mrs.
Ericson observed, “There's Olaf's buggy. He's stopped on his way from
town.” Nils shook himself and prepared to greet his brother, who was
waiting on the porch.
Olaf was a big, heavy Norwegian, slow of speech and movement. His head
was large and square, like a block of wood. When Nils, at a distance,
tried to remember what his brother looked like, he could recall only his
heavy head, high forehead, large nostrils, and pale blue eyes, set far
apart. Olaf's features were rudimentary: the thing one noticed was the
face itself, wide and flat and pale; devoid of any expression, betraying
his fifty years as little as it betrayed anything else, and powerful by
reason of its very stolidness. When Olaf shook hands with Nils he looked
at him from under his light eyebrows, but Nils felt that no one could
ever say what that pale look might mean. The one thing he had always
felt in Olaf was a heavy stubbornness, like the unyielding stickiness of
wet loam against the plow. He had always found Olaf the most difficult
of his brothers.
“How do you do, Nils? Expect to stay with us long?”
“Oh, I may stay forever,” Nils answered gaily. “I like this country
better than I used to.”
“There's been some work put into it since you left,” Olaf remarked.
“Exactly. I think it's about ready to live in now--and I'm about ready
to settle down.” Nils saw his brother lower his big head (“Exactly like
a bull,” he thought.) “Mother's been persuading me to slow down now, and
go in for farming,” he went on lightly.
Olaf made a deep sound in his throat. “Farming ain't learned in a day,”
he brought out, still looking at the ground.
“Oh, I know! But I pick things up quickly.” Nils had not meant to
antagonize his brother, and he did not know now why he was doing it. “Of
course,” he went on, “I shouldn't expect to make a big success, as you
fellows have done. But then, I'm not ambitious. I won't want much. A
little land, and some cattle, maybe.”
Olaf still stared at the ground, his head down. He wanted to ask Nils
what he had been doing all these years, that he didn't have a business
somewhere he couldn't afford to leave; why he hadn't more pride than to
come back with only a little sole-leather trunk to show for himself, and
to present himself as the only failure in the family. He did not ask one
of these questions, but he made them all felt distinctly.
“Humph!” Nils thought. “No wonder the man never talks, when he can butt
his ideas into you like that without ever saying a word. I suppose he
uses that kind of smokeless powder on his wife all the time. But I guess
she has her innings.” He chuckled, and Olaf looked up. “Never mind
me, Olaf. I laugh without knowing why, like little Eric. He's another
cheerful dog.”
“Eric,” said Olaf slowly, “is a spoiled kid. He's just let his mother's
best cow go dry because he don't milk her right. I was hoping you'd take
him away somewhere and put him into business. If he don't do any good
among strangers, he never will.” This was a long speech for Olaf, and as
he finished it he climbed into his buggy.
Nils shrugged his shoulders. “Same old tricks,” he thought. “Hits from
behind you every time. What a whale of a man!” He turned and went round
to the kitchen, where his mother was scolding little Eric for letting
the gasoline get low.