IV

Joe Vavrika's saloon was not in the county seat, where Olaf and Mrs.

Ericson did their trading, but in a cheerfuller place, a little Bohemian

settlement which lay at the other end of the county, ten level miles

north of Olaf's farm. Clara rode up to see her father almost every day.

Vavrika's house was, so to speak, in the back yard of his saloon. The

garden between the two buildings was inclosed by a high board fence

as tight as a partition, and in summer Joe kept beer tables and wooden

benches among the gooseberry bushes under his little cherry tree. At

one of these tables Nils Ericson was seated in the late afternoon, three

days after his return home. Joe had gone in to serve a customer, and

Nils was lounging on his elbows, looking rather mournfully into his

half-emptied pitcher, when he heard a laugh across the little garden.

Clara, in her riding habit, was standing at the back door of the house,

under the grapevine trellis that old Joe had grown there long ago. Nils

rose.

“Come out and keep your father and me company. We've been gossiping all

afternoon. Nobody to bother us but the flies.”

She shook her head. “No, I never come out here any more. Olaf doesn't

like it. I must live up to my position, you know.”

“You mean to tell me you never come out and chat with the boys, as you

used to? He _has_ tamed you! Who keeps up these flower-beds?”

“I come out on Sundays, when father is alone, and read the Bohemian

papers to him. But I am never here when the bar is open. What have you

two been doing?”

“Talking, as I told you. I've been telling him about my travels. I find

I can't talk much at home, not even to Eric.”

Clara reached up and poked with her riding-whip at a white moth that was

fluttering in the sunlight among the vine leaves. “I suppose you will

never tell me about all those things.”

“Where can I tell them? Not in Olaf's house, certainly. What's the

matter with our talking here?” He pointed persuasively with his hat

to the bushes and the green table, where the flies were singing lazily

above the empty beer glasses.

Clara shook her head weakly. “No, it wouldn't do. Besides, I am going

now.”

“I'm on Eric's mare. Would you be angry if I overtook you?”

Clara looked back and laughed. “You might try and see. I can leave you

if I don't want you. Eric's mare can't keep up with Norman.”

Nils went into the bar and attempted to pay his score. Big Joe, six feet

four, with curly yellow hair and mustache, clapped him on the shoulder.

“Not a Goddamn a your money go in my drawer, you hear? Only next time

you bring your flute, te-te-te-te-te-ty.” Joe wagged his fingers in

imitation of the flute player's position.

“My Clara, she come all-a-time Sundays an' play for me. She not like to

play at Ericson's place.” He shook his yellow curls and laughed. “Not a

Goddamn a fun at Ericson's. You come a Sunday. You like-a fun. No forget

de flute.” Joe talked very rapidly and always tumbled over his English.

He seldom spoke it to his customers, and had never learned much.

Nils swung himself into the saddle and trotted to the west of the

village, where the houses and gardens scattered into prairie land and

the road turned south. Far ahead of him, in the declining light, he saw

Clara Vavrika's slender figure, loitering on horseback. He touched his

mare with the whip, and shot along the white, level road, under the

reddening sky. When he overtook Olaf's wife he saw that she had been

crying. “What's the matter, Clara Vavrika?” he asked kindly.

“Oh, I get blue sometimes. It was awfully jolly living there with

father. I wonder why I ever went away.”

Nils spoke in a low, kind tone that he sometimes used with women:

“That's what I've been wondering these many years. You were the last

girl in the country I'd have picked for a wife for Olaf. What made you

do it, Clara?”

“I suppose I really did it to oblige the neighbours”--Clara tossed her

head. “People were beginning to wonder.”

“To wonder?”

“Yes--why I didn't get married. I suppose I didn't like to keep them in

suspense. I've discovered that most girls marry out of consideration for

the neighbourhood.”

Nils bent his head toward her and his white teeth flashed. “I'd have

gambled that one girl I knew would say, 'Let the neighbourhood be

damned.'”

Clara shook her head mournfully. “You see, they have it on you, Nils;

that is, if you're a woman. They say you're beginning to go off. That's

what makes us get married: we can't stand the laugh.”

Nils looked sidewise at her. He had never seen her head droop before.

Resignation was the last thing he would have expected of her. “In your

case, there wasn't something else?”

“Something else?”

“I mean, you didn't do it to spite somebody? Somebody who didn't come

back?”

Clara drew herself up. “Oh, I never thought you'd come back. Not after

I stopped writing to you, at least. _That_ was all over, long before I

married Olaf.”

“It never occurred to you, then, that the meanest thing you could do to

me was to marry Olaf?”

Clara laughed. “No; I didn't know you were so fond of Olaf.”

Nils smoothed his horse's mane with his glove. “You know, Clara Vavrika,

you are never going to stick it out. You'll cut away some day, and I've

been thinking you might as well cut away with me.”

Clara threw up her chin. “Oh, you don't know me as well as you think. I

won't cut away. Sometimes, when I'm with father, I feel like it. But I

can hold out as long as the Ericsons can. They've never got the best of

me yet, and one can live, so long as one isn't beaten. If I go back to

father, it's all up with Olaf in politics. He knows that, and he never

goes much beyond sulking. I've as much wit as the Ericsons. I'll never

leave them unless I can show them a thing or two.”

“You mean unless you can come it over them?”

“Yes--unless I go away with a man who is cleverer than they are, and who

has more money.”

Nils whistled. “Dear me, you are demanding a good deal. The Ericsons,

take the lot of them, are a bunch to beat. But I should think the

excitement of tormenting them would have worn off by this time.”

“It has, I'm afraid,” Clara admitted mournfully.

“Then why don't you cut away? There are more amusing games than this in

the world. When I came home I thought it might amuse me to bully a few

quarter sections out of the Ericsons; but I've almost decided I can get

more fun for my money somewhere else.”

Clara took in her breath sharply. “Ah, you have got the other will! That

was why you came home!”

“No, it wasn't. I came home to see how you were getting on with Olaf.”

Clara struck her horse with the whip, and in a bound she was far ahead

of him. Nils dropped one word, “Damn!” and whipped after her; but she

leaned forward in her saddle and fairly cut the wind. Her long riding

skirt rippled in the still air behind her. The sun was just sinking

behind the stubble in a vast, clear sky, and the shadows drew across the

fields so rapidly that Nils could scarcely keep in sight the dark figure

on the road. When he overtook her he caught her horse by the bridle.

Norman reared, and Nils was frightened for her; but Clara kept her seat.

“Let me go, Nils Ericson!” she cried. “I hate you more than any of

them. You were created to torture me, the whole tribe of you--to make me

suffer in every possible way.”

She struck her horse again and galloped away from him. Nils set his

teeth and looked thoughtful. He rode slowly home along the deserted

road, watching the stars come out in the clear violet sky.

They flashed softly into the limpid heavens, like jewels let fall into

clear water. They were a reproach, he felt, to a sordid world. As he

turned across the sand creek, he looked up at the North Star and smiled,

as if there were an understanding between them. His mother scolded him

for being late for supper.

V

On Sunday afternoon Joe Vavrika, in his shirt sleeves and carpet

slippers, was sitting in his garden, smoking a long-tasseled porcelain

pipe with a hunting scene painted on the bowl. Clara sat under the

cherry tree, reading aloud to him from the weekly Bohemian papers. She

had worn a white muslin dress under her riding habit, and the leaves

of the cherry tree threw a pattern of sharp shadows over her skirt. The

black cat was dozing in the sunlight at her feet, and Joe's dachshund

was scratching a hole under the scarlet geraniums and dreaming of

badgers. Joe was filling his pipe for the third time since dinner,

when he heard a knocking on the fence. He broke into a loud guffaw and

unlatched the little door that led into the street. He did not call Nils

by name, but caught him by the hand and dragged him in. Clara stiffened

and the colour deepened under her dark skin. Nils, too, felt a little

awkward. He had not seen her since the night when she rode away from him

and left him alone on the level road between the fields. Joe dragged him

to the wooden bench beside the green table.

“You bring de flute,” he cried, tapping the leather case under Nils'

arm. “Ah, das-a good' Now we have some liddle fun like old times. I got

somet'ing good for you.” Joe shook his finger at Nils and winked his

blue eye, a bright clear eye, full of fire, though the tiny bloodvessels

on the ball were always a little distended. “I got somet'ing for you

from”--he paused and waved his hand--“Hongarie. You know Hongarie? You

wait!” He pushed Nils down on the bench, and went through the back door

of his saloon.

Nils looked at Clara, who sat frigidly with her white skirts drawn

tight about her. “He didn't tell you he had asked me to come, did he?

He wanted a party and proceeded to arrange it. Isn't he fun? Don't be

cross; let's give him a good time.”

Clara smiled and shook out her skirt. “Isn't that like Father? And he

has sat here so meekly all day. Well, I won't pout. I'm glad you came.

He doesn't have very many good times now any more. There are so few of

his kind left. The second generation are a tame lot.”

Joe came back with a flask in one hand and three wine glasses caught by

the stems between the fingers of the other. These he placed on the table

with an air of ceremony, and, going behind Nils, held the flask between

him and the sun, squinting into it admiringly. “You know dis, Tokai? A

great friend of mine, he bring dis to me, a present out of Hongarie. You

know how much it cost, dis wine? Chust so much what it weigh in gold.

Nobody but de nobles drink him in Bohemie. Many, many years I save him

up, dis Tokai.” Joe whipped out his official corkscrew and delicately

removed the cork. “De old man die what bring him to me, an' dis wine he

lay on his belly in my cellar an' sleep. An' now,” carefully pouring

out the heavy yellow wine, “an' now he wake up; and maybe he wake us

up, too!” He carried one of the glasses to his daughter and presented it

with great gallantry.

Clara shook her head, but, seeing her father's disappointment, relented.

“You taste it first. I don't want so much.”

Joe sampled it with a beatific expression, and turned to Nils. “You

drink him slow, dis wine. He very soft, but he go down hot. You see!”

After a second glass Nils declared that he couldn't take any more

without getting sleepy. “Now get your fiddle, Vavrika,” he said as he

opened his flute case.

But Joe settled back in his wooden rocker and wagged his big carpet

slipper. “No-no-no-no-no-no-no! No play fiddle now any more: too much

ache in de finger,” waving them, “all-a-time rheumatic. You play de

flute, te-tety-tetety-te. Bohemie songs.”

“I've forgotten all the Bohemian songs I used to play with you and

Johanna. But here's one that will make Clara pout. You remember how her

eyes used to snap when we called her the Bohemian Girl?” Nils lifted his

flute and began “When Other Lips and Other Hearts,” and Joe hummed the

air in a husky baritone, waving his carpet slipper. “Oh-h-h, das-a fine

music,” he cried, clapping his hands as Nils finished. “Now 'Marble

Halls, Marble Halls'! Clara, you sing him.”

Clara smiled and leaned back in her chair, beginning softly:

“I dreamt that I dwelt in ma-a-arble halls,

With vassals and serfs at my knee,”

and Joe hummed like a big bumblebee.

“There's one more you always played,” Clara said quietly, “I remember

that best.” She locked her hands over her knee and began “The Heart

Bowed Down,” and sang it through without groping for the words. She was

singing with a good deal of warmth when she came to the end of the old

song:

“For memory is the only friend

That grief can call its own.”

Joe flashed out his red silk handkerchief and blew his nose, shaking his

head. “No-no-no-no-no-no-no! Too sad, too sad! I not like-a dat. Play

quick somet'ing gay now.”

Nils put his lips to the instrument, and Joe lay back in his chair,

laughing and singing, “Oh, Evelina, Sweet Evelina!” Clara laughed, too.

Long ago, when she and Nils went to high school, the model student of

their class was a very homely girl in thick spectacles. Her name was

Evelina Oleson; she had a long, swinging walk which somehow suggested

the measure of that song, and they used mercilessly to sing it at her.

“Dat ugly Oleson girl, she teach in de school,” Joe gasped, “an' she

still walks chust like dat, yup-a, yup-a, yup-a, chust like a

camel she go! Now, Nils, we have some more li'l drink. Oh,

yes-yes-yes-yes-yes-yes-_yes_! Dis time you haf to drink, and Clara she

haf to, so she show she not jealous. So, we all drink to your girl. You

not tell her name, eh? No-no-no, I no make you tell. She pretty, eh? She

make good sweetheart? I bet!” Joe winked and lifted his glass. “How soon

you get married?”

Nils screwed up his eyes. “That I don't know. When she says.”

Joe threw out his chest. “Das-a way boys talks. No way for mans. Mans

say, 'You come to de church, an' get a hurry on you.' Das-a way mans

talks.”

“Maybe Nils hasn't got enough to keep a wife,” put in Clara ironically.

“How about that, Nils?” she asked him frankly, as if she wanted to know.

Nils looked at her coolly, raising one eyebrow. “Oh, I can keep her, all

right.”

“The way she wants to be kept?”

“With my wife, I'll decide that,” replied Nils calmly. “I'll give her

what's good for her.”

Clara made a wry face. “You'll give her the strap, I expect, like old

Peter Oleson gave his wife.”

“When she needs it,” said Nils lazily, locking his hands behind his head

and squinting up through the leaves of the cherry tree. “Do you remember

the time I squeezed the cherries all over your clean dress, and Aunt

Johanna boxed my ears for me? My gracious, weren't you mad! You had both

hands full of cherries, and I squeezed 'em and made the juice fly all

over you. I liked to have fun with you; you'd get so mad.”

“We _did_ have fun, didn't we? None of the other kids ever had so much

fun. We knew how to play.”

Nils dropped his elbows on the table and looked steadily across at her.

“I've played with lots of girls since, but I haven't found one who was

such good fun.”

Clara laughed. The late afternoon sun was shining full in her face,

and deep in the back of her eyes there shone something fiery, like the

yellow drops of Tokai in the brown glass bottle. “Can you still play, or

are you only pretending?”

“I can play better than I used to, and harder.”

“Don't you ever work, then?” She had not intended to say it. It slipped

out because she was confused enough to say just the wrong thing.

“I work between times.” Nils' steady gaze still beat upon her. “Don't

you worry about my working, Mrs. Ericson. You're getting like all the

rest of them.” He reached his brown, warm hand across the table and

dropped it on Clara's, which was cold as an icicle. “Last call for play,

Mrs. Ericson!” Clara shivered, and suddenly her hands and cheeks grew

warm. Her fingers lingered in his a moment, and they looked at each

other earnestly. Joe Vavrika had put the mouth of the bottle to his lips

and was swallowing the last drops of the Tokai, standing. The sun, just

about to sink behind his shop, glistened on the bright glass, on his

flushed face and curly yellow hair. “Look,” Clara whispered, “that's the

way I want to grow old.”