FLAXEN'S GREAT NEED.
Flaxen wrote occasionally, during the next year, letters all too short
and too far between for the lonely man toiling away on his brown farm.
These letters were very much alike, telling mainly of how happy she was,
and of what she was going to do by and by, on Christmas or Thanksgiving.
Once she sent a photograph of herself and husband, and Anson, after
studying it for a long time, took a pair of shears and cut the husband
off, and threw him into the fire.
"That fellow gives me the ague," he muttered.
Bert did not write, and there was hardly a night that Ans lay down on
his bed that he did not wonder where his chum was, especially as the
winter came on unusually severe, reminding him of that first winter in
the Territory. Day after day he spent alone in his house, going out only
to feed the cattle or to get the mail. The sad wind was always in his
ears. But with the passage of time the pain in his heart lost its
intensity.
One day he got a letter from Flaxen that startled and puzzled him. It
was like a cry for help, somehow.
"Dear old pap, I wish you was here," and then in another place came the
piteous cry, "Oh, I wish I had some folks!"
All night long that cry rang in the man's head with a wailing, falling
cadence like the note of a lost little prairie-chicken.
"I wonder what that whelp has been doin' now. If he's begun to abuse her
I'll wring his neck. She wants me an' da'sn't ask me to come. Poor
chick, I'll be pap an' mam to ye, both," he said at last, with sudden
resolution.
The day after the receipt of this letter a telegram was handed to him at
the post-office, which he opened with trembling hands:
Anson Wood: Your daughter is ill. Wants you. Come at once.
Dr. Dietrich.
He got into his wagon mechanically and lashed his horses into a run. He
must get home and arrange about his stock and catch the seven o'clock
train. His mind ran the round of the possibilities in the case until it
ached with the hopeless fatigue of it. When he got upon the train for an
all-night ride, he looked like a man suffering some great physical pain.
He sat there all night in a common seat--he could not afford to pay for
a sleeper; sat and suffered the honest torture that can come to a
man--to sit and think the same dread, apprehensive wondering thoughts;
to strain at the seat as if to push the train faster, and to ache with
the desire to fly like the eagle. He tried to be patient, but he could
only grow numb with the effort.
A glorious winter sun was beginning to light up the frost foliage of the
maples lining St. Peter's streets when Anson, stiff with cold and
haggard with a night of sleepless riding, sprang off the train and
looked about him. The beauty of the morning made itself felt even
through his care. These rows of resplendent maples, heavy with
iridescent frost, were like fairy-land to him, fresh from the treeless
prairie. As he walked on under them, showers of powdered rubies and
diamonds fell down upon him; the colonnades seemed like those leading to
some enchanted palace, such as he had read of in boyhood. Every shrub in
the yards was similarly decked, and the snug cottages were like the
little house which he had once seen at the foot of the Christmas-tree in
a German church years before.
Feet crunched along cheerily on the sidewalks, bells of dray-teams were
beginning to sound, and workmen to whistle.
Anson was met at the door by a hard-faced, middle-aged woman.
"How's my girl?" he asked.
"Oh, she's nicely. Walk in."
"Can I see her now?"
"She's sleepin'; I guess you better wait a little while till after
breakfast."
"Where's Kendall?" was his next question.
"I d'n' know. Hain't seen 'im sence yesterday. He don't amount to much,
anyway, and in these cases there ain't no dependin' on a boy like that.
It's nachel fer girls to call on their mothers an' fathers in such
cases."
Anson was about to ask her what the trouble was with his girl, when she
turned away. She could not be dangerously ill; anyway, there was comfort
in that.
After he had eaten a slight breakfast of bad coffee and yellow biscuits,
Mrs. Stickney came back.
"She's awake an' wants to see yeh. Now don't get excited. She ain't
dangerous."
Anson was alarmed and puzzled at her manner. Her smile mystified him.
"What is the matter?" he demanded.
Her reply was common enough, but it stopped him with his foot on the
threshold. He understood at last. The majesty and mystery of birth was
like a light in his face, and dazzled him. He was awed and exalted at
the same time.
"Open the door; I want to see her," he said in a new tone.
As they entered the darkened chamber he heard his girl's eager cry.
"Is that you, pap?" wailed her faint, sweet voice.
"Yes: it's me, Flaxie." He crossed the room and knelt by the bed. She
flung her arms round his neck.
"O pappy! pappy! I wanted you. Oh, my poor mamma! O pap, I don't like
her," she whispered, indicating the nurse with her eyes. "O pap, I hate
to think of mother lying there in the snow--an' Bert--where is Bert,
pap? Perhaps he's in the blizzard too--"
"She's a little flighty," said the nurse in her matter-of-fact tone.
Anson groaned as he patted the pale cheek of the sufferer.
"Don't worry, Flaxie; Bert's all right. He'll come home soon. Why don't
you send for the doctor?" he said to the nurse.
"He'll be here soon. Don't worry over that," indicating Flaxen, who was
whispering to herself. "They of'n do that."
"Do you s'pose I can find my folks if I go back to Norway?" she said to
Anson a little after.
"Yes: I guess so, little one. When you get well, we'll try an' see."
"Perhaps if I found my aunt she'd look like mamma, an' I'd know then how
mamma looked, wouldn't I? Perhaps if the wheat is good this year we can
go back an' find her, can't we?" Then her words melted into a moan of
physical pain, and the nurse said:
"Now I guess you'd better go an' see if you can't hurry the doctor up.
Yes: now he's got to go," she went on to Flaxen, drowning out her voice
and putting her imploring hands back upon the bed.
Anson saw it all now. In her fear and pain she had turned to him--poor,
motherless little bird--forgetting her boy-husband or feeling the need
of a broader breast and stronger hand. It was a beautiful trust, and as
the great, shaggy man went out into the morning he was exalted by the
thought. "My little babe--my Flaxen!" he said with unutterable love and
pity.
Again his mind ran over the line of his life--the cabin, the dead woman,
the baby face nestling at his throat, the girl coming to him with her
trials and triumphs. His heart swelled so that he could not have spoken,
but deep in his throat he muttered a dumb prayer. And how he suffered
that day, hearing her babble mixed with moanings every time the door
opened. Once the doctor said:
"It's no use for you to stand here, Wood. It only makes you suffer and
don't help her a particle."
"It seems 's if it helped her, an' so--I guess I'll stay. She may call
for me, an' if she does," he said resolutely, "I'm goin' in, doctor. How
is she now?"
"She's slightly delirious now, but still she knows you're here. She now
and then speaks of you, but doesn't call for you."
But she did call for him, and he went in, and kneeling by her side he
talked to her and held her hands, stroked her hair and soothed her as he
used to when a little child unable to speak save in her pretty Norseland
tongue, and at last when opiates were given, and he rose and staggered
from the room, it seemed as though he had lived years.
So weary was he that, when the doctor came out and said, "You may go to
sleep now," he dropped heavily on a lounge and fell asleep almost with
the motion. Even the preparations for breakfast made by the
hoarse-voiced servant-girl did not wake him, but the drawling, nasal
tone of Kendall did. He sat up and looked at the oily little clerk. It
was after seven o'clock.
"Hello!" said Kendall, "when d' you get in?"
"Shortly after you went out," said Anson in reply.
Kendall felt the rebuke, and as he twisted his cuffs into place said,
"Well, y' see I couldn't do no good--a man ain't any good in such cases,
anyway--so I just thought I'd run down to St. Paul an' do a little
buying."
Anson turned away and went into the kitchen to wash his face and to comb
his hair, glad to get rid of the sight of Kendall for a moment. Mrs.
Stickney was toasting some bread.
"She's awake an' wants to see you when you woke up. It's a girl--thought
I'd tell ye--yes: she's comfortable. Say, 'tween you an' me, a man 'at
'u'd run off--waal--" she ended, expressively glancing at Kendall.
Once more Anson caught his breath as he entered the darkened chamber. He
was a rough, untaught man, but there was something in him that made that
room holy and mysterious. But the figure on the bed was tranquil now,
and the voice, though weak and low, was Flaxen's own.
He stopped as his eyes fell on her. She was no longer a girl. The
majesty of maternity was on her pale face and in her great eyes. A
faint, expectant smile was on her lips; her eyes were fixed on his face
as she drew the cover from the little red, weirdly-wrinkled face at her
throat.
Before he could speak, and while he was looking down at the mite of
humanity, Kendall stepped into the room.
"Hello, Ellie! How are--"
A singular revulsion came out on her face. She turned to Anson. "Make
him go 'way; I don't want him."
"All right," said Kendall cheerfully, glad to escape.
"Isn't she beautiful?" the mother whispered. "Does she look like me?"
she asked artlessly.
"She's beautiful to me because she's yours, Flaxie," replied Anson, with
a delicacy all the more striking because of the contrast with his great
frame and hard, rough hands. "But there, my girl, go to sleep like baby,
an' don't worry any more."
"You ain't goin' away while I'm sick?" she asked, following him with her
eyes, unnaturally large.
"I won't never go 'way again if you don't want me to," he replied.
"Oh, I'm so glad!" she sighed restfully.
He was turning to go when she wailed reproachfully, "Pap, you didn't
kiss baby!"
Anson turned and came back. "She's sleepin', an' I thought it wasn't
right to kiss a girl without she said so."
This made Flaxen smile, and Anson went out with a lighter heart than he
had had for two years. Kendall met him utside and said confidentially:
"I don't s'pose it was just the thing for me to do; but--confound it! I
never could stand a sick-room, anyway. I couldn't do any good,
anyway--just been in the way. She'll get over her mad in a few days.
Think so?"
But she did not. Her singular and sudden dislike of him continued, and
though she passively submitted to his being in the room, she would not
speak a word to him nor look at him as long as she could avoid it; and
when he approached the baby or took it in his arms a jealous frown came
on her face.
As for Anson, he grew to hate the sound of that little chuckle of
Kendall's; the part in the man's hair and the hang of his cut-away coat
made him angry. The trim legs, a little bowed, the big cuffs hiding the
small, cold hands, and the peculiar set of his faultless collar, grew
daily more insupportable.
"Say, looky here, Kendall," said he in desperation one day, "I wish you
didn't like me quite so well. We don't hitch first rate--at least, I
don't. Seems to me you're neglectin' your business too much."
He was going to tell him to keep away, but he relented as he looked down
at the harmless little man, with his thin, boyish face.
"Oh, my business is all right. Gregory looks after it mostly, anyhow.
But, I say, if you wanted to go into the dray business, there's a
first-class opening now. Clark wants to sell."
It ended in Anson seeing Clark and buying out his line of drays, turning
in his claim toward the payment--a transaction which made Flaxen laugh
for joy, for she had not felt certain before that he would remain in St.
Peter. She was getting about the house now, looking very wifely in her
long, warm wraps, her slow motions contrasting strongly with the old
restless, springing steps Anson remembered so well.
Night after night, as he sat beside the fire and held baby, listening to
the changed voice of his girl and watching the grave, new expressions of
her face, the tooth of time took hold upon him powerfully, and he would
feel his shaggy head and think, "I'll soon be gray, soon be gray!" while
the little one cooed, and sprang, and pulled at his beard, which had
grown long again and had white hairs in it.
Kendall spent most of his time at the store, or downtown somewhere, and
so all of those long, delicious winter evenings were Flaxen's and
Anson's. And his enjoyment of them was pathetic. The cheerful little
sitting-room, the open grate, the gracious, ever-growing womanliness of
Elga, the pressure of soft little limbs, and the babble of a liquid baby
language, were like the charm of an unexpected Indian-summer day between
two gray November storms.