O Pioneers!, Willa Cather [simple ebook reader txt] 📗

“You’d have made the battery at the University for sure, ’Médée,” Emil said as they were walking from the ball grounds back to the church on the hill. “You’re pitching better than you did in the spring.”

Amédée grinned. “Sure! A married man don’t lose his head no more.” He slapped Emil on the back as he caught step with him. “Oh, Emil, you wanna get married right off quick! It’s the greatest thing ever!”

Emil laughed. “How am I going to get married without any girl?”

Amédée took his arm. “Pooh! There are plenty girls will have you. You wanna get some nice French girl, now. She treat you well; always be jolly. See,”⁠—he began checking off on his fingers⁠—“there is Sévérine, and Alphosen, and Joséphine, and Hectorine, and Louise, and Malvina⁠—why, I could love any of them girls! Why don’t you get after them? Are you stuck up, Emil, or is anything the matter with you? I never did know a boy twenty-two years old before that didn’t have no girl. You wanna be a priest, maybe? Not‑a for me!” Amédée swaggered. “I bring many good Catholics into this world, I hope, and that’s a way I help the Church.”

Emil looked down and patted him on the shoulder. “Now you’re windy, ’Médée. You Frenchies like to brag.”

But Amédée had the zeal of the newly married, and he was not to be lightly shaken off. “Honest and true, Emil, don’t you want any girl? Maybe there’s some young lady in Lincoln, now, very grand,”⁠—Amédée waved his hand languidly before his face to denote the fan of heartless beauty⁠—“and you lost your heart up there. Is that it?”

“Maybe,” said Emil.

But Amédée saw no appropriate glow in his friend’s face. “Bah!” he exclaimed in disgust. “I tell all the French girls to keep ’way from you. You gotta rock in there,” thumping Emil on the ribs.

When they reached the terrace at the side of the church, Amédée, who was excited by his success on the ball grounds, challenged Emil to a jumping match, though he knew he would be beaten. They belted themselves up, and Raoul Marcel, the choir tenor and Father Duchesne’s pet, and Jean Bordelau, held the string over which they vaulted. All the French boys stood round, cheering and humping themselves up when Emil or Amédée went over the wire, as if they were helping in the lift. Emil stopped at five-feet-five, declaring that he would spoil his appetite for supper if he jumped any more.

Angélique, Amédée’s pretty bride, as blonde and fair as her name, who had come out to watch the match, tossed her head at Emil and said:⁠—

“ ’Médée could jump much higher than you if he were as tall. And anyhow, he is much more graceful. He goes over like a bird, and you have to hump yourself all up.”

“Oh, I do, do I?” Emil caught her and kissed her saucy mouth squarely, while she laughed and struggled and called, “ ’Médée! ’Médée!”

“There, you see your ’Médée isn’t even big enough to get you away from me. I could run away with you right now and he could only sit down and cry about it. I’ll show you whether I have to hump myself!” Laughing and panting, he picked Angélique up in his arms and began running about the rectangle with her. Not until he saw Marie Shabata’s tiger eyes flashing from the gloom of the basement doorway did he hand the disheveled bride over to her husband. “There, go to your graceful; I haven’t the heart to take you away from him.”

Angélique clung to her husband and made faces at Emil over the white shoulder of Amédée’s ball shirt. Emil was greatly amused at her air of proprietorship and at Amédée’s shameless submission to it. He was delighted with his friend’s good fortune. He liked to see and to think about Amédée’s sunny, natural, happy love.

He and Amédée had ridden and wrestled and larked together since they were lads of twelve. On Sundays and holidays they were always arm in arm. It seemed strange that now he should have to hide the thing that Amédée was so proud of, that the feeling which gave one of them such happiness should bring the other such despair. It was like that when Alexandra tested her seed-corn in the spring, he mused. From two ears that had grown side by side, the grains of one shot up joyfully into the light, projecting themselves into the future, and the grains from the other lay still in the earth and rotted; and nobody knew why.

While Emil and Carl were amusing themselves at the fair, Alexandra was at home, busy with her account books, which had been neglected of late. She was almost through with her figures when she heard a cart drive up to the gate, and looking out of the window she saw her two older brothers. They had seemed to avoid her ever since Carl Linstrum’s arrival, four weeks ago that day, and she hurried to the door to welcome them. She saw at once that they had come with some very definite purpose. They followed her stiffly into the sitting room. Oscar sat down, but Lou walked over to the window and remained standing, his hands behind him.

“You are by yourself?” he asked, looking toward the doorway into the parlor.

“Yes. Carl and Emil went up to the Catholic fair.”

For a few moments neither of the men spoke.

Then Lou came out sharply. “How soon does he intend to go away from here?”

“I don’t know, Lou. Not for some time, I hope.” Alexandra spoke in an even, quiet tone that often exasperated her brothers. They felt that she was trying to be superior with them.

Oscar spoke up grimly. “We thought we ought to tell you that people have begun to talk,” he said meaningly.

Alexandra looked at him. “What about?”

Oscar met her eyes blankly. “About you, keeping him here so long. It looks bad for him to be hanging