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

turban the red coral pendants swung against white cheeks. Frank was still staring at her, but he seemed to see nothing. Years ago, he himself had had the power to take the blood from her cheeks like that. Perhaps he did not remember⁠—perhaps he had never noticed! Emil was already at the other end of the hall, walking about with the shoulder motion he had acquired among the Mexicans, studying the floor with his intent, deep-set eyes. Marie began to take down and fold her shawls. She did not glance up again. The young people drifted to the other end of the hall where the guitar was sounding. In a moment she heard Emil and Raoul singing:⁠—

“Across the Rio Grand‑e
There lies a sunny land‑e,
My bright-eyed Mexico!”

Alexandra Bergson came up to the card booth. “Let me help you, Marie. You look tired.”

She placed her hand on Marie’s arm and felt her shiver. Marie stiffened under that kind, calm hand. Alexandra drew back, perplexed and hurt.

There was about Alexandra something of the impervious calm of the fatalist, always disconcerting to very young people, who cannot feel that the heart lives at all unless it is still at the mercy of storms; unless its strings can scream to the touch of pain.

II

Signa’s wedding supper was over. The guests, and the tiresome little Norwegian preacher who had performed the marriage ceremony, were saying good night. Old Ivar was hitching the horses to the wagon to take the wedding presents and the bride and groom up to their new home, on Alexandra’s north quarter. When Ivar drove up to the gate, Emil and Marie Shabata began to carry out the presents, and Alexandra went into her bedroom to bid Signa goodbye and to give her a few words of good counsel. She was surprised to find that the bride had changed her slippers for heavy shoes and was pinning up her skirts. At that moment Nelse appeared at the gate with the two milk cows that Alexandra had given Signa for a wedding present.

Alexandra began to laugh. “Why, Signa, you and Nelse are to ride home. I’ll send Ivar over with the cows in the morning.”

Signa hesitated and looked perplexed. When her husband called her, she pinned her hat on resolutely. “I ta‑ank I better do yust like he say,” she murmured in confusion.

Alexandra and Marie accompanied Signa to the gate and saw the party set off, old Ivar driving ahead in the wagon and the bride and groom following on foot, each leading a cow. Emil burst into a laugh before they were out of hearing.

“Those two will get on,” said Alexandra as they turned back to the house. “They are not going to take any chances. They will feel safer with those cows in their own stable. Marie, I am going to send for an old woman next. As soon as I get the girls broken in, I marry them off.”

“I’ve no patience with Signa, marrying that grumpy fellow!” Marie declared. “I wanted her to marry that nice Smirka boy who worked for us last winter. I think she liked him, too.”

“Yes, I think she did,” Alexandra assented, “but I suppose she was too much afraid of Nelse to marry anyone else. Now that I think of it, most of my girls have married men they were afraid of. I believe there is a good deal of the cow in most Swedish girls. You high-strung Bohemian can’t understand us. We’re a terribly practical people, and I guess we think a cross man makes a good manager.”

Marie shrugged her shoulders and turned to pin up a lock of hair that had fallen on her neck. Somehow Alexandra had irritated her of late. Everybody irritated her. She was tired of everybody. “I’m going home alone, Emil, so you needn’t get your hat,” she said as she wound her scarf quickly about her head. “Good night, Alexandra,” she called back in a strained voice, running down the gravel walk.

Emil followed with long strides until he overtook her. Then she began to walk slowly. It was a night of warm wind and faint starlight, and the fireflies were glimmering over the wheat.

“Marie,” said Emil after they had walked for a while, “I wonder if you know how unhappy I am?”

Marie did not answer him. Her head, in its white scarf, drooped forward a little.

Emil kicked a clod from the path and went on:⁠—

“I wonder whether you are really shallow-hearted, like you seem? Sometimes I think one boy does just as well as another for you. It never seems to make much difference whether it is me or Raoul Marcel or Jan Smirka. Are you really like that?”

“Perhaps I am. What do you want me to do? Sit round and cry all day? When I’ve cried until I can’t cry any more, then⁠—then I must do something else.”

“Are you sorry for me?” he persisted.

“No, I’m not. If I were big and free like you, I wouldn’t let anything make me unhappy. As old Napoleon Brunot said at the fair, I wouldn’t go lovering after no woman. I’d take the first train and go off and have all the fun there is.”

“I tried that, but it didn’t do any good. Everything reminded me. The nicer the place was, the more I wanted you.” They had come to the stile and Emil pointed to it persuasively. “Sit down a moment, I want to ask you something.” Marie sat down on the top step and Emil drew nearer. “Would you tell me something that’s none of my business if you thought it would help me out? Well, then, tell me, please tell me, why you ran away with Frank Shabata!”

Marie drew back. “Because I was in love with him,” she said firmly.

“Really?” he asked incredulously.

“Yes, indeed. Very much in love with him. I think I was the one who suggested our running away. From the first it was more my fault than his.”

Emil turned away his