Settlers of the Marsh (21 page)

The work she did was hateful to her; yet she did it. Was not that an attempt to do what was expected of her? With almost any other woman it would have been a matter of course. Was it with her? He had, so far, blamed her in his heart because his meals were as monotonous now as they had been in his bachelor days. He was suddenly inclined to give her credit for the fact that they were not more so than formerly.

What her city life has consisted in, of that he had no very clear idea. No matter; it had been different. To please him, she made an attempt to adapt herself. He would show a little more sympathy, a little more appreciation.

But somehow, right from the beginning, he felt himself thwarted …

He had, for instance, expected that she would open her suitcases and show him where his money had gone. It might have been spent on cold creams, perfumes, silks, gewgaws: things he did not approve of. No matter what it had been spent on, he had expected to see it; he was prepared to express approval of what he condemned, simply for the sake of even a fictitious companionship.

She gave him no chance to do so; she showed him nothing …

He came to the conclusion that perhaps it was expected of him to betray curiosity. He would ask her; he would seize the very next opportunity … The trouble was that no opportunity offered. His wife seemed to wear an armour since her return …

He had also expected that, after an absence of almost three weeks, there would be, on her part, a re-awaking of physical desires. Even he, having tasted of the forbidden fruit, was conscious of them.

His expectation was disappointed.

This puzzled him greatly.

But there was still something else …

Of an evening, of a Sunday afternoon, when he felt her scrutiny, he became aware of a new quality in her look: she was no longer merely amused at his ways, at his choice of reading matter.

With an uncomfortable realisation of possible shortcomings, unsuspected by himself, he became convinced that he was being weighed, compared … with whom?

Her eyes showed a new expression: there was a dreamy quality in them …

Once or twice, when crossing his yard, he caught himself dreading that look in her face: he turned back and went to the granary, instead of the house. He sat down in its door, looking across at that big dwelling of his which contained a mystery …

But he must make the best of a bad bargain! …

He offered to take her out for drives.

“Oh no,” she said curtly. “I don't care for it.”

Yet she, too, was restless. When they had been sitting, she would suddenly get up and begin to pace the room. Sometimes she hummed a tune, smiling to herself; her step became almost a dance. Then, with a sigh, the look in her eyes seemed to come back from an infinite distance and to refocus reality: it became serious, then, almost hostile, as if she wished to erase reality.

E
ARLY IN DECEMBER
more snow fell. Hauling began. Niels hired a second man; and they went with three teams, starting out in the morning at three, getting home again next morning about the same time.

In the most natural way, thus, another change came about.

Niels got up about two o'clock at night and prepared breakfast for himself and Bobby. When they returned, at uncertain hours, he made breakfast again.

Thus the first few trips were made.

Then, one morning, when they came home, after a particularly hard trip, against a sharp north-east wind and drifting snow, exhausted, cold, almost desperate, Niels found in the kitchen the dishes his wife had used the day before, and even his own breakfast dishes unwashed. They were simply piled together.

In an impulse of anger he went to the staircase and called. But, receiving no answer, he did not call again. He went to the kitchen, heated water, and washed the dishes himself.

This happened once; then, after a week, it became the regular routine. Niels did not comment on it at all.

In this manner, what with his absences and reticences, an almost complete separation of husband and wife came before he realised it. It was a demoralisation of all human relationships …

And yet, as if to perpetuate this state of affairs, he took out a timber lease on government land, so as to provide work in the bush for the rest of the winter …

W
HAT WAS THE WOMAN
in the White Range Line House doing meanwhile?

He hardly knew.

He did know that she spent hours and hours in front of her dressing table, combing her hair in ever new ways. To her, too, life seemed to be a burden.

When she was aware of being watched, she moved about with extreme slowness.

She made the impression of being always absent-minded. She would take up a brush and lay it down again; a comb, and drop it back into place; and finally she would reach for a shell hair-pin and put it slowly, tentatively, into a dozen places in her hair before she left it where it was …

To his occasional shame, Niels got into the habit of spying on her …

Sometimes, when he was at home, there would pass between them no more than half a dozen words.

But Saturdays, mail-days, she would invariably ask, “Can you send Bobby to the post office?”

And Bobby would go on horseback and bring back a bundle of letters, circulars, papers, sometimes a parcel … The letters were all for her; the parcels, too. Niels had never asked from whom they came; she had never volunteered any information. Without glancing at them, she thrust them into her waist or the pocket of her dressing gown.

For a long time Niels was not aware of the fact that he himself looked at the addresses on the envelopes; but one day he realised that he knew every single handwriting on them and noticed when this or that one was missing.

C
HRISTMAS
came.

On the eve Niels had seen one of his neighbours, a settler on the sand-flats, returning from the bush with two little Christmas-trees.

Children!

Early on Christmas Day Bobby went on horseback to call on his foster mother at Poplar Grove …

The White Range Line House lay dead and cold …

Restlessly Niels went here and there, back and forth on the yard, clad in his sheep-skin, a fur cap on his head, big, roomy boots on his feet, leggings rolled about his legs: he was a burden to himself.

On a silken bed upstairs in the house, there lay a woman, it is true …

Horses, cows, and pigs were a semblance of company. Niels went ever back to the stables.

He was there when, shortly before noon, the merry jingle of sleigh bells caught his ear. The sound came from the north, from the bridge trail over the corner of the Marsh. Niels stepped to the door of the stable to listen … Nearer and nearer came the sound. It reached the bluff and rounded the corner …

Callers for some one; not for him …

And yet, there they stopped in front of his gate! Niels went past the cow-shed and crossed his yard.

Strangers belike who wished to enquire about the road: it was a big cutter filled with furs: three children on the front seat, two grown-ups behind.

And then a voice, loud, boisterous, laughing.

“Hello! Step lively there, you hulking muskrat!”

Nelson's voice!

A titter sounded an echo to it; behind Nelson's shoulder a woman's face peered out: Olga's!

Niels opened the gate. “Hello,” he said, forcing a smile of welcome.

“Haven't seen you for ages,” Nelson said, shaking hands. “Thought we'd do the right thing and call, seeing that you're married at last. Well, she nibbed you, didn't she, old hoss? The gay widow? Well, well!”

Olga laughed. But she reproved her husband. “Here, Lars, behave.”

Nelson drove in; and they alighted. Niels helped to unhitch the drivers: great, stronglimbed beasts.

“So you've built a stable?” Nelson said.

“And such a big one!” Olga admired.

She looked the same as years ago when Niels had first met her as Mrs. Nelson. The crisp winter air had driven a flush into her face.

“Made it in a little over two hours,” Nelson boasted. “How's that for drivers?”

“Bought them this year?” Niels asked.

“After threshing. Had to have something to offset your Percherons.”

They entered the stable.

“Gosh,” Nelson exclaimed. “Look at that, Olga. If this dormouse hasn't got ten head of horses! He beats me on that. Six's all I have. But I've got cattle. No end of cattle. Herefords. Say, Lindstedt, I've got a little bull, a two-year-old that's a beauty. Just the thing for a small herd like yours. Sell him to you for two hundred, for old sake's sake. Make you a present of him for two hundred … Well, how does it feel to be married?”

Niels was white. “Come to the house,” he said.

They went.

“What a beautiful yard!” Olga exclaimed. “So sheltered!”

“How much have you broken?” Nelson asked.

“A hundred acres.”

“Whoo-pee!” Nelson shouted in his booming bass. “You sure beat me on that! I'm sticking around fifty. But grain's a side issue with me. I'm the cattle man. I prefer a crop that'll walk to town on its own feet.”

Niels held the door. Olga pushed two of her children ahead; the youngest one Nelson picked up as he entered.

Niels led them through to the dining room.

“Make yourselves at home,” he said, taking their wraps.

Olga and Nelson wore black-dog coats. Nelson, as he peeled himself out of his, stood in black “store-clothes,” with stiff white collar and blue satin tie, patent-leather shoes on his enormous feet. Olga was dressed in shiny black silk, very pretty, and plainly with child. The two boys were encased in brand-new suits, with knickers and Norfolk jackets; the little girl, the oldest, in fluffy white muslin.

“Excuse me a moment,” Niels said as he ponderously stepped back into the almost bare front room.

There he hesitated; then, with an expression of set determination on his deeply lined face, he went slowly upstairs.

A
S HE ENTERED
his wife's room, for the first time in months, the woman, in a sky-blue dressing gown, reclining on her bed, looked up at him, dropping the hand which held her book. There was a curious expression on her face, half a smile, full of irony, challenge, hostile provocation …

For just a second Niels was tempted to yell at her, Get up and dress and come down!

The strange thing was that he felt instinctively that that would have been the right thing to do; yes, that it would have pleased her. He did not know why. He did not fathom this woman's psychology. Later, much later, he understood that such a course might have righted much that was wrong between him and his wife …

Clear and sharp, perfectly self-possessed, as if she were not concerned, her voice rang out, calmly enough, but to him like the bell of doom. “Well?”

Niels took himself in hand. As he mastered his almost unconquerable impulse of violence, he felt humiliated, almost humble, and said very quietly, “The Nelsons are here. They came to call.”

“Well?” the voice repeated.

Niels began to stammer he hardly knew what. Her aggressive composure disconcerted him. Then, with a great effort, he used her name. “Clara … won't you dress and come down?”

Her light, silvery laugh answered him. It sounded perfectly easy; but a strange quality in it betrayed even to Niels that in this woman, too, the nerves were in tension. Then, after a pause, “Why should I?”

“But … You don't understand … They are the first callers we've had …”

“They call on you, not on me,” she said, the laughter dying out from her voice, the smile from her face. And, with a distinctly hostile note, “Leave me alone.”

He was thunderstruck. Once more he began to stammer “Clara … Do me the favour …”

“Do you a favour?” the voice answered, low but strident. Then a brief laughter. And again the voice, vibrant with pent-up excitement, “You … you … you skunk!”

Niels turned.

“Do
me
the favour,” the voice was now loud and ringing so that Niels thought it could be heard throughout the house, “and close my door …”

Niels had to stop on the stairs to steady himself. His knees shook …

Then he went down. In the hall he hesitated again before he entered the dining room.

“W
HAT PERFECTLY LOVELY
furniture!” Olga greeted him as he entered.

He looked at her and nodded. “You'll stay for dinner, of course,” he managed to say after a while.

“That's what we were figuring on,” Nelson said. “Indeed we were. If you've got a bite in the house?”

There was an air of immense embarrassment in the room.

Niels went to the dumb-waiter in the corner and picked up a table cloth. Then he inserted a leaf in the table. And at last he went to the kitchen door.

“You'll have to excuse me once more,” he mumbled.

The children were crowding about their mother: they were afraid of him.

In the kitchen he started the fire, sliced ham and bread, and broke eggs into a frying pan.

His guests had been conversing in whispers. When he appeared, they went silent; and again that air of embarrassment settled over the room.

Then Nelson said, clearly with the intention of breaking the silence, “Bobby away?”

“Bobby's gone to call on his mother.”

“I'm so glad,” Olga threw in, “mamma's got that splendid place at the judge's. She says it's just grand. The judge is such a lovely old man.”

Niels returned to the kitchen. Nelson followed.

“Look here, old man,” Nelson said, “anything wrong?”

“No,” Niels replied without looking up.

“I mean with the wife …”

“She isn't feeling well …”

“Child coming?” Nelson whispered slyly, nudging Niels with his elbow.

“No.”

Suddenly Nelson became serious. “Look here. We came to do you a good turn, old man. We know that we're the first to call. You know the reason, of course, why nobody has ever come. We thought we'd break the ice. But, if we're not welcome …”