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."
VI
On the day of Olaf Ericson's barn-raising, his wife, for once
in a way, rose early. Johanna Vavrika had been baking cakes and
frying and boiling and spicing meats for a week beforehand, but it
was not until the day before the party was to take place that Clara
showed any interest in it. Then she was seized with one of her
fitful spasms of energy, and took the wagon and little Eric and
spent the day on Plum Creek, gathering vines and swamp goldenrod
to decorate the barn.
By four o'clock in the afternoon buggies and wagons began to
arrive at the big unpainted building in front of Olaf's house.
When Nils and his mother came at five, there were more than fifty
people in the barn, and a great drove of children. On the ground
floor stood six long tables, set with the crockery of seven
flourishing Ericson families, lent for the occasion. In the middle
of each table was a big yellow pumpkin, hollowed out and filled
with woodbine. In one corner of the barn, behind a pile of green-
and-white striped watermelons, was a circle of chairs for the old
people; the younger guests sat on bushel measures or barbed-wire
spools, and the children tumbled about in the haymow. The box
stalls Clara had converted into booths. The framework was hidden
by goldenrod and sheaves of wheat, and the partitions were covered
'With wild grapevines full of fruit. At one of these Johanna
Vavrika watched over her cooked meats, enough to provision an army;
and at the next her kitchen girls had ranged the ice-cream
freezers, and Clara was already cutting pies and cakes
against the hour of serving. At the third stall, little Hilda, in
a bright pink lawn dress, dispensed lemonade throughout the
afternoon. Olaf, as a public man, had thought it inadvisable
to serve beer in his barn; but Joe Vavrika had come over with two
demijohns concealed in his buggy, and after his arrival the wagon
shed was much frequented by the men.
"Hasn't Cousin Clara fixed things lovely?" little Hilda
whispered, when Nils went up to her stall and asked for lemonade.
Nils leaned against the booth, talking to the excited little
girl and watching the people. The barn faced the west, and the
sun, pouring in at the big doors, filled the whole interior with a
golden light, through which filtered fine particles of dust from
the haymow, where the children were romping. There was a great
chattering from the stall where Johanna Vavrika exhibited to the
admiring women her platters heaped with fried chicken, her roasts
of beef, boiled tongues, and baked hams with cloves stuck in the
crisp brown fat and garnished with tansy and parsley. The older
women, having assured themselves that there were twenty kinds of
cake, not counting cookies, and three dozen fat pies, repaired to
the corner behind the pile of watermelons, put on their white
aprons, and fell to their knitting and fancywork. They were a fine
company of old women, and a Dutch painter would have loved to find
them there together, where the sun made bright patches on the floor
and sent long, quivering shafts of gold through the dusky shade up
among the rafters. There were fat, rosy old women who looked hot
in their best black dresses; spare, alert old women with brown,
dark-veined hands; and several of almost heroic frame, not less
massive than old Mrs. Ericson herself. Few of them wore glasses,
and old Mrs. Svendsen, a Danish woman, who was quite bald, wore the
only cap among them. Mrs. Oleson, who had twelve big
grandchildren, could still show two braids of yellow hair as thick
as her own wrists. Among all these grandmothers there were more
brown heads than white. They all had a pleased, prosperous air, as
if they were more than satisfied with themselves and with life.
Nils, leaning against Hilda's lemonade stand, watched them
as they sat chattering in four languages, their fingers never
lagging behind their tongues.
"Look at them over there," he whispered, detaining Clara as
she passed him. "Aren't they the Old Guard? I've just counted
thirty hands. I guess they've wrung many a chicken's neck and
warmed many a boy's jacket for him in their time."
In reality he fell into amazement when he thought of the
Herculean labours those fifteen pairs of hands had performed: of
the cows they had milked, the butter they had made, the gardens
they had planted, the children and grandchildren they had tended,
the brooms they had worn out, the mountains of food they had
cooked. It made him dizzy. Clara Vavrika smiled a hard,
enigmatical smile at him and walked rapidly away. Nils' eyes
followed her white figure as she went toward the house. He
watched her walking alone in the sunlight, looked at her slender,
defiant shoulders and her little hard-set head with its coils of
blue-black hair. "No," he reflected; "she'd never be like them,
not if she lived here a hundred years. She'd only grow more
bitter. You can't tame a wild thing; you can only chain it.
People aren't all alike. I mustn't lose my nerve." He gave
Hilda's pigtail a parting tweak and set out after Clara. "Where
to?" he asked, as he came upon her in the kitchen.
"I'm going to the cellar for preserves."
"Let me go with you. I never get a moment alone with you.
Why do you keep out of my way?"
Clara laughed. "I don't usually get in anybody's way."
Nils followed her down the stairs and to the far corner of
the cellar, where a basement window let in a stream of light.
From a swinging shelf Clara selected several glass jars, each
labeled in Johanna's careful hand. Nils took up a brown flask.
"What's this? It looks good."
"It is. It's some French brandy father gave me when I was
married. Would you like some? Have you a corkscrew? I'll get
glasses."
When she brought them, Nils took them from her and put them
down on the window-sill. "Clara Vavrika, do you remember how
crazy I used to be about you?"
Clara shrugged her shoulders. "Boys are always crazy
about somebody or another. I dare say some silly has be
en crazy
about Evelina Oleson. You got over it in a hurry."
"Because I didn't come back, you mean? I had to get on, you
know, and it was hard sledding at first. Then I heard you'd
married Olaf."
"And then you stayed away from a broken heart," Clara laughed.
"And then I began to think about you more than I had since I
first went away. I began to wonder if you were really as you had
seemed to me when I was a boy. I thought I'd like to see. I've
had lots of girls, but no one ever pulled me the same way. The
more I thought about you, the more I remembered how it used to be--
like hearing a wild tune you can't resist, calling you out at
night. It had been a long while since anything had pulled me out
of my boots, and I wondered whether anything ever could again."
Nils thrust his hands into his coat pockets and squared his
shoulders, as his mother sometimes squared hers, as Olaf, in a
clumsier manner, squared his. "So I thought I'd come back and see.
Of course the family have tried to do me, and I rather thought I'd
bring out father's will and make a fuss. But they can have their
old land; they've put enough sweat into it." He took the flask and
filled the two glasses carefully to the brim. "I've found out what
I want from the Ericsons. Drink skoal, Clara." He lifted
his glass, and Clara took hers with downcast eyes. "Look at me,
Clara Vavrika. Skoal!"
She raised her burning eyes and answered fiercely: "Skoal!"
The barn supper began at six o'clock and lasted for two
hilarious hours. Yense Nelson had made a wager that he could eat
two whole fried chickens, and he did. Eli Swanson stowed away two
whole custard pies, and Nick Hermanson ate a chocolate layer cake
to the last crumb. There was even a cooky contest among the
children, and one thin, slablike Bohemian boy consumed sixteen and
won the prize, a gingerbread pig which Johanna Vavrika had
carefully decorated with red candies and burnt sugar. Fritz
Sweiheart, the German carpenter, won in the pickle contest, but he
disappeared soon after supper and was not seen for the rest of the
evening. Joe Vavrika said that Fritz could have managed the
pickles all right, but he had sampled the demijohn in his buggy too
often before sitting down to the table.
While the supper was being cleared away the two fiddlers began
to tune up for the dance. Clara was to accompany them on her old
upright piano, which had been brought down from her father's. By
this time Nils had renewed old acquaintances. Since his interview
with Clara in the cellar, he had been busy telling all the old
women how young they looked, and all the young ones how pretty they
were, and assuring the men that they had here the best farmland in
the world. He had made himself so agreeable that old Mrs.
Ericson's friends began to come up to her and tell how lucky she
was to get her smart son back again, and please to get him to play
his flute. Joe Vavrika, who could still play very well when he
forgot that he had rheumatism, caught up a fiddle from Johnny
Oleson and played a crazy Bohemian dance tune that set the wheels
going. When he dropped the bow every one was ready to dance.
Olaf, in a frock coat and a solemn made-up necktie, led the grand
march with his mother. Clara had kept well out of that
by sticking to the piano. She played the march with a pompous
solemnity which greatly amused the prodigal son, who went over and
stood behind her.
"Oh, aren't you rubbing it into them, Clara Vavrika? And
aren't you lucky to have me here, or all your wit would be thrown
away."
"I'm used to being witty for myself. It saves my life."
The fiddles struck up a polka, and Nils convulsed Joe Vavrika
by leading out Evelina Oleson, the homely schoolteacher. His next
partner was a very fat Swedish girl, who, although she was an