Read The Troll Garden and Selected Stories Page 5

charge against him, his brilliancy always makes me suspect him

  of cheapness.

  Here Margaret stopped and glanced at the remaining pages of

  this strange love-letter. They seemed to be filled chiefly with

  discussions of pictures and books, and with a slow smile she laid

  them by.

  She rose and began undressing. Before she lay down she went

  to open the window. With her hand on the sill, she hesitated,

  feeling suddenly as though some danger were lurking outside, some

  inordinate desire waiting to spring upon her in the darkness. She

  stood there for a long time, gazing at the infinite sweep of the

  sky.

  "Oh, it is all so little, so little there," she murmured.

  "When everything else is so dwarfed, why should one expect love to

  be great? Why should one try to read highly coloured suggestions

  into a life like that? If only I could find one thing in it all

  that mattered greatly, one thing that would warm me when I am

  alone! Will life never give me that one great moment?"

  As she raised the window, she heard a sound in the plum bushes

  outside. It was only the house-dog roused from his sleep, but

  Margaret started violently and trembled so that she caught the foot

  of the bed for support. Again she felt herself pursued by some

  overwhelming longing, some desperate necessity for herself, like

  the outstretching of helpless, unseen arms in the darkness, and the

  air seemed heavy with sighs of yearning. She fled to her bed with

  the words, "I love you more than Christ who died for me!" ringing

  in her ears.

  III

  About midnight the dance at Lockhart's was at its height.

  Even the old men who had come to "look on" caught the spirit of

  revelry and stamped the floor with the vigor of old Silenus. Eric

  took the violin from the Frenchmen, and Minna Oleson sat at the

  organ, and the music grew more and more characteristic--rude, half

  mournful music, made up of the folksongs of the North, that the

  villagers sing through the long night in hamlets by the sea, when

  they are thinking of the sun, and the spring, and the fishermen so

  long away. To Margaret some of it sounded like Grieg's Peer

  Gynt
music. She found something irresistibly infectious in

  the mirth of these people who were so seldom merry, and she felt

  almost one of them. Something seemed struggling for freedom in

  them tonight, something of the joyous childhood of the nations

  which exile had not killed. The girls were all boisterous with

  delight. Pleasure came to them but rarely, and when it came, they

  caught at it wildly and crushed its fluttering wings in their

  strong brown fingers. They had a hard life enough, most of them.

  Torrid summers and freezing winters, labour and drudgery and

  ignorance, were the portion of their girlhood; a short wooing, a

  hasty, loveless marriage, unlimited maternity, thankless sons,

  premature age and ugliness, were the dower of their womanhood. But

  what matter? Tonight there was hot liquor in the glass and hot

  blood in the heart; tonight they danced.

  Tonight Eric Hermannson had renewed his youth. He was no

  longer the big, silent Norwegian who had sat at Margaret's feet and

  looked hopelessly into her eyes. Tonight he was a man, with a

  man's rights and a man's power. Tonight he was Siegfried indeed.

  His hair was yellow as the heavy wheat in the ripe of summer, and

  his eyes flashed like the blue water between the ice packs in the

  north seas. He was not afraid of Margaret tonight, and when he

  danced with her he held her firmly. She was tired and dragged on

  his arm a little, but the strength of the man was like an all-

  pervading fluid, stealing through her veins, awakening under her

  heart some nameless, unsuspected existence that had slumbered there

  all these years and that went out through her throbbing fingertips

  to his that answered. She wondered if the hoydenish blood of some

  lawless ancestor, long asleep, were calling out in her tonight,

  some drop of a hotter fluid that the centuries had failed to cool,

  and why, if this curse were in her, it had not spoken before. But

  was it a curse, this awakening, this wealth before undiscovered,

  this music set free? For the first time in her life her heart held

  something stronger than herself, was not this worthwhile? Then she

  ceased to wonder. She lost sight of the lights and the faces and

  the music was drowned by the beating of her own arteries. She saw

  only the blue eyes that flashed above her, felt only the

  warmth of that throbbing hand which held hers and which the blood

  of his heart fed. Dimly, as in a dream, she saw the drooping

  shoulders, high white forehead and tight, cynical mouth of the man

  she was to marry in December. For an hour she had been crowding

  back the memory of that face with all her strength.

  "Let us stop, this is enough," she whispered. His only answer

  was to tighten the arm behind her. She sighed and let that

  masterful strength bear her where it would. She forgot that this

  man was little more than a savage, that they would part at dawn.

  The blood has no memories, no reflections, no regrets for the past,

  no consideration of the future.

  "Let us go out where it is cooler," she said when the music

  stopped; thinking, I am growing faint here, I shall be all

  right in the open air
. They stepped out into the cool, blue

  air of the night.

  Since the older folk had begun dancing, the young Norwegians

  had been slipping out in couples to climb the windmill tower into

  the cooler atmosphere, as is their custom.

  "You like to go up?" asked Eric, close to her ear.

  She turned and looked at him with suppressed amusement. "How

  high is it?"

  "Forty feet, about. I not let you fall." There was a note of

  irresistible pleading in his voice, and she felt that he

  tremendously wished her to go. Well, why not? This was a night of

  the unusual, when she was not herself at all, but was living an

  unreality. Tomorrow, yes, in a few hours, there would be the

  Vestibule Limited and the world.

  "Well, if you'll take good care of me. I used to be able to

  climb, when I was a little girl."

  Once at the top and seated on the platform, they were silent.

  Margaret wondered if she would not hunger for that scene all her

  life, through all the routine of the days to come. Above them

  stretched the great Western sky, serenely blue, even in the night,

  with its big, burning stars, never so cold and dead and far away as

  in denser atmospheres. The moon would not be up for twenty minutes

  yet, and all about the horizon, that wide horizon, which

  seemed to reach around the world, lingered a pale white light, as

  of a universal dawn. The weary wind brought up to them the heavy

  odours of the cornfields. The music of the dance sounded faintly

  from below. Eric leaned on his elbow beside her, his legs swinging

  down on the ladder. His great shoulders looked more than ever like


  those of the stone Doryphorus, who stands in his perfect, reposeful

  strength in the Louvre, and had often made her wonder if such men

  died forever with the youth of Greece.

  "How sweet the corn smells at night," said Margaret nervously.

  "Yes, like the flowers that grow in paradise, I think."

  She was somewhat startled by this reply, and more startled

  when this taciturn man spoke again.

  "You go away tomorrow?"

  "Yes, we have stayed longer than we thought to now."

  "You not come back any more?"

  "No, I expect not. You see, it is a long trip halfway across

  the continent."

  "You soon forget about this country, I guess." It seemed to

  him now a little thing to lose his soul for this woman, but that

  she should utterly forget this night into which he threw all his

  life and all his eternity, that was a bitter thought.

  "No, Eric, I will not forget. You have all been too kind to

  me for that. And you won't be sorry you danced this one night,

  will you?"

  "I never be sorry. I have not been so happy before. I not be

  so happy again, ever. You will be happy many nights yet, I only

  this one. I will dream sometimes, maybe."

  The mighty resignation of his tone alarmed and touched her.

  It was as when some great animal composes itself for death, as when

  a great ship goes down at sea.

  She sighed, but did not answer him. He drew a little closer

  and looked into her eyes.

  "You are not always happy, too?" he asked.

  "No, not always, Eric; not very often, I think."

  "You have a trouble?"

  "Yes, but I cannot put it into words. Perhaps if I could do

  that, I could cure it."

  He clasped his hands together over his heart, as children do when

  they pray, and said falteringly, "If I own all the world, I give

  him you."

  Margaret felt a sudden moisture in her eyes, and laid her hand

  on his.

  "Thank you, Eric; I believe you would. But perhaps even then

  I should not be happy. Perhaps I have too much of it already."

  She did not take her hand away from him; she did not dare.

  She sat still and waited for the traditions in which she had always

  believed to speak and save her. But they were dumb. She belonged

  to an ultra-refined civilization which tries to cheat nature with

  elegant sophistries. Cheat nature? Bah! One generation may do

  it, perhaps two, but the third-- Can we ever rise above nature or

  sink below her? Did she not turn on Jerusalem as upon Sodom, upon

  St. Anthony in his desert as upon Nero in his seraglio? Does she

  not always cry in brutal triumph: "I am here still, at the bottom

  of things, warming the roots of life; you cannot starve me nor tame

  me nor thwart me; I made the world, I rule it, and I am its

  destiny."

  This woman, on a windmill tower at the world's end with a

  giant barbarian, heard that cry tonight, and she was afraid! Ah!

  the terror and the delight of that moment when first we fear

  ourselves! Until then we have not lived.

  "Come, Eric, let us go down; the moon is up and the music has

  begun again," she said.

  He rose silently and stepped down upon the ladder, putting his

  arm about her to help her. That arm could have thrown Thor's

  hammer out in the cornfields yonder, yet it scarcely touched her,

  and his hand trembled as it had done in the dance. His face was

  level with hers now and the moonlight fell sharply upon it. All

  her life she had searched the faces of men for the look that lay in

  his eyes. She knew that that look had never shone for her before,

  would never shine for her on earth again, that such love comes to

  one only in dreams or in impossible places like this, unattainable

  always. This was Love's self, in a moment it would die. Stung by

  the agonized appeal that emanated from the man's whole being, she

  leaned forward and laid her lips on his. Once, twice and again she

  heard the deep respirations rattle in his throat while she held

  them there, and the riotous force under her head became an

  engulfing weakness. He drew her up to him until he felt all the

  resistance go out of her body, until every nerve relaxed and

  yielded. When she drew her face back from

  his, it was white with fear.

  "Let us go down, oh, my God! let us go down!" she muttered.

  And the drunken stars up yonder seemed reeling to some appointed

  doom as she clung to the rounds of the ladder. All that she was to

  know of love she had left upon his lips.

  "The devil is loose again," whispered Olaf Oleson, as he saw Eric

  dancing a moment later, his eyes blazing.

  But Eric was thinking with an almost savage exultation of the

  time when he should pay for this. Ah, there would be no quailing

  then! if ever a soul went fearlessly, proudly down to the gates

  infernal, his should go. For a moment he fancied he was there

  already, treading down the tempest of flame, hugging the fiery

  hurricane to his breast. He wondered whether in ages gone, all the

  countless years of sinning in which men had sold and lost and flung

  their souls away, any man had ever so cheated Satan, had ever

  bartered his soul for so great a price.

  It seemed but a little while till dawn.

  The carriage was brought to the door and Wyllis Elliot and his

  sister said goodbye. She could not meet Eric's eyes as she gave

  him her hand, but as he stood by the horse's head, just as the

  carriage moved off, she gave him one swift glance that said, "I

  will not forget." In a moment the carriage was gone.

  Eric changed his coat and plunged his head into the water tank

  and went to the barn to hook up his team. As he led his horses to

  the door, a shadow fell across his path, and he saw Skinner rising

  in his stirrups. His rugged face was pale and worn with looking

  after his wayward flock, with dragging men into the way of

  salvation.

  "Good morning, Eric. There was a dance here last night?" he

  asked, sternly.

  "A dance? Oh, yes, a dance," replied Eric, cheerfully.

  "Certainly you did not dance, Eric?"

  "Yes, I danced. I danced all the time."

  The minister's shoulders drooped, and an expression of profound

  discouragement settled over his haggard face. There was almost

  anguish in the yearning he felt for this soul.

  "Eric, I didn't look for this from you. I thought God had set

  his mark on you if he ever had on any man. And it is for things

  like this that you set your soul back a thousand years from God. 0

  foolish and perverse generation!"

  Eric drew himself up to his full height and looked off to

  where the new day was gilding the corn-tassels and flooding the

  uplands with light. As his nostrils drew in the breath of the dew

  and the morning, something from the only poetry he had ever read

  flashed across his mind, and he murmured, half to himself, with

  dreamy exultation:

  "'And a day shall be as a thousand years, and a thousand years

  as a day.'"

  The En
chanted Bluff

  We had our swim before sundown, and while we were cooking our

  supper the oblique rays of light made a dazzling glare on the white

  sand about us. The translucent red ball itself sank behind the

  brown stretches of cornfield as we sat down to eat, and the warm

  layer of air that had rested over the water and our clean sand bar

  grew fresher and smelled of the rank ironweed and sunflowers

  growing on the flatter shore. The river was brown and sluggish,

  like any other of the half-dozen streams that water the Nebraska

  corn lands. On one shore was an irregular line of bald clay bluffs

  where a few scrub oaks with thick trunks and flat, twisted tops

  threw light shadows on the long grass. The western shore was low

  and level, with cornfields that stretched to the skyline, and all

  along the water's edge were little sandy coves and beaches where

  slim cottonwoods and willow saplings flickered.

  The turbulence of the river in springtime discouraged milling,

  and, beyond keeping the old red bridge in repair, the busy farmers

  did not concern themselves with the stream; so the Sandtown boys

  were left in undisputed possession. In the autumn we hunted quail

  through the miles of stubble and fodder land along the flat shore,

  and, after the winter skating season was over and the ice had gone

  out, the spring freshets and flooded bottoms gave us our great

  excitement of the year. The channel was never the same for two

  successive seasons. Every spring the swollen stream undermined a

  bluff to the east, or bit out a few acres of cornfield to the west

  and whirled the soil away, to deposit it in spumy mud banks

  somewhere else. When the water fell low in midsummer, new sand

  bars were thus exposed to dry and whiten in the August sun.

  Sometimes these were banked so firmly that the fury of the next

  freshet failed to unseat them; the little willow seedlings emerged

  triumphantly from the yellow froth, broke into spring leaf, shot up

  into summer growth, and with their mesh of roots bound together the

  moist sand beneath them against the batterings of another April.

  Here and there a cottonwood soon glittered among them, quivering in

  the low current of air that, even on breathless days when the dust

  hung like smoke above the wagon road, trembled along the face of

  the water.

  It was on such an island, in the third summer of its yellow

  green, that we built our watch fire; not in the thicket of dancing

  willow wands, but on the level terrace of fine sand which had been

  added that spring; a little new bit of world, beautifully ridged

  with ripple marks, and strewn with the tiny skeletons of turtles

  and fish, all as white and dry as if they had been expertly cured.

  We had been careful not to mar the freshness of the place, although

  we often swam to it on summer evenings and lay on the sand to rest.

  This was our last watch fire of the year, and there were

  reasons why I should remember it better than any of the others.

  Next week the other boys were to file back to their old places in

  the Sandtown High School, but I was to go up to the Divide to teach

  my first country school in the Norwegian district. I was already

  homesick at the thought of quitting the boys with whom I had always

  played; of leaving the river, and going up into a windy plain that

  was all windmills and cornfields and big pastures; where there was

  nothing wilful or unmanageable in the landscape, no new islands,

  and no chance of unfamiliar birds--such as often followed the

  watercourses.

  Other boys came and went and used the river for fishing or

  skating, but we six were sworn to the spirit of the stream, and we

  were friends mainly because of the river. There were the two

  Hassler boys, Fritz and Otto, sons of the little German tailor.

  They were the youngest of us; ragged boys of ten and twelve, with

  sunburned hair, weather-stained faces, and pale blue eyes. Otto,