Chapter III: Part 3

“When we looked over that rolling icy field beyond the garden this morning, with the dazzling light on the snow, just as it is at home, and I shut my eyes, I could see the ranch, and Uncle Sandy and the boys, and fat Mrs. Malone, the housekeeper, so plainly that I almost put out my hand to touch them. There’s something queer about March; lots of the range cattle get through almost until spring and then give out, and the boys that have held out well all winter often go nearly blind of a sudden. I guess it’s because by March you’ve braced up and stood all you can of winter, and because it’s called spring, you lose nerve and can’t pull the strap up another hole for a fresh grip.”

Then with a sudden movement, burying her face in my shoulder, she half whispered: “That’s the way it is with me; ever since I left the ranch, I’ve kept myself braced so that Terry should not know how homesick I feel. At first I thought it would pass, then I thought if I had a place where I could strike root the pain might wear away, and so I’ve hunted and hunted, but now, to-day, coming here and feeling some one else’s home feeling, but from outside, it’s like March snow to my eyes, I can’t bear it; there’s not another inch to pull up and the saddle girths are slipping, slipping under me, and there’s no help. I must go back!

“I was born in March, I met Terry in March, the next March we were married, and now, oh, Mrs. Evan, unless you can help me and hold me, we shall part, Terry and I, for no fault, and I shall go back to Uncle Sandy in March! No, don’t look at me so hardly, I can feel your eyes right through my hair: you, who have always been at home, can’t judge me. It isn’t that I don’t love Terry better than any one else, but the earth loves you, too, and sometimes it won’t let go. I could not know it would be so until I came away; no one could. Some day it will all be changed, this coming of a man and taking the woman away; he will come to her and stay, for home is more to the one who stays in to keep it.”

As she leaned close to me, I could feel the beating of her heart and with it another sound, a sort of feeble echo as it were. Then I gathered her up and held her close, and told her of those two first years and of my own separation from home and country.

“But after that you came back,” she cried, “and Terry can’t go back with me; we thrashed that out in the beginning, for even Uncle Sandy said there was no opening for a lawyer in a grazing country, because every one settles their own disputes quick, unless they are big enough for the government to butt in, and anyway a lawyer isn’t popular. Well, at last, thank God, I’ve found some one to understand it, some one who has lived through that feeling that pulls you back to where you started.” And Mrs. Terry, clasping her arms around my neck, fell to crying, not passionately, but comfortably, that blessed outlet that Nature has given us women in compensation for much pain we may not avoid.

Gradually the sobs stopped, she was asleep. So, laying her carefully back on the pillows and covering her with an old afghan, I left her to the dreams bred by the singing of the firewood accompanied by a little, whistling snore from Peter, the old hound.

* * * * *

The morning of the sale at the Dearborn farm was mild, as though March was preparing to go out like a lamb that scented green pastures. Two days of rain had washed the snow from the open places, and though the roads ran mud, yet it was the mud of promise.

We made an early start, that Mrs. Terry might have a chance to see the few bits of old furniture likely to attract one who had no association with the family or place; for the Dearborns were of the plain Yankee stock that, aside from a few heirlooms kept most of the time behind drawn blinds, had furnishings of the plainest sort. There was a good tall clock with a ship atop of the pendulum sailing toward a port it never reached, a handsome claw-footed table of mahogany, a chest of drawers, and a dozen chairs of the same wood, patterned diversely, a four-post bed, carved with some skill, a Davenport sofa with carved ends, a hooded cradle, a low-boy, and a work table with heavy brass handles. The silver table ware, worn thin by use, was of a slender pattern, the ends of the handles of spoons and forks being abruptly angled; while of china, outside of the modern ware in daily use, there was a tea-set of Lowestoft with its odd small-necked tea-caddy and helmet cream-pitcher, and a more complete service of blue and white India porcelain.

A bevy of neighbours and one or two dealers, including old Pop Tucker, were buzzing about these things, but what seemed to attract Mrs. Terry far more, were the pitiful little personal articles that belonged intimately to the life of Sallie Dearborn, and that she had never doubted would pass either to her own kin, or, if worthless, be destroyed instead of being exposed for criticism and sale, as the law ordains in the settling of an estate where no friendly hand intervenes.

Worn table-linen tied into bundles, underclothing, much darned stockings, shoes, a well-worn Bible filled with little memory markers bearing names and dates, a book filled with household recipes copied in a stiff, exact handwriting, and lastly, resting on the seat of a chintz-covered chair, as if its owner had left it there for a brief moment while she went to other tasks, was a deep work-basket, big as a peck measure. The inside pockets of this basket were filled with spools, needle-cases, tapes and all such gear; the outside bags held bits of half-finished work, and knitting, the rusty needles sticking from a ball of home-dyed blue-gray yarn, just as they had been laid away; while a thimble of an odd pineapple pattern hung on the top of a long darning needle that occupied the middle of the pincushion.

“This is simply cruel,” whispered Mrs. Terry, the electric wire look reappearing as she rumpled her hair and held the basket close to her as if to protect it. “There is nothing in this basket worth a nickel, unless that dingy thimble is gold, and to have it put up and sold to some one of those old cats yonder, who have been going about pinching and smelling everything, not that they mean to buy, but just to see, as that one with the green porcupine topknot in her hat said a minute ago, ‘what dear Sallie had that set her up so.’

“A lot of a woman’s secrets drop into her work-basket, and mix up with her pens and writing things when she’s alone, and it’s wicked to sell any of these things. I’m going to buy this basket, Mrs. Evan, and wrap it up in a pink paper and bury it if you’ll lend me a spade and the ground isn’t frozen too hard; if not, I’ll burn it.

“I mean to buy that old Bible, too, with all the births and deaths written in. The porcupine woman said she would buy it if it didn’t bring over a dollar, because she hadn’t had a chance to ‘leaf it over well’ and there were dates in it she wanted to write out and there might be letters tucked in somewhere! From what I’ve overheard, Miss Sallie must have had a lover fifty or sixty years ago, who went away, and as no one ever knew why, her friends’ children are still curious about the matter.”

Mr. Hanks’ vigorous pounding on the table in the kitchen, and the ringing of a bell, gathered about him an audience of nearly one hundred people, and the selling began, room by room; for, to save confusion, the large pieces of furniture were sold where they stood.

During the morning the sale dragged, the dealers had everything their own way, and in spite of Mr. Hanks’ pathetic reminiscences concerning each article, from an old pew stove to a five-cent factory-made wooden spoon, the derelicts that did not receive a single bid would have filled a wagon. The afternoon session began in the best room, wherein was the four-poster, the cradle, a good mirror, the work-basket and the tall desk, the fate of which was contained in Miss Sallie’s letter to father.

As we stood in the doorway, a flood of sunlight, coming in through the small, iridescent window-panes, gilded the dust that lay upon everything and lent warmth to the quaint buff wall-paper, festooned with loops of bright flowers and birds of paradise; a brave paper in its day and one that had faded with dignity.

“I don’t know quite what there is about this room,” whispered Mrs. Terry, “but bare as it is and cold, it seems familiar and somehow more homelike to me than any other I have ever seen; I wonder could I have lived in it in dreams?”

Before I could answer, one of the swift changes passed over her, and stepping forward, she said in the perfectly clear, unemotional voice of a business man, “Mr. Hanks, as it is growing late and I must go, would you object to selling the contents of this room as it stands? Wall-paper and all, if it is possible to get it off?” I was amazed and a little worried, for I knew nothing of the length of Mrs. Terry’s purse.

The country folks gasped and whispered among themselves; they did not wish to be cheated out of a moment’s excitement. The dealers began a series of mental calculations, but no real objection being made, Mr. Hanks stroked his chin a moment, muttered something about its being possible that the wall paper being fastened to the house might be real estate, and then said, “The bed must be a separate lot, the desk as is known is not for the sale, but the rest of the fittings I will put up in bulk ‘as is,’ madam, which is a learned and professional term you must know for the way they seem to be to the casual eye, not what perhaps the brush of fancy might paint them.”

The green porcupine lady shut her mouth with the snap of a turtle, murmuring something about the widow’s mite being disdained, as she saw that both the Bible, and the basket containing the thimble that was suspected of being gold, would vanish from her horizon.

Of course I was in no way responsible for Mrs. Terry, yet for one who confessed to being on the eve of running away, to buy a wagon load of furniture seemed hardly rational. When, ten minutes later, Mr. Hanks, after selling the bed and contents of the room for one hundred and fifty dollars, was fairly beaming at his success, and I realized that the furniture must be removed within two days, my heart sank.

Not so Mrs. Terry’s; after giving Hanks a very substantial deposit upon her purchase, she tucked the Bible under one arm, and hugging the basket to her breast, made ready to go.

That evening, after supper, she spread Bible, basket, and herself upon the rug before the den fire and began examining the contents of the old work-basket as a child does a picture puzzle, saying naïvely, “It’s no harm to look at the things before I bury them,” whereat Evan heaved a sigh, and I knew that he was mentally weighing the stability of Terry Donelly’s marriage, though at the same time his eyes twinkled with amusement.

“See,” she continued, “here’s a finished sock wrapped up in paper with something peppery, and the other is all done but a bit of the tip of the toe. I think I’ll finish it if I can get the rust off the needles; yes, it rubs off and the rug polishes them nicely,—there seems to be enough yarn on the ball to finish the toe, though it’s rather mothy; it looks ages old. Can I knit? Oh, yes, I used to knit long stockings for Uncle Sandy out of heather yarn. I knit a pair of golf stockings for Terry last fall, but one foot was shorter than the other, and he said it always drew up his big toe and distracted his attention when he was ‘putting.’”

“That carries me back a long way,” said father, who had come across the hall, newspaper in hand, for a little visit and to exchange cigars with Evan, a nightly custom, as he watched Mrs. Terry knitting in the firelight. “When I was a young fellow, not only the old folks, but all the country-bred girls learned to knit as soon as their skirts went down and their hair was put up. Then, when the attentions of one of the young men who took them to and from meeting and singing-school were recognized as serious, when he became ‘steady company’ and privileged to sit in the best room and hold the skein of yarn for her to wind, the girl with many blushes would ask him to write his name with hers on a bit of paper, which folded up, made the centre of a ball of yarn from which she straightway began to knit _Him_ a pair of socks to prove her housewifery.”

“What a well-packed idea!” cried Mrs. Terry, rising to her knees, “and perhaps, who knows, the name brought good luck and helped her get both feet alike!”

“I’m not sure about that,” laughed father, “but I do remember that there was a lot of curiosity about those papers and sometimes a girl would steal her rival’s knitting ball to find whose name was inside, and feuds came of it that were worse than tangled yarn.”

“Do you suppose there could possibly be a paper in this ball?” Mrs. Terry cried suddenly, as she squeezed it tight; “it isn’t all yarn, there’s something inside and it isn’t a spool. No, I won’t unwind it, I’ll knit this last inch out,” and the fingers flew, while it seemed as though her strange hair stretched out to look, and pulling away from its pins fairly danced in the firelight.

As the stocking ate up the yarn, I found myself getting nearer to Mrs. Terry, father drew his chair close, and Evan leaned against the fireplace.

“Why are we all so breathlessly interested?” I asked, addressing the ball of yarn as much as anything.

“Because,” answered father, “of the possibility of unearthing romance, and twist, distort, and disguise it as we will, simple love is the most interesting thing to every one of us.”

“Last round,” called Evan, who was watching so closely that Mrs. Terry’s fingers trembled nervously.

The row was finished and bound off, though the rotten yarn had to be pieced three times in the process; then she began to unwind the wisp that remained. Yes, there was a piece of paper inside, brittle and yellow.

Slowly she opened it, for it threatened to tear in shreds, and read in an awestruck voice, “‘Surely goodness and mercy will follow me all my days. March the 20th, 1842. Sarah Dearborn and Richard Morland’!”

* * * * *

“Richard Morland was my mother’s father!” she said, scarcely above a whisper; “how did his name come here, Dr. Russell?”

Father held the paper to the lamp, scarcely less excited than Mrs. Terry, who stood with clasped hands and a strange, searching expression in her eyes as they followed him.

“Richard Morland, yes, that is the name,” said father, making sure of every letter. “He once taught school at the old centre village. It was before my time, but it is a matter of record, and some of the old people still speak of him. As I remember the story, the school-teacher always boarded at the Dearborn farm.”

“Then my grandfather once lived in the house where we were, to-day, and probably slept in the four-posted bed and saw the parrots perched in the flowers on the wall the first thing in the morning,” Mrs. Terry said slowly, turning her back to the room and speaking, as it were, to the fire.

“It is very strange, because when I went into the room, it did not seem new to me. I, too, must sleep in the great bed and wake up with the sunshine on that old, old paper.”

“It is a pity that it couldn’t be taken off the wall so that all the fittings might be kept together,” I said thoughtlessly. But the young woman wheeled around swiftly, and putting a hand on either of my shoulders held me off, at the same time that her expression drew me close.

“That paper shall never come off,” she said. “If grandpa had married Miss Sallie, she would have been my grandmother and I should have belonged in the Dearborn homestead. It’s too late for that now, but I’m going to buy the place and manage it that way. Don’t you see, Mrs. Evan? I’ve found my reason, the reason that I wanted to make me stay somewhere until I had taken root and couldn’t get away. Then perhaps I may find out something more from the old place to make me hug it tighter. Anyway, the south pasture is just the place to turn out horses.

“Don’t you think, Dr. Russell, that they might be willing to sell before next week? Please may I use the telephone? I’ll call up Terry, he will be so relieved! And then I must get to work and find out why Miss Sallie wasn’t my grandmother.”

* * * * *

Now the time had come for father to open Miss Sallie’s letter, which said that—the desk and its contents were to become the property of the owner of the house!

“The desk and all the wall-papers Miss Sallie chose for the refurnishings!” cried Mrs. Terry; “it’s actually like having some one to share the responsibility of it all. Ah, you see, Mrs. Evan, I told you that dreary old March is my lucky month; another thirty days and it might have been too late.”

The day that the deed was transferred, father handed Mrs. Terry the key of the old secretary. Whispering to me, “I don’t want even Terry to come up yet, only you must be with me when I open it, for you understand,” she literally pulled me up the narrow stairs.

Dragging up the big arm-chair, she seated herself in it and turned the key slowly in the creaking lock. As the flap fell back, revealing a row of pigeon-holes and two shallow drawers, she whispered, “I don’t know exactly whether I’m opening a treasure chest or a grave!”

After some hesitation, she pulled out a drawer and took from it a bundle of yellow papers, folded lengthwise and tied with a faded blue ribbon. “‘Letters from R. M. to S. D., preserved to show my kin how good a man their foolish aunt lost through thinking that land could weigh in the balance with love,’” read Mrs. Terry, reddening deeply; “and here is a picture of grandpa cut from black paper, and a queer curl of hair. Ah, _now_ I see where my inquisitive hair comes from.

“‘A letter of advice to my kin if they think to marry, and a request.’” Mrs. Terry read this slowly to herself, saying as she did so, “I hope she wants something I can do for her.”

There was a long silence, so long that I looked up rather anxiously at last.

“What is it?” I asked.

“She wants grandpa’s name to be given to the first child that is born in this house,” said Mrs. Terry, in an awestruck tone, “and that seems to me like a loaf and fish miracle, for I was _so_ afraid that Terry would want to call him for his own people, and his father’s name was Patrick Dennis! Oh, how nice it is to have even a might-have-been grandmother to shoulder such responsibilities!” And once more she threw herself into my arms as she had done the afternoon in the attic, peeping over my shoulder at the hooded mahogany cradle into which the beams of the victorious snow-quelling March sun were shining.

“Something seems to have turned up, or else we have all gone snow-blind,” said Evan that night.

IV
THE IMMIGRANTS

=APRIL=—THE GOOSE MOON

It was early in April, an hour before sunset. The keen wind that blew down through the valley, sweeping the forge pond into little ripples, was tinkling with spring sounds,—wayside voices of robin, meadow-lark, purple finch, and cheery song sparrow; the red-wing’s good-night blending with the piping of the marsh frogs; music of little brooks newly born of melted ice and spring rain on the rocky hillsides; here and there the chime of cow bells worn by Peter Salop’s rambling herd returning from their first day’s browsing in the brush lots,—all blended into the steady rhythm of the water as it fell in an unbroken sheet from the pond’s edge upon the rocks below.

Spring rushed toward the ear that evening more swiftly than to the eye. There were yellow tassels of fragrant spice-bush in moist warm hollows, echoing in tint the winter-flowering witch-hazel; wands of glistening willow outlined the waterways, and the red glow of life lay upon the swamp maples; but only the eyes of the wise might hope to find the hiding-places of the white and rathe blue hepaticas, or the nooks deep in the hemlock woods where the wax-pink arbutus distilled fragrance from the leaf mould.

As the sun slowly vanished behind the long chain of hills beyond the Moosatuck, the warmth of the first spring day swiftly followed, and soon the sky was barred with the dull red-purple and citron that promised unwelcome frosts.

In all the countryside but two people were to be seen out-of-doors or in any way seemingly conscious of the evening’s beauty, and these were alien born; Peter Salop, the owner of the pond, mill, and forge, and Ivan Gronski, his hired helper. Peter was English born, a portly and comfortable man of sixty odd, who, having come over in his youth, had made a little money by city trade. Once upon a time he had gone home again to pick up the old life for middle-aged rest, but though the land was there, the people that made the life had vanished. Now coming for the second time, he had settled in our hill country near his sons, and because he was born in a mill, a mill he must own, and, because as a boy he had loved to creep into a neighbour’s forge and watch the molten metal take shape, a forge he must have, even though its work was no more ambitious than turning scrap iron into cheap ploughs and third-grade tools.

Among other traditions that he brought with him and never seemed to have lost in his forty years of city trading, was a love for the sound of cow bells, the sight of sheep grazing on the rough hillsides where they were almost indistinguishable from the rocks, the sight and smell of snowy “May” or Hawthorn, big bushes of which grew in his house yard, a love of lying prone on green grass, hands behind head to watch the sky, and an intense respect for the game laws. It was this latter quality that had begun an intimacy between Peter and Evan, and together they had formed an alliance to put down the trapping, ferreting, and snaring among the hills, about which the country lad, native by a few generations, has no conscience.

Wild geese had been flying these two weeks, and Peter Salop was minded that if a flock dropped to rest and feed on his pond, there should be none lacking in their onward flight. Moreover, with the wild-fowl in mind, he never cut the heavy-seeded marsh grasses and sedges that grew in the pond’s backwater, and had scattered wild rice until it had become naturalized. So now Peter paced up and down the highway that skirted his property on the west, hands behind back, his eyes first resting upon the pond that, here and there, glistened silver-like between the meshed alders that hedged it like coin within a knitted purse, then sweeping the road up which either the mail man or the home-coming cattle might at any time be expected.

For the moment, a flock of white geese held the right of way with half-raised wings and heads erect, forcing their master to one side; for this was before the day of heartless motor cars, when in rural regions, at least, the road belonged to the females, who drove buggies with sundry twitches of the reins as though they were pulling in fish, and to the ducks, geese, and portly hens escorting young chickens.

The other human figure in the picture was working steadily back of the cow barns, occasionally looking across the pond toward the sunset, but without once ceasing his toil of carrying hay from the stack and making ready for milking. What he thought, if he thought at all, left no trace upon his flat features, that were tanned and weathered to the deep hue of sole leather, although his long, light hair, and scant, bristling mustache, showed that originally he must have been fair of skin; his short, thick-set, yet lean body, with its long arms, worked like a machine until one would have supposed that an overseer was standing by him with a lash.

This unceasing labour was a sort of inborn habit, one of the few traditions that Ivan Gronski had brought with him. He never stopped to think why he worked so incessantly. Peter Salop would have told you that Ivan worked but never thought about his work, and in this way he stood in his own light, adding, “By ’n by he’ll get to thinkin’, no doubt, and then he’ll most like not work at all.”

But Peter did not know the reason. Once in the years gone by, Ivan had stopped when he was working, stopped to listen to what another said, that ‘if the tax to support the idle was not so heavy upon them all, there would be more time to raise the head and breathe the air, while if a time should come when there were no idle to be clad in gold and gems, they, the people, might even in work hours stand, hands upon hips, and laugh!’ Then had Ivan not only listened but answered, “God hasten the day,” crossing himself with one hand, while with the other he pressed the little icon, worn under his blouse, against his flesh until it left a mark.

Some one had heard! Swift as the bird flies the words travelled. Nicholas, the man who had spoken, disappeared from among his fellows who worked in a nobleman’s field, while the man who had merely answered soon felt the dreaded spy shadow hovering over him, following him and blighting the way before.

In Ivan’s hut there were five: Maria the wife, Zetta the eldest girl, ’Tiana (short for Tatiana) who crept about, and Paul the baby, and over them all the spy shadow hung. Some day, Ivan had hoped they might all go overseas to America, where it was said that one might not only laugh, but own land and houses; perhaps this might happen when Paul also could walk. But all that was before the spy shadow fell. A little money had been saved and hidden beneath the thatch, but the shadow seemed to shut a door between Ivan and freedom of motion even. What day it would come in the door, he could not tell. Some work horses from the estate were to go for exhibition to a neighbouring fair. When they were ready, polished and sleek, with bunches of ribbons braided in their manes and tails, the man in charge of them fell suddenly ill, and not daring to disarrange his overseer’s plans, he begged Ivan to wear his new boots, blouse, and cap, and ride the horses to the fair. Maria urged him to go, and overlooked the new blouse carefully,—a stitch was lacking here and there, she said,—and had he the eyes for it there was something strange both in her face and her manner of wishing him good-by.

The first night of the fair, amid some little jollity and confusion, an overseer in a village near to Ivan’s pressed close to him and whispered in his ear, “Michael is in Siberia, I, too, am beneath the spy cloud and therefore I go away to-night; come you with me, else it will be too late, to-morrow they mean to arrest us both; keep on moving with the crowd and do not let your face change.”

“How? I cannot, I have no money, and there is Maria and all. You need not think I will do that.”

“Maria knows and wishes it, then she follows when you have made a place. She has sewn the money from the thatch into the blouse you wear.”

Involuntarily Ivan pressed his hand to his side where something had been chafing him, and there he felt the little box that held their treasure. Without question Maria had placed it there, Maria must know more than he. So Ivan Gronski turned his back upon Russia, hatred of his country being all that remained of it in his heart, for what other heritage is left to an honest Russian Pole!

Three weeks later the two men reached a seaport, after arrest, hunger, and despair, all three in turn, had threatened them; another three weeks, and they stood upon American soil. The brother of Ivan’s rescuer, already well established, met and vouched for both; the friend found quick haven, but Ivan drifted here and there at first, working in ditches, on railways, clutching at every penny to save it for the coming of Maria and the others when he had “made a place,” then losing again through sickness, hearing seldom from her, and then always through Michael, the friend with whom he had come.

When working for a junk dealer in Bridgeton, he had been sent one day, in company with another man, out far across country with a load of scrap iron, its destination being Peter Salop’s forge. While his companion bargained about the iron, Ivan had watered the horses and, idle for the moment, stood looking across the pond to where a field of ripening wheat waved to and fro against the blue midsummer sky. He had never set his eyes upon a wheat field since the time when his fellow-worker, in tying sheaves, had spoken of liberty and he had answered. How long ago was that, years or only months? He could hardly tell. And what was that beyond the field edge lying low to the land almost concealed by a tall poplar—was it a peasant’s hut?

No, merely the low-built house of some early settler, the wide stone chimney and sloping attic eaves seeming lowered by the intervening hill. But a throb came into Ivan’s throat and tore it, and suddenly the oppression of his race that had gripped him even in the New Land like a paralysis, gave way, and long-drawn sobs swept him until he swayed and shook like the wheat in the wind.

A heavy but kindly hand was laid on his shoulder. “What’s the matter, my man?” asked the deep voice of Peter Salop. But before Ivan hid his face in his arms, Peter saw the tears and a reserve fell upon him.

“The wheat, the hut, Maria, and I make no place for her,” Ivan explained, piecing out his few words of English with direct gestures.

“Homesick?” shouted Peter; “want to go home?” making the common mistake of thinking loud tones help to interpret a strange tongue. “What are you, a Polack or a Slav?”

Ivan understood, and a sadness deeper than tears came to him, almost giving dignity to his hunched form. “Me? There is no go home for me, I am a Russe!”

Peter Salop might be called dense upon some occasions, but not now. For a moment he too was an immigrant, and that other pond and mill, whose double he had sought in later life in a strange land, were before him.

“I need a farm man, if you’d care to stay about here,” he said presently; “to begin, twenty a month if I board you, thirty and you find yourself; more, bimeby if you fit in.”

“Yeas, yeas, oh yeas,” gasped Ivan, clinging only to the first proposition, which for the moment overshadowed the others.

Ivan stayed; indeed, he seemed rooted to the spot, and this time was now three years past. In the working hours he only worked, but after, he schemed and planned in his little room in the horse barn about the place for Maria, always with the cottage back of the grain field in his mind. Now the plans had taken solid shape and this spring she would come, for did not the letter say so, the letter she had written him at Christmas?—that is, if he had the money ready. This being so, had not the good friend Michael arranged about the passage, and made all safe? For it is not wise for a wife to have much money in the house or write many letters, when the spy shadow has rested on the husband and he has escaped.

* * * * *

The cows came slowly up the road, nipping a green tuft here and there, before turning each to her particular stall. The boy who drove them, a grandson of Peter’s and a namesake as well, gave a whoop of delight as the last one entered the door, and carefully taking a slender trout pole from its resting-place on a beam, he unearthed a bait box from beneath the door stone and sped off through the alders up-stream, to make the most of the hour of twilight, waving his hand to old Peter as he went.

The milking over, Ivan turned the cows into the yard, carried the pails up to the milk-room door, where he received his own small can, then throwing his coat about him as if it were a sleeveless cloak, and raising his head as though lifting the day’s toil from his shoulders, he strolled slowly toward the pond. The evening mail was overdue by this time, and each night he thought might there not be a letter saying when? For surely it was spring now: April the 15th said the Insurance calendar on the barn door. But primitive Ivan had a truer almanac in his head, made up of ice and snow, sun and wind, water, flower colours, and bird songs, though he could not call them by name; for three years this calendar had grouped itself about him and spoken to him in clearer tones than printed figures.

Yes, it was spring in truth and fulness. Twice the marsh frogs had piped up and been stilled again by ice; that was in March. Now they had chanted for fourteen uninterrupted evenings; that meant April. Also yesterday, and the day before that, the straight wild goose arrows had crossed the sky from south to the north-eastward.

The first time in his boyhood that he had seen birds resembling these, in that they looked dark against the sky, an old crone had crossed herself and muttered, “there go the birds of famine.” Here in this land it was otherwise, these birds were the wise prophets, seeing spring from afar. Moreover, best of all the signs, in the field above the pond, the fall wheat had raised its green ribbons far enough to flutter in the breeze that whispered as it ran, “Summer, harvest, bread!”

The twilight began to deepen, and the purple bars locked the horizon against the warmer rays. A mist rose from the pond as high as Ivan’s heart and chilled it. A merry little screech-owl whose quavering call belied its feelings, flapped over to its nest in an abandoned dove-cote.

Suddenly the frogs began to croak, “If she shouldn’t come, suppose they do not come!”

“Maybe that they are dead,” throbbed Ivan’s heart, as though responding in a litany. And why not? The last letter was more than three months back; life had been hard to Maria, she told of work in many places, and in Peasant Russia winter is a demon who travels with famine for horses and wolves for his hunting pack!

There was a harsh bird cry in the distance. Far overhead, a second, nearer, clear and sonorous, then a dark arrow clove the dusk, fell swiftly, broke into feathered fragments, as with some little manœuvring and splashing, the wild-goose flock settled upon the forge pond. Then the pendulum of hope swung back toward Ivan. At the same time, the postman’s white-topped wagon with its sliding door stopped at the four corners. Peter Salop, preparatory to his evening gossip, shuffled his mail deftly in his big hands as one who had been in the haste of commercial life, at the same time giving a whistle and then calling, “Hi, Ivan, are you there? Here’s a letter, a _Roosian_ letter,” he added, as the man came forward, half eager, half reluctant with dread. Then as he saw the cramped, thin writing by the light of the carrier’s lantern, Ivan’s face relaxed. No, Maria was not dead, she could write her own letters to him,—a proud distinction. Content with this, he put the letter inside his shirt, gave a silent good-night greeting to his employer, and balancing his little can of milk carefully, hurried along the Lonetown cross-road that wound toward the north between forge and farm.

For half a mile he kept on the road that twisted and circled until he reached a crudely fashioned gate in the loosely piled stone fence; opening it, he went up a straight dirt path edged with bits of stone to the door of a small house, took a key from his pocket, and let himself in.

Going into the furthest of the three rooms into which the first floor was divided, he lighted a lamp that stood on the uncovered pine table, and drawing up a stool, laid the letter before him, scanned it carefully and then jumped up again. No, he would feed the fowls first, else it would be too dark, bring in his water, fix fire and teapot, make all snug,—then for the letter. What was Ivan doing in this little house, and whose house was it? His own, as well as the five acres of rough land that lay about it.

Two kinds of people traverse the country nowadays, reviving the dead and dying farms: the idealists with money (more or less) in pocket, seeking to find homes on the old lines wherein to spend it; the immigrant looking for a foothold where he may wrest a living from soil whereon the native would starve.

The house, with its three rooms and loft above, was the ruin clinging about its stone chimney that Ivan had spied across the corn field that summer day three years before, one of a dozen such lonely places that had fallen to the town for taxes. Year after year no one had come to pay, and all had fallen away but chimney and stout oak frame.

From the moment Ivan had seen its veiled outlines across the wheat field, he had desired it. At first he only thought of it, and walked around it silently on Sunday afternoons. In a few months his tongue loosened to Peter Salop, “Could the place be bought?” “Yes, surely, for the price of the rough land.” So before the second summer came he owned it.

Little by little—in the off season when Salop could spare him—board by board had he floored it and closed it in. Odd windows picked up second-hand had followed, a ladder reached the loft chamber; then came the paint, odd cans bought at an auction, bright blue with red for window-frames and door. Next he made a sort of corral of birch brush woven with wild grapevines in one corner where once had been a barn. This meant a poultry-yard; four posts and some boards thereon back of the house stood for a wood-shed. The old well was cleaned out and a swinging bucket geared above it.

By the third fall, the rough land was broken up and one little corner spaded and made ready for the vegetable garden to come this spring. Spaded and combed and brushed it was as for a flower-bed, this work largely done by the women, being half the secret of how the immigrant can live upon the bit of land the native scorns.

In-doors a few bits of plain furniture, some dishes, pots and pans, and a stove made home; no, one thing more, a little mongrel cur that a year before had followed Ivan from the village, entered the house with him, and on being fed, refused ever after to leave the place, watching all day for his return, and sleeping either on door or hearth-stone, according to the season.

* * * * *

The evening work done, the fire lit and tea made, Ivan broke the edge slowly from the envelope, grasping his icon and muttering a prayer as he did it. Yes, Maria and all were coming, also his young sister. Coming? As the date read they were now on the seas and any day might bring them.

For the first time since the parting, Ivan seemed to realize the meeting, lost his head, and shuffling his feet, danced with joy. Hitherto he had worked always, worked at first without success; now he let himself feel as a man, which he never had done since the spy shadow came between him and the sun. Then he was merely Fear walking; how long ago was it? He could not seem to reckon, but what mattered it now that it was over?

Lamp in hand, he strode through the three rooms and noticed for the first time how many things were lacking, that workmen in the houses on the upper road possessed. What did that matter? In two days another month’s pay would be due, and Maria could go some day to Bridgeton and choose for herself. All that evening he talked to himself and to the cur by turns, telling him how Maria would tend the garden and Zetta the poultry, and by and by, when they were old enough, ’Tiana and Paul would gather both fagots and berries in the big unfenced country by the Ridge.

* * * * *

Next day Ivan was uneasy at his work; a pedler’s wagon passed and he followed it and bought a doll for ’Tiana and a jingling toy for Paul, to give them welcome. The evening mail brought him another letter, this time from the friend Michael in New York. Maria had landed, and, the legal formalities being over, would go by the noon train to the Glen station on the morrow!

Life came to Ivan, and vigour; his stooping shoulders straightened, man’s blood pushed the serf’s blood through his veins. With the letter extended in his hand, he went to Peter Salop, his master, and telling its contents, dared to ask a half holiday that he might be at the station at noon. This was gladly granted, and he strode home on air, the doll and toy in his pocket and a ham, the gift of Mrs. Salop to help him make a feast, swinging over his shoulder. He put the doll and toy on either side of the little mirror on the kitchen shelf, and eating a cold supper, hurried to sleep.

A long two miles separated the Glen station from the forge; a good half hour before train time, Ivan reached it, clad in his best, a bit of myrtle sticking in his buttonhole. As the engine slid up to the narrow platform, he barely had the courage to raise his eyes. A woman got off, then another, and two men, but no Maria, and the train went snorting on its way.

“Another train from New York?” repeated the station master, busy with his trunks and packages. “Oh, there’s another at four.”

For a moment Ivan hesitated, and then turned back toward the forge, stripped off his bits of finery, and tried to lose himself in work. Peter passing by on his way to the village for a wagon that was at the repair shop, guessed what had happened and wisely said nothing. The good-hearted never jar a brimming goblet.

He would not go too early, thought Ivan, and so the second time he reached the station almost as the train pulled in. This time there were many people, chiefly for the Ridge, and he pushed his way among them wildly; but when the little crowd parted and vanished, Maria was not there! “Six-thirty is the last train up to-night, mostly freight, not often passengers,” chirped the agent.

Ivan slunk off behind the station, head down and the old stoop to his shoulders. He had eaten no dinner and his head reeled. Stumbling into the general store close to the station, he bought a hunk of cheese and a small loaf, and going down the road a short way, he climbed up the wooded bank and finding some soft moss, threw himself down and whittling his bread and cheese into mouthfuls, ate from necessity rather than with relish, for all of a sudden he felt strangely and intensely weary. A little nap could do no harm, so coat under head, Ivan fell soddenly asleep, like the wayfarer he had once been.

* * * * *

The six-thirty train came slowly into the Glen station, for it was both long and heavy with freight cars, a single combination passenger and baggage car being at the very end. This same halted far below the station, where the water-tank made a barrier between the railroad ground and the open fields.

Slowly four clumsy, heavy-laden figures in petticoats crawled down the high steps, assisting a little boy in curious trousers, while a good-natured brakeman helped to steady and replace the various bundles that were fastened to head and shoulders. As they huddled together, straightening their garments and belongings, the whistle blew three times shrilly, and the train creaked and moved heavily on.

Is there any stillness more intense than that which closes around the countryside after the bustle of a train has ceased? The evensong of the birds and the peeping frogs only serve to deepen silence from the purely human standpoint.

The heads of the three elder women were covered by kerchiefs, the little girl was bareheaded, and the boy wore an odd cap, but all alike had an expression of fatigue and resigned anxiety. The elder woman must have been pretty once, but her face was lined and thin with toil and poor feeding, while the other woman, of twenty perhaps, was round-eyed and plump.

“Where is he, Maria? Where is Ivan my brother? He leaves us here alone in a strange place at nightfall?” she asked in her foreign tongue. “I can see no houses, it is like a green desert.”

“Perhaps it is Siberia, then!” said the girl of twelve, with a shiver.

“Hush,” said Maria, “thy father has not forgotten us in all these years, he will not now,” but nevertheless dread was creeping over her, and she raised her hands nervously to loose the band that bound the bundle to her forehead.

“I’m hungry and I want to go to sleep,” piped the little boy, and crouching toward him on the bare ground his mother strove to comfort him.

* * * * *

Ivan slept like one dead, until a shrill whistling sound waked him with a start, and reading the time by the shadows that had not only lengthened, but were vanishing, he rolled to his feet, and half slid, half stumbled down to the road, across the head of which the evening train was moving.

Pulling on his coat, he tried to run, but his feet, numb with inaction, refused to do more than walk. Would he ever reach the station?

At last he felt the boards under his feet, but the long platform was empty, and the station master was setting his night light and preparing to leave. “No, there had been no passengers on the evening train,” he answered curtly, wondering if this wild-eyed man who had been there thrice in one day was a bit out of his head.

For the third time Ivan was about to turn away, when something fluttering far down by the water-tank caught his eye, and as he stared the forlorn group came into view, walking slowly up the track. Another moment, suspense was over, and they stood facing one another.

“Maria and all.”

“Ivan.”

Then at last the women began to cry softly, and Ivan with wet cheeks ran from one to the other, untying the burdens that bound head and throat, and that never more should choke them.

Halting suddenly, Ivan gasped, “But where is Paul, my baby?”

Then Maria laughed in earnest. “This is Paul, a well-grown boy; he has not been a baby these seven years. Have you lost count of time, Ivan, my friend?”

And truly, he had, and flushed when he thought of the little one he had expected to fondle, and the jingling toy at home, and with the knowledge came a certain tinge of disappointment.

Then was the procession formed for the homeward march, Ivan heaped high with the bedding; but they had gone but a few yards when a team, rumbling up from behind, came to a halt, and a jolly voice called, “Hi, Ivan, I think your people had better have a ride.”

Turning, he saw Peter Salop, who was driving his ice wagon, newly painted, with white canopy, red wheels, and blue body, home from the shop.

“It is the master,” Ivan whispered, and the group stood with bent heads, hardly daring to look at the magnificence.

Climbing in, the children’s tongues loosened among themselves. “At home, the master flogs us with a whip, sometimes, if he meets us on the roads,” murmured ’Tiana, “but here in this new country he takes us to ride in his beautiful chariot.”

Once at the house, Ivan and Maria wandered through the rooms, hand in hand, smiling shyly, and then laughing with pleasure. As Maria stopped before the little mirror to unwrap her head and set the hair-pins, Ivan snatched up the jingling toy and thrust it in the mantel closet, for somehow it wounded him to think of his mistake. But Maria cautioned him not to break it, saying: “It may be useful yet, who knows? Ah, who knows anything?”

Then leading her about the yard, her eyes rested on the sprouting wheat field and again tears filled them. “What is it that speaks, Ivan, my friend?” she asked.

“Something we have left behind and wish to forget,” he answered shortly.

“Yes, but what we are glad to leave, we are more glad to find here before us,” and she laid her face against his, which was also wet, but smiling; and high above their heads shot a wild goose arrow.

“What is that?” asked Maria, pointing.

“It is a sign of spring, and a good omen of birds,” Ivan answered.

V
TREE OF LIFE

=MAY=—THE PLANTING MOON

One day, Evan and I played _make believe_ and went a-Maying. This was not very long ago, yet in those days, high-road and byways were divided between horse and man only and therefore were our own, while we jogged along plucking at the branches and trailers that we passed, letting the horses browse, reins upon neck without risk of danger.

The _make believe_ was that we were a couple of carefree children playing at going on a journey to seek the Tree of Life, which, should we chance to find in blossom and walk in its shadow, would enable us to live as long as we wished. This had been one of my childhood’s plays, a hybrid born of Genesis and Pilgrim’s Progress, belonging to days spent alone in the garden when father had gone a day’s journey to see some patients over the hills, and Aunt Lot was immersed in preserves and forgot me. Blissful forgetfulness of children by their elders that is one of the gates to wonderland!