Settlers of the Marsh (14 page)

“Wait,” said the girl. “I'll get my hat.” And she slipped past him, into the house.

Half conscious only of his movements he idled back to the yard and stood there, eyes fixed on vacancy.

Dark, green, gloomy, the bush reared all about. Aspen-leaves shivered, revealing their silvery under-sides.

“I believe a storm is coming,” said the girl, somewhat steadied as she rejoined him, her hat slung by its ribbons over her arm. “I wish it would come while we are out. I like to watch a storm.”

They turned and passed into the bush road, side by side.

The tension between them grew less. The moment was coming. It did not depend upon them. Why tremble?

On and on they went; between them peace arose. Both seemed to feel that it was for the very last time: drain what you can to the dregs …

The storm, too, was coming. But all the clearer, all the more brilliant was the sky overhead.

First they followed the bush road; then they left it, threading a cattle path which branched off to the left. Birds fluttered up as they touched the bushes: shy birds and bold birds: waxwings, catbirds, tow-hees—these merely flitted away; blackbirds, kingbirds, and jays—these scolded at them, resenting their intrusion into the home of their young. Bush rabbits sprang up and scampered away in a panic: and both of them laughed: laughter released the tension completely.

The cattle path forked: the girl followed one, the boy another; they flitted and ran; whoever was first to arrive at the rejunction of the trails stood and waited for the other, smiling or laughing …

T
HEY CAME
to the clearing of the little school.

The yard was densely overgrown with raspberry canes which held a profusion of heavy, overripe berries. They picked them, eating as they went or offering handfuls to each other. Not a word did they say, except that now and then the one or the other exclaimed, “Here!” or “Look at that!”

True enough, the moment was coming. But between them had arisen something like a silent compact not to hasten it along; to delay it, rather. That moment was fraught with pain!

They went to the building and peered in through broken window-lights; they laughed at the sight of benches and blackboards; thoughtlessly, happily, as children laugh.

They crossed the road that led north, past the school house, winding through the virgin bush. And just as they were in its centre, they caught a glimpse of a democrat coming from the south. As if in play, fleeing from pursuit, they plunged into the bush beyond. Behind a thicket of hazel-brush they crouched down, laughing, their movements as simultaneous and nearly instinctive as those of a flock of birds.

The democrat rattled up, along the trail, the horses snorting; horses are scary in the bush.

A man's voice sang out, “Hi, you there!”

Silence.

They heard, though they could not see, that the man climbed down from his seat. They looked at each other in mock fright. Evidently the man wished to enquire about the road …

In a common, instinctive impulse they rose, flitted deeper into the thicket, to hide, not to be found …

Heavy steps crashed through the underbrush, wending this way and that.

The man's voice again. “Well, I'll be dog-gonned …”

Silence.

A woman's voice, “You were mistaken, Jack.”

“I saw them as plain as daylight. They're hiding, that's all.”

“Well …”

The man's steps crashed as he turned to the road. He climbed back to his seat and clicked his tongue. The horses pulled; the vehicle rolled on …

Breathlessly two human beings listened, their faces flushed: a boy and a girl …

Bent forward, shape of an arrow, a bird peered at them around a screen of foliage.

The girl sprang to her feet and laughed: a loud, mocking laugh, irresistible, so that the boy had to join her: both were flushed with guilt …

At the laugh, however, the horses stopped out there on the road.

Boy and girl caught their breath, listened, and once more broke cover and ran, away from the road, flitting this way and that, around thickets and tree trunks …

Again the girl stopped, breathless, flushed, but laughing. “Oh Niels!” she sang out, exuberantly, exultantly.

In an instant he was by her side, reaching out for her hand. “Ellen!” His voice is hoarse, intensely serious of a sudden.

“No,” she begs. “Not now. Let's be happy!”

But she leaves him her hand.

On they go, following a wider path; sun-spots filter through the leaf-mosaic of the trees, dancing and flitting over their heads. There is hardly room for the two side by side; their shoulders touch.

T
HE SLOUGH OPENS UP
: a wide expanse, first of meadow, recently cropped; then of sedge, interlaced with low-growing bands of willow.

Far on the other side, a cliff of forest, black, mysterious, threatening …

A few hundred yards in front of them rise the
haystacks
which they had piled a few weeks ago.

Slough and forest are steeped in sweltering sunlight and heat. Higher now looms a darkgrey mass of cloud in the north, edged with enormous, whitish scallops.

They stand and look.

Then the girl heaves a sigh.

“There's the storm,” she says. “Let's stay and watch. Let's go to the hay-stacks. We can crawl in when the rain comes. Shall we?”

“Yes,” says the boy.

And they cross the edge of the slough, hand in hand.

When they reach the first stack, he scoops out huge armfuls of hay, making a hollow on the south-east side, where the rain will not strike them, a cave, overhung by a roof twenty feet thick.

“Let's get on top,” she says.

Without a word he takes hold of one of the ropes weighted with stones which are thrown across the hay to hold it down in a wind. Bracing his feet against the flank of the stack he climbs upward, making steps as he goes by tramping; and then he reaches down with one hand and lifts the girl clear off her feet and pulls her up.

“Now wait,” he said when she has a firm foothold; and he repeats the manoeuvre, two, three times.

Then they stand on the top and laugh, looking at each other's flushed faces and beady brows.

The girl puts her hat on, a wide-rimmed hat, the rim bent down at the sides and fastened with ribbons under her chin: her face looks out as from a cavern.

The air is breathless: even the slight, wafting flow from the east has ceased. Nature lies prostrate in expectation of the scourge that is coming, coming. The wall of cloud has differentiated: there are two, three waves of almost black; in front, a circling festoon of loose, white, flocculent manes, seething, whirling … A winking of light runs through the first wave of black. A distant rumbling heralds the storm …

The two have squatted down in the hay, forgetting themselves. They sit and look. Then a noise as of distant breakers in the surf; the roar of the sea, approaching nearer, nearer.

The bush in front through which they have come stands motionless, breathless, blackening, as the sun is obscured. Birds flit to and fro, seeking shelter, silent …

Then a huge suction soughs through the stems. But already the lash of the wind comes down: like the sea in a storm tree tops rise and fall, the stems bending over and down and whipping back again, tossed by enormous pressures. They dance and roll, tumble and rear, and mutely cry out as in pain. And the very next moment the wind hits the stack, snatching the breath from the lips of the two who sit there crouching. A misty veil rushes over the landscape, illumined by a bluish flash which is followed by nearer and nearer growlings and barkings.

Up rises the girl in the storm, holding on to her bonnet with both her hands, leaning back into the wind, her skirt crackling and snapping and pulling at her strong limbs. Once more she laughs, laughs into the storm and sweeps her arm over the landscape, pointing.

The first rain drops, heavy, large, but few, strike against her body. She looks at the man, the boy still crouching at her feet and calls, “Now down!”

They run to the edge of the stack, squat, slide, and make for the shelter which the boy has prepared.

Down comes the rain in a cloud-burst, forming a wall in front of them where they sit in the sheltering cove in which all the fragrance of the meadow is concentrated. Flashes of lightning break on the slough like bomb-shells; rattling thunder dances and springs.

On sweeps the storm; less and less rain falls; the drops begin to sparkle and glitter; the sun bursts forth. Over the bush huge clouds are lifting their wings; and a playful breeze strikes into the cave where Niels and Ellen still crouch silent …

E
LLEN IS LOOKING OUT
, straight ahead, her eyes fixed on she knows not what.

Niels is looking at her, from close by, his face almost touching her shoulder. The longing actually to touch her, to take her in both his arms, grows so strong that his joints ache with it … A moment ago he still could have yielded to this longing …

But already something has stepped in between them: as if a distance had stepped between them, a great, infinite remoteness not to be bridged … As he sits there and looks, it is as if her face were receding and fading from view. And suddenly he is aware that in her eyes there are tears which are quivering on her lashes, white, sun-bleached lashes, before they fall.

The realisation of a bottomless abyss shakes him.

“Ellen,” he calls with an almost breaking voice.

The girl slowly rises. “I know,” she says. “Don't speak. The moment has come. I know what you want to say. Oh Niels, I am going to hurt you deeply. Let it be as it is, Niels. Why can't you?” She sobs and turns, touching his cheek with her hand. Then almost impatiently, almost angrily, “Oh God, I can't understand it! Why has it got to be like this? I've seen it coming, Niels. Ever since I first saw you, years ago. I knew it would have to come to this! I knew it! I knew it! I did what I could to keep it away; but it did not help. Oh God!” she cries out once more, “I've had only one single friend in my life! And now I must lose him!” And her tears run freely at last; and she makes no longer any attempt to check her sobs.

Niels has risen. He is shaken to his very depths. He does not know what to do, what to say. He stands helpless, sobs pressing from within to be let out.

“Ellen …” he stammers at last.

At that the girl sinks down before him. “Niels,” she implores, “it is hard, oh so hard! I cannot! … Niels, promise … promise that you will let things remain as they are. Come, come …” She reaches for his hand and strokes it. “I shall be all alone again, Niels. Promise that you will not say another word!”

Niels stands ghastly white. His knees shake under him. Once more he stammers, “Ellen …”

“At least to-day, Niels,” she begs; “promise that at least to-day you will not say another word …”

“I won't,” he breathes.

“Thanks,” she says, “thanks.” And she feels for her handkerchief to dry her eyes.

“Let's go,” she says as she rises to her feet and smiles at him. “The rain's over. It is beautiful now. Let us take the road.”

S
O THEY WENT HOME
through the bush where the drops showered down upon them as the breeze ran through the leafy tops of trees.

They went in silence: Niels as through a vacant dream devoid of feeling. It was Ellen who reached for his hand as if begging forgiveness.

At Ellen's gate they stopped.

“Niels,” Ellen said, “will you believe me when I tell you that I know? What you wish can never be. When I can, I shall tell you. If it's any comfort to you, you may know I shall never marry. You've been my only friend. I've suffered, Niels, when sometimes you did not come. I know why you have stayed away when you did. Because you, too, felt that at last something like this would be coming. I've dreaded it; I've dreaded it more than I can tell. Let things remain as they are. Don't leave me alone. You will come again? Promise me, Niels, promise that you will come again!”

Niels nodded and went on his way…

N
IELS SAT
in the granary on his farm. The house was distasteful to him … Bobby had gone away in the morning, on horseback, as he often did. Sigurdsen looked after the stock on such days …

Not only the house was distasteful to him: his yard, his stable, his farm … He wished it were winter and he were out, fighting the old, savage fight against the elements …

He did not understand what had happened to him. He did not enquire into it. It was final …

He was hiding like a wounded beast. Bobby might soon be back. Sigurdsen would come, hobbling about, bent on his stick … Niels wanted to be left alone.

The hours went by; it grew dark. What awakened him from his lethargy was the impatient lowing of his cows at the gate.

There, he thought, I have two men on the place; one I pay, the other I feed; and neither feels called upon to open the gate and to water my cattle …

He went and attended to them; for half an hour he pumped water into the trough. The horses had drunk it dry.

Two of the cows had to be milked. Let it go? He drove them into the cow-lot, and with an angry feeling against Bobby he went and fetched the pails …

Then he looked into the stable. The mangers were empty; at the noise he made the horses came pressing in through the door from the horse-lot.

He lighted a lantern and reached for a fork.

As he did so, he heard Bobby's merry whistling from the corner of the Marsh. He had half finished his task when the boy joined him, grinning sheepishly.

“I'm late,” said Bobby. “I thought Sigurdsen would look after things. I asked him to.”

“Sigurdsen hasn't been around,” Niels said curtly. But he felt ashamed of the slur on the old man this implied. “Better go and see whether there's anything wrong.”

He was closing the door of the stable when Bobby returned, running. “I believe the old man's dying,” he said.