Arthur Stringer

“ To get leg-weary in the open air, tramping about the sedgy slough-sides after mallard and canvas-back, to smell coffee and bacon and frying grouse in the cool of the evening, across a thin veil of camp-fire smoke, to see the tired world turn over on its shoulder and go to sleep—it's all a sort of monumental lullaby.
The prairie wind seems to seek you out, and make a bet with the Great Dipper that he'll have you off in forty winks, and the orchestra of the spheres whispers through its million strings and sings your soul to rest. ”

“ I went to the piano and pounded out Kennst Du Das Land with all my soul, and I imagine it did me good. It at least bombarded the silence out of Casa Grande. The noise of life is so far away from you on the prairie! It is not utterly silent, just that dreamy and disembodied sigh of wind and grass against which a human call targets like a leaden bullet against metal. It is almost worse than silence. ”

“ They found the chicken-coop once more right side up, and everything ship-shape. Percy promptly asked where Olga was. I pointed her out to him, breast-high in the growing wheat. She looked like Ceres, in her big, new, loose-fitting blue waist, with the noonday sun on her yellow-gold head and her mild ruminative eyes with their misted sky-line effect. She always seems to fit into the landscape here. I suppose it's because she's a born daughter of the soil. And a sea of wheat makes a perfect frame for that massive, benignant figure of hers. ”

“ But Dinky-Dunk wants wealth. And I can't help him much. I'm afraid I'm an encumbrance. And the stars make me lonely, and the prairie wind sometimes gives me the willies! And winter is coming.
I'm afraid I'm out of my setting, as badly out of it as Percival Benson is. It wouldn't be so bad, I suppose, if I'd never seen such lovely corners of the world, before coming out here to be a dot on the wilderness. If I'd never had that heavenly summer at Fiesole, and those months with you at Corfu, and that winter in Rome with poor dear dead Katrinka! ”

“ All day Saturday Olga and Dinky-Dunk were off in the chuck-wagon, working too far away to come home for dinner. The thought of them being out there, side by side, hung over me like a cloud. I remembered how he had absently stared at the white column of her neck. And I pictured him stopping in his work and studying her faded blue cotton waist pulled tight across the line of that opulent bust. What man wouldn't be impressed by such bodily magnificence, such lavish and undulating youth and strength? ”

“ I've been wondering if Dinky-Dunk is going to fall in love with Olga. Yesterday I saw him staring at her neck. She's the type of woman that would really make the right sort of wilderness wife. She seems an integral part of the prairie, broad-bosomed, fecund, opulent. And she's so placid and large and soft-spoken and easy to live with. She has none of my moods and tantrums.
Her corsets came to-day, and I showed her how to put them on. She is incontinently proud of them, but in my judgment they only make her ridiculous. It's as foolish as putting a French toque on one of her oxen. ”

“ But we're tilling the soil and growing wheat. We're making a great new country out of what was once a wilderness. To me, that seems almost enough. We're laboring to feed the world, since the world must have bread, and there's something satisfying and uplifting in the mere thought that we can answer to God, in the end, for our lives, no matter how raw and rude they may have been. And there are mornings when I am Browning's "Saul" in the flesh. The great wash of air from sky-line to sky-line puts something into my blood or brain that leaves me almost dizzy. ”

“ Just a housewife! And I so wanted to be something more, once! Yet I wonder if, after all, the one is so much better than the other? I wonder? And here comes my Dinky-Dunk, and in three minutes he'll be kissing me on the tip of the chin and asking me what there's going to be good for supper! And that is better than fame! For all afternoon those twelve little lines of Dobson's have been running through my head:
Fame is a food that dead men eat—
I have no stomach for such meat. ”

“ It may be good for the wheat, but I can't say that it seems good for me. All day long I've been fretting for far-away things, for foolish and impossible things. I tried reading Keats, but that only made me worse than ever. I've been longing for a glimpse of the Luxembourg Gardens in spring, with all the horse-chestnuts in bloom. I've been wondering how lovely it would be to drift into the Blue Grotto at Capri and see the azure sea-water drip from the trailing boat-oars. I've been burning with a hunger to see a New England orchard in the slanting afternoon sunlight of an early June afternoon. ”

“ You can't even afford to lay down on your job of loving. The more we ask, the more we must give. I've just been thinking of those days of my fiercely careless childhood when my soul used to float out to placid happiness on one piece of plum-cake—only even then, alas, it floated out like a polar bear on its iceberg, for as that plum-cake vanished my peace of mind went with it, madly as I clung to the last crumb. But now that I'm an old married woman I don't intend to be a Hamlet in petticoats. A good man loves me, and I love him back. And I intend to keep that love alive. ”

“ Even Dinky-Dunk admits that spring is coming. For three solid hours an awakened blue-bottle has been buzzing against the pane of my bedroom window. I wonder if most of us aren't like that fly, mystified by the illusion of light that fails to lead to liberty? This morning I caught sight of Dinky-Dunk in his fur coat, climbing into the buckboard. I shall always hate to see him in that rig. It makes me think of a certain night. And we hate to have memory put a finger on our mental scars. ”

“ Even tin tobacco-boxes and Dundee marmalade holders and the bottoms of old bake-pans and the sides of an old wash-boiler had been pieced together and patiently tacked over those shack-sides. It must have taken weeks and weeks to do. And it suddenly impressed me as something poignant, as something with the Vergilian touch of tears in it. It seemed so full of history, so vocal of the tragic expedients to which men on the prairie must turn. ”

“ You may call me a rattle-box, and accuse me of being temperamental now and then—which I'm not—but the one thing in life which I love is sanity. And that, Dinky-Dunk, is why I love you, even though you are only a big sunburnt farmer fighting and planning and grinding away for a home for an empty-headed wife who's going to fail at everything but making you love her! ”

“ I complained to Dinky-Dunk that he was dreaming wheat, living wheat, breathing wheat, that he and all the rest of the world seemed mad about wheat.
"And there's just one other thing you must remember, Lady Bird," was his answer. "All the rest of the world is eating wheat. It can't live without wheat. And I'd rather be growing the bread that feeds the hungry than getting rich making cordite and Krupp guns!" So he's risking everything on this crop of his, and is eternally figuring and planning and getting ready for the grande débâcle. ”

“ It is funny to see Percy teaching Olga. She watches him as though he were a miracle man. Her dewy red lips form the words slowly, and the full white throat utters them largely, laboriously, instruments on them, and in some perhaps uncouth way makes them lovely. I sit with my sewing, listening. Sometimes I open the piano and play. But I feel out of it. I seem to be on the fringe of things that are momentous only to other people. Last night, when Percy said he thought he'd sell his ranch, Dinky-Dunk looked up from his paper-littered desk and told him to hang on to that land like a leech. ”

“ But I love to see Dinky-Dunk's eyes grow black. Yet it makes me a little afraid of him. I can hear his heart pound, sometimes, quite distinctly. And sometimes there seems something so pathetic about it all—we are such puny little mites of emotion played on by nature for her own immitigable ends! But every woman wants to be loved. Dinky-Dunk asked me why I shut my eyes when he kisses me. ”

“ I've started to say my prayers again. It rather frightened Dinky-Dunk, who sat up in bed and asked me if I wasn't feeling well. I promptly assured him that I was in the best of health. He not only agreed with me, but said I was as plump as a partridge. When I am alone, though, I get frightened and fidgety. So I kneel down every night and morning now and ask God for help and guidance. I want to be a good woman and a better wife. But I shall never let Duncan know—never! ”

“ Out here, there's no object in being anything but one's self. Life is so simple and honest, so back to first principles! There's joy in the thought of getting rid of all the sublimated junk of city life. I'm just a woman; and Dinky-Dunk is just a man. We've got a roof and a bed and a fire. That's all. And what is there, really, after that? We have to eat, of course, but we really live well. There's all the game we want, especially wild duck and prairie chicken, to say nothing of jack-rabbit. Dinky-Dunk sallies out and pots them as we need them. ”

“ How would you act if you beheld a big blonde Valkyr suddenly introducing herself into your little earthly affairs?
Well, can you wonder that I stared, all eyes, when Dinky-Dunk brought home a figure like this, in the shape of a Finn girl named Olga Sarristo? Olga is to work in the fields, and to help me when she has time. But I'll never get used to having a Norse Legend standing at my elbow, for Olga is the most wonderful creature I have ever clapped eyes on. ”

“ Everything at Casa Grande has settled back into the usual groove. There is a great deal to do about the shack. The grimmest bug-bear of domestic work is dish-washing. A pile of greasy plates is the one thing that gets on my nerves. And it is a little Waterloo that must be faced three times every day, of every week, of every month, of every year. And I was never properly "broke" for domesticity and the dish-pan! Why can't some genius invent a self-washing fry-pan? My hair is growing so long that I can now do it up in a sort of half-hearted French roll. ”

“ But I turned on him with sudden fierceness and declared I wasn't going to be merely an animal. I intended to keep my soul alive, that it was every one's duty, no matter where they were, to ennoble their spirit by keeping in touch with the best that has ever been felt and thought.
When I grimly got out my mouth-organ and played the Pilgrim's Chorus, as well as I could remember it, Dinky-Dunk sat listening in silent wonder. He kept up the fire, and waited until I got through. Then he reached for the dish-pan and said, quite casually, "I'm going to help you wash up to-night, Gee-Gee!" ”

“ The days get longer, and the weather is perfect. And the prairie looks as though a vacuum cleaner had [Pg 211] been at work on it overnight. Positively, there's a charwoman who does this old world over, while we sleep! By morning it's as bright as a new pin. And out here every one is thinking of the day ahead; Dinky-Dunk, of his crop; Olga, of the pair of sky-blue corsets I've written to the Winnipeg mail-order house for; Olie, of the final waterproofing of the granaries so the wheat won't get spoilt any more; Gee-Gee, herself, of—of something which she's almost afraid to think about. ”

“ They have a saying out here that soil is as rich as it is sticky. If this is true Dinky-Dunk has a second Garden of Eden. This mud sticks to everything, to feet, to clothes, to wagon-wheels. But there's getting to be real warmth in the sun that shines through my window. ”

“ Dinky-Dunk promptly said that I was blasphemous—he's so strict and solemn! But as I stared up into the depths of that intense opaline light, so clear, so pure, I realized how air, just air and nothing else, could leave a scatter-brained lady like me half-seas over. Only it's a champagne that never leaves you with a headache the next day! ”

“ I love to watch the wheat, now that it's really turning. It waves like a sea and stretches off into the distance as far as the eye can follow it. It's as high as my waist, and sometimes it moves up and down like a slowly breathing breast. When the sun is low it turns a pure Roman gold, and makes my eyes ache. ”

“ Dinky-Dunk, in his deviling moods, says I'm an old married woman now, that I'm settled, that I've eaten my pie! Perhaps I have. I'm not imaginative, so I must depend on others for my joy of living. I know now that I can never create, never really express myself in any way worth while, either on paper or canvas or keyboard. And people without imagination, I suppose, simply have to drop back to racial simplicities—which means I'll have to have a family, and feed hungry mouths, and keep a home going. ”

“ For I tell you here and now, Matilda Anne, I, poor, puny, good-for-nothing, insignificant I, have heard that music of the spheres as clearly as you ever heard Funiculi-Funicula on that little Naples steamer that used to take you to Capri. And when I'd crawl out from under that old wagon-box, like a gopher out of his hole, in the first delicate rosiness of dawn, I'd feel unutterably grateful to be alive, to hear the cantatas of health singing deep in my soul, to know that whatever life may do to me, I'd snatched my share of happiness [Pg 118] from the pantry of the gods! ”