_ CAROL'S liveliest interest was in her walks with the baby.
Hugh wanted to know what the box-elder tree said, and what
the Ford garage said, and what the big cloud said, and she
told him, with a feeling that she was not in the least making
up stories, but discovering the souls of things. They had an
especial fondness for the hitching-post in front of the mill.
It was a brown post, stout and agreeable; the smooth leg
of it held the sunlight, while its neck, grooved by hitching-
straps, tickled one's fingers. Carol had never been awake
to the earth except as a show of changing color and great
satisfying masses; she had lived in people and in ideas about
having ideas; but Hugh's questions made her attentive to the
comedies of sparrows, robins, blue jays, yellowhammers; she
regained her pleasure in the arching flight of swallows, and
added to it a solicitude about their nests and family squabbles.
She forgot her seasons of boredom. She said to Hugh,
"We're two fat disreputable old minstrels roaming round the
world," and he echoed her, "Roamin' round--roamin' round."
The high adventure, the secret place to which they both
fled joyously, was the house of Miles and Bea and Olaf Bjornstam.
Kennicott steadily disapproved of the Bjornstams. He
protested, "What do you want to talk to that crank for?" He
hinted that a former "Swede hired girl" was low company
for the son of Dr. Will Kennicott. She did not explain. She
did not quite understand it herself; did not know that in the
Bjornstams she found her friends, her club, her sympathy
and her ration of blessed cynicism. For a time the gossip of
Juanita Haydock and the Jolly Seventeen had been a refuge
from the droning of Aunt Bessie, but the relief had not
continued. The young matrons made her nervous. They talked
so loud, always so loud. They filled a room with clashing
cackle; their jests and gags they repeated nine times over.
Unconsciously, she had discarded the Jolly Seventeen, Guy
Pollock, Vida, and every one save Mrs. Dr. Westlake and the
friends whom she did not clearly know as friends--the Bjornstams.
To Hugh, the Red Swede was the most heroic and powerful
person in the world. With unrestrained adoration he trotted
after while Miles fed the cows, chased his one pig--an animal
of lax and migratory instincts--or dramatically slaughtered a
chicken. And to Hugh, Olaf was lord among mortal men, less
stalwart than the old monarch, King Miles, but more understanding
of the relations and values of things, of small sticks,
lone playing-cards, and irretrievably injured hoops.
Carol saw, though she did not admit, that Olaf was not
only more beautiful than her own dark child, but more gracious.
Olaf was a Norse chieftain: straight, sunny-haired, large-
limbed, resplendently amiable to his subjects. Hugh was a
vulgarian; a bustling business man. It was Hugh that bounced
and said "Let's play"; Olaf that opened luminous blue eyes
and agreed "All right," in condescending gentleness. If Hugh
batted him--and Hugh did bat him--Olaf was unafraid but
shocked. In magnificent solitude he marched toward the
house, while Hugh bewailed his sin and the overclouding of
august favor.
The two friends played with an imperial chariot which
Miles had made out of a starch-box and four red spools;
together they stuck switches into a mouse-hole, with vast
satisfaction though entirely without known results.
Bea, the chubby and humming Bea, impartially gave cookies
and scoldings to both children, and if Carol refused a cup of
coffee and a wafer of buttered knackebrod, she was desolated.
Miles had done well with his dairy. He had six cows,
two hundred chickens, a cream separator, a Ford truck. In the
spring he had built a two-room addition to his shack. That
illustrious building was to Hugh a carnival. Uncle Miles did
the most spectacular, unexpected things: ran up the ladder;
stood on the ridge-pole, waving a hammer and singing something
about "To arms, my citizens"; nailed shingles faster
than Aunt Bessie could iron handkerchiefs; and lifted a two-
by-six with Hugh riding on one end and Olaf on the other.
Uncle Miles's most ecstatic trick was to make figures not on
paper but right on a new pine board, with the broadest softest
pencil in the world. There was a thing worth seeing!
The tools! In his office Father had tools fascinating in their
shininess and curious shapes, but they were sharp, they were
something called sterized, and they distinctly were not for
boys to touch. In fact it was a good dodge to volunteer "I
must not touch," when you looked at the tools on the glass
shelves in Father's office. But Uncle Miles, who was a person
altogether superior to Father, let you handle all his kit except
the saws. There was a hammer with a silver head; there was a
metal thing like a big L; there was a magic instrument, very
precious, made out of costly red wood and gold, with a tube
which contained a drop--no, it wasn't a drop, it was a nothing,
which lived in the water, but the nothing LOOKED like a drop,
and it ran in a frightened way up and down the tube, no
matter how cautiously you tilted the magic instrument. And
there were nails, very different and clever--big valiant spikes,
middle-sized ones which were not very interesting, and shingle-
nails much jollier than the fussed-up fairies in the yellow
book.
II
While he had worked on the addition Miles had talked
frankly to Carol. He admitted now that so long as he stayed
in Gopher Prairie he would remain a pariah. Bea's Lutheran
friends were as much offended by his agnostic gibes as the
merchants by his radicalism. "And I can't seem to keep my
mouth shut. I think I'm being a baa-lamb, and not springing
any theories wilder than `c-a-t spells cat,' but when folks
have gone, I re'lize I've been stepping on their pet religious
corns. Oh, the mill foreman keeps dropping in, and that Danish
shoemaker, and one fellow from Elder's factory, and a few
Svenskas, but you know Bea: big good-hearted wench like
her wants a lot of folks around--likes to fuss over 'em--never
satisfied unless she tiring herself out making coffee for somebody.
"Once she kidnapped me and drug me to the Methodist
Church. I goes in, pious as Widow Bogart, and sits still
and never cracks a smile while the preacher is favoring us
with his misinformation on evolution. But afterwards, when
the old stalwarts were pumphandling everybody at the door
and calling 'em `Brother' and `Sister,' they let me sail right
by with nary a clinch. They figure I'm the town badman.
Always will be, I guess. It'll have to be Olaf who goes on.
`And sometimes---- Blamed if I don't feel like coming out and
saying, `I've been conservative. Nothing to it. Now I'm
going to start something in these rotten one-horse lumber-
camps west of town.' But Bea's got me hypnotized. Lord, Mrs.
Kennicott, do you re'lize what a jolly, square, faithful woman
she is? And I love Olaf---- Oh well, I won't go and get
sentimental on you.
"Course I've had thoughts of pulling up stakes and going
West. Maybe if they didn't know it beforehand, they wouldn't
find out I'd ever been guilty of trying to think for myself.
But--oh, I've worked hard, and built up this dairy business,
and I hate to start all over again, and move Bea and the kid
into another one-room shack. That's how they get us!
Encourage us to be thrifty and own our own houses, and then,
by golly, they've got us; they know we won't dare risk
everything by committing lez--what is it? lez majesty?--I
mean they know we won't be hinting around that if we had
a co-operative bank, we could get along without Stowbody.
Well---- As long as I can sit and play pinochle with Bea,
and tell whoppers to Olaf about his daddy's adventures in the
woods, and how he snared a wapaloosie and knew Paul Bunyan,
why, I don't mind being a bum. It's just for them that
I mind. Say! Say! Don't whisper a word to Bea, but when
I get this addition done, I'm going to buy her a phonograph!"
He did.
While she was busy with the activities her work-hungry
muscles found--washing, ironing, mending, baking, dusting,
preserving, plucking a chicken, painting the sink; tasks which,
because she was Miles's full partner, were exciting and creative
--Bea listened to the phonograph records with rapture like
that of cattle in a warm stable. The addition gave her a
kitchen with a bedroom above. The original one-room shack
was now a living-room, with the phonograph, a genuine leather-
upholstered golden-oak rocker, and a picture of Governor John
Johnson.
In late July Carol went to the Bjornstams' desirous of a
chance to express her opinion of Beavers and Calibrees and
Joralemons. She found Olaf abed, restless from a slight fever,
and Bea flushed and dizzy but trying to keep up her work.
She lured Miles aside and worried:
"They don't look at all well. What's the matter?"
"Their stomachs are out of whack. I wanted to call in
Doc Kennicott, but Bea thinks the doc doesn't like us--
she thinks maybe he's sore because you come down here. But
I'm getting worried."
"I'm going to call the doctor at once."
She yearned over Olaf. His lambent eyes were stupid, he
moaned, he rubbed his forehead.
"Have they been eating something that's been bad for
them?" she fluttered to Miles.
"Might be bum water. I'll tell you: We used to get our
water at Oscar Eklund's place, over across the street, but
Oscar kept dinging at me, and hinting I was a tightwad not
to dig a well of my own. One time he said, `Sure, you
socialists are great on divvying up other folks' money--and
water!' I knew if he kept it up there'd be a fuss, and I
ain't safe to have around, once a fuss starts; I'm likely to
forget myself and let loose with a punch in the snoot. I
offered to pay Oscar but he refused--he'd rather have the
chance to kid me. So I starts getting water down at Mrs.
Fageros's, in the hollow there, and I don't believe it's real
good. Figuring to dig my own well this fall."
One scarlet word was before Carol's eyes while she listened
She fled to Kennicott's office. He gravely heard her out;
nodded, said, "Be right over."
He examined Bea and Olaf. He shook his head. "Yes.
Looks to me like typhoid."
"Golly, I've seen typhoid in lumber-camps," groaned Miles,
all the strength dripping out of him. "Have they got it
very bad?"
"Oh, we'll take good care of them," said Kennicott, and
for the first time in their acquaintance he smiled on Miles
and clapped his shoulder.
"Won't you need a nurse?" demanded Carol.
"Why----" To Miles, Kennicott hinted, "Couldn't you
get Bea's cousin, Tina?"
"She's down at the old folks', in the country."
"Then let me do it!" Carol insisted. "They need some
one to cook for them, and isn't it good to give them sponge
baths, in typhoid?"
"Yes. All right." Kennicott was automatic; he was the
official, the physician. "I guess probably it would be hard to
get a nurse here in town just now. Mrs. Stiver is busy with
an obstetrical case, and that town nurse of yours is off on
vacation, ain't she? All right, Bjornstam can spell you at
night."
All week, from eight each morning till midnight, Carol fed
them, bathed them, smoothed sheets, took temperatures.
Miles refused to let her cook. Terrified, pallid, noiseless in
stocking feet, he did the kitchen work and the sweeping, his
big red hands awkwardly careful. Kennicott came in three
times a day, unchangingly tender and hopeful in the sick-
room, evenly polite to Miles.
Carol understood how great was her love for her friends.
It bore her through; it made her arm steady and tireless to
bathe them. What exhausted her was the sight of Bea and
Olaf turned into flaccid invalids, uncomfortably flushed after
taking food, begging for the healing of sleep at night.
During the second week Olaf's powerful legs were flabby.
Spots of a viciously delicate pink came out on his chest and
back. His cheeks sank. He looked frightened. His tongue
was brown and revolting. His confident voice dwindled to a
bewildered murmur, ceaseless and racking.
Bea had stayed on her feet too long at the beginning. The
moment Kennicott had ordered her to bed she had begun to
collapse. One early evening she startled them by screaming,
in an intense abdominal pain, and within half an hour she was
in a delirium. Till dawn Carol was with her, and not all of
Bea's groping through the blackness of half-delirious pain
was so pitiful to Carol as the way in which Miles silently
peered into the room from the top of the narrow stairs. Carol
slept three hours next morning, and ran back. Bea was altogether
delirious but she muttered nothing save, "Olaf--ve
have such a good time----"
At ten, while Carol was preparing an ice-bag in the kitchen,
Miles answered a knock. At the front door she saw
Vida Sherwin, Maud Dyer, and Mrs. Zitterel, wife of the
Baptist pastor. They were carrying grapes, and women's-
magazines, magazines with high-colored pictures and optimistic
fiction.
"We just heard your wife was sick. We've come to see
if there isn't something we can do," chirruped Vida.
Miles looked steadily at the three women. "You're too
late. You can't do nothing now. Bea's always kind of hoped
that you folks would come see her. She wanted to have a
chance and be friends. She used to sit waiting for somebody
to knock. I've seen her sitting here, waiting. Now---- Oh,
you ain't worth God-damning." He shut the door.
All day Carol watched Olaf's strength oozing. He was
emaciated. His ribs were grim clear lines, his skin was
clammy, his pulse was feeble but terrifyingly rapid. It beat--
beat--beat in a drum-roll of death. Late that afternoon
he sobbed, and died.
Bea did not know it. She was delirious. Next morning,
when she went, she did not know that Olaf would no longer
swing his lath sword on the door-step, no longer rule his
subjects of the cattle-yard; that Miles's son would not go
East to college.
Miles, Carol, Kennicott were silent. They washed the bodies
together, their eyes veiled.
"Go home now and sleep. You're pretty tired. I can't ever
pay you back for what you done," Miles whispered to Carol.
"Yes. But I'll be back here tomorrow. Go with you to
the funeral," she said laboriously.
When the time for the funeral came, Carol was in bed,
collapsed. She assumed that neighbors would go. They had
not told her that word of Miles's rebuff to Vida had spread
through town, a cyclonic fury.
It was only by chance that, leaning on her elbow in bed,
she glanced through the window and saw the funeral of Bea
and Olaf. There was no music, no carriages. There was only
Miles Bjornstam, in his black wedding-suit, walking quite
alone, head down, behind the shabby hearse that bore the
bodies of his wife and baby.
An hour after, Hugh came into her room crying, and when
she said as cheerily as she could, "What is it, dear?" he
besought, "Mummy, I want to go play with Olaf."
That afternoon Juanita Haydock dropped in to brighten
Carol. She said, "Too bad about this Bea that was your
hired girl. But I don't waste any sympathy on that man of
hers. Everybody says he drank too much, and treated his
family awful, and that's how they got sick." _