Settlers of the Marsh by Frederick Philip Grove Page B

Always, in going, his look was fixed on that gap in the green-gold forest—gilded by rising or setting sun—where the trail led north, across the old bridge put up by the one-time fuel-hunters who had become settlers: the bush in which Ellen lived.
    Everything he did he did for her. Sometimes he felt an overpowering impulse to go right over and to ask her to follow him. Once or twice, on moonlit nights, he went to the bridge and lost himself in the shadows of the road-chasm beyond. But, the nearer he came to that farmstead in the bush, the less did the girl seem approachable to him; the less distinctly did he see her as she had walked along the edge of the field, with her firm, long strides, or as she had stood by his side at the well; and the more forbiddingly did she, instead, look at him as she had done on her father’s yard when he had recklessly spoken to her. Out of clear, critical, light-blue eyes she looked.…
    He knew that he wanted her; that he desired only one thing: to melt that ice which seemed to surround her; to beat down those barriers which defended her against him; yes, finally, with a realisation that made his very body tremble and shake, that sent his blood red-hot to his brain, he became conscious of the ultimate, supreme, physical desire: he wanted to feel her head sinking on his shoulder, her body yielding to his embrace …
    When he came home after such a paroxysm of passion and despair, he threw himself down on his hard willow-bed on the ground; and he told himself that this would not do; that no girl, no woman was ever wooed from a distance.
    How was he to get near her? Her father? No father was ever an obstacle between man and girl …
    It was she, she alone who kept him away: who kept the world away, and with the world him: for he was merely a part of that world: not a hero who came, acclaimed by the multitudes, borne high on the shoulders of his followers …
    H AYING TIME . In return for the help of Bobby and Mrs. Lund, Niels was putting up a stack at the post office …
    In the midst of this work Nelson and Olga were married. Niels was one of the groom’s “best men.”
    The wedding was no elaborate affair. It took place at the end of the regular service in the German church at Odensee. The pastor, in courtesy to the young people, merely changed into English for the ceremony. When it was over, everybody who cared to do so returned to Lund’s where a supper was prepared for which Mrs. Lund had boiled a ham.
    Niels had not made many friends. He was not a “mixer.” Amidst the general joking and celebrating, he again stood apart, in the back of the room.
    He could not help thinking of himself as he had stood in this same house three years ago, a newcomer, shy, little sure of himself, full of longings as yet undefined …
    He looked down on his surroundings with the same critical look.
    There was the bride, a bare nineteen years old; and somehow he felt that she must be glad to escape. Lunds might have had a past; Nelson was sure to have a future. For some time already the girl had been indifferent to the worries of her old home.
    Niels could not help wondering at the fact that Nelson, young, strong, ambitious, industrious as he was, should have picked the mate of his life from this house. Yet, when he scanned the bride’s face, he could not help feeling, either, that she would do as her husband wished; that she was sure to put forth her very best effort to make him an acceptable home …
    Mrs. Lund, as she worked over the stove, kept softly crying to herself. No doubt she saw her own youth in her daughter …
    Niels no longer blamed her for the state of her house. The mere fact that she felt the need of referring to better days in the certain past and the possible future showed that she was only too conscious of the fearful shortcomings of the present. Who, from morning to night, walks with bare, bleeding feet over meadow and stubble