II
If Alexandra had had much imagination she
might have guessed what was going on in
Marie's mind, and she would have seen long
before what was going on in Emil's. But that,
as Emil himself had more than once reflected,
was Alexandra's blind side, and her life had not
been of the kind to sharpen her vision. Her
training had all been toward the end of making
her proficient in what she had undertaken to do.
Her personal life, her own realization of herself,
was almost a subconscious existence; like an
underground river that came to the surface only
here and there, at intervals months apart, and
then sank again to flow on under her own fields.
Nevertheless, the underground stream was
there, and it was because she had so much per-
sonality to put into her enterprises and suc-
ceeded in putting it into them so completely,
that her affairs prospered better than those of
her neighbors.
There were certain days in her life, out-
wardly uneventful, which Alexandra remem-
bered as peculiarly happy; days when she was
close to the flat, fallow world about her, and
felt, as it were, in her own body the joyous
germination in the soil. There were days,
too, which she and Emil had spent together,
upon which she loved to look back. There
had been such a day when they were down
on the river in the dry year, looking over the
land. They had made an early start one
morning and had driven a long way before
noon. When Emil said he was hungry, they
drew back from the road, gave Brigham his
oats among the bushes, and climbed up to the
top of a grassy bluff to eat their lunch under the
shade of some little elm trees. The river was
clear there, and shallow, since there had been
no rain, and it ran in ripples over the sparkling
sand. Under the overhanging willows of the
opposite bank there was an inlet where the
water was deeper and flowed so slowly that it
seemed to sleep in the sun. In this little bay a
single wild duck was swimming and diving and
preening her feathers, disporting herself very
happily in the flickering light and shade. They
sat for a long time, watching the solitary bird
take its pleasure. No living thing had ever
seemed to Alexandra as beautiful as that wild
duck. Emil must have felt about it as she did,
for afterward, when they were at home, he used
sometimes to say, "Sister, you know our duck
down there--" Alexandra remembered that
day as one of the happiest in her life. Years
afterward she thought of the duck as still there,
swimming and diving all by herself in the sun-
light, a kind of enchanted bird that did not
know age or change.
Most of Alexandra's happy memories were as
impersonal as this one; yet to her they were
very personal. Her mind was a white book,
with clear writing about weather and beasts and
growing things. Not many people would have
cared to read it; only a happy few. She had
never been in love, she had never indulged in
sentimental reveries. Even as a girl she had
looked upon men as work-fellows. She had
grown up in serious times.
There was one fancy indeed, which persisted
through her girlhood. It most often came to
her on Sunday mornings, the one day in the
week when she lay late abed listening to the
familiar morning sounds; the windmill singing
in the brisk breeze, Emil whistling as he blacked
his boots down by the kitchen door. Some-
times, as she lay thus luxuriously idle, her eyes
closed, she used to have an illusion of being
lifted up bodily and carried lightly by some one
very strong. It was a man, certainly, who car-
ried her, but he was like no man she knew; he
was much larger and stronger and swifter, and
he carried her as easily as if she were a sheaf
of wheat. She never saw him, but, with eyes
closed, she could feel that he was yellow like the
sunlight, and there was the smell of ripe corn-
fields about him. She could feel him approach,
bend over her and lift her, and then she could
feel herself being carried swiftly off across the
fields. After such a reverie she would rise has-
tily, angry with herself, and go down to the
bath-house that was partitioned off the kitchen
shed. There she would stand in a tin tub and
prosecute her bath with vigor, finishing it by
pouring buckets of cold well-water over her
gleaming white body which no man on the
Divide could have carried very far.
As she grew older, this fancy more often came to her when she was tired than when she was fresh and strong. Sometimes, after she had been in the open all day, overseeing the brand- ing of the cattle or the loading of the pigs, she would come in chilled, take a concoction of spices and warm home-made wine, and go to bed with her body actually aching with fatigue. Then, just before she went to sleep, she had the old sensation of being lifted and carried by a strong being who took from her all her bodily weariness.
