He bowed his head in thought for a while, and then looked up.
"Ay can't go to her, Yake. Ay can't go to her. But you go, Yake; you go. An' you tal her--dat Magnus Thorkelson--Norsky Thorkelson--bane ready to do what he can for her. All he can do. Tal her Magnus ready to live or die for her. You tal her dat, Yake!"
I had to think over this a few days before I could begin to guess what it meant; and three days after, she came to see me. It was a Sunday right after harvest. I had put on my new clothes thinking to go to hear Elder Thorndyke preach, but when I thought that I had no longer any pleasure in the thought of Virginia, no chance ever to have her for my wife, no dreams of her for the future even, I sat in a sort of stupor until it was too late to go, and then I walked out to look at things.
The upland phlox, we called them pinks, were gone; the roses had fallen and were represented by green haws, turning to red; the upland scarlet lilies were vanished; but the tall lilies of the moist places were flaming like yellow stars over the tall grass, each with its six dusty anthers whirling like little windmills about its red stigma; and beside these lilies, with their spotted petals turned back to their roots, stood the clumps of purple marsh phlox; while towering over them all were the tall rosin-weeds with their yellow blossoms like sunflowers, and the Indian medicine plant waving purple plumes. There was a sense of autumn in the air. Far off across the marsh I saw that the settlers had their wheat in symmetrical beehive-shaped stacks while mine stood in the shock, my sloping hillside slanting down to the marsh freckled with the shocks until it looked dark--the almost sure sign of a bountiful crop. And as I looked at this scene of plenty, I sickened at it. What use to me were wheat in the shock, hay in the stack, cattle on the prairie, corn already hiding the ground? Nothing! Less than nothing: for I had lost the thing for which I had worked--lost it before I had claimed it. I sat down and saw the opposite side of the marsh swim in my tears.
4
And then Rowena came into my view as she passed the house. I hastily dried my eyes, and went to meet her, astonished, for she was alone. She was riding one of Gowdy's horses, and had that badge of distinction in those days, a side-saddle and a riding habit. She looked very distinguished, as she rode slowly toward me, her long skirt hanging below her feet, one knee crooked about the saddle horn, the other in the stirrup. I had not seen a woman riding thus since the time I had watched them sweeping along in all their style in Albany or Buffalo. She came up to me and stopped, looking at me without a word.
"Why of all things!" I said. "Rowena, is this you!"
"What's left of me," said she.
I stood looking at her for a minute, thinking of what her father and mother had said, and finally trying to figure out what seemed to be a great change in her. There was something new in her voice, and her manner of looking at me as she spoke; and something strange in the way she looked out of her eyes. Her face was a little paler than it used to be, as if she had been indoors more; but there was a pink flush in her cheeks that made her look prettier than I had ever seen her. Her eyes were bright as if with tears just trembling to fall, rather than with the old glint of defiance or high spirits; but she smiled and laughed more than ever I had seen her do. She acted as if she was in high spirits, as I have seen even very quiet girls in the height of the fun and frolic of a dance or sleigh-ride. When she was silent for a moment, though, her mouth drooped as if in some sort of misery; and it was not until our eyes met that the laughing expression came over her face, as if she was gay only when she knew she was watched. She seemed older--much older.