The milking over, Ivan turned the cows into the yard, carried the pails up to the milk-room door, where he received his own small can, then throwing his coat about him as if it were a sleeveless cloak, and raising his head as though lifting the day’s toil from his shoulders, he strolled slowly toward the pond. The evening mail was overdue by this time, and each night he thought might there not be a letter saying when? For surely it was spring now: April the 15th said the Insurance calendar on the barn door. But primitive Ivan had a truer almanac in his head, made up of ice and snow, sun and wind, water, flower colours, and bird songs, though he could not call them by name; for three years this calendar had grouped itself about him and spoken to him in clearer tones than printed figures.
Yes, it was spring in truth and fulness. Twice the marsh frogs had piped up and been stilled again by ice; that was in March. Now they had chanted for fourteen uninterrupted evenings; that meant April. Also yesterday, and the day before that, the straight wild goose arrows had crossed the sky from south to the north-eastward.
The first time in his boyhood that he had seen birds resembling these, in that they looked dark against the sky, an old crone had crossed herself and muttered, “there go the birds of famine.” Here in this land it was otherwise, these birds were the wise prophets, seeing spring from afar. Moreover, best of all the signs, in the field above the pond, the fall wheat had raised its green ribbons far enough to flutter in the breeze that whispered as it ran, “Summer, harvest, bread!”
The twilight began to deepen, and the purple bars locked the horizon against the warmer rays. A mist rose from the pond as high as Ivan’s heart and chilled it. A merry little screech-owl whose quavering call belied its feelings, flapped over to its nest in an abandoned dove-cote.
Suddenly the frogs began to croak, “If she shouldn’t come, suppose they do not come!”
“Maybe that they are dead,” throbbed Ivan’s heart, as though responding in a litany. And why not? The last letter was more than three months back; life had been hard to Maria, she told of work in many places, and in Peasant Russia winter is a demon who travels with famine for horses and wolves for his hunting pack!
There was a harsh bird cry in the distance. Far overhead, a second, nearer, clear and sonorous, then a dark arrow clove the dusk, fell swiftly, broke into feathered fragments, as with some little manœuvring and splashing, the wild-goose flock settled upon the forge pond. Then the pendulum of hope swung back toward Ivan. At the same time, the postman’s white-topped wagon with its sliding door stopped at the four corners. Peter Salop, preparatory to his evening gossip, shuffled his mail deftly in his big hands as one who had been in the haste of commercial life, at the same time giving a whistle and then calling, “Hi, Ivan, are you there? Here’s a letter, a Roosian letter,” he added, as the man came forward, half eager, half reluctant with dread. Then as he saw the cramped, thin writing by the light of the carrier’s lantern, Ivan’s face relaxed. No, Maria was not dead, she could write her own letters to him,—a proud distinction. Content with this, he put the letter inside his shirt, gave a silent good-night greeting to his employer, and balancing his little can of milk carefully, hurried along the Lonetown cross-road that wound toward the north between forge and farm.
For half a mile he kept on the road that twisted and circled until he reached a crudely fashioned gate in the loosely piled stone fence; opening it, he went up a straight dirt path edged with bits of stone to the door of a small house, took a key from his pocket, and let himself in.
Going into the furthest of the three rooms into which the first floor was divided, he lighted a lamp that stood on the uncovered pine table, and drawing up a stool, laid the letter before him, scanned it carefully and then jumped up again. No, he would feed the fowls first, else it would be too dark, bring in his water, fix fire and teapot, make all snug,—then for the letter. What was Ivan doing in this little house, and whose house was it? His own, as well as the five acres of rough land that lay about it.
Two kinds of people traverse the country nowadays, reviving the dead and dying farms: the idealists with money (more or less) in pocket, seeking to find homes on the old lines wherein to spend it; the immigrant looking for a foothold where he may wrest a living from soil whereon the native would starve.