The Settlers (55 page)

—2—

The children were allowed to eat as much as they could of the delicious Christmas food and then they went to sleep in the gable room, sated and tired.

Since last Christmas a new life had come into the house; in February Kristina had borne a boy, christened Frank Aldo Hjalmar. They called him Frank, the first of the children to be given an American name. When they came to their third American-born child it was their new homeland’s turn to be remembered at the baptism, thought Karl Oskar. Now their brood had grown to half a dozen, and of her surviving children, Kristina had given life to three in Sweden and three in America; one half of their children were Swedes, one half Americans. In their home the two peoples were equally strong, half of their children represented the old country, half the new. When Frank was born, Karl Oskar had said: Now it’s just right!

After Frank’s birth Kristina had been so weak physically that it was several months before she could fully resume her chores. And during the recent exhausting Christmas preparations she had felt that her strength had not yet fully come back.

Before the children were sent to bed this Christmas Eve, Karl Oskar had read the Christmas gospel aloud to his family, as was his custom. Now that the parents were alone Kristina read a few psalms from the prayerbook about Christ’s birth, beginning as usual with Luther’s words of greeting and rejoicing on the blessed day. The message of the Savior’s arrival here on earth was comforting to her anew each time she heard it.

By and by their talk turned to worldly things, and, naturally, first of all to the new iron stove.

“Thirty-three dollars!” said Kristina. “What an expense!”

“The stove will aid you in your work,” said Karl Oskar. “It’s worth the price.”

In a sudden burst of emotion Kristina put out her hand to him across the table.

“Thank you, Karl Oskar.”

It was she he had thought of when he bought the Prairie Queen. This she had of course understood at once, but it was good to hear him say it. He never failed in his concern for her. It seldom expressed itself in words; he was shy and retiring in such matters. But they knew each other so well that words between them were not required; it was unnecessary to say the self-evident. And from their deeds they knew each other’s thoughts. What people said need not mean anything. What people did meant everything.

How much work and worry he had had fattening those four hogs which had paid for the Prairie Queen! How many steps he’d taken so that she might have an iron stove! Nothing could have been more timely than this help in the kitchen. Yet, she felt that he could have bought something they needed more for those thirty-three dollars. There were farm implements invented here in America, that could have aided him in his work. Hadn’t he several times spoken of a reaper and a threshing machine?

The reaper and the thresher were still too expensive for him, replied Karl Oskar. He would surely get himself both these machines, by and by—he knew how many days’ work they would save him in a year—but lately he had been thinking of a horse. He couldn’t raise a horse since he didn’t own a mare. He had had it in mind to put aside this hog money for a horse; he had felt he almost had it by the halter. But just then he had caught sight of the Prairie Queen in the store window in St. Paul—and he had let go his hold of the horse.

“I thought of you, Kristina. It’s too much for you—you need a little rest.”

She felt his concern, both in voice and look.

Sure, she needed a long rest. Her strength diminished as her chores increased. The older children were growing up and could begin to look after themselves, but those of tender age required care in their stead. She had always had three babies who depended on her: one in her arms, and two hanging onto her skirt. This predicament had been her lot as a mother. And at regular intervals she had had to retire to childbed, from which she arose more tired each time, her body turned into a supply room for a new life, her thin breasts sustaining a hungrily sucking mouth. Karl Oskar had known what he was doing a few years earlier: he had made a solid cradle of oak. That cradle rarely stood empty.

Karl Oskar himself pulled such a heavy load that he could not take on any of hers. But his willingness to help was in itself a help. And the chores with the children she could never have managed except for the great mother-comfort: she had carried them in her body; she had borne them in pain; but when she had them around her—all healthy and without blemishes, chirping like morning birds—in such moments she felt a joy so great that she only wanted to thank God for the lives he had created through her. She ought to be still more grateful since all their children had been born well developed and without deformities.

She said that she must try to get through each day in turn. But after a moment’s silence her thoughts turned to other things.

“I wonder how they have it at home this evening?”

“They must be on their way to the early morn Christmas service,” answered Karl Oskar. “The Swedish clocks are six hours ahead of us.”

Kristina had wondered greatly about this difference in time. It showed that Sweden and America were two entirely different worlds, each with different time and hours. While it still was evening here, dawn broke at home. The two countries were given their days—their light and their dark—at different times.

During a few evenings before the holidays Karl Oskar had busied himself with his letter to Sweden. Tomorrow he would take enough time off to finish it. What more was there to put into the letter? He had told in detail about the iron stove he had given Kristina as a Christmas present, he had enumerated the cooking utensils that came with the stove, and he had written that the price in Swedish money was about one hundred twenty-five riksdaler. Father and Mother would feel he had paid a senseless sum for it. A mason in Ljuder parish would build a whole fireplace for ten riksdaler. But he had added in his letter that he felt sure it would be many years before an iron stove would be put into a farm kitchen in the home parish.

The last letter from his father had come during the fall; it had been short, yet difficult for Karl Oskar to read. The lines wiggled up and down like a snake; the letters in many places crept into each other, making them impossible to decipher. His father, Nils Jakobsson, wrote that his hands trembled, but he need not have written this: every word in the letter indicated the condition of his hand.

His father had replied to the message about his son Robert’s death in America: “It was Sad for us Old ones to learn of our youngest Son’s demise in youthful years. It was difficult for Robert to be satisfied with anything in this World. You wrote your Brother traveled widely. Wither can Man Flee that Death shall not o’ertake him?”

The letter was barely ten sentences long, and Nils had written only these few words about Robert. It seemed as if the trembling hand had been unable to manage any of sorrow’s outpourings. When Karl Oskar read the letter to Kristina, she told him what she had heard his father say that April morning when they left home and started their journey to America: “I must step out on the stoop and behold my sons’ funeral cortege.” The words touched Karl Oskar deeply. His father had felt his sons were dead while they still lived. Thus when the message of Robert’s death reached him he had submitted to his loss in advance.

The old parents did not know the circumstances of their youngest son’s death. Karl Oskar had only written that Robert had died suddenly and from an unknown sickness.

Surely, no age has a promise of the morrow. When Karl Oskar had gone to inspect the maple-studded knoll near the lake for a cemetery, who would that day have thought his younger brother, a young man of twenty-two, would be the first to be buried under the silver maples?

Since then a new summer had come and gone; the silver maples had twice shed their leaves over the first grave of the new cemetery. And Robert was no longer alone in the Swedish burying plot at Chisago Lake.

You raised your hand against your brother the last time you saw him in life! Such had been their last meeting: one brother had struck the other. Karl Oskar had struck his brother, flesh of his own flesh—what wouldn’t he give to have that deed undone. He had regretted his action at once, and Robert’s assurance of forgiveness was some comfort to him when they found the body a few days later. But his brother’s forgiveness was not sufficient for Karl Oskar; he could not forgive himself for what he had done. Kristina had not again mentioned this burst of temper, except to say on the day of Robert’s funeral that this was a warning, something to learn from, the thing that had taken place when two brothers met for the last time in life: people should always act toward others as if their meeting were the last.

The gold seeker returning from California had been a short-time guest in their house. He had arrived on Monday evening, he had left on Saturday morning. During five nights he had slept under his brother’s roof—then he had taken off again, but had not gone farther than the brook a few miles away in the forest. There his body was found.

If they only had known that Robert was deathly sick when he returned . . . But Karl Oskar guessed that Robert himself had not known this. And so the sick one had been forced to end his life like a wounded animal seeking a hiding place in a forest thicket. Such an end would have been spared him had they known about his mortal illness. But the wise man who knew everything aright—his name was Afterward.

Robert’s own reticence was at fault, but concerning his illusory fortune, he had convinced them he had acted in good faith and had believed the useless bills were worth their face value. And it was good, at least, to know that he hadn’t wanted to cheat them but had himself been cheated. Karl Oskar had later thrown the whole bundle of bills into the fire, and as he did so he had felt an intense hatred for the notes: these bills had been printed and circulated to destroy people. Because of these damned bills he had abused his brother! He had wished the wildcat money had feelings; he wanted it to suffer in the flames as it burned to ashes.

What had happened on Arvid’s and Robert’s California journey would now never be clear to them. The gold seekers’ own mouths were closed for eternity. Arvid’s watch, which they had found in Robert’s pocket after his death, had been sent to the boy’s father, the cotter Petter of Kråkesjö. Karl Oskar had enclosed a letter saying Arvid had perished in North America, in an unknown way, in an unknown place, and that no one knew his grave. The father received back the inheritance he gave his son at the emigration; the patrimony returned to its source in Sweden.

On Christmas Eve they always thought of their relatives, both living and dead. Kristina remembered that already a year and a half had passed since Robert was buried on the beautiful hill near the lakeside. But he was far from forgotten; Kristina often mentioned his name, and she did so tonight.

“My brother—I never understood him,” said Karl Oskar. “I wonder if he ever would have found peace in this world had he lived.”

“Robert was already finished with life,” replied Kristina. “He was reconciled to his fate.”

She had several times told her husband about the talk she had had with Robert under the sugar maples on the Friday when Karl Oskar was in Stillwater; it had been her last talk alone with Robert. Now she repeated it again to her husband, and he wondered how she could remember Robert’s words in such detail after so long a time. She explained that his words had had a special meaning after he was dead, and she had thought of them so much because they were uttered at a time when he had only a few days left of life. She had been talking at the time to one who had already completed his life span.

“Do you suppose he knew he didn’t have much time left?”

It was not the first time he had asked this question, and she replied now as before. Robert was sure to have felt that his life would not be long. But his words could sometimes be interpreted one way, then again another way. He had also said that he didn’t suffer from any disease except the old earache he had had since his farm service in Sweden. And when
Hemlandet
had printed a notice seeking a young man to learn printing, he had asked her if he oughtn’t to reply to the advertisement. Then he had sounded in good health, with no expectation of imminent death.

Karl Oskar nodded: Robert had been a master of secret, always talking in riddles.

“I suspect he had consumption,” said Kristina.

“Probably so.”

“But Robert wasn’t afraid of death. He was unreachable, he said.”

“Unreachable? There again he spoke in riddles!”

“It’s no riddle—I understand what he meant.”

“You do?” Karl Oskar raised his eyebrows and looked at his wife in surprise. “What do you suppose he meant?”

This time Kristina was slow in answering, and when she spoke her voice had changed; it was tense and restrained. In vain she tried to suppress a tremble.

“He was through his. We have ours ahead of us, we do.”

Karl Oskar’s eyes still rested on her inquisitively; he did not understand.

“I just said Robert was reconciled to his lot in life,” she resumed. “We are not.”

What is this all about? he asked himself. A few words by Robert, a year and a half ago, she had taken so seriously that time and again she came back to them and repeated them. What did it mean? He began to suspect that she was keeping something from him.

“What is it we must be reconciled with, Kristina?”

Now she quickly turned her eyes away as if she were found out. She seemed to feel she had said too much and was now regretting it. She replied that she didn’t want to talk about it tonight. It was time to go to bed. It was awfully late, she was quite worn out this Christmas Eve.

How deeply Robert’s statement concerning his fate had affected her she did not divulge to Karl Oskar. It concerned her own life, the lot of the emigrant. And each new day posed this question to her: How would she manage
her
lot in life?

—3—

Beginning on Christmas Eve 1856, Kristina had a good and faithful assistant in her kitchen. On the Prairie Queen she was able to prepare food for the large family in half the time it previously had taken her. After a few months with the new stove Kristina could not believe she had been able to manage her household without it for so many years. The new invention saved her so much work it became the most useful object in the house.