________________________________________________
_ One evening, a week after Signa's wedding, Emil was kneeling before
a box in the sitting-room, packing his books. From time to time
he rose and wandered about the house, picking up stray volumes and
bringing them listlessly back to his box. He was packing without
enthusiasm. He was not very sanguine about his future. Alexandra
sat sewing by the table. She had helped him pack his trunk in
the afternoon. As Emil came and went by her chair with his books,
he thought to himself that it had not been so hard to leave his
sister since he first went away to school. He was going directly
to Omaha, to read law in the office of a Swedish lawyer until
October, when he would enter the law school at Ann Arbor. They
had planned that Alexandra was to come to Michigan--a long journey
for her--at Christmas time, and spend several weeks with him.
Nevertheless, he felt that this leavetaking would be more final
than his earlier ones had been; that it meant a definite break with
his old home and the beginning of something new--he did not know
what. His ideas about the future would not crystallize; the more
he tried to think about it, the vaguer his conception of it became.
But one thing was clear, he told himself; it was high time that he
made good to Alexandra, and that ought to be incentive enough to
begin with.
As he went about gathering up his books he felt as if he were
uprooting things. At last he threw himself down on the old slat
lounge where he had slept when he was little, and lay looking up
at the familiar cracks in the ceiling.
"Tired, Emil?" his sister asked.
"Lazy," he murmured, turning on his side and looking at her. He
studied Alexandra's face for a long time in the lamplight. It had
never occurred to him that his sister was a handsome woman until
Marie Shabata had told him so. Indeed, he had never thought of
her as being a woman at all, only a sister. As he studied her bent
head, he looked up at the picture of John Bergson above the lamp.
"No," he thought to himself, "she didn't get it there. I suppose
I am more like that."
"Alexandra," he said suddenly, "that old walnut secretary you use
for a desk was father's, wasn't it?"
Alexandra went on stitching. "Yes. It was one of the first things
he bought for the old log house. It was a great extravagance
in those days. But he wrote a great many letters back to the old
country. He had many friends there, and they wrote to him up to the
time he died. No one ever blamed him for grandfather's disgrace.
I can see him now, sitting there on Sundays, in his white shirt,
writing pages and pages, so carefully. He wrote a fine, regular
hand, almost like engraving. Yours is something like his, when
you take pains."
"Grandfather was really crooked, was he?"
"He married an unscrupulous woman, and then--then I'm afraid he
was really crooked. When we first came here father used to have
dreams about making a great fortune and going back to Sweden to
pay back to the poor sailors the money grandfather had lost."
Emil stirred on the lounge. "I say, that would have been worth
while, wouldn't it? Father wasn't a bit like Lou or Oscar, was
he? I can't remember much about him before he got sick."
"Oh, not at all!" Alexandra dropped her sewing on her knee. "He
had better opportunities; not to make money, but to make something
of himself. He was a quiet man, but he was very intelligent. You
would have been proud of him, Emil."
Alexandra felt that he would like to know there had been a man of
his kin whom he could admire. She knew that Emil was ashamed of
Lou and Oscar, because they were bigoted and self-satisfied. He
never said much about them, but she could feel his disgust. His
brothers had shown their disapproval of him ever since he first
went away to school. The only thing that would have satisfied them
would have been his failure at the University. As it was, they
resented every change in his speech, in his dress, in his point of
view; though the latter they had to conjecture, for Emil avoided
talking to them about any but family matters. All his interests
they treated as affectations.
Alexandra took up her sewing again. "I can remember father when
he was quite a young man. He belonged to some kind of a musical
society, a male chorus, in Stockholm. I can remember going with
mother to hear them sing. There must have been a hundred of them,
and they all wore long black coats and white neckties. I was
used to seeing father in a blue coat, a sort of jacket, and when I
recognized him on the platform, I was very proud. Do you remember
that Swedish song he taught you, about the ship boy?"
"Yes. I used to sing it to the Mexicans. They like anything
different." Emil paused. "Father had a hard fight here, didn't
he?" he added thoughtfully.
"Yes, and he died in a dark time. Still, he had hope. He believed
in the land."
"And in you, I guess," Emil said to himself. There was another
period of silence; that warm, friendly silence, full of perfect
understanding, in which Emil and Alexandra had spent many of their
happiest half-hours.
At last Emil said abruptly, "Lou and Oscar would be better off if
they were poor, wouldn't they?"
Alexandra smiled. "Maybe. But their children wouldn't. I have
great hopes of Milly."
Emil shivered. "I don't know. Seems to me it gets worse as it
goes on. The worst of the Swedes is that they're never willing
to find out how much they don't know. It was like that at the
University. Always so pleased with themselves! There's no getting
behind that conceited Swedish grin. The Bohemians and Germans were
so different."
"Come, Emil, don't go back on your own people. Father wasn't
conceited, Uncle Otto wasn't. Even Lou and Oscar weren't when they
were boys."
Emil looked incredulous, but he did not dispute the point. He
turned on his back and lay still for a long time, his hands locked
under his head, looking up at the ceiling. Alexandra knew that he
was thinking of many things. She felt no anxiety about Emil. She
had always believed in him, as she had believed in the land. He
had been more like himself since he got back from Mexico; seemed
glad to be at home, and talked to her as he used to do. She had
no doubt that his wandering fit was over, and that he would soon
be settled in life.
"Alexandra," said Emil suddenly, "do you remember the wild duck we
saw down on the river that time?"
His sister looked up. "I often think of her. It always seems to
me she's there still, just like we saw her."
"I know. It's queer what things one remembers and what things one
forgets." Emil yawned and sat up. "Well, it's time to turn in."
He rose, and going over to Alexandra stooped down and kissed her
lightly on the cheek. "Good-night, sister. I think you did pretty
well by us."
Emil took up his lamp and went upstairs. Alexandra sat finishing
his new nightshirt, that must go in the top tray of his trunk. _
Read next: PART IV - The White Mulberry Tree: Chapter 4
Read previous: PART IV - The White Mulberry Tree: Chapter 2
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