Bab Bab 36 · Chapter II

One March evening in my sophomore year I was sitting alone in my room

after supper. There had been a warm thaw all day, with mushy yards and

little streams of dark water gurgling cheerfully into the streets out

of old snow-banks. My window was open, and the earthy wind blowing

through made me indolent. On the edge of the prairie, where the sun had

gone down, the sky was turquoise blue, like a lake, with gold light

throbbing in it. Higher up, in the utter clarity of the western slope,

the evening star hung like a lamp suspended by silver chains—like the

lamp engraved upon the title-page of old Latin texts, which is always

appearing in new heavens, and waking new desires in men. It reminded

me, at any rate, to shut my window and light my wick in answer. I did

so regretfully, and the dim objects in the room emerged from the

shadows and took their place about me with the helpfulness which custom

breeds.

I propped my book open and stared listlessly at the page of the

‘Georgics’ where tomorrow’s lesson began. It opened with the melancholy

reflection that, in the lives of mortals the best days are the first to

flee. ‘Optima dies... prima fugit.’ I turned back to the beginning of

the third book, which we had read in class that morning. ‘Primus ego in

patriam mecum... deducam Musas’; ‘for I shall be the first, if I live,

to bring the Muse into my country.’ Cleric had explained to us that

‘patria’ here meant, not a nation or even a province, but the little

rural neighbourhood on the Mincio where the poet was born. This was not

a boast, but a hope, at once bold and devoutly humble, that he might

bring the Muse (but lately come to Italy from her cloudy Grecian

mountains), not to the capital, the palatia Romana, but to his own

little I country’; to his father’s fields, ‘sloping down to the river

and to the old beech trees with broken tops.’

Cleric said he thought Virgil, when he was dying at Brindisi, must have

remembered that passage. After he had faced the bitter fact that he was

to leave the ‘Aeneid’ unfinished, and had decreed that the great

canvas, crowded with figures of gods and men, should be burned rather

than survive him unperfected, then his mind must have gone back to the

perfect utterance of the ‘Georgics,’ where the pen was fitted to the

matter as the plough is to the furrow; and he must have said to

himself, with the thankfulness of a good man, ‘I was the first to bring

the Muse into my country.’

We left the classroom quietly, conscious that we had been brushed by

the wing of a great feeling, though perhaps I alone knew Cleric

intimately enough to guess what that feeling was. In the evening, as I

sat staring at my book, the fervour of his voice stirred through the

quantities on the page before me. I was wondering whether that

particular rocky strip of New England coast about which he had so often

told me was Cleric’s patria. Before I had got far with my reading, I

was disturbed by a knock. I hurried to the door and when I opened it

saw a woman standing in the dark hall.

‘I expect you hardly know me, Jim.’

The voice seemed familiar, but I did not recognize her until she

stepped into the light of my doorway and I beheld—Lena Lingard! She was

so quietly conventionalized by city clothes that I might have passed

her on the street without seeing her. Her black suit fitted her figure

smoothly, and a black lace hat, with pale-blue forget-me-nots, sat

demurely on her yellow hair.

I led her toward Cleric’s chair, the only comfortable one I had,

questioning her confusedly.

She was not disconcerted by my embarrassment. She looked about her with

the naive curiosity I remembered so well. ‘You are quite comfortable

here, aren’t you? I live in Lincoln now, too, Jim. I’m in business for

myself. I have a dressmaking shop in the Raleigh Block, out on O

Street. I’ve made a real good start.’

‘But, Lena, when did you come?’

‘Oh, I’ve been here all winter. Didn’t your grandmother ever write you?

I’ve thought about looking you up lots of times. But we’ve all heard

what a studious young man you’ve got to be, and I felt bashful. I

didn’t know whether you’d be glad to see me.’ She laughed her mellow,

easy laugh, that was either very artless or very comprehending, one

never quite knew which. ‘You seem the same, though—except you’re a

young man, now, of course. Do you think I’ve changed?’

‘Maybe you’re prettier—though you were always pretty enough. Perhaps

it’s your clothes that make a difference.’

‘You like my new suit? I have to dress pretty well in my business.’

She took off her jacket and sat more at ease in her blouse, of some

soft, flimsy silk. She was already at home in my place, had slipped

quietly into it, as she did into everything. She told me her business

was going well, and she had saved a little money.

‘This summer I’m going to build the house for mother I’ve talked about

so long. I won’t be able to pay up on it at first, but I want her to

have it before she is too old to enjoy it. Next summer I’ll take her

down new furniture and carpets, so she’ll have something to look

forward to all winter.’

I watched Lena sitting there so smooth and sunny and well-cared-for,

and thought of how she used to run barefoot over the prairie until

after the snow began to fly, and how Crazy Mary chased her round and

round the cornfields. It seemed to me wonderful that she should have

got on so well in the world. Certainly she had no one but herself to

thank for it.

‘You must feel proud of yourself, Lena,’ I said heartily. ‘Look at me;

I’ve never earned a dollar, and I don’t know that I’ll ever be able

to.’

‘Tony says you’re going to be richer than Mr. Harling some day. She’s

always bragging about you, you know.’

‘Tell me, how IS Tony?’

‘She’s fine. She works for Mrs. Gardener at the hotel now. She’s

housekeeper. Mrs. Gardener’s health isn’t what it was, and she can’t

see after everything like she used to. She has great confidence in

Tony. Tony’s made it up with the Harlings, too. Little Nina is so fond

of her that Mrs. Harling kind of overlooked things.’

‘Is she still going with Larry Donovan?’

‘Oh, that’s on, worse than ever! I guess they’re engaged. Tony talks

about him like he was president of the railroad. Everybody laughs about

it, because she was never a girl to be soft. She won’t hear a word

against him. She’s so sort of innocent.’

I said I didn’t like Larry, and never would.

Lena’s face dimpled. ‘Some of us could tell her things, but it wouldn’t

do any good. She’d always believe him. That’s Ántonia’s failing, you

know; if she once likes people, she won’t hear anything against them.’

‘I think I’d better go home and look after Ántonia,’ I said.

‘I think you had.’ Lena looked up at me in frank amusement. ‘It’s a

good thing the Harlings are friendly with her again. Larry’s afraid of

them. They ship so much grain, they have influence with the railroad

people. What are you studying?’ She leaned her elbows on the table and

drew my book toward her. I caught a faint odour of violet sachet. ‘So

that’s Latin, is it? It looks hard. You do go to the theatre sometimes,

though, for I’ve seen you there. Don’t you just love a good play, Jim?

I can’t stay at home in the evening if there’s one in town. I’d be

willing to work like a slave, it seems to me, to live in a place where

there are theatres.’

‘Let’s go to a show together sometime. You are going to let me come to

see you, aren’t you?’

‘Would you like to? I’d be ever so pleased. I’m never busy after six

o’clock, and I let my sewing girls go at half-past five. I board, to

save time, but sometimes I cook a chop for myself, and I’d be glad to

cook one for you. Well’—she began to put on her white gloves—‘it’s been

awful good to see you, Jim.’

‘You needn’t hurry, need you? You’ve hardly told me anything yet.’

‘We can talk when you come to see me. I expect you don’t often have

lady visitors. The old woman downstairs didn’t want to let me come up

very much. I told her I was from your home town, and had promised your

grandmother to come and see you. How surprised Mrs. Burden would be!’

Lena laughed softly as she rose.

When I caught up my hat, she shook her head. ‘No, I don’t want you to

go with me. I’m to meet some Swedes at the drugstore. You wouldn’t care

for them. I wanted to see your room so I could write Tony all about it,

but I must tell her how I left you right here with your books. She’s

always so afraid someone will run off with you!’ Lena slipped her silk

sleeves into the jacket I held for her, smoothed it over her person,

and buttoned it slowly. I walked with her to the door. ‘Come and see me

sometimes when you’re lonesome. But maybe you have all the friends you

want. Have you?’ She turned her soft cheek to me. ‘Have you?’ she

whispered teasingly in my ear. In a moment I watched her fade down the

dusky stairway.

When I turned back to my room the place seemed much pleasanter than

before. Lena had left something warm and friendly in the lamplight. How

I loved to hear her laugh again! It was so soft and unexcited and

appreciative gave a favourable interpretation to everything. When I

closed my eyes I could hear them all laughing—the Danish laundry girls

and the three Bohemian Marys. Lena had brought them all back to me. It

came over me, as it had never done before, the relation between girls

like those and the poetry of Virgil. If there were no girls like them

in the world, there would be no poetry. I understood that clearly, for

the first time. This revelation seemed to me inestimably precious. I

clung to it as if it might suddenly vanish.

As I sat down to my book at last, my old dream about Lena coming across

the harvest-field in her short skirt seemed to me like the memory of an

actual experience. It floated before me on the page like a picture, and

underneath it stood the mournful line: ‘Optima dies... prima fugit.’