So Big Edna Ferber (most romantic novels txt) 📖

the fine old piece that had saved Selina’s room from sheer ugliness. He had stained the wood, polished it. Had carved the front of it with her initials⁠—very like those that stood out so boldly on the old chest upstairs⁠—S. P. D. And the year⁠—1890. The whole was a fine piece of craftsmanship for a boy of thirteen⁠—would not have discredited a man of any age. It was the one beautiful gift among Selina’s clumsy crude wedding things. She had thanked him with tears in her eyes. “Roelf, you’ll come to see me often, won’t you? Often!” Then, as he had hesitated, “I’ll need you so. You’re all I’ve got.” A strange thing for a bride to say.

“I’ll come,” the boy had said, trying to make his voice casual, his tone careless. “Sure, I’ll come oncet in a while.”

“Once, Roelf. Once in a while.”

He repeated it after her, dutifully.

After the wedding they went straight to DeJong’s house. In May the vegetable farmer cannot neglect his garden even for a day. The house had been made ready for them. The sway of the old housekeeper was over. Her kitchen bedroom was empty.

Throughout the supper Selina had had thoughts which were so foolish and detached as almost to alarm her.

“Now I am married. I am Mrs. Pervus DeJong. That’s a pretty name. It would look quite distinguished on a calling card, very spidery and fine:

Mrs. Pervus DeJong

At Home Fridays

She recalled this later, grimly, when she was Mrs. Pervus DeJong, at home not only Fridays, but Saturdays, Sundays, Mondays, Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays.

They drove down the road to DeJong’s place. Selina thought, “Now I am driving home with my husband. I feel his shoulder against mine. I wish he would talk. I wish he would say something. Still, I’m not frightened.”

Pervus’s market wagon was standing in the yard, shafts down. He should have gone to market today; would certainly have to go tomorrow, starting early in the afternoon so as to get a good stand in the Haymarket. By the light of his lantern the wagon seemed to Selina to be a symbol. She had often seen it before, but now that it was to be a part of her life⁠—this the DeJong market wagon and she Mrs. DeJong⁠—she saw clearly what a crazy, disreputable, and poverty-proclaiming old vehicle it was, in contrast with the neat strong wagon in Klaas Pool’s yard, smart with green paint and red lettering that announced, “Klaas Pool, Garden Produce.” With the two sleek farm horses the turnout looked as prosperous and comfortable as Klaas himself.

Pervus swung her down from the seat of the buggy, his hand about her waist, and held her so for a moment, close. Selina said, “You must have that wagon painted, Pervus. And the seat-springs fixed and the sideboard mended.”

He stared. “Wagon!”

“Yes. It looks a sight.”

The house was tidy enough, but none too clean. Old Mrs. Voorhees had not been minded to keep house too scrupulously for a man who would be unlikely to know whether or not it was clean. Pervus lighted the lamps. There was a fire in the kitchen stove. It made the house seem stuffy on this mild May night. Selina thought that her own little bedroom at the Pools’, no longer hers, must be deliciously cool and still with the breeze fanning fresh from the west. Pervus was putting the horse into the barn. The bedroom was off the sitting room. The window was shut. This last year had taught Selina to prepare the night before for next morning’s rising, so as to lose the least possible time. She did this now, unconsciously. She took off her white muslin underwear with its frills and embroidery⁠—the three stiff petticoats, and the stiffly starched corset-cover, and the high-bosomed corset and put them into the bureau drawer that she herself had cleaned and papered neatly the week before. She brushed her hair, laid out tomorrow’s garments, put on her high-necked, long-sleeved nightgown and got into this strange bed. She heard Pervus DeJong shut the kitchen door; the latch clicked, the lock turned. Heavy quick footsteps across the bare kitchen floor. This man was coming into her room⁠ ⁠… “You can’t run far enough,” Maartje Pool had said. “Except you stop living you can’t run away from life.”

Next morning it was dark when he awakened her at four. She started up with a little cry and sat up, straining her ears, her eyes. “Is that you, Father?” She was little Selina Peake again, and Simeon Peake had come in, gay, debonair, from a night’s gaming.

Pervus DeJong was already padding about the room in stocking feet. “What⁠—what time is it? What’s the matter, Father? Why are you up? Haven’t you gone to bed⁠ ⁠…” Then she remembered.

Pervus DeJong laughed and came toward her. “Get up, little lazy bones. It’s after four. All yesterday’s work I’ve got to do, and all today’s. Breakfast, little Lina, breakfast. You are a farmer’s wife now.”

VIII

By October High Prairie Housewives told each other that Mrs. Pervus DeJong was “expecting.” Dirk DeJong was born in the bedroom off the sitting room on the fifteenth day of March, of a bewildered, somewhat resentful, but deeply interested mother; and a proud, foolish, and vainglorious father whose air of achievement, considering the really slight part he had played in the long, tedious, and racking business, was disproportionate. The name Dirk had sounded to Selina like something tall, straight, and slim. Pervus had chosen it. It had been his grandfather’s name.

Sometimes, during those months, Selina would look back on her first winter in High Prairie⁠—that winter of the icy bedroom, the chill black drum, the schoolhouse fire, the chilblains, the Pool pork⁠—and it seemed a lovely dream; a time of ease, of freedom, of careless happiness. That icy room had been her room; that mile of road traversed on bitter winter mornings a mere jaunt; the schoolhouse stove a toy, fractious but fascinating.

Pervus DeJong loved his pretty young wife, and she him. But young