So Big Edna Ferber (most romantic novels txt) 📖

child soon to be born. And where was adventure now? And where was life? And where the love of chance bred in her by her father?

The two years following Dirk’s birth were always somewhat vague in Selina’s mind, like a dream in which horror and happiness are inextricably blended. The boy was a plump hardy infant who employed himself cheerfully in whatever spot Selina happened to deposit him. He had his father’s blond exterior, his mother’s brunette vivacity. At two he was a child of average intelligence, sturdy physique, and marked good humour. He almost never cried.

He was just twelve months old when Selina’s second child⁠—a girl⁠—was born dead. Twice during those two years Pervus fell victim to his so-called rheumatic attacks following the early spring planting when he was often forced to stand in water up to his ankles. He suffered intensely and during his illness was as tractable as a goaded bull. Selina understood why half of High Prairie was bent and twisted with rheumatism⁠—why the little Dutch Reformed church on Sunday mornings resembled a shrine to which sick and crippled pilgrims creep.

High Prairie was kind to the harried household. The farm women sent Dutch dainties. The men lent a hand in the fields, though they were hard put to it to tend their own crops at this season. The Widow Paarlenberg’s neat smart rig was frequently to be seen waiting under the willows in the DeJong yard. The Paarlenberg, still widow, still Paarlenberg, brought soups and chickens and cakes which never stuck in Selina’s throat because she refused to touch them. The Widow Paarlenberg was what is known as good-hearted. She was happiest when someone else was in trouble. Hearing of an illness, a catastrophe, “Og heden!” she would cry, and rush off to the scene with sustaining soup. She was the sort of lady bountiful who likes to see her beneficiaries benefit before her very eyes. If she brought them soup at ten in the morning she wanted to see that soup consumed.

“Eat it all,” she would urge. “Take it now, while it is hot. See, you are looking better already. Just another spoonful.”

In the DeJongs’ plight she found a grisly satisfaction, cloaked by commiseration. Selina, white and weak following her tragic second confinement, still found strength to refuse the widow’s sustaining potions. The widow, her silks making a gentle susurrus in the bare little bedroom, regarded Selina with eyes in which pity and triumph made horrid conflict. Selina’s eyes, enormous now in her white face, were twin pools of Peake pride.

“It’s most kind of you, Mrs. Paarlenberg, but I don’t like soup.”

“A whole chicken boiled in it.”

“Especially chicken soup. Neither does Pervus. But I’m sure Mrs. Voorhees will enjoy it.” This being Pervus’s old housekeeper pressed now into temporary emergency service.

It was easy to see why the DeJong house still was unpainted two years after Selina’s rosy plans began to form; why the fences still sagged, the wagon creaked, the single horse hauled the produce to market.

Selina had been married almost three years when there came to her a letter from Julie Hempel, now married. The letter had been sent to the Klaas Pool farm and Jozina had brought it to her. Though she had not seen it since her days at Miss Fister’s school, Selina recognized with a little hastening heartbeat the spidery handwriting with the shading and curleycues. Seated on her kitchen steps in her calico dress she read it.

Darling Selina:⁠—

I thought it was so queer that you didn’t answer my letter and now I know you must have thought it queer that I did not answer yours. I found your letter to me, written long ago, when I was going over Mother’s things last week. It was the letter you must have written when I was in Kansas City. Mother had never given it to me. I am not reproaching her. You see, I had written you from Kansas City, but had sent my letter to Mamma to mail because I never could remember that funny address of yours in the country.

Mamma died three weeks ago. Last week I was going over her things⁠—a trying task, you may imagine⁠—and there were your two letters addressed to me. She had never destroyed them. Poor Mamma⁠ ⁠…

Well, dear Selina, I suppose you don’t even know that I am married. I married Michael Arnold of Kansas City. The Arnolds were in the packing business there, you know. Michael has gone into business with Pa here in Chicago and I suppose you have heard of Pa’s success. Just all of a sudden he began to make a great deal of money after he left the butcher business and went into the yards⁠—the stockyards, you know. Poor Mamma was so happy these last few years, and had everything that was beautiful. I have two children. Eugene and Pauline.

I am getting to be quite a society person. You would laugh to see me. I am on the Ladies’ Entertainment Committee of the World’s Fair. We are supposed to entertain all the visiting big bugs⁠—that is the lady bugs. There! How is that for a joke?

I suppose you know about the Infanta Eulalie. Of Spain, you know. And what she did about the Potter Palmer ball.⁠ ⁠…

Selina, holding the letter in her work-stained hand, looked up and across the fields and away to where the prairie met the sky and closed in on her; her world. The Infanta Eulalie of Spain.⁠ ⁠… She went back to the letter.

Well, she came to Chicago for the Fair and Mrs. Potter Palmer was to give a huge reception and ball for her. Mrs. P. is head of the whole committee, you know, and I must say she looks queenly with her white hair so beautifully dressed and her diamond dog-collar and her black velvet and all. Well, at the very last minute the Infanta refused to attend the ball because she had just heard that Mrs. P. was an innkeeper’s wife. Imagine! The