Chapter IV
Theyear had turned. It was as long after Christmas as the middle of February.
In the evening the captain was sitting, with two candles in tin candlesticks, smoking and readingHermoder. At the other end of the table the light was used by Jörgen, who was studying his lessons; he must worry out the hours that had been assigned, whether he knew the lessons or not.
The frosty panes shone almost as white as marble in the moonlight, which printed the whole of a pale window on the door panel in the lower, unlighted end of the sitting-room.
Certainly there were bells!
Jörgen raised his head, covered with coarse, yellow hair, from his book. It was the second time he had heard them, far away on the hill; but, like the sentinels of Haakon Adelstensfostre at the beacon, of whom he was just reading, he did not dare to jump up from his reading and give the alarm until he was sure.
"I think there are bells on the road," he gently remarked, "far off."
"Nonsense! attend to your lesson."
But, notwithstanding he pretended that he was deeply absorbed in the esthetic depths ofHermoder, the captain also sat with open ears.
"The trader's bells—they are so dull and low," Jörgen put in again.
"If you disturb me again, Jörgen, you shall hear the bells about your own ears."
The trader, Öjseth, was the last one the captain could think of wishing to see at the farm. He kept writing and writing after those paltry thirty dollars of his, as if he believed he would lose them. "Hm! hm!" He grew somewhat red in the face, and read on, determined not to see the man before he was standing in the room.
The bells plainly stopped before the door.
"Hm! hm!"
Jörgen moved uneasily.
"If you move off the spot, boy, I'll break your arms and legs in pieces!" foamed the captain, now red as copper. "Sit—sit still and read!"
He intended also to sit still himself. That scoundrel of a trader—he should fasten his horse himself at the doorsteps, and help himself as he could.
"I hear them talking—Great-Ola."
"Hold your tongue!" said the captain in a murderous deep bass, and with a pair of eyes fixed on his son as if he could eat him.
"Yes; but, father, it is really—"
A pull on his forelock and a box on the ears sent him across the floor.
"The doctor," roared Jörgen.
The truth of his martyrdom was established in the same moment, because the short, square form of the military doctor appeared in the door.
His fur coat was all unbuttoned, and the tip of his long scarf trailed behind him on the threshold. He held his watch out: "What time is it?"
"Now, then, may the devil take your body and soul to hell, where you long ago belonged, if it isn't you, Rist!"
"What time is it? I say—Look!"
"And here I go and lick Jörgen for—well, well, boy, you shall be excused from your lesson and can ask for syrup on your porridge this evening. Go out to Ma, and tell her Rist is here."
The captain opened the kitchen door: "Hullo, Marit! Siri! A girl in here to pull off the doctor's boots! All the diseases of the country are in your clothes."
"What time is it, I say—can you see?"
"Twenty-five minutes of seven."
"Twenty-one miles in two hours and a quarter—from Jölstad here, with my bay!"
The doctor had got his fur coat off. The short, muscular man, with broad face and reddish-gray whiskers, stood there in a fur cap, swallowed up in a pair of long travelling boots.
"No, no," he exclaimed to the girl, who was making an effort to pull them off. "Oh, listen, Jäger;will you go out and feel of the bay's hind leg, if there is a wind-gall? He began to stumble a little, just here on the hill, I thought, and to limp."
"He has very likely got bruised." The captain eagerly grabbed his hat from the clavichord and went with him.
Outside by the sleigh they stood, thinly clothed in the severe frost, and felt over the hamstring and lifted up the left hind foot of the bay. For a final examination, they went into the stable.
When they came out there was a veritable wild dispute.
"I tell you, you might just as well have said he had glanders in his hind legs. If you are not a better judge of curing men than you are of horses, I wouldn't give four shillings for your whole medical examination."
"That brown horse of yours, Jäger—that is a strange fodder he takes. Doesn't he content himself with crib-splinters?" retorted the doctor, slyly bantering.
"What? Did you see that, you—knacker?"
"Heard it, heard it; he gnawed like a saw there in the crib. He has cheated you unmercifully—that man from Filtvedt, you know."
"Oh, oh, in a year he will be tall enough for a cavalry horse. But this I shall concede, it was a good trade when you got the bay for sixty-five."
"Sixty and a binding dram, not a doit more. But I would not sell him, if you offered me a hundred on the spot."
Ma was waiting in her parlor.
Now, it was Aslak of Vaelta who had cut his foot last Thursday hewing timber—Ma had bandaged him—and then Anders, who lived in the cottage, was in a lung fever. The parish clerk had been there and bled him; six children up in that hut—not good if he should be taken away.
"We will put a good Spanish-fly blister on his back, and, if that does not make him better, then a good bleeding in addition."
"He came near fainting the last time," suggested Ma, doubtfully.
"Bleed—bleed—it is the blood which must be got away from the chest, or the inflammation will make an end of him. I will go and see him to-morrow morning—and for Thea's throat, camphor oil and a piece of woollen cloth, and to bed to sweat—and a good spoonful of castor-oil to-night—you can also rub the old beggar woman about the body with camphor, if she complains too much. I will give you some more."
After supper the old friend of the house sat with his pipe and his glass of punch at one end of the sofa, and the captain at the other. The red tint of the doctor's nose and cheeks was not exclusively to be attributed to the passage from the cold to thesnug warmth of the room. He had the reputation of rather frequently consoling his bachelorhood with ardent spirits.
They had talked themselves tired about horses and last year's reminiscences of the camp, and had now come to more domestic affairs.
"The news, you see, is blown here both from the city and the West; old Aunt Alette wrote before Christmas that the governor's wife had found out she must drive with both snaffle and curb."
"I thought so," said the doctor, chewing his mouthpiece. "The first thing of importance in managing is to study the nature of the beast; and Inger-Johanna's is to rear; she must be treated gently."
"And that sister-in-law never believed that so much inborn stuff could grow up in the wild mountain region."
The captain began to puff impatiently. Ma would surely sometime get supper ready and come in, so he could get to his daughter's letters.
"You can believe he is a real pelican, that old judge down in Ryfylke! Orders them round and bellows—keeps them hot both in the office and in the house. I wonder if he won't sometime apply for an office somewhere else; for that is what he threatens to do every time he sees an office vacant, Thinka writes. Let us have the letters, Ma, and my spectacles," he exclaimed, when she came in. "The firstis of November, so you shall hear about your goddaughter's coming to the governor's, Rist."
He hummed over a part of the beginning and then read:
When Great-Ola put my baggage inside the street door, I almost wanted to seat myself in the cariole and drive the three days home again; but then at once I thought, best to march straight on, as father says! I went past the servant and inside the hall door. It was very light there, and a great many outside garments and hats and caps were hanging on the pegs, and twice two servant-girls flew through with trays and teacups, without troubling themselves about me in the least. But I thought that the one who had fallen into the midst of things was your beloved daughter. My outside garments were off in a jiffy; I knocked once, twice, three times. I hardly knew what to do with myself, so I gently turned the knob. Thank heaven, there was no one there. There was another door with a portière, which I only needed to shove a little aside, and then—I was plunged right into the centre of it. Nay, how shall I describe it? It was a corner room that I had entered: there was only mahogany furniture and upholstered easy chairs, and pictures in gilded frames over the sofa; the other pictures were in dark frames; but I did not see a doit of all that, for I thought at first that it was dark. But it wasn't darkat all. There was just a shade over the astral lamp on the table, and neither more nor less than a whole company. There in the lion's den, with the married ladies on the corner sofa, sat a number of people drinking tea.
I stood there in the middle of the floor, and the reddish brown linsey-woolsey, I believed, could surely defend itself.
"Aunt Zittow," I ventured.
"Who is it?—What? Can it be my dear Inger-Johanna? My husband's niece!" was said from the table. "You have come just like a wild mountain rose, child, with the rain still on your face—and so cold!" as she touched me. But I saw very well that she had her eye on my dress. I am sure it is too long in the waist, I thought; that is what I said at home. But then I forgot the whole dress, for it was indeed my aunt, and she embraced me and said, "You are heartily welcome, my dear child! I think now a cup of good hot tea will do her good, Miss Jörgensen,—and will you ask Mina to put her room in order upstairs!" And then she seated me on a soft cushioned chair by the side of the wall.
There I sat in the twilight, with a teacup in my lap, and biscuits—how I got them I cannot remember—and thought, is it I or not I?
At first it was not easy to see those who sat about in the soft stuffed chairs; what I saw nearest to me was a piece of a foot, with spurs and a broad redstripe along the side, which rocked up and down the whole time. Now and then a head with a fine lace cap bobbed up into the light to put down a cup or to replenish it. The lamp-shade made just a round ring in the room, not a foot from the table.
Oh, how warm and delicate it was!
In the light under the astral lamp-shade, aunt was sitting, bowed down over a little black contrivance with the image of a negro on it, and was burning pastilles; her hair, on both sides of her forehead, was made into stiff, grayish curls.
The bright, shining tea-kettle stood singing over the beautiful blue cups of that old Copenhagen porcelain, of which you have four pairs in the cabinet, which came from grandmother's. I could not help looking all the time on aunt's face, with the great earrings showing through the lace. I thought the antique tea-kettle, which is like a vase or urn, resembled her so much, with the haughty stiff curve of her chin! It was just as if they belonged together from—I don't know from what time, it could not be from the time of the creation, I suppose. And then when the conversation among them came to a stop and it was still as if there were not a human being there, the machine puffed and snorted as it were with aunt's fine Danish twist to the R:Arvet! Arvet!(inherited)—and in between it bubbled Zittow, von Zittow. It was what you told me,mother, about the Danish Zittow, who was diplomatist in Brussels, that was buzzing in me.
"The young one! She has got it in her blood," whinnied the doctor.
But it really did not look as if aunt thought there was any hurry about seeing uncle. And then when aunt sent Miss Jörgensen with some tea into the next room, where they were playing cards, I at once asked if I could be allowed to go with her.
"With all my heart, my child, it would be a shame to tax your patience any longer. And then, Miss Jörgensen, take our little traveller up to her room, and see that she has something to eat, and let her go to bed." But I saw very plainly that she pulled the lamp-shade down on the side I was going; that I thought of afterwards.
"What? what? what?" said my uncle. You should have seen him gaze at me. He looked so much like you, mother, about the forehead and eyes that I threw my arms around his neck.
He held me before him with his arms stretched out. "But really I think it is Aunt Eleonore all over! Well, well, now don't fancy you are such a beauty!"
That was the reception.
Shortly after I was lying in bed in my elegantlittle blue room, with curtains with long fringes. There were pastilles on the stove, and Miss Jörgensen—just think, she called me Miss!—almost undressed me and put me between all the soft down quilts.
There I lay and thought it all over, and became hotter and hotter in my head and face, till at last it seemed as if I was thumping in the cariole with Svarten and Ola.
"No, the cariole came home again empty," said the captain with a sigh.
"Look out if you don't get her back to Gilje again in a carriage," added the doctor.
"She was so handsome, Rist," exclaimed the captain, quite moved. "It seems as if I see her, standing there in the middle of the floor at brother-in-law's, with her heavy black hair dressed upon her neck. From the time when she used to run about here, with the three long braids down her back, it was as if she developed into a swan all at once, when she came to dress in the clothes of a full-grown person—You remember her on confirmation day, Rist?"
"But, dear Jäger," said Ma, trying to subdue him.
The captain cautiously unfolded a letter, closely written on a large sheet of letter paper.
"And now you shall hear; this is dated January 23d."
The money which I brought with me—
"Well, well—"
The bill of Larsen for—
"You can certainly skip over to the next page," remarked Ma with a certain emphasis.
"Well, yes, hm, hm,—mere trifles—here it is."
To think that father, and you also, mother, cannot see my two new dresses! Aunt is inconceivably good. It is impossible to walk any other way than beautifully in this kind of shoes; and that aunt says I do; it is just as if you always felt a dancing-floor under your feet. And yesterday aunt gave me a pair of patent leather sandals with buckles on the ankles. Did you ever hear of such! Yes—I kissed her for that, too, this time; she could say what she liked. For you must know, she says that the first rule of life for a lady is a kind of confident, reserved repose, which, however, may be cordial! I have it naturally, aunt says, and only need to cultivate it. I am going to learn to play on the piano and go through a regular course of lessons in dancing.
Aunt is so extremely good to me, only she will have the windows shut when I want them open. Of course I don't mean in the sitting-room, wherethey have pasted themselves in with double panes, but up in my own room. Just fancy, first double windows and then stuffy curtains, and then all the houses, which are near us across the street; you can't breathe, and much use it is to air out the rooms by the two upper panes twice a day!
Aunt says that I shall gradually get accustomed to the city air. But I don't see how I can, when I never get acquainted with it. Not once during the whole winter have I frozen my fingers! We go out for a short drive in the forenoon, and then I go with aunt in the shops in the afternoon, and that is the whole of it. And you can believe it is quite another thing to go out here than at home; when I only jumped over a little pile of shovelled-up snow, in order to get into the sleigh more quickly, aunt said that every one could instantly see manners from my state of nature, as she always says. For all the movements I make, I might just as well have chains on both legs, like the prisoners we see some days in the fort.
And now aunt wants me not to go bare-footed on the floor of my chamber. Nay, you should have seen her horror when I told her how Thinka and I, at the time of the breaking up of the ice last year, waded across the mill stream in order to avoid the roundabout way by the bridge! At last I got her to laughing with me. But I certainly believe that the pair of elegant slippers with swansdownon them, which stuck out of a package this morning, are for me! You see now, it is into them, nevertheless, that my sweet little will must be put.
"She is on her guard lest they should want to put a halter about her neck," mumbled the doctor.
Ma sighed deeply. "Such sweet small wills are so apt to grow into big ones, and"—again a sigh—"women don't get on in the world with that."
The doctor looked meditatively down into his glass: "One of woman's graces is flexibility, they say; but on the other hand, she is called 'proud maiden' in the ballad. There is something like a contradiction in that."
"Oh, the devil! Divide them into two platoons! It is mostly the ugly who have to be pliable," said the captain.
"Beauty does not last so very long, and so it is best to think of the years when one has to be accommodating," remarked Ma, down in her knitting-work.
The captain continued reading the letter.
The French is done in a twinkling. I am always ready with that before breakfast, and aunt is so contented with my pronunciation; but then the piano comes from nine to eleven. Ugh! only exercises; and then aunt receives calls. Guess who came day before yesterday? No one else than StudentGrip. It was just as if I must have known him ever so well, and liked him even better, so glad was I at last to see any one who knew about us at home. But just think, I am not entirely sure that he did not try to dictate to aunt; and then he had the boldness to look at me as if I should agree with him. Aunt helped him to a place in uncle's office, because she heard that he had passed such an excellent examination and was so gifted, but had almost nothing from home to study on.
"I ventured my three dollars on him—But how the fellow could manage to take such high honors passes my comprehension," threw out the captain.
"But he repaid them all right, Jäger, with postage and everything."
The captain held the letter up to the light again.
And then aunt thought he would be the better for a little polish in his ways, and enjoined him to come to her fortnightly receptions; she likes to have young people about her; but he let aunt see that he regarded that as a command and compulsion. And now he came in fact to make a sort of excuse. But how they talked!
"Well, then, we shall see you again at some of our Thursday evenings?" said aunt.
"Your ladyship no doubt remembers the occasion of my remaining away. It was my ill-bred objectionsto the seven unanimous teacups which gave supreme judgment in your celebrated small tea-fights."
"See, see, see," aunt smiled. "I can't be wrong when I say that you are really made for social life; there is need just there for all one's best sides."
"All one's smoothest, your ladyship means."
"Well, well, no falling back, Mr. Grip, I beg you."
"I did my best, your ladyship; for I really thought all one's most mendacious."
"Now you are in the humor of contradiction again; and there one gets entangled so easily, you know."
"I only think that when one does not agree with what is said, and keeps silent, one lies."
"Then people offer up to good form, without which no social intercourse can exist."
"Yes, what do they offer up? Truth!"
"Perhaps more correctly a little of their vanity, an opportunity of exhibiting some bright and shining talent; that tempts young men greatly, I believe."
"Possible, not impossible at any rate," he admitted.
"Do you see?" But then aunt said, for she never abandons her text: "A little good manners is not out of place; and when I see a bright young student stand talking with his hands in his pockets, or ridingbackwards on a chair, then, whether the one concerned takes my motherly candor ill or not, I always try by a little hint to adjust the defects in his education."
You should have seen him! Hands out of his pockets, and at once he sat up before her, as straight as a candle.
"If all were like your ladyship, I would recommend making calls," said he, "for you are an honest woman."
"Woman! We say, lady."
"I mean an honest governor's lady; besides, I don't at all say a good-natured!" and then he shook that great brown lock of hair down over his forehead.
I do not need to wish for any portrait of you, for I lie thinking, in the evenings, that I am at home. I see father so plainly, walking up and down the room whistling, and then starting off up the office stairs; and I pull your hair, Jörgen! and poke your head down into the geography, so that I get you after me, and we run round, in one door and out another, up and down in the house. Nay, I long horribly at times. But I must not let aunt see that; it would be ungrateful. She does not believe that one can exist anywhere but in a city.
And then there are a lot of things which I have been obliged to draw a black mark through, because I don't at all understand them. Only think,mother! Aunt says, that it may at most be allowable to say that we have cows at home; but I must not presume to say that any one of them has a calf! I should like to know how they think we get new cows, when we kill the old ones for Christmas?
Here the captain interpolated some inarticulate noises. But an expression of anxiety came over Ma's face, and she said faintly:
"That is because, unfortunately, we have not been able to keep the children sufficiently away from the servants' room, and from everything they hear there."
"You see, madam," declared the doctor, "in the city people are so proper that a hen hardly dares to lay eggs—It is only the products of the efforts of the land that they are willing to recognize, I can tell you."
"No," the captain put in, "it is not advisable for a poor mare to be so indiscreet as to have a foal there."
His wife coughed gently and made an errand to her sewing-table.
Ma had been gone upstairs for more than an hour, and the clock was getting on towards twelve.
The captain and the doctor were now sitting somewhat stupidly over the heeltaps in their mugs, a little like the dying tallow candles, which stoodwith neglected wicks, almost burned down into the sockets and running down.
"Keep your bay, Rist. Depend on me—he has got to get up early who takes me in on a horse—with my experience, you see. All the cavalry horses I have picked out in my time!"
The doctor sat looking down into his glass.
"You are thinking of the cribber," said the captain, getting into a passion; "but that was the most rascally villainy—pure cheating. He might have been taken into court for that—But, as I tell you, keep your bay."
"I have become a little tired of him, you see."
"See there, see there,—but that is your own fault and not the bay's, my boy. You are always tired of the beast you have. If you should count all the horses you have swapped, it would be a rare stable."
"They spoiled him for driving when he was a colt; he is one-sided, he is."
"That's all bosh. I should cure him of that in a fortnight, with a little breaking to harness."
"Oh, I am tired of sitting and pulling and hauling on one rein to keep him out of the side of the ditch; if it were not for that, the beast should never go out of my hand. No, had it been only that he made a few splinters in the crib."
The captain assumed a thoughtful expression; he leaned against the back of the sofa, and gave two or three deep, strong pulls on his pipe.
"But my Brunen is nothing at all to talk about—a little gnawing only—with the one eye-tooth."
"Nay, my bay also gives way only on one side of the road."
Again two or three sounding puffs. The captain gave his wig a poke.
"If there is any one who could cure him of that, it is certainly I."
Dense smoke poured out of his pipe.
Over in his corner of the sofa the doctor began to clean his out.
"Besides, my Brunen is a remarkably kind animal—thunders a little on the crib down in the stall—a horse can hardly have less of a fault, and then so thoroughly easy on the rein—knows if one only touches it—so extremely sensitive in his mouth—a regular beauty to drive on the country road."
"Ye-s, ye-s; have nothing against that—fine animal!"
"Look here, Rist! All things considered, that was a driving horse for you—stands so obediently, if one just lays the rein over his back."
"Swap off the bay, do you mean?" pondered the doctor, in a doubting tone,—"hadn't really thought of that." He shook his head—"Only I can't understand why he is so stiff on one rein."
"No, my boy; but I can understand it."
"If you are only not cheated in that, Jäger—trade is trade, you know."
"I cheated? Ha, ha, ha!" The captain shook with laughter and with quiet consciousness. "Done, boy! We will swap."
"You are rather quick on the rein, Jäger."
"Always my nature, you see—to get the thing closed up at once, on the nail. And so we will take a drink to close the bargain," shouted the captain eagerly; he pulled his wig awry, and sprang up.
"Let us see if Ma has some cognac in the closet."
What sort of a trick was it the horse had?
The captain was wholly absorbed in breaking the bay to harness. The horse turned his head to the right, and kept over on the side of the road just as far as he could for the rein. It was impossible to find any reason for it.
This morning he had broken off one of the trace-pins by driving against the gate-post. Was it possible that he was afraid of a shadow? That was an idea!—and the captain determined to try him in the moonlight that evening.
When he came down to the stable after dinner, he saw a wonderful sight.
Great-Ola had taken the bay out of his stall, and was standing shaking his fist against the horse's forehead.
"Well, I have tried him every way, Captain, but he wouldn't wink, not even if I broke his skull withthe back of an axe—he doesn't move! And now see how he jumps!" He raised his hand towards the other side of the horse's head. "But in his left eye he is as blind as a shut cellar door."
The captain stood awhile without saying a word; the veins on his forehead swelled up blue, and his face became as red as the collar on his uniform coat.
"Well, then." In a rage he gave Ola a box on his ears. "Are you standing there threatening the horse, you dog?"
When Ola was feeding the horse at night, the captain went into the stall. He took the lantern and let it shine on the bay. "No use to cure you of going into the ditch—See there, Ola, take that shilling, so that you at all events may profit by it."
Ola's broad face lighted up with cunning. "The doctor must provide himself with planks, for the one he got ate up three two-inch boards while we had him."
"Look here, Ola," nodded the captain, "it is not worth while to let him hear anything but that the bay can see with both eyes here with us."
When Great-Ola, in breaking-up time in spring, was driving a load of wood home from the Gilje ridge, he was obliged to turn out on a snow-drift for Dr. Rist, who was coming in a sleigh from the north.
"Driving with the bay, I see. Has the captaingot him so that he's all right? Does he cling just as hard to the side of the road?"
"No, of course not. The captain was the man to make that all right. He is no more one-sided now than I am."
"As if I was going to believe that, you liar," mumbled the doctor, while he whipped his horse and drove on.