Lieutenant, rather than distress Britta Lambert and the other
womenfolk, said nothing to them about a certain plan he had in mind. He
merely gave the wink to old Bengt, the former stableman, who still
pottered round the place at this and that.
Then, in some mysterious way the cats began to disappear--not all at
once, but by gradual elimination. Britta Lambert thought she noticed
that one and another of her precious tabbies was missing, yet she was
not quite sure about it, since the cats were all so much alike in
colour and markings. She attempted to count them as they came up for
their milk, but that was not so easy, for they pushed and crowded each
other at the milk-trough. Then, too, it was almost pitch-dark in the
barn. She complained to the old housekeeper and the young mistress.
“You see,” she said, “’tis this I fear me, that if you do away with the
red cats, you’ll do away with the luck in the cow-house. No good can
come to folks as begins by being ungrateful to them that’s helped us
all up to now.”
Fru Lagerlöf and the housekeeper both assured her they had no evil
designs upon her cats. They thought she would soon have them back
again--the whole seventeen.
All the same, Britta noted that the cats were becoming fewer and fewer.
She suspected this one and that one, but none would confess to guilt.
The only one of whom she could never have believed anything so sinful
as that he would harm a cat, was the Lieutenant. She knew that his
mother had taught him better.
“This’ll never do, Master,” she said to the Lieutenant every time he
came into the barn. “You don’t know how worried I am! The cats are
leaving me.”
“I don’t see but they’re running in front of my feet the same as
usual,” the Lieutenant replied.
“If there be thirteen left, ’tis all and no more,” wailed the cow-girl.
“I’d hate to be standing in the shoes of the one that’s doing this! And
worst of all, the farm’ll suffer for it.”
Now in those days the Lieutenant was a strong young man and an
ambitious, enterprising farmer. He had big plans for Mårbacka. The
estate was not extensive, but the soil was rich and the fields,
spreading in one continuous stretch of expanse, were level and clear of
stones. It would be no fault of his if the farm did not some day become
the finest in the whole Fryken Valley. He had money at his command, for
his father-in-law, Squire Wallroth, who was a man of means, admired his
son-in-law’s initiative and enterprise, and gave him the support he
needed.
The Lieutenant set about reparcelling the land for rotation of crops.
He dug ditches a fathom deep for drainage, and sowed timothy and clover
in the meadows, so that they would produce something besides wild
flowers; he bought a threshing machine, which did away with their
having to stand in a barn all winter beating out the grain with flails,
and he also procured some tall, fine-bred cattle from the manors down
by the Ness. He did not let the cows wander in the woods from spring to
autumn, and half-starve, but sent them to pasture in the open meadow.
Everything that could be thought of to enhance the value of the farm
was done: he carried on protracted negotiations with the peasants on
the west side of the dale for the purchase of lands adjoining his; he
built cottages for his workmen, that they might have decent homes, with
outbuildings and a bit of ground where they could keep a cow and a pig.
Nor were his labours in vain. Within a year the farm paid back all he
had laid out on it. There was such a harvest of hay he hardly knew
where to store it all for the winter. For every bushel of peas sown he
got twenty bushels in return, and when he planted turnips the ground
gave forth such a blessed abundance it was more than his own folk could
gather in. So he sent word to the neighbours to come with horse and
cart, and take home all the turnips they could dig.
However, there was one serious obstacle to this work of improving the
farm, and that was the little river Ämtan, which meandered in all sorts
of graceful bends and curves down in the dale, where his fields lay.
Ordinarily, the stream was not much bigger than a forest brook, but as
soon as there came a good fall of rain it overflowed its banks,
converting his clover meadows and oat fields into little lakes.
The Lieutenant decided that something must be done about the river.
Where it flowed through his own property he deepened its bed and
straightened its course. But little good came of that, for the peasants
who owned the land below Mårbacka let the river run on in its old
tortuous, sluggish way. Whenever there was a heavy rain it flooded
their acres as well as his.
What was the good of all his labour with the soil, if Ämtan could at
any time wash away his haystacks and rye-shooks? He would never be able
to develop his property as he wished until the river was mastered.
He talked with the neighbours, and they seemed to be in favour of
having the river properly dredged. A surveyor was consulted, who drew,
measured, and made calculations; after which the Lieutenant convened a
meeting of all interested parties at the parish public room.
More than a few obstacles had been surmounted by the time he had got
thus far along with the project. The morning he was to drive to the
meeting he felt quite happy, thinking that now the most difficult part
of the work had been accomplished. But as he was getting into his
carriole, right in the middle of the seat sat one of the red barn cats
staring blankly at him.
There was nothing strange in that, however. The barn cats all loved to
ride. Britta Lambert had trundled them in her wheel-barrow from the
time they were tiny kittens, and in that way they had become as fond of
riding as children, and would jump into all the farm vehicles. But they
were not in the habit of venturing into the family carriages.
“So you’d like to come along to the meeting, would you?” said the
Lieutenant. “Scat!”
The cat deigned to take itself off, but not before it had given the
Lieutenant a sardonic look that made him feel positively uncomfortable.
Between the stable and the road the Lieutenant had to pass through
three gates. On each of the gateposts sat a red barn cat. Nor was there
anything strange in that. Cats like to sit on gateposts to sun
themselves and watch everything that moves on the ground below. But
that morning the Lieutenant thought the cats all had a sinister look;
they blinked at him as if they knew what would come of his trip. He was
beginning to think Britta Lambert was right--that they were little
witches and goblins in the guise of cats.
Now it is not a good omen to meet a lot of cats when one sets out on a
journey, so the Lieutenant spat three times for each cat, as his mother
had taught him to do, and thought no more about them during the drive.
He went over in his mind the whole plan of the ditching and prepared
himself to lay the proposition before the meeting clearly and
convincingly.
But instantly the Lieutenant stepped inside the parish room, an
unmistakable air of wariness and opposition assailed him. The peasants
sat there immovable, with tight-shut faces. He began to surmise that
they had changed their minds, which proved to be the case. All his
arguments were overruled.
“We understand, of course, that this ditching would be a good thing for
Mårbacka,” said their spokesman, “but it’s of no importance to us.”
When he came back from the meeting he felt rather depressed. The matter
of the dredging was settled for some time to come. The river could go
on creating havoc. If a stray herd of cattle trampled his fields he
could drive them out, but the river must be left free to choke and
destroy all in its path.
In the midst of these broodings on his frustrated hopes, he got up and
went over to the servants’ hall to see Bengt.
“It didn’t go through, Bengt, that about the river,” he said.
“That’s too bad, Lieutenant!” the old man sympathized. “The Paymaster
of the Regiment always said the farm would be worth twice as much if it
wasn’t for Ämtan.”
“I say, Bengt”--the Lieutenant lowered his voice--“there aren’t so many
cats in the barn now, eh?... Perhaps we’d better let Britta keep what’s
left of them.”
“Just as you wish, Lieutenant.”
The Lieutenant lowered his voice a bit more, as if fearful lest the
walls of the old manservants’ room might hear what he said.
“Where did you drown them, Bengt?”
“I took ’em down to the river. I was afraid they’d come floating up and
be seen, if I drowned them here in the duck pond.”
“H’m, in the river--I thought so!” The Lieutenant stood reflecting a
long while. Suddenly he burst out: “There’s a lot that’s queer in this
world!”
“Ay, there is that,” old Bengt agreed.
As long as Lieutenant Lagerlöf lived he had to let the river do as it
would with his fine fields. Year after year he saw it overflow its
banks and spread out in innumerable lake-like ponds, from Mårbacka down
through the whole dale. And every time it occurred he would tell about
the red cats that sat on the gateposts the morning he drove down to the
meeting. Could it be possible that they knew how badly things would go
for him? And was it true that one who did violence to a cat was
punished? He wondered about that to the end of his days.
II
THE NEW BARN
LIEUTENANT LAGERLÖF wanted to have Mårbacka not only a productive and
well-cared-for farm, but a beautiful place, with stately avenues of
approach and extensive gardens of flowers and shrubbery on all sides of
the dwelling house.
Not far from the house stood the wretched old cow-barn, with its
thatched roof, its small window-openings, and its weather-beaten timber
walls. To be sure, there was a row of century-old sycamores, with
yellow, lichen-clad trunks and a wealth of foliage, which concealed the
building from view, so that the place was perhaps not so very ugly
after all. Still, the Lieutenant declared he could never make Mårbacka
look like a manor until that cow-house was torn down.
The first few years he had been wholly occupied with the cultivation of
the soil; it was not till after the Strömstad visit and the death of
Grandmother Lagerlöf that he set about building the new barn, which had
to be finished before the old one could be pulled down. That the new
barn might not be easily seen from the house, he decided to build it on
the level meadow just below the sand-hill, where the other outhouses
stood. When the womenfolk heard of this, a wail went up. Think of their
having to go that long distance to tend the cows! And think how hard it
would be on the cow-girl and the dairy-maid to have to carry the milk
three times a day up the steep hill to the dairy! The Lieutenant turned
a deaf ear. He was going to remove all the outbuildings and have
everything of the sort, including the dairy, centred in the one place,
thereby making it much easier for both serving-folk and animals.
The barn, though it would lie in an out-of-the-way spot, was going to
be the finest in the whole district. It was to be built in the form of
a cross, and of brick all the way up to the eaves-course, and would
house at least fifty cows. It would only be lacking a spire to look
like a church.
The Lieutenant discussed his building project with his father-in-law,
Squire Wallroth, who had seen enough of the old cow-house to know that
a new one was badly needed. He gave the Lieutenant quite a large sum of
money for building purposes, and the latter immediately went ahead with
the preliminary work. For two consecutive winters he quarried stone at
Åsberget for the foundation; for two whole summers he had a clay-mill
standing down by the duck pond, where the bricks were made and left to
dry and harden in the sun; and for two autumns he had men at work in
his own woodlands, cutting timber, that he might have proper material
for cross-beams and rafters.
At last he was ready to stake out the ground and start digging for the
foundation. It was a great moment for him when the workmen put their
spades to the ground to clear away the first layer of earth. They began
the digging and foundation-laying on the east side, which was nearest
the house. There all went well; the ground was firm and the stones
stayed where they were put. But when they came to lay the stones on the
west side, which gave on the field, they found that there had been a
terrible miscalculation. They had not gone very deep before they came
upon soft blue-clay, into which the stones sank and disappeared. The
Lieutenant had made the grave mistake of not having the ground tested.
But now that the foundation had been laid on one side, he thought it
best to go on with the building in the place he had staked out. An old
mason advised him to put the barn farther up toward the hill, as blue
clay was treacherous stuff to build on. The Lieutenant would not hear
of that. It would be all right, he said, to lay the foundation on blue
clay; there must be a bottom even to that. As for stone to fill it in,
well--there was the whole mountain range to take from.
Load after load of stone was dumped on to the clay and before long he
had a wide stone dam there--solid and steady as could be--on which it
seemed safe enough to lay a foundation. Then, one day, came a couple of
heavy showers, and all at once cracks appeared in the dam. The next
morning it began to sink, and in a few hours it was completely
swallowed up.
But all summer the Lieutenant went on dumping stone into the clay, and
when by autumn it was still uncertain whether the foundation would
hold, he decided to put off the masonry work till the following year,
in order to see how the blue clay would behave in the spring, when the
frost was out of the ground.
As soon as the snow was gone, the Lieutenant went down to have a look
at his wall. Yes, it was still there, no cracks in it. But then the
regular spring thaw had not begun.
Every day, and many times a day, he went down to see how things were
going. The wall remained intact, and the ground seemed now to be free
of frost, so he ventured to send word to the master mason to come with
his journeymen, and begin work.
They put up the walls on the north and east sides first, so as to give
the insecure foundation on the west side time to settle. The latter
part of June they began work on the doubtful side, and by the middle of
July, when they had got almost up to the coping, they noticed some
cracks in the wall. Then, all at once, the wall began to sag, and
several layers of brick had to be torn down quickly, lest the whole
wall give way.
Now things began to look serious for Lieutenant Lagerlöf. What to do
next he did not know. By that time the money he had received from his
father-in-law was used up. But Squire Wallroth, who was both
open-handed and reasonable, would no doubt have let him have an
additional sum, had he written and explained why the building would
cost more than he had estimated. But after this fresh cave-in he felt
loath to write. He would have to confess that as yet the barn had
neither roof nor floor, that the walls were not even finished and that
he must start laying a new foundation. His father-in-law would surely
think he had shown poor judgment, and lose confidence in him.
The Lieutenant almost felt like giving up the whole building
scheme--yet, somehow, the mere thought of it went against him. So many
of his projects had come to naught, and, besides, the old cow-house was
beyond repair.
Of course he should have started building on another spot long ago. But
how could he do so now, when the walls were half-finished? It was a
question which would entail the lesser outlay--to start building in a
new place or continue at the old one.
At East Ämtervik lies a small foundry estate known as Gårdsjö, which is
about three English miles from Mårbacka. Living there at that time was
a brother of Fru Lagerlöf, Iron Master Karl Wallroth, a wise and
prudent man on whose judgment the Lieutenant relied implicitly. To him
he went for advice. Iron Master Wallroth counselled him by all means to
dismiss the whole matter from his mind.
“It would be foolish to ask Father for more money to put into your
building scheme,” he said. “He’s always ready to give one a lift, but
he wants to see the money used to good advantage. And to put a
mortgage on the estate in order to finish your barn would not be
advisable. No telling how many times the work will have to be done
over. You might lose all you have by it.”
Afterward, the Lieutenant sat talking the whole evening with the
brother-in-law and his wife, who insisted on his staying for supper. He
tried to be his usual jolly self, and entertain them with amusing
stories; but his spirit was as if paralyzed. He knew the brother-in-law
was right, and therefore felt no resentment, though it was such a
crushing blow to his pride not to be able to complete a work begun.
On the way home strange, gloomy thoughts arose in him; he wondered if
he were not one whose every undertaking was doomed to failure. There
was a time when he thought himself a veritable Fortune’s Favourite.
That was when he had captured his wife and taken over Mårbacka. But
later on he had had a lot of ill-luck. For one thing, he had asked for
his discharge from the military service merely because of a slight
reprimand from his captain. He had been overhasty, but he did not worry
about that. What did rankle in him, though, was that he had not been
appointed Paymaster of the Regiment, to succeed his father. The office
had been abolished, and the duties pertaining to it had been divided
between four muster-clerks, of whom he was one. But the work was
unimportant and the remuneration small. Then there was the attempt to
have the river dredged--it, too, had failed.
Midway between Gårdsjö and Mårbacka lies As Springs, an old health
resort he had once undertaken to modernize. He had built a fine new
bath house and engaged a corps of male and female attendants, with the
hope that health-seekers would flock to the place. That was also a
failure. Now and again an invalid came, but it hardly paid to keep the
resort open.
And to cap it all, his barn-building was a lamentable failure! There
must be something lacking in him, he thought; he was perhaps less
capable than other men. The best thing he could do was to give up his
plans, settle down in his rocker, read his newspaper, and let things
run on in the old ruts.
Coming home he found his wife seated on the front steps awaiting him.
She was very like her brother at Gårdsjö; she had the same intelligent
face, the same clear head, the same serious turn of mind, the same love
of work and indifference to pleasure, and the same dislike of all that
was uncertain and venturesome.
The Lieutenant was very fond of his wife and moreover respected her
judgment as he did her brother’s. But that evening he would rather she
had not sat up for him. She, too, was against him in this building
project.
“What did Kalle say?” Fru Lagerlöf asked him, as they went to their
room.
“He thinks like you and the rest, that I should give up the work.”
Fru Lagerlöf made no reply. She had dropped into her usual place, by
the sewing table, and sat looking out into the light summer night, with
no thought, apparently, of retiring.
The Lieutenant had already flung off his coat. “Aren’t you going to
bed?” he asked. His rasping tones betrayed his irritation and
despondency.
“I think,” said the wife in a low, even voice--still gazing into the
night--“I think you should finish it.”
“What are you saying?” the Lieutenant queried impatiently. He had heard
what she said, but thought he must have misunderstood.
“I think,” she repeated, “that you ought to go on with it.”
“Is it the barn you’re speaking of?” he asked, going up to her. Her
words had awakened a little hope in him, yet he was not certain that he
had understood her aright.
Fru Lagerlöf had been turning this matter over in her mind the whole
evening; she had said to herself that it would not be well for her
husband to go short in yet another undertaking. It might be more
expedient perhaps to give over the building scheme; but that would go
too hard with him. This was something which her father or her brother
could not understand; but she--his wife--understood.
To read the hearts of those she loved--that was as easy to Fru Lagerlöf
as reading a book; but to put her own thoughts into words in a moment
of deep feeling she could no more do than she could interpret Hebrew.
“I don’t think as Kalle does,” she said.
“What are you talking about?” The Lieutenant was almost trembling with
suspense. He dared not believe even now that she had come to his way of
thinking
Seeing how agitated he was, she did her utmost to make him understand.
“I don’t agree with Kalle,” she said. “I think you should finish
building the barn, and that it should stand where you want to have it.
And I think we ought to put a mortgage on the estate so that we can get
along without having to ask Father for more money.”
Now at last the Lieutenant understood. A great light broke in upon him.
If the wife and he were of one mind there were no difficulties ahead.
The foundation was solid and the walls rose firmly.
“God bless you, Louise!” he said.
After that they seemed to be more closely drawn to each other than
ever, held by new bonds of sympathy and tenderness. And the wife was
consulted at every step in the building work.
When at last the doors of the new barn were thrown open, and the cows
were ceremoniously led in and tied to their cribs; when the chickens
and geese, the turkeys and ducks were driven into their cages and the
calves into the stalls; when light streamed in through the large
windows and they themselves walked in clean, smooth passageways, they
felt that a good work had been done, and were glad they had both had a
share in it.
III
THE GARDEN
MAMSELLE LOVISA certainly loved and admired her brother the Lieutenant,
but she did not see why he need introduce so many changes and
newfangled things. She thought Mårbacka might better be left as it was
in their parents’ time. What went against her most was his wanting to
lay out gardens on all sides of the dwelling house.
She had been quite worried when he talked of deepening the river-bed,
and felt relieved when his plan miscarried. It was such a pretty sight,
when Ämtan overflowed and formed a lot of little shimmering lakes down
in the meadows! And she wailed a good deal when her brother cleared
away the field flowers. It had been a veritable feast for the eyes when
one field was white with daisies, another violet with heart’s-ease, and
a third yellow with buttercups. And it was a great pity the cows were
no longer sent to pasture in the woods. Everybody knew that such thick
cream and such yellow butter as one got when they wandered in the
forest were never seen when they grazed in the meadow.
In her father’s time, and for hundreds of years before, it had been
the custom to cut down the saplings, leave them on the ground to dry,
then burn them where they lay. The following year the ashes were sown
with rye, and, later, these burn-beaten clearings were covered with
wild strawberries and raspberries. Mamselle Lovisa naturally took it to
heart when her brother no longer burned such “falls.”
“Mark my words,” she said to him, “there’ll soon be an end to the wild
berries. Where will they grow if the woods are not burn-beaten? If all
were to do as you are doing, we’d never again be able to sit of a
summer’s evening and watch the pretty fires round the wooded hills.”
And she was not pleased with the new barn, either. Of course she did
not know very much, she said, but she had been told there was never any
comfort in a stone barn.
When the new barn was finished and the old one torn down, and the
Lieutenant talked of laying out a new garden, Mamselle Lovisa was
beside herself.
“I trust you know what you’re about,” she said. “A large garden
requires constant care, so you will have to figure on keeping a
gardener. Unless a garden is properly tended and kept clear of weeds,
one might better have none at all.”
The Lieutenant let her admonitions go into one ear and out of the
other. In the autumn he began tearing down the fences, which had been
there since Pastor Wennervik’s time--those enclosing the kitchen
garden and rose garden and those surrounding the front and back yards.
“Well, this is the end of all comfort and joy in this place!” sighed
Mamselle Lovisa. “Think how secure one felt when once inside all the
white fences! And what fun it was for the children to run out and open
the gates when company came!”
“It was less fun, though, for the one who had to keep so many fences
and gates in repair,” the Lieutenant replied.