WHEN MAGNUS WAS LEFT ALONE
The farms lay so close together thus far down in the settlements that
Andy and Maglena, who were now without Magnus, began to long for the
woods where they thought they could live on berries instead of having
to go to strange farms every day and stand as beggars at the door.
It had not grown easier to stand at a door and wait, often both long
and well before any one bothered to greet them even, or to help them.
The children had traded whisks and egg-beaters and wooden spoons for
food, or had been given a coin for them. But one couldn’t do much when
one went from door to door, and had no definite place to work.
It seemed empty and lonely without Magnus and Golden Horn. Maglena
could scarcely bear to remember even now how sad she had felt when she
had, for the last time, brushed Golden Horn’s coat so that it was soft
and glossy. She had polished the goat’s horns with a woolen rag, had
combed her beard; and she had caressed and talked to Golden Horn--had
thanked her for all she had been to her and to her brothers and sisters
during the hard, cold, and snowy winter. Never, never would Maglena
forget Golden Horn, she promised solemnly; even if she rose so high
that she came to the king, she’d still remember Golden Horn.
And Golden Horn was tenderness and understanding itself.
Magnus would have thought that she laughed ‘he-he-he’ to cheer them up.
For she bleated so gently. It was as if she had had her own little kid
before her. She nudged Maglena with her nose, and licked the inside of
her hands. Golden Horn understood clearly that a parting was at hand.
Andy had found it hard, too, with Magnus, who, with Golden Horn, went
with them a bit down the road. He must once again remind the little
brother of everything mother wanted them to remember. Andy was so
worried because Magnus still stumbled over ‘Thy will be done’ in ‘Our
Father.’
Magnus had to repeat the whole prayer three times. At last it went
fluently, at least for this time.
‘For you see, Magnus,’ assured Andy seriously, ‘mother said every one
should know that prayer, both big and little, read it and really know
it by heart so as to fly up to heaven more easily, and sort of read
open the door to heaven every day, you know, boy. And then mother
said that some time _every one in the whole world_ will fly up to God
through that prayer, both rich and poor. It is as if we must learn the
way there till the time when we really go there. God knows your voice
and then you aren’t strange to Him, and can go right into heaven to God
as mother did when she died.’
‘You don’t have to worry,’ said Magnus sullenly. ‘I didn’t stumble
once this last time, and I guess I can remember what mother said just
as well as you can. I remember her and the little gray house, and I’d
rather be there than any other place, if I only had her and Golden Horn
there.’
With this tender and delicate assurance at the moment of parting,
Magnus turned to go back, with Golden Horn, to the sawmill and the
pretty little house.
He hadn’t any great desire either to have Andy and Maglena see the
tears that, to his great indignation and astonishment, rushed to his
eyes. Since he was quite sure that he felt no regret in parting from
his brother and sister, he thought the tears had no business in coming
at all. With his hand clasping one of Golden Horn’s horns, he went now
without even shaking hands or saying a word of farewell.
Maglena stood nonplussed. It seemed like a bad dream that both of them,
Golden Horn and Magnus, should now be far away from her. It mustn’t be.
Not like this, so suddenly. She must keep them a little while longer.
And Magnus must have some souvenir of her, so that he would never
forget his sister and her warnings. Maglena took the knapsack from
Andy’s shoulders quickly and with trembling hands. With a practiced
hand she reached down to the very bottom of it.
‘The brass comb!’ Magnus should have from her the very brass comb
itself to keep himself nice on the outside, just as Andy had given him
that with which to keep himself nice on the inside.
‘Magnus!’ called Maglena. ‘Boy, wait!’
Magnus slowed down without turning around.
He started with aversion when Maglena, who had run after him, stopped
short and thrust the comb past his ear, and past his nose, which it
nearly scraped.
The hated brass comb gleamed in the sun right before his eyes. Magnus
was furious with a vengeance, and Maglena literally jumped backward
when he turned a tear-drenched face with actually fiery eyes toward
her. He jerked the comb away from her and banged it down in the road.
‘I believe you want to kill me with that truck! I’ve gone out to
strangers to get away from that cat-claw and then you come galloping
after me with it. Take the comb yourself, and comb out your curls so
that your hair can be smooth for once like other people’s. Golden Horn
and I can get along all right.’
With that Magnus set off with Golden Horn, who turned and twisted to
get away in order to be caressed and petted a bit by Maglena. She, who
had had to bend down to pick up the comb, stood as if petrified.
Golden Horn and Magnus melted away in the dust of the road, and became
smaller and smaller. They disappeared behind a pile of boards without
turning around, which, for the goat, would have been rather hard,
considering the steady hold with which Magnus held her head.
Perhaps Maglena would have wondered less and felt lighter of heart if
she had seen how Magnus stopped behind the pile of boards and peeped
out through the cracks after her and Andy as long as he could see them.
She would have been on the verge of tears if she had seen him bend down
over Golden Horn and heard his warm assurances to the goat:
‘Do you know, Golden Horn, now I’ll call you both Andy and Maglena.
I’ll call you Andy in the evenings when it seems that I can’t say “Our
Father”; and Maglena in the mornings when I don’t want to comb myself.
I was so awfully mad, I don’t know why; and I’m crying now, I don’t
know why either, when I’m mad at Maglena. The tears run whether I want
them to or not. See, now Andy and Maglena are going down the hill. Now
I see only the red striped shawl on Maglena’s head, and now only Andy’s
cap. Now they are gone. Come, now, little Andy, sweet Maglena, we have
other things to do besides standing here looking at something that
isn’t here.’
Magnus had not turned around before Kristina, who longed for the boy
from her home parish, and the goat, and understood that the little
one felt sad, was beside him. She had sandwiches with her in a little
basket which contained even some bits of bread for Golden Horn.