he led the horse and carriage away from the steps; there was surely
something the matter; the captain had got cheated again with this new
nag.
"Good day, Ma--good day!" and he kissed her hastily. "Yes, I am quite
well."
He took off his cloak and shako. "Oh, can't you let Marit take the
trunk and the travelling-bag so that they needn't stand there on the
steps any longer?--Oh, yes; it has been tiresome enough," as he evaded
rather coldly Thinka's attentions. "Put the sabre on the peg, and
carry the bag up to my chamber."
He himself went first up to the office to look at the mail, and then
down to the stable to see how Great-Ola had treated Svarten.
There was something the matter with father; that was clear!
Ma's face, anxiously disturbed, followed him here and there in the
doorways, and Thinka glided in and out without breaking the silence.
When he came in, the supper-table was spread--herring salad, decorated
with red beets and slices of hard boiled eggs, and a glass of brandy by
the side of it--and then half salted trout and a good bottle of beer.
Father was possibly not quite insensible, but extremely reticent. You
could absolutely get only words of one syllable in answer to the most
ingeniously conceived questions!
"The sheriff is going to marry again, they say; it is absolutely
certain!" he let fall at last, as the first agreeable news he knew from
the outer world; "Scharfenberg's youngest."
The remark was followed by deep silence, even if a gleam of perfect
contentment glided over Thinka's face, and she busied herself with
eating. They both felt that his ill-humor came from this.
"That man can say he is lucky with his daughters--Bine soon in a
parsonage, and now Andrea the sheriff's wife! Perhaps you can get a
position there, Thinka, when you need it some day, as governess for the
children, or housekeeper; she won't be obliged to do more in the house
than just what she pleases; she can afford it."
Thinka, blushing to the roots of her hair, kept her eyes on her plate.
"Yes, yes, Ma, as you make your bed you must lie in it in this world."
No more was said before Thinka cleared off the table, when Ma
apologetically exclaimed, "Poor Thinka!"
The captain wheeled towards her on the floor with his fingers in the
armholes of his vest and blinked indignantly at her.
"Do you know! After the parasol and the one attention after another
which he has taken the pains to show all summer, if she could have
given the man a bit of thanks and friendliness other than she has--It
would not have gone so at all, if I had been at home!"--his voice rose
to something like a peal of thunder--"But I think it is a flock of
geese that I have here in the house, and not grown-up women who look
out a little for themselves. Andrea Scharfenberg didn't let herself be
asked twice, not she!" he said, walking out again when Thinka came in;
he did not care if she did hear it.
Ma gazed somewhat thoughtfully at him, and in the days that followed,
they petted and coddled father in every way to make him a little more
cheerful. Thinka, in the midst of her quiet carefulness, cast her eyes
down involuntarily, when he groaned and panted in this way.
He did not go out any farther than to look after young Svarten.
The horse had fever in one hoof to-day after the new shoeing. It was a
nail which had been driven in too far by that blockhead of a smith. It
must come out.
The captain stood silently looking on in his favorite position, with
his arms on the lower half of the stable door, while Great-Ola,
with the hind leg of young Svarten over his leg, was performing the
operation of extraction with the tongs. The animal was good-natured and
did not so much as move his leg.
"O-o-ola," came hoarsely, half smothered.
Great-Ola looked up.
"Good Lord!" if the captain did not sink slowly down, while he still
held onto the stable door, right on the dung!
Ola looked a moment irresolutely at his master, dropping the horse's
foot. Then he took the stable pail and spattered some water into his
face until he once more manifested a little life and consciousness.
He then held the pail to his mouth.
"Drink, drink, Captain! Don't be afraid. It is only the result of all
that drilling and pleasuring. It is just as it is when one has kept up
a wedding festivity too long. My brother--"
"Help me out, Ola! There, let me lean on you--gently, gently. Ah, it
does one good to breathe--breathe," as he stopped. "Now it's over, I
believe. Yes, entirely over, nothing more than a half fainting spell.
Just go with me a little bit, Ola, as a matter of precaution. Hm, hm,
that goes well enough. Yes, yes, I have no doubt it is the irregular
life the whole of the autumn. Go and call my wife. Say I am up in the
chamber. I can manage the stairs bravely."
There was no little fright.
This time it was the captain who was at ease and turned it off, and Ma
who without authority dispatched a messenger. If the army surgeon was
not at home, then he must go to the district doctor.
When the army surgeon, Rist, came, and had received at the door Ma's
anxious explanations that Jäger had had a slight shock, for the calming
of the house he delivered a humorous lecture.
It was wholly a question of degree. The man who drank only so much that
he stammered suffered from paralytic palsy of the tongue--and in this
way every blessed man that he knew was a paralytic patient. This was
only a congestion not uncommon among full-blooded people.
Jäger himself was in fact so far over it that he demanded the toddy
tray in the evening--true enough, only an extremely light dose for his
part! But cock and bull stories from the encampment and about Svarten
were told in the clouds of smoke, and with constant renewals of the
thin essence, till half-past one in the morning.
There was a roaring in the stove on one of the following forenoons,
while the captain sat in his office chair, and wrote so that his
quill-pen sputtered.
As usual at this time of the year, after his long absence, there
was a great multitude of things to be disposed of. Thea's Norwegian
grammar was lying on the green table by the door; she had just finished
reading, and was heard humming outside in the hall.
There was a noise on the stairs, and Ma showing some one the way up,
"That way--to the captain."
There was a knocking at the door.
"Good day, my man! Well?"
It was an express from the sheriff--in Sunday dress--with a letter. It
was to be given to the captain himself.
"What? Is there to be an answer? Well, well! Yes, go down to the
kitchen and get a little something to eat and a dram.--Hm, hm," he
mumbled and threw the letter, written on letter-paper and fastened
with a seal, down on his desk, while in the mean time he took a turn up
and down the floor. "Notice of the betrothal, I suppose--or perhaps an
invitation to the wedding."
Opening it, he read it, standing up--eagerly running it over hastily--a
cursed long introduction!--Over that--over that--quite to the third
page.
"Well, there it comes!"
He struck the back of the hand in which he held the letter with a
resounding whack into the other, and then seated himself--"Yes, yes,
yes, yes, yes, yes, yes!"
He snapped his fingers, once, twice, three times, in a brown study,
scratched his head behind his ear, and then slyly up under his wig.
"Now, we shall see--we shall see!--And that nonsense about
Scharfenberg." He rushed to the door and jerked it open; but bethought
himself and walked on tiptoe to the stairs. "Who is there in the
hall--you, Thea?"
The little square-built, brown-eyed Thea flew up the stairs.
"Tell Ma to come up," he said, nodding.
Thea looked up at her father: there was something out of the ordinary
about him.
When Ma came in, he walked about with the letter behind his back,
clearing his throat. There was the suitable deliberate seriousness
about him which the situation demanded.
"I have got a letter, Ma--from the sheriff!--Read!--or shall I read?"
He stood leaning against the desk, and went through its three pages,
period by period, with great moderation, till he came to the point,
then he hurled it out so that it buzzed in the air, and hugged Ma
wildly.
"Well, well!--what do you say, Ma? Take a trip when we want to go down
to our son-in-law!" He rubbed his hands. "It was a real surprise,
Ma,--hm, hm," he began, again clearing his throat. "It is best that we
ask Thinka to come up and tell her the contents--don't you think?"
"Ye-es," said Ma huskily, having turned to the door; she could see no
help or escape for her any more, poor girl!
The captain walked up and down in the office, waiting. He had the
high-spirited, dignified, paternal expression which is completely
absorbed in the importance of the moment.
But where was she gone to?
She could not be found. They had hunted for her over the whole house.
But the captain was not impatient to-day.
"Well, then, don't you see her?" he mildly asked two or three times
through the door.
At last Thea found her in the garret. She had taken refuge up there
and hid herself, when she saw the express and heard that it was from
the sheriff, in anticipation of the contents. And now she was sitting
with her head on her arms and her apron over her head.
She had not been crying; she had been seized with a sort of panic; she
felt an irresistible impulse to hide herself away somewhere and shut
her eyes, so that it would be really dark, and she would not be obliged
to think.
She looked a little foolish when she went down with Thea to her father
and mother in the office.
"Thinka," said the captain, when she came in, "we have received to-day
from the sheriff an important letter for your future. I suppose it is
superfluous to say--after all the attention you have allowed him to
show you during the year--what it is about, and that your mother and I
regard it as the greatest good fortune that could fall to your lot, and
to ours also. Read the letter and consider it well. Sit down and read
it, child."
Thinka read; but it did not seem as if she got far; she shook her head
dumbly the whole time without knowing it.
"You understand very well, it is not any youthful love fancy, and any
such exalted nonsense that he asks of you. It is if you will fill an
honored position with him that you are asked, and if you can give the
good will and care for him which he would naturally expect of a wife."
There was no answer to be got, except a weak groan down into her lap.
The captain's face began to grow solemn.
But Ma whispered, with a blaze of lightning in her eyes, "You see
plainly, she cannot think, Jäger.--Don't you think as I do, father,"
she said aloud, "that it is best we let Thinka take the letter, so that
she can consider it till to-morrow? It is such a surprise."
"Of course, if Thinka prefers it," came after them, from the captain,
who was greatly offended, as Ma went with her, shutting her up in her
chamber.
She had her cry out under the down quilt during the whole afternoon.
In the twilight Ma went up and sat beside her.
"No place to turn to, you see, when one will not be a poor,
unprovided-for member of a family. Sew, sew your eyes out of your head,
till at last you lie in a corner of some one's house. Such an honorable
proposal would seem to many people to be a great thing."
"Aas! Aas, mother!" articulated Thinka very weakly.
"God knows, child, that if I saw any other way out, I would show it to
you, even if I should have to hold my fingers in the fire in order to
do it."
Thinka slipped her hand onto her mother's thin hand and sobbed gently
into her pillow.
"Your father is no longer very strong--does not bear many mental
excitements,--so that the outlook is dark enough. The attack when he
came home last--"
When Ma went out, sigh followed sigh in the darkness.
Late in the evening Ma sat and held her daughter's head so that she
could get some sleep; she was continually starting up.
And now when Thinka finally slept, without these sudden starts any
longer--quietly and peacefully, with her fair young head regularly
breathing on the pillow--Ma went out with the candle. The worst was
over.
If the captain was in an exalted mood after having seen from the office
window Aslak, who went as express messenger to the sheriff, vanishing
through the gate, then in certain ways he was doubly set up in the
kingdom of hope by a little fragment of a letter from Inger-Johanna,
dated Tilderöd:
We are all in a bustle, packing up and moving to the city, therefore
the letter will be short this time.
There have been guests here to the very last; solitude suits neither
uncle nor aunt, and so they had said "Welcome to Tilderöd" so often
that we had one long visit after another all through the summer--in
perfect rusticity, it was said. But I believe indeed they did not
go away again without feeling that aunt preserves style in it. With
perfect freedom for every one, and collations both in the garden room
and on the veranda, there is, after all, something about it which makes
the guests feel that they must give something and be at their best.
People don't easily sink down to the level of the commonplace when aunt
is present. She flatters me that we are alike in that respect.
And I don't know how it is, I feel now that I am almost as much
attracted by assemblies as formerly by balls. There certainly is much
more of an opportunity to use whatever little wit one has, and they may
be a real influential circle of usefulness: aunt has opened my eyes
to that this summer. When we read of the brilliant French _salons_,
where woman was the soul, we get an impression that here is an entire
province for her. And to be able to live and work in the world has
possessed me since I was little, and mourned so that I was not a boy
who could come to be something.
I had got so far, dear parents, when Miss Jörgensen called me to go
down into the garden to aunt. The mail had come from the office in the
city, and on the table in a package lay a flat, red morocco leather box
and a letter to me.
It was a gold band to wear in my hair, with a yellow topaz in it, and
in the letter there was only, "To complete the portrait. RÖNNOW."
Of course aunt must try it on me at once--take down my hair, and call
in uncle. Rönnow's taste was subtly inspired when it concerned me, she
declared.
Oh, yes! it is becoming.
But with the letter and all the fantastical overvaluation, there is
that which makes me feel that the gold band pinches my neck. Gratitude
is a tiresome virtue.
Aunt lays so many plans for our social life next winter, and is
rejoicing that Rönnow may possibly come for another trip.
For my part I must say I don't really know; I both want it and don't
want it.
_Chapter X_
The more quickly and quietly the wedding could be arranged, the better,
said the sheriff. It had its advantage in getting ahead of explanations
and gossip. People submitted to an accomplished fact.
The third day of Christmas was just the right one to escape too much
sensation; and it suited the sheriff exactly, so that he could enter
upon his new state of household affairs with the new year.
Naturally, Kathinka was asked about every one of these points; and she
always found everything that her father thought right.
The decision that the wedding should be arranged speedily and promptly
was exactly after the captain's own heart. On the other point, on the
contrary, that everything should be kept so quiet and still, he was in
agreement with the sheriff and Ma, of course; but it really did not lie
in his nature that the whole joyful affair should take place smothered
with a towel before his mouth, and whispering on tiptoe, as if it were
a sick-room they were having at Gilje instead of a wedding.
Some show there must be about it; that he owed to Thinka, and to
himself also a little.
And thus it came about that before Christmas he took a little sleighing
trip, when it was good going, down to the lieutenant's and to the
solicitors, Scharfenberg and Sebelow, with whom he had some money
settlements to get adjusted in regard to the map business that had been
done in the last two suits.
And then, when he met the report that the banns had been published
in church for his daughter and the sheriff, he could answer
with a question if they would not come and convince themselves.
Confidentially, of course, he invited no one but the army surgeon and
those absolutely necessary. "But"--winking--"old fellow, how welcome
you shall be, the third day of Christmas, not the second and not the
fourth, my boy, remember that!"
And he took care that provisions as well as batteries of strong liquors
should be stored up inside the ramparts at home, so the fortress could
hold its own.
On Christmas Eve there came a horse express from the sheriff with a
sleigh full of packages--nothing but presents and surprises for Thinka.
First and foremost, his former wife's warm fur cloak with squirrel-skin
lining and muff, which had been made over for Thinka by Miss Brun in
the chief parish; then her gold watch and chain with earrings, and
rings, all like new, and burnished up by the goldsmith in the city, and
a Vienna shawl, and, lastly, lavender water and gloves in abundance.
In the letter he suggested to his devotedly loved Kathinka that his
thoughts were only with her until they should soon be united by a
stronger bond, and that she, when once in her new home, would find
several other things which might possibly please her, but which it
would not be practical to send up to Gilje, only to bring them right
back again.
He had not brought Baldrian and Viggo home for Christmas--and in
this he hoped she would agree with him; he had sent them down to his
brother, the minister at Holmestrand.
Never in Great-Ola's time had there been such a festive show in horses
and vehicles, as when, on the third day of Christmas, they started down
the hill to the annex-church; the harnesses and bells shone, and both
the black horses glistened before the double sleighs, as if they had
been polished up, both hair and mane.
Under the bearskin robe in the first sat the captain in a wolf-skin
coat and Thinka adorned with the chains and clothes of the sheriff's
first wife, with young Svarten. In the second Ma and Thea, with
Great-Ola on the dickey seat behind and old Svarten.
There stood the subalterns in uniform paying their respects at the
church door; and inside, in the pew, Lieutenants Dunsack, Frisak,
Knebelsberger, and Knobelauch rose up in full uniform. So the sheriff
could see that there was some style about it, anyway.
And when they turned towards home, after the ceremony was over, now
with the captain and his wife in the first sleigh and the wedded couple
in the other--there was such a long cortège that the sheriff's idea of
celebrating the wedding quietly must be regarded as wholly overridden.
At Gilje dinner was waiting.
During this the powers of the battalion from the youngest lieutenant
up to the captain developed a youthful courage in their attack on the
strong wares, so wild and so regardless of the results, that it could
only demand of the sheriff a certain degree of prudence.
All would drink with the bride and the bridegroom, again and again.
The sheriff sat contented and leaning forward with his great forehead
thinly covered with hair, taking pains to choose his words in the
cleverest and most fitting manner for the occasion.
And so long as it was confined to the speeches, he was the absolute
master, unless he might possibly have a rival in the army surgeon's
sometimes more deeply laid satire, which became more problematical and
sarcastic after he had been drinking.
But now the small twinkling eyes, shining more and more dimly and
tenderly veiled, devoted themselves exclusively to the bride.
She must taste the tower tart and the wine custard, for his sake! He
would not drink any more, if he could avoid it, for her sake. "I
assure you," for your--"only for your sake."
An inroad was made on the wares at Gilje with prolonged hilarity till
far into the night, when some of the sleighs in the starlight and in
the gleam of the Northern lights reeled homewards with their half
unconscious burdens drawn by their sober horses, while as many as the
house would hold remained over in order to celebrate the wedding and
Christmas the next day.
By New Year's the house was finally emptied of its guests, the sheriff
and Kathinka were installed in their home, and the captain travelled
down on a visit to them with Thea in order to have his New Year's Day
spree there.
But then Ma was tired out and completely exhausted.
She felt, now the wheel of work had stopped all at once, and she sat
there at home alone, on the day after New Year's, how tremendous a
load it had been to pull. The trousseau all through the autumn and the
household affairs before the holidays, Christmas, and the wedding, and
all the anxieties.
It had gone on incessantly now, as far back as she could think. It was
like ravelling out the yarn from a stocking, the longer she thought,
the longer it was, clear back to the time when it seemed to her there
was a rest the days she was lying in childbed.
But that was now long since.
She was sitting in the corner of the sofa half asleep in the twilight,
with her knitting untouched before her.
Aslak and two of the girls had got leave to go to a Christmas
entertainment down at the Skreberg farm, and except old Torbjörg, who
was sitting with her hymn book and humming and singing in the kitchen,
there was no one at home.
Bells jingled out in the yard. Great-Ola had come home with the
two-seated sleigh and old Svarten, after having driven the captain and
Thea.
He stamped the snow off in the hall and peeped in through the door.
When he drove past Teigen, the postmaster had come out with the
captain's mail.
"When did you get there last evening? I hope Thea was not cold."
"No, not at all! We were down there in good time before supper. Ever
so many messages from the young wife; she was down in the stable and
patted and stroked Svarten last night. It was kind of a separation."
Ma rose. "There is a candle laid out for the stable lantern."
Great-Ola vanished again.
Old Svarten, still harnessed to the sleigh, stood in the stable door
and neighed impatiently.
"It only lacked that you should turn the key also," growled Ola, while
he took off the harness, and, now with the harness and bells over his
arm, let the horse walk in before him.
"Why, if young Svarten isn't neighing also! That was the first time you
have said a decent good day here in the stable, do you know that? But
you will have to wait, you see."
He curried and brushed and rubbed the new arrival like a privileged old
gentleman. They had been serving together now just exactly nine years.
In the kitchen the spruce wood crackled and snapped on the hearth,
casting an uncertain reddish glow over Ma's newly polished copper and
tin dishes and making them look like mystical shields and weapons hung
on the walls.
Great-Ola was now sitting there making himself comfortable with his
supper, Christmas cheer and entertainment--butter, bread, bacon,
wort-cakes, and salt meat; and Torbjörg had been ordered to draw a bowl
of small beer for him down in the cellar. Ola had heard one thing and
another down there.
Thinka, she had gone out into the kitchen and would take charge of the
housekeeping immediately. But there she found some one who meant to
hold the reins.
Old Miss Gülcke wouldn't hear of that. She went straight up to the
office, they said, and twisted and turned it over with her brother the
whole forenoon till she got what she wanted.
And in the evening the sheriff sat on the sofa and talked so sweetly to
the young wife. Beret, the chamber-maid, heard him say that he wanted
her to have everything so extremely nice and be wholly devoted to him,
so that--Horsch, the old graybeard! We can see now what he was doing
here last year.
"And thereby," said Ola, with a mouthful between his teeth, while he
cut and spread a new slice of bread, "she got rid of the trouble and
the management too."
"It is of no use to pull the noose when one has his head in a snare,
you see, Ola."
In the sitting-room Ma had examined the mail that had come, sitting by
the stove door. Besides a number of _Hermoder_, _The Constitutional_,
and a free official document, there was a letter from Aunt Alette.
She lighted the candle and sat down to read it.
In certain respects it was a piece of good fortune that Jäger was not
at home. He ought to have nothing to do with this.