A LITTLE CLOUD IN THE SKY.
"All the flowers of Love and Happiness blow double."
As it happened that year the peerie, or Indian summer, was of unusual
length and beauty. The fine weather lingered until the end of October.
These weeks were full of joy to Margaret and to Jan, and in them Jan
showed himself in many a charming light. He played well upon the
violin, and as long as love was his theme Margaret understood him. He
recited to her stirring stories from the Sagas, and she thought only
how handsome he looked with his flashing eyes, and flushing face. She
never reflected, that the soul which could put life into these old
tales was very likely to be a soul akin to the restless adventurous
men of which they told. Her home and her love were sufficient for her
happiness, and she expected that Jan would measure his desires by the
same rule.
But in a few weeks Jan began to weary a little of a life all
love-making. Many things, laid aside for a time, renewed their
influence over him. He wished to let the romance and exaggeration of
his married position sink into that better tenderness which is the
repose of passion, and which springs from the depths of a man's best
nature. But Margaret was not capable of renunciation, and Jan got to
be continually afraid of wounding her sensibilities by forgetting some
outward token of affection. He tried to talk to her of his projects,
of his desire to go to sea again, of his weariness of the store. She
could understand none of these things. Why should he want to leave
her? Had he ceased to love her? Her father was happy in the store. It
offended her to hear a word against it. Yet she thought she loved Jan
perfectly, and would have deeply resented Michael Snorro's private
verdict against her--that she was a selfish woman.
One morning, as the first snow was beginning to fall, a big Dutch
skipper in his loose tunic and high cap, and wooden clogs, came
stalking into Peter's store, and said, "Well, here at last comes 'The
North Star.' Many of us thought she would come no more."
Jan was packing eggs, but he signed to Michael to take his place, and
in a few minutes he was among the crowd watching her arrival. She came
hurrying in, with all her sails set, as if she were fleeing from the
northern winter behind her. Her stout sides were torn by berg and
floe, her decks covered with seal skins and jawbones of whales, and
amidships there was a young polar bear growling in a huge cask. Her
crew, weather-beaten and covered with snow and frost, had the strange
look of men from lands unknown and far off. Jan had once sailed in
her, and her first mate was his friend. It was like meeting one from
the dead. Proudly and gladly he took him to his home. He wanted him to
see his beautiful wife. He was sure Margaret would be delighted to
welcome a man so brave, and so dear to him.
On the contrary, it was a deep offense to her. Christian Groat, in his
sheepskin suit, oily and storm-stained, unkempt and unshorn, seemed
strangely out of place in her spotless room. That he had fought with
the elements, and with the monsters of the deep, made him no hero in
her eyes. She was not thrilled by his adventures upon drifting floes,
and among ice mountains reeling together in perilous madness. The
story made Jan's blood boil, and brought the glistening tears into his
big blue eyes; but Margaret's pulses beat no whit quicker. Christian
Groat was only a vulgar whaler to her, and that Jan should bring him
to her hearth and table made her angry.
Jan was hurt and humiliated. The visit from which he had hoped so
much, was a pain and a failure. He walked back into the town with his
friend, and was scarcely able to speak. Margaret also was silent and
grieved. She thought Jan had wronged her. She had to make a clean
cushion for the chair in which the man had sat. She persisted for days
in smelling whale oil above the reek of the peat, above even the salt
keenness of the winter air. Her father had never done such a thing;
she could not understand Jan's thoughtlessness about her.
For two days she was silent, and Jan bore it very well, for he, too,
was hurt and angry. On the third he spoke to his wife, and little by
little the coolness wore away. But an active quarrel and some hard
words had perhaps been better, for then there might have followed some
gracious tears, and a loving reconciliation. As it was, the evenings
wore silently and gloomily away. Margaret sat, mechanically knitting,
her beautiful face wearing an expression of injury and resignation
that was intolerably annoying to a man of Jan's temper. But though she
said nothing to her husband during these unhappy hours, the devil
talked very plainly in her place.
"Why," he asked Jan, "do you stay beside a sulky woman, when there are
all your old companions at Ragon Torr's? There, also, is the song and
the tale, and the glass of good fellowship. And who would be so
heartily welcome as Jan Vedder?"
Jan knew all this well. But as he did not care to make his wife
unhappy, he determined to deceive her. It was snowing, and likely to
snow; Margaret would not come down to the store in such weather. So he
said to her, "Michael Snorro hath a fever. He can not work. That is a
bad business, for it is only I that can fill his place. The work will
keep me late, wait not for me." To himself he said: "To leave her
alone a few nights, that will be a good thing; when I stay next at my
own hearth, she may have something to say to me."
Margaret's nature was absolutely truthful. She never doubted Jan's
words. In that love of self which was a miserable omnipresence with
her, she was angry with Snorro for being sick and thus interfering in
her domestic life, but she fully believed her husband's statement.
Jan spent two evenings at Ragon Torr's, but on the third morning his
conscience smote him a little. He looked at Margaret, and wished she
would ask, "Wilt thou come home early to-night?" He would gladly have
answered her, "I will come at whatever hour thou desirest." But,
unfortunately, Margaret was at that moment counting her eggs, and
there were at least two missing. She was a woman who delighted in
small economies; she felt that she was either being wronged by her
servant, or that her fowls were laying in strange nests. At that
moment it was a subject of great importance to her; and she never
noticed the eager, longing look in Jan's eyes.
When he said at last. "Good-by to thee, Margaret;" she looked up from
her basket of eggs half reproachfully at him. She felt that Jan might
have taken more interest in her loss. She had not yet divined that
these small savings of hers were a source of anger and heart-burning
to him. He knew well that the price of her endless knitting, her
gathered eggs, wool, and swans' down, all went to her private account
in Lerwick Bank. For she had been saving money since she was a child
six years old, and neither father, mother, nor husband knew how much
she had saved. That was a thing Margaret kept absolutely to herself
and the little brown book which was in her locked drawer. There had
been times when Jan could have opened it had he desired; but he had
been too hurt and too proud to do so. If his wife could not
voluntarily trust him, he would not solicit her confidence. And it had
never struck Margaret that the little book was a hidden rock, on which
every thing might yet be wrecked. It was there, though the tide of
daily life flowed over it, and though it was never spoken of.
All that day Jan was sulky and obstinate, and Peter came near
quarreling with him more than once. But Peter thought he knew what
was the matter, and he smiled grimly to himself as he remembered
Margaret's power of resistance. Perhaps a fellow-feeling made him
unusually patient, for he remembered that Thora had not been brought
to a state of perfect obedience until she had given him many a day of
active discomfort. He watched Jan curiously and not without sympathy,
for the training of wives is a subject of interest even to those who
feel themselves to have been quite successful.
During the first hours of the day Jan was uncertain what to do. A
trifle would have turned him either way, and in the afternoon the
trifle came. A boat arrived from Kirkwall, and two of her crew were
far-off cousins. The men were in almost as bad condition as Christian
Groat. He would not risk soiling Margaret's chair-cushions again, so
he invited them to meet him at Ragon Torr's. As it happened Margaret
had an unhappy day; many little things went wrong with her. She longed
for sympathy, and began to wish that Jan would come home; indeed she
was half inclined to go to the store, and ask him if he could not.
She opened the door and looked out. It was still snowing a little, as
it had been for a month. But snow does not lie in Shetland, and the
winters, though dreary and moist, are not too cold for the daisy to
bloom every where at Christmas, and for the rye grass to have eight or
ten inches of green blade. There was a young moon, too, and the
Aurora, in a phalanx of rosy spears, was charging upward to the
zenith. It was not at all an unpleasant night, and, with her cloak and
hood of blue flannel, a walk to the store would be easy and
invigorating.
As she stood undecided and unhappy, she saw a man approaching the
house. She could not fail to recognize the large, shambling figure. It
was Michael Snorro. A blow from his mighty hand could hardly have
stunned her more. She shut the door, and sat down sick at heart. For
it was evident that Snorro was not ill, and that Jan had deceived her.
Snorro, too, seemed to hesitate and waver in his intentions. He walked
past the house several times, and then he went to the kitchen door.
In a few minutes Elga Skade, Margaret's servant, said to her, "Here
has come Michael Snorro, and he would speak with thy husband."
Margaret rose, and went to him. He stood before the glowing peats, on
the kitchen hearth, seeming, in the dim light, to tower to the very
roof. Margaret looked up with a feeling akin to terror at the large
white face in the gloom above her, and asked faintly, "What is't thou
wants, Snorro?"
"I would speak with Jan."
"He is not come yet to his home. At what hour did he leave the
store?"
At once Snorro's suspicions were aroused. He stood silent a minute,
then he said, "He may have gone round by thy father's. I will wait."
The man frightened her. She divined that he distrusted and disapproved
of her; and she could ask nothing more. She left him with Elga, but in
half an hour she became too restless to bear the suspense, and
returned to the kitchen. Snorro gave her no opportunity to question
him. He said at once, "It is few houses in Shetland a man can enter,
and no one say to him, 'Wilt thou eat or drink?'"
"I forgot, Snorro. I am troubled about Jan. What wilt thou have?"
"What thou hast ready, and Elga will get it for me."
A few minutes later he sat down to eat with a calm deliberation which
Margaret could not endure. She put on her cloak and hood, and calling
Elga, said, "If he asks for me, say that I spoke of my father's
house."
Then she slipped out of the front door, and went with fleet steps into
the town. The street, which was so narrow that it was possible to
shake hands across it, was dark and empty. The shops were all shut,
and the living rooms looked mostly into the closes, or out to the sea.
Only here and there a lighted square of glass made her shrink into the
shadow of the gables. But she made her way without hindrance to a
house near the main quay. It was well lighted, and there was the sound
and stir of music and singing, of noisy conversation and laughter
within it.
Indeed, it was Ragon Torr's inn. The front windows were uncurtained,
and she saw, as she hurriedly passed them, that the main room was full
of company; but she did not pause until within the close at the side
of the house, when, standing in the shadow of the outbuilt chimney,
she peered cautiously through the few small squares on that side. It
was as she suspected. Jan sat in the very center of the company, his
handsome face all aglow with smiles, his hands busily tuning the
violin he held. Torr and half a dozen sailors bent toward him with
admiring looks, and Ragon's wife Barbara, going to and fro in her
household duties, stopped to say something to him, at which every body
laughed, but Jan's face darkened.
Margaret did not hear her name, but she felt sure the remark had been
about herself, and her heart burned with anger. She was turning away,
when there was a cry of pleasure, and Suneva Torr entered. Margaret
had always disliked Suneva; she felt now that she hated and feared
her. Her luring eyes were dancing with pleasure, her yellow hair fell
in long, loose waves around her, and she went to Jan's side, put her
hand on his shoulder, and said something to him.
Jan looked back, and up to her, and nodded brightly to her request.
Then out sprang the tingling notes from the strings, and clear, and
shrill, and musical, Suneva's voice picked them up with a charming
distinctness:
"Well, then, since we are welcome to Yool,
Up with it, Lightfoot, link it awa', boys;
Send for a fiddler, play up the Foula reel,
And we'll skip it as light as a maw, boys."
Then she glanced at the men, and her father and mother, and far in the
still night rang out the stirring chorus:
"The Shaalds of Foula will pay for it a'!
Up with it, Lightfoot, and link it awa'."
Then the merry riot ceased, and Suneva's voice again took up the
song--
"Now for a light and a pot of good beer,
Up with it, Lightfoot, and link it awa', boys!
We'll drink a good fishing against the New Year,
And the Shaalds of Foula will pay for it a', boys.
CHORUS:
"The Shaalds of Foula will pay for it a';
Up with it, Lightfoot, and link it awa'."
Margaret could bear it no longer, and, white and stern, she turned
away from the window. Then she saw Michael Snorro standing beside her.
Even in the darkness she knew that his eyes were scintillating with
anger. He took her by the arm and led her to the end of the close.
Then he said:
"Much of a woman art thou! If I was Jan Vedder, never again would I
see thy face! No, never!"
"Jan lied to me! To me, his wife! Did thou think he was at my
father's? He is in Ragon Torr's."
"Thou lied to me also; and if Jan is in Ragon Torr's, let me tell
thee, that thou sent him there."
"I lied not to thee. I lie to no one."
"Yea, but thou told Elga to lie for thee. A jealous wife knows not
what she does. Did thou go to thy father's house?"
"Speak thou no more to me, Michael Snorro." Then she sped up the
street, holding her breast tightly with both hands, as if to hold back
the sobs that were choking her, until she reached her own room, and
locked fast her door. She sobbed for hours with all the passionate
abandon which is the readiest relief of great sorrows that come in
youth. In age we know better; we bow the head and submit.
When she had quite exhausted herself, she began to long for some
comforter, some one to whom she could tell her trouble. But Margaret
had few acquaintances; none, among the few, of whom she could make a
confidant. From her father and mother, above all others, she would
keep this humiliation. God she had never thought of as a friend. He
was her Creator, her Redeemer, also, if it were his good pleasure to
save her from eternal death. He was the Governor of the Universe; but
she knew him not as a Father pitying his children, as a God tender to
a broken heart. Was it possible that a woman's sharp cry of wounded
love could touch the Eternal? She never dreamed of such a thing. At
length, weary with weeping and with her own restlessness, she sat down
before the red peats upon the hearth, for once, in her sorrowful
preoccupation, forgetting her knitting.
In the meantime, Snorro had entered Torr's, and asked for Jan. He
would take no excuse, and no promises, and his white, stern face, and
silent way of sitting apart, with his head in his hands, was soon felt
to be a very uncomfortable influence. Jan rose moodily, and went away
with him; too cross, until they reached the store, to ask, "Why did
thou come and spoil my pleasure, Snorro?"
"Neil Bork sails for Vool at the midnight tide. Thou told me thou
must send a letter by him to thy cousin Magnus."
"That is so. Since Peter will do nothing, I must seek help of Magnus.
Well, then, I will write the letter."
When it was finished, Jan said, "Snorro, who told thee I was at
Torr's?"
"Thou wert not at home. I went there, first."
"Then thou hast made trouble for me, be sure of that. My wife thought
that thou wast ill."
"It is a bad wife a man must lie to. But, oh, Jan! Jan! To think that
for any woman thou would tell the lie!"
Then Jan, being in that garrulous mood which often precedes
intoxication, would have opened his whole heart to Michael about his
domestic troubles; but Michael would not listen to him. "Shut thy
mouth tight on that subject," he said angrily. "I will hear neither
good nor bad of Margaret Vedder. Now, then, I will walk home with
thee, and then I will see Neil Bork, and give him thy letter."
Margaret heard their steps at the gate. Her face grew white and cold
as ice, and her heart hardened at the sound of Snorro's voice. She
had always despised him; now, for his interference with her, she hated
him. She could not tolerate Jan's attachment to a creature so rude and
simple. It was almost an insult to herself; and yet so truthfully did
she judge his heart, that she was quite certain Michael Snorro would
never tell Jan that she had watched him through Ragon Torr's window.
She blushed a moment at the memory of so mean an action, but instantly
and angrily defended it to her own heart.
Jan came in, with the foolish, good-natured smile of alcoholic
excitement. But when he saw Margaret's white, hard face, he instantly
became sulky and silent. "Where hast thou been, Jan?" she asked. "It
is near the midnight."
"I have been about my own business. I had some words to send by Neil
Bork to my cousin Magnus. Neil sails by the midnight tide."
She laughed scornfully. "Thy cousin Magnus! Pray, what shall he do for
thee? This is some new cousin, surely!"
"Well, then, since thy father keeps thy tocher from me, I must borrow
of my own kin."
"As for that, my father hath been better to thee than thou deservest.
Why didst thou lie to me concerning Snorro? He has had no fever. No,
indeed!"
"A man must ask his wife whether he can speak truth to her, or not.
Thou can not bear it. Very well, then, I must lie to thee."
"Yet, be sure, I will tell the truth to thee, Jan Vedder. Thou hast
been at Ragon Torr's, singing with a light woman, and drinking
with--"
"With my own kin. I advise thee to say nothing against them. As for
Suneva, there is no tongue in Lerwick but thine will speak evil of
her--she is a good girl, and she hath a kind heart. And now, then, who
told thee I was at Torr's?"
He asked the question repeatedly, and instead of answering it,
Margaret began to justify herself. "Have I not been to thee a good
wife? Has not thy house been kept well, and thy meals ever good and
ready for thee? Has any thing, great or little, gone to waste?"
"Thou hast been too good. It had been better if thou had been less
perfect; then I could have spoken to thee of my great wish, and thou
would have said, as others say, 'Jan, it would be a joy to see thee at
the main-mast, or casting the ling-lines, or running into harbor
before the storm, with every sail set, as though thou had stolen ship
and lading.' Thou would not want me to chaffer with old women about
geese-feathers and bird-eggs. Speak no more. I am heavy with sleep."
And he could sleep! That was such an aggravation of his offense. She
turned sometimes and looked at his handsome flushed face, but
otherwise she sat hour after hour silent and almost motionless, her
hands clasped upon her knee, her heart anticipative of wrong, and with
a perverse industry considering sorrows that had not as yet even
called to her. Alas! alas! the unhappy can never persuade themselves
that "sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof."