The Emperor of Portugallia Part 10

"If you would only let me go out in the world!" she said.

Katrina suddenly ceased mumbling and wringing her hands. Glory Goldie's words had awakened in her a faint hope.

"It shouldn't be so very difficult to earn a couple of hundred rix-dollars between now and the first of October," said the girl.

"This is only midsummer, so it's three whole months till then. If you will let me go to Stockholm and take service there, I promise you the house shall remain in your keeping."

When Jan of Ruffluck heard these words he grew ashen. His head sank back as if he were about to swoon. How dear of the little girl! he thought. It was for this he had waited the whole time--yet how, how could he ever bear to let her go away from him?

ON THE MOUNTAIN-TOP

Jan of Ruffluck walked along the forest road where he and his womenfolk, happy and content, had pa.s.sed on the way home from church a few hours earlier.

He and Katrina, after long deliberation, had decided that before sending their daughter away or doing anything else in this matter that Jan had better see Senator Carl Carlson of Storvik and ask him whether Lars Gunnarson had the right to take the hut from them.

There was no one in the whole of Svartsjo Parish who was so well versed in the law and the statutes as was the senator from Storvik, and those who had the good sense to seek his advice in matters of purchase and sale, in making appraisals, or setting up an auction, or drawing up a will, could rest a.s.sured that everything would be done in a correct and legal manner and that afterward there was no fear of their becoming involved in lawsuits or other entanglements.

The senator was a stern and masterful man, brusque of manner and harsh of voice, and Jan was none too pleased at the thought of having to talk with him.

"The first thing he'll do when I come to him will be to read me a lecture because I've got no papers," thought Jan. "He has scared some folks so badly at the very start that they never dared tell him what they had come to consult him about."

Jan left home in such haste that he had no time to think about the dreadful man he was going to see. But while pa.s.sing through the groves of the Ashdales toward the big forest the old dread came over him. "It was mighty stupid in me not to have taken Glory Goldie along!" he said to himself.

When leaving home he had not seen the girl about, so he concluded that she had betaken herself to some lonely spot in the woods, to weep away her grief, as she never wanted to be seen by any one when she felt downhearted.

Just as Jan was about to turn from the road into the forest he heard some one yodelling and singing up on the mountain, to right of him. He stopped and listened. It was a woman's voice; surely it could not be the one it sounded like! In any case, he must know for a certainty before going farther.

He could hear the song clearly and distinctly, but the singer was hidden by the trees. Presently he turned from the road and pushed his way through some tangle-brush in the hope of catching a glimpse of her; but she was not as near as he had imagined. Nor was she standing still. On the contrary, she seemed to be moving farther away--farther away and higher up.

At times the singing seemed to come from directly above him. The singer must be going up to the peak, he thought.

She had evidently taken a winding path leading up the mountain, where it was almost perpendicular. Here there was a thick growth of young birches; so of course he could not see her. She seemed to be mounting higher and higher, with the swiftness of a bird on the wing, singing all the while.

Then Jan started to climb straight up the mountain; but in his eagerness he strayed from the path and had to make his way through the bewildering woods. No wonder he was left far behind! Besides he had begun to feel as if he had a heavy weight on his chest; he could hardly get his breath as he tramped uphill, straining his ears to catch the song. Finally he went so slowly that he seemed not to be moving at all.

It was not easy to distinguish voices out in the woods, where there was so much that rustled and murmured and chimed in, as it were.

But Jan felt that he must get to where he could see the one who for very joy went flying up the steep. Otherwise he would harbour doubts and misgivings the rest of his life. He knew that once he was on the mountain top, where it was barren of trees, the singer could not elude him.

The view from the summit was glorious. From there could be seen the whole of long Lake Loven, the green vales encircling the lake and all the blue hills that shelter the valley. When folks from the shut-in Ashdales climbed to the towering peak they must have thought of the mountain whither the Tempter had once taken Our Lord, that he might show Him all the kingdoms of the world, and their glories.

When Jan had at last left the dense woods behind him and had come to a cleared place, he saw the singer. At the top of the highest peak was a cairn, and on the topmost stone of this cairn silhouetted against the pale evening sky stood Glory Goldie Sunnycastle, in her scarlet dress.

If the folk in the dales and woodlands below had turned their eyes toward the peak just then, they would have seen her standing there in her shining raiment.

Glorv Goldie looked out over miles and miles of country. She saw steep hills crowned with white churches on the sh.o.r.es of the lake, manors and founderies surrounded by parks and gardens, rows of farmhouses along the skirt of the woods, stretches of field and meadow land, winding roads and endless tracts of forest.

At first she sang. But presently she hushed her singing and thought only of gazing out over the wide, open world before her. Suddenly she flung out her arms as if wanting to take it all into her embrace--all this wealth and power and bigness from which she had been shut out until that day.

Jan did not return until far into the night, and when he reached home he could give no coherent account of his movements. He declared he had seen and talked with the senator, but what the senator had advised him to do he could not remember.

"It's no good trying to do anything," he said again and again.

That was all the satisfaction Katrina got.

Jan walked all bent over, and looked ill. Earth and moss clung to his coat, and Katrina asked him if he had fallen and hurt himself.

"No," he told her, but he may have lain on the ground a while.

Then he must be ill, thought Katrina.

It was not that either. It was just that something had stopped the instant it dawned on him that his little girl had offered to save the home for her parents not out of love for them, but because she longed to get away and go out in time world. But this he would not speak of.

THE EVE OF DEPARTURE

The evening before Glory Goldie of Ruffluck left for Stockholm Jan discovered no end of things that had to be attended to all at once.

He had no sooner got home from his work than he must betake himself to the forest to gather firewood, whereupon he set about fixing a broken board in the gate that had been hanging loose a whole year.

When he had finished with that he dragged out his fishing tackle and began to overhaul it.

All this time he was thinking how strange it seemed not to feel any actual regret. Now he was the same as he had been seventeen years before; he felt neither glad nor sad. His heart had stopped like a watch that has received a hard blow when he had seen Glory Goldie on the mountain-top, opening her arms to the whole world.

It had been like this with him once before. Then folks had wanted him to be glad of the little girl's coming, but he had not cared a bit about it; now they all expected him to be sad and disconsolate over her departure, and he was not that, either.

The hut was full of people who had come to say good-bye to Glory Goldie. Jan had not the face to go in and let them see that he neither wept nor wailed; so he thought it best to stop outside.

At all events it was a good thing for him matters had taken this turn, for if all had been as before he knew he should never have been able to endure the separation, and all the heartache and loneliness.

A while ago, in pa.s.sing by the window, he had noticed that the hut inside was decked with leaves and wild flowers. On the table were coffee cups, as on the day of which he was thinking. Katrina was giving a little party in honour of the daughter who was to fare forth into the wide world to save the home. Every one seemed to be weeping, both the housefolk and those who had come to bid the little girl G.o.dspeed. Jan heard Glory Goldie's sobs away out in the yard, but they had no effect upon him.

"My good people," he mumbled to himself, "this is as it should be.

Look at the young birds! They are thrust out of the nest if they don't leave it willingly. Have you ever watched a young cuckoo?

What could be worse than the sight of him lying in the nest, fat and sleek, and shrieking for food the whole blessed day while his parents wear themselves out to provide for him? It won't do to let the young ones sit around at home and become a burden to us older ones. They have got to go out into the world and shift for themselves my good friends."

At last all was quiet in the house. The neighbours had left, so that Jan could just as well have gone inside; but he went on puttering with his fishing tackle a while longer. He would rather that Glory Goldie and Katrina should be in bed and asleep before he crossed the threshold.

By and by, when he had heard no sound from within for ever so long, he stole up to the house as cautiously as a thief.

The womenfolk had not retired. As Jan pa.s.sed by the open window he saw Glory Goldie sitting with her arms stretched out across the table, her head resting on them. It looked as if she were still crying. Katrina was standing back in the room wrapping her big shawl around Glory Goldie's bundle of clothing.

"You needn't bother with that, mother," said Glory Goldie without raising her head. "Can't you see that father is mad at me because I'm leaving?"

"Then he'll have to get glad again," returned Katrina, calmly.

"You say that because you don't care for him," said the girl, through her sobs. "All you think about is the hut. But father and I, we think of each other, and I'll not leave him!"

"But what about the hut?" asked Katrina.

"It can go as it will with the hut, if only father will care for me again."