The Emperor of Portugallia Part 11

Jan moved quietly away from the door, where he had been standing a moment, listening, and sat down on the step. He never thought for an instant that Glory Goldie would remain at home. Indeed he knew better than did any one else that she must go away. All the same it was to him as if the soft little bundle had again been laid in his arms. His heart had been set going once more. Now it was beating away in his breast as if trying to make up for lost time. With that he felt that his armour of defence was gone.

Then came grief and longing. He saw them as dark shadows in among the trees. He opened his arms to them, a smile of happiness lighting his face.

"Welcome! Welcome!" he cried.

AT THE PIER

When the steamer _Anders Fryxell_ pulled out from the pier at Borg Point with Glory Goldie of Ruffluck on board, Jan and Katrina stood gazing after it until they could no longer see the faintest outline of either the girl or the boat. Every one else had left the pier, the watchman had hauled down the flag and locked the freight shed, but they still tarried.

It was only natural that the parents should stand there as long as they could see anything of the boat, but why they did not go their ways afterward they hardly knew themselves. Perhaps they dreaded the thought of going home again, of stepping into the lonely hut in each other's company.

"I've got no one but him to cook for now!" mused Katrina, "no one but him to wait for! But what do I care for him? He could just as well have gone, too. It was the girl who understood him and all his silly talk, not I. I'd be better off alone."

"It would be easier to go home with my grief if I didn't have that sour-faced old Katrina sitting round the house," thought Jan. "The girl knew so well how to get on with her, and could make her happy and content; but now I suppose I'll never get another civil word from that quarter."

Of a sudden Jan gave a start. Bending forward he clapped his hands to his knees. His eyes kindled with new-found hope and his whole face shone. He kept his gaze on the water and Katrina thought something extraordinary must have riveted his attention, although she, who stood beside him, saw nothing save the ceaseless play of the gray-green waves, chasing each other across the surface of the lake, with never a stop.

Jan ran to the far end of the pier and bent down over the water, with the look on his face which he always wore whenever Glory Goldie approached him, but which he could never put on when talking to any one else. His mouth opened and his lips moved as though he were speaking, but not a word was heard by Katrina. Smile after smile crossed his face, just as when the girl used to stand and rail at him.

"Why, Jan!" said Katrina, "what has come over you?"

He did not reply, but motioned to her to be still. Then he straightened himself a little. His gaze seemed to be following something that glided away over the gray-green waves. Whatever it was, it moved quickly in the direction the boat had taken. Now Jan no longer bent forward but stood quite upright, shading his eyes with his hand that he might see the better. Thus he remained standing till there was nothing more to be seen, apparently. Then, turning to Katrina, he said:

"You didn't see anything, perhaps?"

"What can one see here but the lake and its waves?"

"The little girl came rowing back," Jan told her, his voice lowered to a whisper. "She had borrowed a boat of the captain. I noticed it was marked exactly like the steamer. She said there was something she had forgotten about when she left; it was something she wanted to say to us."

"My dear Jan, you don't know what you're talking about! If the girl had come back then I, too, would have seen her."

"Hush now, and I'll tell you what she wants of us!" said Jan, in solemn and mysterious whispers. "It seems she had begun to worry about us; she was afraid we two wouldn't get on by ourselves.

Before she had always walked between us, she said, with one hand in mine and the other in yours, and in that way everything had gone well. But now that she wasn't here to keep us together she didn't know what might happen, 'Now perhaps father and mother will go their separate ways,' she said."

"Sakes alive!" gasped Katrina, "that she should have thought of that!" The woman was so affected by what had just been said--for the words were the echo of her own thoughts--that she quite forgot that the daughter could not possibly have come back to the pier and talked with Jan without her seeing it.

"'So now I've come back to join your hands,' said he, 'and you mustn't let go of each other, but keep a firm hold for my sake till I return and link hands with you again.' As soon as she had said this she rowed away."

There was silence for a moment on the pier.

"And here's my hand," Jan said presently, in an uncertain voice that betrayed both shyness and anxiety--and put out a hand, which despite all his hard toil had always remained singularly soft. "I do this because the girl wants me to," he added.

"And here's mine," said Katrina. "I don't understand what it could have been that you saw, but if you and the girl want us to stick together, so do I."

Then they went all the way home to their hut, hand in hand.

THE LETTER

One morning when Glory Goldie had been gone about a fortnight, Jan was out in the pasture nearest the big forest, mending a wattled fence. He was so close to the woods that he could hear the murmur of the pines and see the grouse hen walking about under the trees, scratching for food-along line of grouse chicks trailing after her.

Jan had nearly finished his work when he heard a loud bellowing from the wooded heights! It sounded so weird and awful he began to be alarmed. He stood still a moment and listened. Soon he heard it again. Then he knew it was nothing to be afraid of, but on the contrary, it seemed to be a cry for help.

He threw down his pickets and branches and hurried through the birch grove into the dense fir woods, where he had not gone far before he discovered what was amiss. Up there was a big, treacherous marsh. A cow belonging to the Falla folk had gone down in a quagmire and Jan saw at once that it was the best cow they had on the farm, one for which Lars Gunnarson had been offered two hundred rix-dollars. She had sunk deep in the mire and was now so terrified that she lay quite still and sent forth only feeble and intermittant bellowings. It was plain that she had struggled desperately for she was covered with mud clear to her horns, and round about her the green moss-tufts had been torn up. She had bellowed so loud that Jan thought every one in Ashdales must have heard her, yet no one but himself had come up to the marsh. He did not tarry a second, but ran straight to the farm for help.

It was slow work setting poles in the marsh, laying out boards and slipping ropes under the cow, to draw her up by. For when the men reached her she had sunk to her back, so that only her head was above the mire. After they had finally dragged her back onto firm ground and carted her home to Falla the housewife invited all who had worked over the animal to come inside for coffee.

No one had been so zealous in the rescue work as had Jan of Ruffluck. But for him the cow would have been lost. And just think!

She was a cow worth at least two hundred rix-dollars.

To Jan this seemed a rare stroke of luck. Surely the new master and mistress could not fail to recognize so great a service. Something of a similar nature once happened in the old master's time. Then it was a horse that had been impaled on a picket fence. The one who found the horse and had it carted home received from Eric of Falla a reward of ten rix-dollars; And that despite the fact that the beast was so badly injured that Eric had to shoot it.

But the cow was alive and in nowise harmed. So Jan pictured himself going on the morrow to the s.e.xton, or to some other person who could write, to ask him to write to Glory Goldie and tell her to come home.

When Jan came into the living-room at Falla he naturally drew himself up a bit. The old housewife was pouring coffee and he did not wonder at it when she handed him his cup before even Lars Gunnarson had been served. Then, while they were all having their coffee, every one spoke of how well Jan had done, that is, every one but the farmer and his wife; not a word of praise came from them.

But now that Jan felt so confident his hard times were over and his luck was coming back, it was easy for him to find grounds for comfort. It might be that Lars was silent because he wished to make what he would say all the more impressive. But he was certainly withholding his thanks a distressingly long while.

The situation had become embarra.s.sing. The others had stopped talking and looked a little uncomfortable. When the old mistress went round to refill the coffee cups some of the men hesitated; Jan among them.

"Oh, have another wee drop, Jan!" she said. "If you hadn't been so quick to act we would have lost a cow that's worth her two hundred rix-dollars."

This was followed by a dead silence, and now every one's eyes turned toward the man of the house. All were waiting for some expression of appreciation from him.

Lars cleared his throat two or three times, as if to give added weight to what he was about to say.

"It strikes me there's something queer about this whole business,"

he began. "You all know that Jan owes two hundred rix-dollars and you also know that last spring I was offered just that sum for the cow. It seems to fit in altogether too well with Jan's case that the cow should have gone down in the marsh to-day and that he should have rescued her."

Lars paused and again cleared his throat. Jan rose and moved toward him; but neither he nor any of the others had an answer ready.

"I don't know how Jan happened to be the one who heard the cow bellowing up in the marsh," pursued Lars. "Perhaps he was nearer the scene when the mishap occurred than he would have us think.

Maybe he saw a possibility of getting out of debt and deliberately drove the cow--"

Jan brought his fist down on the table with a crash that made the cups jump in their saucers.

"You judge others by yourself, you!" he said, "That's the sort of thing you might do, but not I. You must know that I can see through your tricks. One day last winter you--"

But just when Jan was on the point of saying something that could only have ended in an irreparable break between himself and his employer, the old housewife tipped him by the coat sleeve.

"Look out, Jan!" said she.

Jan did so. Then he saw Katrina coming toward the house with a letter in her hand.

That was surely the letter from Glory Goldie which they had been longing for every day since her departure. Katrina, knowing how happy Jan would be to get this, had come straight over with it the moment it arrived.

Jan glanced about him, bewildered. Many ugly words were on the tip of his tongue, but now he had no time to give vent to them. What did he care about being revenged on Lars Gunnarson? Why should he bother to defend himself? The letter drew him away with a power that was irresistible. He was out of the house and with Katrina before the people inside had recovered from their dread of what he might have hurled at his employer in the way of accusation.