The Emperor of Portugallia Part 24

"What do you say to all this, Nils? I suppose you're sitting there thinking to yourself it's very strange Our Lord hasn't written a commandment for parents on how they shall treat their children?"

This was wholly unexpected. The son could feel the blood mounting to his face. It was as if he had done something dreadful, and been caught at it.

"But my dear father!" he protested, "I've never said or thought--"

"True," the old man struck in, turning now to his guests. "I know you will hardly believe what I tell you, but it's a fact that this son of mine has never spoken an unkind word to me; neither has his wife."

These remarks were not addressed to any one in particular, nor did any one feel disposed to respond to them.

"They have been put to some pretty hard tests," Ol' Bengtsa went on. "It was a large property they were deprived of. They could have been landed proprietors by this time if I had only done the right thing. Yet they have never uttered a word of complaint and every summer they pay me a visit, just to show they are not angry with me."

The old man's face looked so dead now, and his voice sounded so hollow! The son could not tell whether he was trying to come out with something or whether he talked merely for talk's sake.

"Now it's altogether different with Lisa," said Ol' Bengtsa, pointing at the daughter-in-law with whom he lived. "She scolds me every day for not holding on to my property."

The daughter-in-law, not in the least perturbed, retorted with a good-natured laugh: "And you scold me because I can't find time to patch all the holes in the boys' clothes."

"That's true," the old man admitted. "You see, we're not shy; we say right out what we think and tell each other everything. What I've got is hers, and what she's got is mine; so I'm beginning to think it is she who is my real child."

Again the son felt embarra.s.sed, and troubled as well.

There was something the old man wanted to force from him--something of a personal nature; but surely he could not expect it to be forthcoming here, before all this company?

It was a great relief to the son of Ol' Bengtsa when on looking up he saw Lars Gunnarson and his wife standing at the gate. Not he alone, but every one was glad to see them. Now it was as if all their gloomy misgivings had suddenly been dispelled.

Lars and his wife made profuse apologies for being so late. Lars had been suffering from a bad headache and had feared he would not be able to come at all; but it had abated somewhat so he decided to come to the party, thinking he would forget about his aches and pains if he got out among people.

He looked a bit hollow-eyed, but he was as jolly and sociable as he had been the year before. He had barely got down the first mouthful of food when he and the son of Ol' Bengtsa fell to talking of the lumber business, of big profits and interest on loans.

The poor rustics round about them, aghast at the mere mention of these large figures, were afraid to open their mouths. Ol' Bengtsa was the only one who wanted to have his say in the matter.

"Since you're talking of money," he said, "I wonder, Nils, if you remember that note for 17,000 rix-dollars I got from the old ironmaster at Doveness? It was mislaid, if you recollect, and couldn't be found at the time when I was in such hard straits. Just the same, I wrote to the ironmaster requesting immediate payment; but received the reply that he was dying. Later on, after his death, the administrators of the estate declared they could find no record of my claim. I was informed that it wasn't possible for them to pay me unless I produced the note. We searched high and low for it, both I and my sons, but we couldn't find it."

"You don't mean to tell me that you've come across it at last!" the son exclaimed.

"It was the strangest thing imaginable!" the old man went on. "Jan of Ruffluck came over here one morning and told me he knew for a certainty that the note was in the secret drawer of my cedar chest.

He had seen me take it out in a dream, he said."

"But you must have looked there?"

"Yes, I did search through the secret drawer on the left-hand side.

But Jan said it was in the drawer on the right, and then, when I looked more carefully, I found a secret drawer that I'd never known about; and in that lay the note."

"You probably put it there some time when you were in your cups."

"Very likely I did."

The son laid down his knife and fork for a moment, then took them up again. Something in the old man's tone made him a bit wary.

"Maybe it's just a hoax," he thought to himself. Aloud he said, "it was outlawed, of course?"

"Oh, yes," replied the old man, "it would doubtless have been so regarded by any other debtor. But I rowed across to Doveness one day and took the note to the new ironmaster, who admitted at once that it was good. 'It's as clear as day that I must pay my father's debt, Ol' Bengtsa,' he said. 'But you'll have to give me a few weeks' grace. It is a large sum to pay out all at once.'"

"That was spoken like a man of honour!" said the son, bringing his hand down heavily on the table. A sense of gladness stole in upon him in spite of his suspicions. To think that it was something so splendid the old man had been holding back from him the whole day!

"I told the ironmaster that he needn't pay me just then; that if he would only give me a new note the money could remain in his safekeeping."

"That was well," said the son approvingly. There was a strong, glad ring in his voice, that betrayed an eagerness he would rather not have shown, for he knew of old that one could never be quite sure of Ol' Bengtsa--in the very next breath he might say it was just a yarn.

"You don't believe me," observed the old man. "Would you like to see the note? Run in and get it, Lisa!"

Almost immediately the son had the note before his eyes. First he glanced at the signature, and recognized the firm, legible hand of the ironmaster. Then he looked at the figures, and found them correct. He nodded to his wife, who sat opposite him, that it was all right, at the same time pa.s.sing the note to her, knowing how interested she would be to see it.

The wife examined the note carefully. "What does this mean?" she asked--"'Payable to Lisa Persdotter of l.u.s.terby'--is Lisa to have the money?"

"Yes," the old man answered. "She gets this money because she has been a good daughter to me."

"But this is unfair--"

"No, it is not unfair," drawled the old man in a tired voice. "I have squared myself and owe n.o.body anything. I might have had one other creditor," he added turning to this son, "but after looking into matters, I find that I haven't."

"You mean me, I suppose," said the son. "But you don't seem to think I--" All that the son had wanted to say to the father was left unsaid, as he was interrupted by a piercing shriek from the opposite side of the table.

Lars Gunnarson had just seized a bottle of brandy and put it to his mouth. His wife, screaming from terror, was trying to take it from him. He held her back until he had emptied half the contents, whereupon he set the bottle down and turned to his wife, his face flushed, his eyes staring wildly, his hands clenched.

"Didn't you hear it was Jan who found the note?" he said in a hoa.r.s.e voice. "All his dreams come true! Can't you comprehend that the man has the gift of second sight? You'll see that something dreadful will happen to me this day, as he has predicted."

"Why he has only cautioned you to be on your guard," said the wife.

"You begged and teased me to come here so that I should forget what day it was, and now I get this reminder!"

Again Lars raised the brandy bottle to his lips. This time, however, the wife cast herself upon him with prayers and tears.

Replacing the bottle on the table, he said with a laugh: "Keep it!

Keep it for all of me!" With that he rose and kicked the chair out of his way. "Good-bye to you, Ol' Bengtsa," he said to the host. "I hope you will pardon my leaving, but to-day I must go to a place where I can drink in peace."

He rushed toward the gate, his wife following. When he was pa.s.sing out into the road, he pushed her back. "Why can't you let me be!"

he cried fiercely. "I've had my warning, and I go to meet my doom!"

SUMMERNIGHT

All day, while the party was going on at the seine-maker's, Jan of Ruffluck kept to his hut. But at evening he went out and sat down up on the flat stone in front of the house, as was his wont. He was not ill exactly, but he felt weak and tired. The hut had become so overheated during the long, hot sunny day that he thought it would be nice to get a breath of fresh air. He found, however, that it was not much cooler outside, but he sat still all the same, mostly because there was so much out here that was beautiful to the eye.

It had been an excessively hot and dry month of June and forest fires, which always rage every rainless summer, had already got going. This he could tell by the pretty bluish-white smoke banks that rose above the hills at the other side of the lake. Presently, away off to southward, a shimmery white curly cloud head appeared, while in the west, over against Great Peak, huge smoke-blended clouds rolled up and up. It seemed to him as if the whole world were afire.

No flames could be seen from where he sat, but there was no mistaking that fire had broken out and could hold sway indefinitely.

He only hoped it would confine itself to the forest trees, and not sweep down upon huts and farmsteads.

He could scarcely breathe. It was as if such quant.i.ties of air had been consumed that there was very little of it left. At short intervals he sensed an odour, as of something burning, that stuck in his nostrils. That odour did not come from any cook stove in the Ashdales! It was a salutation from the great stake of pine needles, and moss, and brushwood that sizzled and burned many miles away.