The Girl From the Marsh Croft Part 13

As soon as the divorce was settled, she came back and took a small apartment where she and the boys were to live. In two days she had everything in readiness, so that they could come home to her.

It was the happiest day the boys had experienced. The entire apartment consisted of one large living-room and a big kitchen, but everything was new and pretty, and mother had arranged the place so cosily. The big room she and they were to use daytimes as a work-room, and nights they were to sleep there. The kitchen was light and comfortable. There they would eat, and in a little closet off the kitchen mother had her bed.

She had told them that they would be very poor. She had secured a place as singing-teacher at the girls' school, and this was all they had to live upon. They couldn't afford to keep a servant, but must get along all by themselves. The boys were in ecstasies over everything--most of all, because they might help along. They volunteered to carry water and wood. They were to brush their own shoes and make their own beds. It was only fun to think up all that they were going to do!

There was a little wardrobe, in which Lennart was to keep all his mechanical apparatus. He was to have the key himself, and no one but Hugo and he should ever go in there.

But the boys were allowed to be happy with their mother only for a single day. Afterwards their father spoiled their pleasure, as he had always done as far back as they could remember. Mother told them she had heard that their father had received a legacy of a few thousand kronor, and that he had resigned from his position as organist and was going to move to Stockholm. Both they and mother were glad that he was leaving town, so they would escape meeting him on the streets. And then a friend of father's had called on mother to tell her that father wanted to take the boys with him to Stockholm.

Mother had wept and begged that she might keep her boys, but father's messenger had answered her that her husband was determined to have the boys under his guardianship. If they did not come willingly, he would let the police fetch them. He bade mother read through the divorce papers, and there it said plainly that the boys would belong to their father. This, of course, she already knew. It was not to be gainsaid.

Father's friend had said many nice things of father and had told her of how much he loved his sons, and for this reason he wanted them to be with him. But the boys knew that father was taking them away solely for the purpose of torturing mother. She would have to live in a state of continual anxiety for them. The whole thing was nothing but malice and revenge!

But father had his own way, and here they were now, on their way to Stockholm. And right opposite them their father sits, rejoicing in the thought that he has made their mother unhappy. With every second that pa.s.ses, the thought of having to live with father becomes more repellent. Are they then wholly in his power? Will there be no help for this?

Father leans back in his seat, and after a bit he falls asleep.

Immediately the boys begin whispering to each other very earnestly. It isn't difficult for them to come to a decision. The whole day they have been sitting there thinking that they ought to run away. They conclude to steal out on the platform and to jump from the train when it goes through a big forest. Then they will build them a hut in the most secluded spot in the forest, and live all by themselves and never show themselves to a human being.

While the boys are laying their plans, the train stops at a station, and a peasant woman, leading a little boy by the hand, comes into the coupe.

She is dressed in black, with a shawl on her head, and has a kind and friendly appearance. She removes the little one's overcoat, which is wet from the rain, and wraps a shawl around him. Then she takes off his shoes and stockings, dries his little cold feet, takes from a bundle dry shoes and stockings and puts them on him. Then she gives him a stick of candy and lays him down on the seat with his head resting on her lap, that he might sleep.

First one boy, then the other casts a glance over at the peasant woman.

These glances become more frequent, and suddenly the eyes of both boys fill with tears. Then they look up no more, but keep their eyes obstinately lowered.

It seems that when the peasant woman entered some one else--some one who was invisible and imperceptible to all save the boys--came into the coupe. The boys fancied that she came and sat down between them and took their hands in hers, as she had done late last night, when it was settled that they must leave her; and she was talking to them now as she did then. "You must promise me that you will not be angry with father for my sake. Father has never been able to forgive me for preventing him from going abroad. He thinks it is my fault that he has never amounted to anything and that he drinks. He can never punish me enough. But you mustn't be angry at him on that account. Now, when you are to live with father, you must promise me that you will be kind to him. You mustn't quarrel with him and you are to look after his needs as well as you can.

This you must promise me, otherwise I don't know how I can ever let you go." And the boys promised. "You mustn't run away from father, promise me that!" mother had said. That they had also promised.

The boys are as good as their word, and the instant they happen to think that they had given mother these promises, they abandon all thought of flight. Father sleeps all the while and they remain patiently in their places. Then they resume their reading with redoubled zeal, and their friend, the good Jules Verne, soon takes them away from many heavy sorrows to Africa's happy wonder world.

Far out on the south side of the city, father has rented two rooms and a kitchen on the ground floor, with an entrance from the court and an outlook over a narrow yard. The apartment has long been in use; it has gone from family to family, without ever having been renovated. The wall paper is full of tears and spots; the ceilings are sooty; a couple of window-panes are cracked, and the kitchen floor is so worn that it is full of ruts. Expressmen have brought the furniture cases from the railway station and have left them there, helter skelter. Father and the boys are now unpacking. Father stands with axe raised to hack open a box. The boys are taking out gla.s.s and porcelain ware from another box, and are arranging them in a wall cupboard. They are handy and work eagerly, but the father never stops cautioning them to be careful, and forbids their carrying more than one gla.s.s or plate at a time. Meanwhile it goes slowly with father's own work. His hands are fumbly and powerless, and he works himself into a sweat without getting the lock off the box. He lays down the axe, walks around the box, and wonders if it's the bottom that is uppermost. Then one of the boys takes hold of the axe and begins to bend the lock, but father pushes him aside. "That lock is nailed down too hard. Surely you don't imagine that you can force the lock when father couldn't do it? Only a regular workman can open that box," says father, putting on his hat and coat to go and fetch the janitor.

Father is hardly outside the door when an idea strikes him. Instantly he understands why he has no strength in his hands. It is still quite early in the morning and he has not consumed anything which could set the blood in motion. If he were to step into a cafe and have a cognac, he would get back his strength and could manage without help. This is better than calling the janitor.

Then father goes into the street to try and hunt up a cafe. When he returns to the little apartment on the court, it is eight o'clock in the evening.

In father's youth, when he attended the Academy, he had lived at the south end of the city. He was then a member of a double quartette, mostly made up of choristers and petty tradesmen, who used to meet in a cellar near Mosebacke. Father had taken a notion to go and see if the little cellar was still there. It was, in fact, and father had the luck to run across a pair of old comrades who were seated there having their breakfast. They had received him with the greatest delight, had invited him to breakfast, and had celebrated his advent in Stockholm in the friendliest way possible. When the breakfast was over, finally, father wanted to go home and unpack his furniture, but his friends persuaded him to remain and take dinner with them. This function was so long drawn out that he hadn't been able to go home until around eight o'clock. And it had cost him more than a slight effort to tear himself away from the lively place that early.

When father comes home, the boys are in the dark, for they have no matches. Father has a match in his pocket, and when he has lighted a little stump of a candle, which luckily had come along with their furnishings, he sees that the boys are hot and dusty, but well and happy and apparently very well pleased with their day.

In the rooms the furniture is arranged alongside the walls, the boxes have been removed and straw and papers have been swept away. Hugo is just turning down the boys' beds in the outer room. The inner room is to be father's bedroom, and there stands his bed, turned down with as great care as he could possibly wish.

Now a sudden revulsion of feeling possesses him. When he came home, he was displeased with himself because he had gone away from his work and had left the boys without food; but now, when he sees that they are in good spirits and not in any distress, he regrets that, for their sakes, he should have left his friends; and he becomes irritable and quarrelsome.

He sees, no doubt, that the boys are proud of all the work they have accomplished and expect him to praise them; but this he is not at all inclined to do. Instead, he asks who has been here and helped them, and begs them to remember that here in Stockholm one gets nothing without money, and that the janitor must be paid for all he does. The boys answer that they have had no a.s.sistance and have got on by themselves.

But father continues to grumble. It was wrong of them to open the big box. They might have hurt themselves on it. Had he not forbidden them to open it? Now they would have to obey him. He is the one who must answer for their welfare.

He takes the candle, goes out into the kitchen, and peeps into the cupboards. The scanty supply of gla.s.s and porcelain is arranged on the shelves in an orderly manner. He scrutinizes everything very carefully to find an excuse for further complaint.

All of a sudden he catches sight of some leavings from the boys' supper, and begins immediately to grumble because they have had chicken. Where did they get it from? Do they think of living like princes? Is it his money they are throwing away on chicken? Then he remembers that he had not left them any money. He wonders if they have stolen the chicken and becomes perturbed. He preaches and admonishes, scolds and fusses, but now he gets no response from the boys. They do not bother themselves about telling him where they got the chicken, but let him go on. He makes long speeches and exhausts his forces. Finally he begs and implores.

"I beseech you to tell me the truth. I will forgive you, no matter what you have done, if you will only tell me the truth!"

Now the boys can hold in no longer. Father hears a spluttering sound.

They throw off the quilts and sit up, and he notices that they are purple in the face from suppressed laughter. And as they can laugh now without restraint, Lennart says between the paroxysms, "Mother put a chicken in the food sack which she gave us when we left home."

Father, draws himself up, looks at the boys, wants to speak, but finds no suitable words. He becomes even more majestic in his bearing, looks with withering scorn at them, and goes to his room without further parley.

It has dawned upon father how handy the boys are, and he makes use of this fact to escape hiring servants. Mornings he sends Lennart into the kitchen to make coffee and lets Hugo lay the breakfast-table and fetch bread from the baker's. After breakfast he sits down on a chair and watches how the boys make up the beds, sweep the floors, and build a fire in the grate. He gives endless orders and sends them from one task to another, only to show his authority. When the morning ch.o.r.es are over, he goes out and remains away all the forenoon. The dinner he lets them fetch from a cooking-school in the neighborhood. After dinner he leaves the boys for the evening, and exacts nothing more of them than that his bed shall be turned down when he comes home.

The boys are practically alone almost the entire day and can busy themselves in any way they choose.

One of their most important tasks is to write to their mother. They get letters from her every day, and she sends them paper and postage, so that they can answer her. Mother's letters are mostly admonitions that they shall be good to their father. She writes constantly of how lovable father was when she first knew him, of how industrious and thrifty he was at the beginning of his career. They must be tender and kind to him.

They must never forget how unhappy he is. "If you are very good to father, perhaps he may feel sorry for you and let you come home to me."

Mother tells them that she has called to see the dean and the burgomaster to ask if it were not possible to get back the boys. Both of them had replied that there was no help for her. The boys would have to stay with their father. Mother wants to move to Stockholm that she may see her boys once in a while, at least, but every one advises her to have patience and abide her time. They think father will soon tire of the boys and send them home. Mother doesn't quite know what she should do. On the one hand she thinks it dreadful that the boys are living in Stockholm with no one to look after them, and on the other hand she knows that if she were to leave her home and her work, she could not take them and support them, even if they were freed. But for Christmas, at all events, mother is coming to Stockholm to look after them.

The boys write and tell her what they do all day, hour by hour. They let mother know that they cook for father and make his bed. She apprehends that they are trying to be kind to him for her sake, but she probably perceives that they like him no better now than formerly.

Her little boys appear to be always alone. They live in a large city, where there are lots of people, but no one asks after them. And perhaps it is better thus. Who can tell what might happen to them were they to make any acquaintances?

They always beg of her not to be uneasy about them. They tell how they darn their stockings and sew on their b.u.t.tons. They also intimate that Lennart has made great headway with his invention and say that when this is finished all will be well.

Mother lives in a state of continual fear. Night and day her thoughts are with her boys. Night and day she prays G.o.d to watch over her little sons, who live alone in a great city, with no one to shield them from the temptations of the destroyer, and to keep their young hearts from the desire for evil.

Father and the boys are sitting one morning at the Opera. One of father's old comrades, who is with the Royal Orchestra, has invited him to be present at a symphony rehearsal, and father has taken the boys along. When the orchestra strikes up and the auditorium is filled with tone, father is so affected that he can't control himself, and begins to weep. He sobs and blows his nose and moans aloud, time and again. He puts no restraint upon his feelings, but makes such a noise that the musicians are disturbed. A guard comes along and beckons him away, and father takes the boys by the hand and slinks out without a word of protest. All the way home his tears continue to flow.

Father is walking on, with a boy on each side, and he has kept their hands in his all the while. Suddenly the boys start crying. They understand now for the first time how much father has loved his art. It was painful for him to sit there, besotten and broken, and listen to others playing. They feel sorry for him who had never become what he might have been. It was with father as it might be with Lennart were he never to finish his flying-machine, or with Hugo if he were not to make any voyages of discovery. Think if they should one day sit like old good-for-nothings and see fine airships sailing over their heads which they had not invented and were not allowed to pilot!

The boys were sitting one morning on opposite sides of the writing-table. Father had taken a music roll under his arm and gone out.

He had mumbled something about giving a music lesson, but the boys had not for a moment been tempted into believing this true.

Father is in an ugly mood as he walks up the street. He noticed the look the boys exchanged when he said that he was going to a music lesson.

"They are setting themselves up as judges of their father," he thinks.

"I am too indulgent toward them. I should have given them each a sound box on the ear. It's their mother, I dare say, who is setting them against me. Suppose I were to keep an eye on the fine gentlemen?" he continues. "It would do no harm to find out how they attend to their lessons."

He turns back, walks quietly across the court, opens the door very softly, and stands in the boys' room without either of them having heard him coming. The boys jump up, red in the face, and Lennart quickly s.n.a.t.c.hes a bundle of papers which he throws into the table drawer.

When the boys had been in Stockholm a day or two, they had asked which school they were to attend, and the father had replied that their school-going days were over now. He would try and procure a private tutor who would teach them. This proposition he had never carried into effect, nor had the boys said anything more about going to school. But in less than a week a school chart was discovered hanging on the wall in the boys' room. The school books had been brought forth, and every morning they sat on opposite sides of an old writing-table and studied their lessons aloud. It was evident that they had received letters from their mother counselling them to try and study, so as not to forget entirely what they had learned.

Now, as father unexpectedly comes into the room, he goes up to the chart first and studies it. He takes out his watch and compares. "Wednesday, between ten and eleven, Geography." Then he comes up to the table.

"Shouldn't you have geography at this hour?"