The Heritage Of The Kurts Volume I Part 8

Tomasine hastened to say that she had thought of giving the child sixty daler a year. Here was the first thirty for the past six months. If Marit needed any more help, she must come and tell her. When the child was bigger, they would talk of what was further to be done with her.

Marit stood with the money in her hand: "That really was something, far more than any one could expect; if everybody behaved like that when any one had a misfortune...." And she began to cry again.

In the meantime the child had let go the dress, rousing up when she heard that there were people outside in the garden. She had sidled right into the porch. She now came rushing in again, while loud laughter from outside rang through the house. The little girl only said "Lars Tobia.s.sen," seized her grandmother's dress with both her hands, and huddled it round her. Tomasine, frightened lest he should be coming in, went hurriedly to the door without even saying goodbye, tying her bonnet strings, which she had loosened, as she went. In so doing she nearly fell, and had a narrow escape of descending the steps quicker than she had intended. But Lars Tobia.s.sen had just pa.s.sed. The laughter seemed to have burst out as he clambered up the steps to the right. He was roaring drunk.

Tomasine came out just as, with his back towards her, he had surmounted the first obstacle. She noticed his close-cropped neck. Where had she seen that bronze bull-neck before, and the point of hair in the middle?

Oh! Heavens, that fearful neck which had hung over her, the night her child was born. The eldest Kurt's neck: that was it. And the bull-necked man now called out, "Now just you wait--devil take you!

I'll give you something to scream for, I will." Tomasine was down the steps, out of the garden, through the crowd; she would not hear that swearing again, nor the sound of blows, and not, oh! not that half-insane screaming. She rather flew than walked through the people, who made way for her. But barely sufficient, so that she jostled against several of them, and when the descent began, she sprang from step to step, fancying she heard laughter behind her, but only running on the faster. She was fit to drop, but would not give in.

Notwithstanding all her efforts, she could hear behind her the incessant terrified cries of the child, the drunken voice, and a woman's pa.s.sionate scream. Dogs woke up and barked, but not near enough to drown the shriek, that fearful shriek, until, thank G.o.d, the bells from the two churches in the town began to ring at the same moment, filling the whole air with their clangour. She had come to the flat stone where the young people had been. It was deserted now; she sank down on it, and burst into tears. At last Andreas Berg came after her.

His dignified pace made her feel that she had behaved somewhat strangely. She dare not wait till he got up with her, but without looking round she walked on. Her knees trembled, but she would no longer allow herself to be hunted by phantoms. The blessed church bells saved her from hearing anything else, and they continued till she was right down at the bottom. The children were no longer there. It was dinner-time.

A quarter of an hour later she was sitting with her little boy in her lap. He was very much puzzled by her excitement and tears, a.s.suring her eagerly that he had been "dood" the whole time. She thanked him for it over and over again, with caresses, hugs, and kisses, but cried all the more. Now she began to feel how bad it had been of her never to lay her hand on his little sister's head, although she had been "dood" too.

The boy's playthings lay strewn around him. She remembered the bit of firewood, with an ap.r.o.n round it, which his little sister had let fall when she ran frightened away from the door-step. Tomasine had noticed it, for she almost fell over it as she hurried away. But nothing had melted her. Yet the child could not help having the same father! No, it was Tomasine who had not been "dood" that morning.

CHAPTER III

THE CHILD

The first result of this visit was that Tomasine felt she must have some one to talk to, for there were other bad inheritances in the world beside the Kurts'. She must gain further knowledge. Without hesitation she chose the man for whom she had the greatest respect, "Old Green."

Now as surely as the afternoon came old Green pa.s.sed by. The way he took was along the garden, on the right, where the road used to run, and where a path still led up to the woods. This walk among the hills and woods was Dean Green's favourite one. Tomasine began to watch for him, but lately he had hardly ever been alone. Nils Hansen, the shoemaker, was generally with him, the greatest character in the town, and married to a lady whom Tomasine had known abroad, and who had been one of her friends.

One day, as Tomasine had stationed herself at the gate, to watch if the Dean were alone, she heard him and Hansen far down the slope. Mormonism was beginning at this time to be made known in the North by its first emissaries. The newspapers constantly contained something about this new teaching. Nils Hansen was talking loudly. "Mormonism," he said, "we are as good Mormons here as in America. How many wives has a man before he is married in church, and afterwards as well? The merchants are the worst, but there are others beside."

They had drawn nearer before the Dean answered. "Look you, Hansen. I take it for granted that the races which have attained to monogamy, actual monogamy...."

"And what sort of thing may that be?"

The Dean stood still. "It means having one wife. Polygamy is having several wives."

"Oh! that's it, is it."

"The races which have really and truly come to be monogamists,"

continued the Dean, "are but few. The most part are still polygamists."

They walked on again.

Nils Hansen agreed. "Yes, that is--devil take it--my opinion as well."

The Dean: "Progress consists in this, that the disgrace...." She heard no further.

"There are bad inheritances in the world beside the Kurts," thought Tomasine again. "How otherwise could he have been endured: nay, even liked? No doubt he appealed to some secret feeling in most of them."

As she had not the courage to go straight down to Dean Green, she went first to Nils Hansen's. It was generally said of Nils Hansen, that he flourished, and that in the greatest prosperity, on the hatred of the whole town. His crime consisted in his having several years before mustered the lesser townsfolk in a struggle against those of more importance, or rather in the fact that he had been victorious. He had taken the town councillorship from them, seized the pews in church, so that now every one had equal rank and place there. He had had everything supervised and the financial estimates inspected, in a way that the leading people looked upon as extremely wrong. His worse villainy admittedly was, that, aided by some pecuniary help from non-residents, he had established a bank for poor people, called the penny bank, which had helped a number of the lower orders, even in some cases bringing them quite to independence; for all the vested interests, his sharp and amusing answers were like a wireworm at the root of a tree.

It had aroused incredible merriment when a school-mistress in the town, a pretty, fair woman, with more than usual endowments, and even with the expectation of a fortune, refused several eligible offers, to engage herself to rough, rude, shoemaker Hansen. She was desperately in love with him into the bargain. She smiled and blushed if he were so much as named, and it can be imagined what it was when he himself hove in sight--one shoulder a little higher than the other, by the way--with his odd face, blinking eyes, broad shoulders, and huge hands. Endless jokes were made behind their backs, because, both while they were engaged, and afterwards when they were married, she taught Hansen, and he boasted of it. But they afterwards felt the result of this schooling, and paid for it as well. She was older than Tomasine, and had once been some months with her in England. When Tomasine returned, Fru Hansen had been married a year, and was therefore somewhat outside the circle in which the former moved, though she often went to see her, for she was very fond of the healthy, clear-headed little housewife.

It was therefore with her that Tomasine was especially angry when it transpired what kind of man John Kurt was. Why had she not by a single word dissuaded her from taking him? After his death Laura Hansen had tried to have some talk with Tomasine, but in vain. But now the latter thought, "Perhaps most wives have something to complain of, and yet this does not prevent girls from marrying; so why should I have expected them to advise me to act differently from what they would have done themselves?" So she went down to Laura Hansen.

They lived in a small, old house on the marketplace, next door to Furst's. The queer building, with a narrow alley on one side and a large door leading to the rambling courtway on the other, was the inheritance which Laura had expected, and now possessed. She was a slender but well-grown woman, with an open countenance. Some people considered her sullen, some thought her shy: that depended very much on what was pa.s.sing. By some she was called talkative, by others sparing of her words. She took both people and circ.u.mstances into consideration. The friends had not met for five years. Laura sat sewing in the room behind the shop, the one with the window towards the alley.

She rose, astonished, flushed, and somewhat agitated. Tomasine was really once more in her house. They were both a little stiff at first.

A little dark-haired, thickset girl sat on a stool learning to sew. She looked solemnly up at them, but was soon sent out of the room. Her mother understood at once that they two, friends of old days, must be alone, and make it up together. And they did so.

After several introductory remarks, Tomasine laid her complaint against Laura and her other friends, considerately, but still clearly.

Laura answered: "When a girl does not allow herself to be hindered by the kind of life that John Kurt led, there is no use in any one else talking to her about it." Laura, for her part, had refused several men just because their conduct in that particular had been doubtful, or more than doubtful. But Hansen, she knew, was honourable in that respect as in others.

The tall Tomasine felt very small under little Laura's steady gaze and quiet words. She fell from the position of accuser to that of accused, and her fall was no trifling one. She had felt very superior up there for several years, and a few words spoken in the course of a minute or two had laid her low. She did not feel much respect for her own powers; nay, for a moment, it made her unhappy to think how short-sighted she had been. She actually felt anxious to discover if she were equally stupid in other things, but she soon so far regained her balance as to understand that to look only at one side of things may be partly the fault of circ.u.mstances.

She sat there without speaking, without listening; she had fallen into a reverie. Laura took the opportunity of leaving the room to prepare some chocolate, and to ask her husband to take her place while she was away. This, however, he had not time for at the moment, but still was so pleased that Tomasine had come again, that he felt he must just put his head in at the door to say so. He had on his leather ap.r.o.n, and held a shoemaker's stirrup in his left hand. Tomasine rose to grasp the other, but he waved her back, laughing. It was not fit to touch. "I only wanted to say many, many 'good days' to an old friend," he said after his fashion, as he drew back. But at that moment little Augusta came in again from the shop. She heard her father. He popped his head in again. "Just look at her. I always say that a dark person ought to marry a fair one. That is just what our two young ones are." And he shut the door.

Augusta was unusually tall and strong for her age. She was a full year older than Tomas. When Tomasine called her and spoke to her, the child surprised her.

There was a serenity in her eyes and brow, and a quietness in her way of talking, more like a grown person than a child. She was a contrast to Tomasine's own nervous little "Red-head," who never asked three questions about the same thing--a most pleasant contrast both outwardly and inwardly. Little Augusta went on questioning until the subject was clear to her own mind, and then would pa.s.s on to the next topic which came up.

Her hands were plump, but firm; his, thin, freckled, restless in their very shape. Her hair was dark and unusually plentiful, notwithstanding which it made the smoothest plaits; his stood up and stuck out in red bristles, which seemed to grow in layers; it was never tidy unless it were close cropped. He was bony and thin; she so plump, though thoroughly healthy. Tomasine recalled what she herself had been as a child. Why was not her child the same? She felt something almost like envy; to think that the little velvet jacket that Augusta wore was without a spot, though it was evidently far from new. Tomasine searched for one until it seemed to her that the whole little figure was solid soft velvet.

Her mother came in with the chocolate, and the ice being now broken, they found plenty of subjects of conversation, especially after Augusta had again been sent away.

Tomasine asked how the child had become so lovable, gentle, and sensible; and was told that she had never been headstrong. "Not even at first?" "Never, but clear-headed and staid from a tiny child."

The last thing that Tomasine wished was to say anything against her little Tomas, but the contrast was so great that somehow all that she had gone through was told, and what incessant care she had still to practice.

Laura received, during Tomasine's relation, a firm conviction that this state of things would in the long run prove too much for her, and therefore be dangerous for her health.

Accordingly they both went to Dean Green, and from that day forward the stately old gentleman, in his long-skirted coat and broad-brimmed hat, often took his way up the avenue, instead of round the garden, when he set out for his afternoon's walk. Beside this, Tomasine began, little by little, to gather her old friends about her again. Once more they strolled in the broad paths of "The Estate" garden, many of them with their children in their hands. So by degrees happiness and confidence entered into her life again, and peace as well.

For now, when Tomas's education was to begin, it was done in quite a different way from what she had imagined. He went to school--a school which she herself kept for him, and for a number of little girls, the children of her friends.

At first he thought this incredibly splendid. He was thoroughly happy, willing, even devoted; but after a while, when he heard from the other boys that it was a disgrace even to go about with little girls, he wanted to know why he should be condemned to do so. Could not his mother send them all home again and have boys there instead? He pleaded for this--he fumed, he cried; but the girls remained. If only he could make out what was the use of it all! What had he not to endure from the lads who attended the boy's public school, who had men for teachers. If he as much as put his head over the garden wall, he heard, "Petticoat boy!" "Mamma's darling!" "The women's prince!" "Miss Freckles!"

Especially the last, for he was terribly freckled, regularly speckled with red all over his face and hands, added to which he had the most hopelessly red hair. Just think of a boy being called "A Freckle,"

"Miss Freckle," though he were nothing but a freckle amongst the band of girls. Goodness knows how he disdained them! If, however, he were so bold as to say so to them, and a boy with his heart in the right place is often impelled to do so, he cannot always keep his contempt concealed; well, if he did so he got a beating--a veritable, serious beating. From his mother? That would have been nothing; no, from those same wretched little girls. Some held him and half strangled him, and several more beat him. And this not as a joke. It hurt frightfully. And his mother stood there and laughed. She laughed till the tears came.

She had to take off her spectacles and dry them. They would have no domineering little tyrant among them--those girls, no arrogant young master; though they were always ready, they said to him, to welcome a well-behaved little gentleman and pleasant companion. If he grimaced at them they were at him again, down with him again; it was one perpetual beating. When they had done, they curtseyed to him, one after the other. There were such a number of them that it was mere fun to them.

The worst, however, has not yet been told. He was desperately in love with one of the little girls. She knew it, the ungrateful little monkey, and his mother knew it as well. He was sure of that. It was princ.i.p.ally on account of it that she had laughed so dreadfully. It was the worst of them, Augusta Hansen, Laura's daughter--Augusta, with whom he had eaten cherries. That is to say, they had taken them out of each other's mouths; first she out of his, as he held the stalk in his mouth close up to the fruit, and then he, in the same way from hers. Augusta, who had given him her sash to wear as a badge at the tournaments which he held ... quite alone, by the way. Augusta, to whom in return he had given his whole collection of blown eggs; he had found every one of them himself. He had been obliged to ask his mother's leave to give them away, for it could not very well have been managed without. He had come behind her to whisper in her ear, he did not wish her to look at him while he did so. His mother had asked him if he were fond of Augusta, and he had confided to her that it was especially her hair, but that she was the most good-natured of the girls, and the cleverest as well. What Augusta said was always right. His mother had agreed with him in that. She had not laughed then, but now she stood and looked on while Augusta thrashed him, for it was Augusta's hand that thumped the hardest.

After such treachery--and this did not happen only once unfortunately; it happened very often--he would not speak to Augusta for several days; once he held out for three. He tried the same with his mother, but he could never contrive to keep grave when she looked at him. She always befooled him into laughing.

He now essayed, by a more serious and regular manner of proceeding, to obtain a different adjustment of things for the future. This struggle really meant nothing more nor less than the right relationship between the s.e.xes. Its depths he was truly far from having sounded, but his masculine instincts told him that it was all upside down, up there in the garden. Things must be altered. But there was never any "Hands off," as they say. It was Dean Green whom he suspected of being the cause of the worst of all this. Of one thing, at all events, he was certain. It was Dean Green's idea that he, like the girls, should learn to play the piano. No other boy had to strum like that. Tomas hated the long-coated parson, with his aquiline nose and bushy eyebrows; who was always about, and who smiled when he saw him. He hated him to that extent that, when he shot at a mark, he always tried to draw a picture of the Dean to shoot at, and then to hit his coat, his nose, or his eye. But, hit him as much as he would, no change took place; the piano-playing went on, the girls remained, and even if any day he brought some boys into the garden, they could never be alone--oh no!

The detestable little girls were always hanging about, and then all the stories afterwards; any little thing that a boy might have said or done was used against him; he was done for, he never came again.

And they would say, too, that Tomas had tried to show himself off before his companions, and play the grown man. He always got a beating afterwards. Sometimes they divided his offences into several portions, and he was first beaten for one and then for another. Augusta was constantly drubbing him with the greatest heartiness, without the slightest remembrance of the cherries, or the eggs, or any of his little attentions. There is no telling the number of times that he renounced his allegiance and loyalty to her, but as Augusta did not care a rush, and went about just the same, with those thick plaits and st.u.r.dy legs of hers.... Well, then he began to abase himself. He had to let her understand that he did not exactly disdain her, that perhaps it might be possible to obtain grace. She never seemed to notice him, and so it ended that he thought it was not worth remembering any longer.

One thing about Augusta was peculiar, she always really influenced the others without trying to do so; she let others lead as long as they liked, she acted exactly in the same way whoever led and whatever plan they hit upon; but whenever they got into difficulties it was _she_ who found the way out.

Ah! how Tomas admired her, how often he told her so! and was annoyed that he could not let it alone. It was with her that he now began to take his music lessons, and from that time forth playing became his favourite occupation.