Read Ebook: The Family at Gilje: A Domestic Story of the Forties by Lie Jonas Olson Julius E Author Of Introduction Etc Eastman Samuel Coffin Translator

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Ebook has 1448 lines and 58285 words, and 29 pages

A little waiting, and the bells suddenly sounded plainly in the road behind the wood-shed. Now you could hear the snow creaking under the runners.

The captain placed the candlestick on the table in the hall, the floor of which had been freshly scoured, washed, and strewn with juniper. He went out on the stairs, while the children, head to head, peeped out of the kitchen door, and kept Pasop, who growled and fretted behind them, from rushing out and barking.

"Good-evening, R?nnow! Good-evening, Lieutenant! Welcome to Gilje!" said the captain with his strong, cheerful voice, while the vehicle, which at the last post-house was honored with the name of double sleigh, swung into the yard and up to the steps. "You are elegantly equipped, I see."

"Beastly cold, Peter,--beastly cold, Peter," came the answer from the tall figure wrapped in furs, as he threw down the reins, and, now a little stiff in his movements, stepped out of the sleigh, while the steaming horse shook himself in his harness so that the bells rang loudly. "I believe we are frozen stiff. And then this little rat we have for a horse would not go. It is a badger dog they have harnessed in order to dig our way through the snow-drifts. How are you, Peter? It will be pleasant to get into your house. How goes it?" he concluded, upon the steps, shaking the captain's hand. "Bring in the case of bottles, Lieutenant."

While the two gentlemen took off their furs and travelling-boots in the hall and paid for the horse, and Great-Ola carried the trunk up to the guest-chamber, an odor of incense diffused itself from the large room, which at once roused Captain R?nnow's cavalier instinct to a recollection of the lady, whom, in the joy of seeing his old comrade once more, he had forgotten. His large, stately figure stopped before the door, and he adjusted his stock.

"Do I look tolerably well, Peter, so I can properly appear before your wife?" he said, running his hand through his black curly hair.

"Yes, yes, fine enough--devilish fine-looking fellow, Lieutenant.--If you please, gentlemen. Captain R?nnow and Lieutenant Mein, Ma," he said, as he opened the door.

The mistress of the house rose from her place at the table, where she was now sitting with fine white knitting-work. She greeted Captain R?nnow as heartily as her stiff figure would allow, and the lieutenant somewhat critically. It was the governor's sister to whom the salaam was made, as Captain R?nnow afterwards expressed it--an old, great family.

She disappeared a little later into domestic affairs, to "get them something for supper."

Captain R?nnow rubbed his hands from the cold, wheeled around on one leg on the floor, and thus placed himself with his back to the stove. "I tell you we are frozen stiff, Peter,--but--Oh, Lieutenant, bring in the case of bottles."

When Lieutenant Mein came in again, R?nnow took a sealed bottle with a label, and held it, swinging by the neck, before the captain.

"Look at it, Peter J?ger! Look well at it!" and he moved over towards his friend. "Genuine arrack from Atschin in hither--farther--East--or West India. I present it to you. May it melt your heart, Peter J?ger!"

"Hot water and sugar, Ma!" shouted the captain out into the kitchen, "then we shall soon know whether you only mean to deceive us simple country folks with stories. And out with the whist-table till we have supper! We can play three-handed whist with a dummy."

"Brrr-rr-whew, what kind of stuff is it you've got in your tobacco box, J?ger?" said Captain R?nnow, who was filling his pipe at it; "powder, sneezing powder, I believe! Smell it, Lieutenant. It must be tansy from the nursery."

"Tideman's three crown, fellow! We can't endure your leaf tobacco and Virginia up here in the mountain districts," came from J?ger, who was pulling out and opening the card-table. "Only look at the next box under the lead cover, and you will find some cut-leaf tobacco, Bremen leaf, as black and high flavored as you want. Up here it is only to the goats that we can offer that kind, and to the folk who come from Bergen; they use strong tobacco there to dry out the wet fog."

The door opened, and the three girls and their little brother came in, carrying the tray with the glasses and the jug of hot water, which task they seemed to have apportioned among themselves according to the rules for the procession at the Duke of Marlborough's funeral, where, as is known, the fourth one carried nothing.

The tall, blond Kathinka marched at the head with the tray and glasses with the clinking teaspoons in them. She attempted the feat of curtseying, while she was carrying the tray, and blushed red when it was ready to slip, and the lieutenant was obliged to take hold of it to steady it.

He immediately noticed the next oldest, a brunette with long eyelashes, who was coming with the smoking water-jug on a plate, while the youngest, Thea, was immediately behind her with the sugar-bowl.

"But, my dear Peter J?ger," exclaimed R?nnow, astonished at the appearance of his friend's almost grown-up daughters, "when have you picked up all this? You wrote once about some girls,--and a boy who was to be baptized."

At the same moment J?rgen came boldly forward, strutting over the floor, and made his best bow, while he pulled his bristly yellow locks instead of his cap.

"What is your name?"

"J?rgen Winnecken von Zittow J?ger."

"That was heavy! You are a perfect mountain boy, are you not? Let me see you kick as high as your name."

"No, but as high as my cap," answered J?rgen, going back on the floor and turning a cart-wheel.

"Bold fellow, that J?rgen!" And with that, as J?rgen had done his part, he stepped back into obscurity. But while the gentlemen were pouring out the arrack punch at the folding-table, he kept his eyes uninterruptedly fastened on Lieutenant Mein. It was the lieutenant's regularly trimmed black moustache, which seemed to him like bits that he had not got into his mouth properly.

"Oh, here, my girl!" said R?nnow, turning to one of the daughters, who stood by his side while he was putting some sugar into the steaming glass, "what is your name?"

"Inger-Johanna."

"Yes, listen"--he spoke without seeing anything else than the arm he touched to call her attention. "Listen, my little Inger-Johanna! In the breast pocket of my fur coat out in the hall there are two lemons--I didn't believe that fruit grew up here in the mountains, Peter!--two lemons."

"No, let me! Pardon me!" and the lieutenant flew gallantly.

Captain R?nnow looked up, astonished. The dark, thin girl, in the outgrown dress which hung about her legs, and the three thick, heavy, black cables, braided closely for the occasion, hanging down her back, stood distinct in the light before him. Her neck rose, delicately shaped and dazzlingly fresh, from the blue, slightly low-cut, linsey-woolsey dress, and carried her head proudly, with a sort of swan-like curve.

The captain grasped at once why the lieutenant was so alert.

"Bombs and grenades, Peter!" he exclaimed.

"Do you hear that, Ma?" the captain grunted slyly.

"Up here among the peasants the children--more's the pity--grow up without any other manners than those that they learn of the servants," sighed the mother. "Don't stand so bent over, Thinka, straighten up."

Thinka straightened up her overgrown blond figure and tried to smile. She had the difficult task of hiding a plaster on one side of her chin, where a day or two before she had fallen down through the cellar trap-door in the kitchen.

Soon the three gentlemen sat comfortably at their cards, each one smoking his pipe and with a glass of hot arrack punch by his side. Two moulded tallow candles in tall brass candlesticks stood on the card-table and two on the folding-table; they illuminated just enough so that you could see the almanac, which hung down by a piece of twine from a nail under the looking-glass, and a part of the lady's tall form and countenance, while she sat knitting in her frilled cap. In the darkness of the room the chairs farthest off by the stove could hardly be distinguished from the kitchen door--from which now and then came the hissing of the roasting meat.

"Three tricks, as true as I live--three tricks, and by those cards!" exclaimed Captain R?nnow, eager in the game.

"Thanks, thanks," turning to Inger-Johanna who brought a lighted paper-lighter to his expiring pipe. "Th-a-nks"--he continued, drawing in the smoke and puffing it out, his observant eyes again being attracted by her. Her expression was so bright, the great dark eyes moving to and fro under her eyebrows like dark drops, while she stood following the cards.

"What is your name, once more, my girl?" he asked absently.

"Inger-Johanna," she replied with a certain humor; she avoided looking at him.

"Yes, yes.--Now it is my turn to deal! Your daughter puts a bee in my bonnet, madam. I should like to take her with me to Christiania to the governor's, and bring her out. We would make a tremendous sensation, that I am sure of."

"At last properly dealt! Play."

With her hands on the back of her father's chair, Inger-Johanna gazed intently on the cards; but her face had a heightened glow.

R?nnow glanced at her from one side. "A sight for the gods, a sight for the gods!" he exclaimed, as he gathered together with his right hand the cards he had just arranged, and threw them on the table. "Naturally I mean how the lieutenant manages dummy--you understand, madam," nodding to her with significance. "Heavens! Peter, that was a card to play.--Here you can see what I mean," he continued. "Trump, trump, trump, trump!" He eagerly threw four good spades on the table, one after another, without paying any attention to what followed.

The expression of the lady's face, as she sat there and heard her innermost thoughts repeated so plainly, was immovably sealed; she said, somewhat indifferently, "It is high time, children, you said good-night; it is past your bed-time. Say good-night to the gentlemen."

The command brought disappointment to their faces; not obeying was out of the question, and they went round the table, and made curtsies and shook hands with the captain and the lieutenant.

The last thing J?rgen noticed was that the lieutenant turned round, stretched his neck, and gaped like Svarten as they went out.

Their mother straightened up over her knitting-work. "You used to visit my brother's, the governor's, formerly, Captain R?nnow," she ventured. "They are childless folk, who keep a hospitable house. You will call on them now, I suppose."

"Certainly I shall! To refrain from doing that would be a crime! You have, I should imagine, thought of sending one of your daughters there. The governor's wife is a person who knows how to introduce a young lady into the world, and your Inger-Johanna--"

The captain's wife answered slowly and with some stress; something of a suppressed bitterness rose up in her. "That would be an entirely unexpected piece of good fortune; but more than we out-of-the-way country folk can expect of our grand, distinguished sister-in-law. Small circumstances make small folk, more's the pity; large ones ought to make them otherwise.--My brother has made her a happy wife."

"Done. Will you allow an old friend to work a little for your attractive little Inger?" returned Captain R?nnow.

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