Loe raamatut: «The Golden House», lehekülg 7

Pelle looked and looked in vain. The spectacles told no tales. A sneer went round the room again and again, and Knut was heard to chuckle as he said, "Of course he made up the whole story. That any one in his senses could believe it!"

Pelle was discomfited. At last he said falteringly, "I have told the truth. I did see that face in my spectacles, but I don't see anything now. It has happened to me many times in church on Sunday morning. I am sure I could do it where I sit in the church."

"Why not let him try it in the church?" said the colonel. "I am sure the pastor would give his permission."

The experiment in the church was arranged for the next morning.

Frans and his companion were left in custody for the night, and the colonel went home with a sad heart, but not without some hope that his son would be proved to be innocent. For it was true that Frans had been much at the golden house, and was a great favourite there, and it was not impossible that the temptation to free him had been too strong for Pelle to resist.

The morning came, and at eleven o'clock there was an unusual gathering in the parish church. The stillness round the marble sleepers on the monumental tombs was broken, not by the sound of prayer and praise, but by the low hush of murmuring voices and the tramp of eager feet. Pelle came quietly in and took his usual seat. He bowed his head, just from habit, then followed a silent petition, not for a blessing on the services of the sanctuary, but that the innocent might be defended and the guilty brought to justice.

He raised himself up and sat down, intending to wait for further orders. He suddenly said in a sharp voice, "Take off your hat, Adam or Enos!" and then turned unconsciously to look behind him. Yes, there stood one of the twins, which he could not say, his mouth wide with delight, while a murmur went round, "He was right this time!"

"Of course it was all planned before at the cottage," said a dissenting voice.

"I don't plan to have boys stand in the church with their hats on," said Pelle.

"I ordered the boy to take his place there myself," said the magistrate.

Again and again the experiment was tried, and with success, even the pastor and the magistrate curiously taking their turn in the performance; Pelle then, most respectfully stating whom he had had the honour to see, bowing as he did so.

At last all present were fully convinced that Pelle had spoken the truth, and he was conducted in a kind of triumphal procession back to the cottage.

The question was everywhere agitated, "What is to 'come of' Pelle's testimony?" The fate of the boys was not to be altogether decided by him.

The authorized messengers who had been sent to the little inn where Pelle had stopped came back with the innkeeper and the owner of the boat that had been hired by the boys. From them it was easily learned that the culprits had been seen at the time mentioned by Pelle, and had been considered suspicious strangers, especially the older lad, who was foolishly free with his money, and had a bold, bad look about him. The younger boy was described as cast down, and evidently not on good terms with his companion.

The case did not come to a public trial. A large part of the money taken had been recovered, the note paid for the boat being identified as one of the missing bills. The merchant who had been robbed declined prosecuting the offender, as his loss was fully made good to him by the colonel. It was, however, exacted in the agreement that Knut should be sent out of the country at once.

The pastor took Knut home with him, and gave him such a kind, serious talk that the poor lad's heart was quite melted, and he, sincere for the time at least, promised to try to lead a better life.

"He will only go to ruin if he is sent to prison," Pelle had said. "May God help the boy in his own way! I will try to help him in mine. Who knows what I might have been if I had kept on as a sailor!" So Pelle, for the time a prominent man, went round in the neighbourhood and collected money enough to send the guilty boy over the Atlantic to begin life again in the far West.

Karin wrote a short letter to her "son in America," full of love to Erik, and with a request that he would do what he could for Knut to help him on in the right way. Oke penned a full description of the whole affair, which he declared was written so plainly that anybody ought to understand it, let alone a Swede like Erik, born in the best country in the world, though he did now seem to be more than half an American.

A neat suit of clothes had been sent to Frans by the careful housekeeper, so that he looked quite like himself when he took his seat beside his father for his homeward drive.

Oke had made haste to tell all the neighbourhood of the success of Pelle in the church, and Alma had had her share of the good news. Whether Frans would be allowed to return home with his father she had not yet heard. She sat anxiously watching at the window, when there was a sound of carriage-wheels in the avenue. There were two persons in the carriage! Yes, one was certainly Frans!

Alma ran down to the veranda. "Dear, dear Frans! I am so glad to see you!" she exclaimed, as she put her arm around him; and so they followed their father into the house.

"Thank you, sister!" he answered, with a quivering lip. He could say no more.

The colonel went into the library and closed the door, and Frans and his sister were left together. They went back to the veranda and sat down side by side, Frans still struggling to gain self-command.

"Dear brother," began Alma, "I am so sorry I have been a cross, disagreeable sister to you. I mean to be better. I shall try, and you must forgive me if I fail, and am cross to you sometimes."

"Don't speak so, sister," said Frans, interrupting her. "You do not know what you have been to me. You have kept me from much that is wrong. When I have been with the boys, and have been tempted to speak and do as some of them did, I have thought of you. 'What would Alma say to such talk and such doings?' would come into my mind and help me to resist temptation. I have thought of you as something higher, holier, purer than myself. And such a good scholar, too! I have always been proud of my sister. You found fault with me, of course. I deserved it, poor, thoughtless fellow that I have been. I cannot be like you, Alma, but I am really going to try to be better. I have done with idle ways and bad companions. I did not know what Knut really was until we came to be constantly together, and then, bad as I was, I thanked God that I had had such a father and such a sister and such a home. It is only God's mercy that has saved me from a prison. I had no way to prove my innocence. What I have suffered you can understand, but I deserved it all. I have been doing badly all the term. I tried to make it up at the last. All went well with me in the morning, but in the afternoon I was so worn out and so tired and dull that I could not command myself to say what I really knew. Of course I made a miserable failure. I was afraid to meet my father and ashamed to see your face when I had come out so badly. I did the worst thing I could do. I added wrong to wrong, not thinking of all the worry and trouble I was making. I was quite desperate when I met Knut, and he proposed that we should go off together. I caught at the plan. – Listen. When I was hanging, clinging to the boat, in that deep water, so far from the shore, my whole life came before me; and what a worthless life it was! I seemed shut out from heaven. I felt so miserable and hopeless and wretched! Then I saw you coming over the water. You looked so pale and slight, but you worked like a man. Then I understood that you loved me, that you really cared for me, and would forgive me. I did not know then of the dreadful thing of which I was suspected, but you did, and you and dear father were willing to forgive me. That helped me afterwards to understand that I might try to lead a new life, and to believe our heavenly Father too could forgive me, and willingly give me strength to do better."

Alma had several times tried to speak, but Frans had laid his hand pleadingly on hers as he went on. Now she said solemnly, "Thank God, Frans! we are to begin our new life together. I have not been the true Christian you seem to have thought me, in spite of my very wrong way towards you. I feel that I have set you a very bad example. We must help each other now."

"You must help me," said Frans soberly; then starting up, he exclaimed, "But I am forgetting Marie, who has always been so kind to me. You can't think how many messages she managed to send me when I was in town in disgrace, and little things to eat, too, that she thought I would like."

Marie was lingering in the hall, listening not to catch the words of the conversation going on without, but enjoying the satisfaction of hearing the voice of her "dear boy," as she called him, once more in his own home. She had made up her mind, however, to reprove him sharply for causing them all so much trouble. When, however, she saw him looking so humble and sorrowful, so little like himself, she had no reproaches for him, but took his offered hand affectionately, and exclaimed, "You dear boy!" as if he had been a little child.

And Frans felt like a child – a naughty child; but a child forgiven, and resolved to do better.

CHAPTER XVII.
QUESTIONINGS

Another spring had come to the golden house. Such a little family as Karin now had! She quite mourned over it. The twins had gone to America; Erik had written for them. He had now a good place on a farm, where there was work for two such "hands" as he was sure Adam and Enos must be, raised in such a home. The twins had been good teachers of the Swedish language in their way, the best way, by example; and Erik was soon able to write a letter again that could be understood at the golden house without a translator. He wrote that the twins were the admiration of the country round, and his pride too. So Karin was thankful; but she missed the big, boisterous fellows, and said she felt like an old table trying to stand on three legs, with only Thor and Sven and Nono at home.

Pelle and Nono still had many cozy talks together, for which the boy was much wiser and the old man much happier. But the time came when the little Italian had a real sorrow.

Up in Stockholm the solemn bells were ringing, and mourning garments and mourning hats were everywhere. In stately mansions and in dreary attics real tears of sorrow were shed. The good princess was dead. In the palace, in a grand apartment all draped in black, lay her silent, wasted body, on a pompous funeral bier. Throngs of the loftiest and the noblest of the land passed slowly by, in solemn procession, to pay their last respects to the humble princess and the true-hearted woman who had gone to her reward. Rough peasants and the poor of the city came too, with their tribute of real mourning, grateful to see once more the face of the loving friend who had cast sunlight into their shadowed lives.

Far away in the country little Nono's heart was sorrowful. His princess was dead! No one had been able to really comfort him. Suddenly he seemed to see her bright and glad in the Holy City. She was at home at last! She was where she belonged – where "the inhabitant shall no more say, I am sick;" where "the wicked cease from troubling, and the weary be at rest." Nono had now his princess in heaven, and he went about his work with something of the light in his face which he had seemed to see in hers.

From the hospital there came the news that little Decima was drooping and sad. She said she must cry because the princess would never take her on her knee again and call her "Decima Desideria." The child declared she was well now, and she wanted to go home. Indeed she was as well as she could ever be, the doctors said, but she would be a cripple for life. She must always walk with a crutch. A change would do the child good, was the universal opinion; so home came the little girl, to her mother's great delight.

"Such a dear little useful creature as she had learned to be," Karin said, and it was true. As to knitting and crochet-work, no one in that parish could match her. The little lame girl really brought sunshine back to the golden house. She had such sweet songs to sing, and such hymns for Sunday, that Jan said it was quite like going to church to hear her, or more like hearing the little angels doing their best up in heaven. To Pelle she particularly attached herself, laughing merrily, as she said they belonged together, as they both walked with a stick.

Decima was soon the soul of merriment. She seemed to have been provided with an extra stock of gladness, to bubble over, in spite of her misfortune, to be a joy to herself and all about her. Her resources for talk were inexhaustible. She had always stories to tell of her stay at the hospital, something that had happened to herself or the other little patients, whose biographies she had quite by heart.

Of the princess Decima never wearied of talking – how she played with the children, even let them cover her with hay, then rose up suddenly out of the silent heap, and smiled at them so friendly, just like an angel, they all thought. What sweet words she wrote to them, too, about the good Shepherd that would willingly lead them to the green pastures!

"Yes, little Decima is lame for life, but it has been her greatest blessing," said Pelle to Karin. Karin opened her eyes wide, and he went on: "We all spoiled Decima. The boys petted and teased her, and even you, Karin, seemed to think the world must be made all smooth for her. The princess has taught her the way to heaven, and has gone before, so the child understands what a real place heaven is. We mustn't spoil her again."

The caution was needed. When Decima was pleased to speak, all listened. Something was said one day in her presence about a monkey. She began to laugh cheerily, and told about a baby monkey that a hand-organ man brought once to the hospital in his pocket. She had seen him from the window. It was a queer man, they all thought, for he said he was looking for a golden house, where he left a baby long ago. Maybe it was Nono he meant. He only stayed a little while, and then went away, and never came back again.

Nono's eyes gleamed as he listened, and his mouth trembled so he could not speak. "It must have been my father!" he exclaimed at last, and his tears fell fast.

So thought all the family, and the news was soon spread abroad that Nono's father was in Sweden, and was looking for him. Decima had to tell the story over and over again to listeners in the house and listeners without. The colonel and the pastor set on foot an inquiry for the man who had appeared months ago at the hospital, but with no apparent result. The interest in the search gradually died away, and it was the general conclusion that the man had returned discouraged to his native land.

As for Nono, he was quite changed. He did not give up the hope of finding his own father. He seemed always listening, looking out for, expecting something. Yet he did his work faithfully, and was more than ever thoughtful of Karin, and dutiful and obedient towards Jan. There was a special tenderness towards the dear friends in the cottage, as if the time of parting might be near. The likeness of the princess seemed meanwhile to have become especially dear to him. He would stand and look at it long and wistfully, as if he would ask his friend some deep question, or read in her inmost soul.

Pelle watched the boy narrowly, and grew uneasy about him. Nono was not inclined to talk about his father, and Pelle would not force his confidence. He was afraid some wild scheme was forming in the mind of the boy, some plan of going off in search of his father. Pelle took occasion at one time to speak of the sorrow Frans had caused in his home by his disappearance; at another, he enlarged on the dangers that beset young lads without the protecting care of those who understood life better than they did, etc., with innumerable variations.

Nono listened in respectful silence, but with a wandering, wistful look in his eyes.

Alma had been intensely interested in Decima's story. Nono's life was quite like a romance, she said, and she wished she could turn to the last page of the story, as she often did in a book she was reading. She, too, was watching and waiting and expecting. The sound of a hand-organ brought her at once to the window, and many a wandering musician was astonished with questions in Swedish and Italian as to whether he was looking for the golden house, where he had left a baby long ago; what had become of Pionono, the bear; if Francesca were dead, etc. Such questions, put so suddenly and skilfully, Alma fancied would be sure to bring out the truth. The puzzled stragglers often went away from Ekero half suspecting that they were losing their own wits or the young lady had quite lost hers, or that Swedish and Italian were now so confused in their brains that they could fully understand neither. When such wanderers happened to meet Nono on the highroad, they were likely to be further mystified by the dark boy's saying suddenly, "Don't I look like an Italian?" or "I am the baby that was left at the golden house," or some other equally surprising question or announcement.

If Nono chanced to have neglected to speak to such a stranger, he was haunted by the thought that perhaps that very man was his father, and he might have lost his only opportunity of succeeding in his search.

"I shall be glad when winter comes, and these black-haired fellows stop tramping the country round," said Karin one day. "I am tired of the sight of them, and thinking when I see them perhaps they are coming to carry off Nono. What should I do without him? Why, he's just like one of my own boys."

Karin was talking to Pelle. She always allowed herself the liberty of saying out first what was in her heart to him. Now he answered her at once. "You seem to think that Nono was made just to be a pleasure to you, like a baby's plaything. A pleasure he has been to you and to us all, and that I don't deny. God knows what he means to do with the boy, and we don't. It's likely he'll have to go out like the others to earn his living. He can't weed and run errands for Miss Alma all his life. You must think that he is getting to be a big boy, if we do call him 'little Nono.' The Lord will take care of him, I am sure of that," and Pelle turned away from Karin and went into his little room.

Karin dashed away the tears that had come into her eyes at the very thought of parting with Nono, but she thought to herself, "Pelle is right. Nono is getting to be a big boy, and more's the pity. How glad I am that I have Decima for company! and so cheerful and helpful the child is. I don't know how I got on without her so long. If I had had my way and kept her at home, she would have been a wild, spoiled little thing, to be sure. The Lord's ways are best, as Pelle says. That's what I am, a poor scholar at learning. A mother, though, must be a mother, and that the Lord knows as well as I do, and that's a comfort."

CHAPTER XVIII.
NONO'S PLANS, AND PLANS FOR NONO

Winter had come again. Nono, who was usually of a contented spirit, seemed continually displeased with the weather. It was now the last of January. There had for many weeks been a pleasant alternation of sunshine and storm, of cold and a milder temperature. The snow had been continually on the ground, but not deep enough to be in any way an inconvenience; yet Nono was not satisfied. At last the light flakes had fallen slowly for several days, and then the paths about the cottage were cut out sharply, as from the solid rock.

Nono's face wore an expression of musing satisfaction. He seemed now in a mood for play. Thor and Sven were delighted when they heard him ask their mother's permission to build in his spare time a snow-house after a plan he had in his mind, and if it might stand in the open space between the cottage and the gate. Karin was pleased to see Nono looking so happy, and promptly granted his request.

Nono found no difficulty in getting the other boys to act under his direction, as they had great confidence in his architectural abilities. With such willing hands the work went on cheerily, and with wonderful rapidity. Block after block was put in its place, and the surface most skilfully smoothed and hardened.

After all, it only looked like a watch-house when it was done, Jan said, and he was right. There was much playing sentinel among the children, as they stood on guard, being relieved at stated intervals, even Decima being allowed to share in the fun. This kind of frolic came to an end when Nono, with Karin's leave, had smeared the arched interior with a dismal pasty composition from the refuse of the coal-cellar at Ekero.

Nono now ventured to ask Karin to lend him a sheet to hang for a few days before the opening of the watch-house, as the structure was familiarly called in the family. Sven and Thor gave each other significant punches as the request was granted, to signify that no sheet would have been loaned to them; which was no doubt a fact, as they were not much to be relied on for discretion or care-taking.

Now began the erection of something within the snow-house, which Nono alone was allowed to touch. The so-called "little boys" were of the opinion that Nono was making the stump of a crooked old tree; but Oke, who considered himself an authority in the family as to matters literary and artistic, declared his opinion that Nono was making a model of the leaning tower of Pisa, of which he spoke as familiarly as if he had seen it personally in his travels. To the disappointment of Decima and her brothers, they were soon all shut out from the scene of Nono's labours; and he asked them so kindly not even to peep behind the white curtain, that they gave their promise to do as he wished, and promises were held sacred at the golden house.

One morning, early in February, Nono had gone out early to "the watch-house," and had removed the curtain, as the sheet was respectfully called. The family had finished their breakfast, and were just breaking up to set off in different directions, when there was a sound of sleigh-bells stopping at the gate.

The colonel and a gentleman who was staying at Ekero had started out for a morning drive, "Shall we pass near the post-office?" said the gentleman, taking a letter from his pocket. "I forgot to say before we left the house that I had a letter I was anxious to have mailed at once. It is my wife's name-day, and I want her to get a few words from me."

"We shall not pass the post-office," said the colonel, "but I can get a trusty messenger here;" and the coachman drew up at once at the cottage.

The gentleman started, and the colonel sprang to his feet in surprise.

"How wonderful! so like her! I almost thought I had seen a spectre!" said the stranger. "And her name-day, too. My wife was named after the princess."

Yes! There stood the princess in white garments, seemingly coming forward, her figure gracefully bowed, as it was in life, as if by a loving, unconscious desire of the heart to draw near to all who approached her. A fleecy shawl seemed to lie lightly over her shoulders. Snow-white coils of hair crowned her head, and her fair face had a pure sweetness of its own.

"It is wonderfully like her!" said the stranger.

The family from the cottage now came out, Nono leading Karin, who had all the while been in the secret, and the rest eagerly following.

"Is this your work, Nono?" said the colonel.

Nono modestly bowed, and murmured an answer, while his eyes glowed as if they were on fire.

The sound of little Decima sobbing broke in on the conversation. "That is a cold white princess!" she said. "She can't take me on her knee and tell me pretty stories. I don't like the cold white princess!"

Jan took Decima in his arms, while the colonel said pleasantly: "But we like her, Decima; and we loved the princess, both of us; and this gentleman's wife has her name; and he has written a letter to her that we want taken to the post-office at once, that she may get it on her name-day. – Can you go, Nono?"

Nono was glad to spring away with the letter, full of happy thoughts – that every one knew that it was the princess, his dear snow princess, that he had made with his own hands! The gentlemen liked it, too!

While Nono was joyously bounding along the road to the village, the group round the statue could not get through admiring it.

"He's a wonder, that boy!" said Karin, as she went into the cottage. "That he should come to me to bring up, when I can't cut out a gingerbread baby so that it looks like anything!"

"God knows why he sent him to you, Karin," said Pelle, "and God will know what to do with him in the time that is coming. He is a wonderful boy, that is sure!"

While the simple people at the golden house were talking in this way about Nono, the colonel and his guest had driven away. The stranger had promised to come in the afternoon and take a photograph of the snow statue, and of Nono too, the very best he could get, and of the whole family group just as he had seen them.

As the gentlemen drove on together they talked of the princess, beloved by rich and poor, and of the visitor's wife, one of the pure in heart worthy to bear the name of her honoured friend.

Nono, too, was the subject of conversation. His whole story was told, and listened to with intense interest. It was agreed that Nono should, with Karin's permission, come for some hours every day to Ekero to wait upon the stranger, who was a sculptor, and was making a marble bust of the colonel's wife from the various likenesses of her, assisted by her husband's vivid descriptions of her ever-remembered face and her person and character.

"I must know that boy, and take him to Italy with me in the spring if I can," said the sculptor. "There is an artist in him, I am sure, and it will only be a pleasure to train him."

When, later, Pelle heard the plan that was proposed, he said quickly, —

"Those artist fellows are not always the best to be trusted with the care of a boy. It would be better for Nono to work in the fields, with good Jan to look after him, than to make figures in a far country under the greatest gentleman in the world who was not a good man."

Karin looked relieved, and turned to hear what Jan would say on the subject; for, after all, in important matters it was always Jan who decided.

"The colonel said, when he talked to me" – and here Jan paused and looked about him. He did not object to having it understood that the colonel considered him the head of the family, a fact which Jan himself sometimes doubted – "the colonel said," he continued, "that artist was a Christian man, and he had a wife just fit to be called, as she was, after the princess, and he couldn't say any more. And he didn't need to! They haven't any children of their own, so she just goes where he goes, everywhere, and she's the kind of a woman to be the making of Nono, such a boy as he is. Nono will go with him in the spring; I have made up my mind on that matter."

Karin began to cry. "To bring him up, and such a nice boy as he is, and such a wonderful boy, too; and to love him so, and then have to give him to people who hardly know him at all!" and Karin fairly sobbed.

"You are partial to Nono, Karin," said Jan sternly. He never held back a rebuke for Karin when he thought she deserved it. "You never took on so when your own boys went away, three of them, over the sea."

"Our boys are our boys," said Karin, "and that makes a difference. They can't belong to anybody else. I should be their own mother, and they'd feel it, and so should I, if they lived in the moon. But Nono, off there, he may find his own father and mother and never come back. They may be tramping kind of people. Most likely they are, and there's no knowing what ways they might teach him. They have a right to him and I haven't. That's what I feel. I love him just like my own. He wouldn't turn the cold shoulder to his own father and mother if they were poor as poverty or just fit for a prison, I know that. It wouldn't be in him. Not that I think he would forget me. It would be a shame to say it, such a good child as he has always been to me!"

Jan put his hand on Karin's shoulder and looked helplessly at her, as he generally did when she had a flood of tears and a flood of talk at the same time.

Pelle came to the rescue, as he had often done before. "Karin wants to be Providence," he said. "She wants to take things into her own hands. That's the way with women, especially mothers. There was my mother, when I was a sailor, almost sure I would go to the bad; but God just lays me up in a hospital, and turns me square round, and sets my face to the better country. I just went home, and made up my mind to stay by my mother, and do for her as long as she lived; and I did, God bless her! It is good sense, Karin, to let the Lord manage his own way. Your way might not turn out the best after all."

"Yes, I know it," said Karin, wiping her eyes. "But things do come so unexpected in this world, one can't ever be ready for them."

"Just take one day at a time, Karin, and don't bother about what's coming," said Pelle. "We can't any of us say what is to become of Nono, not even Jan, who is so clear in his mind. We don't any of us know what to-morrow may bring. He'll have just what the Lord has planned for him. Women are better at bringing up 'critters' than driving them when they are brought up. They are about the same with boys. Mothers should bring up their boys right, and then let the Lord do what he pleases with them afterwards. Isn't it so, Karin?"

"Yes – maybe – I do suppose you are right, Pelle, and I'll try to remember it. But a man don't know how a woman feels."

"It's well they don't," said Jan curtly. "It wouldn't have suited what I've had to do in life to be like them. Karin's heart is bigger than her head; but things have worked well here so far, and it's likely it will be so to the end," and Jan looked kindly after Karin as she went off to feed the chickens, with Decima in her train, evidently thinking her mother was the injured party.