Part 7

“Oh, we’ll manage to get home,” said the Paymaster of the Regiment. “But my money-chest is still in your house, and that I must have along with me.”

“Well, well, can it be possible that ye went off and left the money-box!” said the woman. “Then it must be standing in the bedroom. No one’s been in there since ye left.”

“The box was not forgotten,” said the Paymaster, sternly. “So produce it at once! You know what happens to those who steal the Crown’s money.”

“Now where could we hide a big money-chest?” the woman protested blandly. “Ye can see for yerself what’s here, and ye’re welcome to search the house.”

And that Bengt had already done. He had peered and poked into every nook and corner--and had found nothing.

“If you won’t give it up willingly,” said the Paymaster, “I shall have to leave my man here on guard while I go for the bailiff.”

“What, that fellow stay and keep guard over us!” almost laughed the woman.

Nor was it likely that Bengt, single-handed, could have kept six persons quietly seated in the hut while his master went in search of the bailiff. But all this time Bengt had been puzzling over something. He heard a crackling noise coming from the bake-oven, but saw no evidences of dough having been prepared. Without a word, he stole up and flung open the oven door.

“Come here, Master,” he cried, “and see the kind of bread they bake in this here oven.”

In there on a pyre of burning wood stood the money-chest.

The crofter and his wife now sprang at Bengt, but Paymaster Lagerlöf, who was a powerful man, pushed them back. When the other four, who had also begun to bestir themselves, saw the kind of thrusts he could give, they kept out of his reach. Bengt seized the oven rake and quickly pulled the box down onto the hearth. In his eagerness to find out whether the box had been much damaged, he nearly burned his fingers off.

“Ha! it hasn’t been opened,” he cried exultantly.

Though the box showed that the thieves had been filing and hammering at it, the good oaken chest was intact; neither lock nor mountings had given way. As a last resort they had put it on the fire. But, luckily, Bengt had been too quick for them--only a bit of one corner was charred.

III

THE LARDER ON STILTS

ALL who had been long on the place thought the building next in age to the stone huts was the old larder that stood on posts. It had not been built by the first settler, but was erected some hundred years after his time, when Mårbacka had become a regular farmstead.

The peasants then living there had hurriedly put up a post-larder, it being the rule that every farm of any pretension must have one. It was a crude structure. The door was so low one had to stoop to enter; but the lock and key were conspicuously large and strong. There were no windows, only small openings, with trap-shutters. In summer there were fly-screens at the openings made of woven splints, through which very little light could penetrate.

The larder had two stories. The upper story being better finished than the lower, it was probably there the peasants stored their valuables.

In Lieutenant Lagerlöf’s time the building was as in olden days. It may have had a new roof, perhaps, but the steps were never changed. They were so narrow and close together one could scarcely get a foothold. Nor was there ever a pane of glass in the old building.

In the autumn the larder was something to behold. On the lower floor there were great bins of newly milled flour, next which stood two huge vats packed to the brim with beef and pork in brine, then came cowls and buckets of beef sausage, pork sausage, and potato sausage--in fact, all sorts of things that had been made up during the autumn slaughter. In one corner stood a barrel of salted herring, a keg of salted whitefish and one of _sickling_, and generally a firkin of salmon. Besides, there were tins of salted beans, salted spinach, and firkins of green and yellow peas.

On the upper floor there were tubs of butter of the summer’s churning stored for winter use. Long rows of cheeses were arranged on shelves above the openings, and from the ceiling hung year-old hams. The home-raised hops were preserved in a sack the size of a bolster, and the malted grain in a similar one. Here were provisions for a whole year.

It was the housekeeper who ruled over the larder. That was her domain, and the key to it seldom got into another’s hands. Mamselle Lovisa might potter in the pantry or milk-room, but she would hardly have ventured into the larder. The housekeeper was also supreme in the kitchen. Making small cakes or putting up preserves and fruit juices might well be left to Mamselle Lovisa, but when it came to roasting a fowl, making a cheese, or baking _knäckebröd_, it was the old housekeeper who took charge.

The little Lagerlöf children were very fond of her, and looked up to her as the most important member of the household. They had noticed that whenever relatives came to visit, the first thing they did was to go out to the kitchen and pay their respects to the housekeeper. If anything unusual happened in the family Lieutenant Lagerlöf would always call her in and tell her about it, and when Daniel and Johan were returning to school after the Christmas and summer holidays, they were told to say good-bye to the housekeeper. They had also heard outsiders say that Fru Lagerlöf was in great luck to have such a treasure in her kitchen, that nothing was ever wasted under her watchful eye. They said, moreover, that nowhere else could one get such Christmas ale, such _knäckebröd_, and such tasty dishes as were set before you at Mårbacka. And it was all due to the old housekeeper, they declared. So it was not strange the children regarded her as the main prop of the home, and firmly believed that were she not there Mårbacka would collapse.

Then, one day, little Anna found out a great secret, which gave her an awful fright, and she confided it to her sister Selma. She had overheard two of the maids talking about the housekeeper; they had said she was married and had a husband.

The distress of the two little girls was indescribable. If the housekeeper were actually married and had a husband they could not be sure of keeping her at Mårbacka. What would their mother do without her? And what would they themselves do who got such nice titbits from her whenever they went into the kitchen? And what would happen to the whole place, they wondered?

It was most imperative, therefore, that they should know how the matter stood; so they asked Nurse Maja if it were true that the housekeeper was married and had a husband.

Oh, yes. Nurse Maja knew the whole story. She had heard it from her mother, who was in service at Mårbacka at the time it all happened.

“It is the truth and no lie,” said she. The housekeeper’s husband was living in Karlstad, and was a boss carpenter. There was no such luck as his being dead!

And this was how it came about: When Lieutenant Lagerlöf and his brother as lads attended school at Karlstad, their mother, the old mistress, had sent her trusted housekeeper along with the boys, to look after them and prepare their meals. While there, she had made the acquaintance of a carpenter, who proposed to her. When on her return to Mårbacka in the spring she announced that she was going to be married, the old mistress was both sad and alarmed at the thought of losing her “greatest treasure.”

“And what sort of fellow are you marrying?” she had asked her. “Do you know whether he is a good man?”

Oh, yes, she was certain of that. He was a boss carpenter, who had his own shop and his own home. The house was in order, so that she might be married at once, and she could never have found a better husband.

“But how can you be content to live the year round in a barren city street--you who have always lived in the country?” the old mistress had then said.

Oh, she had no fears as to that. All would be well for her hereafter. She was to have an easy life--no baking, no brewing; she had only to go to the market and bring home whatever was needed.

When the old mistress heard her housekeeper speak in that manner she knew the woman was bent on marriage, and there was nothing to be done but give her a wedding at Mårbacka.

The bridegroom appeared to be a clever, sensible sort, and the day after the wedding he took his bride to Karlstad.

One evening a fortnight later--no, it was hardly that long--as the old mistress went out to the larder to slice some ham for supper (she could never take up the key to the larder but she thought of Maja Persdotter and wondered how she was getting along), she said to herself: “If I had not sent her to Karlstad she would never have met that carpenter and I should still have my good helper, and wouldn’t have to run out to the larder twenty times a day, as I do now.” Suddenly she saw a figure coming through the birch grove that was the living image of her housekeeper. The nearer the figure approached the more certain was Grandmother Lagerlöf of what she beheld. When Maja Persdotter presently stood before her and said, “Good-evening, Frua,” she had to believe her eyes and ears.

“Well, well, is it you, Maja Persdotter!” she exclaimed. “But what brings you here? Haven’t you got a good husband?”

“All he does is drink,” declared the housekeeper. “He’s been drunk every day since the wedding. It’s the pure alcohol he should be using in his work he guzzles. I can’t put up any longer with such a swine.”

“But I thought you were to go to the market and buy all your provisions, in order to escape hard work?”

“I’ll work my fingers to the bone for Frua and the children if you’ll only take me back!” vowed the housekeeper. “I’ve wished myself back at Mårbacka day and night since I went away.”

“Come in, then, and we’ll talk this over with the Paymaster of the Regiment,” the old mistress said with tears of joy in her eyes. “God willing, we’ll never part again so long as we live,” she added.

Nor did they. The housekeeper’s husband probably knew it would be useless for him to try to get her back. At all events, he never came to fetch her. The wedding ring she removed from her finger and laid away in her trunk. Nothing more was said about that episode in her life.

Lieutenant Lagerlöf’s little daughters should have felt quite easy in their minds on hearing this; but for a long time afterward they were troubled. Since that carpenter was still alive he might come some day and take her away. Whenever they looked down the road they expected to see him coming. Nurse Maja had told them that if he came and demanded the return of his wife, she would have to go with him.

They did not know just how old the housekeeper was. She herself had forgotten the year of her birth, and the date set down in the parish register was said not to be authentic. She must have been over seventy; but for all that, the carpenter might want her back--fine, capable woman that she was.

Then what would happen to Mårbacka!

IV

THE MANSERVANTS’ COTTAGE

IN OLDEN times, when the master had to furnish the clothing for all the servants on his place, the womenfolk must have had their hands full of work the year round. Through the long, dark winter mornings and the long, dark winter evenings, they sat at the spinning wheels drawing out the threads for warp and weft. But the weaving itself was not begun until the spring, when the days grew longer; for such work cannot be done in semi-darkness.

In order to get the coarse wadmal and fine woollen cloth, the linen and cotton webs finished by summer, when the parish tailor came, they had to put speed into the looms. But if a loom stood in the kitchen the work did not go very fast. The weavers should have a place to themselves, where they can work without interruptions. Therefore, in former days every well-conducted farmstead had its special loom-room, and, of course, Mårbacka had one also. This was from the time of the clergymen. They had added a story to the manservants’ cottage consisting of two rooms, with clay-coated walls and boarded ceilings; and in each was a tile-stove. The back room was occupied by the farm overseer; and in the front room stood two looms, one at either window.

The loom-room was in use even in Lieutenant Lagerlöf’s time, though it was then no longer the custom to pay one’s serving-folk their earnings in clothing but in money. It was Fru Lagerlöf’s great delight to sit at a loom weaving towelling, bed linen, table linen, floor mats, curtains, furniture coverings, and dress fabrics--in fact, everything of that sort needed in the home. All summer long she had her looms going.

In the autumn, however, the looms were taken out to make room for a long, low table which was well smeared with bezum, and the round, three-legged stools were brought up from the servants’ room. That meant that Soldier Svens, the parish shoemaker, was expected. Soon he and his apprentices came shouldering great knapsacks packed full of awls, hammers, bundles of lasts, wax-ends, eyelets, heel-irons and shoe-pegs, all of which were dumped upon the table.

The cobbler was a tall, gaunt man with a shock of black hair and a full black beard. Seeing him for the first time one thought him a fierce and dangerous fellow, more fit for fighting than for the shoemaker’s bench. But when he spoke, it was in a soft, timorous voice. His eyes were rather small and mild-looking, and his whole bearing was a bit uncertain. He was perhaps not so very dangerous after all.

Lieutenant Lagerlöf’s little children were in high glee when the shoemaker arrived. They bounded up the difficult stairs to the loom-room many times a day. It was not so much for chatter they came--for Soldier Svens was a reticent and diligent man--as to watch the work, to see how a shoe was made, from the stretching of the leather on the last to the cutting out of the bootlaces.

The shoemaker, who usually sat with drooping head, brightened when he heard Lieutenant Lagerlöf’s footstep on the stairs. He and the Lieutenant were old regiment comrades. After they had discussed brogans, sole-leather, and boot-grease a while, they fell to reminiscing about Trossnäs Field, and when they were well warmed up to it, the Lieutenant would coax the shoemaker to sing an old war song which was unlike any other battle hymn in that it began thus: _We heroes from Sweden, we do not love to fight._ That song the soldiers had made up when they marched down to Denmark in the year 1848 on the expedition known as the “Sandwich War.”

Singularly enough, Shoemaker Svens loved to talk about Tailor Lager, who had sat many a time in that very room in the days of the Paymaster of the Regiment, and who was as merry and full of fun as he was grave and mournful.

“You have probably heard, Lieutenant, how the tailor came to be called Lager,” the shoemaker began.

The Lieutenant knew the story as well as he knew his “Our Father,” but all the same he replied:

“I may have heard it, Svens, but you tell it--in your way.”

“Well, you see, Lager he was a soldier like myself, though he was before my time. They say in the regiment that at first he was called Lars Andersson. Then came orders for the privates to change their names because there were too many Anderssons and Johanssons in the regiment.

“One day at a rally at Trossnäs, the soldiers were called in by your father to say by what name they wished to be known, and to have it set down in the roll.

“Of course Lars Andersson was among them. The Paymaster of the Regiment knew him from of old as a joke-maker, for year after year Lars had sat here at Mårbacka weeks at a stretch, making clothes for the Paymaster and all his folks. From the time he came till he went it was nothing but fun and laughter. He could mimic everybody in the parish and make things disappear like a magician at the fair, and he played on a stick till you thought you heard the whole regiment marching. But he was a bit dangerous, was Lars, for he made up yarns about folk that caused bad feeling among the neighbours.

“‘Well, what shall you call yourself, Lars Andersson?’ the Paymaster asked him, putting on a stern face so that Lars would not dare come with any of his monkey tricks.

“‘Lord preserve the Paymaster of the Regiment!’ says he. ‘May I call myself anything I like?’ He puckered his forehead as if he were trying hard to think of a name.

“‘You may, Lars Andersson.’ The Paymaster, knowing his man, added, ‘But it must be a proper and honourable name, and nothing clownish.’

“You remember, Lieutenant, how your father looked. He was a kind man, but just the sight of him put fear into many a one, for he was a big tall man with bushy black eyebrows.

“But the tailor was not afraid--not he! ‘Then,’ says he, ‘I’ll call myself Lagerlöf, for that is both an honourable and respected name. I know of no other in all Värmland that sounds so sweet.’

“The Paymaster of the Regiment must have got hot in the head when he heard that that buffoon wanted to call himself Lagerlöf.

“‘No, that won’t do,’ he said. ‘We can’t have two with the same name in the regiment.’

“‘But,’ says the tailor, ‘there are at least three Ugglas and four Lilliehööks, and it isn’t likely anyone would mistake me for the Paymaster.’

“‘No. But can’t you see, Lars Andersson, that it would never do,’ protested the Paymaster.

“‘I wouldn’t have chosen that name if you hadn’t given me leave to call myself whatever I wished.’ The tailor made himself appear very humble and serious. ‘I know that when the Paymaster of the Regiment gives you his word you can usually go by it.’

“Then there was a long silence. Paymaster Lagerlöf sat studying how he’d get round this. Aside from the fact that it would make him the butt of the regiment, he didn’t care to have a mountebank like that tailor knocking about under the name of Lagerlöf.

“‘Look here, Lars,’ he finally said, ‘it might do well enough here in the regiment for us two to bear the same name, but home at Mårbacka it would never go. So understand, if you insist on this thing you can’t do any more tailoring there.’

“That must have given the tailor a scare, for the weeks he sat sewing at Mårbacka were to him the best in the whole year. At no other place did he fare so well, and nowhere else did they laugh so heartily at his yarns and pranks.

“‘Perhaps you’d be satisfied to call yourself Lager?’ the Paymaster suggested, seeing the fellow was wavering. The tailor must have agreed to that, for he went by the name of Lager the rest of his life.”

V

THE “JUNGFRU”

SHE was an old _jungfru_ who had once been in service in the home of Fru Lagerlöf’s parents, at Filipstad, but lived now, in her old age, at Ämtervik. She had known Fru Lagerlöf as a child, and used to come to Mårbacka two or three times a year to see the folks.

The _jungfru_ was a tall, good-looking woman with white hair. She had a strong nose, a firm mouth, and a grave manner. She liked preachers and missionaries, and ran to prayer-meetings and sewing-circles. One could not talk with her about dancing, or novels, or love affairs; such things were to her an abomination. Nor did one dare speak ill of any one in her presence, or even discuss pretty clothes, and she would not hear about the sinful things that went on in the world.

It was not easy to know just what one should talk about. Outside of cookery and the weather there were few topics of conversation one might safely touch upon. These, to be sure, held out a long while, but even they could become exhausted, for the _jungfru_ was a person of few words, and her answers were short and well posed.

There was a way, however, to loosen the _jungfru’s_ tongue; but it had its drawbacks. She had once on a time been cook at a large deanery. The dean had twenty children, all living and arrived at maturity. That family she continually kept in mind, and her supreme delight was to talk about those people.

The family at Mårbacka were having their usual afternoon coffee in the living room. The coffeepot and tray stood on the big table. Everyone, in turn, went up and poured himself a cup. None took more than one lump of sugar, one wheaten rusk and one of rye, one ring-biscuit, one ginger cookie, and a bit of fresh cake, if there happened to be any. Whereupon each sat down in his accustomed place. Fru Lagerlöf occupied one corner of the sofa, Mamselle Lovisa the other. The Lieutenant always had the rocker, which was his favourite seat. No one else would have ventured to appropriate that. Herr Tyberg, Johan’s tutor, took a cane-bottomed chair, and between these four stood a table made from the root of an alder. At one of the little window-tables sat Johan, at the other Anna, while over in the chimney corner, by the folded card table, sat the two little tots, Selma and Gerda; they were considered too young to have coffee, and had to be content with a glass of milk each.

The _jungfru_, who had come that day for a visit, was having coffee with the family. She had placed her chair in the middle of the room, where all might see and talk with her. They had run the whole gamut of harmless topics, and were now at a standstill. Lieutenant Lagerlöf, who could not abide a lull in the conversation, began to question her about missions, colporteurs, sewing-circles, and prayer-meetings. Knowing the sort he was and what she was, it was clear that this could not run smoothly.

Fru Lagerlöf tried to change the conversation, Mamselle Lovisa gave her brother a nudge with her elbow, and Herr Tyberg called attention to the excellent quality of the coffee. But the Lieutenant and the _jungfru_ went right on with their discussion, which was getting a bit hot.

Now Fru Lagerlöf knew from of old that if the _jungfru_ took offence at anything the Lieutenant said about the “miss-i-on,” she would not come again for at least a year; and her circumstances were such that she needed to come to Mårbacka occasionally, to get a few good meals, a sack of flour, and something tasty to take home with her. She saw no way out of it but to ask the _jungfru_ what had become of all the dean’s twenty children.

In a twinkling the foreign and home missions, the heathen children, and even the impious Lieutenant were forgotten. She brightened, and promptly started in:

“I’ve never known the like of it in all my life. In that house we’d a wash-day every other week, and at that, the tubs were always full of clothes. You could never sit down to a meal but you must have a child on each side of you. You had to fix its food and help feed it in the bargain. When there was shifts to be made, they had to fetch home whole bolts of linen, and sempstresses and tailors and shoemakers never found time to go to other places in the parish, for they’d enough to do in that one place.”

“But, my dear Jungfru Anna, however could the dean and his wife manage to bring up so many children?” Fru Lagerlöf said to get her well started.

“Ah, but they did, though, and they turned out grand, all of them. You never saw better children. Only think! the oldest daughter, Eve--what a handy one she was at making baby things and tending little ones! And she got married, indeed, at seventeen to Curate Jansson of Skilanda, and when he died she got a dean in Västergötland. She had a lot of children, and after she’d stood a bride the first time she never showed herself again in her father’s house.”

“She probably thought there were enough without her,” observed the Lieutenant, dryly.

The little girls over in the chimney-corner began to giggle; but they got such a sharp look from the _jungfru_ they subsided instantly.

“The next to the oldest was a boy named Adam,” the _jungfru_ continued. “He was the worst child for crying I ever came across. But later on, when he became a priest, he chanted the service so beautiful that he was made Court Chaplain. He could have married any one he liked, but he had no such wish. For some reason he remained a bachelor all his life.”