The Rider on the White Horse | Page 8

is a crown piece from the time of Christian IV; go and buy a tanned lamb-skin with it for your cold legs! And when our cat has kittens, you may pick out the biggest of them; both together, I suppose, will make up for an Angora cat feeble from old age! Take your beast and, if you want to, take it to the tanner in town, but keep your mouth shut and don't tell that it has lain on my honest table."
During this speech the woman had already snatched the crown and stowed it away in a little bag that she carried under her skirts, then she tucked the cat back into the pillowcase, wiped the bloodstains from the table with her apron, and stalked out of the door. "Don't you forget the young cat!" she called back.
After a while, when old Haien was walking up and down in the narrow little room, Hauke stepped in and tossed his bright bird on to the table. But when he saw the still recognizable bloodstain on the clean white top, he asked as if by the way: "What's that?"
His father stood still. "That's blood that you have spilled!"
The young man flushed hotly. "Why, has Trin Jans been here with her cat?"
The old man nodded: "Why did you kill it?"
Hauke uncovered his bleeding arm. "That's why," he said. "She had torn my bird away from me!"
Thereupon the old man said nothing. For a time he began to walk up and down, then he stood still in front of the young man and looked at him for a while almost absently.
"This affair with the cat I have made all right," he said, "but look, Hauke, this place is too small; two people can't stay on it--it is time you got a job!"
"Yes, father," replied Hauke; "I have been thinking something of the sort myself."
"Why?" asked the old man.
"Well, one gets wild inside unless one can let it out on a decent piece of work!"
"Is that so?" said the old man, "and that's why you have killed the Angora cat? That might easily lead to something worse!"
"You may be right, father, but the dikemaster has discharged his farmhand; I could do that work all right!"
The old man began to walk up and down, and meanwhile spat out the black tobacco. "The dikemaster is a blockhead, as stupid as a goose! He is dikemaster only because his father and grandfather have been the same, and on account of his twenty-nine fens. Round Martinmas, when the dike and sluice bills have to be settled, then he feeds the schoolmaster on roast goose and mead and wheat buns, and sits by and nods while the other man runs down the columns of figures with his pen, and says: 'Yes, yes, schoolmaster, God reward you! How finely you calculate!' But when the schoolmaster can't or won't, then he has to go at it himself and sits scribbling and striking out again, his big stupid head growing red and hot, his eyes bulging out like glass balls, as if his little bit of sense wanted to get out that way."
The young man stood up straight in front of his father and marveled at his talking; he had never heard him speak like that. "Yes, God knows," he said, "no doubt he is stupid, but his daughter Elke, she can calculate!"
The old man looked at him sharply.
"Hallo, Hauke," he exclaimed "what do you know about Elke Volkerts?"
"Nothing, father; only the schoolmaster has told me?"
The old man made no reply; he only pushed his piece of tobacco thoughtfully from one cheek into the other. "And you think," he said, "that you can help in the counting there too."
"Oh, yes, father, that would work all right," the son replied, and there was a serious twitching about his mouth.
The old man shook his head: "Well, go if you like; go and try your luck!"
"Thanks, father!" said Hauke, and climbed up to his sleeping place in the garret. There he sat down on the edge of the bed and pondered why his father had shouted at him so when he had mentioned Elke Volkerts. To be sure, he knew the slender, eighteen-year-old girl with the tanned, narrow face and the dark eyebrows that ran into each other over the stubborn eyes and the slender nose; but he had scarcely spoken a word to her. Now, if he should go to old Tede Volkerts, he would look at her more and see what there was about the girl. Right off he wanted to go, so that no one else could snatch the position away from him--it was now scarcely evening. And so he put on his Sunday coat and his best boots and started out in good spirits.
The long rambling house of the dikemaster was visible