The Rider on the White Horse | Page 8

as warmly together as if I still had my
young sweetheart in bed!"

The old woman, as if she were waiting for his assent to this
remembrance, looked with her gleaming eyes at the old man standing
beside her at the table. Tede Haien, however, said thoughtfully: "I
know a way out for you, Trin Jans," and he went to his strong box and
took a silver coin out of the drawer. "You say that Hauke has robbed
your animal of life, and I know you don't lie; but here 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