The Rider on the White Horse | Page 7

the coast when he had wanted to help his mother by fishing in the storm. Hauke had scarcely walked on a hundred steps, while he caught the blood from his wounds on a cloth, when he heard a shrill howling and screaming from the hut. He turned round and, in front of it, saw the old woman lying on the ground; her grey hair was flying in the wind round her red head scarf.
"Dead!" she cried; "dead!" and raised her lean arm threateningly against him: "A curse on you! You have killed her, you good for nothing vagabond; you weren't good enough to brush her tail!" She threw herself upon the animal and with her apron she tenderly wiped off the blood that was still running from its nose and mouth; then she began her screaming again.
"When will you be done?" Hauke cried to her. "Then let me tell you, I'll get you a cat that will be satisfied with the blood of mice and rats!"
Then he went on his way, apparently no longer concerned with anything. But the dead cat must have caused some confusion in his head, for when he came to the village, he passed by his father's house and the others and walked on a good distance toward the south on the dike toward the city.
Meanwhile Trin Jans, too, wandered on the dike in the same direction. In her arms she bore a burden wrapped in an old blue checkered pillowcase, and clasped it carefully as if it were a child; her grey hair fluttered in the light spring wind. "What are you lugging there, Trina?" asked a peasant who met her. "More than your house and farm," replied the old woman, and walked on eagerly. When she came near the house of old Haien, which lay below, she walked down to the houses along the "akt," as we call the cattle and foot paths that lead slantingly up and down the side of the dike.
Old Tede Haien was just standing in front of his door, looking at the weather. "Well, Trin!" he said, when she stood panting in front of him and dug her crutch into the ground, "What are you bringing us in your bag?"
"First let me into the room, Tede Haien! Then you shall see!" and her eyes looked at him with a strange gleam.
"Well, come along!" said the old man. What did he care about the eyes of the stupid woman!
When both had entered, she went on: "Take that old tobacco box and those writing things from the table. What do you always have to write for, anyway? All right; and now wipe it clean!"
And the old man, who was almost growing curious, did everything just as she said. Then she took the blue pillow-case at both ends and emptied the carcass of the big cat out on the table. "There she is!" she cried; "your Hauke has killed her!" Thereupon she began to cry bitterly; she stroked the thick fur of the dead animal, laid its paws together, bent her long nose over its head and whispered incomprehensible words of tenderness into its ears.
Tede Haien watched this. "Is that so," he said; "Hauke has killed her?"
He did not know what to do with the howling woman.
She nodded at him grimly. "Yes, yes, God knows, that's what he has done," and she wiped the tears from her eyes with her hand, crippled by rheumatism. "No child, no live thing any more!" she complained. "And you know yourself how it is after All Saints' Day, when we old people feel our legs shiver at night in bed, and instead of sleeping we hear the northwest wind rattle against the shutters. I don't like to hear it. Tede Haien, it comes from where my boy sank to death in the quicksand!"
Tede Haien nodded, and the old woman stroked the fur of her dead cat. "But this one here," she began again, "when I would sit by my spinning-wheel, there she would sit with me and spin too and look at me with her green eyes! And when I grew cold and crept into my bed--then it wasn't long before she jumped up to me and lay down on my chilly legs, and we both slept 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