The Emperor of Portugallia Part 8

There was plenty of time for Eric to have escaped while the spruce still swayed; but he had felled so many trees in his lifetime that he thought he ought to know more about this than Jan did, and stood still. The next moment he lay upon the ground with the tree on top of him. He had not uttered a sound when the tree caught him and now he was completely hidden by the thick spruce branches.

Jan stood looking round not knowing what had become of his employer. Presently he heard the old familiar voice he had always obeyed; but it sounded so feeble he could hardly make out what it was saying.

"Go get a team and some men to take me home," said the voice.

"Shan't I help you from under first?" asked Jan.

"Do as I tell you!" said Eric of Falla.

Jan, knowing his employer to be a man who always demanded prompt obedience, said nothing further but hurried back to Falla as fast as he could. The farm was some distance away, so that it took time to get there.

On arriving, the first person Jan came upon was Lars Gunnarson, the husband of Eric's eldest daughter and prospective master of Falla, which he was destined to take over upon the decease of the present owner.

When Lars Gunnarson had received his instructions he ordered Jan to go straight to the house and tell the mistress of what had occurred; then he was to call the hired boy. Meantime Lars himself would run down to the barn and harness a horse.

"Perhaps I needn't be so very particular about telling the womenfolk just yet?" said Jan. "For if they once start crying and fretting it will only mean delay. Eric's voice sounded so weak from where he lay that I think we'd best hurry along."

But Lars Gunnarson, since coming to the farm, had made it a point to a.s.sert his authority. He would no more take back an order once given than would his father-in-law.

"Go into mother at once!" he commanded. "Can't you understand that she must get the bed ready so we'll have some place to put him when we come back with him?"

Then of course Jan was obliged to go inside and notify the mistress. Try as he would to make short work of it, it took time to relate what had happened and how it had happened.

When Jan returned to the yard he heard Lars thundering and swearing in the stable. Lars was a poor hand with animals. The horses would kick if he went anywhere near them and he had not been able to get one of the beasts out of its stall the whole time that Jan had been inside talking with the housewife.

It would not have been well for Jan had he offered to help Lars.

Knowing this he went immediately on his other errand, and fetched the hired boy. He thought it mighty strange that Lars had not told him to speak to Borje, who was thres.h.i.+ng in the barn close by, instead of sending him after the hired boy, who was at work out in the birch-grove, a good way from the farmyard.

And while Jan ran these needless errands, the faint voice under the spruce branches rang in his ears. The voice was not so imperative now, but it begged and implored him to hasten. "I'm coming, I'm coming!" Jan whispered back. He had the sensation of one in a nightmare who tries to run but who cannot take a step.

Lars had at last managed to get a horse into the shafts. Then the womenfolk came and told him to be sure to take along straw and blankets. This was all very well, but it meant still further delay.

Finally Lars and Jan and the hired boy drove away from the farm.

But they had got no farther than to the edge of the forest, when Lars stopped the horse.

"One gets sort of rattled when one receives news of this kind,"

said he. "I never thought of it till just now--but Borje is back at the barn."

"It would have been well to have taken him along," said Jan, "for he's twice as strong as any of us."

Then Lars sent the hired boy back to the farm to get Borje; which meant a long wait.

While Jan sat in the sledge, powerless to act, he felt as though within him opened a big, empty ice-cold void. It was the awful certainty that they would be too late!

Then at last came Borje and the boy, all out of breath from running, and now they drove on into the woods. They went very slowly, though, for Lars had harnessed the old spavined bay to the sledge. What he had said about his being rattled must have been true, for all at once he wanted to turn in on the wrong road.

"If you go in that direction, we'll come to Great Peak," Jan told him; "and we must get to the woods beyond Loby."

"Yes, I know," returned Lars, "but farther up there's a crossroad where it's better driving."

"What road might that be? I've never seen it."

"Wait, and I'll show you," said Lars, determined to continue up the mountain.

Now Borje sided with Jan, so Lars had to give in of course; but precious time had been consumed while they argued with him, and Jan felt as if all the life had gone out of his body.

"Nothing matters now," thought he. "Eric of Falla will be beyond our help when we arrive."

The old bay jogged along the forest road as well as it could, but it had not the strength for a heavy pull like this. It was poorly shod, and stumbled time after time. When going uphill the men had to get down from the sledge and walk, and when they came upon trackless unbeaten ground in the thick of the forest the horse was almost more of a hindrance than a help.

At all events they got there finally. Strange to say, they found Eric of Falla in fairly good condition; he was not much hurt and no bones were broken. One of his thighs had been lacerated by a branch, and there he had an ugly wound; still it was nothing but what he could recover from.

When Jan went back to his work the next morning he learned that Eric had a high fever and was suffering intense pain. While lying on the frozen ground he had caught a severe cold, which developed into pneumonia, and within a fortnight he was dead.

THE RED DRESS

The summer the young girl was in her seventeenth year she went to church one Sunday with her parents. On the way she had worn a shawl, which she slipped off when she came to the church knoll.

Then everybody noticed that she was wearing a dress such as had never before been seen in the parish.

A travelling merchant, one of the kind that goes about with a huge pack on his back, had found his way to the Ashdales, and on seeing Glory Goldie in all the glow and freshness of her youth he had taken from his pack a piece of dress goods which he tried to induce her parents to buy for her. The cloth was a changeable red, of a texture almost like satin and as costly as it was beautiful. Of course Jan and Katrina could not afford to buy for their girl a dress of that sort, though Jan, at least, would have liked nothing better.

Fancy! When the merchant had vainly pressed and begged the parents for a long while he grew terribly excited because he could not have his way. He said he had set his heart on their daughter having the dress, that he had not seen another girl in the whole parish who would set it off as well as she could. Whereupon he had measured and cut off as much of the cloth as was needed for a frock, and presented it to Glory Goldie. He did not want any payment, all he asked was to see the young girl dressed in the red frock the next time he came to Ruffluck.

Afterward the frock was made up by the best seamstress in the parish, the one who sewed for the young ladies at Lovdala Manor, and when Glory Goldie tried it on the effect was so perfect that one would have thought the two had blossomed together on one of the lovely wild briar bushes out in the forest.

The Sunday Glory Goldie showed herself at church in her new dress, nothing could have kept Jan and Katrina at home, so curious were they to hear what folks would say.

And it turned out, as has been said, that everybody noticed the red dress. When the astonished folk had looked at it once they turned and looked again; the second time, however, they glanced not only at the dress but at the young girl who wore it.

Some had already heard the story of the dress. Others wanted to know how it happened that a poor cotter's la.s.s stood there in such fine raiment. Then of course Katrina and Jan had to tell them all about the travelling merchant's visit, and when they learned how it had come about they were all glad that Fortuna had thought of taking a little peep into the humble home down in the Ashdales.

There were sons of landed proprietors who declared that if this girl had been of less humble origin they would have proposed to her then and there. And there were daughters of landed proprietors--some of them heiresses--who said to themselves that they would have given half of their possessions for a face as rosy and young and radiant with health as hers.

That Sunday the Dean of Bro preached at the Svartsjo church, instead of the regular pastor. The dean was an austere, old fas.h.i.+oned divine who could not abide extravagance in any form, whether in dress or other things.

Seeing the young girl in the bright red frock he must have thought she was arrayed in silk, for immediately after the service he told the s.e.xton to call the girl and her parents, as he wished to speak with them. Even he noticed that the girl and the dress went well together, but for all that he was none the less displeased.

"My child," he said, laying his hand on Glory Goldie's shoulder, "I have something I want to say to you. n.o.body could prevent me from wearing the vestments of a bishop, if I so wished; but I never do it because I don't want to appear to be something more than what I am. For the same reason you should not dress as though you were a young lady of quality, when you are only the daughter of a poor crofter."

These were cutting words, and poor Glory Goldie was so dismayed she could not answer. But Katrina promptly informed him that the girl had received the cloth as a gift.

"Be that as it may," spoke the dean. "But parents, can't you comprehend that if you allow your daughter to array herself once or twice in this fas.h.i.+on she will never again want to put on the kind of clothes you are able to provide for her?"

Now that the dean had spoken his mind in plain words he turned away; but before he was out of earshot Jan was ready with a retort.

"If this little girl could be clothed as befits her, she would be as gorgeous as the sun itself," said he. "For a sunbeam of joy she has been to us since the day she was born."