The Golden House Part 5

He had been accustomed to giving his own boys a thras.h.i.+ng now and then, but on Nono he had never laid hands, as Karin's gentler discipline had usually sufficed for her foster-son.

The tears were in the eyes of the culprit, but he stood quite still, and was at first speechless. At last he managed to say, "Don't whip me here, Papa Jan; take me down to the sh.o.r.e, please." Jan generally had his times of punishment quite private with the boys, the grove behind the house being the usual place of execution. He could not, however, refuse Nono's modest request. Off to the sh.o.r.e they went together, the twins meanwhile shrugging and wincing, as if they themselves were undergoing the ordeal, while they said to each other, "He'll catch it!

It won't feel good!"--not without some satisfaction, mingled with a sense of the seriousness of the occasion.

Little Decima, who had been a depressed looker-on at the proceedings, buried her head in her mother's ap.r.o.n and cried as if she herself were the victim. The little boys, no longer little, were hardened to punishment, as they were often in disgrace for their wild pranks, but the idea of Nono's being whipped seemed to have made them uncommonly sober. Sven went into the cottage to look among his treasures for something with which to console Nono on his return from the sh.o.r.e.

Thor was walking up and down, giving defiant looks at the twins for their want of sympathy with Nono in his humiliation. There was a sorrowful shadow over the whole family group that evening not common at the golden house.

To the surprise of all parties Jan soon appeared, holding Nono by the hand, both apparently in a most cheerful humour. There were no tears in Nono's face, and Jan looked down at him with peculiar tenderness.

"Nono has not meant to be a bad boy," said Jan; "and I have forgiven him, and I think you will have to forgive him too, Karin."

"Dear, dear Mamma Karin, indeed I did not want to be a bad boy," said Nono. "That would be hard, after all your kindness to me. Please, please forgive me!" Nono put his arm round Karin as he spoke. She looked doubtfully at him, but could not refuse the lips he put up to her to be kissed in sign of full forgiveness.

Sven, who had found a broken horse-shoe among his treasures, was rather disappointed that he had lost the opportunity of consoling Nono with his friendly gift.

Decima laid her little hand in Nono's, and was about leading him off the scene, when she was suddenly captured by her mother and hurried into the cottage, with the exclamation, "Here's Decima up till this time! One never knows when to put children to bed these summer evenings. She'll be as cross as pepper in the morning if she don't get her sleep out!"

It was plain that Karin was not quite satisfied with the turn the whole affair had taken.

"Papa is too partial to Nono! It is a shame!" murmured the twins, as they went off in a pout.

The morning of the second day of August was warm and bright. When Karin awoke, Jan was already up and out of the house. The children were dressed in their holiday clothes, by their father's permission, they said, their faces beaming with satisfaction. Karin was hardly in order when Jan appeared and advised her to put on a white ap.r.o.n, which she wonderingly consented to do, and then Jan led her off down to the sh.o.r.e. Behind them the children followed in orderly procession. Old Pelle brought up the rear, like the shepherd with the sheep going on before him.

Of the why and wherefore of all this ado the children had no idea.

Nono had a.s.sured them that their father approved of the whole thing, and the proud and yet tender way that Jan was walking with Karin showed that the affair had his full endors.e.m.e.nt.

On a green bank in a little cove in the sh.o.r.e Karin was ceremoniously seated, and Jan placed himself at her side.

The children threw into her lap their bouquets, each of a hue of its own, to lie there like a jumbled-up rainbow. With Oke's bright flowers from the pastor's garden fell a bank-note from the absent Erik, with an inscription pinned to it in his usual lingo: "Mamma. From her gosse Erik." (Nono had a.s.sured Oke it was best to keep the gift till the second of August.) A few drops fell on the note and the bright flowers from Karin's astonished eyes; but there was a sudden suns.h.i.+ne of joy and wonder as Nono proceeded to take down the evergreen branches that were leaned against the bank opposite to her. There, a deep arch had been scooped into the hillside. In its sweet retirement there was a tiny house of yellow pine, perfectly modelled after the family home, the door open, and the flower-beds in their proper place under the windows. In front of the house was a group, which all recognized at a glance. "Perfect! Just as if he had seen it! Think! he could make it, when he was only _so long_ at the time!" exclaimed Oke, his fingers indicating a most diminutive baby. There was no contempt, but unlimited admiration, in this mention of the infant Nono.

[Ill.u.s.tration: The model house.]

It was indeed a most successful bit of modelling. The picture that had been so long in Nono's mind had taken form. Bear, and Italians, and Swedes, and the very baby Francesca was raising high in the air for a toss, were wonderfully living and full of expression.

When the tumult of delight was subdued for a moment, Jan intimated, as he had been requested, that Nono had something to say.

What grandiloquence Nono had prepared never transpired. As it was, he forgot his intended speech. His heart was in his throat; but he managed to say that this was Katharina day in the almanac, and so Mamma Karin's name-day, and the dear mother of them all ought, of course, to be honoured. He had found some nice clay by the sh.o.r.e, which would stay in any form he put it, and he had tried to make the group he had thought so much about to show how thankful he was to have a place in such a home. He had not meant to be careless, but when he got at his work he forgot everything else, and so it had all happened. The last time was the worst, when he had spilt the basin of water, just as he was trying to make himself decent. Papa Jan had forgiven him, and he hoped Mamma Karin would do so too, now she had heard all about it. He really had not meant to be a bad boy.

Karin caught the little Italian in her arms, while Jan looked down on them benignantly, and the children roared an applause that came from the depths of their hearts. They had never thought of celebrating their mother's name-day. It had never even struck them that she had one, as her name as they knew it was not to be found in the almanac.

As for themselves, each could remember some simple treat that had been provided for his name-day--a row on the bay, pancakes after dinner, an apple all round, a trip to the village, or some other favour calculated to specially please the recipient and make all happy in the home.

The children, all but Nono, had been sure to have their _fete_; for if the name by which they were called in everyday life had no place in the almanac, they had a luxury used only once a year which fixed their time to be honoured--a second name that stood in the calendar. So Decima had come to be a kind of D.D. in her way. She had been baptized Decima Desideria, that she too might have a name-day and a celebration.

Desideria was a royal name, and a kind of a queen too. Decima had been from the very beginning the one girl among many boys, and ruling them all with her whims and caprices.

Jan had no idea of lingering all day by the sh.o.r.e, and he soon broke up the party by saying it was time for them all to go in and get on their everyday clothes, and be twice as busy as usual to make up for lost time.

Jan spoke bluntly, for he found himself in a softened mood, and that was his odd way of showing it. For his part, he had made up his mind that he had taken too little pains to give Karin pleasure--his good wife, who had all kinds of bothers, no doubt, and never troubled him about them.

A truce was sealed that day between Nono and the twins, though the duumvirs said never a word on the subject. They were not going to trouble a boy who could make such wonderful things, and show how grateful he was to their own mother, who had been just as kind to them, and they had thought little about it, and not even found out she had a name-day at all.

When Nono was going to bed that night, Karin thanked him again for the great pleasure he had given her.

"I did not give it to you; it was all the princess," he said. Karin looked wonderingly at him, and he added, "I told Oke I wanted to make beautiful things like some he showed me in a book about Italy the pastor had lent him. Oke laughed first, and then he said it told in the book that the men who made beautiful things did not always have beautiful lives--good lives it meant, Oke said. I want to have a beautiful life, Mamma Karin, and I thought it might be best not to try to make figures at all, as I am always wanting to, and I felt sorry about it. When Miss Alma showed me what the good princess could make, I thought I might see if I could make beautiful things and have a beautiful life too, like her. So you see it was the princess. I am glad you were pleased."

Karin bade the little boy good-night with unusual tenderness. She understood him, and in her heart the purpose was strengthened to try more herself to lead "a beautiful life," and to begin more earnestly than ever before on her name-day.

CHAPTER X.

THE LITTLE COTTAGE.

Of course, Alma was anxious to see the wonderful group that Nono had made for Karin. The evening after the celebration of Karin's name-day, Alma appeared at the cottage in a light summer costume and her parasol held daintily in her hand, though the sun was veiled in golden clouds.

What was her astonishment to see Frans cosily sitting on the doorstep beside Jan in his working dress, and his own not more presentable for eyes polite. Frans enjoyed society where the laws of etiquette and the dominion of fas.h.i.+on were unknown.

"You here, Frans!" exclaimed Alma, with a sudden cloud on her before smiling face.

"You here, Alma!" answered Frans, starting up with affected surprise, then offering to his sister with formal courtesy the seat he had vacated at honest Jan's side.

Jan took himself up too--a slow process for him after a day of hard work. Bareheaded he stepped forward to welcome the young lady, who at once explained the object of her visit. Nono, who had seen her in the distance, now came to meet her, and willingly led the way to the sh.o.r.e.

Karin, who was weeding in the vegetable-garden, did not know of the arrival of the guest.

Alma's delight with the group exceeded Nono's expectations. She used words about it such as she had heard her father employ in criticising works of art, and quite soared beyond Nono's comprehension as well as her own. The little house, just like Karin's cottage, charmed her completely. "Did you really make it all yourself, Nono; the house, I mean?" she said.

"Uncle Pelle helped me about it a little," said Nono honestly. "I am glad you like it."

"I like it so much that I want just such a one, to be really my own, but very, very much smaller it should be. I should like to use it as a money-box, a kind of savings-bank. The chimney should be open all the way down, so that I could drop the money in. The door should be locked, and I should have the key. I have a lock from an old work-box that would just do. Pelle could help you to fit it in, I am sure; he is so handy about everything. Will you do it, Nono?"

Of course Nono gladly said he would try; and then Alma added, "But I want to see Pelle too, and Karin, and Pelle's room, and the cottage."

"Pelle does not often let anybody come into his room but me," said Nono hesitatingly; "but Mamma Karin will be pleased, ever so pleased, to see you, I am sure."

"Perhaps I had better come another time," said Alma, remembering that Frans was on the premises, and not being at all sure what he might choose to say while she was trying to make herself agreeable at the golden house. So Alma made her way to the gate, escorted by Nono, and only left a message for the family, who had all a.s.sembled in the garden, which Frans was cheerily inspecting.

Nono began at once to plan about the savings-bank for Alma, and was much in deep consultation with Pelle. In the course of their conversations on the subject, Nono heard from the old man how the golden house came to be so very different from the usual red cottages of Sweden. He felt it was like Karin not to have told him the story.

She had served as maid in her youth to an eccentric old lady, with whom she had lived until she was married. When her former mistress was near her end, and was gloomily looking forward to death, some words of simple faith and hope she had once heard from Karin came now to her mind like a new revelation, and the glad truths took deep root in her troubled heart. An abounding grat.i.tude to Karin at once took possession of the dying woman, and she added an item to her will providing that Karin, who was struggling along with her young family about her, should have a bit of land of her own, and a cottage built upon it, like those the testator remembered in the part of Sweden where she had lived in her childhood. It should all be one great room up to the roof, but very comfortable and convenient. It must not, though, be red like any other cottage, but yellow at first, and always yellow; for Karin had been as good as gold to her mistress, and better. So this was the story of "the golden house," as the Italian had named it--a name it had borne ever since.

Bright yellow, and complete in all its appointments, was the little house that Nono at last took to Alma. If not gold itself, something golden, small and round, fell into Nono's hands as Alma received it.

"Now, Nono," she said, "that is your gift from your G.o.dmother, for I am a kind of a G.o.dmother to you. It may be the last present you will have from me. I am going to be very saving now, and lay up all the money I can."

Nono felt as if common Swedish words were hardly fit to express his thankfulness, so he astonished Alma by dropping on one knee and kissing her hand, as he had seen "a courtier saluting a queen" in a "history book" he studied at school.

Old Pelle, meanwhile, was looking on with the sharp twinkle in his eye with which he watched many of Alma's proceedings. She knew he had been consulting-architect as to the little cottage, but she could not help calling on him now to admire it, saying, "Is it not a beauty, and just like Karin's home?"

Pelle leaned on his rake as he stood, and answered, "It is like it, and it is not like it. People's faces can look like them even when they are dead. That is a kind of a dead house to me with the door tight shut. That isn't the way at the cottage. The door is always open, in a way, there. It says, 'Come in; you're welcome.' If the Master up there," and he raised his thin finger towards the skies, "was to say to Karin, 'Where is the guest-room?' she'd likely point to the house, all one great room inside. She'd make a mistake, though. Her guest-room is in _here_, where she let the Master in long ago." Pelle laid his hand on his breast, where he supposed his honest old heart to be beating. He may not have located it right physiologically, but something whispered to Alma that the old man spoke the truth as he added emphatically, "The guest-room is the heart, to my thinking; and when the right Guest gets in there, sharing is easy, and a man or a woman grows free and friendly like."

Pelle began to work very diligently, raking the newly-cut gra.s.s as if he had had his say in the matter and had no more time for talking.