Jan Vedder's Wife. Barr Amelia E.
for me, be sure of that. My wife thought that thou wast ill.”
“It is a bad wife a man must lie to. But, oh, Jan! Jan! To think that for any woman thou would tell the lie!”
Then Jan, being in that garrulous mood which often precedes intoxication, would have opened his whole heart to Michael about his domestic troubles; but Michael would not listen to him. “Shut thy mouth tight on that subject,” he said angrily. “I will hear neither good nor bad of Margaret Vedder. Now, then, I will walk home with thee, and then I will see Neil Bork, and give him thy letter.”
Margaret heard their steps at the gate. Her face grew white and cold as ice, and her heart hardened at the sound of Snorro’s voice. She had always despised him; now, for his interference with her, she hated him. She could not tolerate Jan’s attachment to a creature so rude and simple. It was almost an insult to herself; and yet so truthfully did she judge his heart, that she was quite certain Michael Snorro would never tell Jan that she had watched him through Ragon Torr’s window. She blushed a moment at the memory of so mean an action, but instantly and angrily defended it to her own heart.
Jan came in, with the foolish, good-natured smile of alcoholic excitement. But when he saw Margaret’s white, hard face, he instantly became sulky and silent. “Where hast thou been, Jan?” she asked. “It is near the midnight.”
“I have been about my own business. I had some words to send by Neil Bork to my cousin Magnus. Neil sails by the midnight tide.”
She laughed scornfully. “Thy cousin Magnus! Pray, what shall he do for thee? This is some new cousin, surely!”
“Well, then, since thy father keeps thy tocher from me, I must borrow of my own kin.”
“As for that, my father hath been better to thee than thou deservest. Why didst thou lie to me concerning Snorro? He has had no fever. No, indeed!”
“A man must ask his wife whether he can speak truth to her, or not. Thou can not bear it. Very well, then, I must lie to thee.”
“Yet, be sure, I will tell the truth to thee, Jan Vedder. Thou hast been at Ragon Torr’s, singing with a light woman, and drinking with – ”
“With my own kin. I advise thee to say nothing against them. As for Suneva, there is no tongue in Lerwick but thine will speak evil of her – she is a good girl, and she hath a kind heart. And now, then, who told thee I was at Torr’s?”
He asked the question repeatedly, and instead of answering it, Margaret began to justify herself. “Have I not been to thee a good wife? Has not thy house been kept well, and thy meals ever good and ready for thee? Has any thing, great or little, gone to waste?”
“Thou hast been too good. It had been better if thou had been less perfect; then I could have spoken to thee of my great wish, and thou would have said, as others say, ‘Jan, it would be a joy to see thee at the main-mast, or casting the ling-lines, or running into harbor before the storm, with every sail set, as though thou had stolen ship and lading.’ Thou would not want me to chaffer with old women about geese-feathers and bird-eggs. Speak no more. I am heavy with sleep.”
And he could sleep! That was such an aggravation of his offense. She turned sometimes and looked at his handsome flushed face, but otherwise she sat hour after hour silent and almost motionless, her hands clasped upon her knee, her heart anticipative of wrong, and with a perverse industry considering sorrows that had not as yet even called to her. Alas! alas! the unhappy can never persuade themselves that “sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.”
CHAPTER III.
JAN’S OPPORTUNITY
“Thou broad-billowed sea,
Never sundered from thee,
May I wander the welkin below;
May the plash and the roar
Of the waves on the shore
Beat the march to my feet as I go;
Ever strong, ever free,
When the breath of the sea,
Like the fan of an angel, I know;
Ever rising with power,
To the call of the hour,
Like the swell of the tides as they flow.”
The gravitation of character is naturally toward its weakest point. Margaret’s weakest point was an intense, though unconscious, selfishness. Jan’s restless craving for change and excitement made him dissatisfied with the daily routine of life, lazy, and often unreasonable. His very blessings became offenses to him. His clean, well-ordered house, made him fly to the noisy freedom of Ragon Torr’s kitchen. Margaret’s never-ceasing industry, her calmness, neatness and deliberation, exasperated him as a red cloth does a bull.
Suneva Torr had married Paul Glumm, and Jan often watched her as he sat drinking his ale in Torr’s kitchen. At home, it is true, she tormented Glumm with her contrary, provoking moods; but then, again, she met him with smiles and endearments that atoned for every thing. Jan thought it would be a great relief if Margaret were only angry sometimes. For he wearied of her constant serenity, as people weary of sunshine without cloud or shadow.
And Margaret suffered. No one could doubt that who watched her face from day to day. She made no complaint, not even to her mother. Thora, however, perceived it all. She had foreseen and foretold the trouble, but she was too noble a woman to point out the fulfillment of her prophecy. As she went about her daily work, she considered, and not unkindly, the best means for bringing Jan back to his wife and home, and his first pride in them.
She believed that the sea only could do it. After all, her heart was with the men who loved it. She felt that Jan was as much out of place counting eggs, as a red stag would be if harnessed to a plow. She, at least, understood the rebellious, unhappy look on his handsome face. When the ling fishing was near at hand, she said to Peter: “There is one thing that is thy duty, and that is to give Jan the charge of a boat. He is for the sea, and it is not well that so good a sailor should go out of the family.”
“I have no mind to do that. Jan will do well one day, and he will do as ill as can be the next. I will not trust a boat with him.”
“It seems to me that where thou could trust Margaret, thou might well trust nineteen feet of keel, and fifty fathom of long lines.”
Peter answered her not, and Thora kept silence also. But at the end, when he had smoked his pipe, and was lifting the Bible for the evening exercise, he said: “Thou shalt have thy way, wife; Jan shall have a boat, but thou wilt see evil will come of it.”
“Thou wert always good, Peter, and in this thing I am thinking of more than fish. There is sorrow in Margaret’s house. A mother can feel that.”
“Now, then, meddle thou not in the matter. Every man loves in his own way. Whatever there is between Jan and Margaret is a thing by itself. But I will speak about the boat in the morning.”
Peter kept his word, and kept it without smallness or grudging. He still liked Jan. If there were trouble between him and Margaret he regarded it as the natural initiation to married life. Norse women were all high-spirited and wished to rule; and he would have despised Jan if he had suspected him of giving way to Margaret’s stubborn self-will. Though she was his own daughter, he did not wish to see her setting an example of wifely supremacy.
So he called Jan pleasantly and said, “I have saved for thee ‘The Fair Margaret.’ Wilt thou sail her this season, Jan? She is the best boat I have, as thou well knows. Fourteen hundred hooks she is to carry, and thou can hire six men to go with thee.”
It made Peter’s eyes feel misty to see the instantaneous change in Jan’s face. He could not speak his thanks, but he looked them; and Peter felt troubled, and said, almost querulously, “There, that will do, son Jan; go now, and hire the men thou wants.”
“First of all, I should like Snorro.”
Peter hesitated, but he would not tithe his kindness, and he frankly answered, “Well, then, thou