CHAPTER XXVI

THE BRIDE

So the children went on toward the more closely settled districts. They came to farms where order and happiness reigned, where work went with a vim, and newly woven linen bleached in the sun, stretched on the slopes near the houses.

Sometimes they also reached places and farms, imposing to look at, but where drunkenness and laziness had made hard hearts and eyes, and tongues as sharp as knives.

It was just after spending a night in fear and humiliation at such a place that they came to a new, strange parish. The white streams whose rushing had always sounded in their ears as they followed the road through the valleys were no longer heard.

They had reached the settlements where navigation became possible and where the big river flowed, navigable, broad, and still. Here restless life reigned everywhere. The river lay open and free of ice, and carried with it the yellow timber that was taken care of by the big sawmills. Ships from native and foreign countries lay anchored out in the calm water, surrounded by barges filled with newly sawed planks. It was summer time, with light in the air night and day, light in the hearts of every one. The work at the saws and on the ships went with a singing briskness.

The wandering children walked through lumber yards with stacks of lumber higher than houses, and where it smelled freshly of raw wood. They stopped beside a row of white-stemmed birches that lined a road on both sides up to a fine white manor house. A little steamboat, with a Swedish flag at the stern, lay beside the pier beyond the garden. A group of well-dressed people came laughing and talking up toward the birch-lined road that led to the fine house.

Maglena drew back with Golden Horn, terrified. The brothers followed. There were lots of hiding-places behind the lumber piles. Maglena realized that they themselves could not now at once follow the same road that such fine people had taken. She turned, therefore, to a small house that looked pleasant. It had small windows that laughed like eyes under a red-tiled roof, just like the forester’s, only this house was smaller, bright, and yellow in color.

A green fence surrounded the yard, which was large, with a vegetable garden and a grass plot where white linen lay bleaching. Bushes and small trees were there too. The children knew now that these were trees that would bear apples. Though they had never either seen or tasted apples, they thought it was very wonderful to see such trees as were found in Paradise itself. Besides, there were flowers and roses of many kinds. So Andy thought it best to put a muzzle on Golden Horn before they took her with them through the pretty white gate.

A young woman rose from the vegetable garden south of the house. She had been weeding. With her raised arm, she shaded her eyes against the sun while she gazed at the rather unusual group coming in. Her young, pretty face took on a soft, compassionate look. Her voice sounded sadly troubled. ‘If these aren’t children from the famine regions, maybe from the mountains where it has been worst! Poor things, what trouble you have had and how far you have walked! My dears, come in.’

She stepped out of the garden and hurried toward the house.

‘It is _the bride_--Andy, Magnus--boys. It is _the bride_,’ whispered Maglena, beside herself with eagerness and joy.

‘Huh,’ muttered Magnus, who was hungry. ‘Have you ever seen a bride weeding a vegetable garden! Everything down here is upside down, of course--but not that much!’

‘It is, though, can’t you see it? It is the nice beautiful bride,’ whispered Maglena. More shy than ever, and astonished, but still delighted, she crept in behind her brothers, who were ashamed of her stupid notion and were glad to hide her.

They entered a big sunny room that was as fine as the best room at a wedding, if there had not been an ordinary fireplace and, in front of the middle window, a brand-new spinning-wheel.

‘The bride,’ Maglena had talked about stood at a white painted cupboard, eagerly taking out food.

Magnus stood and stared at her head. That surely couldn’t be a bridal crown that stood up so high under the head covering of red dotted lawn. It was more likely only braids of hair, twisted about her head and fastened with a comb.

Magnus’s eyes traveled down the young mistress’s figure for more reliable signs of a bride.

‘Huh! Cotton blouse and home-woven blue-striped skirt.’

Just then she who was supposed to be the ‘bride’ turned around. She met Magnus’s brooding, sharply searching gaze. He looked comical, like a wise little bear cub with his head on one side and the blue eyes fixed upon her reflectively.

‘What can such a little fellow be thinking of when he looks so thoughtful?’ she asked, and came smiling toward the children who stood near the door.

‘Maglena says----’ began Magnus.

‘Be quiet, Magnus,’ warned Andy and pinched his brother’s arm. It was a signal to be careful in speech and behavior and do everything that one ought to do in this country that Magnus knew all too well not to obey.

‘What does Maglena say?’ asked the young mistress as she drew Magnus with her to the table.

‘This little girl doesn’t look to me as if she’d want to say anything that wasn’t right and good,’ she added kindly.

Maglena stood as red as a rose and with downcast eyes. She wanted to cry, she felt so ill at ease and ashamed.

Magnus, of course, dared not open his mouth again; he had the greatest respect for Andy’s pinches.

‘Well, but, children, you ought to tell me what Maglena said.’

Andy stepped forward, even he red to the ears. ‘Maglena always says so much that is silly and that she makes up, though there isn’t any harm in it. Now she said that you are--a bride.’

‘No, I didn’t say that, Andy.’ Maglena was angry over her brother’s misunderstanding of her words, and her overwhelming shyness fell away. ‘I said that she _was the bride_.’

‘I hear you--and now you say it again.’ Andy looked at his sister with stern reproach and warning.

‘_Was the bride_ up at the Wicked Farm, yes!’

Maglena raised her tearful, shining blue eyes toward the mistress with a pleading expression.

The young mistress gave a cry.

‘But, children--it’s you that came as wandering children to the wedding and brought me luck when I was married!’

‘Yes, and that’s what I see and know and say,’ sniffed Maglena, provoked. ‘And I danced with the bridegroom and got a twenty-five öre piece.’

‘Oh, but it is nice to see some one from the mountains! I long to be there so sometimes, especially now in the summer. Before, I always used to be with the cattle at our dairy farm in the mountains at this time.’

The young mistress smiled and chattered familiarly with the children while she set out food for them and searched for a few garments to make over for them.

She laughed with pleasure when she thought of children conceiving of anything so truly delightful as taking a goat with them on this sort of a wandering. She must see and talk with Golden Horn, who lay with a muzzle over her nose out on the step. Goats she knew something about and wanted to own. But down here at the sawmill there was no one who owned a goat or even knew much about them, or of how much use and pleasure the animals were when one took proper care of them.

‘Maybe we will get a goat now, too, when my husband sees this one and hears how wonderful she is,’ smiled Kristina.

She was so happy, young mistress Kristina, that she took Maglena by the hands and danced around with her. The little girl must have still another dance with ‘the bride.’

‘Here is my friend, the very best,’ she sang. Maglena joined in bravely.

They stopped in the middle of the dance.

The master, the young lumberman, came in. He stopped at the door as if petrified when he saw his wife, in the middle of the day, romping around with a youngster, who, into the bargain, was dressed in beggar’s rags.

‘What in the world, Kristina! What’s happened to you?’

‘Nothing, boy!’ laughed Kristina, rosy and in high spirits after the dance. ‘But you see, I have fine company here from the mountains, so we have to have some fun together. Now we’ll go out into the garden and have coffee there,’ she continued.

Kristina took the coffee-pot, after she had divided the other coffee things among the children to carry. And they filed out to the bench that stood under the blossoming mountain ash at the corner of the house near the vegetable garden.

The man drank coffee and ate homemade bread. His wife did the same, sitting fresh and happy beside him, and talking in a low tone about the children.

‘Yes, just think how the poor little things have suffered,’ said the man. He looked thoughtfully at the children’s clothes, outgrown or grown-up’s old garments.

‘It’s impossible to talk about it,’ cried his wife eagerly. ‘Without father and mother, and such awful famine years as they’ve had. And now they have to go on like this, from door to door, whether people take them in or drive them out.’

‘I can’t bear to hear it even. It must have been worst for this little fellow. Such tiny legs he has to walk on. But he’s good at weeding, so he’ll be a real man in time, anyway.’

The master, laughing with pleasure, looked at Magnus who lay on all fours in the vegetable garden, pulling up pigweed and red-eye from the turnip bed, and throwing the weeds in a pile on the path.

‘May I give this to Golden Horn?’ asked Magnus. His face streaked with clay after wiping away the sweat, he stood in the path in front of the pile of weeds that were still fresh and green.

‘Have you ever seen any one like him, Kristina?’

‘Yes, he’s a fine boy, though the little ones often seem to be more forward up there in the mountains where they’re poor. But now they’re going to have coffee, and as much bread as they can eat, and that’s certain.’

‘Yes, give your goat the weeds, boy,’ said the master to Magnus. ‘But do you think she’ll eat such stuff?’ he went on when Magnus came back with Golden Horn, who was given ‘leave’ of the weeds and, freed of the muzzle, began to munch them.

‘Golden Horn is satisfied with what she gets,’ assured Magnus. ‘You’ve never seen such a goat,’ he added with that talkativeness that marked him when the subject was Golden Horn and he, as now, was beyond Andy’s reach.

‘Is that so? Is she so wonderful, then?’

‘Golden Horn! You bet she is! She has sense enough for twelve. She eats whether she likes it or not--the worst trash if she can’t get anything better, just so she’ll have milk for us.’

Magnus stood musing over Golden Horn’s other excellences. He continued: ‘If she sees that we are tired and hungry, she’ll come to us and say “Ma-a-a.” “Take some milk,” she means, and when we had the little girls she could say it to Anna-Lisa many times a day.’

‘And she always has milk to give?’

‘Always, and that’s one thing. And then she’ll rub her nose against us. “He-he-he,” she says then. She seems to laugh then so that we’ll be glad, and not give up. Look out, Golden Horn!’ cried Magnus in the middle of his rapturous description. ‘Don’t go into the garden or I’ll put the muzzle on you.’

‘That you can bear to torture her like that!’ said the master, a little mockingly.

‘Yes, I know,’ muttered Magnus. He stared before him. ‘But she doesn’t mind. She doesn’t want to be better off than we are.’

‘Do you wear a muzzle, then?’

‘No-o, but--how is that now again, Andy?’

Irresolute and confused, Magnus turned to his brother, who, in the greatest zeal after the lunch, sat bent over in the garden, weeding. Now he had come near the bench and could hear what the master and Magnus were talking about.

He looked up at the master as he came toward him.

‘It just seemed, when I thought of putting a muzzle on Golden Horn to keep her from gnawing and spoiling bushes and grass in the yards, as if she wouldn’t suffer any more from it than we do.’

‘You talk, too, as if you went around with a muzzle on your nose.’

The lumberman looked wonderingly at the boy who rose and stood soberly before him.

‘We don’t have a muzzle exactly that shows outside,’ he explained, embarrassed and blushing. ‘But I thought that it wasn’t any worse for Golden Horn to walk through pastures and turnip fields with a muzzle on and not get anything to eat than for--for people that go around and come in where there is food and maybe don’t get any.’

The older man’s slightly mocking air, with which he had first listened, changed to a thoughtful, serious look.

Andy was afraid that the lumberman was angry at what he had said, and that it would sound as if he himself were complaining, so he continued with as brave a voice as he could manage:

‘You see, it isn’t so bad for one who is a little grown up and has patience to wait, ’cause you always get something after a while.’

‘Well, it would be a pretty bad world otherwise,’ remarked the master sternly.

‘It’s only for little ones,’ continued Andy--‘for little ones like Magnus here that it can be pretty bad. And I think it is worse for him to see the food and not get it, even if he hasn’t a muzzle on, than for Golden Horn, ’cause she can always get something from the gutters and small bushes.’

‘The kind of a muzzle you have we all ought to have. We ought to have a muzzle when we pass the inn and when tobacco tempts us so that we think we can’t live without it.’

‘Yes, but that kind of a muzzle you’ve had ever since boyhood, my dear,’ said Kristina, who had carried away the coffee things and now came back. She put her head caressingly against her husband’s fresh brown cheek.

‘And for that I got you--the only child, and the most beautiful girl in Nolen Parish, even if I didn’t have a house and was from another parish.’

The man drew his young wife down on his knee, deeply happy.

‘I feel as big inside when I think of it as if I owned the whole world. And now,’ he continued, and straightened up as if he were about to lift a heavy burden--‘now I feel strong enough to take this little fellow as our son, because I can’t bear to think that he should go into houses with a muzzle on.’

‘Boy, how happy you make me! I’ve just been thinking the same thing!’ Kristina threw her arms about his neck and gave him a hearty kiss.

‘Just think,’ he continued, ‘I thought when I first saw the boy that I could grow fond of him, and it would be a sin to let him go begging again.’

‘Yes, I liked the little fellow at once too.’

‘And we have food and room enough too. I’ve saved enough through the muzzle I’ve had on my nose and throat so that I can take the little one who doesn’t have father or mother.’

The young lumberman stood up. Proud and fine he looked, strong of will, lithe, and powerful--it was evident that the muzzle had been good for him.

‘I think the best bank for savings is just such little fellows with good stuff in them. I am sure that the squire up at the manor house feels the same way.’