CHAPTER II.
A LITTLE CLOUD IN THE SKY.
“All the flowers of Love and Happiness blow double.”
As it happened that year the peerie, or Indian summer, was of unusual length and beauty. The fine weather lingered until the end of October. These weeks were full of joy to Margaret and to Jan, and in them Jan showed himself in many a charming light. He played well upon the violin, and as long as love was his theme Margaret understood him. He recited to her stirring stories from the Sagas, and she thought only how handsome he looked with his flashing eyes, and flushing face. She never reflected, that the soul which could put life into these old tales was very likely to be a soul akin to the restless adventurous men of which they told. Her home and her love were sufficient for her happiness, 18 and she expected that Jan would measure his desires by the same rule.
But in a few weeks Jan began to weary a little of a life all love-making. Many things, laid aside for a time, renewed their influence over him. He wished to let the romance and exaggeration of his married position sink into that better tenderness which is the repose of passion, and which springs from the depths of a man’s best nature. But Margaret was not capable of renunciation, and Jan got to be continually afraid of wounding her sensibilities by forgetting some outward token of affection. He tried to talk to her of his projects, of his desire to go to sea again, of his weariness of the store. She could understand none of these things. Why should he want to leave her? Had he ceased to love her? Her father was happy in the store. It offended her to hear a word against it. Yet she thought she loved Jan perfectly, and would have deeply resented Michael Snorro’s private verdict against her—that she was a selfish woman.
One morning, as the first snow was beginning to fall, a big Dutch skipper in his loose tunic and high cap, and wooden clogs, came stalking 19 into Peter’s store, and said, “Well, here at last comes ‘The North Star.’ Many of us thought she would come no more.”
Jan was packing eggs, but he signed to Michael to take his place, and in a few minutes he was among the crowd watching her arrival. She came hurrying in, with all her sails set, as if she were fleeing from the northern winter behind her. Her stout sides were torn by berg and floe, her decks covered with seal skins and jawbones of whales, and amidships there was a young polar bear growling in a huge cask. Her crew, weather-beaten and covered with snow and frost, had the strange look of men from lands unknown and far off. Jan had once sailed in her, and her first mate was his friend. It was like meeting one from the dead. Proudly and gladly he took him to his home. He wanted him to see his beautiful wife. He was sure Margaret would be delighted to welcome a man so brave, and so dear to him.
On the contrary, it was a deep offense to her. Christian Groat, in his sheepskin suit, oily and storm-stained, unkempt and unshorn, seemed strangely out of place in her spotless room. 20 That he had fought with the elements, and with the monsters of the deep, made him no hero in her eyes. She was not thrilled by his adventures upon drifting floes, and among ice mountains reeling together in perilous madness. The story made Jan’s blood boil, and brought the glistening tears into his big blue eyes; but Margaret’s pulses beat no whit quicker. Christian Groat was only a vulgar whaler to her, and that Jan should bring him to her hearth and table made her angry.
Jan was hurt and humiliated. The visit from which he had hoped so much, was a pain and a failure. He walked back into the town with his friend, and was scarcely able to speak. Margaret also was silent and grieved. She thought Jan had wronged her. She had to make a clean cushion for the chair in which the man had sat. She persisted for days in smelling whale oil above the reek of the peat, above even the salt keenness of the winter air. Her father had never done such a thing; she could not understand Jan’s thoughtlessness about her.
For two days she was silent, and Jan bore it very well, for he, too, was hurt and angry. On the third he spoke to his wife, and little by 21 little the coolness wore away. But an active quarrel and some hard words had perhaps been better, for then there might have followed some gracious tears, and a loving reconciliation. As it was, the evenings wore silently and gloomily away. Margaret sat, mechanically knitting, her beautiful face wearing an expression of injury and resignation that was intolerably annoying to a man of Jan’s temper. But though she said nothing to her husband during these unhappy hours, the devil talked very plainly in her place.