“Why,” he asked Jan, “do you stay beside a sulky woman, when there are all your old companions at Ragon Torr’s? There, also, is the song and the tale, and the glass of good fellowship. And who would be so heartily welcome as Jan Vedder?”
Jan knew all this well. But as he did not care to make his wife unhappy, he determined to deceive her. It was snowing, and likely to snow; Margaret would not come down to the store in such weather. So he said to her, “Michael Snorro hath a fever. He can not work. That is a bad business, for it is only I that can fill his place. The work will keep me 22 late, wait not for me.” To himself he said: “To leave her alone a few nights, that will be a good thing; when I stay next at my own hearth, she may have something to say to me.”
Margaret’s nature was absolutely truthful. She never doubted Jan’s words. In that love of self which was a miserable omnipresence with her, she was angry with Snorro for being sick and thus interfering in her domestic life, but she fully believed her husband’s statement.
Jan spent two evenings at Ragon Torr’s, but on the third morning his conscience smote him a little. He looked at Margaret, and wished she would ask, “Wilt thou come home early to-night?” He would gladly have answered her, “I will come at whatever hour thou desirest.” But, unfortunately, Margaret was at that moment counting her eggs, and there were at least two missing. She was a woman who delighted in small economies; she felt that she was either being wronged by her servant, or that her fowls were laying in strange nests. At that moment it was a subject of great importance to her; and she never noticed the eager, longing look in Jan’s eyes.
When he said at last. “Good-by to thee, Margaret;” 23 she looked up from her basket of eggs half reproachfully at him. She felt that Jan might have taken more interest in her loss. She had not yet divined that these small savings of hers were a source of anger and heart-burning to him. He knew well that the price of her endless knitting, her gathered eggs, wool, and swans’ down, all went to her private account in Lerwick Bank. For she had been saving money since she was a child six years old, and neither father, mother, nor husband knew how much she had saved. That was a thing Margaret kept absolutely to herself and the little brown book which was in her locked drawer. There had been times when Jan could have opened it had he desired; but he had been too hurt and too proud to do so. If his wife could not voluntarily trust him, he would not solicit her confidence. And it had never struck Margaret that the little book was a hidden rock, on which every thing might yet be wrecked. It was there, though the tide of daily life flowed over it, and though it was never spoken of.
All that day Jan was sulky and obstinate, and Peter came near quarreling with him more than once. But Peter thought he knew what 24 was the matter, and he smiled grimly to himself as he remembered Margaret’s power of resistance. Perhaps a fellow-feeling made him unusually patient, for he remembered that Thora had not been brought to a state of perfect obedience until she had given him many a day of active discomfort. He watched Jan curiously and not without sympathy, for the training of wives is a subject of interest even to those who feel themselves to have been quite successful.
During the first hours of the day Jan was uncertain what to do. A trifle would have turned him either way, and in the afternoon the trifle came. A boat arrived from Kirkwall, and two of her crew were far-off cousins. The men were in almost as bad condition as Christian Groat. He would not risk soiling Margaret’s chair-cushions again, so he invited them to meet him at Ragon Torr’s. As it happened Margaret had an unhappy day; many little things went wrong with her. She longed for sympathy, and began to wish that Jan would come home; indeed she was half inclined to go to the store, and ask him if he could not.
She opened the door and looked out. It was still snowing a little, as it had been for a month. But snow does not lie in Shetland, and the winters, though dreary and moist, are not too cold for the daisy to bloom every where at Christmas, and for the rye grass to have eight or ten inches of green blade. There was a young moon, too, and the Aurora, in a phalanx of rosy spears, was charging upward to the zenith. It was not at all an unpleasant night, and, with her cloak and hood of blue flannel, a walk to the store would be easy and invigorating.
As she stood undecided and unhappy, she saw a man approaching the house. She could not fail to recognize the large, shambling figure. It was Michael Snorro. A blow from his mighty hand could hardly have stunned her more. She shut the door, and sat down sick at heart. For it was evident that Snorro was not ill, and that Jan had deceived her. Snorro, too, seemed to hesitate and waver in his intentions. He walked past the house several times, and then he went to the kitchen door.