“But thou, mother, wilt ask Margaret to come out here and speak to me? Yes, thou 79 wilt do that,” and he eagerly pressed in Thora’s hand the little present he had brought. “Give her this, and tell her I wait here for her.”
After ten minutes’ delay, Thora returned and gave him the trinket back. Margaret wanted her £600 and not a gold locket, and Jan had not even sent her a message about it. His return had brought back the memory of her loss in all its first vividness. She had had a dim hope that Jan would bring her money with him, that he had only taken it to frighten her; to lose this hope was to live over again her first keen sorrow. In this mood it was easy for her to say that she would not see him, or speak to him, or accept his gift; let him give her back her £600, that was the whole burden of her answer.
Jan put the unfortunate peace-offering in his pocket, and walked away without a word. “He will trouble thee no more, Margaret,” said Thora, quietly. Margaret fancied there was a tone of reproach or regret in the voice. It angered her anew, and she answered, “It is well; it were better if he had never come at all.” But in her heart she expected Jan to come, and come again, until she pardoned him. 80 She had no intention of finally casting him off. She meant that he should suffer sufficiently to insure his future good behavior. She had to suffer with him, and she regarded this as the hardest and most unjust part of the discipline. She, who had always done her duty in all things.
It is true she had permitted her father to dismantle their home, but she had had a distinct reason for that, and one which she intended to have told Jan, had he come back under circumstances to warrant the confidence. In fact she had begun to dislike the house very much. It was too small, too far away from her mother, and from the town; besides which, Peter had the very house she longed for vacant, and she hoped so to manage her father, as to make the exchange she wished. Perhaps, too, she was a little bit superstitious. No one had ever been lucky in the house in which she and Jan had lived. She sometimes felt angry at her father for thrusting it upon them. Even Elga Skade’s love affairs had all gone wrong there, and the girl was sure some malicious sprite had power within its walls to meddle and make trouble. Elga had left her, influenced 81 entirely by this superstition, and Margaret had brooded upon it, until it had obtained some influence over her; otherwise, she would not have permitted her father to dismantle the unhappy home without a protest.
As it was, with all its faults she was beginning to miss the independence it gave her. No married woman ever goes back to the best of homes, and takes the place of her maidenhood. Her new servant, Trolla Bork, had warned her often of this. “When Bork was drowned,” she said, “I went back to my parents, but I did not go back to my home. No, indeed! There is a difference, even where there is no unkindness. Thy own home is a full cup. Weep, if thou must weep, at thy own fireside.”
After Margaret’s refusal to see Jan, he went back to his boat, and employed himself all day about her cargo, and in settling accounts with Tulloch. It was very late when he went to see Snorro. But Snorro was waiting for him. Now that things had come to a crisis he was ready to hear all Jan’s complaints; he believed him in all things to have done right.
“Thou hast asked her once, Jan,” he said; “that was well and right. Thou shalt not go 82 again. No, indeed! Let her come and tell thee she is sorry. Then thou can show her a man’s heart, and forgive her freely, without yea or nay in the matter. What right had she to pull thy house to pieces without thy knowledge? Come, now, and I will show thee the place I have made for thee when thou art in Lerwick.”
There was a big loft over Peter’s store, with a narrow ladder-like stair to it. It was full of the lumber of thirty years and tenanted by a colony of Norway rats, who were on the most familiar terms with Snorro. Many of them answered to their names, none were afraid to eat from his hand; one old shrewd fellow, gray with age, often crept into Snorro’s bosom, and in the warmth, lay hour after hour, watching with wise, weird eyes the quiet face it trusted as it bent over a book.
There was a corner in this garret with a window looking seaward, and here Snorro had cleared a small space, and boarded it up like a room. A bed of down and feathers, with a cover of seal-skins occupied one side; two rude seats, a big goods-box turned up for a table, and some shelves full of the books Jan had brought him, completed its furniture.