"I am a brute, I know it; but you don't know what it is to see the ghosts of sins stirring in a man's soul like maggots in a dead rat. And the children, that is the worst of all. Oh, God! my poor little girls! What will become of them? Oh, oh!"
"But you settled for them!" soothing with her weary voice. "But you settled for them all right!"
"Oh, yes, the money's all right; oh, Lord, yes! I settled, I settled," with the reiteration of drunken gravity, "I settled that. But the mother was a brute, a heartless brute; and she was a lady too, ay, in her own right. And she never asked a word about them, not one word; it was I, I, poor disreputable brute, that put them to nurse, and I loathed her for it. Ah, if you women knew what a hold simple goodness has on us! I met her once, I had one at each hand; I used to go to see them. Oh, they don't know, they don't know, God forbid! and she lay back in her victoria and looked at us, curse her! She has children now, legitimate ones, and my little girls don't know I'm alive. Oh, my poor little girls! They are so pretty! Mind you bury that locket with me; don't open it! Yes, yes, I know; don't think I don't trust you,—only woman I ever trusted in the world. But I'm afraid for them: curse this water in my eyes [sob]; don't you imagine I'm crying, I'm not! It's whiskey, pure, unadulterated [hiccough] whiskey; but I can't help thinking of them. The others, ay, Lord! how many others? I don't care about them, I settled for them; they weren't ladies, they'll get on well enough; but these my pretty little ones, I'm afraid for them, afraid for them! I, who spared no man's daughter, how can I tell if some brute won't hurt mine? Oh, God! oh, God! how can they be good with such a father and such a mother?"
He drinks as he speaks, and pours out in grief and rage a wild torrent of prayers and curses.
"Ay, verily, it's reaping the whirlwind! How the faces crowd round! they always come with the gray morning light,—women's faces, girls' faces, child-girls' faces—oh, damn you! hide me from them! hold me tight and keep them away! put your arms right round me! you are clean, a clean little thing,—they can't come through you."
And she holds the throbbing head in her arms, and hides the wild eyes in her breast, and she feels as if there is a rustle of trailing skirts about her, and waving hair and a feel of women; and then he tears himself out of her clasp, and she falls, bruising herself sorely; and he throws over the table, with a shatter of falling glass, and bounds up the stairs, snatching a riding-whip out of the hall; and he beats its gold head into jagged shreds of glitter on the maids' door, and shouts to them to rise and come down. He'll show them he is master in his own house! He has eaten nothing all day,—no, nor for many days! down at once, or he'll know why, and cook, cook his dinner and light fires,—yes, fires everywhere! What does he pay them for, lazy sluts! what does he keep house for?
And so, man, the master mind of creation, asserts his authority, and the maids troop down, heavy-eyed and stupid with sleep; and bake and roast, and giggle hysterically under their breaths, and tell stories of other masters they have served, and goings on, and grind fresh coffee-beans, and have white bread and lump sugar and cold fowl, for there is no one to say them nay, and the larders are full of good things; and only the pale little mistress knows how near the grand place is drawing to bankruptcy.
Morning came, and the table was decked and the dinner served, and taken out again untasted; and another storm simmered all through the sunny forenoon, to burst like a hurricane over the house at noon.
The kitchen is empty and the fire has gone out; a wreck of crockery shows where the storm raged worst. The girls flew before the thunder of voice and flash of whip; the Swedish gardener left his birthright of song untouched, and followed them: he is skylarking with them now up in the great loft; they have pulled up the ladder, and are pelting one another with last year's hay. The cow-girl, a wench from Hittedal, lured the cattle and goats and long-legged heifer calves deeper into the woods with her quaint Lokke song, calling,—
"Come, sweet breath, come cowslip, come rich milk,