Chapter VI
The captain had kept the cover of his old large meerschaum pipe polished with chalk for three days, without being willing to take it down from the shelf; he had trimmed and put in new mouthpieces, and held a feast of purification on the remainder, as well as on all the contents of the tobacco table, the ash receiver, the tobacco stems, and lava-like scrapings from the pipe. He had let the sexton do his best at tuning the clavichord, and put two seats, painted white, on the stoop. The constantly neglected lattice-work around the garden now glistened here and there with fresh white palings, like single new teeth which are stuck between a whole row of old gray ones. The walks in the garden must be swept and garnished, the yard was cleaned up, and, finally, the cover put on the well, which was to have been done all the years when the children were small.
It was the captain who, in an almost vociferous good humor, was zealously on the move everywhere.
Sometimes he took a kind of rest and stood puffing on the steps or in the window of the large room which looked down toward the country highway; or in the shades of the evening he took a little turn down to the gate and sat there on the stone fence with his pipe. If any one passed by going south, he would say, "Are you going to the store to buy a plug of tobacco, Lars? If you meet a fine young lady in a cariole, greet her from the captain at Gilje; it is my daughter who is coming from the city."
If the person was some poor old crone of the other sex, to her astonishment a copper coin fell down on the road before her: "There, Kari; there, Siri: you may want something to order a crutch carriage with."
A surprise which was so much the greater as the captain at other times cherished a genuine liking for flaying old beggar women. The whole stock of tempestuous oaths and of abusive words coined in the inspiration of the moment, which was in his blood from the drill-ground and military life, must now and then have an outbreak. The old women who went on crutches were long accustomed to this treatment, and knew what to expect when they were going away from the house, after having first got a good load in their bags in the kitchen. It was like a tattoo about their ears, accompanied by Pasop's wild barking.
But in these days, while he was going about in joyful expectation and awaiting his daughter's return home, he was what made him a popular man both in the district and among his men, straightforward and sportive, something of the old gay Peter Jäger.
The captain had just been in again in the afternoon and tried the concert pitch on the clavichord, which was constantly lowering, and compared his deep bass with its almost soundless rumbling G, when Jörgen thought he saw, through the window, a movable spot on one of the light bits of the highway, which was visible even on the other side of the lake.