The Rider on the White Horse Read online

  “Don’t you believe that they looked like people!” she cried; “no, like sea devils! Heads as big as this,” and she touched together the tips of her outspread and outstretched hands, “coal-black and shiny, like newly baked bread! And the crabs had nibbled them, and the children screamed when they saw them.” For old Haien this was nothing new.

  “I suppose they have floated in the water since November!” he said indifferently.

  Hauke stood by in silence, but as soon as he could, he sneaked out on the dike; nobody knew whether he wanted to look for more dead, or if he was drawn to the places now deserted by the horror that still clung to them. He ran on and on, until he stood alone in the solitary waste, where only the winds blew over the dike where there was nothing but the wailing voices of the great birds that shot by swiftly. To his left was the wide empty marshland, on the other side the endless beach with its sand flats now glistening with ice; it seemed as if the whole world lay in a white death.

  Hauke remained standing on the dike, and his sharp eyes gazed far away. There was no sign of the dead; but when the invisible streams on the sand flats found their way beneath the ice, it rose and sank in streamlike lines.

  He ran home, but on one of the next nights he was out there again. In places the ice had now split; smoke-clouds seemed to rise out of the cracks, and over the whole sand-stretch a net of steam and mist seemed to be spun, which at evening mingled strangely with the twilight. Hauke stared at it with fixed eyes, for in the mist dark figures were walking up and down that seemed to him as big as human beings. Far off he saw them promenade back and forth by the steaming fissures, dignified, but with strange, frightening gestures, with long necks and noses. All at once, they began to jump up and down like fools, uncannily, the big ones over the little ones, the little ones over the big ones—then they spread out and lost all shape.

  “What do they want? Are they ghosts of the drowned?” thought Hauke. “Hallo!” he screamed out aloud into the night; but they did not heed his cry and kept on with their strange antics.

  Then the terrible Norwegian sea spectres came to his mind, that an old captain had once told him about, who bore stubby bunches of sea grass on their necks instead of heads. He did not run away, however, but dug the heels of his boots faster into the clay of the dike and rigidly watched the farcical riot that was kept up before his eyes in the falling dusk. “Are you here in our parts too?” he said in a hard voice. “You shall not chase me away!”

  Not until darkness covered all things did he walk home with stiff, slow steps. But behind him he seemed to hear the rustling of wings and resounding screams. He did not look round, neither did he walk faster, and it was late when he came home. Yet he is said to have told neither his father nor anyone else about it. But many years after he took his feeble-minded little girl, with whom the Lord later had burdened him, out on the dike with him at the same time of day and year, and the same riot is said to have appeared then out on the sand flats. But he told her not to be afraid, that these things were only the herons and crows, that seemed so big and horrible, and that they were getting fish out of the open cracks.

  God knows, the schoolmaster interrupted himself, there are all sorts of things on earth that could confuse a Christian heart, but Hauke was neither a fool nor a blockhead.

  As I made no response, he wanted to go on. But among the other guests, who till now had listened without making a sound, only filling the low room more and more thickly with tobacco smoke, there arose a sudden stir. First one, then another, then all turned toward the window. Outside, as one could see through the uncurtained glass, the storm was driving the clouds, and light and dark were chasing one another; but it seemed to me too as if I had seen the haggard rider whiz by on his white horse.

  “Wait a little, schoolmaster,” said the dikemaster in a low voice.

  “You don’t need to be afraid, dikemaster,” laughed the little narrator. “I have not slandered him and have no reason to do so”—and he looked up at him with his small clever eyes.

  “All right,” said the other. “Let your glass be filled again!” And when that had been done and the listeners, most of them with rather anxious faces, had turned to him again, he went on with his story:

  Living thus by himself and liking best to associate only with sand and water and with scenes of solitude, Hauke grew into a long lean fellow. It was a year after his confirmation that his life was suddenly changed, and this came about through the old white Angora cat which old Trin Jans’s son, who later perished at sea, had brought her on his return from a voyage to Spain. Trin lived a good way out on the dike in a little hut, and when the old woman did her chores in the house, this monster of a cat used to sit in front of the house door and blink into the summer day and at the peewits that flew past. When Hauke went by, the cat mewed at him and Hauke nodded; both knew how each felt toward the other.

  Now it was spring and Hauke, as he was accustomed to do, often lay out on the dike, already farther out near the water, between beach pinks and the fragrant sea-wormwood, and let the strong sun shine on him. He had gathered his pockets full of pebbles up on the higher land the day before, and when at low tide the sand flats were laid bare and the little gay strand snipes whisked across them screaming, he quickly pulled out a stone and threw it after the birds. He had practiced this from earliest childhood on, and usually one of the birds remained lying on the ground; but often it was impossible to get at it. Hauke had sometimes thought of taking the cat with him and training him as a retriever. But there were hard places here and there on the sand; in that case he ran and got his prey himself. On his way back, if the cat was still sitting in front of the house door, the animal would utter piercing cries of uncontrollable greed until Hauke threw him one of the birds he had killed.

  To-day when he walked home, carrying his jacket on his shoulder, he was taking home only one unknown bird, but that seemed to have wings of gay silk and metal; and the cat mewed as usual when he saw him coming. But this time Hauke did not want to give up his prey—it may have been an ice bird—and he paid no attention to the greed of the animal. “Wait your turn!” he called to him. “To-day for me, to-morrow for you; this is no food for a cat!”

  As the cat came carefully sneaking along, Hauke stood and looked at it: the bird was hanging from his hand, and the cat stood still with its paw raised. But it seemed that the young man did not know his cat friend too well, for, while he had turned his back on it and was just going on his way, he felt that with a sudden jerk his booty was torn from him, and at the same time a sharp claw cut into his flesh. A rage like that of a beast of prey shot into the young man’s blood; wildly he stretched out his arm and in a flash had clutched the robber by his neck. With his fist he held the powerful animal high up and choked it until its eyes bulged out among its rough hairs, not heeding that the strong hind paws were tearing his flesh. “Hello!” he shouted, and clutched him still more tightly; “let’s see which of us two can stand it the longest!”

  Suddenly the hind legs of the big cat fell languidly down, and Hauke walked back a few steps and threw it against the hut of the old woman. As it did not stir, he turned round and continued his way home.

  But the Angora cat was the only treasure of her mistress; he was her companion and the only thing that her son, the sailor, had left her after he had met with sudden death here on the coast when he had wanted to help his mother by fishing in the storm. Hauke had scarcely walked on a hundred steps, while he caught the blood from his wounds on a cloth, when he heard a shrill howling and screaming from the hut. He turned round and, in front of it, saw the old woman lying on the ground; her grey hair was flying in the wind round her red head scarf.

  “Dead!” she cried; “dead!” and raised her lean arm threateningly against him: “A curse on you! You have killed her, you good for nothing vagabond; you weren’t good enough to brush her tail!” She threw herself upon the animal and with her apron she tenderly wiped off the blood that was still running from its nose and mo
uth; then she began her screaming again.

  “When will you be done?” Hauke cried to her. “Then let me tell you, I’ll get you a cat that will be satisfied with the blood of mice and rats!”

  Then he went on his way, apparently no longer concerned with anything. But the dead cat must have caused some confusion in his head, for when he came to the village, he passed by his father’s house and the others and walked on a good distance toward the south on the dike toward the city.

  Meanwhile Trin Jans, too, wandered on the dike in the same direction. In her arms she bore a burden wrapped in an old blue checkered pillowcase, and clasped it carefully as if it were a child; her grey hair fluttered in the light spring wind. “What are you lugging there, Trina?” asked a peasant who met her. “More than your house and farm,” replied the old woman, and walked on eagerly. When she came near the house of old Haien, which lay below, she walked down to the houses along the “akt,” as we call the cattle and foot paths that lead slantingly up and down the side of the dike.

  Old Tede Haien was just standing in front of his door, looking at the weather. “Well, Trin!” he said, when she stood panting in front of him and dug her crutch into the ground, “What are you bringing us in your bag?”

  “First let me into the room, Tede Haien! Then you shall see!” and her eyes looked at him with a strange gleam.

  “Well, come along!” said the old man. What did he care about the eyes of the stupid woman!

  When both had entered, she went on: “Take that old tobacco box and those writing things from the table. What do you always have to write for, anyway? All right; and now wipe it clean!”

  And the old man, who was almost growing curious, did everything just as she said. Then she took the blue pillow-case at both ends and emptied the carcass of the big cat out on the table. “There she is!” she cried; “your Hauke has killed her!” Thereupon she began to cry bitterly; she stroked the thick fur of the dead animal, laid its paws together, bent her long nose over its head and whispered incomprehensible words of tenderness into its ears.

  Tede Haien watched this. “Is that so,” he said; “Hauke has killed her?”

  He did not know what to do with the howling woman.

  She nodded at him grimly. “Yes, yes, God knows, that’s what he has done,” and she wiped the tears from her eyes with her hand, crippled by rheumatism. “No child, no live thing any more!” she complained. “And you know yourself how it is after All Saints’ Day, when we old people feel our legs shiver at night in bed, and instead of sleeping we hear the northwest wind rattle against the shutters. I don’t like to hear it. Tede Haien, it comes from where my boy sank to death in the quicksand!”

  Tede Haien nodded, and the old woman stroked the fur of her dead cat. “But this one here,” she began again, “when I would sit by my spinning-wheel, there she would sit with me and spin too and look at me with her green eyes! And when I grew cold and crept into my bed—then it wasn’t long before she jumped up to me and lay down on my chilly legs, and we both slept as warmly together as if I still had my young sweetheart in bed!”

  The old woman, as if she were waiting for his assent to this remembrance, looked with her gleaming eyes at the old man standing beside her at the table. Tede Haien, however, said thoughtfully: “I know a way out for you, Trin Jans,” and he went to his strong box and took a silver coin out of the drawer. “You say that Hauke has robbed your animal of life, and I know you don’t lie; but here is a crown piece from the time of Christian IV; go and buy a tanned lamb-skin with it for your cold legs! And when our cat has kittens, you may pick out the biggest of them; both together, I suppose, will make up for an Angora cat feeble from old age! Take your beast and, if you want to, take it to the tanner in town, but keep your mouth shut and don’t tell that it has lain on my honest table.”

  During this speech the woman had already snatched the crown and stowed it away in a little bag that she carried under her skirts, then she tucked the cat back into the pillowcase, wiped the bloodstains from the table with her apron, and stalked out of the door. “Don’t you forget the young cat!” she called back.

  After a while, when old Haien was walking up and down in the narrow little room, Hauke stepped in and tossed his bright bird on to the table. But when he saw the still recognizable bloodstain on the clean white top, he asked as if by the way: “What’s that?”

  His father stood still. “That’s blood that you have spilled!”

  The young man flushed hotly. “Why, has Trin Jans been here with her cat?”

  The old man nodded: “Why did you kill it?”

  Hauke uncovered his bleeding arm. “That’s why,” he said. “She had torn my bird away from me!”

  Thereupon the old man said nothing. For a time he began to walk up and down, then he stood still in front of the young man and looked at him for a while almost absently.

  “This affair with the cat I have made all right,” he said, “but look, Hauke, this place is too small; two people can’t stay on it—it is time you got a job!”

  “Yes, father,” replied Hauke; “I have been thinking something of the sort myself.”

  “Why?” asked the old man.

  “Well, one gets wild inside unless one can let it out on a decent piece of work!”

  “Is that so?” said the old man, “and that’s why you have killed the Angora cat? That might easily lead to something worse!”

  “You may be right, father, but the dikemaster has discharged his farmhand; I could do that work all right!”

  The old man began to walk up and down, and meanwhile spat out the black tobacco. “The dikemaster is a blockhead, as stupid as a goose! He is dikemaster only because his father and grandfather have been the same, and on account of his twenty-nine fens. Round Martinmas, when the dike and sluice bills have to be settled, then he feeds the schoolmaster on roast goose and mead and wheat buns, and sits by and nods while the other man runs down the columns of figures with his pen, and says: ‘Yes, yes, schoolmaster, God reward you! How finely you calculate!’ But when the schoolmaster can’t or won’t, then he has to go at it himself and sits scribbling and striking out again, his big stupid head growing red and hot, his eyes bulging out like glass balls, as if his little bit of sense wanted to get out that way.”

  The young man stood up straight in front of his father and marveled at his talking; he had never heard him speak like that. “Yes, God knows,” he said, “no doubt he is stupid, but his daughter Elke, she can calculate!”

  The old man looked at him sharply.

  “Hallo, Hauke,” he exclaimed “what do you know about Elke Volkerts?”

  “Nothing, father; only the schoolmaster has told me?”

  The old man made no reply; he only pushed his piece of tobacco thoughtfully from one cheek into the other. “And you think,” he said, “that you can help in the counting there too.”

  “Oh, yes, father, that would work all right,” the son replied, and there was a serious twitching about his mouth.

  The old man shook his head: “Well, go if you like; go and try your luck!”

  “Thanks, father!” said Hauke, and climbed up to his sleeping place in the garret. There he sat down on the edge of the bed and pondered why his father had shouted at him so when he had mentioned Elke Volkerts. To be sure, he knew the slender, eighteen-year-old girl with the tanned, narrow face and the dark eyebrows that ran into each other over the stubborn eyes and the slender nose; but he had scarcely spoken a word to her. Now, if he should go to old Tede Volkerts, he would look at her more and see what there was about the girl. Right off he wanted to go, so that no one else could snatch the position away from him—it was now scarcely evening. And so he put on his Sunday coat and his best boots and started out in good spirits.

  The long rambling house of the dikemaster was visible from afar because of the high mound on which it stood, and especially because of the highest tree in the village, a mighty ash. The grandfather of the present dikemaster, the first of the
line, had in his youth planted an ash to the east of the house door; but the first two had died, and so he had planted a third on his wedding morning, which was still murmuring as if of old times in the increasing wind with its crown of foliage that was growing mightier and mightier.

  When, after a while, tall, lank Hauke climbed up the hill which was planted on both sides with beets and cabbage, he saw the daughter of the owner standing beside the low house door. One of her somewhat thin arms was hanging down languidly, the other seemed to be grasping behind her back at one of the iron rings which were fastened to the wall on either side of the door, so that anyone who rode to the house could use them to hitch his horse. From there the young girl seemed to be gazing over the dike at the sea, where on this calm evening the sun was just sinking into the water and at the same time gilding the dark-skinned maiden with its last golden glow.

  Hauke climbed up the hill a little more slowly, and thought to himself: “She doesn’t look so dull this way!” Then he was at the top. “Good evening to you!” he said, stepping up to her. “What are you looking at with your big eyes, Miss Elke?”

  “I’m looking,” she replied, “at something that goes on here every night, but can’t be seen here every night.” She let the ring drop from her hand, so that it fell against the wall with a clang. “What do you want, Hauke Haien?” she asked.

  “Something that I hope you don’t mind,” he said. “Your father has just discharged his hired man; so I thought I would take a job with you.”

  She glanced at him, up and down: “You are still rather lanky, Hauke!” she said, “but two steady eyes serve us better than two steady arms!” At the same time she looked at him almost sombrely, but Hauke bravely withstood her gaze. “Come on, then,” she continued. “The master is in his room; let’s go inside.”

  The next day Tede Haien stepped with his son into the spacious room of the dikemaster. The walls were covered with glazed tiles on which the visitor could enjoy her a ship with sails unfurled or an angler on the shore, there a cow that lay chewing in front of a peasant’s house. This durable wall-covering was interrupted by an alcove-bed with doors now closed, and a cupboard which showed all kinds of china and silver dishes through glass doors. Beside the door to the “best room” a Dutch clock was set into the wall behind a pane of glass.