The Rider on the White Horse Page 5

  A year after that winter holiday Ole Peters had left his position and married Vollina Harders. Hauke had been right: the old man had retired, and instead of his fat daughter his brisk son-in-law was riding the brown mare over the fens and, as people said, on his way back always up the dike. Hauke was head man now, and a younger one in his place. To be sure, the dikemaster at first did not want to let him move up. “It’s better he stays what he is,” he had growled; “I need him here with my books.” But Elke had told him: “Then Hauke will go too, father.” So the old man had been scared, and Hauke had been made head man, although he had nevertheless kept on helping the dikemaster with his administration.

  But after another year he began to talk with Elke about how his own father’s health was failing and told her that the few days in summer that his master allowed him to help on his father’s farm were not enough; the old man was having a hard time, and he could not see that any more. It was on a summer evening; both stood in the twilight under the great ash tree in front of the house door. For a while the girl looked up silently into the boughs of the tree; then she replied: “I didn’t want to say it, Hauke; I thought you would find the right thing to do for yourself.”

  “Then I will have to leave your house,” he said, “and can’t come again.”

  They were silent for a while and looked at the sunset light which vanished behind the dike in the sea.

  “You must know,” she said; “only this morning I went to see your father and found him asleep in his armchair; his drawing pen was in his hand and the drawing board with a half-finished drawing lay before him on the table. And when he had waked up and talked to me with effort for a quarter of an hour, and I wanted to go, then he held me back by the hand so full of fear, as if he were afraid it was for the last time; but—”

  “But what, Elke?” asked Hauke, when she hesitated to go on.

  A few tears ran down the girl’s cheeks. “I was only thinking of my father,” she said; “believe me, it will be hard for him to get on without you.” And then added, as if she had to summon her strength for these words: “It often seems to me as if he too were getting ready for death.”

  Hauke said nothing; it seemed to him suddenly, as if the ring were stirring in his pocket. But even before he had suppressed his indignation over this involuntary impulse, Elke went on: “No, don’t be angry, Hauke; I trust you won’t leave us anyway.”

  Then he eagerly took her hand, and she did not draw it away. For a while the young people stood together in the falling darkness, until their hands slipped apart and each went his way. A gust of wind started and rustled through the leaves of the ash tree and made the shutters rattle on the front of the house; but gradually the night sank down, and quiet lay over the gigantic plain.

  Through Elke’s persuasion, the old dikemaster had relieved Hauke of his services, although he had not given notice at the right time, and two new hired men were in the house. A few months later Tede Haien died; but before he died, he called his son to his bedside: “Sit by me, my child;” said the old man with his faint voice, “close by me! You don’t need to be afraid; he who is near me now is only the dark angel of the Lord who comes to call me.”

  And his son, deeply affected, sat down close by the dark bed fixed to the wall: “Tell me, father, what you still have to say.”

  “Yes, my son, there is still something,” said the old man and stretched out his hands across the quilt. “When, as a half-grown boy, you went to serve the dikemaster, then you had the idea in your head that you wanted to be one yourself some day. That idea I caught from you, and gradually I came to think that you were the right man for it. But your inheritance was too small for such an office. I have lived frugally during your time of service—I planned to increase it,”

  Passionately Hauke seized his father’s hands, and the old man tried to sit up, so that he could see him. “Yes, yes, my son,” he said; “there in the uppermost drawer of the chest is a document. You know old Antje Wohlers has a fen of five and a half acres; but she could not get on with the rent alone in her crippled old age; so I have always round Martinmas given the poor soul a certain sum, or more when I could; and for that she gave her fen over to me; it is all legally settled. Now she too is on her deathbed; the disease of our marshes, cancer, has seized her; you won’t have to pay her any more.”

  For a while he closed his eyes; then he spoke once more: “It isn’t much; but you’ll have more then than you were accustomed to with me. May it serve you well in your life on earth!”

  With his son’s words of thanks in his ears, the old man fell asleep. He had no more cares: and after a few days the dark angel of the Lord had closed his eyes forever, and Hauke received his inheritance.

  The day after the funeral Elke came into his house. “Thanks for looking in, Elke,” Hauke greeted her.

  But she replied: “I’m not looking in; I want to put things in order a little, so that you can live decently in your house. Your father with all his figures and drawings didn’t look round much, and the death too makes confusion. I want to make things a little livable for you.”

  His grey eyes looked full of confidence upon her. “All right, put things in order!” he said; “I like it better that way too.”

  And then she began to clear up: the drawing board, which was still lying there, was dusted and carried up to the attic, drawing pens and pencil and chalk were locked away carefully in a drawer of the chest; then the young servant girl was called in to help and the furniture was put into different and better positions in the room, so that it seemed as if it now had grown lighter and bigger. Smiling, Elke said: “Only we women can do that,” and Hauke in spite of his mourning for his father, had watched her with happy eyes, and, where there was need for it, had helped too.

  And when toward dusk—it was in the beginning of September—everything was just as she wanted it for him, she took his hand and nodded to him with her dark eyes: “Now come and have supper with us; for I had to promise my father to bring you; then when you go home, you can enter your house in peace.”

  Then when they came into the spacious living-room of the dikemaster, where the shutters were already closed and the two candles burning on the table, the latter wanted to rise from his armchair, but his heavy body sank back and he only called to his former man: “That’s right, that’s right, Hauke, that you’ve come to see your old friends. Come nearer, still nearer.” And when Hauke had stepped up to his chair, he took his hand into both of his own: “Now, now, my boy,” he said, “be calm now, for we all must die, and your father was none of the worst. But Elke, now see that the roast gets on to the table; we have to get strength. There’s a great deal of work for us, Hauke! The fall inspection is coming; there’s a pile of dike and sluice bills as high as the house; the damage to the dike of the western enclosure the other day—I don’t know where my head is, but yours, thank God, is a good bit younger; you’re a good boy, Hauke.”

  And after this long speech, with which the old man had laid bare his whole heart, he let himself drop back into his chair and blinked longingly toward the door, through which Elke was just coming in with the roast on the platter. Hauke stood smiling beside him. “Now sit down,” said the dikemaster, “so that we won’t lose time for nothing; that doesn’t taste well cold.”

  And Hauke sat down; it seemed to be taken for granted that he should help to do the work of Elke’s father. And when the fall inspection had come and a few more months of the year were gone, he had indeed done the greatest part of the work.

  The story-teller stopped and looked round. The scream of a gull had knocked against the window, and out in the hall one could hear a stamping of feet, as if someone were taking the clay off his heavy boots.

  The dikemaster and the overseers turned their heads toward the door of the room. “What is it?” called the first.

  A strong man with a southwester on his head had stepped in.

  “Sir,” he said, “we both have seen it—Hans Nickels and I: the rider on t
he white horse has thrown himself into the breach.”

  “Where did you see that?” asked the dikemaster.

  “There is only the one break; in Jansen’s fen, where the Hauke-Haienland begins.”

  “Did you see it only once?”

  “Only once; it was only like a shadow, but that doesn’t mean that this was the first time it happened.”

  The dikemaster had risen. “You must excuse me,” he said, turning to me, “we have to go out and see what this calamity is leading to.” Then he left the room with the messenger; the rest of the company too rose and followed him.

  I stayed alone with the schoolmaster in the large deserted room; through the curtainless windows, which were now no longer covered by the backs of the guests sitting in front of them, one could have a free view and see how the wind was chasing the dark clouds across the sky.

  The old man remained on his seat, with a superior, almost pitying smile on his lips. “It is too empty here now,” he said; “may I invite you to my room? I live in this house; and believe me, I know every kind of weather here by the dike—there is nothing for us to fear.”

  This invitation I accepted with thanks, for I too began to feel chilly, and so we took a light and climbed up the stairs to a room under the gables; there the windows also looked toward the west, but they were covered by woollen rugs. In a bookcase I saw a small library, beside it portraits of two old professors; before a table stood a great high armchair. “Make yourself comfortable,” said my pleasant host and threw some pieces of peat into the still faintly glowing stove, which was crowned by a tin kettle on top. “Only wait a little while! The fire will soon roar; then I’ll mix you a little glass of grog—that’ll keep you awake!”

  “I don’t need that,” I said; “I won’t grow sleepy, when I accompany your Hauke upon his life-journey!”

  “Do you think so?” and he nodded toward me with his keen eyes, after I had been comfortably settled in his armchair.

  Well, where did we leave off? Yes, yes; I know. Well, Hauke had received his inheritance, and as old Antje Wohlers, too, had died of her ailment, his property was increased by her fen. But since the death, or rather, since the last words of his father, something had sprung up within him, the seed of which he had carried in his heart since his boy-hood; he repeated to himself more often than enough that he was the right man for the post if there had to be a new dikemaster. That was it; his father, who had to know, who was the cleverest man in the village, had added his word, like a last gift to his heritage. The fen of the Wohlers woman, for which he had to thank his father too, should be the first stepping-stone to this height. For, to be sure, even with this—a dikemaster had to be able to show more real estate! But his father had got on frugally through his lonely years; and with what he had saved he had made himself owner of new property. This Hauke could do too, and even more; for his father’s strength had already been spent, but he could do the hardest work for years. To be sure, even if he should succeed along this line—on account of the sharp methods he had brought into the administration of his old employer, he had made no friends in the village, and Ole Peters, his old antagonist, had just inherited property and was beginning to be a well-to-do man. A row of faces passed before his inner vision, and they all looked at him with hostile eyes. Then a rage against these people seized him: he stretched out his arms as if he would clutch them, for they wanted to push him from the office for which he alone, of all, was destined. These thoughts did not leave him; they were always there again, and so in his young heart there grew beside honor and love, also ambition and hate. But these two he locked up deep within him; even Elke surmised nothing of them.

  When the new year had come, there was a wedding; the bride was a relative of the Haiens, and Hauke and Elke were both invited. Indeed, at the wedding dinner it happened that, because a nearer relative was absent, they found themselves seated side by side. Their joy about this was betrayed only by a smile that flitted over the face of each. But Elke to-day sat with indifference in the midst of the noise of chattering and the click of the glasses.

  “Is something ailing you?” asked Hauke.

  “Oh, really nothing; only there are too many people here for me.”

  “But you look so sad!”

  She shook her head; then again she said nothing.

  Then something like jealousy rose within him on account of her silence, and secretly, under the overhanging table-cloth, he seized her hand. She did not draw it away, but clasped it, as if full of confidence, round his. Had a feeling of loneliness come over her, as she had to watch the failing body of her father every day? Hauke did not think of asking her this; but his breathing stopped, as he pulled the gold ring from his pocket. “Will you let it stay?” he asked trembling, while he pushed the ring on the ring-finger of the slender hand.

  Opposite them at the table sat the pastor’s wife; she suddenly laid down her fork and turned to her neighbor: “My faith, look at that girl!” she cried; “she is turning deadly pale!”

  But the blood was returning into Elke’s face. “Can you wait, Hauke?” she asked in a low voice.

  Clever Frisian though he was, he nevertheless had to stop and think a few seconds. “For what?” he asked then.

  “You know perfectly well; I don’t need to tell you.”

  “You are right,” he said; “yes, Elke, I can wait—if it’s within a human limit.”

  “Oh, God, I’m afraid, a very near one! Don’t talk like that, Hauke; you are speaking of my father’s death!” She laid her other hand on her breast; “Till then,” she said, “I shall wear the gold ring here; you shan’t be afraid of getting it back in my lifetime!”

  Then both smiled, and their hands pressed each other so tightly that on other occasions the girl would have cried out aloud.

  The pastor’s wife meanwhile had looked incessantly at Elke’s eyes, which were now glowing like dark fire under the lace fringe of her little gold brocade cap. But in the growing noise at the table she had not understood a word; neither did she turn to her partner again, for she was accustomed not to disturb budding marriages—and this seemed to be such a case—if only for the sake of the promise of the wedding-fee for her husband, who did the marrying.

  Elke’s presentiment had come true; one morning after Easter the dikemaster Tede Volkerts had been found dead in his bed. When one looked at his face, one could see written upon it that his end had been calm. In the last months he had often expressed a weariness of life; his favorite roast, even his ducks, wouldn’t please him any more.

  And now there was a great funeral in the village. Up on the high land in the burying-ground round the church there was on the western side a burial-place surrounded by a wrought-iron fence. Upright against a weeping willow stood a broad blue tombstone upon which was hewn the image of death with many teeth in the skeleton jaws; beneath it one could read in large letters:

  “Ah, death all earthly things devours,

  Takes art and knowledge that was ours;

  The mortal man at rest here lies—

  God give, that blesséd he may rise.”

  It was the burial-place of the former dikemaster Volkert Tedsen; now a new grave had been dug in which his son, Tede Volkerts, was to be buried. And now the funeral procession was coming up from the marshes, a multitude of carriages from all parish villages. Upon the first one stood the heavy coffin, and the two shining black horses of the dikemaster’s stable drew it up the sandy hill to the high land; their tails and manes were waving in the sharp spring breeze. The graveyard round the church was filled with people up to the ramparts; even on the walled gate boys were perching with little children in their arms; all wanted to see the burying.

  In the house down in the marshes Elke had prepared the funeral meal in the best parlour and the living-room. Old wine was set on the table in front of the plates; by the plate of the dikemaster general—for he, too, was not missing to-day—and of the pastor there was a bottle of “Langkork” for each. When everything was
ready, she went through the stable in front of the yard door; she met no one on the way, for the hired men were at the funeral with two carriages. Here she stood still and while her mourning clothes were waving in the spring wind, she watched the last carriages down in the village drive up to the church. There after a while a great turmoil appeared, which seemed to be followed by a deadly silence. Elke folded her hands; now they must be letting the coffin into the grave: “And to dust thou shalt return!” Inevitably, in a low voice, as if she could have heard them from up here, she repeated the words. Then her eyes filled with tears, her hands folded across her breast sank into her lap. “Our Father, who art in heaven!” she prayed ardently. And when the Lord’s prayer was finished, she stood a long time motionless—she, now the mistress of this great marsh farm; and thoughts of death and of life began to struggle within her.

  A distant rumbling waked her. When she opened her eyes, she again saw one carriage after another drive rapidly down from the marshes and up to her farm. She straightened herself, looked ahead sharply once more and then went back, as she had come, through the stable into the solemnly ordered living-rooms. Here too there was nobody; only through the wall could she hear the bustle of the maids in the kitchen. The festive board looked so quiet and deserted; the mirror between the windows had been covered with white scarfs, and likewise the brass knobs of the stove; there was nothing bright any more in the room. Elke saw that the doors of the alcove-bed, in which her father had slept his last sleep were open and she went up and closed them fast. Almost absently she read the proverb that was written on them in golden letters between roses and carnations:

  “If thou thy day’s work dost aright,

  Then sleep comes by itself at night.”

  That was from her grandfather! She cast a glance at the sideboard; it was almost empty. But through the glass doors she could still see the cut-glass goblet which her father, as he used to tell with relish, had once won as a prize when riding the ring in his youth. She took it out and set it in front of the dikemaster general’s plate. Then she went to the window, for already she heard the carriages drive up the hill; one after the other they stopped in front of her house, and, more briskly than they had come, the guests leaped from their seats to the ground. Rubbing their hands and chattering, all crowded into the room; it was not long before they sat down at the festive board, where the well-prepared dishes were steaming—in the best parlor the dikemaster general and the pastor. And noise and loud talking ran along the table, as if death had never spread its awful stillness here. Silent, with her eyes upon her guests, Elke walked round the tables with her maids, to see that nothing was missing at the funeral meal. Hauke Haien, too, sat in the living-room with Ole Peters and other small landowners.