The Jonas Lie Megapack: 14 Classic Novels and Stories Read online

  Such a servant for looking after him and taking care of him he had not believed it possible to get for love or money, cried the general dealer.

  But now his wife could contain herself no longer. She showed him that the clothes were both scorched and burned, and that the whole of one side of the oilskin jacket was crumpled up with heat, and cracked if one pulled it never so lightly.

  And in she dragged the big butter-keg, that he might see for himself how the wench had stuck both his boots in it and used it to grease them with.

  But the general dealer stood there quite dumfoundered, and glanced now at the boots and now at the butter-tub.

  He snapped his fingers, and his face twitched, and then he began to wipe away his tears.

  He hastened to go in that they might not see that he was weeping.

  “Mother does not know how kindly the wench has meant it all,” he sobbed. Good heavens! what if she had used butter for his boots, if she had only meant well. Never would he turn such a lass out of the house.

  Then the wife gave it up altogether, and let the big kitchen wench rule as best she might. And it was not very long either before Toad let the key of the store-room remain in the door from morn till eve. When any one bawled out to her, “Who’s inside there?” she would simply answer, “It’s me!”

  And she didn’t budge from the gingerbread-box, as she sat there and ate, even for Madame herself. But she always had an eye upon her master the general dealer.

  But he only jested with her, and asked her if she got food enough, and said that he was afraid he would, one day, find her starved to death.

  Towards Christmas time, when folks were making ready to go a-fishing, Madame was busy betimes and bustled about as usual, and got the great caldron taken down into the working-room for washing and wool-stamping.

  The cooks hired for the occasion rolled out the lefser,[3] and baked and frizzled on the flat oven-pans. And they brought in herring kegs from the shop, and meal and meat, both cured and fresh, and weighed and measured, and laid in stores of provisions.

  But then it seemed to Toad as if she hadn’t a moment’s peace for prying into pots and pans. Her mistress was going backwards and forwards continually, between store-room and pantry, after meal, or sugar, or butter, or sirup for the lefser. The store-room door was ajar for her all day long.

  So at last Toad grew downright wild. She was determined to put an end to all this racket. So she took it upon her to well smear the threshold of the store-room with green soap.

  Next morning her mistress came bustling along first thing with butter and a wooden ladle in a bowl, and she slipped and fell in the opening between the stairs and the store-house door.

  There she lay till Toad dragged her up.

  She carried her in to her husband with such a crying and yelling that it was heard all over the depôt. Madame had been regularly worrying herself to death with all this bustle, said she, and now the poor soul had fallen and broken her leg.

  But the one who cried the most, and didn’t know what to do with himself when he heard such weeping and wailing over his wife, was the general dealer.

  None knew the real worth of that kitchen wench, said he.

  And so it was Toad who now superintended everything, and both dispensed the stores and made provision for the household.

  She drove all the hired cooks and pancake rollers out of the house—they were only eating her master out of house and home, she said.

  The lefser were laid together without any sirup between them, and she gave out fat instead of butter. She distributed it herself, and packed it up in their Nistebommers.[4]

  Never had the general dealer known the heavy household business disposed of so quickly as it was that year. He was quite astonished.

  And he was really dumfoundered when Toad took him up into the store-room, and showed him how little had been consumed, and how the cured shoulders of mutton and the hams hung down from the rafters in rows and rows.

  “So long as things went on as they were going now,” said he, “she should have the control of the household like mother herself,” for his wife was now bedridden in her room upstairs.

  And at Yule-tide Toad baked and roasted, and cut things down so finely that her fellow-servants were almost driven to chew their wooden spoons and gnaw bones.

  But such fat calves, and such ribs of pork, and such lefser filled with both sirup and butter, and such mölje[5] and splendid fare for the guests that came to his house at Christmas-time the general dealer had never seen before.

  Then the general dealer took her by the arm, and right down into the shop they both went together.

  She might take what she would, said he, both of kirtles and neckerchiefs and other finery, so that she might dress and go in and out as if she were mother herself; and she might provide herself with beads and silk as much as she liked. There was nothing that she might not have.

  But when the bailiff and the sexton sat at cards, and Toad came in to lay the table-cloth, they were like to have rolled off their chairs. Such a sight they had never seen before. Toad had rigged herself up with all manner of parti-coloured ’kerchiefs, and trimmed her hairy poll with blue and yellow and green ribbons till it looked like a cart-horse’s tail. But they said nothing, for the sake of the general dealer, who thought she looked so smart, and was calling her in continually.

  And they were forced to confess that the wench spared neither meat nor ale nor brandy. And on the third evening, when they got so drunk that they lay there like logs, she carried them off to bed as if they were sucking babes.

  And so it went on, with feasting and entertaining, right up to the twentieth day after Christmas Day, and beyond it.

  And that wench Toad used to smirk and stare about the room; and whenever they didn’t laugh or jest enough with her, she would plant herself right in the middle of the floor, and turn herself about in all her finery to attract notice, and say, “It’s me!”

  And when the guests left the house they must needs admit that the general dealer was right when he said that such serving-maids were not to be picked up every day.

  But those folks who went a-fishing for the general dealer, and had their provisions put up for them beforehand, were not slow to mark that Toad had the control of the shop and stores likewise.

  So it happened as might only have been expected. Their provisions ran short, and they had to return home just as the cod was biting best, while all the other fishermen sailed further out and made first-rate hauls.

  The general dealer was like to have had apoplexy on the day that he saw his boats lying empty by the bridge in the height of the fishing season. His men came up in a body to the shop, headed by their eldest foreman, and laid a complaint before him.

  The food that had been packed into their boxes and baskets, they said, couldn’t be called human food at all. The lefser were so hard, they said, that it was munch munch all day; there was only rancid fat on them, with scarcely a glimpse of bacon; and as for the cured shoulders of mutton, one had scarcely shaved off a thin slice when one scraped against the bare bone.

  Up into the store-room went the general dealer like a shot.

  But as for Toad, she smote her hands above her head, and said that it was as much as he, the general dealer, could manage, to meet the heavy expenses for fish-hooks and fish-baskets, and nets and lines, without having to provide his fishermen with salt herring and bacon, and fresh butter and lefser and ground coffee into the bargain. They had no need to starve when they had all the fish of the sea right under their noses, said she.

  And then she handed him, as a specimen, one of his own lefser, which she had filled with butter and sirup herself, and let him taste it. And he tasted it, and ate and ate till the sirup ran down both corners of his mouth. Such good greasy lefser he had never tasted before.


  Then the general dealer gave them a bit of his mind.

  He was as red as a turkey-cock; and out of the shop-door they went head first—some three yards and some four, according as he got a good grip of them; and old Thore, who had steered the big femböring, both for him and his father, was discharged.

  But Kjel, the herdsman, had hid himself out of the way up on the threshing-floor whilst the row was going on, and the general dealer was shrieking and bellowing his worst in the yard below. And he stood there and peeped through the little window. Then he saw his mistress, who hadn’t been out of bed for nine weeks, hobble forward and stare out of her bedroom window.

  She took on terribly, and cried and wrung her thin hands when she saw their old foreman told to go to the devil, and shamble off with his cap in his hand as if he were deranged.

  But she dared not so much as shout a word of comfort after him, for there stood Toad, big and broad, in the store-house door, with a platter of mölje in her hand, and shook her fist after him.

  Then Kjel was like to have wept too.… That stout Toad should not grease herself shiny with mölje fat much longer in their house, or he’d know the reason why, thought Kjel.

  And from thenceforth Kjel kept a strict watch upon her. There were lots of things going on that he couldn’t make out at all.

  Towards spring-time, when they put the mast into the large new yacht which was to take the first trading voyage to Bergen, the general dealer was so glad that he was running up and down from the bridge to the house the whole day. He had never imagined that the yacht would have turned out so fine and stately.

  And when they had the tackle and the shrouds all ready, and were hoisting away at the yards, he spun round on his heel and snapped his fingers—“That lass Toad should go with him to Bergen,” said he.… “She had never seen the town, poor thing! while as for mother, she had been there three times already.”

  But it seemed to Kjel that he saw more in this than other people saw.

  As for Toad, when she heard she was to go to Bergen, she regularly turned the house upside down. There was nothing good enough for her in the whole shop; there was not a shelf that she didn’t ransack to find the finery and frippery that glittered most.

  And in the evening, when the others had lain them down to rest, she strolled over to the storehouse with a light.

  But Kjel, who was a very light sleeper, was up and after her in an instant, and peeped at her through the crack in the door.

  There he saw her cutting up the victuals and putting one tit-bit aside after the other, lefser and sweet-cakes and bacon and collared-beef, into the large chest which she had hidden behind the herring barrels. And on this, the last evening before their departure for Bergen, she had filled her provision-chest so full that she had to sit upon it, with all her huge heavy weight, to press it down.

  But the lock wouldn’t catch; she had filled the chest too full, so she had to get up and stamp backwards on the lid till it regularly thundered; and sure enough she forced it down at last.

  But the heel she stamped down upon it with was much more like the hoof of a horse than the foot of a human being, thought Kjel.

  Then she carried the chest to the waggon that it might be smuggled on board without any one seeing it. After that she went into the stable and unloosed the horse. But then there was a pretty to do in the stable!

  The horse knew that there was witchcraft afoot, and would not allow itself to be inspanned. Toad dragged and dragged, and the horse shied and kicked. At last the wench used her back-legs, just as a mare does.

  Such sport as that no human eye should have ever seen.

  And straight off to the general dealer rushed Kjel, and got him to come out with him.

  There in the moonshine that wench, Toad, and the dun horse were flinging out at each other as if for a wager, so that their hoofs dashed against the framework of the stable-door. Their long legs flew in turn over the stable walls, and the sparks scattered about in showers.

  Then the general dealer grew all of a shiver and staggered about. Blood flew from his nose, and Kjel had to help him into the kitchen and duck his head in the sink. That night the general dealer didn’t go to bed at all; but he walked up and down and stamped till the floor regularly thundered. And it was scarcely light next morning when he sent off Kjel with a dollar in his fist to old Thore the foreman. And he sent in the same way to all the boat people down by the shore.

  Thore was told to put on his holiday clothes and get out the femböring, and row Madame herself to the yacht with the last lading. She should go with him to Bergen. There she should get both a silk dress and a shawl, and a gold watch and chain into the bargain, and engage a Bergen serving-wench.

  It was still early in the day when the yacht lay in the bay with her flag flying, all ready to start.

  When they had hoisted the sail, that wench Toad, heavy and stout, came, puffing and blowing, across the bridge, in full parade, with rings on all her sprawling fingers, and her body covered with all the yellow and green and red ribbons she could possibly find room for on her ample person.

  There she stood waiting for them to come back in the stately femböring and take her on board.

  And when they began to raise the anchor, and the general dealer appeared on deck with his large meerschaum pipe and his telescope, she smirked and minced and wriggled and twisted, and cried aloud, “It’s me!”

  She thought he wanted to peep at her splendour through his spyglass.

  All at once she saw Madame standing by his side in full travelling costume, and understood that they were going away without her.

  Then she kicked out so that the planks of the bridge groaned and creaked beneath her. Eight into the sea she plunged, and caught hold of the anchor, and tugged and held the ship back till the cable broke.

  Then head over heels she went with both her hoofs in the air.

  But the yacht glided away under full sail, and the general dealer stood there and laughed till he nearly fell overboard.

  [1] A giantess, the wife of the mountain gnome, who rules in the Dovrefeld.

  [2] I.e., the general dealer’s wife.

  [3] Thin cakes that can be doubled in two and eaten with sirup.

  [4] Boxes containing provisions for voyages or journeys.

  [5] Flat cakes broken up with butter.

  THE PILOT AND HIS WIFE

  Translated by G.L. Tottenham

  CHAPTER I

  On the stern, pine-clad southern coast of Norway, off the picturesquely-situated town of Arendal, stand planted far out into the sea the white walls of the Great and Little Torungen Lighthouses, each on its bare rock-island of corresponding name, the lesser of which seems, as you sail past, to have only just room for the lighthouse and the attendant’s residence by the side. It is a wild and lonely situation,—the spray, in stormy weather, driving in sheets against the walls, and eagles and sea-birds not unfrequently dashing themselves to death against the thick glass panes at night; while in winter all communication with the land is very often cut off, either by drift or patchy ice, which is impassable either on foot or by boat.

  These, however, and others of the now numerous lights along that dangerous coast, are of comparatively recent erection. Many persons now living can remember the time when for long reaches the only lighting was the gleam of the white breakers themselves. And the captain who had passed the Oxö light off Christiansand might think himself lucky if he sighted the distant Jomfruland up by Kragerö.

  About a score of years before the lighthouse was placed on Little Torungen there was, however, already a house there, if it could be dignified by that name, with its back and one side almost up to the eave of the roof stuck into a heap of stones, so that it had the appearance of bending forward to let the storm sweep over it. The low e
ntrance-door opened to the land, and two small windows looked out upon the sea, and upon the boat, which was usually drawn up in a cleft above the sea-weed outside.

  When you entered, or, more properly speaking, descended into it, there was more room than might have been expected; and it contained sundry articles of furniture, such as a handsome press and sideboard, which no one would have dreamt of finding under such a roof. In one corner there stood an old spinning-wheel covered with dust, and with a smoke-blackened tuft of wool still hanging from its reel; from which, and from other small indications, it might be surmised that there had once been a woman in the house, and that tuft of wool had probably been her last spin.

  There sat now on the bench by the hearth a lonely old man, of a flint-hard and somewhat gloomy countenance, with a mass of white hair falling over his ears and neck, who was generally occupied with some cobbling work, and who from time to time, as he drew out the thread, would make some remark aloud, as if he thought he still had the partner of his life for audience. The look askance over his brass spectacles with which he greeted any casual stranger who might come into the house had very little welcome in it, and an expression about his sunken mouth and sharp chin said plainly enough that the other might state his business at once and be gone. He sought no company; and the only time he had ever been seen at church was when he came rowing over to Tromö with his wife’s body in her coffin. When the pastor sprinkled earth upon it, it was observed that the tears streamed down his cheeks, and it was long after dark before he quitted the churchyard to return. He had become a proverb for obstinacy for miles beyond his own residence; and people who dealt with him for fish in the harbour, if they once began to bargain, were as likely as not to see him without a word just quietly row away.