The instant this man entered it became as still in the hut as on a winter night in the forest, and everyone’s eyes save Jan’s alone turned toward him. Jan did not stir, although Katrina whispered to him that Senator Carl Carlson of Storvik had just come in.
The senator held in his hand a roll of papers and everyone took for granted that he had been sent here by the new owner of Falla, to notify the Ruffluck folk of what must befall them, now that they could not meet Lars Gunnarson’s claim.
Carl Carlson wore his usual magisterial mien and no one could guess how heavily the blow he had come to deal would fall. He went up and shook hands, first with Katrina, then with the others, and each one in turn rose as he came to them; the only one who did not rise was Jan.
“I am not very well acquainted in this district,” said the senator, “but I gather that this must be the place in the Ashdales that is called Ruffluck Croft.”
It was of course. Everyone nodded in the affirmative, but no one was able to utter an audible word. They wondered that Katrina had the presence of mind to nudge Börje, and make him get up and give his chair to the senator.
After drawing the chair up to the table the senator laid the roll of papers down, then he took out his snuff box and placed it beside the papers, whereupon he removed his spectacles from their case and wiped them with his big blue-and-white checkered handkerchief. After these preliminaries he glanced round the room, looking from one person to the other. Those who sat there were persons of such little importance he did not even know them by name.
“I wish to speak with Jan Anderson of Ruffluck,” he said.
“That’s him over there,” volunteered the seine-maker, pointing at the bed.
“Is he sick?” inquired the senator.
“Oh, no! Oh, no!” replied half a dozen at the same time.
“And he isn’t drunk, either,” added Börje.
“Nor is he asleep,” said the seine-maker.
“He has walked so far today he’s all tired out,” said Katrina, thinking it best to explain the matter in that way. At the same time she bent down over her husband and tried to persuade him to rise.
But Jan lay still.
“Does he understand what I’m saying?” asked the senator.
“Yes indeed,” they all assured him.
“Perhaps he’s not expecting any glad tidings, seeing it’s Senator Carl Carlson who is paying him a call.” This from the seine-maker.
The senator turned his head and stared at the seine-maker. “Ol’ Bengtsa of Lusterby has not always been so afraid of meeting Carl Carlson of Storvik,” he observed in a mild voice. Turning toward the table again, he took up a letter.
Everyone was dumbfounded. The senator had actually spoken in a friendly tone. He could almost be said to have smiled.
“The fact is,” he began, “a couple of days ago I received a communication from a person who calls herself Glory Goldie Sunnycastle, daughter of Jan of Ruffluck, in which she says she left home some months ago to try to earn two-hundred rix-dollars, which sum her parents have to pay to Lars Gunnarson of Falla on the first day of October in order to obtain full rights of ownership to the land on which their hut stands.”
Here the senator paused a moment so that his hearers would be able to follow him.
“And now she sends the money to me,” he continued, “with the request that I come down to the Ashdales and see that this matter is properly settled with the new owner of Falla; so that he won’t be able to play any new trick later on.”
“That girl has got some sense in her head,” the senator remarked as he folded the letter. “She turns to me from the start. If all did as she has done there would be less cheating and injustice in this parish.”
Before the close of that remark Jan was sitting on the edge of the bed. “But the girl? Where is she?” he asked.
“And now I’d like to know,” the senator proceeded, taking no notice of Jan’s question, “whether the parents are in accord with the daughter and authorize me to close—”
“But the girl, the girl?” Jan struck in. “Where is she?”
“Where she is?” said the senator, looking in the letter to see. “She says it was impossible for her to earn all this money in just two or three months, but she has found a place with a kind lady, who advanced her the money, and now she will have to stay with the lady until she has made it good.”
“Then she’s not coming home?” Jan asked.
“No, not for the present, as I understand it,” replied the senator.
Again Jan lay down on the bed and turned his face to the wall.
What did he care for the hut and all that? What was the good of his going on living, when his little girl was not coming back?
The Dream Begins
The first few weeks after the senator’s call Jan was unable to do a stroke of work: he just lay abed and grieved. Every morning he rose and put on his clothes, intending to go to his work; but before he was outside the door he felt so weak and weary that all he could do was to go back to bed.
Katrina tried to be patient with Jan, for she understood that pining, like any other sickness, had to run its course. Yet she could not help wondering how long it would be before Jan’s intense yearning for Glory Goldie subsided. “Perhaps he’ll be lying round like this till Christmas!” she thought. “Or possibly the whole winter?”
And this might
