“I understand that such things are very trying,” said the sexton. “But between you and your father there has been an uncommonly close bond of sympathy, and you musn’t think it can be so easily severed.”
Then the sexton and Glory Goldie went outside. Katrina followed immediately. She had altered her mind now and wanted to talk to the sexton, but stopped a moment to glance up toward the hill. She had the feeling that Jan would soon be there.
“Are you afraid father will come?” asked Glory Goldie, leaving the sexton and going over to her mother.
“Afraid!” cried Katrina. “I only hope to God he gets here before I’m gone!” Then, summoning all her courage, she went on: “I feel that I have done something wicked for which I shall suffer as long as I live.”
“You think that only because you’ve had to live in gloom and misery so many years,” said Glory Goldie. “You’ll feel differently once we’re away from here. Anyhow, it isn’t likely that father will come when he doesn’t even know we’ve left the house.”
“Don’t be too sure of that!” returned Katrina. “Jan has a way of knowing all that is necessary for him to know. It has been like that with him since the day you left us, and this power of sensing things has increased with the years. When the poor man lost his reason Our Lord gave him a new light to be guided by.”
Then Katrina gave Glory Goldie a brief account of the fate of Lars Gunnarson and of other happenings of more recent date, to prove to her that Jan was clairvoyant, as folks call it. Glory Goldie listened with marked attention. Before Katrina had tried to tell her of Jan’s kindness toward many poor old people, but to that she had not cared to listen. This, on the contrary, seemed to impress the girl so much that Katrina began to hope the daughter’s opinion of Jan would change and that she, too, would turn back.
But Katrina was not allowed to cling to this hope long! In a moment Glory Goldie cried out in a jubilant voice:
“Here’s the boat, mother! So after all it has turned out well for us, and now we’ll soon be off.”
When Katrina saw the boat at the pier her old eyes filled up. She had intended to ask Sexton Blackie to say a good word for Jan and herself to Glory Goldie, but now there was no time. She saw no way of escaping the journey.
The boat was evidently late, for she seemed to be in a great hurry to get away again. There was not even time to put out the gangplank. A couple of hapless passengers who had to come ashore here were almost thrown onto the pier by the sailors. Glory Goldie seized her mother by the arm and dragged her over to the boat, where a man lifted her on board. The old woman wept and wanted to turn back, but no pity was shown her.
The instant Katrina was on deck Glory Goldie put her arm around her, to steady her.
“Come, let’s go over to the other side of the boat,” she said.
But it was too late. Old Katrina had just caught sight of a man running down the hill toward the pier. And she knew who it was, too!
“It’s Jan!” she cried. “Oh, what will he do now!”
Jan did not stop until he reached the very edge of the pier; but there he stood—a frail and pathetic figure. He saw Glory Goldie on the outgoing boat and greater anguish and despair than were depicted on his face could hardly be imagined. But the sight of him was all Katrina needed to give her the strength to defy her daughter.
“You can go if you want to,” she said. “But I shall get off at the next landing and go home again.”
“Do as you like, mother,” sighed Glory Goldie wearily, perceiving that here was something which she could not combat. And perhaps she, too, may have felt that their treatment of the father was outrageous.
No time was granted them for amends. Jan did not want to lose his whole life’s happiness a second time, so with a bound he leaped from the pier into the lake.
Perhaps he intended to swim out to the boat. Or maybe he just felt that he could not endure living any longer.
Loud shrieks went up from the pier. Instantly a boat was sent out, and the little freight steamer lay by and put out her skiff.
But Jan sank at once and never rose to the surface. The imperial stick and the green leather cap lay floating on the waves, but the Emperor himself had disappeared so quietly, so beyond all tracing, that if these souvenirs of him had not remained on top of the water, one would hardly have believed him gone.
Held!
It seemed extraordinary to many that Glory Goldie of Ruffluck should have to stand at the Borg pier day after day, watching for one who never came.
Glory Goldie did not stand there waiting on fine light summer days either! She was on the pier in bleak and stormy November and in dark and cold December. Nor did she have any sweet and solacing dreams about travellers from a far country who would step ashore here in pomp and state. She had eyes and thoughts only for a boat that was being rowed back and forth on the lake, just beyond the pier, dragging for the body of a drowned man.
In the beginning she had thought that the
