Frü Dagmar's son

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UNITED STATES OF AMERICA.

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Chapter I. Uncle Kars And The Kat

41 The tempest crackles on the leads ,

And, singing spins from brand and mail ;

But o'er the dark a glory spreads And gilds the driving hail.

I leave the plain , I climb the height;

But blessed forms in whistling storms Fly o'er waste fens and windy fields .”

A March evening and cold. Sleet beginning to fall in the streets of Praesto, a little Danish village on the Island of Zeeland. There were four or five street lamps in Praesto, and the dull yellow gleam of one limned certain small concentric zones of light on the muddy sidewalk before Herr Abts shop. Two candles dimly burning on Herr Abt’s counter revealed the interior of the shop, but refused to send more than an uncertain straggling ray through the

Fru Dagniars Son.

coarse thick window glass. With his arms about the lamp-post, and “ bowing ” upon it with all his weight, as Samson in the House of Dagon, was a boy of thirteen. Clad in homespun, with no over-garment suited to the keenness of the weather, his yellow curls cropping from under a small home-made cap, giving way to hearty grief, and clinging, for want of a living sympathizing person, to the weather-beaten lamp-post, at his feet a pitiful little bundle tied in a red kerchief, Lars Waldsen was met and overwhelmed by the sorrows of orphanage and exile. A heavy portion that for a boy of thirteen, my masters ! But this is a world where the majority are not coddled upon rose-leaves for any great length of time.

Around the corner of the nearest cross-street came a stalwart young Dane, crashing along in wooden sabots over the small stones in the footpath ; his full tawny beard blowing in the raw wind, his arms folded over his chest to help keep himself warm. The big chest had a very big heart in it, and this descendant of the Vikings stopped short at sight of the boy. With one large hand he lifted the bowed head, with not unkindly force, and then cried out — “ Why, it’s never Lars Waldsen ! crying here in the street ! ” Then, as his toe touched the bundle

Uncle Kars and the Kat .

in the kerchief — “ Lars ! Lars, what has happened to Frii Dagmar ? ”

“ She's dead,” sobbed Lars, “ dead and buried ! >7

“Dead” — said the Viking, with a sudden choke in his voice. “ Dead — and why are you out here in the night, Lars ? Where are you going ? ”

“ I’m going to Korsor with my Uncle Kars Barbe. He is in the shop here. I wait for him.”

“ A nice uncle he must be/’ stormed the Viking, “ to take you out on such a night without a cape coat ; no wonder you are crying with cold/

“ I'm not crying with cold,” retorted Lars indignantly. “ I can stand cold as well as any man ; but my uncle has sold all our things ! He sold the little house and all that was in it ; he sold the wheel by which my mother always sat singing as she spun ; he sold the hand-loom where she wove the cloth for our clothes ; he sold all her dresses and other things ; nothing is left but this one silk kerchief which Frii Lisbet bought and gave to me” — and Lars opened the breast of his jacket, and showed, lying on his bosom, a purple silk kerchief, that his mother had been wont to wear on her neck on Sundays.

io Frii Dagmars Son .

“ And who gave him leave to sell all your things ?• ”

“ The Hofmeister, no doubt. You see Uncle Barbe is my guardian, and my only relation, and when my mother found that she was about to die, she sent for him, as he was her brother. But she had not seen him for many years, and when he came, I think she feared him. But it was too late. Soon she died. He promised her that he would do well by me and make a son of me ; but he has sold all our things, our home and all, for two hundred rix dollars, and Frii Lisbet says she makes sure 111 never get any of it.”

“ Is that Uncle Kars in the shop talking with Abt ? ” demanded Jens Iveson, putting his whiskered face against the small dull windowpanes, and glaring malignly into Herr Abt’s shop. “ He don’t look much like being a father to any body.”

“He told my mother that he had also adopted his wife’s niece Gerda, and was a father to her.”

“ I wouldn’t trust him,” vouchsafed Jens. “What is he doing in there ? ”

He is selling the last of the things — my mother’s rings and hair ornaments and a silk shawl, and the big Bible. He is selling the big picture Bible where my mother used to

Uncle Kars and the Kat.

i read to me every night ! It had her name and my father’s in it. That’s why I’m crying. It is our family Bible he sells, and our family record is there, do you see ? and the marriage of my father and mother, and my birth, and the certificate of my baptism and confirmation — he is selling it ! ” *

“ Selling your records ! Why that is to blot you out, and leave you as no more than a dog or a pig,” quoth Jens. 4< Let us see if he shall do that ! ” Whereupon he stalked into the shop, and leaning over the counter where the leatherbound Bible lay, he demanded: ‘‘You sell the Bible of Frii Dagmar, and the records of her son ? If you rob the boy Lars in that manner, you shall have Junker Jens Iveson to reckon with/' and coolly pullingfrom the band of his trousers a great knife used by the Karles, or farm hands, in their work, he turned open the Bible, and cut out the family record.

“Who is that?” demanded Uncle Kars, trembling so that his teeth chattered and clicked like dice shaken in a box.

“It is Jens Iveson,” said Herr Abt, with a

* Ninety-nine per cent of the Danish population are Lutherans. Children are confirmed early and the records of baptism and confirmation are legal papers, and are greatly cherished.

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quavering voice, “ a man with whom no one should quarrel. He is strong — I have seen him, when he had taken much brandy, so as one would think him Thor come back to the earth. The old Jotuns were nothing to him, nor Samson of whom this book tells ! But Frii Dagmar could wind him round her little finger, or subdue him by a look of her eye. It was she that got him to give up drinking, and that set his brother Thorrold on going to America.”

“ I wish this one had gone to America too,” growled Uncle Kars. “ America is the place for all fiends and fierce creatures, who make Europe too hot to hold decent people. Come, Herr Abt, the price agreed upon is the same ; the fellow has not hurt the book. Indeed, it will sell far better without those pages.”

Meanwhile Jens Iveson strode out to Lars and gave him the precious written pages, saying — “ Keep them safely. They have thq writing of your father, whom you don’t remember, and of your mother, who was one of God’s saints, and is now in glory. A boy with both parents in Heaven cannot come to much evil, for surely the angels will have a care of him. How are you going to Korsor to-night ? ”

“We are to walk out to the cross-roads and

Unde Kars and the Kat . 13

catch the stage at midnight,” said Lars, folding his family record in the purple silk kerchief, and tucking both carefully in his bosom.

“ Have you had supper ? ”

“ Frii Lisbet gave us supper. I could not eat, I was so sick in my heart of sorrow ; but Uncle Kars ate well. He ate an entire pork pie and almost a pound of cheese ! He told me it was always well to eat heartily of what cost us nothing.”

“ One would not think such a weazened whiffet of a man could hold so much,” quoth Jens, again addressing his face to the windowpane.

“ I see also he considers it well to drink heartily of what costs him nothing. He is using up Herr Abt’s schnapps until he turns Herr Abt pale.”

“ He is very fond of brandy and beer and schnapps,” said Lars. “ The doctor had left a pint bottle of brandy in our house, and Uncle Kars drank it all the day he came. It made him sleep. He was asleep when my mother died.”

“ Did she know that ? ” asked Jens.

“ No, of course not. Why should I grieve her at the last, by letting her know the man I was left to lay drunk as a pig ? ”

“ If he is as miserly as you say,” replied Jens, “ he will not get drunk very often, it costs too much money. When I drank I was in debt from year to year; now I have a purse full of money. You shall have it, Lars. Only for your mother every penny of it would be in the wine house till. Here, boy, take the whole of it, nine rix dollars.”

“No, I have money,” whispered Lars, repulsing the proffered purse. “ I shall not need money; my uncle promised to take care of me, and put me in his business.”

Jens shook his big head unbelievingly.

“ Count on me for your friend, and if the little uncle does not treat you well, say the word, and I’ll come to Korsor and break him as I would a rye straw.”

“ I’ll try mothers way first,” said Lars. “ I promised her that I would be good all my life, that I would endure patiently what could be endured. I guess I can get on with Uncle Kars.”

Herr Abt’s bottle of schnapps being emptied, Uncle Kars appeared on the threshold, and, looking timorously at the big Jens said, “ Come, boy, we need to be going.”

“ Good-bye, Jens,” said Lars, holding out his hand.

Uncle Kars and the Rat. i5

“ Good-bye,” said Jens, shaking the cold, slender hand vigorously, “ and good-bye to you, Uncle Kars, and if you don’t treat this boy well, never forget that if his mother can’t get out of Heaven to come down and punish you, here’s a big Karle named Jens Iveson who could beat you to a jelly in three minutes, and would take pleasure in doing it.”

Away went Jens, not now whistling and cheery, but hanging his head, his sabots seeming to cleave to the pavement, for that Frii Dagmar, his friend and preserver, was dead, and Lars, her son, had fallen upon evil times.

“ I should say the devil was inside of him with his hair and hoofs on,”* said Uncle Kars, hurrying along toward the post-road. “ I’ll see to it that in Korsor you don’t make any such evil acquaintances as that.”

The heart of Lars was too heavy even to rise up to defend his friend. Besides he instinctively felt that defence of Jens would be based on principles which Uncle Kars could not comprehend. On, on, he and Uncle Kars tramped * along the half-frozen roads. The sleet ceased falling, and the moon came out through rifts of clouds, but the raw air was nothing warmer.

*This is a very common phrase in Denmark for a violent person.

The waiting under a little thatched shed, for half an hour, until the coach came by, was even worse than the walk, for the motion had kept Lars’ blood in circulation, and now he was nearly perished with cold. Uncle Kars had saved a few pennies, by walking to the cross-roads to meet the night coach, and he now saved a few more by taking places on top of the vehicle, instead of inside. As the middle place in the seat was warmer and more sheltered than the outer one, Uncle Kars took that and left his nephew the worse position. Lars was overcome with drowsiness, cold and exhaustion. Thus it happened that as the coach rattled along, the driver was startled by seeing in the moonlight the shadow of a passenger losing balance and swaying far out over the coach side.

There was a little tumult on top of the coach, and the driver pulled up his horses. Looking angrily around, he saw the pale handsome face of the sleepy boy who had narrowly escaped falling, the moonlight illuminating the circle of fair short curls cropping out from under his cap.

“How now!” cried Jehu to Uncle Kars. “ What sort of a man are you to put a drowsy, slim lad like that on the outside place, and take no manner of care of him ! Do you want to get his neck broken P And I vow if this boy is not travelling without any cape- coat such a night as this. A pretty spectacle of a father you are with your coat.’’

“ I’m not his father, nor anybody’s father,” growled Uncle Kars. “I’m his uncle; it’s not my business if he has no coat.”

“His uncle! Well, I don’t know whether that’s so much the worse or so much the better ; depends on how much you have to do with him,” said the driver. “ Come down here into the boot with me, my boy ; you’ll be safe here.”

So he dragged Lars down into the empty and envied place at his own side, into a thick pocket of furs. Lars felt a delightful warm footstone pushed under his benumbed feet, and a N wolf-skin robe tucked up about his ears.

“ Sleep away,” said the coachman ; “ you’ll be as warm as an apple baking on the hearth, and I’ll warrant you can’t fall out of there.”

The next that Lars knew it was broad day, and the stage had stopped at a little tavern. The stable boys were leading away the horses, the driver was climbing down to the doorstep. Beside the driver stood the inside passenger, a tall, slender man in a high, pointed felt hat, a long cloak, a ruff about his neck which indicated his clerical estate.

Fru Dagmars Son.

“Lars!” cried out Uncle Kars from his seat on top, “ did you do as I told you last night, and put a breakfast in your pocket from Frii Lisbet’s supper table ? ”

“ No/’ said Lars slowly. How very hungry he was !

“So much the worse for you,” grinned Uncle Kars. “ I helped myself. I always do when victuals are freely offered.”

He took out an immense sandwich and began munching it.

“ So, the boy is to go without his breakfast ?” cried the driver.

“ No, he is not,” said the man with the ruff. “ I invite him to eat with me. I enjoy a meal better when it is shared.”

Lars needed no second invitation from the pleasant face and winning voice ; he scrambled out of the boot.

“ I should have asked him myself, Priest Andersen,” said the driver, “ if you had not. But it is right that you do it. A true Priest is the father of the people.*

“ I see you have a crape on your sleeve/’ said Priest Andersen, as he and Lars entered the dining-room, and sat down by the breakfast table.

* In Denmark the Lutheran pastor is always called a priest, and is usually so addressed.

There was a strip of coarse crape tied above Lars’ elbow, by Fru Lisbet.

“ I am mourning,’’ said Lars, “ my mother has just died.’’

“ And your father ? ’’

“He died before I was a week old. I seemed to forget him, you know. But my mother, oh she was the best! We lived at Praesto. Did you ask if I had a good time? Of course I did. Wouldn’t any boy have a good time living with his mother ? ”

“ A good mother is never lost to her son,”, said Priest Andersen. “ I speak from experience ; mine died when I was of your age. But she has never seemed to perish out of my life. She has always seemed near me. I have tried to guide my life by her counsels, and daily I think of the time when we shall meet again. She will have the same eyes, the same smile the same warm love in her heart. When we finally meet, it will seem like only a little while since we parted. Time passed is always short. I think you may feel that your mother will be glad when you are honestly happy, and she will rejoice when you obey her counsels. Don’t forget that.”

The Herr Pastor was filling up Lars’ plate

Fril Dagmars Son, as he spoke, and a certain matter-of-fact cheerfulness in his tone encouraged Lars.

Here was a man who had suffered a loss like his own, and had lived through the years, and was good and happy.

“ Make a man of yourself, even if there are difficulties in your way. Go to school all that you can, and learn all that you can. Go to church and keep in mind the doctrines that have been taught you. Don’t forget your prayers, and be sure and read your Bible. I suppose you have a Bible ? ” said Pastor Andersen.

“ We had a nice big one,” said Lars, getting red in the face, “ and my uncle, out in the coach there, sold it.’’

“ That is bad. Still, as I always carry a Bible, I can remedy the loss, in a way. You shall have this of mine. It is just like one I gave to my son last week. Y ou may not have the easiest time in the world if you live with your uncle, so I will advise you for your help two things — Yield where you can ; and never yield a principle.”

The friendly talk of Herr Pastor, and the fine hot breakfast began to revive Lars’ spirits. He felt more equal to his fate. As they left the dining-room the stage driver said :

“ Come, Priest Andersen, you have fulfilled

Uncle Kars and the Kat.

your duty; you have given the lad a breakfast and a Bible, food for the body and food for the soul, finish up by giving him your blessing. A good man’s blessing is not like water spilled on the ground.”

Lars, with ingenuous grace, pulled off his scrap of a cap and bent his curly head. The tall pastor laid his hand on the bowed head and said, “ The Lord bless thee and keep thee; the Lord lift up the light of His countenance upon thee, and give thee peace.”

“ Let me write your name in my note-book,” he said, before they returned to their places in the coach ; and he looked a little curiously at Lars’ homespun and home-made suit, and coarse shoes, and his fine, atistrocratic face and pose. He said to himself, “ The dress is that of the Insidder, but the face is the face of a Herremand.”

An Insidder is a laborer, a Herremand a gentleman.

“ My name is Lars Waldsen,” said the boy. “ We are poor now, but my mother's name was Barbe, and my mother’s grandfather was a Herremand, and my father’s grandfather was a Gaardmand ” — for in Denmark class distinctions are rigidly maintained, and the blood of a Herremand, or country gentleman, and of a

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Gaardmand, a yeoman farmer, is held in great esteem by his descendants, especially if they have fallen in the social scale.

Once more tucked into the boot beside the driver, Lars began to ponder. His future looked dark enough. His humble home of the past had been quiet, hospitable, happy, lit by his mother’s smile. His future lay in the keeping of Uncle Kars, while Frii Lisbet, Jens, the coach driver, Priest Andersen, all seemed to hold U ncle Kars in very low esteem. And then a man who lay drunk when his only sister was dying ! A man who sold his nephew’s family Bible !

“ My little chap,” said the voice of the driver, “ if you are going to live with yon man on the top of the coach, just remember the old proverbs, “ hard words break no bones,” and ‘ least said soonest mended.’ Don’t rile him by talk, for talk does no good when you can’t back it up with actions. The hardest things don’t last forever ; you’ll be a man in a matter of eight or nine years. Moreover, there is a law in the land, if he gets to be too cantankerous.”

A flight of ravens from a wood swept round the coach and their harsh cries interrupted the driver’s counsels. But all men seemed to Lars as ravens croaking of evil to come, as he rode toward Korsor.

Korsor at last ! Uncle Kars and his nephew left the coach at the entrance of the little town. This street, that street, here was Uncle Kars’ house — a brick house standing close to the uneven brick walk, and touched by the branches of two lime trees which grew before it. Across the front of the house, between the two stories ran a huge carved oak beam, wrought in cherubs and lilies, with Glory Be To God carved in great Gothic text in the centre. Down the side of the house stretched a big leaden pipe for rain water, with a big lions head for the water to run out through. The front door was carved, double, heavy; all manner of imps and satyrs and grinning beasts chiselled on the panels, mocked at Lars as he entered with his uncle. The house was dark and fireless. Uncle Kars led the way to a cold kitchen. No living thing appeared but the very thinnest cat Lars had ever seen, a great brindle cat with green eyes. She did not come to meet them, but shrunk into a corner and glared.

“ Where is the little girl Gerda ? ” asked Lars.

“ Oh Gerda ? Children are lonely and need occupation, you know, so I hired Gerda out to work for Frii Heitzen, next door. Girls should learn things. What could I teach a girl? ”

Fru Dagmars Son.

“ Do you mean to hire me out ? ” asked Lars.

“ No, I can use a boy in my business.”

“ But I must go to school a year. The law is to go to school till you are fourteen. I am only just past thirteen.”

“ You are fourteen, mind. If any one asks, you are fourteen. I say it. You will not go to school. You will live here with me and my Kat.”

Chapter II. Castle Famine And The Princess

“ A residence for woman , man or child,

A dwelling-place — and yet no habitation; A house — but under some tremendous ban Of excommunication . ”

“We don’t need any dinner, since we had our breakfast,” said Uncle Kars. “ There is nothing so wasteful and dangerous for people, as over-eating. Two meals a day are enough to keep people alive.”

“ Shall I make a fire for you ? ” asked Lars. “ Where is the wood ? ”

“ There is nothing so dangerous as fire,” said Uncle Kars. “ It might burn the house up. It is also wasteful ; also it is unnecessary. Exercise is better than fire to warm one. Let us get to work.”

“ And what is your business, and what can I do ? ”

“ My business is to collect curiosities and antiques from Sweden, Norway, and Denmark,

Frii Dagmars Son .

Heligoland, Finnland, for a great house in England. Your business will be to help repair and get in order and clean up the things I purchase ; you can keep the house for me when I go away to buy things.”

“ When do you go ? ” asked Lars. “ How long do you stay ? ”

“ I stay for a few days, and I go whenever I hear of some auction sale in the large towns, or that some great Herremand’s house is breaking up. Then I go to the sales and buy cheap and sell dear. As I am to teach you my business, boy, that is the first principle of business. Buy cheap. Say it is trash and you don’t care for buying it. Sell dear. Say it is rare, and you don’t care for parting with it. That is the way to thrive.”

“ It is written in the Bible,” said Lars : “ ‘ It is naught, it is naught, saith the buyer, but when he goeth his way, then he boasteth.’ I don’t think it means to praise up that way though.”

Uncle Kars had taken some brasses from a chest and was spreading them upon a table. They were old and dim. He took out similar brasses, new and evidently just from the foundry. Next he found in a drawer a bottle of dark liquid and a soft brush.

“ Now, boy,’ ? he said to his nephew, “ the stuff in this bottle is a secret, but if you wash those brasses over with it carefully, they will soon look as old as these others.”

“ I think they are much prettier new,” said Lars, as he began the task. “ Why do you spoil them ? ”

“ Because those greedy kites and thieves of Englishmen like them better that way,” said Uncle Kars ; “ and I make my living by the English trade.”

“ There must be honest men in the world to trade with,” said Lars. “ Why don’t you trade with our own countrymen ? My mother told me that Danes are honest men. Why do you trade with thieves ? ”

li No matter how big a thief a man is,” said Uncle Kars, polishing a brass, “ his money is just as good. The English thieves have the most money, so I trade with them. But never fear. They can’t cheat me. I’m a match for the best of them.”

In fact, Lars shivering and hungry, tarnishing the brass cups and servers, began to think that he had fallen into the talons of the greatest kite in the whole falconry! He looked about the old kitchen ; the floor was dirty and warped, the walls blackened by smoke, the

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plaster fallen in places, the beams overhead festooned with cobwebs, the hearth foul, the lean cat crouched in a window ledge, her bones nearly piercing her skin. Only the upper half of the shutters was open, and Lars and his uncle worked in the semi-gloom.

“ I don’t see why you sent Gerda to work out,” said Lars eying his dismal environment. “ You need a girl here, some one to tidy up, to clean the floor and windows, and brighten the hearth and set a good kettle of soup steaming for you ; some one to keep your house as it should be.”

“ And waste soap and coals and food ! ” screamed Uncle Kars. “ If those are your notions, no wonder your mother died poor. I don’t care for the state of my house.”

“We were not poor,” said Lars. “ My mother said no one was poor who had a stout heart, hands to work, the love of his fellow creatures, and the fear of God before his eyes. We had all that. And my mother always taught me that a good man cares for his living place, for the roof over his head, and the hearth he sits by, and that it is his home, and he should love it. I loved mine — and — you sold it.”

“ Nonsense,” said Uncle Kars, “ the money will be worth more to you. How would you get food if you had had no money ? I am a poor man. If I shelter you, it is all I can do.”

“ A poor man,” said Lars stoutly, “ should not live in a house with carved doors.”

Uncle Kars laughed with joy that his nephew was so observing. “ Did you notice the doors ? And the beam ? And the leaden spout ? Y ou have an eye for my trade ! That is well. Let me tell you I got the house for a song — from a young man who wasted his property. He is dead. The house — the house could be sold in pieces for a noble pile of kronen. I could sell the doors, the beam, the ceiling, the stair ballusters, the casements, the leaded windows, the wainscotings.”

Lars was growing so faint and hungry that he could not listen to Uncle Kars’ discourse. He concluded to lead up gently to the idea of food. He ceased to work on the brass, and leaning his arms on the table remarked : “You must have forgotten to leave food for the cat while you were gone. See how thin she is. If you’ll tell me where to get her some milk, I’ll feed her. It’s dreadful to be hungry.”