At the time when the horse market was going on Hauke Haien had ridden into the city, although he had had nothing to do with the market.
Nevertheless, when he came home toward evening, he brought home a second horse. It had rough hair, however, and was lean, so that one could count every rib and its eyes looked tired and sunken deep into the sockets. Elke had stepped out in front of the house door to meet her husband: "Heaven help us!" she cried, "what shall we do with that old white horse?" For when Hauke had ridden up to the house with it and stopped under the ash tree, she had seen that the poor creature was lame, too.
The young dikemaster, however, jumped laughing down from his brown horse: "Never mind, Elke; it didn"t cost much, anyway."
The clever woman replied: "You know, the greatest bargain turns out to be the most expensive."
"But not always, Elke; this animal is at most four years old; look at it more carefully. It is starved and has been abused; our oats shall do it good. I"ll take care of it myself, so that they won"t overfeed it."
Meanwhile the animal stood with bowed head; its long mane hung down its neck. Elke, while her husband was calling the hired men, walked round it with curious eyes; but she shook her head: "A horse like this has never yet been in our stable."
When the servant boy came round the corner, he suddenly stood still with frightened eyes. "Well, Carsten," called the dikemaster, "what has struck you? Don"t you like my white horse?"
"Yes--oh, yes, master, why not?"
"Then take the animal into the stable; don"t feed it. I"ll come myself right off."
The boy took hold of the halter of the white horse carefully and then hastily, as if for protection, seized the bridle of the brown horse also put into his trust. Hauke then went into the room with his wife.
She had warm beer ready for him, and bread and b.u.t.ter were there, too.
He had soon finished; then he got up and walked up and down the room with his wife. "Let me tell you, Elke," he said, while the evening glow played on the tiles of the wall, "how I came to get the animal. I spent about an hour at the dikemaster general"s; he has good news for me--there will be some departures, here and there, from my drawings; but the main thing, my outline, has been accepted, and the next days may bring the command to begin the new dike."
Elke sighed involuntarily. "After all?" she said, anxiously.
"Yes, wife," returned Hauke; "it will be hard work; but for that, I think, the Lord has brought us together! Our farm is in such good order now, you can take a good part of it on your own shoulders. Think ahead ten years--then we"ll own quite a different property."
During his first words she had pressed her husband"s hand into hers as a sign of a.s.surance; but his last words could give her no pleasure.
"For whom all the property?" she said. "You would have to take another wife then; I shall bring you no children."
Tears shot into her eyes; but he drew her close into his arms. "We"ll leave that to the Lord," he said; "but now and at that time too, we are young enough to have joy for ourselves in the fruits of our labors."
She looked at him a long time with her dark eyes while he held her.
"Forgive me, Hauke," she said; "sometimes I am a woman in despair."
He bent down to her face and kissed her: "You are my wife and I am your husband, Elke. And nothing can alter that."
Then she clasped her arms tightly round his neck: "You are right, Hauke, and what comes, will come for us both." Then she freed him, blushing. "You wanted to tell me about the white horse," she said in a low voice.
"So I did, Elke. I told you, my head and heart were full of joy over the good news that the dikemaster general had given me. So I was riding back again out of the city, when on the dam, behind the harbor, I met a shabby fellow--I couldn"t tell if he was a vagabond, a tinker, or what.
This fellow was pulling the white horse after him by the halter; but the animal raised his head and looked at me with dull eyes. It seemed to me as if he wanted to beg me for something--and, indeed, at that moment I was rich enough. "Hallo, good sir," I hailed him, "where do you want to go with your jade?"
"The fellow stopped, and the white horse, too. "Sell him," he said, and nodded to me slyly.
""But spare me!" I called cheerfully.
""I think I shall!" he said; "it"s a good horse and worth no less than a hundred dollars."
"I laughed into his face.
""Well," he said, "don"t laugh so hard; you don"t need to pay it. But I have no use for it, it"ll perish with me; with you it would soon look different."
"Then I jumped down from my brown horse and looked into the white horse"s mouth and saw that it was still a young animal. "How much do you want for it?" I cried, for again the horse seemed to look at me beseechingly.
""Sir, take it for thirty dollars," said the fellow, "and I"ll give you the halter to the bargain."
"And then, wife, I took the fellow"s stretched-out brown hand, which looked almost like a claw. And so we have the white horse, and I think a good enough bargain. The only strange thing was that, when I rode away with the horses, I soon heard laughter behind me, and when I turned round my head, saw the Slovak standing with his legs apart, his arms on his back, and laughing after me like a devil.
"Oh, horror," cried Elke; "I hope that white horse will bring you nothing from his old master. May he thrive for your good, Hauke!"
"Thrive he shall, at least as far as I can make him!" And the dikemaster went into the stable, as he had told the boy a while ago.
But not only on the first night did he feed the white horse--from that time on he always did it himself and did not leave the animal out of sight. He wanted to show that he had made a first-rate bargain; anyway, he did not want to allow any mistake. And already after a few weeks the animal"s condition improved: gradually the rough hair vanished; a smooth, blue-spotted skin appeared, and one day when he led it round on the place, it walked nimbly on its steady legs. Hauke thought of the adventurous seller. "That fellow was a fool, or a knave who had stolen it," he murmured to himself. Then soon, when the horse merely heard his footsteps, it threw back its head and neighed to greet him; and now he saw too that it had, what the Arabs demand of a good horse, a spare face, out of which two fiery brown eyes were gleaming. He would lead it into its stable and put a light saddle on it; and scarcely did he sit on the saddle, when the animal uttered a neigh like a shout of delight.
It sped away with him, down the hill to the road and then to the dike; but the rider sat securely, and when they had reached the top, it went more quietly, easily, as if dancing, and thrust its head to the side of the sea. He patted and stroked its smooth neck, but it no longer needed these endearments, the horse seemed altogether to be one with the rider, and after he had ridden a distance northwards out on the dike, he turned it easily and reached the farm again.
The men stood at the foot of the hill and waited for the return of their master. "Now, John," he cried, as he leaped down from his horse, "you ride it to the fens where the others are; it"ll carry you like a cradle."
The white horse shook its head and neighed aloud over the sunny marshes, while the hired man was taking off the saddle and the boy ran with it to the harness-room; then it laid its head on its master"s shoulder and suffered him to caress it. But when the hired man wanted to swing himself on its back, it leaped to the side with a sudden bound and then stood motionless, turning its beautiful eyes on its master.
"Hallo, Iven," cried Hauke, "has he hurt you?" and he tried to help his man up from the ground.
The latter was busily rubbing his hip: "No, sir, I can manage still; but let the devil ride that white horse!"
"And me!" Hauke added, laughing. "Then bring him to the fens by the bridle."
And when the man obeyed, somewhat humiliated, the white horse meekly let itself be led.
A few evenings later the man and the boy stood together in front of the stable door. The sunset gleam had vanished behind the dike, the land it enclosed was already wrapped in twilight; only at rare intervals from far off one could hear the lowing of a startled bull or the scream of a lark whose life was ending through the a.s.sault of a weasel or a water rat. The man was leaning against the doorpost and smoking his short pipe, from which he could no longer see the smoke; he and the boy had not yet talked together. Something weighed on the boy"s soul, however, but he did not know how to begin with the silent man. "Iven," he said finally, "you know that horse skeleton on Jeverssand."
"What about it?" asked the man.
"Yes, Iven, what about it? It isn"t there any more? neither by day nor by moonlight; I"ve run up to the dike about twenty times."
"The old bones have tumbled to pieces, I suppose," said Iven and calmly smoked on.
"But I was out there by moonlight, too; nothing is moving over there on Jeverssand, either!"
"Why, yes!" said the man, "if the bones have fallen apart, it won"t be able to get up any more."
"Don"t joke, Iven! I know now; I can tell you where it is."
The man turned to him suddenly: "Well, where is it, then?"
"Where?" repeated the boy emphatically. "It is standing in our stable; there it has been standing, ever since it was no more on the island. It isn"t for nothing that our master always feeds it himself; I know about it, Iven."
For a while the man puffed away violently into the night. "You"re not right in your mind, Carsten," he said then; "our white horse? If ever a horse was alive, that one is. How can a wide-awake youngster like you get mixed up with such an old wives" belief!"
But the boy could not be converted: if the devil was inside the white horse, why shouldn"t it be alive? On the contrary, it was all the worse. He started, frightened, every time that he stepped into the stable toward night, where the creature was sometimes kept in summer and it turned its fiery head toward him so violently. "The devil take you!" he would mutter; "we won"t stay together much longer!"
So he secretly looked round for a new place, gave notice and, about All Saints" Day, went to Ole Peters as hired man. Here he found attentive listeners for his story of the dikemaster"s devil"s horse. Fat Mrs.
Vollina and her dull-witted father, the former dike overseer, Jess Harders, listened in smug horror and afterwards told it to all who had a grudge against the dikemaster in their hearts or who took pleasure in that kind of thing.