Mårbacka/Part 3, Chapter 3
All who had been long on the place thought the building next in age to the stone huts was the old larder that stood on posts. It had not been built by the first settler, but was erected some hundred years after his time, when Mårbacka had become a regular farmstead.
The peasants then living there had hurriedly put up a post-larder, it being the rule that every farm of any pretension must have one. It was a crude structure. The door was so low one had to stoop to enter; but the lock and key were conspicuously large and strong. There were no windows, only small openings, with trap-shutters. In summer there were fly-screens at the openings made of woven splints, through which very little light could penetrate.
The larder had two stories. The upper story being better finished than the lower, it was probably there the peasants stored their valuables.
In Lieutenant Lagerlöf's time the building was as in olden days. It may have had a new roof, perhaps, but the steps were never changed. They were so narrow and close together one could scarcely get a foothold. Nor was there ever a pane of glass in the old building.
In the autumn the larder was something to behold. On the lower floor there were great bins of newly milled flour, next which stood two huge vats packed to the brim with beef and pork in brine, then came cowls and buckets of beef sausage, pork sausage, and potato sausage—in fact, all sorts of things that had been made up during the autumn slaughter. In one corner stood a barrel of salted herring, a keg of salted whitefish and one of sickling, and generally a firkin of salmon. Besides, there were tins of salted beans, salted spinach, and firkins of green and yellow peas.
On the upper floor there were tubs of butter of the summer's churning stored for winter use. Long rows of cheeses were arranged on shelves above the openings, and from the ceiling hung year-old hams. The home-raised hops were preserved in a sack the size of a bolster, and the malted grain in a similar one. Here were provisions for a whole year.
It was the housekeeper who ruled over the larder. That was her domain, and the key to it seldom got into another's hands. Mamselle Lovisa might potter in the pantry or milk-room, but she would hardly have ventured into the larder. The housekeeper was also supreme in the kitchen. Making small cakes or putting up preserves and fruit juices might well be left to Mamselle Lovisa, but when it came to roasting a fowl, making a cheese, or baking knäckebröd, it was the old housekeeper who took charge.
The little Lagerlöf children were very fond of her, and looked up to her as the most important member of the household. They had noticed that whenever relatives came to visit, the first thing they did was to go out to the kitchen and pay their respects to the housekeeper. If anything unusual happened in the family Lieutenant Lagerlöf would always call her in and tell her about it, and when Daniel and Johan were returning to school after the Christmas and summer holidays, they were told to say good-bye to the housekeeper. They had also heard outsiders say that Fru Lagerlöf was in great luck to have such a treasure in her kitchen, that nothing was ever wasted under her watchful eye. They said, moreover, that nowhere else could one get such Christmas ale, such knäckebröd, and such tasty dishes as were set before you at Mårbacka. And it was all due to the old housekeeper, they declared. So it was not strange the children regarded her as the main prop of the home, and firmly believed that were she not there Mårbacka would collapse.
Then, one day, little Anna found out a great secret, which gave her an awful fright, and she confided it to her sister Selma. She had overheard two of the maids talking about the housekeeper; they had said she was married and had a husband.
The distress of the two little girls was indescribable. If the housekeeper were actually married and had a husband they could not be sure of keeping her at Mårbacka. What would their mother do without her? And what would they themselves do who got such nice titbits from her whenever they went into the kitchen? And what would happen to the whole place, they wondered?
It was most imperative, therefore, that they should know how the matter stood; so they asked Nurse Maja if it were true that the housekeeper was married and had a husband.
Oh, yes. Nurse Maja knew the whole story. She had heard it from her mother, who was in service at Mårbacka at the time it all happened.
"It is the truth and no lie," said she. The housekeeper's husband was living in Karlstad, and was a boss carpenter. There was no such luck as his being dead!
And this was how it came about: When Lieutenant Lagerlöf and his brother as lads attended school at Karlstad, their mother, the old mistress, had sent her trusted housekeeper along with the boys, to look after them and prepare their meals. While there, she had made the acquaintance of a carpenter, who proposed to her. When on her return to Mårbacka in the spring she announced that she was going to be married, the old mistress was both sad and alarmed at the thought of losing her "greatest treasure."
"And what sort of fellow are you marrying?" she had asked her. "Do you know whether he is a good man?"
Oh, yes, she was certain of that. He was a boss carpenter, who had his own shop and his own home. The house was in order, so that she might be married at once, and she could never have found a better husband.
"But how can you be content to live the year round in a barren city street—you who have always lived in the country?" the old mistress had then said.
Oh, she had no fears as to that. All would be well for her hereafter. She was to have an easy life—no baking, no brewing; she had only to go to the market and bring home whatever was needed.
When the old mistress heard her housekeeper speak in that manner she knew the woman was bent on marriage, and there was nothing to be done but give her a wedding at Mårbacka.
The bridegroom appeared to be a clever, sensible sort, and the day after the wedding he took his bride to Karlstad.
One evening a fortnight later—no, it was hardly that long—as the old mistress went out to the larder to slice some ham for supper (she could never take up the key to the larder but she thought of Maja Persdotter and wondered how she was getting along), she said to herself: "If I had not sent her to Karlstad she would never have met that carpenter and I should still have my good helper, and wouldn't have to run out to the larder twenty times a day, as I do now." Suddenly she saw a figure coming through the birch grove that was the living image of her housekeeper. The nearer the figure approached the more certain was Grandmother Lagerlöf of what she beheld. When Maja Persdotter presently stood before her and said, "Good-evening, Frua," she had to believe her eyes and ears.
"Well, well, is it you, Maja Persdotter!" she exclaimed. "But what brings you here? Haven't you got a good husband?"
"All he does is drink," declared the housekeeper. "He's been drunk every day since the wedding. It's the pure alcohol he should be using in his work he guzzles. I can't put up any longer with such a swine."
"But I thought you were to go to the market and buy all your provisions, in order to escape hard work?"
"I'll work my fingers to the bone for Frua and the children if you'll only take me back!" vowed the housekeeper. "I've wished myself back at Mårbacka day and night since I went away."
"Come in, then, and we'll talk this over with the Paymaster of the Regiment," the old mistress said with tears of joy in her eyes. "God willing, we'll never part again so long as we live," she added.
Nor did they. The housekeeper's husband probably knew it would be useless for him to try to get her back. At all events, he never came to fetch her. The wedding ring she removed from her finger and laid away in her trunk. Nothing more was said about that episode in her life.
Lieutenant Lagerlöf's little daughters should have felt quite easy in their minds on hearing this; but for a long time afterward they were troubled. Since that carpenter was still alive he might come some day and take her away. Whenever they looked down the road they expected to see him coming. Nurse Maja had told them that if he came and demanded the return of his wife, she would have to go with him.
They did not know just how old the housekeeper was. She herself had forgotten the year of her birth, and the date set down in the parish register was said not to be authentic. She must have been over seventy; but for all that, the carpenter might want her back—fine, capable woman that she was.
Then what would happen to Mårbacka!