Mårbacka/Part 4, Chapter 1
There was a cow-girl at Mårbacka named Britta Lambert, who had been on the place from the time of the Paymaster of the Regiment. She was little and ugly, with a face like old parchment, and she had only one eye. In the company of humans she was crabbed and surly, but she loved animals. If a cow was expected to calve in the night, she would make up a bed in the barn and sleep there. Every day she would heat water in the brew house and carry great bucketfuls down to the barn, so that the cows might have warm mash. When the hay ran low in the cow-house, along in April, and the cows had to chew on rye-straw, she was not above sneaking over to the stable and stealing hay from the horses.
The barn in which she ruled was very old and so dark you could scarcely see your hand before you; the passage-ways were narrow, the floor was worn full of holes, and the cows stood in cramped little stalls, which Britta did not think to keep clean. Nevertheless, steady contentment reigned in the old cow-house. There was no fear of a cow's overfeeding, or getting anything sharp in her fodder, or that aught would go wrong with the calving. There were lots of calves and plenty of milk. The mistress at Mårbacka never had any anxiety concerning the cow-house.
But there was one species of animal Britta Lambert loved even better than she loved the cow, and that was the cat. She believed that cats had some sort of supernatural power to protect her and her cattle. The worst thing one could ask of her was to drown a kitten now and then, lest there should be more cats than cows to care for. When anyone stepped inside the dark cow-house he was met on all sides by the uncanny gleam of green cat-eyes. The cats got under his feet and sprang on to his shoulders—for that Britta had got them into the habit of doing.
When Lieutenant Lagerlöf took over Mårbacka, on the death of his father, there were no less than seventeen cats in the barn. They were all of the tortoise-shell variety, with not a black or white or gray one among them. For Britta Lambert believed it was only the red cats that brought luck.
Now the Lieutenant was a great lover of animals, and he had no antipathy whatever to cats; but to feed and house seventeen of them in the barn—that, he thought, was a bit too much. The cats, to be sure, were vigilant hunters of rats and field-mice, but they also pursued little birds; there was hardly so much as a sparrow left at Mårbacka. Besides, the milk they consumed would have fed three calves.
Anyway, it's a sorry business having to do away with cats. So the Lieutenant, rather than distress Britta Lambert and the other womenfolk, said nothing to them about a certain plan he had in mind. He merely gave the wink to old Bengt, the former stableman, who still pottered round the place at this and that.
Then, in some mysterious way the cats began to disappear—not all at once, but by gradual elimination. Britta Lambert thought she noticed that one and another of her precious tabbies was missing, yet she was not quite sure about it, since the cats were all so much alike in colour and markings. She attempted to count them as they came up for their milk, but that was not so easy, for they pushed and crowded each other at the milk-trough. Then, too, it was almost pitch-dark in the barn. She complained to the old housekeeper and the young mistress.
"You see," she said, "'tis this I fear me, that if you do away with the red cats, you'll do away with the luck in the cow-house. No good can come to folks as begins by being ungrateful to them that's helped us all up to now."
Fru Lagerlöf and the housekeeper both assured her they had no evil designs upon her cats. They thought she would soon have them back again—the whole seventeen.
All the same, Britta noted that the cats were becoming fewer and fewer. She suspected this one and that one, but none would confess to guilt. The only one of whom she could never have believed anything so sinful as that he would harm a cat, was the Lieutenant. She knew that his mother had taught him better.
"This'll never do, Master," she said to the Lieutenant every time he came into the barn. "You don't know how worried I am! The cats are leaving me."
"I don't see but they're running in front of my feet the same as usual," the Lieutenant replied.
"If there be thirteen left, 'tis all and no more," wailed the cow-girl. "I'd hate to be standing in the shoes of the one that's doing this! And worst of all, the farm'll suffer for it."
Now in those days the Lieutenant was a strong young man and an ambitious, enterprising farmer. He had big plans for Mårbacka. The estate was not extensive, but the soil was rich and the fields, spreading in one continuous stretch of expanse, were level and clear of stones. It would be no fault of his if the farm did not some day become the finest in the whole Fryken Valley. He had money at his command, for his father-in-law. Squire Wallroth, who was a man of means, admired his son-in-law's initiative and enterprise, and gave him the support he needed.
The Lieutenant set about reparcelling the land for rotation of crops. He dug ditches a fathom deep for drainage, and sowed timothy and clover in the meadows, so that they would produce something besides wild flowers; he bought a threshing machine, which did away with their having to stand in a barn all winter beating out the grain with flails, and he also procured some tall, fine-bred cattle from the manors down by the Ness. He did not let the cows wander in the woods from spring to autumn, and half-starve, but sent them to pasture in the open meadow. Everything that could be thought of to enhance the value of the farm was done: he carried on protracted negotiations with the peasants on the west side of the dale for the purchase of lands adjoining his; he built cottages for his workmen, that they might have decent homes, with outbuildings and a bit of ground where they could keep a cow and a pig.
Nor were his labours in vain. Within a year the farm paid back all he had laid out on it. There was such a harvest of hay he hardly knew where to store it all for the winter. For every bushel of peas sown he got twenty bushels in return, and when he planted turnips the ground gave forth such a blessed abundance it was more than his own folk could gather in. So he sent word to the neighbours to come with horse and cart, and take home all the turnips they could dig.
However, there was one serious obstacle to this work of improving the farm, and that was the little river Ämtan, which meandered in all sorts of graceful bends and curves down in the dale, where his fields lay. Ordinarily, the stream was not much bigger than a forest brook, but as soon as there came a good fall of rain it overflowed its banks, converting his clover meadows and oat fields into little lakes.
The Lieutenant decided that something must be done about the river. Where it flowed through his own property he deepened its bed and straightened its course. But little good came of that, for the peasants who owned the land below Mårbacka let the river run on in its old tortuous, sluggish way. Whenever there was a heavy rain it flooded their acres as well as his.
What was the good of all his labour with the soil, if Ämtan could at any time wash away his haystacks and rye-shooks? He would never be able to develop his property as he wished until the river was mastered.
He talked with the neighbours, and they seemed to be in favour of having the river properly dredged. A surveyor was consulted, who drew, measured, and made calculations; after which the Lieutenant convened a meeting of all interested parties at the parish public room.
More than a few obstacles had been surmounted by the time he had got thus far along with the project. The morning he was to drive to the meeting he felt quite happy, thinking that now the most difficult part of the work had been accomplished. But as he was getting into his carriole, right in the middle of the seat sat one of the red barn cats staring blankly at him.
There was nothing strange in that, however. The barn cats all loved to ride. Britta Lambert had trundled them in her wheel-barrow from the time they were tiny kittens, and in that way they had become as fond of riding as children, and would jump into all the farm vehicles. But they were not in the habit of venturing into the family carriages.
"So you'd like to come along to the meeting, would you?" said the Lieutenant. "Scat!"
The cat deigned to take itself off, but not before it had given the Lieutenant a sardonic look that made him feel positively uncomfortable.
Between the stable and the road the Lieutenant had to pass through three gates. On each of the gateposts sat a red barn cat. Nor was there anything strange in that. Cats like to sit on gateposts to sun themselves and watch everything that moves on the ground below. But that morning the Lieutenant thought the cats all had a sinister look; they blinked at him as if they knew what would come of his trip. He was beginning to think Britta Lambert was right—that they were little witches and goblins in the guise of cats.
Now it is not a good omen to meet a lot of cats when one sets out on a journey, so the Lieutenant spat three times for each cat, as his mother had taught him to do, and thought no more about them during the drive. He went over in his mind the whole plan of the ditching and prepared himself to lay the proposition before the meeting clearly and convincingly.
But instantly the Lieutenant stepped inside the parish room, an unmistakable air of wariness and opposition assailed him. The peasants sat there immovable, with tight-shut faces. He began to surmise that they had changed their minds, which proved to be the case. All his arguments were overruled.
"We understand, of course, that this ditching would be a good thing for Mårbacka," said their spokesman, "but it's of no importance to us."
When he came back from the meeting he felt rather depressed. The matter of the dredging was settled for some time to come. The river could go on creating havoc. If a stray herd of cattle trampled his fields he could drive them out, but the river must be left free to choke and destroy all in its path.
In the midst of these broodings on his frustrated hopes, he got up and went over to the servants' hall to see Bengt.
"It didn't go through, Bengt, that about the river," he said.
"That's too bad. Lieutenant!" the old man sympathized. "The Paymaster of the Regiment always said the farm would be worth twice as much if it wasn't for Ämtan."
"I say, Bengt"—the Lieutenant lowered his voice—"there aren't so many cats in the barn now, eh?… Perhaps we'd better let Britta keep what's left of them.
"Just as you wish. Lieutenant."
The Lieutenant lowered his voice a bit more, as if fearful lest the walls of the old manservants' room might hear what he said.
"Where did you drown them, Bengt?"
"I took 'em down to the river. I was afraid they'd come floating up and be seen, if I drowned them here in the duck pond."
"H'm, in the river—I thought so!" The Lieutenant stood reflecting a long while. Suddenly he burst out: "There's a lot that's queer in this world!"
"Ay, there is that," old Bengt agreed.
As long as Lieutenant Lagerlöf lived he had to let the river do as it would with his fine fields. Year after year he saw it overflow its banks and spread out in innumerable lake-like ponds, from Mårbacka down through the whole dale. And every time it occurred he would tell about the red cats that sat on the gateposts the morning he drove down to the meeting. Could it be possible that they knew how badly things would go for him? And was it true that one who did violence to a cat was punished? He wondered about that to the end of his days.