Weird Tales from Northern Seas Part 19

The cooks hired for the occasion rolled out the _lefser_,[3] and baked and frizzled on the flat oven-pans. And they brought in herring kegs from the shop, and meal and meat, both cured and fresh, and weighed and measured, and laid in stores of provisions.

But then it seemed to Toad as if she hadn't a moment's peace for prying into pots and pans. Her mistress was going backwards and forwards continually, between store-room and pantry, after meal, or sugar, or b.u.t.ter, or sirup for the _lefser_. The store-room door was ajar for her all day long.

So at last Toad grew downright wild. She was determined to put an end to all this racket. So she took it upon her to well smear the threshold of the store-room with green soap.

Next morning her mistress came bustling along first thing with b.u.t.ter and a wooden ladle in a bowl, and she slipped and fell in the opening between the stairs and the store-house door.

There she lay till Toad dragged her up.

She carried her in to her husband with such a crying and yelling that it was heard all over the depot. Madame had been regularly worrying herself to death with all this bustle, said she, and now the poor soul had fallen and broken her leg.

But the one who cried the most, and didn't know what to do with himself when he heard such weeping and wailing over his wife, was the general dealer.

None knew the real worth of that kitchen wench, said he.

And so it was Toad who now superintended everything, and both dispensed the stores and made provision for the household.

She drove all the hired cooks and pancake rollers out of the house--they were only eating her master out of house and home, she said.

The _lefser_ were laid together without any sirup between them, and she gave out fat instead of b.u.t.ter. She distributed it herself, and packed it up in their _Nistebommers_[4].

Never had the general dealer known the heavy household business disposed of so quickly as it was that year. He was quite astonished.

And he was really dumfoundered when Toad took him up into the store-room, and showed him how little had been consumed, and how the cured shoulders of mutton and the hams hung down from the rafters in rows and rows.

"So long as things went on as they were going now," said he, "she should have the control of the household like mother herself," for his wife was now bedridden in her room upstairs.

And at Yule-tide Toad baked and roasted, and cut things down so finely that her fellow-servants were almost driven to chew their wooden spoons and gnaw bones.

But such fat calves, and such ribs of pork, and such _lefser_ filled with both sirup and b.u.t.ter, and such _molje_[5] and splendid fare for the guests that came to his house at Christmas-time the general dealer had never seen before.

Then the general dealer took her by the arm, and right down into the shop they both went together.

She might take what she would, said he, both of kirtles and neckerchiefs and other finery, so that she might dress and go in and out as if she were mother herself; and she might provide herself with beads and silk as much as she liked. There was nothing that she might not have.

But when the bailiff and the s.e.xton sat at cards, and Toad came in to lay the table-cloth, they were like to have rolled off their chairs.

Such a sight they had never seen before. Toad had rigged herself up with all manner of parti-coloured 'kerchiefs, and trimmed her hairy poll with blue and yellow and green ribbons till it looked like a cart-horse's tail. But they said nothing, for the sake of the general dealer, who thought she looked so smart, and was calling her in continually.

And they were forced to confess that the wench spared neither meat nor ale nor brandy. And on the third evening, when they got so drunk that they lay there like logs, she carried them off to bed as if they were sucking babes.

And so it went on, with feasting and entertaining, right up to the twentieth day after Christmas Day, and beyond it.

And that wench Toad used to smirk and stare about the room; and whenever they didn't laugh or jest enough with her, she would plant herself right in the middle of the floor, and turn herself about in all her finery to attract notice, and say, "It's me!"

And when the guests left the house they must needs admit that the general dealer was right when he said that such serving-maids were not to be picked up every day.

But those folks who went a-fis.h.i.+ng for the general dealer, and had their provisions put up for them beforehand, were not slow to mark that Toad had the control of the shop and stores likewise.

So it happened as might only have been expected. Their provisions ran short, and they had to return home just as the cod was biting best, while all the other fishermen sailed further out and made first-rate hauls.

The general dealer was like to have had apoplexy on the day that he saw his boats lying empty by the bridge in the height of the fis.h.i.+ng season.

His men came up in a body to the shop, headed by their eldest foreman, and laid a complaint before him.

The food that had been packed into their boxes and baskets, they said, couldn't be called human food at all. The _lefser_ were so hard, they said, that it was munch munch all day; there was only rancid fat on them, with scarcely a glimpse of bacon; and as for the cured shoulders of mutton, one had scarcely shaved off a thin slice when one sc.r.a.ped against the bare bone.

Up into the store-room went the general dealer like a shot.

But as for Toad, she smote her hands above her head, and said that it was as much as he, the general dealer, could manage, to meet the heavy expenses for fish-hooks and fish-baskets, and nets and lines, without having to provide his fishermen with salt herring and bacon, and fresh b.u.t.ter and _lefser_ and ground coffee into the bargain. They had no need to starve when they had all the fish of the sea right under their noses, said she.

And then she handed him, as a specimen, one of his own _lefser_, which she had filled with b.u.t.ter and sirup herself, and let him taste it. And he tasted it, and ate and ate till the sirup ran down both corners of his mouth. Such good greasy _lefser_ he had never tasted before.

Then the general dealer gave them a bit of his mind.

He was as red as a turkey-c.o.c.k; and out of the shop-door they went head first--some three yards and some four, according as he got a good grip of them; and old Th.o.r.e, who had steered the big _femboring_, both for him and his father, was discharged.

But Kjel, the herdsman, had hid himself out of the way up on the thres.h.i.+ng-floor whilst the row was going on, and the general dealer was shrieking and bellowing his worst in the yard below. And he stood there and peeped through the little window. Then he saw his mistress, who hadn't been out of bed for nine weeks, hobble forward and stare out of her bedroom window.

She took on terribly, and cried and wrung her thin hands when she saw their old foreman told to go to the devil, and shamble off with his cap in his hand as if he were deranged.

But she dared not so much as shout a word of comfort after him, for there stood Toad, big and broad, in the store-house door, with a platter of _molje_ in her hand, and shook her fist after him.

Then Kjel was like to have wept too.... That stout Toad should not grease herself s.h.i.+ny with _molje_ fat much longer in _their_ house, or he'd know the reason why, thought Kjel.

And from thenceforth Kjel kept a strict watch upon her. There were lots of things going on that he couldn't make out at all.

Towards spring-time, when they put the mast into the large new yacht which was to take the first trading voyage to Bergen, the general dealer was so glad that he was running up and down from the bridge to the house the whole day. He had never imagined that the yacht would have turned out so fine and stately.

And when they had the tackle and the shrouds all ready, and were hoisting away at the yards, he spun round on his heel and snapped his fingers--"That la.s.s Toad should go with him to Bergen," said he.... "She had never seen the town, poor thing! while as for mother, she had been there three times already."

But it seemed to Kjel that he saw more in this than other people saw.

As for Toad, when she heard she was to go to Bergen, she regularly turned the house upside down. There was nothing good enough for her in the whole shop; there was not a shelf that she didn't ransack to find the finery and frippery that glittered most.

And in the evening, when the others had lain them down to rest, she strolled over to the storehouse with a light.

But Kjel, who was a very light sleeper, was up and after her in an instant, and peeped at her through the crack in the door.

There he saw her cutting up the victuals and putting one t.i.t-bit aside after the other, _lefser_ and sweet-cakes and bacon and collared-beef, into the large chest which she had hidden behind the herring barrels.

And on this, the last evening before their departure for Bergen, she had filled her provision-chest so full that she had to sit upon it, with all her huge heavy weight, to press it down.

But the lock wouldn't catch; she had filled the chest too full, so she had to get up and stamp backwards on the lid till it regularly thundered; and sure enough she forced it down at last.

But the heel she stamped down upon it with was much more like the hoof of a horse than the foot of a human being, thought Kjel.

Then she carried the chest to the waggon that it might be smuggled on board without any one seeing it. After that she went into the stable and unloosed the horse. But then there was a pretty to do in the stable!

The horse knew that there was witchcraft afoot, and would not allow itself to be inspanned. Toad dragged and dragged, and the horse s.h.i.+ed and kicked. At last the wench used her back-legs, just as a mare does.