Part 27 (1/2)

”And will Glahn go with us when we go away?”

”No,” I said. ”He won't. Are you sorry about that?”

”No, no,” she said quickly. ”I am glad.”

She said no more about him, and I felt easier. And Maggie went home with me, too, when I asked her.

When she went, a couple of hours later, I climbed up the ladder to Glahn's room and knocked at the thin reed door. He was in. I said:

”I came to tell you that perhaps we'd better not go out shooting to-morrow.”

”Why not?” said Glahn.

”Because I'm not so sure but I might make a little mistake and put a bullet in your throat.”

Glahn did not answer, and I went down again. After that warning he would hardly dare to go out to-morrow--but what did he want to get Maggie out under my window for, and fool with her there at the top of his voice? Why didn't he go back home again, if the letter really asked him, instead of going about as he often did, clenching his teeth and shouting at the empty air: ”Never, never! I'll be drawn and quartered first?”

But the morning after I had warned him, as I said, there was Glahn the same as ever, standing by my bed, calling out:

”Up with you, comrade! It's a lovely day; we must go out and shoot something. That was all nonsense you said yesterday.”

It was no more than four o'clock, but I got up at once and got ready to go with him, in spite of my warning. I loaded my gun before starting out, and I let him see that I did. And it was not at all a lovely day, as he had said; it was raining, which showed that he was only trying to irritate me the more. But I took no notice, and went with him, saying nothing.

All that day we wandered round through the forest, each lost in his own thoughts. We shot nothing--lost one chance after another, through thinking of other things than sport. About noon, Glahn began walking a bit ahead of me, as if to give me a better chance of doing what I liked with him. He walked right across the muzzle of my gun; but I bore with that too. We came back that evening. Nothing had happened. I thought to myself: ”Perhaps he'll be more careful now, and leave Maggie alone.”

”This has been the longest day of my life,” said Glahn when we got back to the hut.

Nothing more was said on either side.

The next few days he was in the blackest humor, seemingly all about the same letter. ”I can't stand it; no, it's more than I can bear,” he would say sometimes in the night; we could hear it all through the hut. His ill temper carried him so far that he would not even answer the most friendly questions when our landlady spoke to him; and he used to groan in his sleep. He must have a deal on his conscience, I thought--but why in the name of goodness didn't he go home? Just pride, no doubt; he would not go back when he had been turned off once.

I met Maggie every evening, and Glahn talked with her no more. I noticed that she had given up chewing things altogether; she never chewed now. I was pleased at that, and thought: She's given up chewing things; that is one failing the less, and I love her twice as much as I did before!

One day she asked about Glahn--asked very cautiously. Was he not well?

Had he gone away?

”If he's not dead, or gone away,” I said, ”he's lying at home, no doubt.

It's all one to me. He's beyond all bearing now.”

But just then, coming up to the hut, we saw Glahn lying on a mat on the ground, hands at the back of his neck, staring up at the sky.

”There he is,” I said.

Maggie went straight up to him, before I could stop her, and said in a pleased sort of voice:

”I don't chew things now--nothing at all. No feathers or money or bits of paper--you can see for yourself.”

Glahn scarcely looked at her. He lay still. Maggie and I went on. When I reproached her with having broken her promise and spoken to Glahn again, she answered that she had only meant to show him he was wrong.