The Golden House

So thought all the family, and the news was soon spread abroad that Nono's father was in Sweden, and was looking for him. Decima had to tell the story over and over again to listeners in the house and listeners without. The colonel and the pastor set on foot an inquiry for the man who had appeared months ago at the hospital, but with no apparent result. The interest in the search gradually died away, and it was the general conclusion that the man had returned discouraged to his native land.

As for Nono, he was quite changed. He did not give up the hope of finding his own father. He seemed always listening, looking out for, expecting something. Yet he did his work faithfully, and was more than ever thoughtful of Karin, and dutiful and obedient towards Jan. There was a special tenderness towards the dear friends in the cottage, as if the time of parting might be near. The likeness of the princess seemed meanwhile to have become especially dear to him. He would stand and look at it long and wistfully, as if he would ask his friend some deep question, or read in her inmost soul.

Pelle watched the boy narrowly, and grew uneasy about him. Nono was not inclined to talk about his father, and Pelle would not force his confidence. He was afraid some wild scheme was forming in the mind of the boy, some plan of going off in search of his father. Pelle took occasion at one time to speak of the sorrow Frans had caused in his home by his disappearance; at another, he enlarged on the dangers that beset young lads without the protecting care of those who understood life better than they did, etc., with innumerable variations.

Nono listened in respectful silence, but with a wandering, wistful look in his eyes.

Alma had been intensely interested in Decima's story. Nono's life was quite like a romance, she said, and she wished she could turn to the last page of the story, as she often did in a book she was reading. She, too, was watching and waiting and expecting. The sound of a hand-organ brought her at once to the window, and many a wandering musician was astonished with questions in Swedish and Italian as to whether he was looking for the golden house, where he had left a baby long ago; what had become of Pionono, the bear; if Francesca were dead, etc. Such questions, put so suddenly and skilfully, Alma fancied would be sure to bring out the truth. The puzzled stragglers often went away from Ekero half suspecting that they were losing their own wits or the young lady had quite lost hers, or that Swedish and Italian were now so confused in their brains that they could fully understand neither. When such wanderers happened to meet Nono on the highroad, they were likely to be further mystified by the dark boy's saying suddenly, "Don't I look like an Italian?" or "I am the baby that was left at the golden house," or some other equally surprising question or announcement.

If Nono chanced to have neglected to speak to such a stranger, he was haunted by the thought that perhaps that very man was his father, and he might have lost his only opportunity of succeeding in his search.

"I shall be glad when winter comes, and these black-haired fellows stop tramping the country round," said Karin one day. "I am tired of the sight of them, and thinking when I see them perhaps they are coming to carry off Nono. What should I do without him? Why, he's just like one of my own boys."

Karin was talking to Pelle. She always allowed herself the liberty of saying out first what was in her heart to him. Now he answered her at once. "You seem to think that Nono was made just to be a pleasure to you, like a baby's plaything. A pleasure he has been to you and to us all, and that I don't deny. God knows what he means to do with the boy, and we don't. It's likely he'll have to go out like the others to earn his living. He can't weed and run errands for Miss Alma all his life. You must think that he is getting to be a big boy, if we do call him 'little Nono.' The Lord will take care of him, I am sure of that," and Pelle turned away from Karin and went into his little room.

Karin dashed away the tears that had come into her eyes at the very thought of parting with Nono, but she thought to herself, "Pelle is right. Nono is getting to be a big boy, and more's the pity. How glad I am that I have Decima for company! and so cheerful and helpful the child is. I don't know how I got on without her so long. If I had had my way and kept her at home, she would have been a wild, spoiled little thing, to be sure. The Lord's ways are best, as Pelle says. That's what I am, a poor scholar at learning. A mother, though, must be a mother, and that the Lord knows as well as I do, and that's a comfort."

CHAPTER XVIII.

NONO'S PLANS, AND PLANS FOR NONO

Winter had come again. Nono, who was usually of a contented spirit, seemed continually displeased with the weather. It was now the last of January. There had for many weeks been a pleasant alternation of sunshine and storm, of cold and a milder temperature. The snow had been continually on the ground, but not deep enough to be in any way an inconvenience; yet Nono was not satisfied. At last the light flakes had fallen slowly for several days, and then the paths about the cottage were cut out sharply, as from the solid rock.

Nono's face wore an expression of musing satisfaction. He seemed now in a mood for play. Thor and Sven were delighted when they heard him ask their mother's permission to build in his spare time a snow-house after a plan he had in his mind, and if it might stand in the open space between the cottage and the gate. Karin was pleased to see Nono looking so happy, and promptly granted his request.

Nono found no difficulty in getting the other boys to act under his direction, as they had great confidence in his architectural abilities. With such willing hands the work went on cheerily, and with wonderful rapidity. Block after block was put in its place, and the surface most skilfully smoothed and hardened.

After all, it only looked like a watch-house when it was done, Jan said, and he was right. There was much playing sentinel among the children, as they stood on guard, being relieved at stated intervals, even Decima being allowed to share in the fun. This kind of frolic came to an end when Nono, with Karin's leave, had smeared the arched interior with a dismal pasty composition from the refuse of the coal-cellar at Ekero.

Nono now ventured to ask Karin to lend him a sheet to hang for a few days before the opening of the watch-house, as the structure was familiarly called in the family. Sven and Thor gave each other significant punches as the request was granted, to signify that no sheet would have been loaned to them; which was no doubt a fact, as they were not much to be relied on for discretion or care-taking.

Now began the erection of something within the snow-house, which Nono alone was allowed to touch. The so-called "little boys" were of the opinion that Nono was making the stump of a crooked old tree; but Oke, who considered himself an authority in the family as to matters literary and artistic, declared his opinion that Nono was making a model of the leaning tower of Pisa, of which he spoke as familiarly as if he had seen it personally in his travels. To the disappointment of Decima and her brothers, they were soon all shut out from the scene of Nono's labours; and he asked them so kindly not even to peep behind the white curtain, that they gave their promise to do as he wished, and promises were held sacred at the golden house.

One morning, early in February, Nono had gone out early to "the watch-house," and had removed the curtain, as the sheet was respectfully called. The family had finished their breakfast, and were just breaking up to set off in different directions, when there was a sound of sleigh-bells stopping at the gate.

The colonel and a gentleman who was staying at Ekero had started out for a morning drive, "Shall we pass near the post-office?" said the gentleman, taking a letter from his pocket. "I forgot to say before we left the house that I had a letter I was anxious to have mailed at once. It is my wife's name-day, and I want her to get a few words from me."

"We shall not pass the post-office," said the colonel, "but I can get a trusty messenger here;" and the coachman drew up at once at the cottage.

The gentleman started, and the colonel sprang to his feet in surprise.

"How wonderful! so like her! I almost thought I had seen a spectre!" said the stranger. "And her name-day, too. My wife was named after the princess."

Yes! There stood the princess in white garments, seemingly coming forward, her figure gracefully bowed, as it was in life, as if by a loving, unconscious desire of the heart to draw near to all who approached her. A fleecy shawl seemed to lie lightly over her shoulders. Snow-white coils of hair crowned her head, and her fair face had a pure sweetness of its own.

"It is wonderfully like her!" said the stranger.

The family from the cottage now came out, Nono leading Karin, who had all the while been in the secret, and the rest eagerly following.

"Is this your work, Nono?" said the colonel.

Nono modestly bowed, and murmured an answer, while his eyes glowed as if they were on fire.

The sound of little Decima sobbing broke in on the conversation. "That is a cold white princess!" she said. "She can't take me on her knee and tell me pretty stories. I don't like the cold white princess!"

Jan took Decima in his arms, while the colonel said pleasantly: "But we like her, Decima; and we loved the princess, both of us; and this gentleman's wife has her name; and he has written a letter to her that we want taken to the post-office at once, that she may get it on her name-day. – Can you go, Nono?"

Nono was glad to spring away with the letter, full of happy thoughts – that every one knew that it was the princess, his dear snow princess, that he had made with his own hands! The gentlemen liked it, too!

While Nono was joyously bounding along the road to the village, the group round the statue could not get through admiring it.

"He's a wonder, that boy!" said Karin, as she went into the cottage. "That he should come to me to bring up, when I can't cut out a gingerbread baby so that it looks like anything!"

"God knows why he sent him to you, Karin," said Pelle, "and God will know what to do with him in the time that is coming. He is a wonderful boy, that is sure!"

While the simple people at the golden house were talking in this way about Nono, the colonel and his guest had driven away. The stranger had promised to come in the afternoon and take a photograph of the snow statue, and of Nono too, the very best he could get, and of the whole family group just as he had seen them.

As the gentlemen drove on together they talked of the princess, beloved by rich and poor, and of the visitor's wife, one of the pure in heart worthy to bear the name of her honoured friend.

Nono, too, was the subject of conversation. His whole story was told, and listened to with intense interest. It was agreed that Nono should, with Karin's permission, come for some hours every day to Ekero to wait upon the stranger, who was a sculptor, and was making a marble bust of the colonel's wife from the various likenesses of her, assisted by her husband's vivid descriptions of her ever-remembered face and her person and character.

"I must know that boy, and take him to Italy with me in the spring if I can," said the sculptor. "There is an artist in him, I am sure, and it will only be a pleasure to train him."

When, later, Pelle heard the plan that was proposed, he said quickly, —

"Those artist fellows are not always the best to be trusted with the care of a boy. It would be better for Nono to work in the fields, with good Jan to look after him, than to make figures in a far country under the greatest gentleman in the world who was not a good man."

Karin looked relieved, and turned to hear what Jan would say on the subject; for, after all, in important matters it was always Jan who decided.

"The colonel said, when he talked to me" – and here Jan paused and looked about him. He did not object to having it understood that the colonel considered him the head of the family, a fact which Jan himself sometimes doubted – "the colonel said," he continued, "that artist was a Christian man, and he had a wife just fit to be called, as she was, after the princess, and he couldn't say any more. And he didn't need to! They haven't any children of their own, so she just goes where he goes, everywhere, and she's the kind of a woman to be the making of Nono, such a boy as he is. Nono will go with him in the spring; I have made up my mind on that matter."

Karin began to cry. "To bring him up, and such a nice boy as he is, and such a wonderful boy, too; and to love him so, and then have to give him to people who hardly know him at all!" and Karin fairly sobbed.

"You are partial to Nono, Karin," said Jan sternly. He never held back a rebuke for Karin when he thought she deserved it. "You never took on so when your own boys went away, three of them, over the sea."

"Our boys are our boys," said Karin, "and that makes a difference. They can't belong to anybody else. I should be their own mother, and they'd feel it, and so should I, if they lived in the moon. But Nono, off there, he may find his own father and mother and never come back. They may be tramping kind of people. Most likely they are, and there's no knowing what ways they might teach him. They have a right to him and I haven't. That's what I feel. I love him just like my own. He wouldn't turn the cold shoulder to his own father and mother if they were poor as poverty or just fit for a prison, I know that. It wouldn't be in him. Not that I think he would forget me. It would be a shame to say it, such a good child as he has always been to me!"

Jan put his hand on Karin's shoulder and looked helplessly at her, as he generally did when she had a flood of tears and a flood of talk at the same time.

Pelle came to the rescue, as he had often done before. "Karin wants to be Providence," he said. "She wants to take things into her own hands. That's the way with women, especially mothers. There was my mother, when I was a sailor, almost sure I would go to the bad; but God just lays me up in a hospital, and turns me square round, and sets my face to the better country. I just went home, and made up my mind to stay by my mother, and do for her as long as she lived; and I did, God bless her! It is good sense, Karin, to let the Lord manage his own way. Your way might not turn out the best after all."

"Yes, I know it," said Karin, wiping her eyes. "But things do come so unexpected in this world, one can't ever be ready for them."

"Just take one day at a time, Karin, and don't bother about what's coming," said Pelle. "We can't any of us say what is to become of Nono, not even Jan, who is so clear in his mind. We don't any of us know what to-morrow may bring. He'll have just what the Lord has planned for him. Women are better at bringing up 'critters' than driving them when they are brought up. They are about the same with boys. Mothers should bring up their boys right, and then let the Lord do what he pleases with them afterwards. Isn't it so, Karin?"

"Yes – maybe – I do suppose you are right, Pelle, and I'll try to remember it. But a man don't know how a woman feels."

"It's well they don't," said Jan curtly. "It wouldn't have suited what I've had to do in life to be like them. Karin's heart is bigger than her head; but things have worked well here so far, and it's likely it will be so to the end," and Jan looked kindly after Karin as she went off to feed the chickens, with Decima in her train, evidently thinking her mother was the injured party.