Bab Bab 36 · The Father’s Return

. The Father’s Return

That evening Raff Brinker felt so much better that he insisted upon

sitting up for a while on the rough high-backed chair by the fire. For a

few moments there was quite a commotion in the little cottage. Hans was

all-important on the occasion, for his father was a heavy man and needed

something firm to lean upon. The dame, though none of your fragile

ladies, was in such a state of alarm and excitement at the bold step

they were taking in lifting him without the meester’s orders that she

came near pulling her husband over, even while she believed herself to

be his main prop and support.

“Steady, vrouw, steady,” panted Raff. “Have I grown old and feeble, or

is it the fever makes me thus helpless?”

“Hear the man!”--Dame Brinker laughed--“talking like any other

Christian! Why, you’re only weak from the fever, Raff. Here’s the chair,

all fixed snug and warm. Now, sit thee down--hi-di-didy--there we are!”

With these words Dame Brinker let her half of the burden settle slowly

into the chair. Hans prudently did the same.

Meanwhile Gretel flew about generally, bringing every possible thing to

her mother to tuck behind the father’s back and spread over his knees.

Then she twitched the carved bench under his feet, and Hans kicked the

fire to make it brighter.

The father was sitting up at last. What wonder that he looked about him

like one bewildered. “Little Hans” had just been almost carrying him.

“The baby” was over four feet long and was demurely brushing up the

hearth with a bundle of willow wisps. Meitje, the vrouw, winsome and

fair as ever, had gained at least fifty pounds in what seemed to him a

few hours. She also had some new lines in her face that puzzled him. The

only familiar things in the room were the pine table that he had made

before he was married, the Bible upon the shelf, and the cupboard in the

corner.

Ah! Raff Brinker, it was only natural that your eyes should fill with

hot tears even while looking at the joyful faces of your loved ones. Ten

years dropped from a man’s life are no small loss; ten years of manhood,

of household happiness and care; ten years of honest labor, of conscious

enjoyment of sunshine and outdoor beauty, ten years of grateful

life--one day looking forward to all this; the next, waking to find them

passed and a blank. What wonder the scalding tears dropped one by one

upon your cheek!

Tender little Gretel! The prayer of her life was answered through those

tears. She LOVED her father silently at that moment. Hans and his mother

glanced silently at each other when they saw her spring toward him and

throw her arms about his neck.

“Father, DEAR Father,” she whispered, pressing her cheek close to his,

“don’t cry. We are all here.”

“God bless thee,” sobbed Raff, kissing her again and again. “I had

forgotten that!”

Soon he looked up again and spoke in a cheerful voice. “I should know

her, vrouw,” he said, holding the sweet young face between his hands and

gazing at it as though he were watching it grow. “I should know her. The

same blue eyes and the lips, and ah! me, the little song she could sing

almost before she could stand. But that was long ago,” he added, with a

sigh, still looking at her dreamily. “Long ago; it’s all gone now.”

“Not so, indeed,” cried Dame Brinker eagerly. “Do you think I would

let her forget it? Gretel, child, sing the old song thou hast known so

long!”

Raff Brinker’s hand fell wearily and his eyes closed, but it was

something to see the smile playing about his mouth as Gretel’s voice

floated about him like incense.

It was a simple air; she had never known the words.

With loving instinct she softened every note, until Raff almost fancied

that his two-year-old baby was once more beside him.

As soon as the song was finished, Hans mounted a wooden stool and began

to rummage in the cupboard.

“Have a care, Hans,” said Dame Brinker, who through all her poverty was

ever a tidy housewife. “Have a care, the wine is there at your right and

the white bread beyond it.”

“Never fear, Mother,” answered Hans, reaching far back on an upper

shelf. “I shall do no mischief.”

Jumping down, he walked toward his father and placed an oblong block of

pine wood in his hands. One of its ends was rounded off, and some deep

cuts had been made on the top.

“Do you know what that is, Father?” asked Hans.

Raff Brinker’s face brightened. “Indeed I do, boy! It is the boat I was

making you yest--alack, not yesterday, but years ago.”

“I have kept it ever since, Father. It can be finished when your hand

grows strong again.”

“Yes, but not for you, my lad. I must wait for the grandchildren. Why,

you are nearly a man. Have you helped your mother through all these

years?”

“Aye and bravely,” put in Dame Brinker.

“Let me see,” muttered the father, looking in a puzzled way at them all,

“how long is it since the night when the waters were coming in? ‘Tis the

last I remember.”

“We have told thee true, Raff. It was ten years last Pinxter week.”

“Ten years--and I fell then, you say? Has the fever been on me ever

since?”

Dame Brinker scarcely knew how to reply. Should she tell him all? Tell

him that he had been an idiot, almost a lunatic? The doctor had charged

her on no account to worry or excite his patient.

Hans and Gretel looked astonished.

“Like enough, Raff,” she said, nodding her head and raising her

eyebrows. “When a heavy man like thee falls on his head, it’s hard to

say what will come--but thou’rt well NOW, Raff. Thank the good Lord!”

The newly awakened man bowed his head.

“Aye, well enough, mine vrouw,” he said after a moment’s silence, “but

my brain turns somehow like a spinning wheel. It will not be right till

I get on the dikes again. When shall I be at work, think you?”

“Hear the man!” cried Dame Brinker, delighted, yet frightened, too, for

that matter. “We must get him on the bed, Hans. Work indeed!”

They tried to raise him from the chair, but he was not ready yet.

“Be off with ye!” he said with something like his old smile (Gretel had

never seen it before). “Does a man want to be lifted about like a log?

I tell you before three suns I shall be on the dikes again. Ah! There’ll

be some stout fellows to greet me. Jan Kamphuisen and young Hoogsvliet.

They have been good friends to thee, Hans, I’ll warrant.”

Hans looked at his mother. Young Hoogsvliet had been dead five years.

Jan Kamphuisen was in the jail at Amsterdam.

“Aye, they’d have done their share no doubt,” said Dame Brinker,

parrying the inquiry, “had we asked them. But what with working and

studying, Hans has been busy enough without seeking comrades.”

“Working and studying,” echoed Raff, in a musing tone. “Can the

youngsters read and cipher, Meitje?”

“You should hear them!” she answered proudly. “They can run through a

book while I mop the floor. Hans there is as happy over a page of big

words as a rabbit in a cabbage patch; as for ciphering--”

“Here, lad, help a bit,” interrupted Raff Brinker. “I must get me on the

bed again.”