The old mistress had also said it was the three clergymen, Morell, Lyselius, and Wennervik, who built up Mårbacka.
Before their time the place was just a peasant farm, which, though large and flourishing, looked like any other farmstead. If there were a barn for ten cows and a stable for two horses, it was about all that could be expected. The main house had perhaps but one large room, where the entire household lived day and night, and a little pitch-dark kitchen called the kåve. There were many other buildings, of course—a larder, a bath house, a rye-loft and other sheds, a kiln, and a smithy; but they must have been rather small, as the farm at that time was not nearly so extensive as it is now. Only the nearest fields were then under cultivation.
The old mistress used to wonder how the three clergymen had managed to build a stable for ten horses and a cow-house for thirty cows, besides all the big granaries, storehouses, and sheds which they seemed to have required. The brew house with an adjoining room, which was used for a farm-office, were also from their time, likewise the milk-room, loom-room, and bailiff's lodge.
Finally, along in the seventeen-nineties the old mistress's father, Pastor Wennervik, built a new dwelling which was planned on a more modest scale than the other buildings. He was satisfied with a one-story house of four rooms and kitchen, and an attic with two gable chambers. But all the rooms, including the kitchen, were large and light, and so admirably adapted to living purposes that hominess, so to speak, met one with open arms at the threshold.
Pastor Wennervik had also laid out the kitchen garden with its aromatic herb-beds and fruit trees, and the little rose garden. He was the son of a master gardener, and was himself quite clever at gardening. Many little rose bushes and grafted apple trees still growing on the farms round Ämtervik he had helped set out.
In his youth he had been tutor at a great manor, where he conceived a fancy for fences and gates. Round the kitchen garden at Mårbacka he put a pretty white paling, with ornamental gates, and another round the rose garden. If one wished to drive in from the road, one had first to open a great gate, then pass range on range of out-buildings, with fences and gates at several points. It was the same with the front yard.
The children loved to hear about their great-grandfather, Pastor Wennervik. They had found in a corner cupboard of the farm-office some old books in Greek and Latin which bore his signature, also a number of poems by Bellman and Leopold copied in his hand. They knew that the harpsichord and guitar had come to Mårbacka in his time, and they created in fancy a beautiful image of him. It was not only from the old housekeeper they had heard anecdotes of him, but also from their father and their father's sisters. He was a charming gentleman of fine taste, who always liked to wear good clothes and who loved flowers and apples. He must have been a bird-lover, too, for it was he who put up the octangular dove-cote that stood on the green outside the kitchen window. He had planned and worked to make Mårbacka a beautiful home. The clergymen who dwelt there before him must have lived mostly in the peasant manner, while he had softened the old severe simplicity by introducing some of the manners and customs of gentlefolk, thus rendering life there richer and easier.
There was an old oil painting at Mårbacka from the time of Pastor Wennervik. It was a portrait of his early love—a rich and high-born young lady of the Province of Västergötland. He had been tutor to her brother, and being no doubt the best looking and most charming young man she had met up to then, she fell in love with him, and he with her. The lovers had their trysting places in the bowers of the manor park, where they spoke of their love and pledged eternal fidelity. But one day they were discovered, and the young tutor was promptly dismissed.
All that was left to him of love's young dream was this counterfeit presentment of his sweetheart. The young lady's portrait had not been done by a skilled artist; the face on the canvas under the powdered hair was set and expressionless; it looked more like a pretty doll than the likeness of a human countenance. However, the features were of delicate mould, and to him who had seen her eyes sparkle and her lips curve in a smile, the portrait was beautiful enough. Pastor Wennervik perhaps felt some of the old glow of youth in his heart when his gaze rested on the picture.
Mayhap 'twas the portrait which inspired the obscure country parson to surround himself with flowers and birds, to enhance the beauty of life with music and poetry.