In God's Way: A Novel
by Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson · English · Gutenberg #37726 · 611,735 chars · public domain (US)
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Title: In God's Way: A Novel
Author: Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson
Editor: Edmund Gosse
Translator: Elizabeth Carmichael
Release date: October 11, 2011 [eBook #37726]
Most recently updated: January 16, 2025
Language: English
Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/37726
Credits: Produced by Charles Bowen, from page scans provided by Google Books
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK IN GOD'S WAY: A NOVEL ***
Heinemann's International Library.
EDITOR'S NOTE.
There is nothing in which the Anglo-Saxon world differs more from the
world of the Continent of Europe than in its fiction. English readers
are accustomed to satisfy their curiosity with English novels, and it
is rarely indeed that we turn aside to learn something of the interior
life of those other countries the exterior scenery of which is often so
familiar to us. We climb the Alps, but are content to know nothing of
the pastoral romances of Switzerland. We steam in and out of the
picturesque fjords of Norway, but never guess what deep speculation
into life and morals is made by the novelists of that sparsely peopled
but richly endowed nation. We stroll across the courts of the Alhambra,
we are listlessly rowed upon Venetian canals and Lombard lakes, we
hasten by night through the roaring factories of Belgium; but we never
pause to inquire whether there is now flourishing a Spanish, an
Italian, a Flemish school of fiction. Of Russian novels we have lately
been taught to become partly aware, but we do not ask ourselves whether
Poland may not possess a Dostoieffsky and Portugal a Tolstoi.
Yet, as a matter of fact, there is no European country that has
not, within the last half-century, felt the dew of revival on the
threshing-floor of its worn-out schools of romance. Everywhere there
has been shown by young men, endowed with a talent for narrative, a
vigorous determination to devote themselves to a vivid and sympathetic
interpretation of nature and of man. In almost every language, too,
this movement has tended to display itself more and more in the
direction of what is reported and less of what is created. Fancy has
seemed to these young novelists a poorer thing than observation; the
world of dreams fainter than the world of men. They have not been
occupied mainly with what might be or what should be, but with what is,
and, in spite of all their shortcomings, they have combined to produce
a series of pictures of existing society in each of their several
countries such as cannot fail to form an archive of documents
invaluable to futurity.
But to us they should be still more valuable. To travel in a foreign
country is but to touch its surface. Under the guidance of a novelist
of genius we penetrate to the secrets of a nation, and talk the very
language of its citizens. We may go to Normandy summer after summer and
know less of the manner of life that proceeds under those gnarled
orchards of apple-blossom than we learn from one tale of Guy de
Maupassant's. The present series is intended to be a guide to the inner
geography of Europe. It presents to our readers a series of spiritual
Baedekers and Murrays. It will endeavour to keep pace with every truly
characteristic and vigorous expression of the novelist's art in each of
the principal European countries, presenting what is quite new if it is
also good, side by side with what is old, if it has not hitherto been
presented to our public. That will be selected which gives with most
freshness and variety the different aspects of continental feeling, the
only limits of selection being that a book shall be, on the one hand,
amusing, and, on the other, wholesome.
One difficulty which must be frankly faced is that of subject. Life is
now treated in fiction by every race but our own with singular candour.
The novelists of the Lutheran North are not more fully emancipated from
prejudice in this respect than the novelists of the Catholic South.
Everywhere in Europe a novel is looked upon now as an impersonal work,
from which the writer, as a mere observer, stands aloof, neither
blaming nor applauding. Continental fiction has learned to exclude, in
the main, from among the subjects of its attention, all but those facts
which are of common experience, and thus the novelists have determined
to disdain nothing and to repudiate nothing which is common to
humanity; much is freely discussed, even in the novels of Holland and
of Denmark, which our race is apt to treat with a much more gingerly
discretion. It is not difficult, however, we believe--it is certainly
not impossible--to discard all which may justly give offence, and yet
to offer to an English public as many of the masterpieces of European
fiction as we can ever hope to see included in this library. It will be
the endeavour of the editor to search on all hands and in all languages
for such books as combine the greatest literary value with the most
curious and amusing qualities of manner and matter.
EDMUND GOSSE.
IN GOD'S WAY
Heinemann's International Library.
Edited by EDMUND GOSSE.
_Crown 8vo, in paper covers, 2s. 6d., or cloth limp, 3s. 6d_.
Volume I.
_IN GOD'S WAY_.
_A Novel_.
_By BJÖRNSTJERNE BJÖRNSON_.
_Translated from the Norwegian by Elizabeth Carmichael_.
* * *
_Volume II. In July_.
_PIERRE AND JEAN_.
_By GUY DE MAUPASSANT_.
_Translated from the French by Clara Bell_.
* * *
_Volume III. In August_.
_THE CHIEF JUSTICE_.
_By EMIL FRANZOS_.
_Translated from the German by Miles Corbet_.
_Other Volumes will be announced later_.
_Each Volume will contain a Specially Written Introduction
by the Editor_.
* * * * *
London: WILLIAM HEINEMANN, 21 Bedford St., W.C.
IN GOD'S WAY
A NOVEL
BY
BJÖRNSTJERNE BJÖRNSON
TRANSLATED FROM THE NORWEGIAN
BY
ELIZABETH CARMICHAEL
LONDON
WILLIAM HEINEMANN
1890
[_All rights reserved_]
_TO MY BEST FRIEND_
_ETATSRÅD FREDERIK HEGEL_
_IN REMEMBRANCE_
Thou never hast been here; yet I roam
Often up and down and meet thee everywhere.
Here is no room, nor road
But thoughts of thee stand forth
Awaiting me from by-gone days,
When thou by deeds of faithful friendship
Brought comfort to my home in all its troubles.
And ofttimes as I wrote this book,
Thy kindly eye would beam on me;
We were alone then, thou and I, and
All that silently grew into words--
Here and there the book must needs
Be like thy heart, thy simple faith,
And therefore may thy name impart a blessing unto it.
AULESTAD, _September_ 11, 1889.
INTRODUCTION.
Among many Scandinavian candidates for fame in the province of fiction,
by far the most distinguished in our own day is the Norwegian,
Björnstjerne Björnson. He is a child of the mountains; it was in the
remote and romantic parish of Kvike, of which his father was priest,
that he was born on the 8th of December, 1832. In the bleak parsonage
high up in a ravine of the hills, the child led the solitary life which
he has described in the little story called _Blakken_. When he was six
years old, his father was transferred to Næsset, in the Romsdal, one of
the loveliest parishes in Norway, where the influences of natural
beauty and a full peasant society instantly began to mould the child's
poetic sensations. At the grammar school of Molde, Björnson was an
active, tiresome, and industrious boy; in whom, at about the age of
fifteen, a feeling for literature was suddenly awakened, by the reading
of Wergeland's poem, _The English Pilot_. At seventeen, he was sent to
a high school at Christiania, and in 1852 he entered the university. At
the age of twenty he began to write dramas in verse, none of which have
seen the light, and a little later he began to live by journalism in
the capital. His early career was one of struggle against privation and
disappointment. It was not until 1857 that Björnson made his literary
debut, with a little historic drama, called _Between the Battles_, and
with a novel, _Synnöve Solbakken_, of unprecedented charm and
freshness, an exceedingly naïve study of peasant life in Norway; of
this four or five separate translations exist in the English language.
He was now suddenly famous, and the great success of this book led the
author to write a similar, but perhaps a stronger novel, _Arne_, in
1858. Of this also many versions have been made. In 1860 followed
_Short Stories_, a volume including six tales, one of which, "A Happy
Boy," has been regarded as Björnson's most successful effort in this
line of peasant-romance. He proceeded to concentrate his attention on a
revival of the poetical drama, and wrote a succession of masterly
tragedies and a good comedy. His next novel, _The Fisher Maiden_, did
not appear until 1868.
Absorbed in dramatic work of various kinds, a short story called _The
Bridal March_, 1873, was Bjornson's only contribution to fiction for
several years. When he reappeared as a novelist, a great change in his
manner was discernible. In _Magnhild_, published in 1877, his exquisite
purity and simplicity of style had disappeared; this book was more
real, perhaps, but it was much more turbid and more speculative than
his early mountain romances. Björnson had been touched by the "novel of
experience," and had been troubled by it. _Captain Mansana_, a story of
the Italian war, was slight in character. Everything seemed to point to
the abandonment of prose fiction by Björnson, in favour of the drama,
in which he had made and was still making a series of paradoxical
successes. Quite in recent years, however, Björnson has returned to the
novel, and has produced several works of extraordinary merit. Among
these, the latest, _In God's Way_, which was originally published in
1889, has been universally received as the most remarkable. It is a
book which combines the romantic colour and ideal glow of the author's
early pastoral stories, with a deeper insight into life and a graver
examination of the relations of impulse to duty.
Björnson is a Radical in almost every department of thought. Within the
last ten years he has been drawn more and more closely into the vortex
of political life. From his farm at Aulestad, in the mountains, he sent
forth in 1877, a drama, _The King_, the consequences of which were such
as he probably never anticipated. The piece, which was far from being
one of his most artistic creations, was looked upon as a manifestation
of enmity to the throne, and since that time the poet has been driven
further and further into opposition to the existing Sovereign of Sweden
and Norway. But, fortunately for literature, no revolution has as yet
given him that opportunity which so many advanced Norwegians yet hope
may be placed in his way, of helping to administer the government of
his country upon a Republican basis. He is probably able to do better
service to Norway by writing those pure and manly stories of his, which
thousands of young people read with enthusiasm, than if he were
entrusted with the responsibilities of a portfolio. But it would be
idle to speculate what triumphs, whether literary, social, or
political, the future may not hold for one whose physical and
intellectual health is superb, and who has not yet approached his
sixtieth year.
EDMUND GOSSE.
SCHOOL-DAYS
IN GOD'S WAY
I.
In the melting snow on the hill-side by the sea, in the last rays of
the evening sun, stood a boy of fourteen, awestruck. He looked toward
the west, out across the sea; he looked toward the east, over town and
shore and the broad hills; in the background still higher peaks rose
far away in the clear sky.
The storm had lasted a long time; it had been more terrible, too, than
any the old people could remember. In spite of the new dyke, many ships
had been driven ashore, and many had sunk. The telegraph brought news
of wrecks all along the coast, and close by here the herring-nets had
been broken and washed away, oars and anchors had disappeared; it was
even feared that the worst was not yet known.
It was but a few hours since a calm had set in, the storm had abated,
the gusts of wind ceased, all was over--all except the last low
grumblings of the storm.
But the sea was rebellious; it does not do to stir up the deep and then
to run away. Far off in the distance great sea-waves, higher than
houses, came rolling up in endless lines with foam-white crests and a
crashing fall; the dull, heavy thud was heard across the town and
shore; it was like a piece of land slipping away down into space.
Each time the waves at full height stormed the mountain, the spray was
dashed up to a monstrous height; from afar it seemed as though the
great white sea-monsters of the old legends were trying to land just at
that very spot. But a few salt splashes were all that reached the top;
they stung the boy's cheek as he stood there motionless.
As a rule it was only the very worst westerly storms that could dash
the spray so high; but now it had reached the top though the air was so
calm. No one but he had ever seen such a sight.
Away in the far west, sky and sea seemed melting into one in the glow
of the setting sun. It was like some golden realm of peace; and all the
deep sea-waves, with their white crests rolling up from as far as the
eye could reach, were like banished rebels; they came crowding onward,
protesting, million-mouthed.
The contrast of colouring was now at its height; no more blending of
lights and shades, not even a red shimmer made its way across. _There_
was a rich, warm glow, _here_ a cold, blue-black lay over the sea and
snowy coast; all that could be seen of the town from the hill-side
dwindled away and seemed to grow less and less every time the boy
turned to look inland. But each time he looked he felt himself grow
more restless and uneasy; surely that was a bad sign; could more be
going to happen? His imagination was startled, and, tired as he was
from want of sleep, he had no strength to fight against this fear.
The splendour of the sky was disappearing, all the colour gradually
fading away. The roar from down below, where the sea-monsters were
trying to climb, grew louder and louder; or was it he who heard it more
plainly?
Was this meant for him? What in the world had he been doing? Or was he
going to do something wrong? Once before the same vague fear had proved
to be a bad omen.
It was not the storm alone that had frightened him; a short time ago a
lay preacher had prophesied that the end of the world was at hand; all
the signs of the Bible had come to pass, and the prophecies of Jeremiah
and Daniel were clearly to be understood. It made such a sensation that
the papers took up the matter and announced that the same thing had
been foretold so very often before, and those prophecies of Jeremiah
and Daniel were always suited to the occasion. But when the hurricane
came, and was fiercer and more terrible than any that could be
remembered; when ships loosed from their moorings were driven up
against the wharf, crushed themselves and crushing others, and
especially when night came on and shrouded everything in darkness, and
no lantern even could keep alight, ... the crashing fall of the waves
was heard but not seen, shouts of command, screamings and great
lamentations; and in the streets such terror, roofs were lifted right
off, houses shook, windows rattled, stones hurled about, and the
distant screams of those trying to escape only added to the fright, ...
then, indeed, were many who remembered the words of the preacher; God
help and save us, surely the last day has come and the stars are about
to fall. The children especially were frightened to death. The parents
had not time to stay with them; though the last day of the world had
come, still there was a doubt as to whether it really were the last
day, and from sheer force of habit it was thought wiser to look well
after all worldly goods, so they saved what they could, and put up
bolts and bars, and ran to look to the fires, and were busy everywhere.
But to the children they gave prayer-books and psalm-books, and told
them to read what was written about earthquakes and other plagues, and
about the day of judgment; hurriedly they found the places for them,
and then ran and left them. As if the children could read then!
Some there were who went to bed and pulled the bedclothes over their
heads; some took their dog or cat with them--it was company for them,
and they would die together. But it happened sometimes that neither dog
nor cat chose to die under the bedclothes, so then there was a fight.
The boy who now stood up on the top of the hill had been absolutely
crazy with fear. But he was one of those whom fright drove about from
place to place--out of the house into the street, from the street down
to the harbour, and then back home again. No less than three times had
his father been after him, caught him and locked him in, but he always
managed to get out again. Now this was not the sort of thing that could
have been done with impunity in an ordinary way, for no boy was kept
more strictly or got such abundance of thrashings as Edward Kallem; but
the one benefit the storm brought was that there were no blows that
night.
The night passed away, and the stars still shone clear until day dawned
once more, and the sun was as bright as ever; the storm died away and
with it all remains of fear.
But once one has been influenced by anything so terrifying there will
ever after be, as it were, a dread of the actual terror. Not only by
night in evil dreams, but by day when one fancies one's self safest, it
lurks in our imagination, ready to seize hold of us at the smallest
provocation, and devouring us with cunning eyes and bated breath drives
us sometimes to madness.
As the lad stood there he began to feel afraid of the deepening
twilight and the roar of the sea; and all at once a terrible fear came
upon him, and all the horrors of the last day began afresh. How could
he have been so foolish as to venture up there, and _alone_, too! He
stood like one paralysed, he dared not move one foot forward, it might
be noticed, and he was surrounded by enemies. He whispered a prayer to
his dead mother that if this really were the last day, and the
resurrection set her free, she would come to him up there and stay with
him; not with his sister, for she had the headmaster of the school to
take care of her; but he was quite alone.
But all remained as before. Only toward the west it grew lighter, but
darker toward the east; the cold grew more intense and reigned supreme;
but there was a comforting feeling in the more equal size and monotony
of all around. By degrees he regained courage, and began to breathe
more freely--timidly at first, then a long-drawn breath several times;
he began then to touch himself all over very gently and cautiously,
half afraid that those invisible powers which were looking out for him
might suspect some evil. Softly he crept away from the edge of the
precipice and drew nearer to the downward path. He was not going to run
away, oh dear no! He was not even sure that he would go down; he might
just try; certainly he would gladly come again. But the descent just
here was dangerous, and really ought to be got over before dark, and at
this time of year it got dark so very quickly. If he could manage to
climb down to the path that led across the mountain from the fishing
village down below, then there would be no danger; but up here--well,
he would go carefully, cautiously, one little step forward, then
another quite tiny little step. It was just a trial; he would be sure
to come again.
No sooner had he in this way clambered down the steepest and most
dangerous part of the descent, and stood where he felt himself
protected from those invisible powers he had been so anxiously
capitulating with, than he set to work to cheat them most thoroughly;
down he fled, leaping and jumping, bounding like an India-rubber ball
from one piece of rock to another, till suddenly he saw a pointed cap
sticking up so far down below him that he could only just distinguish
it. In an instant he came to a dead stop! His terror and flight, all he
had just gone through vanished; not a shadow of it remained. Now it was
his turn to frighten others; and here came the very boy he had been
waiting for all the time. His excitement, his eyes, his whole eager
attitude showed how he delighted in the knowledge that the other was
coming within range. How he would give it him!
The other boy came climbing upward, little suspecting the danger that
awaited him; slowly he jogged along as if enjoying his liberty and
solitude: soon his heavy boots were heard with their iron heels
clanking against the stones.
A well-built lad he was, tall and fair, a year or so older than the one
awaiting him. He wore coarse cloth clothes, and a woollen scarf around
his neck; his hands were encased in thick, knitted gloves; he carried
one of the little wooden boxes generally used by the peasants; it was
painted blue, with white and yellow roses.
A great mystery was now going to be revealed. For many days the whole
school had been waiting, wondering with whom, and how and where this
meeting would take place, and when the important moment would arrive
when Ole Tuft, confronted by one of the school's most solemn police
force would be obliged to confess where he went to, and what he did in
the afternoons and evenings.
Ole Tuft was the son and only child of a well-to-do peasant along the
coast. His father, who had been dead now a year, had been one of the
most popular lay preachers in all the West country, and had early
determined that his son should be a clergyman, that was why he went to
the town-school. Ole was clever, industrious, and so respectful to the
masters that he soon was a favourite with them all.
But no one can know a dog by his coat only. This most respectful and
simple lad began to disappear from the playground in the afternoons; he
was not at home (he lived with his aunt, his father's sister), and he
was not at the Schultzes, where he used to help two of the children
with their lessons--he always did that directly after dinner; neither
was he at the head-master's, which was the same as being with the
master's adopted daughter, Josephine Kallem, Edward's sister; Ole and
she were always so much together. Sometimes the other lads would see
him go in there, but never come out again, and yet they always found
Josephine alone when they went in to look for him; for they posted out
sentinels, and the whole search was carried on most methodically. They
could track him as far as to the school-yard but no farther--surely he
could not have disappeared into the earth? They ransacked the yard from
one end to the other, every corner, every hiding-place was visited over
and over again; Josephine herself went about with the boys and took
them even up to the cock-loft, down into the cellar, and into every
room where none of the family were sitting, assuring them, on her word
of honour, that he was not there; but they could look for themselves.
Where in all the world was he then?
It so happened that the dux of the school had just won in a lottery
"Les trois Mousquetaires," by Alexandre Dumas the elder, a splendid
book, with illustrations; but as he soon discovered it was not the kind
of book for so learned a man as he, he offered it as a reward to that
one of his school-fellows who could find out where Ole Tuft went to,
and what he did in the afternoons and evenings. This seemed a very
enticing offer to Edward Kallem; he had always lived in Spain until
about a year ago; he could read French just as well as Norwegian, and
he had heard that "Les trois Mousquetaires" was the most splendid novel
in the world. And now he stood sentinel for "Les trois Mousquetaires."
Hurrah for all the three! now they would be his.
Down he crept softly, softly, until he reached the path; the culprit
was close at hand.
There was something about Edward Kallem's head that made one think of a
bird of prey. The nose was like a beak; the eyes wild looking, partly
from their expression and partly because they had a slight squint. His
forehead was sharp and short, the light brown hair closely cropped
around it. There was an extraordinary mobility about him which made one
feel that he was very agile. He was standing still, but he bent his
body forward, shifted his feet and raised his arms as though the next
moment he would throw himself into the air.
"Boo-oo!" shouted he with all the strength of his lungs. How he
startled the boy who was climbing up--he nearly dropped his box. "Now I
have got you! It's all up with your secret now!"
Ole Tuft was like one turned to stone.
"So there you are! Ha, ha! What have you got in the box?" And he rushed
at him; but the other one quickly changed his box from right to left
hand, and held it behind him; it was impossible for Edward to get hold
of it. "What are you thinking of lad? Do you fancy you can escape? Give
up the box!"
"No, you shan't have it!"
"What! you won't obey? Then I'll just go down and ask."
"No; oh no!"
"Indeed but I will though."
"No, you won't?"
"Yes, I shall!" And he pushed past and tried to go down.
"I'll tell all, if only you'll not tell again."
"Not tell again? Are you out of your senses?"
"Oh, but you must not tell!"
"What a ridiculous idea! Give me the box or I'm away down to ask!"
shouted he.
"Well, you'll not tell about it?" And Ole's eyes filled with tears.
"I won't promise."
"Don't tell, Edward!"
"I tell you I won't promise. Out with the box; look sharp!"
"Indeed it's nothing wrong. Do you hear, Edward?"
"Then if it's nothing wrong, I suppose you can give it me. Come, be
quick!"
Boylike, Ole took this as a sort of half promise; he looked imploringly
at him and began hesitatingly: "I go down there to--to--oh, you
know--to walk in the ways of God." This last was said very timidly and
he burst into tears.
"In the ways of God?" repeated Edward, half uneasily but highly
astonished.
Then he remembered that once in a very drowsy geography class, the
master had asked, "What are the best kind of roads or ways?" The answer
in the lesson-book was, "The best way for the exportation of wares is
by sea."
"Well," repeated the master, "what ways arc the best? Answer, you,
Tuft!"
"The ways of God," answered Tuft. In an instant the whole class was
wide awake, a roar of laughter gave evidence of it.
But for all that Edward Kallem did not really know the true meaning of
"God's ways." Ole down in the fishing village, and walking in the ways
of God! From sheer curiosity he forgot that he was a member of the
moral police force, and blurted out, just like any other school-boy, "I
don't understand what you mean, Ole; walking in the ways of God, did
you say?"
Ole noticed the change at once; those wild-looking eyes were friendly
again, but still had that strange light which indeed never left them.
Edward Kallem was the one of all his school-fellows whom Ole secretly
admired the most. The peasant boy suffered much from the town boys'
superior brightness and sharpness, and both these qualities were very
much to the fore in Edward Kallem. And besides, there was as it were a
halo round his head--he was his brown-haired sister's brother.
He had one unbearable fault, he was a fearful tease. He often got a
beating for it from the master or his father, or his companions, but a
moment after he would begin again. This sort of courage was beyond the
peasant boy's comprehension. Therefore a friendly word or smile from
Edward had a greater effect than it was really worth; it had about it a
sunny glow of gracious condescension. This coaxing, kindly questioning,
coming from the bird of prey (though its beak only was visible),
together with the bright, shining eyes, made Ole give in. As soon as
Edward changed his tactics and asked innocently to be allowed to look
at the box he gave it up, and felt so safe and at his ease that he
dried his eyes with his big gloves, took off the one glove and blew
his nose, then remembering that someone had given him a checked
pocket-handkerchief for that purpose, he looked for it in his pockets
but could not find it.
Edward had unfastened the lid of the box; before he raised it he looked
up, saying, "May I?"
"Yes, you may."
Edward put the lid on one side and took off a handkerchief, under which
lay a large book; it was a Bible. He felt rather small, almost awed.
Underneath the Bible lay several unbound books; he took up a few of
them, turned them over and put them back again; they were religious
tracts. He laid down the Bible again carefully, just as he had found
it, spread the handkerchief over it, and shut the lid. In reality he
was not a bit wiser than before, but he was more curious.
"You surely don't read the Bible to the people down there?" asked he.
Ole Tuft blushed. "Yes, I do, sometimes, and then----"
"Who do you read to?"
"Oh, to the sick, but it is not often I can get so far."
"Do you go and visit the sick?"
"Yes, it is just the sick I do visit."
"The sick? What can you do for them?"
"Oh, I help them as well as I can."
"You?" repeated Edward, with all the astonishment he was capable of.
After a pause he went on. "But how do you help them? Do you take food
to them?"
"Sometimes I do. I help them whenever they need it; I change the straw
under them."
"Change the straw?"
"Why, yes, they lie upon straw, and then, don't you see, they would lie
on there, no matter how dirty it got, for they are ill and cannot help
themselves, and often in the daytime they are left quite alone when
every one is out at work and the children are at school. So when I come
in the afternoon, I go first to the boats just in from along the coast
with straw, and there I buy what I need and carry it up and then take
away the old straw."
"But, my dear fellow, have you got money to buy it with?" asked Edward.
"My aunt collects money for me, and so does Josephine too."
"Josephine!" exclaimed the brother.
"Yes; oh, but perhaps I ought not to have told."
"Who does Josephine get money from?" asked Edward, with all an elder
brother's aroused curiosity.
Ole bethought himself a moment, then answered decidedly and clearly:
"From your father."
"From father?"
Edward knew quite well that even though it were Josephine who asked
their father for money, he would never give it for any useless purpose;
he always liked to know what it was wanted for. Therefore his father
must approve of what Ole did, and that took away all doubt from
Edward's mind. Ole could feel how entirely he changed his view of the
matter; he could see it, too, in his eyes. He longed to tell him more
about it all, and he did so. He explained how, often when he went
there, there was hard work for him to do; he was obliged to light the
fire and cook for them.
"Can you cook?"
"Of course I can, and clean up too, and buy all that is needed, and
send a messenger rowing across to the apothecary; for the doctor may
have written a prescription, but no one ever thinks of sending it
over."
"And have you time to do all this?"
"Directly after dinner I finish work at the Schultzes, and I learn my
own lessons at night."
And he talked on, telling all there was to tell, until he, too,
remembered that they ought to get down from the mountain before dark.
Edward walked on in front, deep in thought; the other followed after
with his box.
There, on the slope of the hill, they could hear the roaring of the
waves as if in the air; it was like the low murmur of a distant crowd,
but high above their heads. They felt it getting very cold; the moon
was up, but no stars were to be seen; yes, one solitary one peeped
forth.
"And what made you think of doing this?" asked Edward, turning round.
Ole stood still too. He moved his box backward and forward from one
hand to the other; should he make a bold venture and tell all?
Edward understood at once that he had not heard everything, and that
what remained to be told was the most important part of all.
"Can't you tell me?" he asked, as though it was quite immaterial.
"Yes, I think I can;" but he kept on changing his box from hand to hand
without saying a word.
Then Edward became impatient and began trying to persuade him, to which
Ole had no objections, but still he hesitated.
"Surely it is nothing wicked?"
"No, it is not wicked." And he added, after a pause, "It is rather
something grand, very grand and great."
"Really something great?"
"In reality the grandest thing in all the world."
"But what can you mean?"
"Well, then, if only you will not tell, not to a living soul--do you
hear?--I might tell you."
"What is it, Ole?"
"I am going to be a missionary."
"A missionary?"
"Yes, a missionary among the heathen, the regular savages, don't you
know, those who eat people." He saw that Edward was almost speechless;
so he made haste to tell him all sorts of things about cyclones, raging
wild beasts, and poisonous snakes. "You see one requires to be prepared
for such things."
"How prepared--for raging wild beasts and poisonous snakes?" Edward
began to think everything possible.
"The people are the worst," said Ole, who had to give in about the wild
beasts; "they are such dreadful heathens, and cruel and ugly and wicked
into the bargain. So it will not be so easy to manage them. One must
have practice."
"But how can you get practice in that sort of thing here? They are not
heathens down in the fishing village?"
"No, but they can teach one how to bear a little of everything; there
is no use complaining down there, but just be ready to do all sorts of
hard work. They are often so suspicious when they are ill and fretful,
and some of them are downright brutes. Just fancy, one evening one of
them was going to hit me."
"Hit you?"
"I prayed to God that she would, but she only cursed and swore." Ole's
eyes glistened, his whole face was beaming. "In one of the tracts I
have in my box it says that that is the mistake of our missionaries,
they go out to their work without having any practice or experience.
And it says, too, that the art of winning people is a very difficult
one, but hardest of all it is to win them for the kingdom of God, and
that we ought to strive to do it from our childhood upward; that is
what the book says, and I mean to do it. For to be a missionary is
higher and greater than anything upon earth; greater than to be king,
greater than to be emperor or pope. That is all in the tract, and this,
too, that a missionary said: 'If I had ten lives, I would give them all
to the mission.' And I mean to do the same."
They were walking side by side; unconsciously Ole had turned to the
stars as they began to twinkle, and they both stood still awhile gazing
into space. Beneath them lay the harbour with its dimly outlined ships,
the silent, empty wharfs, and the scattered lights from the town;
beyond was the shore, gray with snow and the dark sea-waves rolling up;
they could hear the sound again, faintly in the distance, the monotony
of the roar seemed in keeping with the star-spangled twilight. An
invisible wave of sympathy passed between the lads, and seemed to link
them together. There was no one Ole was so anxious should think well of
him as his friend here with his jaunty fur cap; while Edward was
thinking all the time how much better Ole was than he; for he knew
quite well that he was far from good, and indeed he was told of it
every day. He glanced sideways at the peasant boy. The peaked cap
was pulled down over his ears, the big gloves, the thick scarf, the
coarse cloth jacket, and trousers hanging loosely on him; the heavy,
iron-bound boots--a curious figure--but his eyes alone made up for it
all. And then the innocent, trusting expression, though it was rather
an old-fashioned face.... Ole would decidedly be a great man some day.
They trotted on again, Edward in front, Ole after him, down toward the
"hill-town," as that part was called which lay nearest the hill-side,
and which consisted chiefly of workmen's houses, a few workshops, and
some smaller factories. As yet the streets were neither properly paved
nor lighted, and now the muddy snow was stiffening into ice as night
came on. The lanterns, few and far between, hung in the middle of the
streets, on ropes stretched across from opposite houses; they were made
to be hoisted up and down. They had been badly cleaned and burned
dimly. Here and there one of the small workshops had its own private
lantern, which was hung up outside on the steps. Edward stopped again
under one of these; he felt he must ask more questions. He wanted to
know more particularly who it was Ole went to see among the fisher
people--whether it was anyone they both knew.
Ole boldly put down his box on the steps, and stood there resting his
hand on it; he smiled. "Do you know Martha from the docks?" The whole
town knew her; she was a clever woman, but much given to drink, and on
Saturday evenings the school-boys always had great fun with her, when
she stood leaning up against a wall, abusing them roundly with gestures
not of the most refined, in fact, quite unmentionable. This, however,
was just what the boys were waiting for, and was invariably received
with shouts of delight.
"What! Dock Martha?" shrieked Edward. "Do you suppose you can convert
her?"
"Hush! hush! For goodness' sake, not so loud," implored Ole, reddening
and looking anxiously round.
Edward repeated, in a whisper: "Do you think anyone could ever convert
Martha?"
"I believe I am on the high road to do so," whispered the other,
mysteriously.
"Come, you won't get me to believe that," and he smiled with squinting
eyes.
"Just you wait and hear. You know she fell on the ice this winter and
was badly hurt?"
"Yes, I know that."
"Well, she is still laid up, and now everyone is tired of helping her,
for she is so cross and so wicked. At first she was very disagreeable
to me; I could hardly bear it; but I took no notice, and now it is
nothing but, 'my little angel,' and 'my lamb,' and 'my pigeon,' and
'dear child;' for I have taken care of her, and got clothes and food
for her, and bedclothes too, and have done much for her that was not at
all pleasant; that I have. And yet it was she who wanted to beat me the
other evening. I was going to help her up, and somehow she managed to
hurt her bad foot. She shrieked with pain and lifted her stick, but
then she thought better of it, and began to curse and abuse me
dreadfully. Now we are good friends again, and the other day I ventured
to read the Bible to her."
"What! to Martha?"
"Yes, the Sermon on the Mount, and she cried, lad."
"She cried? Then did she understand it?"
"No, for she cried so that she could not have heard much of it. But I
don't think she cried on account of what was in the Bible, for she
began as soon as ever I took it out."
The two boys stood looking at each other; a noise of hammering was
heard over from the backyard, and in the far distance a steam-whistle;
then the faint cry of a child from across the street.
"Did she say anything?"
"She said she felt much too miserable to listen to anything. So I
explained that it was just the most wretched and miserable whom God
wanted. But she seemed not to hear that at all. She only begged me to
go away, and to go round and see if Lars the washerman had come home."
"Lars the washerman!" cried Edward so loud that again Ole had to check
him; Lars was the woman's sweetheart.
"Yes, just fancy his being fond of that creature. But they all say
there is a great deal of good in Lars. He goes there every evening to
see what he can do for her. This evening he came earlier than usual, so
I got away; but generally I stay there much longer."
"Have you read to her more than once?"
"Yes, to-day I did. She began to cry at once, but I do think she heard
me to-day; for I read about the Prodigal Son, and she said: 'I expect I
am one of his swine.'" Both the lads laughed. "Then I spoke to her and
said I could not believe that, and that I would try and pray. 'Oh,'
said she, 'there's not much use in that;' but when I began to say 'Our
Father,' she became perfectly crazy, just as though she were
frightened, and sat up in bed crying out that she would not hear
another word, not for anything. Then she lay down again and sobbed most
bitterly."
"So you never said your prayer after all?"
"No, for then Lars came in, and she told me to go. But you see, it did
some good. Don't you think I am on the right way?"
Edward was not sure about it. It was clear that his admiration had
received a blow. Soon after they separated.
II.
Sometimes in the higher class of schools there reigns a spirit utterly
opposed to that prevalent in the town where the school is; and it is
even a rule that in certain matters the school exists under its own
independent influence. One single master can often keep the pupils to
his own way of thinking, just as it may depend on one or several of the
boys whether there is a chivalrous spirit among them or the opposite, a
spirit of obedience or one of rebellion; as a rule there is one who
leads them all. It is the same, too, as regards morality; the boys
become what they are according to the example set before them, and
oftenest it is one or more of themselves who have the power to set this
example.
Just at this time it was Anders Hegge, the _dux_ of the school, who
took the lead in everything. He was the cleverest and best-read boy the
school had seen since its foundation; he was to stay there a year
longer than was necessary, so as to lend to the school the glory of a
certain double first. The other boys were tremendously proud of him;
they told admiring tales of how he had been known to catch the masters
at fault, that he could choose what lessons he liked, and could come
and go whenever he pleased; he did his lessons, too, mostly alone. He
had a library, the shelves of which had long since covered the walls
and now stood out upon the floor; there was one long shelf on each side
of the sofa; it was so much talked about that the smaller boys were
allowed to go up and look at it all. And there, in the middle, in front
of the window, sat he smoking, in a long loose dressing-gown, a present
from a married sister, a velvet cap with gold tassel, a present from an
aunt (his mother's sister), and embroidered slippers, from another aunt
(his father's sister). He was quite a ladies' man, lived with his
mother, who was a widow, and five elderly female relatives paid for his
books and his clothes, and gave him pocket-money.
He was a tall, stout fellow, with marked, regular features, showing
descent from a good old family; the face would have been good-looking
enough, but his eyes were too prominent and had something at once
greedy and inquiring about them. It was the same with his well-made
figure; the effect would have been good but that he stooped so much,
just as if his back were too heavy for him, and his walk was uneven.
His hands and feet were neat, he was dainty and particular, and his
tastes in general were effeminate.
He never forgot anything that had once been told him, important or not
it made no difference; except, perhaps, he considered the trifling
things of most importance. Few things escaped him; he had a quiet way
of gaining the confidence of others, it was quite an art. He knew the
history of all the great families in the whole country and in foreign
countries as well; his greatest delight in life was to repeat these
stories, especially when they were scandalous ones, and to sit
listening greedily for new ones. If the masters had only known how the
air of the school was infected and corrupted by this much-admired piece
of goods, with the contents of its secret drawers, they would hardly
have kept him there another year; the whole school was critical and
doubting, full of slander and mean efforts to curry favor, and infected
by slanderous stories.
Ever eager for news, he was always to be found in his smoking-gear,
sitting among his books, and was there, too, when Edward came in that
evening to tell him that he knew now where Ole went to and what he did
with himself; so now he expected to get the reward! Anders got up and
begged him to wait till he fetched some beer that they might enjoy
themselves together.
The first glass was most delicious, a second little half glass equally
so, but not till then did Edward tell his news--how Ole went to nurse
the sick down in the fishing village.
Anders felt almost as small as Edward had done when he saw Ole's Bible
in his box; Edward laughed heartily at him. But very soon Anders began
to insinuate doubts; he suggested that Ole had invented all that so as
to screen himself; there must be something more under it all; peasant
boys, he said, were always so cunning, and to prove it he began telling
some rather good stories from school. Edward did not at all relish this
everlasting doubting, and to cut the matter short (for he was very
tired) he informed the other that his father knew and approved of it,
and even helped Ole with money. Of course when he heard that, Anders
could doubt no longer; and yet there might be more under it, peasant
boys were so very sly.
But this was too much for Edward; he started up from his seat and asked
if he thought any of them told lies?
Anders sipped his beer quite calmly, rolling his prominent eyes
cautiously around. "Lie" was a strange word to use; might he be allowed
to ask who were the sick people Ole went to see?
Edward was not prepared for this; he had intended to tell as much as
would justify his getting the reward, but not a word more. He got up
from his seat again. If Anders wouldn't believe him, he might leave it
alone, but he meant to have the reward.
Now it was not Anders Hegge's way to quarrel with anyone, and Edward
knew that well. Of course he would give Edward the book, but first he
must just listen to such a funny story about the sick people down in
the fishing village. The parish doctor and his wife had been to see his
mother yesterday, and someone had asked after Martha from the docks,
who had not been seen for so long, whether she was still laid up from
her fall in the winter? Yes, she was still laid up, but she was not in
any want, for, strange to say, people sent her all she needed, and Lars
brought in brandy to her every evening, and they had many a merry
carouse together. She would probably not be up again for some time to
come.
Edward got very red, and Anders noticed it directly; he suggested that
perhaps Martha was one of those whom Ole visited.
Yes she was.
His prominent eyes widened at this piece of news. Edward saw with what
eagerness he gulped it down and it made him feel as if he had been
devoured and swallowed up himself. But if there is a thing that
schoolboys cannot stand it is to be thought too confiding and innocent;
he hastened to free himself from the most insulting insinuation that he
was not able to see through Ole Tuft and his stupid ways; only fancy,
he actually read the Bible to Martha!
He read the Bible to her? Again those prominent eyes opened and
greedily drank it in, but he closed them at once, and was seized with
laughter; he regularly shouted with laughter--and Edward with him.
Yes, he read the Bible to Martha, he read to her about the Prodigal
Son, and then Edward repeated all that Martha had said. They laughed in
chorus and drank up the rest of the beer. All that was pleasant and
amusing in Anders showed itself when he laughed, although his laugh had
a grating sound down in the throat; still it incited one to more fun,
more mischief. So Edward had to tell all, and a little more than all.
As he ran home later with the grand book under his arm, he had a kind
of disgusted feeling. The effects of the beer were over, he was no
longer tempted to laugh, and his wounded pride was satisfied; but Ole's
trusting eyes seemed to meet him everywhere, as soon as he got out in
the air. He tried to put it from him, he was so dreadfully tired; he
would think no more about it this evening; but to-morrow--to-morrow he
would ask Anders not to speak about it.
But the next morning he overslept himself. He hurried on his clothes
and rushed off, eating his bread-and-butter as he went along, and
giving a rapid thought to "Les trois Mousquetaires," now his precious
property; he longed for the afternoon to be able to read it. In school
he stumbled through his lessons one by one, for he had learned nothing,
and on Saturdays there was always so much. He worked on until two hours
before the school closed; there was still to be French and Natural
History, but to neither of these classes did he belong--so away he flew
downstairs before any of the others.
Just as he stood outside the school gates he saw Anders coming from the
opposite side; he was going now to take his lesson in the upper class.
Edward thought at once of the preceding day, and he felt anxious as to
what Anders might take it into his head to tell; but at that very
moment he caught sight of a monster steamer, a wreck, coming slowly in
between the two piers, and all the people running by said there had
never been so large a ship in the harbour before. She dragged along,
hardly able to move, her masts gone, bulwarks all damaged, and the
propped-up funnel all white with salt water up to the very top; was
that another steamer towing her? Edward could not make out for the
pier. Everyone was running that way; he ran too!
Meanwhile Anders turned in at the school gate. Just as he opened it a
class was over, and all the boys rushed down the stairs as through a
long funnel, and out into the yard; it was a storm in a wizard's
belly, the very house shook; first came one short, sharp yell, the
first-comer's shout of delight; then a screaming of mingled voices high
and low, some cracked and breaking ones toning down the whole; then a
mighty shout from all together like a sea of fire shooting up to the
sky, then half quenched on one side, but flaring up again on the other,
then uniting in a broad glow over the whole yard.
Anders whistled softly as he came along; it was not like being in a sea
of fire; it was like sailing through dangerous rocks and reefs, tossed
about and dashed from one side, and tossed and dashed back again to the
other; but he had an object in view; he would try cautiously to reach
the stack of wood over by the neighbour's paling; there all was quiet,
and he could partially screen his body up among the wood.
When he had reached this point of vantage and had looked cautiously
round to see if it was safe, he gazed down on the crowd with delight;
he felt a pleasurable satisfaction in knowing that he could quiet this
uproar just with three or four words which he would whisper in the ear
of his nearest neighbour. They would act like oil upon a raging sea,
and the noise would cease as those few words were spread about.
Where was Ole? There he was, he and a big boy together; they had hold
of each other by the collar and were tumbling about; the bigger of the
two was trying to knock down the other, using his feet freely for many
a kick. Ole's heavy boots swung round, the iron heels shining in the
air; he shouted with laughter as his companion grew fiercer and wilder,
but could not get him down.
Then Anders bent his head down to the boy who stood nearest him:
"Now I know what Ole Tuft does in the evenings!"
"Oh, rubbish!"
"But I do know."
"Who found it out?"
"Edward Kallem."
"Edward Kallem? And has he got the book?" asked the other, hurriedly.
"Of course he has."
"No, really? So Edward Kallem has----!"
"Edward Kallem? What about him?" put in a third, and the one who had
just heard the news repeated the story. A fourth boy, a fifth, a sixth,
all rushed away, crying out: "Edward Kallem has won the prize, lads!
Anders Hegge knows what Ole Tuft does in the evenings." Wherever they
went the noise stopped instantaneously; all of them wanted to hear the
news, and rushed across to Anders Hegge.
Hardly had a fourth part of them reached him before the remaining
three-fourths, losing interest in their games, followed suit. What in
all the world was the matter over by the wood-stack? why were they all
running there? They crowded round Anders, and climbed up on the wood as
many of them as could find room. "What's the matter?" "Edward Kallem
has won the prize." "Edward Kallem?" And the noise began again,
everyone asking, everyone answering--all except Ole Tuft, who remained
standing just where his companion had left him.
There was a dead silence as Anders Hegge told the story; and he had a
right to tell it, for he had paid for it. He told it well, in a short,
dry sort of way that gave an air of double meaning to everything; he
told them first where Ole went to and what he did; how he changed the
straw in Martha's bed, moved and lifted her, cooked for her, and
fetched medicine for her from the apothecary. Then he told them _why_
Ole did all this; he wished to be a missionary, and was practising for
it down at Martha's; he read the Bible to her and made her cry; then,
as soon as Ole had gone, Lars, the washerman, came in with the brandy
bottle, and he and Martha had a grand carouse together on the top of
the Bible reading.
At first the boys stood as quiet as mice; they had never heard the like
before. They looked upon it as a sort of game, and from the way it had
been told it could hardly be understood otherwise; but never before had
they heard of anyone playing at being missionary and Bible-reader; it
was funny, but it was something else besides--something they could not
quite make out. As nobody laughed, Anders continued. And what made Ole
do all this? Because he was ambitious and wanted to become an apostle,
which was more than to be either king, emperor, or pope; Ole had told
Edward Kallem that himself. But, in order to become an apostle, he had
to find out "God's ways," and those ways began down at Martha's; there
he meant to learn how to work miracles, to wrestle with the heathen and
the wild beasts and poisonous snakes, and to calm a cyclone. Then there
was a roar. But just at that moment the school-bell rang, and, shouting
with laughter, the boys had only time to run past Ole back to their
lessons again.
Once before in his young life had Ole Tuft gazed down into a bottomless
abyss. It was on a winter's day, as he stood by his father's grave and
heard the dull sound of the frozen earth falling upon the coffin; the
air was thick with driving mist, and the sea was black as pitch.
Whenever he was in trouble his thoughts flew back to that day; and now
it seemed as if he were standing there again, and heard the mournful
church bells toll. Just as the noise on the stairs and along the
passages had ceased, the last stray loiterer gone in, the last door
been shut--complete quiet suddenly--then, through this empty silence,
he heard a bell, ding-dong, and in fancy saw himself at the little
pine-wood church by the shore. How they creaked and rustled in the
wind, those long-armed, leafless birches by the wall, and the ancient
fir-tree at the gate; the clanging of the bells, harsh and shrill,
floating in the air, and the dull thud of the earth on the coffin, made
a life-long impression on him; and his mother's ceaseless weeping--she
had kept it all back until now, had made no sound, neither by the sick
man's bedside, nor even when he was carried away in his coffin; but
now, suddenly, the tears gushed forth--ah, so bitterly.... O father,
mother! Mother, father! And he, too, burst into tears.
This was sufficient reason for his not following the other boys in; he
would never go back to school again. He could not face any of them
after what had happened, he would have to leave the town; in a couple
of hours it would be known everywhere, they would all be asking
questions, and staring and laughing at him. And now, too, all his hopes
and intentions for the future had been profaned; what was the use of
studying any more; nor would he go to any other town, only home, home,
home.
But if he stood there much longer one of them would be sent down to
fetch him; he ought to get away at once. But not home to his aunt, or
he would have to tell her everything; and not out by the big gates and
down the principal street, for there were so many people who would see
how he was crying. No, he must make his way to the little hiding-place
that Josephine had made for him, and through which she helped him out
every afternoon, so that the other boys might not see him.
The wood-stacks stood next to the neighbour's paling; but to the right
leaned up against a shed into which Ole went. He loosened two boards in
the wall nearest the wood-stack, crept through, and closed them behind
him. This performance could not have been carried out if there had not
been on the other side an open space, made by an impediment of nature,
in the shape of a large stone, taller than the boy, but which stood at
a little distance from the wall. If the stone had not been there, the
two stacks of wood would have touched each other and barred the way;
but as it was, there was plenty of room at both ends of the stone as
well as on the top of it. The children had made themselves little rooms
here, one on each side of the stone. The most comfortable one was at
the back; there they had a board to sit on, and when that was fastened
at both ends in the stacks, they could pass each other in crossing it.
They had laid some planks overhead, and then wood on the top of that,
so that nobody might suspect anything; it had been quite a piece of
work for the children. It was not very light, certainly, but then that
made it all the cosier. Here she would tell him tales of Spain, and he
would tell her of missionaries' adventures; she told of bull-fights,
but he of fights with tigers, lions, and snakes, of terrible cyclones
and water-spouts, of savage monkeys and man-eaters. And by degrees his
stories had eclipsed hers; they were more exciting, and then there was
an object in them; she had only her recollections to look back to, but
he threw himself heart and soul into all his imagination could scrape
together. He drew such vivid, glowing pictures, till at last she was
fascinated too! At first she felt her way with a few cautious questions
as to whether women could be missionaries too? But he did not know; he
thought it was only work for men, though they might possibly be allowed
to be missionaries' wives. Then she asked if missionaries ever married.
He, taking it up as a dogmatic question, answered that he had once
heard his father speak on the subject; it was at a meeting when someone
had had doubts as to this missionary-marriage question, for St. Paul
was the first missionary, and the greatest, too, and he certainly had
not been married, and even gloried in that fact; but his father had
replied that St. Paul believed that Christ was so soon to come again so
he had to hurry as quickly as possible from place to place to tell that
to the people so that they might be in readiness. But nowadays
missionaries always lived in the same place, and therefore might be
allowed to marry. He had even read about missionaries' wives who kept
schools for the little black children. They had not advanced further
than that, but it was easy to see she often thought about it by the
questions she asked: If it were true that black children ate snails?
She did not like the idea of that at all.
In this dim light, with their two heads, brown and fair, bent close
together over their tales of adventures, they had in fancy sat under
palm-trees amid swarms of black children, all so good and clean and
converted, and there were tame tiger-cubs playing on the sand at their
feet; friendly, good-natured monkeys waited upon them, elephants
conveyed them carefully about, and all the food they needed hung in
plenty on the trees.
And now Ole came for the last time to say farewell to this little
Paradise.
Just as he raised himself to climb over the stone, he remembered that
it was Saturday, and her lessons were always over on Saturdays by
eleven o'clock (she took private lessons), and that she often used to
sit behind the stacks during the boys' free quarter-hour. Suppose she
were sitting there, and had heard all? Up he clambered onto the stone
in greatest haste, and there she sat, down on the board, and looked at
him! At the sight of her and as their eyes met he began sobbing again.
"I want to ... go ... home," stammered he, "and never ... never come
back again," and he came sliding down to her. She received him with
open arms and hastened to give him her pocket-handkerchief to stuff
into his mouth that his crying might not be heard. She had a good
deal of knowledge as to school and play-ground ways, and knew that
some one would soon be sent to look for him. He gave in, as he always
did, to her superior guidance in matters of good behaviour and
manners; he thought she was reminding him of that everlasting use of the
pocket-handkerchief, so he began alternately to blow his nose and to cry.
She seized hold of the back of his neck with one of her small but
coarse girl's hands, with the other she grasped his hands with the
handkerchief and forced it right into his mouth, at the same time
shaking her dark-haired head warningly in his face. Then it dawned upon
him! And it was high time too; for he heard his name called down in the
yard, again and again on all sides. His whole body shook and trembled
with his efforts to stifle his sobs; but he kept them down bravely,
waiting till the boy who had been sent down to look for him had gone
rushing back again. He began anew: "I ... want to ... go ... home," and
a fresh burst of tears followed, he couldn't help it. So he gave her
back her pocket-handkerchief with a nod and got up to pull away the
wood in front of the hole in the neighbour's fence, sobbing bitterly
all the time and half-alarmed at his own grief. Hardly had he pulled
the wood aside before he disappeared into the hole; the seat of his
trousers, polished and shiny from daily contact with the school
benches, and the iron heels of his boots crept farther and farther in,
till at last they vanished; he stood upright on the other side, pushed
himself between the paling and the shed, and on past some old wood-work
which lay there rotting, from there he sprang across to the back door,
and not until he stood outside on free ground in a narrow road, did he
remember that he had forgotten to say good-bye to Josephine and had
never even thanked her! This addition to all his other troubles made
him turn and flee from the town, and he never stopped before he, by
roundabout ways, had reached the high road. It was almost as if it were
his property, this well-known road by the shore.
Josephine stood still a moment gazing after the vanishing heels; but
she did not wait long. She hopped upon the stone and slid down to the
wall, pushed the boards aside, crept through and closed them again
carefully behind her. Soon after she was seen at the apothecary's
without her hat; she asked after her brother, first down in the shop
where she knew he liked to be, but he was not there and he had not been
in either to leave his bundle of books. Upstairs she went through all
the rooms, but he was not there; then looking out of the window she saw
the great foreign steamer and ten or twelve small boats around it; of
course he would be there! Away she flew to the pier, unfastened their
own little white-painted boat and pushed off.
She rowed until the perspiration streamed down her face, rowed and
looked about her until she reached the wreck, the great green monster
lying there groaning under the pumps. From afar she could see Edward up
on the captain's bridge, with his books under his arm, talking to his
friend Mo, the pilot.
As soon as she was within call she shouted his name; he heard her, he
and all the others; they saw a brown-haired girl, without hat, red and
heated with rowing, standing up in the boat, leaning on her oars, and
staring up at the captain's bridge; they did not think much of it,
though, and forgot her quickly. But Edward felt a sharp pang; something
out of the common must have happened, and it did not take him long to
get down from the captain's bridge on to the deck, across the deck and
down the steamer's side, climbing over the other boats and up into
hers, exclaiming, as he pushed off: "What's the matter?" He put his
books down in the bottom of the boat, took the oars from her and sat
down repeating: "What's the matter?"
With streaming hair, breathless and red she stood and looked at him as
he turned the boat; then she moved back to a farther bench. Here she
unfastened the other pair of oars and sat down behind him. He did not
like to question her a third time so he rowed on silently--and then,
keeping her oars on the surface of the water meanwhile, she began:
"What have you done to Ole Tuft?"
He turned pale, then red; he too stopped rowing.
"It's all up with him now at school; he has gone home, and he'll never
come back any more."
"Oh, that's a lie!"--but his voice failed him, he felt she was speaking
the truth. He plunged the oars into the water with all his strength and
rowed with might and main.
"Indeed you had better row hard," though she herself began backing her
oars; "you had better hurry after him even if you have to walk all the
way to Store Tuft; if you don't, it will be a bad look-out for you both
at school and at home with father. What a mean wretch you are!"
"Oh, you hold your tongue!"
"No, I shan't! and if you don't go after him at once and bring him home
with you again, I'll tell father, and the head master too, I will!"
"It's you who are the mean wretch with all your gossiping and
story-telling."
"You should have heard how Anders Hegge went on, and the whole school,
and how they laughed at Ole, every one of them; and he poor fellow, he
cried as if his heart would break, and then ran right away home. Oh,
fie! fie! For shame! If you don't bring him back with you it will be
bad for you."
"You stupid! Don't you see I am rowing as hard as I can?"
His finger-nails were quite white and his face streaming and he bent
double each time to take a longer pull at the oars. Without another
word she moved over to the bench nearest him and rowed with all her
might.
As he stood up when they were nearing the pier and stretched out his
hand to prevent the boat bumping against it, he said: "I have had no
lunch to-day, and now I shall get no dinner either; have you any money
with you that I might buy myself some biscuits?"
"Yes, a few pence I have;" she laid down her oars and looked in her
pocket for the money.
"You take my books!" shouted he as he rushed up the street. Shortly
after he too was out on the high road.
III.
The day had been dull, the air thick, and the clouds were driving along
against a light southerly wind; it was mild, though, and had begun to
thaw again; the roads were in a fearful state with snow slush and mud,
especially close by the town where it had been trampled and trodden
into a perfect morass.
Edward had not been walking more than ten minutes before his somewhat
thin boots were wet through. Well, that did not matter, what was much
worse was that he had finished his last biscuit and was by no means
satisfied--not by a long way! However, even that did not matter as he
would soon overtake Ole, he walked so much quicker and lighter than he
did, and then he was hurrying tremendously. As soon as he reached him
he would put things right again; not for an instant did he doubt that.
Ole was very easily managed and he, Edward, would make all square with
the other boys, it was the least he could do; he would enjoy it, too;
he would get others to join him and they would have a fight.
But after he had walked a quarter of a mile[1] without seeing any
traces of Ole's boots in the mud and no sign of himself either, and
particularly after he had dragged on for another quarter along the most
dreadful roads, his feet dripping wet, now perspiring, now cold, then
half-dry, then wet again--it was threatening rain and the wind was
getting up, and all nature seemed so uncomfortably lonely along the
stony ridges with dark woods between each valley--then indeed his
courage fell considerably.
And it seemed so strange, too, that after the first quarter of a mile
he never met a soul. There were plenty of footmarks on the road both of
horses, people, and dogs; they were all bent in the same direction as
himself and most of them were quite fresh, but there was not a creature
to be seen anywhere, not even in the farmyards, not a dog did he hear
bark, nor did he see a chimney smoke; all was deserted. He passed by
one empty cove after the other; they were divided by jutting out ridges
of loose stones caused by landslips; on each side of these ridges lay a
cove, and in every cove one or more farmyards and a brook or stream,
but no people. So many times had the boy now struggled up these stony
hills and gone so far along that he could see across the next field
without distinguishing Ole on the high road, in fact without seeing
anyone, so he began to think that he would have to trudge on, hungry
and tired as he was, the whole way to Store Tuft. It was nearly a mile
distant; that would keep him away so long that his father would hear of
his absence, and then it would be a case of scolding and lecturing, and
probably of beating and swearing as well, and the head-master would
very likely look in and then it would all begin over again.... He could
not help it, the tears would come. Confound Anders Hegge, with his
greedy, fishy eyes and oily smile, his mocking laugh and sneaking
friendliness, the story-teller, the brute! Here was he now forced to
tramp along with tingling feet in all the mud, tired and done up. This
then was the meaning of his fearful fright the evening before, now all
was explained.
But, hang it all! who would cry about that? One must arrive some day at
the journey's end, and a beating would be nothing new, tra-la-la! And
he broke into a Spanish ditty and sang verse upon verse till he became
quite breathless and was obliged to slacken his pace, but taking fright
when he no longer heard the sound of his own voice, he began afresh and
kept on singing all the way through the long valley.
He met nobody there either, only traces of cart-wheels and footmarks of
old and young folk, of horses and dogs from the farms; all bound in the
same direction. What could be going on? A fire? An auction? But then
they would not have taken carts with them. Had there been a landslip
anywhere? Or was it a wreck from yesterday's storm? Well, it was all
the same to him. Just as he was crossing over the next ridge which
jutted out into the bay, he caught sight for the first time of Ole's
footsteps on the hill; he could see that he had walked along by the
side of the road; he recognized the iron heels and the straps under
each foot. The marks were quite fresh too, so Ole could not be far off.
This was exciting, and he hurried on.
Here there was a thick fir-wood, very still and quiet, and as he had to
stop singing going up-hill it was rather uncanny. The farther he
advanced into the wood the thicker it became; the snow lay firmer on
the ground, stones and small tufts of heather peeping up through it
like animals; and then there was a crack here and a rustle there and
sometimes a cry; a startled capercailzie flew up with great flapping of
wings, and the boy in a terrible fright bent down to look for Ole's
foot-marks, just for company's sake--the terror of the day before was
on him again. If he dared but begin to run, and if the wood would only
come to an end! In the painfully long silence that followed the
capercailzie's cry he felt that a very little more and he would go mad
with fright. And this bit of road with high banks on each side, through
which he would have to pass--he looked on ahead at the steep dark sides
which seemed as if they would close over him; terrible looking trees
hung over the top peering down at him. When at last he arrived there,
he felt as if he were the tiniest little ant in a wood; if only all
would keep still, or at least no one swoop down upon him and seize him
by the neck, or drop down suddenly before him, or behind him, or begin
to puff and blow at him.... He walked on with stiff eyes, like one
walking in his sleep, the gnarled and crooked roots of the fir-trees
stretched along the banks, they seemed as though alive, but he
pretended not to notice them. High up in the air far in front of him a
bird was winging its way toward the town he came from. Ah, if he might
but mount that bird! He could see the town distinctly and the ships in
the harbour; he could hear the cheery heave-a-hoy songs and the
rattling of anchor chains, the rolling of barrels along the wharf, and
the merry screams of laughter and the shouts of command.... Yes, he
could even hear those, and the whistle of a steamer! and then another,
a shrill one! and voices! Those _were_ voices! And neighing of horses,
and barking of dogs! And again the sound of voices, many voices. He had
got through the road with the steep banks, for it had only been a short
bit, and through the trees he could see the sea and boats.... But what
was that? Was he back in town again? Had he been walking round and
round? No, surely he had followed the sea all the way. He began to run,
he felt all right again. But had he really walked straight on? Of
course, here is the clearing in the wood, and there the bay, he knew it
well, and the little islands, he remembered them too, it was the right
way, and it was not so very far now to Store Tuft.... But what are all
those boats doing there? And what is the meaning of that steady buzzing
noise? Herring fishing! Hurrah! herring fishing! He had come right into
the midst of a take of herrings, hurrah! hurrah! And away with hunger,
fatigue, and fear, off flew the boy down the hill with mighty strides.
One of the sweep-nets had been hauled in, one was out, one was just
going to be put out, it was a great take. But it was Saturday evening,
and it was necessary to net the herrings before Sunday evening, and to
gut the fish that was already taken. In the twinkling of an eye he
understood it all.
The shore was crowded with people, near the road and on the road, and
up on the fields, crowds and crowds. And endless carts and sledges with
barrels and tubs, some with horses still harnessed, others with the
horses taken out, crowds of dogs; children everywhere, and great
laughter and noise. Out in the bay the boats were round the sweep-net
that was to be put out, the men shouting and calling to each other, and
high in the air a flock of birds flew overhead, flapping their wings
and screaming.
The sky was overcast, the smoke from the steamers making the air seem
thicker and more threatening, the bare, bleak islands seemed suited to
the coming storm, they looked as if they had just started into
existence; the little wooded islet far out rose up solitary and
mysterious through the rainy mist; the steamers came steaming in,
puffing and whistling as if for a wager; they belonged to rival
companies. Men were stamping about in fishermen's boots and in oilskin
clothes over their ordinary ones; others were dressed more like
peasants in coarse cloth coats and fur caps. Women as well as men were
busy cleaning the fish, wrapped in shawls or in a man's jacket over
their own; the usual quiet style of conversation had been disturbed.
Heavy drops of rain began to fall, faster and faster; nearly all the
faces Edward looked at were wet with the rain. They stared a great deal
at him, the delicate looking town boy in the midst of this noisy crowd,
thinly clad, with dripping face and breathless, his little fur cap
clinging wet to his head.
Who should he see just in front of him but Ingebert Syvertsen, the
tall, black-haired man, who did business with his father. He was
standing there bargaining, tall and thin, and dressed in oilskin from
top to toe; he had evidently taken a very active part in it all, the
shiny fish-scales lay thick on his arms and his boots like silver.
"Good day, Ingebert!" shouted the boy in great light.
The great fellow with wet face under his sou'wester, a great drop
hanging from his nose, thin black beard, and three of his upper teeth
missing, knew him at once and laughed; then he said: "Your father is
somewhere about my lad, he is out riding to-day."
Someone spoke to Ingebert at that moment; he turned round, became angry
and abusive, which took up time, when he turned again to speak to the
boy he saw him already far away along the road beyond the whole of the
fishing crowd.
Edward had run away from sheer fright--and it was only when he found
himself out on the road that he remembered he was running just in the
direction his father was coming from. Was it likely he could get to
Store Tuft without meeting his father?
But what was he to do? All those people had seen him, and had stared
hard at him, they would be sure to find out who he was, and then when
his father came riding past he would hear of it too. There was not much
use trying to run away. It was all one whether he got a beating now or
one later. He felt inclined to sing again, for nothing could be worse
than the present state of affairs. He actually did strike up a song,
the Marseillaise, in French; it was so very suitable for one advancing
to get a beating as he was! But before he got to the end of the first
verse his courage failed him, his voice grew fainter, the time slower,
there was a general change of colouring. And oh, it was heavy walking,
and raining fast. So his song gradually died away until it stopped.
Then the boy's thoughts went back to something he had lately read in
the papers about a large coal mine in England that had been inundated
with water. The miners tried to escape as quickly as possible, the
horses after them, down in the mine they could not help themselves,
poor creatures! One boy who had escaped told the others about a horse
that had neighed and whinnied so hopelessly; the boy climbed to the
top, but not the horse.... Edward could distinctly see what the horse
must have looked like, its head, the beautiful shining eyes, he heard
its breathing, its whinnying and felt himself turn quite sick. What it
must be to die amid such horrors! And to think that all that would come
to life again at the day of judgment! And all that would arise from the
mines and very bowels of the earth! Why not the animals too? Surely
they would come forward whining and complaining against mankind? Great
heavens, what complaints there would be. And so many animals, too--only
fancy, from the creation of the world! And where were they all to be
found? On the earth and down in the earth--and think of those that lay
in the sea, at the bottom of the deep sea! And those who lay under that
again, for in many places there had been land where there now was sea.
Well, well!
Oh, how hungry he was! And cold too; he could no longer walk so fast,
and he was very, very tired.
And certainly there was nothing very inviting to look forward to, oh,
no! Well he knew the new riding-whip; he had himself despatched the old
one out of the world; but if he had known that the new one was still
worse, he would have let the old one live on for a couple of years
more. Ouf! how his nails began to ache and his fingers to swell with
the cold. And his feet! But it would never do to think about them or
they got worse directly; hark, how the water sopped in his boots! He
amused himself by putting his feet forward cross ways, and went on from
right to left, from left to right till he got tired of that too. Harder
and harder was the struggle, more and more tedious, again he had to
climb up hill. Dear me! is not this the last hill? Does not Store Tuft
lie in the next valley? Just under the hill? Surely that is Store Tuft?
Perhaps after all he could get there before his father? It would always
be something gained, the evil day put off awhile. At any rate it was
worth hurrying for. Fresh life came to the boy, on he went again!
His father was not always severe either, he could be kind sometimes.
Especially if Josephine were on his side and asked to get him off; and
if Ole came back again then she surely would do that, she must take his
part. They could try, too, to make the apothecary join them! He, the
apothecary, was always so kind, and it is a good thing to be many. Good
heavens! were there no others who----
Up came the chestnut's head over the hill-top! The big straw shoes
which his father used in the winter as stirrups stood out on each side
of the old hack like the paws of a wild beast; the boy stood still,
petrified.
The old hack stared at the lad from out of its heavy Spanish harness;
it could hardly believe its own clever eyes! Neither could the boy's
father believe his, for the round head in the gray woollen cap
stretched farther and farther forward over the horse's neck, till he
had to lean with both hands on the pommel of the saddle. Was that
drenched, dripping boy, with the wisp of fur on his head, standing
terrified and pale as a ghost in the middle of the road--was that the
boy who ought to be sitting at home doing his lessons before he was
allowed to move? And on Saturday afternoon! In such weather and such
roads, and so thinly clad, out on the hill at Store Tuft? And without
permission?
"What the devil are you doing there?"
The horse was pulled up sharp; its warm breath seemed to fill the air
around the boy and envelop him in a thick mist of unpleasant vapours
from its steaming body. Edward dared neither move nor answer. He only
stared up at his father through the mist in a stupid, clumsy fashion,
as though half-dazed.
His father dismounted without delay, and with the bridle round his left
arm and the whip in his right hand he stood before the boy.
"What's the matter? Hey? Why are you here! Why the devil can't you
answer?"
Mechanically Edward slipped farther and farther away, his father after
him; mechanically, too, the boy raised his right arm to shield his
face, and stretched out his left to ward off the coming blows.
"Where are you going to?"
"To Ole Tuft."
"What are you going to do there? Hey? Is Ole Tuft at home? Hey?"
"Yes."
"What are you going there for?"
"I am going to--to----"
"Well!"
"To beg his pardon."
"To beg his pardon? What for? What for? Hey?" and he raised his whip.
The boy answered, hurriedly: "He won't come to school any more."
"Oh, indeed! So you've been teasing him? Hey? You at the head? Hey?"
"Yes."
"Your fault, was it? Hey?" he cried.
"I found out----" here he stopped.
"Well?"
"That he--that he----" and the boy began to cry.
"Well?"
"That he goes to visit the sick."
"So you told the others? Hey? Carried tales? Hey?"
Edward dared not answer, and then the whip began to be troublesome;
both the lad's arms swung up and down, keeping time with the whip, as
if uncertain where it would fall next. He kept slipping farther and
farther away.
"Stand still!" shouted his father.
But instead the boy sprang with one bound right to the edge of the
ditch. Fiercely the father lifted his whip again; but, unintentionally,
the horse behind him received such a sharp cut that it pulled so hard
at the bridle as nearly to upset its master. Edward could not resist
the comical side of this most welcome deliverance and he burst into a
roar of laughter. But he was so startled at hearing himself laugh that
he hopped over the ditch and ran into the wood. He could not possibly
control himself as he turned away; he began to laugh again, and could
hit upon no better way of hiding it than to set up a good howl.
The father's contempt for his son was not to be described. He recovered
his temper, though, quieted the horse, and mounted again. "Come along,"
said he, quietly, pointing with his whip in the direction of the Tuft
valley.
"There will be more accounts to settle when we get there," thought the
boy to himself.
He obeyed his father's call, of course, and walked on, but at a safe
distance in front of the horse. He kept at the same distance all the
time; the horse was a quick stepper, so it was an effort.
The man in gray on the chestnut horse drove his son mercilessly on
before him, through the snow and slush, although one could clearly see
by the way he walked that his feet hurt him, and although his hands
were half-frozen--he kept putting them in his mouth--and although
he was dripping wet; his fur cap was sticking to his head like a
washed-out rag. The man in gray sat comfortably on his horse, in warm,
waterproof clothes, his whip in his hand, his eyes glistening on each
side of his hooked nose. No one who saw this little procession could
have guessed that the dearest wish of this stern-looking man was to
love the boy he was so angrily driving before him.
But in order to love anyone that person must be exactly as we would
wish--is not that the case? And supposing now the boy was not willing?
And that Kallem was not accustomed to opposition? His wife's death was
the first serious blow he had met with; it happened not very long
before this affair with the boy. Up to that time they had all lived
abroad, Kallem leading a quiet retired life with his wife, his
business, sport, and his silent books (he was a great reader), and had
never been worried or annoyed. His wife's brother took charge of the
business, which was a flourishing one, and his wife took charge of the
house, where all flourished too. Everything was managed without fear or
disturbance, and exactly as was proper, until the wife died. But
afterward!
At first neither he himself nor any of the others could realize the
unexpected change that had come over him. Some people thought that the
loss of his wife had made him mad; he himself thought that the air of
Spain was too warm; he was anxious to leave, and longed for home. The
head of the firm agreed at once. It would be a capital speculation to
move the principal house of business to Norway and just have a branch
house in Spain. And so they left--now about a year ago.
But it was the boy who, when they were still in Spain, had been the
cause of his father's first losing command of himself, and indeed the
second time too, and unfortunately also the third, fourth, fifth, sixth
time; it was always the boy. And the same thing, too, when they had
moved to Norway. Hot or cold climate, the boy was equally troublesome.
Soon there began to come complaints about him over from the school,
then from the apothecary, who was an old friend of Kallem's, and in
whose house they had lodgings; then from the courtyard, from the
neighbours, and from the wharf. But possibly other parents also heard
complaints about their sons, and perhaps people in this part of the
world were more given to complaining; of course Kallem could know
nothing about that, for he was a solitary man. But he knew that his son
was the cleverest lad in all the school; one master after the other
came and assured him of that; he knew that nothing was lacking in the
boy, neither heart nor will; but he was peculiar, indifferent to all,
and yet liked meddling in matters that did not concern him. He was both
brave and cowardly, a shameful tease, and altogether hopelessly
naughty. He would have tried the patience of an angel from heaven, to
say nothing of Kallem, who was entirely without that virtue.
This thin, slippery customer, limping on in front of him with
frightened side-glances at both horse and whip, had spoilt the peace of
his father's life. Not only had he made him feel inwardly so unsafe and
uncertain, but at times his want of power became perfect helplessness,
and on those occasions he longed to beat the boy to smithereens.
He would send for him and try both threats and entreaties. Last night,
the night of the storm, he had kept guard over him and used all his
powers of persuasion trying to talk the boy out of his shameful fright,
scolded him and tried to make it clear to him by all manner of natural
history proofs that the prophecy about the end of the world was all a
lie, an invention. The boy answered, yes, and indeed, but did not
believe a word his father said! As soon as the storm broke he was like
one crazy, out and away in the most abject state of fear.
And here he is now to-day, out on the open high road, a mile from the
town, in rain, storm, and wind, and of course without permission. First
he goes and ill-treats the best lad in the school, a little fellow whom
Kallem was really fond of and had helped with a few pence now and then
for his little mission, which he heard of from Josephine; and then on
the top of that----
"Look at him!" said he, to himself. "Deuce take the boy, if he isn't
laughing!" but he pretended not to see it.
What was that? Why, the horse behind him with "What the devil" on its
back, and the whip, and the heavy tramp, tramp in the snow and slush.
Sop-sop, sop-sop, sop-sop, sop-sop; all this grew and grew and got
larger and larger, until it became a huge monster all twisted and
shapeless.... Hurriedly the boy began thinking of other things. He
threw himself into the coal-mine in England that had been inundated,
and tried to conjure up before him the horse that had neighed so
piteously after the escaping miner lad. But no, he could not force
himself into the mine; there was nothing but the high road and
"sop-sop, sop-sop," and "What the devil" and his whip, and he himself
in front limping along with one leg and a half, he, he--e--e!
A shrill "Hey!" came from behind. The sound seemed to creep down the
boy's back like a sharp piece of ice.
Presently Store Tuft came in sight. It lay just below the hill they
were going down. There were many outhouses, most of them in a square
round the farmyard; a stream rushed noisily by on the other side where
the corn and saw-mills lay; the islands outside and the two arms of
land on either side shut in the bay so completely that the water there
was as still and quiet as a millpond, with ice in the corners; there
was a row of boathouses side by side along the bay; there were
fruit-gardens, too, most of them a good size.
The smoke rose up from the house-chimney at Store Tuft--at last! Ole's
mother must be cooking dinner for him! And hunger, grief, and longing
came over the boy, and the thought of a warm room and dry clothes, and
the remembrance of his own mother and of their home in Spain nearly
made him cry again; but then he thought that his father would say:
"Devil take him! Now he's crying again!" so he controlled himself.
He looked toward the farm with fear and trembling.
The house lay with its longest side out to the garden; it was a
two-storied wooden house, painted red, with white window-sills. They
turned up the road, the boy still in front, the father after him.
Passing the short end of the house they came into the yard; on the
other side of that lay cow-house and stable, under the same roof; these
buildings were quite new, and lay at right angles with the barn,
wood-house, and other buildings in the middle. A herd of goats stood in
this corner munching leaves, and surrounded by an incredible number of
sparrows. The whole party were collected together just outside the
barn.
The goats caught sight of the newcomers; they lifted their heads and
stretched out their necks all at the same moment, their eyes wide open,
ears standing up stiff, with the last bite immovable in their mouths,
inquisitive to the last degree. The billy-goat only kept on munching as
he looked at them, lazily satisfied. The flock of sparrows flew away
with a whirr.
Between the cattle-stable and the short end of the dwelling-house, the
father stopped and dismounted. The boy was already inside the yard, and
stood staring at the barn roof, which was broken up and being renewed,
but there were no workmen to be seen; probably they had gone off to the
herring fishery; the ladder still stood on the scaffolding, leaning
upward.
"Stop!" shouted the father, and the boy stopped and turned round; his
father was tying up his old hack to one of the grinding stones which
stood up against this short end of the dwelling-house; the lad stood
and looked on.
"Wonderful, how quiet he is now," thought the father, as he came
forward and pointed with his whip. The boy was to walk in front of him
up to the broad stone step at the entrance in the middle of the house.
And he did so. Past a sledge with railed-in seat that was standing
there; he discovered two kittens playing with each other through the
railing, the one inside, the other outside. The windows they went past
were so low that they could see right through the little room which had
windows on the other side, and through that again into the other room.
There sat Ole in a huge shirt that reached down to his feet, in front
of the hearth with his legs up; his mother stood beside him, bending
over some pots and pans. Edward had not time to see more; he stepped
over the stone and into the passage, where he was met by a strong smell
of fish, both old and new; also a smell of something else which he
could not at first make out. The father pointed on to the right; to the
left, too, there was a door, grandly painted and with a brass handle,
and he was not meant to go there. No, thought the boy, I knew that
much, too, that we were to go where there are people, and not into the
cold guest room. He put his swollen fingers on the latch and lifted it.
The fireplace was in the corner to the left, close by the door, and one
can fancy how the two in there opened their eyes! To such an extent
that curly-lock's head stretched up out of his father's wide blue linen
shirt. The mother was tall and had a delicate face; she wore a black
cap; her fair hair was puffed out down her cheeks and made her face
seem long. She turned from her pots and pans toward the two arrivals,
whom she knew both. It was a grave but friendly face. She seemed afraid
and uncertain. Just at first she did not let her eyes rest on either of
them. Ole's boots stood by the fireside; but his clothes, shirt, and
stockings were hung up to dry above on some of the many poles that
reached across from beam to beam. On the other poles were bundles of
wood and various things put up to dry. Dishes and cups stood about just
as usual on a weekday.
The room was not painted but wainscoted; on each side under the windows
there were red-painted benches. In the corner to the left, at the other
side of the window, stood a table with a bookcase above; at the end of
the table, just by the door into the smaller room, hung the clock. It
ticked as evenly and cheerily as if there had never before been
anything but peace in that room. Outside he saw the kittens in the
sledge, the one inside sticking its paw out through the railing, and
the outside one pushing its paw in; and then he saw Ole's face just in
front of him. He was smiling, was Ole, and it was because he too was
afraid. But those pots and pans! Hungry and tired as Edward was, the
pots seemed to him the best part of it all. There were potatoes in the
one which stood down, quite ready; but two pots still hung over the
fire; could it be fish in one of them? But in the other?
The mother hesitated, not knowing what to do; for they remained
standing there, the angry looking man and the boy. At last just as she
was going to ask them to sit down, or something similar, the father
began. He presumed that she knew now what had happened, hey? The boy
had come to beg pardon and to receive his punishment; it was quite
necessary, for he was a bad boy and nothing but punishing did him any
good; kindness was utterly wasted on him.
"Oh, must it be?" said the mother, mildly. She was quite frightened,
and Ole turned a bluish-white, like the shirt he had on.
"Yes, he must have a beating! Beg pardon first. Sharp's the word?"
Ole began to cry, not so Edward. Ole could not sit still; he got up, he
looked at his mother: "Mother, dear!" said he. He could not get out
another word; but his meaning was evident, his mother was to make peace
between them.
"Beg pardon!" shouted the father, and the whip became restless.
"But, mother dear!" shrieked Ole.
Then Edward had to come forward. Ole turned away; he could not look on
any longer, he was not used to that sort of thing. Edward dived and
ducked, his father after him with clanking spurs. In his fright Edward
rushed to Ole's mother with outstretched hand; she did not take it, but
Ole began to yell. So much sympathy was too much for poor Edward; he
too began to roar, as he dashed round and round the mother. There was
such a hubbub and noise that again the goats stopped their munching and
stared in, listening; the sparrows too, which had come back, flew away
over the roof.
And what happened? The sparrows showed the boy the way. Quick as
lightning, he flew past his father and out at the door, which he left
wide open behind him. They saw the goats fly on all sides, and the boy
into the scaffolding, up the ladder, and on to the roof. Directly he
got there he began to pull the ladder up after him.
"Look at him! Look at him!" screamed his father from the window. "Hey!"
and away he rushed.
As soon as his son saw him coming he dropped the ladder which fell
thundering down. Like a cat the lad ran up the rafters to the ridge of
the roof and along that, balancing himself as though he had never done
anything else all his life. He thought no more of his aching feet.
His father was in great alarm: "Take care, I say, take care there, take
care! Come away from there, and at _once!_ Come down, you young
wretch!" He ran out into the yard in his long riding-boots and
threatened him with the whip.
"I think I see myself! I shall jump right down into the yard!"
"Mad boy! Devil take him! Will you come down?"
"Yes if you'll not beat me!"
"I won't promise."
"Oh, you won't promise?" and away crept the boy farther out along the
ridge.
"Yes, yes! O you wretch! O you coward!"
"Well, have you promised?"
"Devil take your promising. Come down, can't you!"
"And you won't pull my hair either?"
"Down with you! You'll only fall up there!"
"You won't pull my hair and won't beat me, and won't do anything?"
"No, no, no! But come down directly! Look, now you're slipping! Edward,
do you hear?" shouted he.
"Well, will you keep to what you promise?"
"Oh! what don't you deserve!" and he threatened up with his whip. "Yes,
yes, I promise! But take care!"
But the boy went on: "May I stay here till tomorrow with Ole? May I?"
"I won't answer anything till you come down."
"Oh, you won't? all right!"
"Oh you scoundrel; oh, you miserable rascal!"
"Do you agree, then?"
"Yes, deuce take you! But get away from the outer edge at least! Devil
take the boy!"
"I say, it might be just as well if you went away first father."
"Not I; you'll not get me to do that. Never. I must see you down
first."
The boy thought this just as well. His father put up the ladder and
slowly the lad came down; but not until his father had gone a little
way back into the yard. And he kept his distance, although his father
wished to speak to him and assured him he would not harm him. Neither
would he go into the house as long as his father stayed there; but
being wet through, obliged his father to go away.
Five or six minutes after both lads lay kicking on the floor, Edward in
just as big a shirt as Ole's and equally naked otherwise; they were
both going to put on a pair of thick woollen stockings, of the kind the
peasants use that come well up over the thighs. They had thought it
easier to try and put them on sitting on the floor, which was strewn
with sand. There they pushed each other over and laughed as though many
days had gone by since _that_ happened which we have just witnessed.
Everything Edward did Ole did after him; they laughed until at last the
quiet, gentle mother was obliged to laugh too; there was no end to all
that Edward hit upon. They were to put on those long stockings so that
they might sit at table and eat their dinner without feeling too cold;
at table there was no fireplace for their legs. And at last they were
so far ready they got them on. And then was disclosed the contents of
the other pot; it was cream porridge. Edward had never tasted that
before. Ole was to be coaxed into better spirits than he was in when he
arrived, therefore his mother had made that porridge for him. Edward
applauded loudly and greeted the food with laughter.
But all at once Ole sat quite solemn and quiet. What now? Hands folded,
eyes cast down? The mother stood before them; she too was serious with
folded hands and cast-down eyes. Her face was bent down, it seemed to
be vanishing gradually farther and farther, or rather it was as if
shutters were put up before and all light in it extinguished. And then
she began, as though from afar, a long, long grace, in a low monotonous
voice, as if she were talking quietly with someone but at some other
place. Edward felt himself out of it all. His loneliness and fright
came back again, the old recollections and the old longing for his
mother. Then it passed away, pushed back like a shutter; it all
vanished behind the hill.
Edward had never before been present when grace was said at meals, and
her manner and ways were so altogether new to him, and he did not
understand her and her mumbling. He sat very quiet for some time after.
Ole did not speak either; all the time while they were dining he was
very silent and hardly even smiled. Food was God's gift; a certain
solemnity was therefore necessary.
But what a serious matter their eating was! The mother asked them at
last if they did not think it would be best to keep a little till the
evening? No, they said, this was dinner and supper in one. They were to
sleep together in the servant's room, which was used as a spare room;
the fire had been lighted there, and now they would sit by the fireside
for an hour or so and then go to bed.
The mother saw they would rather be alone, so she left them.
Then afterward when they were in the bedroom! At first the most
terrific row; the bed-clothes and featherbeds flew about them; then
they grew calmer after each attack, and at last they began to talk. Ole
told how the boys had treated him and Edward promised that he would
give that boy such a thrashing--yes, even if it were Anders Hegge
himself--if he would not hold his tongue about the "ways of God," and
all that, Edward would give him a proper kind of beating. Anders Hegge
was a coward. He knew who he would get to help him; they would have
such fun!
As they grew more tired they became sentimental. Ole spoke of Josephine
and Edward joined in and assured him that she had behaved splendidly
that day. He described her as she came rowing out in search of him. Ole
thought this grand. Certainly there was something great about
Josephine; they both agreed as to that.
Edward could not understand why Ole should wish to be a missionary? Why
on earth was it such an excellent thing to go off on wild adventures
when one had enough to do here at home? Ole should be a clergyman and
he would be a doctor, and they would both live together in the same
town; would not that be much nicer?
And Edward went on drawing pictures of their future life. They were to
live next door to each other and be often together; in the evenings
particularly, with their glass of punch, just as his father and the
apothecary were and play chess together as those two did. And they
would have a carriage for high days and holidays, and each harness his
own horse to it and drive out together; it would be more sociable like
that. Or else they would live by the sea-side and have a big boat
between them; everything must be between them.
In Ole's fancy Josephine was to be always with them, though Edward did
not actually say as much. But it was clear that she was to be with
them. And Ole thought this showed so much tact on Edward's part and was
very grateful to him; indeed it quite decided him. Josephine was to be
the clergyman's wife and manage everything in the house.
At last he agreed to all; it was decided that one was to be a clergyman
and the other a doctor, and they were to live together. The last thing
they talked about was their fishing expeditions.
They heard sounds of tramping and talking; it was the men coming home
from the herring-fishing. But they were very tired and soon fell
asleep.
YOUTH
I.
FIRST COUPLE FORWARD
There was a party of young people collected together at a country house
about five kilometres outside the town. The garden they were sitting in
down by the cove was brightly coloured by their light summer clothes,
especially those of the girls:
"Yellow, black, brown, white,
Green, violet, blue,"
some self-coloured, others variegated, checks and stripes; felt hats,
straw hats, tulle hats, caps, bare heads, parasols. A sound of singing
rose harmoniously up out of this medley of colour; men's and women's
voices in chorus floating in long undulating waves of sound. There was
no conductor; a dark young girl in a brown checked dress lay in the
midst of the group, leaning on one elbow, and led the singing with a
soprano voice stronger and clearer than the others; and they followed
her lead. They were in good practice. In the cove below them lay a
freshly painted smack, with half rigged up new sails; the water calm as
a mirror.
The singing and the smack seemed brightly to enter into league with
each other down in that black-looking cove, overshadowed and shut in by
the bleak mountains with still higher ones in the distance. The little
cove was like a mountain lake, once caused by a flood but since
forgotten. The mountains--oh, so heavy and stunted in outline as in
colour, rugged and leaden-looking, the more distant ones blue-black,
with dirty snow on their peaks, monsters all of them.
The smack lay on the black water, ready for a dance; it belonged to a
more light-hearted community than these lofty accessories of nature and
human life. The smack and the singing protested against all overweening
despotism, all that was rude, rough, and coarse--a free swaying
protest, proudly delighting in their colours.
But the mountains took no notice of this protest, nor did the young
people ever understand that it had been made. The "high-born" part of
being born and bred in scenery like that of Norway's west country is
just this, that nature forces one to make a stand, if one would not be
utterly crushed and overwhelmed; either one must be beneath or above
all! And they were above; for the west country folk are the brightest
and cleverest of all Scandinavians. In so great a degree do they feel
themselves masters of the situation as regards their scenery that not
one of all these young people felt the mountains as heavy and cold in
colour; all nature seemed to them fresh and strong, as nowhere else in
the world.
But they who now sat there singing or listening only had not been born
and nurtured by glad songs and the wide sea alone; no, they were
children of the mountains too; children of them as well as of the songs
and sea. Just before the song began they had been engaged in a
discussion as sharp and cutting, as leaden-hued as any mountain. It was
to do away with this stone-like sharpness among themselves that they
had sent forth their melodious song, building long bridges of glorious
harmony across the mountain-peaks and precipices. The summer day was
slightly gray in itself; but occasionally (just as at that moment!) the
sun shone forth over song and sail and landscape.
There sat two on whom both sun and song were wasted. Look at him down
there, a little to the right, lying in the grass, leaning on his elbow;
a tall young fellow in light summer clothes and without hat, a round
closely-cropped head, short, broad forehead that looked like butting, a
forehead that in his boyish days must have given many a hard bang!
Below the forehead was a nose like a beak, and sharp eyes that just
then were slightly squinting; either the spectacles concealed it so as
to make it hardly visible, or else it really was only very slight. The
whole face had something severe about it, the mouth was pinched and
hard and the chin sharp. But when one looked more closely into it the
impression it gave one changed entirely; all that was so sharply cut
became energetic rather than severe, and the spirit which had taken up
its abode in this mountainous country could doubtless be both a
friendly and a mischievous one. Even then, as he sat there in a
towering rage, not caring a hang about either sunshine or song, he
would rather have had a fight--even then gleams of merriment shot out
from under the angry brows. It was clear that he was the conqueror.
If anyone doubted it they need only cast an eye over to the other side
of the group on him who sat up against a tree to the left, a little
higher up the bank. He was the picture of a wounded warrior, suffering,
and with all the trembling uneasiness of battle still in his features.
It was a long fair face, not a west country face, but belonging rather
to the mountain districts or highlands; either he was a foreigner, or
else he came of a race of immigrants; he was strikingly like the
popular pictures of Melanchthon, though perhaps the eyes were a little
more dreamy and the eyebrows a little more arched; altogether the
likeness, particularly the forehead, position of the eyes, and the
mouth, was so striking that among his fellow-students he always went by
the name of Melanchthon.
This was Ole Tuft, student in theology, his studies nearly completed;
and the other one, the conqueror with the eagle's beak (which just now
had been hacking so sharply), was the friend of his childhood, Edward
Kallem, medical student.
Several years ago their paths in life had begun to deviate, but so far
there had never been any serious encounter between them; but now what
had happened was to prove decisive.
Between these two, in the middle of the garden and surrounded by the
singers, sat a tall girl in a plum-colored silk dress, round her neck
some broad yellow lace which hung in long loose folds down to her
waist. She herself was not singing; she was making a wreath out of a
whole garden of field flowers and grass. One could easily see that she
was sister to the conqueror, but with darker complexion and hair. The
same shape of head, although her forehead was comparatively higher and
the whole face larger, undoubtedly too large. The sharp family nose had
a more gentle bend in her well-proportioned face; his thin lips became
fuller, his chin more rounded, his uneven eyebrows more even, the eyes
larger--and yet it was the same face. The expression of the two was
different; hers, though not cold, was calm and silent; no one could
quickly read those deep eyes; and yet the two expressions were much
alike. Her head was well set on a strong-looking neck and well-shaped
shoulders, the bust, too, was well developed. Her dark hair was twisted
into a knot peculiar to herself. Her throat was bare, but the dress,
with its yellow lace fastened closely round it--indeed, her whole
attire gave one the idea of something shut in, buttoned up as it were;
and so it was with her whole manner. As before said, she was making a
wreath and looked neither at one or the other of the two who had been
fighting.
The quarrel has been caused by a large black dog; it lay there now
pretending to sleep, its thick wet coat glistening in the sun. Several
of them had been throwing sticks into the water and sending the dog in
after them; each time they threw a stick they shouted, "Samson!
Samson!"--that was the dog's name. Edward Kallem said to two or three
who stood near him, "Samson means sun-god."
"What?" asked one young girl, "does Samson mean sun-god?"
"Certainly it does; but of course the clergymen take care not to tell
that." He said it in youthful exuberance, not in the least intending to
hurt anyone's feelings, or to say more at all. But by chance Ole Tuft
overheard him and said, with rather a superior air:
"Why should the clergymen not dare to tell the children that Samson
means sun-god?"
"Why, for then the whole legend about him could no longer serve them as
a type of the Christ-myth."
This last word was like a sharp stab, and it was meant as such. With a
superior smile Ole said:
"I suppose Samson may be used as a type, whether he be _called_ sun-god
or not."
"Certainly, whether he be _called_ sun-god or not, but suppose him to
_be_ sun-god?"
"Indeed, so he was sun-god?" shouted Ole, laughing.
"The name tells us so."
"The name? Are we bears or wolves because we are called after bears or
wolves? Or gods because we are called after gods?"
Several of the party stood by listening; others joined them, Josephine
among the number, and both turned at once to her.
"The misfortune is," said Edward, "that it is only the fact of his
being a sun-god that gives any sense to the stories told about Samson."
"Oh, nowadays all old records of everybody's forefathers are turned
into sun legends. And Ole related a few amusing parodies of this
scientific craze now so much in vogue. They all laughed, Josephine too;
Edward became excited at once and began to explain that our gods, who
were Indian sun-gods, had in reality been turned into our forefathers
when a new religion was started; the altars which then had been used
for sacrifices were turned into graves or burying-places. In the same
way all the old sun-gods of the Jews had been changed to forefathers
when the worship of Jehovah did away with them as gods."
"Who can know that?"
"Know it? Why, take Samson! How utterly meaningless to believe that
anyone's strength should be in his hair! But as soon as we take it for
granted that it is the sun's rays, lengthy in summer-time, but cut
short in the lap of winter, then there is some sense in it. And when
the rays grew longer and longer, and spring drew near, then all can
understand that the sun-god could again encircle with his arms the
pillars of the world. Never have bees been known to deposit their honey
in a beast's carcase; but when we hear that each time the sun passes
over one of the signs of the stars--for instance, the lion's--then it
is said that the sun slaughtered the lion; then we can understand that
the bees made their honey in the dead lion's carcase, that is to say,
in the hottest part of the summer."
The whole party was all ears, and Josephine was highly astonished. She
did not look up at her brother because she felt he was looking at her,
but the impression made was unmistakable. What Edward had at first
started, without other thought than that of showing off a little, was
now a decided thing aimed at, and it was because Josephine stood
between them.
"With the Egyptians," explained he, "the spring began when the sun
slaughtered the lamb, that is to say, passed across the sign of the
lamb--in their delight at the renewal of all things, every Egyptian
slaughtered a lamb that day. The Jews have it from them. It is utterly
false if the Jews later on have changed this to something that
separates them from the Egyptians. Just as with the circumcision, they
have that, too, from Egypt. But clergymen take care never to speak of
that kind of thing."
Ole Tuft had little or no knowledge of all these things. His plodding
studies had been severely theological, he had not time for more, and
his faith was an inheritance from an old peasant race, and was far too
secure in itself to be capable of scientific doubts. Had he announced
this fact straight out, there would probably have been an end of the
matter. But he too felt that Josephine stood between them and was
allowing herself to be led away. So he began with great scorn to call
everything vague inventions, empty devices, shining one day, melted
away on the morrow.
The other's vanity would not stand this. "Theologians," cried he, "are
wanting in the very simplest honesty. They conceal the fact that the
most important items of their faith are not revealed to the Jews, but
simply taken up and accepted from elsewhere! Like the creed of
immortality, that is from Egypt. The same with the Commandments. No one
climbs up on to a high mountain to have revealed to him in a
thunderstorm what others have known for thousands of years. Where is
the devil from? And the punishments of hell? Whence the last day and
judgment? And the angels? The Jews knew nothing of all this. Clergymen
are a set--in short, a set who do not honestly investigate matters,
telling people such things."
Josephine subsided completely; all the young people, particularly the
men, were evidently on Kallem's side; free-thinking was the fashion,
and it was amusing to have a laugh at the old faith handed down from
days of yore.
One young man began mocking at the history of the creation; Kallem
possessed both geological and palæontological learning, and he made
good use of it. Still less on this subject could Ole Tuft argue with
them; he alluded again to a trial that had been made to reconcile the
doctrines of the Bible with more recent discoveries, but it fared badly
with him. And on they went in rapid succession from dogma to dogma--now
they lay basking in the doctrine of the atonement of sins, it descended
from so ancient and uncultured a time that such a thing as individual
responsibility was not then known, merely that of the whole tribe or
family. Tuft was in despair; to him it really was an important
question, and much moved, in a loud voice, he began to confess his
faith. As if that were of any use! Excuses! Inventions!--show us your
proofs! Too late, Ole Tuft perceived that he had defended the cause too
eagerly and had therefore lost all. He was overcome with grief, fought
without hope, but fought on all the same and shouted out that, if a
single one of all those truths seemed doubtful, the fault was his; he
lacked the power to defend it. But the Word of God would stand unharmed
to the last hour of the world! What is the Word of God? It is the
spirit and entirety of the Bible, the creation (No!); the deluge (No!
No!); the expiation by death (No, No, No!); he shouted, they shouted;
the tears rushed to Tuft's eyes, his voice shook; he looked pale and
handsome.
Young people are not quite so cruel as children; but still it is the
same kind of spirit. Some were sorry for him, others just wanted to
drive him into a corner, Edward Kallem first and foremost.
But Josephine stepped quickly away to the dark girl with the soprano
voice. She began one of their songs directly, the others joined in, the
gentlemen rather after the ladies. With very few exceptions, the party
consisted of a chorus of ladies and gentlemen who had practised
together the last three winters with all the perseverance and industry
only to be met with in a small town.
Josephine went and sat down in the middle of the bank, the others round
about her. She did not sing; she had her flowers.
The party had come out there in the little schooner which now lay so
fresh and bright-looking in the sun. On board, Josephine, Edward, and
Ole had sat together, close together, for there was not much room. No
one could guess, hearing their merry, oft-whispered conversation, that
there was aught between them save friendship and goodwill. And now,
only three hours after, Ole Tuft sat there like an outcast! How he
suffered! An attack on his calling, on his faith, and before them all!
And by Edward, too! So cruel, so persistingly scornful! And Josephine?
Not a single word of sympathy, not even a look from Josephine.
From their childhood Ole and she had been constantly together; they had
written to each other when he was away at Christiania, he once a
fortnight, she as often as she had anything to write about. When he was
at home for his holidays they met daily. During the two years that she
was at a French school and away in Spain their correspondence had been
more active than ever, on her part, too, and when she came home
again--changed though she was otherwise--to him she was always the
same. Her father had helped him with his studies and enabled him to
give all his attention to them; he was to pass his last examination at
Christmas; everyone prophesied that it would be one of the first and
best ever passed in theology. Undoubtedly he had her, and possibly her
brother too, to thank for his having been helped. In former days they
had both of them brought him to their father, to the head-master, to
the apothecary, and to many other families; and now through her he was
accepted everywhere. In everyday life she spoke but little, and was
often rather difficult to get on with; but she was a firm and true
friend. At times she would censure him (for he was not always according
to her taste); it was all part of their intercourse and he did not
attach much importance to it, nor she either; from the very first she
had always been his guardian. As yet he had not dared to say that he
loved her; there was no necessity for it, and, in fact, it was almost
too sacred to be mentioned. He was as sure of her as of his own faith.
He was a peasant, his chief characteristic was a certain trustful,
solid collectiveness. God provided for his faith; his well-being and
future were provided for--of course also by God; but through Josephine.
In his eyes she was the cleverest, most beautiful and healthiest girl
not only in the town but in the whole country, and she was very rich.
This last must be taken into consideration too; as a small boy he had
been an ambitious dreamer, but now his dreams had a different bent.
His fellow-students knew all about it; as well as Melancthon, they
called him the "bishop-theme from the bay," or the "bay bishop." He had
got accustomed to this, it was almost a necessity for him; there was
something child-like in his smiling trustfulness that suited him well;
then he was so handsome, with his fair, open face; and when that is the
case it is quite excusable to be ambitious.
Now he felt that he had been hurled down from his secure and pleasant
height! Anyone who having been safe and secure, for the first time is
thoroughly defeated, feels so completely out of it all. The worst of
this was that Josephine did not appear to wish to have anything to do
with him; he looked repeatedly across to her, but she went on arranging
her flowers and grass just as if he did not exist.
At last it was exactly as though they all had glided away and he too
were no longer there. He sat without seeming to sit, heard without
hearing, saw without seeing. The supper was being got ready up before
the house; they all went up there as soon as the table was laid; they
ate, they drank, they laughed and made merry; but he was not with them,
he stood there staring out across the bay--far, far away. A young man,
clerk in some business, spoke to him about the routes of the different
steamers and how badly they were managed; a girl with crooked teeth,
red hair in plaits and a freckled face (he had formerly been her
master), assured him that sailors were by no means so well educated as
one might expect from people who travelled so much. The hostess came
and asked how it was he would not eat anything, and the host took wine
with him; in doing so they showed him the usual respect; but both of
them cast a hurried, searching glance at his eyes, which made him
tremble. He felt they doubted. In his ceaseless and ever-increasing
pain, he saw nothing but doubt and scorn on every side, even in the
fact of the general merriment. Edward Kallem was especially full of fun
and they all collected round him. It was in his honor too (he had come
home a fortnight ago) that the expedition had been got up. As in a
dream, Ole saw that Josephine's flowers had been placed on the table,
and he heard how everyone praised the blending of their colors; she
herself was sitting at a little stone table with two girl friends--was
that to prevent his joining her? There was much noise and fun going on
at the other side. He saw her talking and laughing, all the young men
waiting upon her; Edward joined them several times; he made them laugh
too. Ole noticed all this with a strange feeling of fear. The noise
jarred on him, the laughter made him feel ashamed, he could not swallow
a morsel, and the wine had a bad taste; everyone seemed as though they
were worked by machinery, the house, the bay, the schooner, the
mountains, all seemed so overwhelmingly near.
A dead calm had set in, so that the whole party were obliged to walk
back to town. They started on their walk singing and all together; but
almost immediately some of the numerous summer visitors came pouring
out from the houses along the road, and, as they were all
acquaintances, they stopped to speak. The newcomers joined them and
walked on with them; then came others, and each time they stopped, and
each time the party broke up and became more divided. In that way Ole
was able to keep behind without anyone's noticing it. He could not bear
their company and their merriment any longer.
Now it was that everything was, as it were, concentrated in Josephine.
The being attacked and overthrown by Edward, the shame of this defeat,
his wounded religious feelings ... it all was due to the fact that she
had not upheld him, neither by word nor by look; had shunned him
before, and now had gone and left him! He could not stand that; for she
had grown to be so much, too much, for him, he knew it and was not
ashamed. That which once had been his highest aim, namely, to be a
missionary, had fallen from him like scales, when he saw she no longer
cared about it. Whenever his mother had said that he should never
become a missionary, his answer was that God must be obeyed before man.
But when Josephine, in her strong sort of way, had looked closer into
the reality of things, he gave up all his wishes without her needing
even to say a word on the subject. He said to himself that he would
surely be punished for having so great a love for any one person. But
he could not help it.
With these and thousands of similar thoughts in his mind, he lagged
behind, and turned off from the road up into the wood; there he lay
down, waiting until their summer acquaintances should pass back again.
He soon turned over, and lay with his face downwards, the cool blades
of grass prickling both cheeks and forehead, and the half-wet earth he
seemed to inhale suited his mood. All these tiny blades of grass were
as nothing in the shade; and so it was with him--through her he reached
the sunny side of life, without her all was shadow.
A voice within him seemed to say her brother had taken her from him.
Her brother, who, until a very few days ago, had not cared a straw
about her, whilst Ole had always been with her since they were children
together, had rowed with her, read to her, been to her both brother and
sister in one, and had faithfully written to her when they were
separated; her own brother had never done any one of all these things.
Even his defeat of to-day he credited to her account; for if he had
not, for her sake, been so conscientious in working for his
examination, to which he had been assisted by her father, then he would
probably have known more about all those matters under discussion
to-day--he would perhaps not have been defeated at all; this, too, he
suffered for the sake of his fidelity.
As long as Josephine was a child and half grown up, Edward had seldom
been together with her without teasing her. She was very thin, with
large, black eyes, often uncombed hair, red hands, altogether scraggy;
he nicknamed her "the duckling," and once when she had hurt her foot
and went about limping, "the lame duckling."
He could never really make her out, she was so defiant, and yet
shy--kept always at a distance. And then, time upon time, she was the
cause of his getting a beating. She considered it "just" to tell each
time he did anything wrong. And if he beat her for telling, then it was
"just" to tell about that too. He took a dislike to her. Soon, however,
they were separated, through his leaving his father's house. After that
unlucky day, when father and son met on the road to Store-Tuft, the
apothecary took pity on his old friend and, taking the boy from him,
adopted him entirely as his own son. What the father had never been
able to succeed in succeeded now. The boy was at once taken away from
school, and allowed to devote himself to his chief interest, natural
history. Chemical and physical analysis or botanical expeditions were
his highest aim, and for two years he studied nothing but what belonged
to those branches. After that he went through other necessary studies
with a private master, and very quickly; he began his medical studies
after passing his second examination. As long as he was at home he only
saw his sister when she came across to the apothecary's to see him,
and, as their interests were entirely opposed, their intercourse became
almost nil. Later on, the apothecary used to take him abroad with him
in the holidays; Edward was so clever at languages, which he certainly
was not. It was not often, therefore, that the brother and sister met
in their holiday time. But from the time that, as a student, he had
first travelled abroad with the apothecary, and she saw her brother
come home, grown-up, with new fashions, both in ideas and in dress,
energetic, full of life, a very ideal, especially a woman's ideal of
youth, from that time she had always secretly admired him. He, for his
part, either overlooked her completely, or else teased her; it cost her
many an hour's torture, but she swallowed it all, so as to be allowed
to be where he was, even if only quietly in a corner.
Ole understood her, though she never betrayed herself. To him, too, she
spoke seldom of Edward without calling him "disgusting," "meddlesome,"
"chatterbox," etc., etc. But Ole's faithful attention to her every time
she sat there neglected by her brother, and with wounded feelings
heaped up "treasures" for him in her heart.
A great change had taken place in Edward--his inquisitiveness had
become a desire for knowledge, his restlessness was now energy. But at
the same time his sister also underwent a change to an extent that he
knew nothing about. It was exactly two years and a half since he had
seen her last; she had been in France and Spain for two years, and in
the last holidays, when she was at home, he had been away travelling in
England with the apothecary; this year, too, they had been away for a
couple of months. This sister whom he now met again was like a stranger
to him. He was much taken up with her after their first meeting.
She was not handsome, he told Ole, as soon as they two met (to Ole's
greatest astonishment). But he never wearied talking of the new and
peculiar sort of impression she produced up here among all the others.
Their mother must surely have looked too much at some Spanish woman
during the time before Josephine's birth. If it had not been for that
indescribable something about the eyes which distinguishes one person
from the other all the world over--if it had not been for that
something about the eyes--she might very well have lived among
Spaniards and been taken for their countrywoman. The effect of this in
a Norwegian household may be imagined! She talked well, rapidly, and to
the point; but, all the same, was rather silent--kept herself at a
distance. She dressed conspicuously, liked bright colors, and was
always in the height of fashion, thereby almost challenging people, but
in all other respects she was timid and shy.
From this time Edward really became a brother to her. Their father was
away, and during his absence she lived at the head-master's and was not
always easily got at; but whenever it was possible they were together.
She had a feeling that he wanted to study her thoroughly, so she was on
her guard; but it flattered her greatly that, whenever there was anyone
present, his eyes always sought hers and he appealed to her in
everything.
* * * * *
While Ole, in deep distress, pressed his face down in the grass in
the little wood where he lay, he could see in his mind's eye Josephine
at a ball, her brother dancing first with this one, then with the
other--sometimes even several dances with the same partner, but with
her only one little "turn," out of compassion.
But now?
Now she had become a precious sister to Edward, and she and Ole were to
be separated.
Why should Edward break in upon and spoil their intercourse, he who
knew so little about it?--taking to himself all manner of rights which
he did not in the least deserve? Just after being together for a few
days, was he to decide who was suitable for her to be with, and who was
not?
Why, before them all, had he thus attacked him, casting scorn and
derision on his calling in life?--not only mocking him, but mocking God
himself.
As this thought passed through Ole Tuft's mind, a strange and strong
light seemed to rise up and spread over all the mountains far away on
the other side of the bay. He felt it in the back of his neck as he lay
there with his face buried in the grass. Then there seemed to come a
whisper from over there, filling all the air around him, "What hast
thou done with me?"
Oh! how crushed he felt, he seemed forced down into the ground. Now he
knew that his suffering was like a sharp razor cutting away all that
was diseased out of his flesh. He had lost his cause to-day simply
because he stood there as a liar. "Thou shalt have no other gods but
me!" No, no, forgive me, spare me! "Thou with thy vain, sensual dreams!
Let the night serve thee as it did Jacob, to wrestle with me, writhing
worm that thou art!"
The air around him seemed full of the sound of a thousand wings.
It was not the first time that the solemnity of the Old Testament had
come upon him from the heights and taken root in him. These questions
of great or small; as to whether he should hazard "the greatest"--or be
contented, like everyone else, with mediocrity--this was nothing new to
him.
But were he to meet Josephine in good humor again, those questions
would cease to exist, with one stroke of her hand she made them vanish.
And such was the case now. Without any warning, it was as if a fresh
protest from her came and overwhelmed him. Josephine would never have
turned from him to-day because her brother wished it, never! And if she
had understood it in that way, she would have done just the opposite.
No, she turned from him because he was such a poor creature--for
nothing else. Perhaps, too, because she did not wish to be forced into
a discussion, she was so very shy. Neither had she turned to her
brother. She sat in the middle of the group in the garden, and later
on, when they dined, she and a couple of girl friends had been at a
separate table. And when the party broke up she had made no effort to
be where her brother collected so many round him--why, in the world,
had he not thought of that before? She was true to him; upon my word,
she was true and faithful! He rose up; why, in the name of fortune, had
he not seen that sooner?
He had wished that she would help him one way or another--at least,
would comfort him and show him how sorry she was for him. But all that
sort of thing was utterly opposed to Josephine's nature. How could he
even think of it? Especially as there had been all this disturbance and
everyone was on the lookout as to what she would do.
He had been a great stupid. Delighted with this discovery, he hopped
down through the wood and across the ditch, on his homeward way, after
the others.
Great heavens, how he loved her! He saw her before him as she was
sometimes when she thought him too child-like; through all her majesty
he could always catch a good, kind look from her!
The late sunset left no red sky behind, the night was dull and gray, a
deserted road winding down hill; by the roadside were some small
factories, the houses being up on the hill, poor places all of them,
and a few shabby-looking summer villas here and there, low trees, and a
few bushes spread about.
He saw it all without seeing it, occupied as he was with his own
thoughts. Not a soul on the road--yes, far off in the distance was a
solitary individual going toward the town. He slackened his pace so as
not to overtake this person, and never noticed that besides that person
walking in front of him was another advancing to meet him. At last he
could distinguish one from the other. Surely--it could never be--was he
mistaken? No, he recognized the hat, and then the walk, the whole
figure, there was only one such! Josephine was coming back to fetch
him! It was just like her.
"But where have you been?" said she. Her large-featured face was
flushed, her breath came quickly, her voice was rather hesitating, and
the parasol she held in her left hand was not altogether steady. He did
not answer; he gazed at her face, her dress, the feather in her hat,
her tall, fine figure, till involuntarily she smiled; so much dumb
admiration and gratitude would pierce through any kind of armor.
"Josephine! Oh, Josephine!" Joy and admiration were reflected from the
crown of his flat hat and down to his very boots. She went gaily up to
him and laid her right hand on his left arm, pushing him gently
forward; he was to walk on.
His face was all stained by the grass he had been burrowing in, she
thought he had been crying: "You are silly, Ole," she whispered.
Such a gray summer's night, when nothing really sleeps nor yet is fully
awake, gives one a strange, unsatisfied feeling. For these two it was
as would be a dimly lighted room for two who were secretly engaged. She
allowed her hand to remain resting on his arm, and when his eyes met
hers she looked at him as though watching over a child.
"You see, I thought," said he, "I thought, only fancy I thought--" The
tears stood in his eyes.
"You are very silly, Ole," whispered she again! And thus ended the
storm of that day.
Her hand still rested on his arm; it looked as if she were leading him
to prison. He could only just feel a very slight pressure, but it went
to his very marrow. Now and then her silk dress just touched his leg,
they were keeping step together, he seemed carried along by the
electric current of her vicinity. They were utterly alone, and the
silence round them was complete; they could hear their own steps and
the rustling of the silk dress. He kept the arm on which her hand lay,
painfully quiet, half afraid that the hand might fall down and be
broken. There was just this one drawback--for there must always be
something not quite perfect, that he felt an ever-increasing guilty
desire to take her hand and tuck it under his arm in the usual way; he
could have pressed it then. But he dared not do it.
They walked on and on. He looked upward and discovered there was no
moon. "There is no moon," said he.
"It would have been lighter if there had been," answered she, smiling.
"Much lighter." Their voices had met and the sound of them mingled,
floating together like birds in the air.
But just on that account they found it difficult to say more. As Ole
walked along pondering over what he could venture to say next, he felt
both touched and proud. He thought of that snowy Saturday evening long
ago, when the other boys at school had treated him so badly, and he had
fled away to Store-Tuft; he thought of all his misery that day; but his
promotion as it were dated from then, he had walked into the town from
the other side, but with her on his arm--stop though, not quite. There
had been the same drawback then too.
Should he tell her? Would she not think it too outspoken.
"We are quite alone now, we too," thus cunningly would he try to lead
up to it; but he could not depend on his voice, it would betray him.
She did not answer him. Again there was a complete silence between
them. Just fancy, then her hand of its own accord slipped quietly into
his arm, in the usual way when two people are engaged. His whole frame
quivered, and taking courage, he pressed it slightly; but did not dare
to look at her. They walked on.
Soon the town lay before them as though under a veil, the ships'
rigging rising up like so many towers; or like the pointed sort of
rigging dredging ships always have; the houses stood in thick outline,
no coloring visible; everything carefully packed up and put away, the
mountains keeping guard over the whole. One long, faint, indistinct
sound, a dull gleam through the dead-gray silence. "Will you not tell
me something?" said she, rapidly, as though she could not possibly get
out more just then. He felt quite relieved at this, and asked her if he
should tell her--about light.
"Yes, about light," answered she; was it ironical?
He began, but could not do it clearly. The very first time that she
asked him for a clearer explanation he felt that he could not give it,
he was not sufficiently at home with the subject. "No," he said, "let
me finish my story about Jeanne d'Arc; you know we were interrupted
yesterday."
"Yes, let us take Jeanne d'Arc!" said she, merrily, and laughed.
"Do you not wish that?"
"Yes, yes!" And she said that more kindly, as if wishing to make up for
the first. Then he told her the end of Jeanne d'Arc's story, as it was
told in a newly published book which he had borrowed from her father in
the holidays. This was a subject that suited him; his west country
accent, with the sing-song rise and fall in the voice, his carefully
studied use of words, peculiar to one who had once been a peasant,
heightened by the country dialect, though it no longer was so
noticeable, impressed one with the idea that it was the words of some
old writer; his soft and gentle Melancthon-face was dreamy; she looked
up at him, and each time seemed to see deep down into his pure heart.
And in this manner they reached the town. The story had taken a hold on
her too, and they both became so eager that they were not aware that
they might possibly meet someone, and that they now had houses on each
side of them; he just lowered his voice a little, but went on telling
his story.
But when they came near the street where his aunt lived, and up which
he ought to turn, he stopped, without having finished his story. Would
he be allowed to take her home? The head-master's house was a little
further on; if not, then he ought to leave her here. Now, this was not
a question of this evening only.
Just on this account she thought of it too; she had never approved of
that sort of nonsense, of being taken to one's own door when the other
person's way lay quite in an opposite direction. From their childhood
she had always had the same feeling, because she had been teased about
him. But she knew that for him it was a great treat.
They both walked along the short bit of road that remained, and worked
themselves up to a state of excitement. Shall we say good-by here,
or--? What had originally been so childish had now grown, by dint of
repetition, to something of great importance. She could not account for
it, but as they stood at the cross-roads, she quietly took her
gloveless hand from his arm and offered it to him in farewell greeting.
She saw his disappointment. And to make up for it her large eyes beamed
on him, her hand grasped his heartily, and, "Thanks for a pleasant
evening!" said she, in quite a different tone of voice from what she
had used for the last few years. The words seemed to fly from heart to
heart like a life-long promise, and such was their meaning. She thanked
him now and always for his faithful love. He stood there, quite pale.
She saw it, and seemed to meditate something--took her hand away, and
went. On the hill, she turned again to look at him, thankful that
neither by word nor deed had he tried to do anything but what she
wished. She nodded to him, he raised his hat.
A few minutes later she stood in her own room, much too warm and too
wide-awake to think of going to bed. She did not wish to sleep; at all
events, she wanted first to see the sun on the roofs, or at least
daylight. Her room looked out on the courtyard, the playground and
gymnasium at the end, some gymnastic apparatus stood outside too.
Looked at from the street side, her bed-room was in the second story,
but seen from the court it was on the first floor; hundreds of times,
as a child, she had jumped out of the window instead of going out
through the door. She opened the window, and even thought of jumping
out now and walking up and down the court. She would, in reality, have
preferred walking about the whole night with Ole; but he could not
understand that. Perhaps it was because he had not proposed it that she
had dismissed him up the street.
But as she thought more about it, she did not dare to venture out into
the yard. It happened sometimes that young men coming home from a
country walk or a boating expedition, or jaunt of some kind, would take
it into their heads, as they passed the old school-yard, to turn into
the playground of their boyish days and have a swing on the ropes; she
would not like to meet those half-tipsy young men. She took off her
hat, and remained standing in the window, leaning forward, gazing out
after what had just happened, and which seemed to draw her outward in
spite of herself.
She heard steps on the stairs outside, and then in the sand, the way in
to her. Could it be Ole? Was he sentimental enough to wish to look up
at her window? He must not come! God help him if he did come! She
listened eagerly; no--those steps were too rapid; it was--she knew it
as he stood there, it was her brother.
Yes, it was Edward who came. He was not astonished at seeing her, but
came straight up to her. And when he had come up to the open window he
stretched up his right hand to her, and she took it. His eyes squinted
a little, a sure sign that he was excited. "I am glad you are still up;
otherwise I should have been obliged to knock." His eyes looked
searchingly into hers, and he did not loose her hand. "Have you just
got back?"
"Yes, just this moment." All at once she felt herself to be in his
power; he might have questioned her about anything in the world and she
would have answered, with those eyes of his looking at her like that.
"When I saw you were no longer with the rest of the party, I knew you
had gone back to Ole."
"Yes."
He stopped speaking, his voice shook: "I behaved badly; I suppose now
you are engaged?"
There was a pause, but her answer gleamed forth directly in her eyes.
"I think so," she said.
Lovingly, yet full of grief, he gazed at her. She felt the greatest
desire to cry aloud. Had she done wrong? She was dreadfully alarmed.
Then he took her head between both his hands, and bending down, kissed
her on the forehead. She burst into tears and clasped her arms tightly
round his neck; they lay thus cheek against cheek.
"Well, well--if it is settled, then--I congratulate you, Josephine,
dear Josephine." They pressed closer to each other, then they parted.
"I leave to-day," whispered he, taking hold of her hand; she gave them
both to him.
"To-day, Edward?"
"I have behaved stupidly. Good-by, Josephine."
She disengaged her hands to take her handkerchief and press it to her
face. "I will come and say good-by," she sobbed.
"Don't do that! No--not again!" And to get it over quickly, he embraced
and kissed her once more and left her without once looking round.
II.
NEXT COUPLE FORWARD.
In March of the following year, just as Edward Kallem was preparing to
pass the second part of his medical examination, he came across
something else which completely occupied his thoughts.
We must now tell all about it.
At the time when his desultory studies in natural history concentrated
themselves more and more on physiology, at that time the cleverest
physiologist was a young realistic student, Thomas Rendalen, somewhat
older than Edward Kallem. In itself, it was seldom that a non medical
student distinguished himself in that branch, so that everybody was
struck by it, and of course Edward Kallem too; but he did not on that
account become any closer acquainted with Rendalen, who was not one of
those who make themselves accessible to all.
It was later on, indeed not until after New Year (as they happened to
be on the same steamer coming back after the Christmas holidays), that
they got to know each other better. The first evening that Kallem went
to see Thomas Rendalen in his own rooms, he stayed the night there. And
a few evenings after, when Rendalen came to him, they kept going
backward and forward between the two lodgings (which were close
together) till between three and four o'clock in the morning. Edward
Kallem had never before come across such a genial sort of fellow, and
Rendalen went up to him early one morning, before Kallem had gone out
to the hospital, just to tell him that of all his friends and
acquaintances Kallem was the one he liked best.
In reality Rendalen's was a stronger nature than Kallem's, a mixture of
savagery and tameness, of passion, melancholy, and music, with great
powers of communicativeness, but with recesses in his character which
were seldom, if ever, opened. Unbounded energy--and then again so
utterly devoid of power that he could do nothing; the whole machinery
was out of order, as though one of the wheels were broken. Not a single
spot at right angles, nothing but irregularities on the whole landscape
of his character; but the light of a great mind was over the whole.
However incalculable were the surroundings, or unpleasant the
disappointments--his individuality, with its strict sense of justice,
was so winning that one could not do otherwise than be fond of him.
His chief concern was for all belonging to schools, and for education
to its very centre; to carry each separate child safe through the
"dangerous age" which comes at different times. Many suffered greatly
at that time, wounds were made but not easily healed; those who lived
comfortably and in better circumstances could pass the ordeal unhurt;
but they were hardly in the majority. All education and teaching was to
be concentrated in forming a good and moral man, that was his first and
last thought.
He was indefatigable in lecturing on ways and means of education; in
discussing all school arrangements and the work to be done in the
homes. His mother owned a widely-known girls' school in one of the
towns on the coast, and he was anxious to take possession of it so as
to be able to carry out his plans! His great aim was a system of mixed
schools; but first the teaching of all the principal branches must
undergo a change--be made easier, not suitable only for the most
talented pupils. And he intended practising all this at the girls'
school.
He possessed a tolerably large collection of school material from
America and from several European countries, and he kept on adding to
it; besides that, he owned a whole library of school literature. He
lived together with one Vangen, a student of theology who had finished
his studies at Christmas, but was just going up for his practical
examination; but although between them they had three rooms, they were
all three full of Rendalen's library and collections.
His appearance was remarkable. Red-haired (but rather a light color)
and the ends sticking up straight in the air, freckled, and with
blinking gray eyes under white short-haired eyebrows which were hardly
visible; the nose was broad and rather turned up, the mouth pinched;
short, freckled hands, every finger denoting energy; not tall, but
splendidly made; his walk, on well turned out feet, was very light.
Wherever he went he was the best of all gymnasts, and could climb the
ropes like none other; Edward, too, who had always been fond of
gymnastics, became doubly eager through his example; for nothing could
equal Rendalen's power to win others for whatever he was fond of. At
this time his great passion was walking on his hands; Kallem could do
this to his great admiration; probably that put the climax to the
respect that Rendalen had for him.
They had many subjects in common; they were both specialists, and both
powerful in whatever they undertook; modern in their way of thinking,
and with the courage of reformers; both were particular to the last
degree about their persons; they dressed with taste; Rendalen, however,
thought rather too much about it. Both had the same quick way of
thinking, guessing in advance the half of what was said; both in that
way perfecting each other's knowledge! Rendalen was musical, played the
piano in a most masterly way, and sang well. Kallem sang still better,
and was encouraged in it by Rendalen.
Although Rendalen could with heart and soul give himself up to one
single object or individual, still there was a reserve about him which
no one could penetrate. He was very fond of Vangen, his adopted
brother; but one could always see that there was a decided something
that kept them apart. In this respect Kallem was entirely to Rendalen's
satisfaction; he too, in the midst of all his devotion to anyone, had
the same kind of stand-offishness about him.
But there was difference enough between them both to keep up the
novelty of their intercourse, at the same time rendering it rather
difficult. Nearly all the difficulties proceeded from Rendalen, for
Kallem was more pliable and accommodating. When Rendalen was in the
humor, he would play by the hour together, just as though no one were
in the room; one might make up one's mind to go away at once. He it was
who always gave the keynote to all their moods. He was capricious and
could have long spells of melancholy; when one of these fits was on him
few could get a word out of him. There was a marvellous power of work
in him whenever he was taken up about anything that occupied his
mind--and then suddenly, good-by to the whole thing! Were he in a
communicative mood and really in good spirits, the very air around him
seemed sparkling with electricity.
For Kallem the study of medicine meant fresh discoveries daily, and on
account of their mutual physiological studies they both faithfully
interchanged ideas, each from his side. During the months of January
and February they met nearly every evening; at any rate, at the
gymnasium from six to seven o'clock; after that they would often sup
together--oftenest at Rendalen's rooms, as he had a piano.
In the early part of March Rendalen's mother came to pay him a visit;
she lodged with her son's landlord, a new-comer to the town. He was a
native of Norland, blind and paralysed down one side, and had an
excessively musical wife; she was very young, in fact almost a
child--the strangest couple imaginable. Rendalen often spoke of them.
As long as his friend's mother was in town, Kallem kept away; each time
they left the gymnasium, Kallem could see that Rendalen did not wish to
have him with him. But when, after a stay of eight days or so, the
mother went home again, still things did not change; either Rendalen
went on with his gymnastics longer than Kallem, or else he left after a
very few exercises; it was clear that he did not wish for Kallem's
company. The latter thought that he was in one of his melancholy moods.
But one morning, Kallem having come home earlier than usual (as a rule
he was out the whole forenoon), he heard the bell ring, the servant
open the door, and then Rendalen's footstep in the passage. He came in
hurriedly, was gloomy and taciturn; his business was--should they
change lodgings?
Kallem knew him so well now, and was so good-natured, that he did not
show the least surprise, and never even asked his reasons for wishing
to change; he only said that his two small rooms would surely not be
large enough for Rendalen's collections and his piano--and for Vangen?
Or, were he and Vangen no longer going to live together? Yes, they
were! But there was a large room adjoining Kallem's two rooms, and for
long Rendalen had had his eye on that. He knew the landlady would be
glad to let it. It would suit him perfectly. Only fancy what it would
be to play in that large room!
"Have you spoken now to the landlady about it?"
"No, but I am just going to her," and off he rushed. They both came
back together, the landlady and he; a few minutes after, all was
settled! In the afternoon they moved! When the good-natured Vangen came
hurrying home from his dinner, there sat Kallem in dressing-gown and
slippers in the first room to the right, and announced to him that
Rendalen had gone to live in Sehested Street, where he, Kallem, used to
live; they had changed lodgings. They both laughed.
"And yet he was very comfortable here," said Vangen; but that was the
only remark he made.
Of course Edward Kallem speculated much on the reason of this hurried
move, and thought he would have a good talk with the servant each time
she came to see to the stove or to bring in his lunch or supper, both
which meals he took at home; she looked as if she knew something.
Marie had a peculiar smile that seemed to say: "Oh, I know the lot of
you--you too, you rogue." He got that, the very first time she opened
the door for him. She had eyes that were more than half covered by the
lids which hung over them in folds. The nose was a turn-up and seemed
to drag the mouth upward into a stiff smile, the upper lip projected,
showing a row of teeth for which there was hardly room, they glistened
through each smile. Everything she said seemed to have a hidden meaning
of fun and nonsense, it shot forth from under her eyelids and played
about the corners of the mouth. The voice was a soft one. Otherwise a
steady girl, well made, clever as old Nick himself, but prudent and
cautious both in speech and ways, for all her laughing criticisms. But
her laugh seemed always on the lookout for one. When he said: "I am
Edward Kallem, I am to live in Rendalen's room," she answered,
smilingly: "Oh!" just as if she had known all his secrets from the time
he was a boy. If he mentioned Rendalen, she looked as if she had a
whole room full of jokes about him; and yet--he never got anything out
of her.
The house where he lived now was a corner house, almost opposite the
university. The door of the house was in the same street into which
Kallem's rooms looked too. They were on the second floor and had
the same entrance as his landlord had; that is to say, one of the
rooms--the other one, his bed-room, had its own private entrance.
Rendalen had had a third room, the corner room further in. Kallem put
his card on the door leading into the little hall, below a large
door-plate bearing the name of Sören Kule; that was the landlord's
name! Next day being Sunday, he went to call on him.
There sat the paralysed, blind man in a large roller-chair. The
unfortunate man was still young, barely over thirty, very heavily
built, and heavy both in face and in speech. His very "Come in!" when
Kallem knocked, was heavy. Kallem introduced himself, the other sat
immovable and answered slowly: "Indeed, I am blind. And I can't move
about much either." This was said with a Norland accent; each syllable
jerked out and jogging heavily along like a London brewer's dray-horse.
It was a clever, but full, large-featured face; he came probably of a
healthy race. Kallem was sufficiently a doctor to be able to see at
once why he was paralysed and blind. A quantity of engravings and
photographs from Spain, hanging on the walls, gave him the idea that it
was probably _there_ he had received as a gift what that most gallant
people distribute with such hospitality.
"Won't you sit down?" he said, at last. His healthy side brisked up as
he turned and looked toward a door to the left: "Ragni!" he called.
Nobody answered and nobody came. His voice, as well as his seeming
indifference and stolid quiet, seemed to make the silence duller.
Kallem sat there and looked about him. Were those children's toys? It
seemed to him surely he heard children's voices? Were there children
_here?_
"Ragni!" repeated he once more, slowly. Then, more gently: "Perhaps
they are in the kitchen busy with the dinner."
Again the same dull, heavy silence; the sound of bells from the street
broke through it for a moment, but only to make it all the more evident
afterward. The furniture was too heavy and dark for a small Norwegian
room in winter; and it was faded and worn. The engravings and
photographs were in large frames, which, however, did not fit very
well, so that both dust and damp had got in and spoilt the paper. The
children's toys and a piano were the most noticeable things; the piano
seemed to be perfectly new and by one of the best Parisian makers, it
was certainly a concert-grand. "Your wife plays so beautifully?"
"Yes."
Kallem knew that she had devoted herself to the study of music since
she was a child, and just to find something to talk about he took up
the subject. "She has studied at the conservatoire in Berlin?"
"Yes."
There was a noise of chairs being pushed about in the room to the
right, the one adjoining the corner room. Kallem then took that up as a
subject for conversation. "I hear I am to have a neighbor in the corner
room?"
"Yes."
"A relation of yours, I believe?"
"Yes, an aunt."
Again Sören Kule looked to the left, and called out in an indifferent
sort of way: "Ragni!" Nobody answered and nobody came. "I fancied I
heard a door open outside," he said, as though apologizing for having
called. Kallem got up then and said good-by.
A few days afterward he gave Rendalen an amusing description of his
visit. Rendalen laughed; he had not often been there himself; but had
heard much about Sören Kule. He declared the fellow might go to the
devil for him, he would rather not talk about him at all; he sat down
to the piano and began to play.
A few days later, who should Kallem meet in the entrance but his
brother-in-law in spe, Mr. Ole Tuft, now candidate in theology, come to
town to pass his so-called practical examination.
Grand meeting and recognition! The one had no idea of the change of
lodgings that had taken place, nor the other that Ole Tuft had come to
town. Kallem begged him to go in with him, and heard then that Tuft was
there for the first time; the landlord's aunt had moved in yesterday,
and it was her Ole had been visiting. Edward Kallem understood at once
what community she belonged to, and he changed the subject. He asked
further whether he knew Sören Kule? No, only through hearing of him
from his aunt; all the family were from the Norland. Then who was Sören
Kule? He was a well-to-do fish-dealer who became blind and partially
paralysed; was obliged to sell his business and had bought this house
in Christiania to make a living by it and by other things as well. They
had several relations in town, and had only been there since October.
Did Ole Tuft know what had caused his paralysis and blindness? No.
Kallem told him there could hardly be a doubt on the matter. Ole Tuft
was quite shocked.
"How could he dare marry then? And twice."
"Has he been married twice?"
"Yes, he married a second time about six months or a year ago--his late
wife's sister."
"Then the children are by the first wife?"
"Yes. But the present wife is hardly more than a child herself; just
fancy, she is eighteen and has been married nearly a year!"
"Was he like this when he married again?"
"No, I think not. He was in ill-health but not so bad as now. There are
not many who can understand how it came about?"
"Have you seen her?"
"No, but my aunt says she is a delicate little creature, and very
musical. She has played in public."
"Indeed, up in the north?"
"They are said to be so very critical up there." Then he began again on
the subject of the marriage. "The parents probably arranged it for the
children's sake."
Kallem very nearly answered, "Then, of course, they are clergy folk;"
but he recollected in time. He only said: "One can't accuse her of
being too particular."
They conversed a little on indifferent subjects; no mention was made of
Josephine. Shortly after Ole went in to find his aunt, whom he had come
to call upon. As it happened Kallem was at home that forenoon and he
heard the landlord's wife play. She began with scales and scales and
still more scales; but then came a piece so wonderfully well executed
that he set his door ajar so as to hear better. Her playing was more
like singing. How in all the world could a woman young like she, and
full of artistic and lyric feeling, marry such a mass of corruption?
Here was a problem which he would have had Rendalen solve, but Rendalen
knew nothing. However, he was in good spirits that day, spoke in
raptures about her playing; there was not so much power in it but it
was full of song, and a poetical charm of coloring which was
unequalled. He could play a Russian piece of her's, "after a fashion"
he added; he played it perfectly. Kallem wanted to know something about
her appearance.
"She looks--stupid!" cried he. "God forgive me for saying it--stupid!
Her forehead might possibly save her, but she hides it entirely with
her hair. I said so to her; 'Up with your hair,' said I. Her eyes, too,
might save her. But never in my life have I seen anyone so shy about
her eyes."
"Has she good eyes?"
"Good heavens, her eyes are of the many-voiced kind! Some eyes sing as
it were in unison or at the most for two voices; but some there are
that send forth chords of bright harmony. If she looks up when she is
playing you will feel it! But generally her eyes are on a level with
the feet of the table, or piercing holes in the corners, or setting the
stove alight. Sometimes, though, they dash up high along the walls like
a rat that cannot escape!" He was amused at his own description and
began to play a Halling.[2] "Wonderful that such a musical nature
can--come, we must not be sentimental, old fellow!" He intended going
to the theatre and took Kallem with him.
A week passed and still Kallem had not seen her, although he had
tried what he could to bring it about. But he was out at a dance one
night--the son of the house was a fellow-student of his--the latter
came up to him whilst a "tour d'inclination" was going on, bringing two
ladies with him, and asked Kallem whether he would choose the "kernel
of a nut" or a "dog-rose?" This was not particularly clever, but he
chose the "dog-rose." This "dog-rose" had a musical forehead and
prettily arched eyebrows; otherwise she was silent and insignificant.
Rather tall, with sloping shoulders, pretty arms, not actually fat but
well-shaped; the same might be said of her whole person. She danced
well, but seemed as if she wished to get away from him as quickly as
possible; he brought her back to her place without her having so much
as looked at him. He was much surprised therefore when she came and
fetched him out in the next "tour." Probably she only knew very few
people and those few were very likely engaged. She looked about her
shyly and then came forward with timid steps and curtsied; still she
did not look up, she seemed positively afraid, and so it struck him he
would be kind and sit down beside her. But whatever he said to her she
never answered anything but "yes," "no," "indeed," "perhaps," which
soon proved too much of a good thing for so-much-sought-after a
cavalier as he; so he left her. Again he was offered his choice between
the "nut-kernel" which he had despised and a "bon-bon," and this time
he chose the "nut-kernel." He liked her much better; she was a lively,
round, little thing, and spoke with a mixture of Norland and Bergen
accent. He soon learned that her father was a native of Bergen, but was
now a clergyman in the Norland district. She was staying here in town
with her sister, and very often went to balls; for they had so many
relations--her voice rose and fell in true Norland fashion; but
unfortunately she would soon have to be going home again; they were
nervous about her up there in the north; nor did the old parents like
to be left alone. Of course Kallem did the polite and pretended to be
highly amused; they became such good friends that-- She told him with a
great flow of words how she had come to town so as to help her sister
to get settled; her sister was not at all practical, which _she_ was;
she could do nothing but play the piano, that sister of hers; she had
been accustomed to it since her childhood, and had studied two years in
Berlin. Then Kallem became all attention, and it turned out that her
sister was the partner he had danced with first and had thought so
tiresome; his landlady, Fru Ragni Kule! The "nut-kernel," it must be
observed, was not her real sister; they were children of different
marriages. And the "nut-kernel" was not the eldest, as he had imagined;
on the contrary, her sister was nearly nineteen, and she was a little
more than seventeen.
Immediately he went and danced with Fru Kule, and remarked with much
surprise that she was his landlady. Was she aware of that? Was that why
she had chosen him to dance with before? She felt as if she were taken
in the act of committing a crime, but could think of no excuse to make.
"But why did you not tell me who you were?" continued he, insisting.
She felt still more overwhelmed by this fresh sin of having kept
silence, and could not possibly get out a word. Then he said, rather
rudely and impatiently:
"Perhaps you have some difficulty in speaking?"
She turned very pale; there was something unspeakably unhappy in her
startled look. His rudeness was the natural consequence of his contempt
for anyone who could lower themselves by such a marriage as hers was.
But his sympathy was so thoroughly aroused by her pallor and
helplessness that he hastened to say: "To be sure, I know that you
possess the gift of a language which is easier for you than for most
people--" and so he talked on in an easy, natural way about her music,
made her sit down, told her that he had heard her play, and that
Rendalen was such a competent judge; he turned the conversation upon
all the world-renowned artists he had ever heard, and succeeded in
making her join in; of course she had heard so many of them. By degrees
she gained so much confidence that she even ventured to ask after
Rendalen; she had not seen him at all since he had moved. He was all
right, and then he described all Rendalen's peculiarities till she was
obliged to laugh. She did not look "stupid" when she laughed, far from
it. For a moment, too, there was a gleam in the eyes as of "many rays."
"Why did Rendalen move?" asked she, and there was something of the
singing Norland accent in her voice too, but less that in her sister's.
It was rather a weak voice, but at the same time so very sweet. He
answered her with a question. But no, she knew nothing; and then she
looked full at him; those were eyes! "Was it about the room?"
"About the room?" repeated he.
"Yes, I mean when he heard that my aunt wanted to live here--my
husband's aunt," she added, correcting herself, and suddenly she became
shy again.
"Had they given him notice to leave?"
"No, certainly not."
"Then he could not possibly be offended."
She quite agreed to that too. But Rendalen had never even been to say
good-by. She never quite got rid of her shyness; it suited her though,
as sometimes a veil can suit a face.
"Did you see much of his mother?"
"Yes," said she, and smiled.
"Why do you smile?"
"Well, perhaps it is hardly right of me, but she was so like a man."
She was ashamed after she had said this, and would gladly have taken
back her words; she had only meant that she was such a clever woman.
But Kallem began joking her about it; she was forced to laugh again,
and, as before said it was sweet to see and hear her laugh. "You see
you _can_ talk!" She glanced up at him; was he making fun of her?
Suddenly he remembered that Rendalen had told her she ought to wear her
hair off her forehead, and it was off this evening! Oh-ho!
She was really very pretty! To think of his not having found it out at
once! And to think that others had not seen it and spoken about it. It
was true that her face was undeveloped and child-like, and the slender
figure rather too thin. Her forehead was lovely; the eyebrows were
delicately arched, but they were fair and not strongly marked. There
was a difficulty in getting a look at the eyes; but now he knew that
they were so confiding in all their gray-blue shyness, and they spoke
volumes. Cheeks, chin, and mouth were soft and undecided; the latter
always slightly open; it was short, too, which made it so "sweet." The
nose was nothing much, but it was slightly crooked. Her hair was not
very thick, but it had a pretty reddish shade in it. But her
complexion! It was so dazzingly white one could not take one's eyes
from it once one had found it out; but the thing was, one did not
notice it unless the colour of the dress helped one or the light was
dim; she wore no ornaments, not even a bracelet. The wrists were such
as would belong to long, narrow hands, which he would have liked to
see. "So you love music more than anything else?"
"Yes," answered she, "it is all that I can do." She looked down. He
wondered what there was he might question her on that would not make
her feel ashamed. But he had better have a care--there he sat falling
in love as fast as he could. Unfortunately he was obliged to leave her
to go and dance with, and talk to, others. As soon as he left her it
was as though he would never find her again; she seemed to become
invisible. He came back to her as soon as he could for propriety's
sake. She evidently did not object; she was a little more confiding,
even looked at him once or twice and smiled right up into his eyes.
Fancy that! It was more than Rendalen could have aspired to. His
falling in love began through her being so shy, and increased as she
became more confiding. He asked if he might be allowed to see the
ladies home. Surely he had a better right to it than anyone else as she
was his landlady. She accepted his offer at once; she never hesitated.
It was true, she said, that her nephew, the young man who had first
offered Kallem the choice between a "nut-kernel" and a "dog-rose" was
going with them too, but that they could both come.
"Yes, of course we can!" said he gaily, thinking secretly that the
nephew should take charge of the "nut-kernel."
It was a thick, dark evening, the snow falling slightly. The star-like
snow-flakes floated slowly and singly down as though each one had its
own place and was bent on a special errand; not a breath of wind came
to disturb them. Both ladies were well wrapped up and had Laplander
shoes on. The music and dancing were still in full swing when they met,
and there was much merry laughter among all the young people on the
stairs and in the corridors; outside was the noise of bells from the
sledges come to fetch the guests. The "nephew," being the host of the
evening, could not leave so early; but he found someone to take his
place; this other young man gave his arm to his lady, and they set off
down hill at a run; but when Kallem would have done the same his young
landlady was frightened and clung to him, as she was forced along
running, and begged and implored him not to do it. It was just as
though she did not see properly. He stopped and asked if that were the
case. No; but she was so terribly afraid of falling.
"You seem to be nervous and timid altogether."
"Yes, I know I am," said she, truthfully. She was sweet enough, but in
reality a bit of a prude. Then they walked on for a while in silence;
they could see nothing of the other two. Bah! thought he, there is no
use being offended, I suppose she can't help it. "It is not one o'clock
yet," said he.
"No, but the youngest child is not very well; the servant is sitting
up with her, but she has to get up early to-morrow morning." The
North-country sing-song in her voice seemed to carry him far away out
to sea.
"I miss the open sea so much now in the winter," said he; "here
everything is ice-bound. I suppose it is always so in the West."
She told him that when she was at Berlin, and particularly after she
had been playing, she could almost hear the sea at times. "But is it
not a delightful thing that the sea always freshens one up when one is
near it, and makes one melancholy when one thinks of it?" Just then
something came driving past them at great speed; they had to get out of
the way and she pulled him with her to the extreme edge of the road, as
three sledges, one after the other, dashed past them at a terrific
rate.
They continued their walk, listening to the sleigh bells as they died
away in the distance; again there was that complete silence necessary
to attract attention to the falling snow-flakes.
"One ought really never to talk whilst snow is falling," said she.
Then the other two waited for them and the conversation was kept up for
a time by the "nut-kernel" and the two gentlemen, till they came to a
hill which the first couple took at full speed. By and by they saw them
again through the veil of snow, but could hear nothing of them. But as
the street became more inhabited, and the traffic greater, the couples
kept closer together, and there was an end to all that had been amusing
in their walk.
After that evening his impression of her seemed like a part of nature's
scenery; she was blended with the starry snow-flakes; never had he met
or seen anything so white and so pure. All that she had said about the
sea and the falling snow was full of musical imagination; at last her
whole person was enveloped in a sort of dim haze. As each of these
pearls of first impressions rose up from the depths of his soul, his
every sense seemed to be enamoured. He seemed to feel her presence in
all the rooms; he started every time a door was opened; and if there
came a soft footstep along the passage he thought it was hers; he felt
it through his whole being. He was really rather afraid of meeting her
again, in case the picture should lose its charm. And that was exactly
what happened. Five or six days after, as he was coming out of the
university, he met her with her sister and two little children; the
street was crowded, so he neither saw nor recognized them till they
were quite close. He bowed; the "nut-kernel" smiled and returned his
bow, but her sister blushed very red and forgot to bow: at that moment
she looked anything but clever. He stopped to thank them for the
pleasant evening they had spent together, and began talking to the one
sister; the other bent down to the children--two sweet little girls,
dressed out like dolls, one about three, the other four years old. He
invited them into a confectioner's for refreshments; the offer was
accepted after a good deal of hesitation; but the married sister never
raised her eyes, and he could hardly induce her to sit down. Out of
pure shyness and uneasiness she worried the children so that they
became impatient. He offered them cakes and wine; but she could not
make up her mind what she would have, and at last allowed her sister to
choose. Her face was framed in by a bonnet with silk flaps; the
forehead quite disappeared, and her face became round and
insignificant; her figure was concealed by clothes which were all much
too large for her (he heard later that they had belonged to her late
sister). It was only when he began to notice the children--he had a
wonderful gift that way, for he was fond of children--that they
really made friends again; it happened down on the floor, too,
because the youngest child had made a terrible mess of itself with a
cake full of whipped cream, which the mother had most injudiciously
chosen for it. There they were now, both drying the child with their
pocket-handkerchiefs, and the mother thanking him over and over again,
with a guilty feeling that it had been her fault. The child, who so
blissfully had made itself in such a mess, asked for more cake of the
same kind and would not be content with any other; and Kallem (though
he knew it was not good for the child to have so much) readily agreed
to it; but he took the child on his lap, asked for a napkin, and
watched carefully over it until the last bite had disappeared. She
stood by humbly taking a lesson. Then the child asked for another cake,
to which Kallem also agreed. Then the eldest of the two, who had
patiently been watching her sister eat her cakes, now ventured to ask
for one; so he took her up on his other knee and fed them both.
Everybody enjoyed themselves thoroughly while this important business
was going on; even Fru Kule joined in the laugh. And as before said,
when she laughed she was very "sweet." The three grown-up ones drank
each another glass of wine, and as they walked home Kallem carried the
youngest child in his arms. He became fast friends with the little
thing; her stepmother was more courageous after she had had her wine,
and said: "Is she not a dear wee thing, my little Juanita?" She
stretched her hand up to the child, who took it in her thick little
glove, and kept tight hold of it as they walked along.
He carried the little one up-stairs, and was careful to show her where
his room was, and invited them both to come and pay him a visit the
next day, which was Sunday. Directly after his dinner he went out and
bought some oranges, apples, figs, and other dried fruits, so as to
have something for them when they came.
"Is she not a dear wee thing, my little Juanita?" This sentence, with a
little of her north-country sing-song in it, he set to music and went
about humming it every time he thought of her. Her voice, her eyes
looking up at the child, and her hand stretched out to it, were all
part of the melody! "Is she not a dear wee thing, my little Juanita?"
became the refrain of his life; he taught it to Rendalen, too; they
greeted each other with it when they met at the gymnasium in the
evenings. But Edward Kallem kept to himself the notion he had that she
had been so shy because she had met him again--perhaps because it was
broad daylight. He mentioned, too, that she looked so funny in the
clothes that were so much too large for her; they seemed to have been
made for a young, growing girl; but he never said a word about how
uneasy she had grown when he looked at her in the confectioner's shop.
The children often came to see him; he gave them oranges and candied
fruit, and walked on his hands and jumped over the chairs, and they
were all tremendously happy. But the servant spoilt everything; he
could distinctly read the following in her smile: "You are a rogue! You
are doing all this for their mother's sake."
He was coward enough to tell her that the children were not to come to
him for a while. It cut him to the heart as he sat there the following
evening and heard how the eldest one opened the door to the passage to
run in to him, but was caught and carried back crying. He rang for the
servant and told her to give the children the remains of what he had
bought for them. She took the things from him but said: "Is it not too
much?" and looked at him with a cunning smile; he could have beaten
her. But then he thought to himself, "If she suspects me no matter what
I do, then the children may just as well come!" And the next evening he
fetched them in himself from the kitchen.
One day he met her sister, who was going out. She nodded brightly to
him and said: "Thanks for our last treat! Fancy," she added, "in a few
days I am going away."
Then he suggested that it would be quite the correct thing for them to
go and have a little farewell feast at the confectioner's. She agreed
with him, and they settled that they would all meet the next day, the
children too, and have it all over again just like the last time. And
so they did. Fru Kule was not quite so shy as the other day, Kallem
himself was in the best of spirits, and the children were uproarious.
He was full of the wildest, maddest love fancies as they went merrily
home he dancing along with Juanita on his head, and teaching the
sisters to sing, "Is she not a dear wee thing, my little Juanita?"
He was at the railway station the day the sister was to leave. Several
of their relations and friends were there to say good-bye. Both the
sisters were very unhappy; the one to be left behind perhaps the most
so; she wept unceasingly, even after the train had gone. For a moment
he thought of going away and leaving the relations alone together, but
she said: "Oh, no, don't go!" And yet there was no reason for her
wishing him to stay; she walked home beside him and the others, crying
all the way; and when the others left them and went their own way, and
he and she stood before their door, she could find nothing to say, but
just went on up-stairs. On the stairs he asked her if she and the
children would like to go for a drive; it might cheer her up a little.
She only shook her head. "Tomorrow perhaps?" asked he, respectfully, as
he opened the door for her. She went in, but came back to say, "Thank
you, to-morrow!" gave him her hand and a look from her dear eyes full
of tears.
He fancied he could tell from her deep distress that she must feel
lonely. Not perhaps in everyday life, because her imagination kept her
time occupied; but when anything out of the common happened, rousing
her and awakening her from her dreams, then she would look around and
see that she was forsaken.
The next day he took her and the children out in a sledge and drove
them himself. After the drive he went in to see Kule, who thanked him
in his heavy sort of way for being so kind to the children. They showed
Kallem all their toys, and Kule asked his wife to play a piece when the
children were sent away; he sat himself, smoking a long pipe, which his
wife usually had to fill for him; Kallem had done it now in her stead.
Kallem saw then, for the first time, a stout kitchen-maid, an elderly,
masculine-looking woman, who sang in a northern dialect, like birds
shrieking over the sea. She was both cook and Kule's attendant.
Apparently the wife was allowed entire liberty in whatever concerned
herself, that is to say, the children and her music. At this moment she
was playing that same piece by the Russian composer which he had heard
from his own room, and perhaps better. Not because he was particularly
attentive; he was looking at her. The upper part of the face now
flashing down over the keys and music was very different to how he knew
it; probably it was like this Rendalen had seen her. How much she would
have to go through before the lower part of the face was equally
developed? A few days ago he had had a letter from a cousin who lived
at Madison, in Wisconsin; he had been made professor at the university
there, and his wife, a Norwegian lady, studied under him. Something of
the kind would be necessary to bring life and shape into these dull
cheeks and weak chin, that vacillating mouth with the cracked lips. But
how touching it was to see all this child-like dependence. Close by he
saw the husband's huge hands resting on the arm of his chair--he lay
back in the chair like a dead river-god in breeches. Whilst she was
playing, the door to the right was opened, and in came the third
supernatural, north-country being, an old lady with white hair, a large
round face, and horn spectacles; this was the aunt, she was taller than
Kallem, and stout in proportion to her height. The young wife moved
about amongst them like a pleasure-yacht among Atlantic steamers laden
to sinking-point. She looked upon Kallem now as an intimate friend,
although she had probably not confided in him at all; but their mutual
youth sought to conspire against all that was a hindrance and hard to
bear. In his love for her he grew impatient, longing to set her free;
the thought that he could not do it made the air of the room seem quite
oppressive. It distressed him greatly, this incomprehensible
connection.
The impressions he received from this visit disturbed him in his
studies for his examination, which, until that day, had been very
regular.
He formed the wildest of plans, even wrote over to his cousins in
America, and asked if they could receive a young lady to live with
them. He confided in Rendalen, who at first protested angrily; but at
last Kallem convinced him. Her feeling of individual responsibility
ought to be aroused, she ought to be shown the dangers of continuing
her present life; above all, she ought to be sent away, far away, where
she would have freedom of thought and liberty to develop.... Kallem
gained more and more assurance, and his love grew stronger from all
this self-imposed solicitude. Each time he met her, however short were
the meetings, even though he only bowed to her on the street or in the
corridor, strengthened him in the conviction that she was his, and his
only, and must be set free!
This was before he had said a word to her about it.
Often before had he been in love, and often had pretended without its
being the real thing; but now he had a longing to save, and then
re-form, all that was so pure yet so undeveloped, so talented and yet
so forlorn, it lay in his disposition, this desire, and he gave himself
up to it with all his soul. She, for her part, lost somewhat of her
shyness each time they met; it seemed as though he really were a
comfort to her after her sister left; indeed, unless he were much
mistaken, he was even more than that. At all events, there was one
unmistakable sign; he had told her that he stayed at home in the
evenings on purpose to hear her play, and that he left his door ajar
the better to hear; now she played every evening and often for a long
time.
When he met her out with the children, and took them to the
confectioner's, he had the greatest desire to speak out; but her manner
prevented it. It was her trustful innocence that was the principal
hindrance, and he dared not startle her. All the energy in him drove
him to action; but his love for her lent itself to her wish for a
poetical pastime where love might not be mentioned, although everything
was symbolical of it. There was a charm about their intercourse the
like of which he had never experienced.
On a certain evening, once every week, she took part in a private
concert, or something of the kind, at the house of some of her
husband's relations, the same house, in fact, where she had gone to
that dance. Kallem made his way in to these evenings, through his
fellow-student, her nephew. Of course he went there solely and entirely
so as to be able to walk home with her at night. At this time the snow
was gone and the streets were full of ice. When he told her that he was
going to be there, too, and would be allowed to see her home (at which
she was very pleased), it was an understood thing that he always had
either a sledge or carriage for her.
They were about to start for home after a long evening when there had
been a great deal too much music for those small rooms; she hastened to
get on her wraps and get away. Here he took her arm. "It is fortunate,"
said he, "that the moon is just up." She thought they would have got
into one of the sledges that stood waiting there, or into a carriage
that just then drove up; she gave a little scream, as it was quite
smooth ice just by the door, yet she went on bravely. Meanwhile they
passed by one sledge after the other, and the carriage, too. None
seemed to be theirs. "Are we not going to drive?" asked she. The rogue
laughed; it was he who had planned this walk. She tried to hide her
disappointment; but, after a few vain efforts, begged to be allowed to
drive. Then he recollected how frightened she had been that first time;
his conscience pricked him, and he declared they would go to the very
first stand, which was not far off. The road was not so very slippery,
but it was steep; she clung to his arm, staring nervously before her,
with an occasional little scream. Matters did not mend as they
advanced, for at times the whole road was covered with ice, though
there were always one or two safe spots. He rather lost courage;
especially as he no longer heard her little screams. He had never seen
anyone so frightened before. As a matter of course, they made their way
slowly, step by step, with many and long pauses.
Some of the gardens and fields round about them were bare, and some
were covered with snow and ice; it was to these she tried to make her
way; but he showed her that the way was stopped either by a house or a
garden; it was not like in the country. The fields looked broken up,
the sky, too, for long, narrow, cloudlets were floating through the
dark-blue atmosphere above, exactly like ice down below here with gaps
between. The moon seemed to be racing after the cloudlets at full
speed, trying to overtake them, pass through and hurry still farther
on; there must be a perfect hurricane up above; down below all was
quiet. Kallem's mistake made him feel both uneasy and unhappy. The
unsteady light there was over the whole of nature, with its scattered
colouring only increased this feeling; surely something would go wrong.
And never did that feeling come over him without its bringing back to
his remembrance that night of terror from his childhood, with all its
consequences. Was this to follow him all through life, this terrifying
forewarning of his own wrong-doings? He was greatly excited; for she
must not be allowed to fall. If it had not been for her timidity he
would have gone down the hills in a merry, sliding dance; now her being
frightened made him frightened too. Each slippery place became a real
danger, from which he was only saved by passing on to a fresh one; they
neither looked at each other nor did they utter a word, they were
impatient and afraid. They were several minutes in doing what otherwise
would have taken a few seconds; the one secretly blamed the other,
struggling on as though for dear life. There was just an occasional
gasping, "Good heavens!" or "Take care here!" or a despairing "No, no,
it's no use!" and then a "Try again! Come along!"--at last not even
that. She might groan and lament, almost cry, he no longer answered
her. She was so taken up by her own fright that she never noticed the
change.
But at last they saw salvation in front of them, namely, high houses on
each side which had kept off the sun and prevented the snow melting.
The question was now to get thus far; the stand was close by. At last
they succeeded. She stopped and drew breath and tried to laugh, but
without success. "Let us wait a little," she said, and drew a long
breath again. They turned and looked on either side; farther away they
heard sleigh bells and listened. "I hope the last horse has not left
the stand," said she; "it is late." She took his arm and they walked
on. The road was not quite all; right here either; the snow was trodden
down hard, but there had been sand strewn on the pavement; they walked
quicker, and by degrees with greater assurance. "Thank God!" said she,
as much relieved as though she had come out of a sea of ice. Hardly had
she said the words before down she fell. They had come to a deceptive
place where there had been water, which was now frozen and covered with
hoar frost. She slipped, and up against one of his feet, so that he too
slipped and fell--the one on top of the other. He swore a tremendous
oath in the fulness of his heart, and sprang to his feet again in order
to help her; but she lay there immovable with closed eyes.
He turned like ice. Was it concussion of the brain? He laid her on his
knee, pulled off his right-hand glove with his teeth, and then untied
the strings under' her chin. Her arms hung loosely down, her face was
pale as death, he opened her cloak, he wanted to give her air. Then she
moved. "Ragni!" whispered he; "Ragni!" and bent down still nearer to
her. "Dear, darling Ragni! Forgive me!" She opened her eyes. "Do you
hear? Can you forgive me?" The colour came back to her cheeks, her hand
went up to her cloak, which was unfastened; then she must have felt it,
she had only been dazed with fright. He could no longer control his
joy, he pressed her head to him and kissed her one, two, three times.
"Oh, how I love you!" whispered he, and kissed her again. He felt she
wanted to move, so he got up at once and helped her up as well. But she
was not able to stand alone, and nearly fell, so he supported her to
the garden railing just in front of the house; she caught hold of it
and leaned against it as if she could not bear her own weight. He let
go his hold of her to see if she could stand without help, which she
was able to do. "I'll run for a sledge," said he, and away he went. As
he ran along he bethought himself that he might have done that at once
and all would have been avoided. But would he be able to get a sledge?
If not there, he would run on farther. If only she could stand and
nobody go by.... He ran and he flew, and when he saw a horse and sledge
standing there, he jumped in, and would have had the coachman drive off
at the top of his speed without knowing where he was to go to. When
that was rectified and the sledge had started, he realized what he had
said and done as he held her in his arms! He had felt it all along,
though it had only been as it were in soft and gentle tones, now it
burst out into full, rich melody.
"Drive on, faster! She is standing over there to the right. We fell
down, and she hurt herself. There she is!" He jumped out and hurried up
to her, while the coachman turned and drove the sledge close up to
them. She was still leaning against the railing, half sideways; she had
fastened her cloak again and drawn down her veil. She gave him her hand
when he came, that she might have support; he took it, put his other
hand on her waist so as to guide her in front of him; he did not wish
to risk being upset again. There was no further accident, he put her in
the sledge, wrapped her up carefully, paid the coach
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