Tales From Two Hemispheres | ||
2. II.
The Oddsons were certainly a happy family though not by any means a harmonious one. The excellent pastor, who was himself neutrally good, orthodox, and kind-hearted, had often, in the privacy of his own thought, wondered what hidden ancestral influences there might have been at work in giving a man so peaceable and inoffensive as himself two daughters of such strongly defined individuality. There was Augusta, the elder, who was what Arnfinn called “indiscriminately reformatory,” and had a universal desire to improve everything, from the Government down to agricultural implements and preserve jars. As long as she was content to expend the surplus energy, which seemed to accumulate within her through the long eventless winters, upon the Zulu Mission, and other legitimate objects, the pastor thought it all harmless enough; although, to be sure, her enthusiasm for those naked and howling savages did at times strike him as being somewhat extravagant. But when occasionally, in her own innocent way, she put both his patience and his orthodoxy to the test by her exceedingly puzzling questions, then he could not, in the depth of his heart, restrain the wish that she might
Toward Arnfinn, Augusta had, although of his own age, early assumed a kind of elder-sisterly relation; she had been his comforter during all the trials of his boyhood; had yielded him her sympathy with that eager impulse which lay so deep in her nature, and had felt forlorn when life had called him away to where her words of comfort could not reach him. But when once she had hinted this to her father, he had pedantically convinced her that her feeling was unchristian, and Inga had playfully remarked that the hope that some one might soon find the open Polar Sea would go far toward consoling her for her loss; for Augusta had glorious visions at that time of the open Polar Sea. Now, the Polar Sea, and many other things, far nearer and dearer, had been forced into uneasy forgetfulness; and Arnfinn was once more with her, no longer a child, and no longer appealing to her for aid and sympathy; man enough, apparently,
It was the third Sunday after Arnfinn's return. He and Augusta were climbing the hillside to the “Giant's Hood,” from whence they had a wide view of the fjord, and could see the sun trailing its long bridge of flame upon the water. It was Inga's week in the kitchen, therefore her sister was Arnfinn's companion. As they reached the crest of the “Hood,” Augusta seated herself on a flat bowlder, and the young student flung himself on a patch of greensward at her feet. The intense light of the late sun fell upon the girl's unconscious face, and Arnfinn lay, gazing up into it, and wondering at its rare beauty; but he saw only the clean cut of its features and the purity of its form, being too shallow to recognize the strong and heroic soul which had struggled so long for utterance in the life of which he had been a blind and unmindful witness.
“Gracious, how beautiful you are, cousin!” he broke forth, heedlessly, striking his leg with his slender cane; “pity you were not born a queen; you would be equal to almost anything, even if it were to discover the Polar Sea.”
“I thought you were looking at the sun, Arnfinn,” answered she, smiling reluctantly.
“And so I am, cousin,” laughed he, with an other-emphatic slap of his boot.
“That compliment is rather stale.”
“But the opportunity was too tempting.”
“Never mind, I will excuse you from further efforts. Turn around and notice that wonderful purple halo which is hovering over the forests below. Isn't it glorious?”
“No, don't let us be solemn, pray. The sun I have seen a thousand times before, but you I have seen very seldom of late. Somehow, since I returned this time, you seem to keep me at a distance. You no longer confide to me your great plans for the abolishment of war, and the improvement of mankind generally. Why don't you tell me whether you have as yet succeeded in convincing the peasants that cleanliness is a cardinal virtue, that hawthorn hedges are more picturesque than rail fences, and that salt meat is a very indigestible article?”
“You know the fate of my reforms, from long experience,” she answered, with the same sad, sweet smile. “I am afraid there must be some thing radically wrong about my methods; and, moreover, I know that your aspirations and
“Yes, I know you think me flippant and boyish,” retorted he, with sudden energy, and tossing a stone down into the gulf below. “But, by the way, my friend Strand, if he ever comes, would be just the man for you. He has quite as many hobbies as you have, and, what is more, he has a profound respect for hobbies in general, and is universally charitable toward those of others.”
“Your friend is a great man,” said the girl, earnestly. “I have read his book on `The Wading Birds of the Norwegian Highlands,' and none but a great man could have written it.”
“He is an odd stick, but, for all that, a capital fellow; and I have no doubt you would get on admirably with him.”
At this moment the conversation was interrupted by the appearance of the pastor's man, Hans, who came to tell the “young miss” that there was a big tramp hovering about the barns in the “out-fields,” where he had been sleeping during the last three nights. He was a dangerous character, Hans thought, at least judging
“Why don't you speak to the pastor, and have him arrested?” said Arnfinn, impatient of Hans's long-winded recital.
“No, no, say nothing to father,” demanded Augusta, eagerly. “Why should you arrest a poor man as long as he does nothing worse than sleep in the barns in the out-fields?”
“As you say, miss,” retorted Hans, and departed.
The moon came up pale and mist-like over the eastern mountain ridges, struggled for a few brief moments feebly with the sunlight, and then vanished.
“It is strange,” said Arnfinn, “how everything reminds me of Strand to-night. What gloriously absurd apostrophes to the moon he could make! I have not told you, cousin, of a very singular gift which he possesses. He can attract all kinds of birds and wild animals to himself; he can imitate their voices, and they flock around him, as if he were one of them, without fear of harm.”
“How delightful,” cried Augusta, with sudden animation. “What a glorious man your friend must be!”
“Because the snipes and the wild ducks like him? You seem to have greater confidence in their judgment than in mine.”
“Of course I have—at least as long as you persist in joking. But, jesting aside, what a wondrously beautiful life he must lead whom Nature takes thus into her confidence; who has, as it were, an inner and subtler sense, corresponding to each grosser and external one; who is keen-sighted enough to read the character of every individual beast, and has ears sensitive to the full pathos of joy or sorrow in the song of the birds that inhabit our woodlands.”
“Whether he has any such second set of senses as you speak of, I don't know; but there can be no doubt that his familiarity, not to say intimacy, with birds and beasts gives him a great advantage as a naturalist. I suppose you know that his little book has been translated into French, and rewarded with the gold medal of the Academy.”
“Hush! What is that?” Augusta sprang up, and held her hand to her ear.
“Some love-lorn mountain-cock playing yonder in the pine copse,” suggested Arnfinn, amused at his cousin's eagerness.
“You silly boy! Don't you know the mountain-cock never plays except at sunrise?”
“He would have a sorry time of it now, then, when there is no sunrise.”
“And so he has; he does not play except in early spring.”
The noise, at first faint, now grew louder. It began with a series of mellow, plaintive clucks that followed thickly one upon another, like smooth pearls of sound that rolled through the throat in a continuous current; then came a few sharp notes as of a large bird that snaps his bill; then a long, half-melodious rumbling, intermingled with cacklings and snaps, and at last, a sort of diminuendo movement of the same round, pearly clucks. There was a whizzing of wing-beats in the air; two large birds swept over their heads and struck down into the copse whence the sound had issued.
“This is indeed a most singular thing,” said Augusta, under her breath, and with wide-eyed wonder. “Let us go nearer, and see what it can be.”
“I am sure I can go if you can,” responded Arnfinn, not any too eagerly. “Give me your hand, and we can climb the better.”
As they approached the pine copse, which projected like a promontory from the line of the denser forest, the noise ceased, and only the
Again there was a frightened flutter over-
“Strand! Strand!” he cried, when the first tumult of excitement had subsided; “you most marvelous and incomprehensible Strand! From what region of heaven or earth did you jump down into our prosaic neighborhood? And
Strand stepped forward, made a deep but somewhat awkward bow, and was dimly aware that a small soft hand was extended to him, and, in the next moment, was enclosed in his own broad and voluminous palm. He grasped it firmly, and, in one of those profound abstractions into which he was apt to fall when under the sway of a strong impression, pressed it with increasing cordiality, while he endeavored to find fitting answers to Arnfinn's multifarious questions.
“To tell the truth, Vording,” he said, in a deep, full-ringing bass, “I didn't know that these were your cousin's barns—I mean that your uncle”—giving the unhappy hand an emphatic shake—“inhabited these barns.”
“No, thank heaven, we are not quite reduced
Strand dropped the hand as if it had been a hot coal, blushed to the edge of his hair, and made another profound reverence. He was a tall, huge-limbed youth, with a frame of gigantic mold, and a large, blonde, shaggy head, like that of some good-natured antediluvian animal, which might feel the disadvantages of its size amid the puny beings of this later stage of creation. There was a frank directness in his gaze, and an unconsciousness of self, which made him very winning, and which could not fail of its effect upon a girl who, like Augusta, was fond of the uncommon, and hated smooth, facile and well-tailored young men, with the labels of society and fashion upon their coats, their mustaches, and their speech. And Strand, with his large sun-burned face, his wild-growing beard, blue woolen shirt, top boots, and unkempt appearance generally, was a sufficiently startling phenomenon to satisfy even so exacting a fancy as hers; for, after reading his book
“Suppose I help you carry your knapsack,” said Arnfinn, who was flitting about like a small nimble spaniel trying to make friends with some large, good-natured Newfoundland. “You must be very tired, having roamed about in this Quixotic fashion!”
“No, I thank you,” responded Strand, with an incredulous laugh, glancing alternately from Arnfinn to the knapsack, as if estimating their proportionate weight. “I am afraid you would rue your bargain if I accepted it.”
“I suppose you have a great many stuffed birds at home,” remarked the girl, looking with self-forgetful admiration at the large brawny figure.
“No, I have hardly any,” answered he, seating himself on the ground, and pulling a thick note-book from his pocket. “I prefer live creatures. Their anatomical and physiological peculiarities have been studied by others, and volumes have been written about them. It is
“How delightful!”
Some minutes later they were all on their way to the Parsonage. The sun, in spite of its mid-summer wakefulness, was getting red-eyed and drowsy, and the purple mists which hung in scattered fragments upon the forest below had lost something of their deep-tinged brilliancy. But Augusta, quite blind to the weakened light effects, looked out upon the broad landscape in ecstasy, and, appealing to her more apathetic companions, invited them to share her joy at the beauty of the faint-flushed summer night.
“You are getting quite dithyrambic, my dear,” remarked Arnfinn, with an air of cousinly superiority, which he felt was eminently becoming to him; and Augusta looked up with quick surprise, then smiled in an absent way, and forgot what she had been saying. She had no suspicion but that her enthusiasm had been all for the sunset.
Tales From Two Hemispheres | ||