Tales From Two Hemispheres | ||
A SCIENTIFIC VAGABOND.
1. I.
THE steamer which as far back as 1860 passed every week on its northward way up along the coast of Norway, was of a very sociable turn of mind. It ran with much shrieking and needless bluster in and out the calm, winding fjords, paid unceremonious little visits in every out-of-the-way nook and bay, dropped now and then a black heap of coal into the shining water, and sent thick volleys of smoke and shrill little echoes careering aimlessly among the mountains. It seemed, on the whole, from an æsthetic point of view, an objectionable phenomenon—a blot upon the perfect summer day. By the inhabitants, however, of these remote regions with the exception of a few obstinate individuals, who had at first looked upon it as the sure herald of dooms-day, and still were vaguely wondering what the
But the Rev. Mr. Oddson, the parson of whom I have to speak, had this day yielded to the gentle urgings of his daughters as, indeed, he always did, and had with them boarded the steamer to receive his nephew, Arnfinn Vording, who was returning from the university for his summer vacation. And now they had him between them in their pretty white-painted parsonage
The parsonage lay snugly nestled at the end of the bay, shining contentedly through the green foliage from a multitude of small sun-smitten windows. Its pinkish whitewash, which was peeling off from long exposure to the weather, was in cheerful contrast to the broad black surface of the roof, with its glazed tiles, and the starlings' nests under the chimney-tops. The thick-leaved maples and walnut-trees which grew in random clusters about the walls seemed loftily conscious of standing there for purposes of protection; for, wherever their long-fingered branches happened to graze the roof, it was always with a touch, light, graceful, and airily
Arnfinn Vording's career had presented that subtle combination of farce and tragedy which most human lives are apt to be; and if the tragic element had during his early years been preponderating, he was hardly himself aware of it; for he had been too young at the death of his parents to feel that keenness of grief which the same privation would have given him at a later period of his life. It might have been humiliating to confess it, but it was nevertheless true that the terror he had once sustained on being pursued by a furious bull was much more vivid in his memory than the vague wonder and depression which had filled his mind at seeing his mother so suddenly stricken with age, as she lay motionless in her white robes in the front parlor. Since then his uncle, who was his guardian and
But—such is the perverseness of human nature— in spite of a series of apparent rebuffs, interrupted now and then by fits of violent attachment, Arnfinn had early selected this dimpled and yellow-haired young girl, with her piquant little nose, for his favorite cousin. It was the prospect of seeing her which, above all else, had lent, in anticipation, an altogether new radiance to the day when he should present himself
“But what of your friend, Arnfinn?” exclaimed Inga, as she ran up the stairs of the pier. “He of whom you have written so much. I have been busy all the morning making the blue guest-chamber ready for him.”
“Please, cousin,” answered the student, in a tone of mock entreaty, “only an hour's respite! If we are to talk about Strand we must make a day of it, you know. And just now it seems so grand to be at home, and with you, that I would rather not admit even so genial a subject as Strand to share my selfish happiness.”
“Ah, yes, you are right. Happiness is too often selfish. But tell me only why he didn't come and I'll release you.”
“He is coming.”
“Ah! And when?”
“That I don't know. He preferred to take the journey on foot, and he may be here at almost any time. But, as I have told you, he is very uncertain. If he should happen to make the acquaintance of some interesting snipe, or crane, or plover, he may prefer its company to ours, and then there is no counting on him any longer. He may be as likely to turn up at the North Pole as at the Gran Parsonage.”
“How very singular. You don't know how curious I am to see him.”
And Inga walked on in silence under the sunny birches which grew along the road, trying vainly to picture to herself this strange phenomenon of a man.
“I brought his book,” remarked Arnfinn, making a gigantic effort to be generous, for he felt dim stirrings of jealousy within him. “If you care to read it, I think it will explain him to you better than anything I could say.”
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.
3. III.
In a life so outwardly barren and monotonous as Augusta's—a life in which the small external
It was early in the morning in the third week of Strand's stay at the Parsonage. A heavy dew had fallen during the night, and each tiny grass-blade glistened in the sun, bending under the weight of its liquid diamond. The birds were improvising a miniature symphony in the
“Ah, yes, you poor little sickly thing!” she heard him mutter. “Don't you make such an ado now. You shall soon be quite well, if you will only mind what I tell you. Stop, stop! Take it easy. It is all for your own good, you know. If you had only been prudent, and not
Augusta stood gazing on in mute astonishment; then, suddenly remembering her hasty toilet, she started to run; but, as chance would have it, a dry branch, which hung rather low, caught at her hood, and her hair fell in a black wavy stream down over her shoulders. She gave a little cry, the tree shook violently, and Strand was at her side. She blushed crimson over neck and face, and, in her utter bewilderment, stood like a culprit before him, unable to move, unable to speak, and only returning with a silent bow his cordial greeting. It seemed to her that she had ungenerously intruded upon his privacy, watching him, while he thought himself unobserved. And Augusta was quite unskilled in those social accomplishments which enable young ladies to hide their inward emotions under a show of polite indifference, for, however hard she strove, she could not suppress a slight quivering of her lips, and her intense
“The mother of this little linnet,” he said, smiling, “did what many foolish young mothers are apt to do. She took upon her the responsibility of raising offspring without having acquired the necessary knowledge of housekeeping. So she lined her nest with hemp, and the consequence was, that her first-born got his legs entangled, and was obliged to remain in the nest long after his wings had reached their full development. I saw her feeding him about a week ago, and, as my curiosity prompted me to look into the case, I released the little cripple, cleansed the deep wound which the threads had cut in his flesh, and have since been watching him during his convalescence. Now he is quite in a fair way, but I had to apply some salve, and to cut off the feathers about the wound, and the little fool squirmed under the pain, and grew rebellious. Only notice this scar, if you please,
Augusta gave a start; she timidly raised her eyes, and saw Strand's grave gaze fixed upon her. She felt as if some intolerable spell had come over her, and, as her agitation increased, her power of speech seemed utterly to desert her.
“Ah, you have not been listening to me?” said Strand, in a tone of wondering inquiry. “Pardon me for presuming to believe that my little invalid could be as interesting to you as he is to me.”
“Mr. Strand,” stammered the girl, while the invisible tears came near choking her voice. “Mr. Strand—I didn't mean—really—”
She knew that if she said another word she should burst into tears. With a violent effort, she gathered up her wrapper, which somehow had got unbuttoned at the neck, and, with heedlessly hurrying steps, darted away toward the house.
Strand stood looking after her, quite unmindful of his feathered patient, which flew chirping about him in the grass. Two hours later Arnfinn found him sitting under the birches with his hands clasped over the top of his head, and
“Corpo di Baccho,” exclaimed the student, stooping to pick up the precious tools; “have you been amputating your own head, or is it I who am dreaming?”
“Ah,” murmured Strand, lifting a large, strange gaze upon his friend, “is it you?”
“Who else should it be? I come to call you to breakfast.”
4. IV.
“I wonder what is up between Strand and Augusta?” said Arnfinn to his cousin Inga. The questioner was lying in the grass at her feet, resting his chin on his palms, and gazing with roguishly tender eyes up into her fresh, blooming face; but Inga, who was reading aloud from “David Copperfield,” and was deep in the matrimonial tribulations of that noble hero, only said “hush,” and continued reading. Arnfinn, after a minute's silence, repeated his remark, whereupon his fair cousin wrenched his cane out of his hand, and held it threateningly over his head.
“Will you be a good boy and listen?” she exclaimed, playfully emphasizing each word with a light rap on his curly pate.
“Ouch! that hurts,” cried Arnfinn, and dodged.
“It was meant to hurt,” replied Inga, with mock severity, and returned to “Copperfield.”
Presently the seed of a corn-flower struck the tip of her nose, and again the cane was lifted; but Dora's housekeeping experiences were too absorbingly interesting, and the blue eyes could not resist their fascination.
“Cousin Inga,” said Arnfinn, and this time with as near an approach to earnestness as he was capable of at that moment, “I do believe that Strand is in love with Augusta.”
Inga dropped the book, and sent him what was meant to be a glance of severe rebuke, and then said, in her own amusingly emphatic way:
“I do wish you wouldn't joke with such things, Arnfinn.”
“Joke! Indeed I am not joking. I wish to heaven that I were. What a pity it is that she has taken such a dislike to him!”
“Dislike! Oh, you are a profound philosopher, you are! You think that because she avoids—”
Here Inga abruptly clapped her hand over her mouth, and, with sudden change of voice and expression, said:
“I am as silent as the grave.”
“Yes, you are wonderfully discreet,” cried Arnfinn, laughing, while the girl bit her under lip with an air of penitence and mortification which, in any other bosom than a cousin's would have aroused compassion.
“Aha! So steht's!” he broke forth, with another burst of merriment; then, softened by the sight of a tear that was slowly gathering beneath her eyelashes, he checked his laughter, crept up to her side, and in a half childishly coaxing, half caressing tone, he whispered:
“Dear little cousin, indeed I didn't mean to hurt your feelings. You are not angry with me, are you? And if you will only promise me not to tell, I have something here which I should like to show you.”
He well knew that there was nothing which would sooner soothe Inga's wrath than confiding a secret to her; and while he was a boy, he had, in cases of sore need, invented secrets lest his life should be made miserable by the sense that she was displeased with him. In this instance her anger was not strong enough to resist the anticipation of a secret, probably relating to that little drama which had, during the last weeks, been in progress under her very eyes.
Arnfinn pulled a thick black note-book from his breast pocket, opened it in his lap, and read:
“August 3, 5 A. M.—My little invalid is doing finely; he seemed to relish much a few dozen flies which I brought him in my hand. His pulse is to-day, for the first time, normal. He is beginning to step on the injured leg without apparent pain.
“10 A. M.—Miss Augusta's eyes have a strange, lustrous brilliancy whenever she speaks of subjects which seem to agitate the depths of her being. How and why is it that an excessive amount of feeling always finds its first expression in the eye? One kind of emotion seems to widen the pupil, another kind to contract it. To be noticed in future, how particular emotions affect the eye.
“6 P. M.—I met a plover on the beach this afternoon. By imitating his cry, I induced him to come within a few feet of me. The plover, as his cry indicates, is a very melancholy bird. In fact I believe the melancholy temperament to be prevailing among the wading birds, as the
“August 5, 9 P. M.—Since the unfortunate meeting yesterday morning, when my intense pre-occupation with my linnet, which had torn its wound open again, probably made me commit some breach of etiquette, Miss Augusta avoids me.
“August 7—I am in a most singular state. My pulse beats 85, which is a most unheard-of thing for me, as my pulse is naturally full and slow. And, strangely enough, I do not feel at all unwell. On the contrary, my physical well-being is rather heightened than otherwise. The life of a whole week is crowded into a day, and that of a day into an hour.”
Inga, who, at several points of this narrative, had been struggling hard to preserve her gravity, here burst into a ringing laugh.
“That is what I call scientific love-making,” said Arnfinn, looking up from the book with an expression of subdued amusement.
“But Arnfinn,” cried the girl, while the laughter quickly died out of her face, “does Mr. Strand know that you are reading this?”
“To be sure he does. And that is just what to my mind makes the situation so excessively comical. He has himself no suspicion that this book contains anything but scientific notes. He appears to prefer the empiric method in love as in philosophy. I verily believe that he is innocently experimenting with himself, with a view to making some great physiological discovery.”
“And so he will, perhaps,” rejoined the girl, the mixture of gayety and grave solicitude making her face, as her cousin thought, particularly charming.
“Only not a physiological, but possibly a psychological one,” remarked Arnfinn. “But listen to this. Here is something rich:
“August 9—Miss Augusta once said something about the possibility of animals being immortal. Her eyes shone with a beautiful animation as she spoke. I am longing to continue the subject with her. It haunts me the whole day long. There may be more in the idea than appears to a superficial observer.”
“Oh, how charmingly he understands how to deceive himself,” cried Inga.
“Merely a quid pro quo,” said Arnfinn.
“I know what I shall do!”
“And so do I.”
“Won't you tell me, please?”
“No.”
“Then I sha'n't tell you either.”
And they flew apart like two thoughtless little birds “sanguine,” as Strand would have called them, each to ponder on some formidable plot for the reconciliation of the estranged lovers.
5. V.
During the week that ensued, the multifarious sub-currents of Strand's passion seemed slowly to gather themselves into one clearly defined stream, and, after much scientific speculation, he came to the conclusion that he loved Augusta. In a moment of extreme discouragement, he made a clean breast of it to Arnfinn, at the same time informing him that he had packed his knapsack, and would start on his wanderings again the next morning. All his friend's entreaties were in vain; he would and must go. Strand was an exasperatingly head-strong fellow, and persuasions never prevailed with him. He had confirmed himself in the belief that he was very unattractive to women, and
Early the next morning, as a kind of etherealized sunshine broke through the white muslin curtains of Arnfinn's room, and long streaks of sun-illumined dust stole through the air toward the sleeper's pillow, there was a sharp rap at the
“Good-bye, brother.”
Arnfinn, who was a hard sleeper, gave another rub, and, in a querulously sleepy tone, managed to mutter:
“Why,—is it as late as that—already?”
The words of parting were more remotely repeated, the hand closed about Arnfinn's half-unfeeling fingers, the lock on the door gave a little sharp click, and all was still. But the sunshine drove the dust in a dumb, confused dance through the room.
Some four hours later, Arnfinn woke up with a vague feeling as if some great calamity had happened; he was not sure but that he had slept a fortnight or more. He dressed with a sleepy,
During all the afternoon, the reading of “David Copperfield” was interrupted by frequent mutual condolences, and at times Inga's hand would steal up to her eye to brush away a treacherous tear. But then she only read the faster, and David and Agnes were already safe in the haven of matrimony before either she or Arnfinn was aware that they had struggled successfully through the perilous reefs and quick-sands of courtship.
Augusta excused herself from supper, Inga's forced devices at merriment were too transparent, Arnfinn's table-talk was of a rambling, incoherent sort, and he answered dreadfully malapropos, if a chance word was addressed to him, and even the good-natured pastor began, at last, to grumble; for the inmates of the Gran Parsonage seemed to have but one life and one soul in common, and any individual disturbance immediately disturbed the peace and happiness of the whole household. Now gloom had, in some unaccountable fashion, obscured the common atmosphere. Inga shook her small wise head, and
6. VI.
Four weeks after Strand's departure, as the summer had already assumed that tinge of sadness which impresses one as a foreboding of coming death, Augusta was walking along the beach, watching the flight of the sea-birds. Her latest “aberration,” as Arnfinn called it, was an extraordinary interest in the habits of the eider-ducks, auks, and sea-gulls, the noisy monotony of whose existence had, but a few months ago, appeared to her the symbol of all that was vulgar and coarse in human and animal life. Now she had even provided herself with a note-book, and to use once more the language of her unbelieving cousin affected a half-scientific interest in their clamorous pursuits. She had made many vain attempts to imitate their voices and to beguile them into closer intimacy, and had found it hard at times to suppress her indignation when they persisted in viewing her in the light of an intruder, and in returning her amiable approaches with shy suspicion, as if they doubted the sincerity of her intentions.
She was a little paler now, perhaps, than before, but her eyes had still the same lustrous depth, and the same sweet serenity was still diffused over her features, and softened, like a pervading tinge of warm color, the grand simplicity of her presence. She sat down on a large rock, picked up a curiously twisted shell, and seeing a plover wading in the surf, gave a soft, low whistle, which made the bird turn round and gaze at her with startled distrust. She repeated the call, but perhaps a little too eagerly, and the bird spread its wings with a frightened cry, and skimmed, half flying, half running, out over the glittering surface of the fjord. But from the rocks close by came a long melancholy whistle like that of a bird in distress, and the girl rose and hastened with eager steps toward the spot. She climbed up on a stone, fringed all around with green slimy sea-weeds, in order to gain a wider view of the beach. Then suddenly some huge figure started up between the rocks at her feet; she gave a little scream, her foot slipped, and in the next moment she lay—in Strand's arms. He offered no apology, but silently carried her over the slippery stones, and deposited her tenderly upon the smooth white sand. There it occurred to
“But how in the world, Mr. Strand, did you come here?” she managed at last to stammer. “We all thought that you had gone away.”
“I hardly know myself,” said Strand, in a beseeching undertone, quite different from his usual confident bass. “I only know that—that I was very wretched, and that I had to come back.”
Then there was a pause, which to both seemed quite interminable, and, in order to fill it out in some way, Strand began to move his head and arms uneasily, and at length seated himself at Augusta's side. The blood was beating with feverish vehemence in her temples, and for the first time in her life she felt something akin to pity for this large, strong man, whose strength and cheerful self-reliance had hitherto seemed to raise him above the need of a woman's aid and sympathy. Now the very shabbiness of his appearance, and the look of appealing misery in his features, opened in her bosom the gate through which compassion could enter, and, with that generous self-forgetfulness which was the chief factor of her character, she leaned over toward him, and said:
“You must have been very sick, Mr. Strand. Why did you not come to us and allow us to take care of you, instead of roaming about here in this stony wilderness?”
“Yes; I have been sick,” cried Strand, with sudden vehemence, seizing her hand; “but it is a sickness of which I shall never, never be healed.”
And with that world-old eloquence which is yet ever new, he poured forth his passionate confession in her ear, and she listened, hungrily at first, then with serene, wide-eyed happiness. He told her how, driven by his inward restlessness, he had wandered about in the mountains, until one evening at a saeter, he had heard a peasant lad singing a song, in which this stanza occurred:
Nor hate nor fondness prove;
For maidens smile on him they hate,
And fly from him they love.”
Then it had occurred to him for the first time in his life that a woman's behavior need not be the logical indicator of her deepest feelings, and, enriched with this joyful discovery, inspired with new hope, he had returned, but had not dared at once to seek the Parsonage, until
The evening wore on. The broad mountain-guarded valley, flooded now to the brim with a soft misty light, spread out about them, and filled them with a delicious sense of security. The fjord lifted its grave gaze toward the sky, and deepened responsively with a bright, ever-receding immensity. The young girl felt this blessed peace gently stealing over her; doubt and struggle were all past, and the sun shone ever serene and unobscured upon the widening expanses of the future. And in his breast, too, that mood reigned in which life looks boundless and radiant, human woes small or impossible, and one's own self large and all-conquering. In that hour they remodeled this old and obstinate world of ours, never doubting that, if each united his faith and strength with the other's, they could together lift its burden.
That night was the happiest and most memorable night in the history of the Gran Parsonage. The pastor walked up and down on the floor, rubbing his hands in quiet contentment. Inga, to whom an engagement was essentially a solemn
This story, however, has a brief but not unimportant sequel. It was not many weeks after this happy evening that Arnfinn and the maiden with the “amusingly unclassical nose” presented themselves in the pastor's study and asked for his paternal and unofficial blessing. But the pastor, I am told, grew very wroth, and demanded that his nephew should first take his second and third degrees, attaching, besides, some very odious stipulations regarding average in study and college standing, before there could be any talk about engagement or matrimony. So, at present, Arnfinn is still studying, and the fair-haired Inga is still waiting.
Tales From Two Hemispheres | ||