Chapter III
Itwas midsummer. The mountain region was hazy in the heat; all the distance was as if enveloped in smoke. The girls on the farm went about barefooted, in waists and short petticoats. It was a scorching heat, so that the pitch ran in sticky white lines down from the fat knots in the timber of the newly built pigsty, where Marit was giving swill to the hogs. Some sand-scoured wooden milk-pans stood on edge by the well, drying, while one or two sparrows and wagtails hopped about or perched nodding on the well-curb, and the blows of the axe resounded from the wood-shed in the quiet of the afternoon. Pasop lay panting in the shade behind the outer door, which stood open.
The captain had finished his afternoon nap, and stood by the field looking at Great-Ola and the horses ploughing up an old grassland which was to be laid down again.
The bumble-bee was humming in the garden. With about the same monotonous voice, Thinka and Inger-Johanna, sitting by the stone table in the summer-house over the cracked blue book-cover and the dog-eared, well-thumbed leaves, mumbled the Catechism and Commentary, with elbows and heads close to each other. They had to learn pages eighty-four to eighty-seven before supper time, andthey held their fingers in their ears so as not to disturb each other.
There was darkness like a shadow just outside of the garden fence. But they saw nothing, heard nothing; the long passage of Scripture went way over on the second page.
Then there was a gay clearing of a throat. "Might one interrupt the two young ladies with earthly affairs?"
They both looked up at the same time. The light hop leaves about the summer-house had not yet entirely covered the trellis.
With his arms leaning on the garden fence there stood a young man—he might have been standing there a long time—with a cap almost without a visor over thick brown hair. His face was sunburned and swollen.
The eyes, which gazed on them, looked dreadfully wicked.
Neither of them saw more; for, by a common impulse at the phenomenon, they ran in utter panic out of the door, leaving the books spread open behind them, and up the steps in to Ma, who was in the kitchen buttering bread for lunch.
"There was a man standing—there was a man out by the garden fence. It was certainly not any one who goes around begging or anything like that."
"Hear what he has to say, Jörgen," said Ma,quickly comprehending the situation; "this way, out the veranda door. Appear as if you came of your own accord."
Both the girls flew in to the windows of the best room in order to peep out under the curtains.
He was coming in by the steps to the outer door with Jörgen, who suddenly vanished from his sight into the kitchen.
Little Thea stood in the door of the sitting-room with a piece of bread and butter, clutching the latch, and, holding the door half shut and half open, stared at him; she was altogether out of it.
"Is your father at home?"
"Yes, but you must go by the kitchen path, do you hear? And wait till we have had lunch; he is not going up to the office before that." She took him for a man who was going to be put on the roll.
"But I am not going to the office, you see."
Ma herself came now; she had managed to get her cap on in her hurry, but it was all awry.
"A young man, I see, who has perhaps come a long distance to-day. Please walk in."
Her smile was kind, but her eye underneath it was as sharp as an officer's review; here were holes and darns with coarse thread for the nonce and rents in abundance, and it was not easy to free herself from the suspicion of some questionable rover, especially when he dropped straight in through the doorwith the remark: "I come like a tramp from the mountain wilds, madam. I must make many excuses."
Ma's searching look had in the mean time broken through the shell. The white streak on the upper part of the forehead, under the shade where the skin had not been reddened by the sunburn, and his whole manner determined her to scrutinize him prudently. "Please sit down, Jäger is coming soon." She incidentally passed by the sewing-table and shut it. "Won't you let me send you a glass of milk in the mean time?"
A girl came in with a great basin, shaped like a bowl, and vanished again.
He put it to his mouth, noted with his eye how much he had drunk, drank again, and took another view.
"It is delightful—is not at all like the mistress of the house, for she seemed like sour milk, and"—he suppressed a sigh—"dangerously dignified."
He drank again.
"Yes, now one really must stop; but since and whereas—"
He placed the basin quite empty on the plate.
"Best to attack him at once. Dead broke, will you on my honest face lend me four—no, that does not sound well, better out with it at once—five dollars, so that I can get to Christiania?"
The small eyes twinkled quickly. If only the captain had come then! Some one was walking about out there.
He gazed abstractedly; he repeated his speech to himself. It was always altered, and now he stood again at the ticklish point—the amount. He considered if perhaps he only needed to ask for four—three?
There was a growling out in the hall; the dog rushed out, barking loudly. It was plainly the captain.
The young man rose hurriedly, but sat down again like a spring ready to jump up out of a chair: he had been in too great haste.
"In the parlor—some sort of fellow who wants to talk with me?" It was out on the stairs that some one was speaking.
A moment or two later, and the captain appeared in the door.
"I must beg you to excuse me, Captain. I have unfortunately, unfortunately"—here he began to stammer; bad luck would have it that one of the two young girls whom he had seen in the summer-house, the dark one, came in after her father; and so it would not do—"come over the mountain," he continued. "You will understand that one cannot exactly appear in the best plight." The last came in a tone of forced ease.
The captain at that moment did not appear exactly agreeably surprised.
"My name is Arent Grip!"
"Arent Grip!" rejoined the captain, looking at him. "Grip! the same phiz and eyes! You can never be the son of Perpetuum—cadet at Lurleiken? He is a farmer, or proprietor I suppose he calls himself, somewhere among the fjords."
"He is my father, Captain."
"Does he still work as hard as ever at his mechanical ideas?" asked the captain. "I heard that he had carried the water for his mill straight through the roof of the cow-barn, so that the cows got a shower bath, when the pipes sprung a leak."
Inger-Johanna caught a movement of indignation, as if the stranger suddenly grasped after his cap. "Shame, shame, that those times did not give a man like my father a scientific education." He said this with a seriousness utterly oblivious of the captain.
"So, so. Well, my boy, you must be kind enough to take a little lunch with us, before you start off. Inger-Johanna, tell Ma that we want something to drink and bread and butter. You must be hungry coming down from the mountains. Sit down.—And what is now your—your occupation or profession in the world? if I might ask." The captain sauntered around the floor.
"Student; and, Captain," he gasped, in order to use quickly the moment while they were alone, "since I have been so free as to come in here thus without knowing you—"
"Student!" The captain stopped in the middle of the floor. "Yes, I would have risked my head on it, saw it at the first glance, but yet I was a little in doubt. Well, yes," clearing his throat, "nearly plucked, perhaps; eh, boy?" inquired he good-naturedly. "Your father also had trouble with his examinations."
"I have not the fractional part of my father's brains, but with what I have, they gave me this yearlaudabilis praeceteris."
"Son of my friend, Fin Arentzen Grip!" He uttered each one of the names with a certain tender recognition. "Your father was, all things considered, a man of good ability, not to say a little of a genius,—when he failed in his officer's examination, it was all due to his irregular notions. Well, so you are his son! Yes, he wrote many a composition for me—the pinch was always with the compositions, you see."
"And, Captain," began the young man again earnestly, now in a louder and more decided tone, "since I can thus, without further ceremony, confidently address you—"
"You can tell Ma," said the captain, when Inger-Johanna again came in with her taller, overgrownsister, "that it is Student Arent Grip, son of my old delightful comrade at the Military School."
The result of this last message was that the contemplated plate with a glass and bread and butter was changed to a little lunch for him and the captain, spread out on a tray.
The old bread-basket of red lacquer was filled with slices of black, sour bread, the crusts of which were cracked off. More's the pity, Ma declared, it had been spoiled in the baking, and the gray, heavy crust was due to the fact that so much of the grain on the captain's farm last year was harvested before it was ripe.
The student showed the sincerity of his forbearance of these defects through an absolutely murderous appetite. The prudential lumps of salt, which studded the fresh mountain butter with pearly tears in a superfluous abundance, he had a knack of dodging boldly and incisively, which did not escape admiring eyes; only a single short stroke of his knife on the under side of the bread and butter, and the lumps of salt rained and pattered over the plate.
"You will surely have some dried beef? I guess you have not had much to eat to-day. Go and get some more, Thinka. A little dram with the cheese, what? You can believe that we tested many a good old cheese in the den at your father's, and when we had a spree, we sent for it, and it circulatedround from one party to another; and then the apples from Bergen which he got by the bushel by freighting-vessel from home! He was such a greenhorn, and so kind hearted—too confiding for such rascals as we! Oh, how we hunted through his closet and boxes!—and then we did our exercises at the same time; it was only his that the teacher corrected through the whole class." The captain emptied the second part of his long dram. "Ah!" He held his glass up against the light, and looked through it, as he was accustomed to. "But nevertheless, there was something odd about him, you know; you must see that such a one, straight from the country, does not fit in at once. Never forget when he first lectured us about perpetual motion. It was done with only five apples in a wheel, he said, and the apples must be absolutely mathematically exact. It was that which got out and ruined him, so people came to—yes, you know—comment on it, and make fun of him; and that hung on till the examination."
The student wriggled about.
The young ladies, who were sitting with their sewing by the window, also noticed how he had now forgotten himself; during the whole time he had kept one boot under the chair behind the other in order to conceal the sole of his shoes gaping wide open. They were in good spirits, and hardly dared to look at each other—son of a man who was calledPerpetuum, was a cadet, and gave the cows a bath. Father was dreadfully amusing when there were strangers present.
"Not a moment's doubt that there were ideas—but there was something obstinate about him. To come, as he did, straight from the farm, and then to begin to dispute with the teacher about what is in the book, never succeeds well, especially in physics in the Military School. And you can believe that was a comedy."
"Then I will bet my head that it was not my father who was wrong, Captain."
"Hm, hm—naturally yes, his father to a dot," he mumbled—"Hm, well, you have gotpraeceterisall the same,—will you have a drop more?" came the hospitable diversion.
"No, I thank you. But I will tell you how it was with my father. It was just as it was with a hound they had once at the judge's. There was such blood and spirit in him that you would search long to find his equal; but one day he bit a sheep, and so he had to be cured. It was done by locking him up in a sheepfold. There he stood, alone before the ram and all the sheepfold. It seemed to him splendid fun. Then the ram came leaping at him, and the dog rolled heels over head. Pshaw, that was nothing; but after the ram came tripping—before he could rise—all the fifty sheep trip—trip—trip, over him; then he was entirely confused. Again theystood opposite each other, and once more the ram rushed in on the dog, and trip—trip—trip—trip, came the feet of the whole flock of sheep over him. So they kept on for fully two hours, until the dog lay perfectly quiet and completely stunned. He was cured, never bit a sheep again. But what he was good for afterwards we had better not talk about—he had been through the Military School, Captain."
When he looked up, he met the dark, intense eyes of the mistress fixed on him; her capped head immediately bent down over the sewing again.
The captain had listened more and more eagerly. The cure of the hound interested him. It was only at the last expression he discovered that there was any hidden meaning in it.
"Hm—my dear Grip. Ah! Yes, you think that. Hm, can't agree with you. There were skilful teachers, and—ho, ho,—really we were not sheep—rather wolves to meet with, my boy. But the cure, I must admit, was disgraceful for a good dog, and in so far—well, a drop more?"
"Thank you, Captain."
"But what kind of a road do you say you have been over, my boy?"
With the food and the glass and a half of cordial which he had enjoyed, new life had come into the young man. He looked at his clothes, and was even so bold as to put his boots out; a great seam went across one knee.
"I certainly might be set up as a scarecrow for a terror and warning to all those who will depart from the highway. It was all because at the post station I met a deer-hunter, an excellent fellow. The chap talked to me so long of what there was on the mountain that I wanted to go with him."
"Extremely reasonable," muttered the captain, "when a man is paying for his son in Christiania."
"I had become curious, I must tell you, and so started off for the heart of the mountains."
"Is he not even more aggravatingly mad than his father,—to start in haphazard over the black, pathless mountain?"
"The track led over the débris and stones at the foot at first for five hours. But I don't know what it is upon the mountain; it was as if something got into my legs. The air was so fine and light, as if I had been drinking champagne; it intoxicated me. I should have liked to walk on my hands, and it would have been of no consequence to any one in the whole wide world, for I was on the summit. And never in my life have I seen such a view as when we stood, in the afternoon, on the mountain crest,—only cool, white, shining snow, and dark blue sky, peak on peak, one behind the other, in a glory as far as the eye could reach."
"Yes, we have snow enough, my boy. It stands close up against the walls of the house here all winter, as clear, white, and cold as any one could wish.We find ourselves very well satisfied with that,—but show me a beautiful green meadow or a fine field of grain, my boy."
"It seemed to me as if one great fellow of a mountain stood by the side of another and said: You poor, thin-legged, puny being, are you not going to be blown away in the blue draught, here on the snow-field, like a scrap of paper? If you wish to know what is great, take your standard from us."
"You gotpraeceteris, you said, my man? Yes, yes, yes, yes! What do you say if we get the shoemaker to put a little patch on your shoes to-night?"
It was as much as an invitation to stay all night!—Extremely tempting to postpone the request till next day. "Thank you, Captain, I will not deny that it might be decidedly practical."
"Tell the shoemaker, Jörgen, to take them as soon as he has put the heel-irons on those I am to have for the survey of the roads."
Oh! So he is going away, perhaps early to-morrow morning; it must be done this evening, nevertheless! Now, when the daughters were beginning to clear off the table, it was best to watch his chance.
The captain began walking up and down the floor with short steps. "Yes, yes, true! Yes, yes, true! Would you like to see some fine pigs, Grip?"
The student immediately sprang up. The way out! He grabbed his cap. "Do you keep many, Captain?" he asked, extremely interested.
"Come!—oh, it is no matter about going through the kitchen—come out a little while on the porch steps. Do you see that light spot in the woods up there? That is where we took the timber for the cow-house and the pigsty, two years ago."
He went out into the farmyard bare-headed.
"Marit, Marit, here is some one who wants to see your pigs. Now you shall be reviewed. There are a sow and seven—you see. Ugh, ugh, yes. Hear your little ones, Marit!—But it was the brick wall, you see. Right here was a swamp hole; it oozed through from the brook above. And now—see the drain there?—as dry as tinder."
Now or never the petition must be presented.
"And now they live like lords all together there," continued the captain.
"All seven of the dollars—what am I saying, all five of the pigs."
"What?"
"Here is your hat, father!"—Jörgen came from the house—"and there are some of the people down from Fosse standing there and waiting."
"So? We will only just look into the stable a little."
There stood Svarten and Brunen, just unharnessed,still dripping wet and with stiff hair after the work at the plough.
"Fine stall, eh?—and very light; the horses don't come out of the door half blind. Ho, Svarten, are you sweaty now?"
There was a warm and pleasant smell of the stable—and finally—
"Captain, I am going to make a re—"
"But, Ola," interrupted the latter, "see Brunen's crib there! I don't like those bits. It can't be that he bites it?"
"Ha, ha, ha—no, by no means." Ola grinned slyly; he was not going to admit in a stranger's presence that the captain's new bay was a cribber!
The captain had become very red; he pulled off his cap, and hurriedly walked along with it in his hand—"such a rascal of a horse-trader!"
He no longer looked as if he would listen to a request.
Out of the afternoon shade by the stable walls the two men just spoken of appeared.
"Is this a time of day to come to people?" he blurted out. "Ah well—go up to the office."
At this he strode over the yard, peeped into the well, and turned towards the window of the sitting-room.
"Girls! Inger-Johanna—Thinka," he called in a loud tone. "Ask Ma if that piece of meat is going to lie there by the well and rot."
"Marit has taken it up, we are going to have it for supper," Thinka tried to whisper.
"Oh! Is it necessary on that account to keep it where Pasop can get it?—Show the student down into the garden, so that he can get some currants," he called out of the door, as he went up by the stables to his office.
Arent Grip's head, covered with thick brown hair, with the scanty flat cap upon it, could now be seen for a good long time among the currant bushes by the side of Thinka's little tall, blond one. At first he talked a great deal, and the sprightly, bright, brown eyes were not in the least wicked, Thinka thought. She began to feel rather a warm interest in him.
He found his boots in the morning standing mended before his bed, and a tray with coffee and breakfast came up to him. He had said he must be off early.
Now it all depended on making his decisive leap with closed eyes in the dark.
When he came down, the captain stood on the stairs with his pipe. Over his fat neck, where the buckle of his military stock shone, grayish locks of hair stuck out under his reddish wig. He was looking out a little discontentedly into the morning fog, speculating on whether it would settle or rise so that he would dare order the mowing to go on.
"So you are going to start, my boy?"
"Captain, can—will you lend me—" in his first courage of the morning he had thought of five, but it sank to four even while he was on the stairs, and now in the presence of the captain to—"three dollars? I have used up every shilling I had to get to Christiania with. You shall have them by money order immediately."
The captain hemmed and hawed. He had almost suspected something of the sort yesterday in the fellow's face—yes, such a student was the kind of a fellow to send back a money order!
There began to be a sort of an ugly grin on his face. But suddenly he assumed a good-natured, free and easy mien. "Three dollars, you say?—If I had three in the house, my boy! But here, by fits and starts in the summer, it is as if the ready money was clean swept away." He stuck his unoccupied hand in the breast of his uniform coat, and looked vacantly out into the air. "Ah! hm-hm," came after a dreadfully oppressive pause. "If I was only sure of getting them back again, I would see if I could pick up three or four shillings at any rate in Ma's household box—so that you could get down to the sheriff or the judge. They are excellent people, I know them; they help at the first word."
The captain, puffing vigorously at his pipe, went into the kitchen to Ma, who was standing in thepantry and dealing out the breakfast. She had the hay-making and the whole of the outside affairs upon her shoulders.
He was away quite a little time.
"Well, if Ma did not have the three dollars after all! So I have got them for you. And so good-by from Gilje! Let us hear when you get there."
"You shall hear in a money order," and the student strode jubilantly away.
It is true that at first Ma had stopped for a moment and pinched her lips together, and then she had declared as her most settled opinion that, if the captain was going to help at all, it must be with all three. He did not seem one of those who shirked everything—was not one who was all surface—and it would not do at all to let him beg at the judge's, the sheriff's, and perhaps the minister's, because he could not get a loan of more than three shillings at Gilje.
From time to time Thinka told of all that she and the student had talked about together.
"What did he say then?" urged Inger-Johanna.
"Oh, he was entertaining almost all the time; I have never heard any one so entertaining."
"Yes, but do you remember that he said anything?"
"Oh, yes, he asked why you were readingFrench. Perhaps you were to be trained to be a parrot, so that you could chatter when you came to the city.
"So,—how did he know that I was going to the city?"
"He asked how old you were; and then I said that you were to be confirmed and to go there. He was very well acquainted at the governor's house; he had done extra writing, or something of that sort, at the office, since he had been a student."
"That kind of acquaintance, yes."
"But you wouldn't suit exactly there, he said; and do you know why?"
"No."
"Do you want to know? He thought you had too much backbone."
"What—did he say?"
She wrinkled her eyebrows and looked up sharply, so that Thinka hastened to add: "Whoever comes there must be able to wind like a sewing thread around the governor's wife, he said; it would be a shame for your beautiful neck to get a twist so early."
Inger-Johanna threw her head back and smiled: "Did you ever hear such a man!"
*****
Thinka had gone to Ryfylke. Her place at the table, in the living-room, in the bed-chamber, wasempty air. The captain started out time after time to call her.
And now the last afternoon had come, when Inger-Johanna was also going away.
The sealskin trunk with new iron bands stood open in the hall ready for packing. The cariole was standing in the shed, greased so that the oil was running out of the ends of the axles, and Great-Ola, who was to start the next morning on the three days' journey, was giving Svarten oats.
The captain had been terribly busy that day: no one understood how to pack as he did.
Ma handed over to him one piece of the new precious stuff after the other; the linen from Gilje would bear the eye of the governor's wife.
But the misfortune of it was that the blood rushed so to Jäger's head when he stooped over.
"Hullo, good! I don't understand what you are thinking of, Ma, to come with all that load of cotton stockings at once! It is this, this, this I want."
Naturally, used to travelling as he was—"But it is so bad for you to stoop over, Jäger."
He straightened up hurriedly. "Do you think Great-Ola has the wit to rub Svarten with Riga liniment on the bruise on his neck and to take the bottle with him in his bag? If I had not thought of that now, Svarten would have had to trot with it. Run down and tell him that, Thea.—Oh, no!"he drew a despairing breath; "I must go myself, and see that it is done right."
There was a pause until his footfall had ceased to creak on the lowest step. Then Ma began to pack with precipitous haste: "It is best to spare your father from the rush of blood to his head."
The contents of the trunk rose layer upon layer, until the white napkin was at last spread over it and covered the whole, and it only remained to sit upon the lid and force the key to turn in the lock.
Towards supper time the worst hubbub and trouble were over. Ma's hasty-pudding, as smooth as velvet, with raspberry sauce, was standing on the table, and solemnly reminded them that again there would be one less in the daily circle.
They ate in silence without any other sound than the rattling of the spoons.
"There, child, take my large cup. Take it when your father bids you."
Certainly she is beautiful, the apple of his eye. Only look at her hands when she is eating! She is as delicate and pale as a nun.
He sighed, greatly down-hearted, and shoved his plate from him.
Tears burst from Inger-Johanna's eyes.
No one would have any more.
Now he walked and whistled and gazed on the floor.
It was a pity to see how unhappy father was.
"You must write every month, child—at length and about everything—do you hear?—large and small, whatever you are thinking of, so that your father may have something to take pleasure in," Ma admonished, while they were clearing off the table. "And listen now, Inger-Johanna," she continued when they were alone in the pantry: "If it is so that the governor's wife wants to read your letters, then put a little cross by the signature. But if there is anything the matter, tell it to old Aunt Alette out in the bishop's mansion; then I shall know it when Great-Ola is in for the city load. You know your father can bear so little that is disagreeable."
"The governor's wife read what I write to you and father! That I will defy her to do."
"You must accommodate yourself to her wishes, child. You can do it easily when you try, and your aunt is extremely kind and good to those she likes, when she has things her own way. You know how much may depend on her liking you, and—you understand—getting a little fond of you. She has certainly not asked you there without thinking of keeping you in the place of a daughter."
"Any one else's daughter? Take me from you and father? No, in that case I would rather never go there."
She seated herself on the edge of the meal-chest and began to sob violently.
"Come, come, Inger-Johanna." Ma stroked her hair with her hand. "We do not wish to lose you; you know that well enough,"—her voice trembled. "It is for your own advantage, child. What do you think you three girls have to depend upon, if your father should be taken away? We must be glad if a place offers, and even take good care not to lose it; remember that, always remember that, Inger-Johanna. You have intelligence enough, if you can also learn to control your will; that is your danger, child."
Inger-Johanna looked up at her mother with an expression almost of terror. She had a bitter struggle to understand. In her, in whom she had always found aid, there was suddenly a glimpse of the helpless.
"I can hardly bear to lose the young one out of my sight to-night, and you leave me alone in there," came the captain, creaking in the door. "You haven't a thought of how desolate and lonesome it will be for me, Ma." He blew out like a whale.
"We are all coming in now, and perhaps father will sing a little this evening," Ma said encouragingly.
The captain's fine, now a little hoarse, bass was his pride and renown from his youth up.
The clavichord was cleared of its books and papers—thecover must be entirely lifted when father was to sing.
It stood there with its yellow teeth, its thin, high tone, and its four dead keys; and Ma must play the accompaniment, in which always, in some part or other, she was left lying behind, like a sack that has fallen out of a wagon, while the horse patiently trots on over the road. His impatience she bore with stoical tranquillity.
This evening he went throughHeimkringlas panna,du höga Nord, andVikingebalken, to
Lo! the chase's empress cometh! Hapless Frithjof, glance away!Like a star on spring cloud sitteth she upon her courser gray.
Lo! the chase's empress cometh! Hapless Frithjof, glance away!Like a star on spring cloud sitteth she upon her courser gray.
Lo! the chase's empress cometh! Hapless Frithjof, glance away!Like a star on spring cloud sitteth she upon her courser gray.
Lo! the chase's empress cometh! Hapless Frithjof, glance away!
Like a star on spring cloud sitteth she upon her courser gray.
He sang so that the window-panes rattled.