Chapter VI
Thecaptain had kept the cover of his old large meerschaum pipe polished with chalk for three days, without being willing to take it down from the shelf; he had trimmed and put in new mouthpieces, and held a feast of purification on the remainder, as well as on all the contents of the tobacco table, the ash receiver, the tobacco stems, and lava-like scrapings from the pipe. He had let the sexton do his best at tuning the clavichord, and put two seats, painted white, on the stoop. The constantly neglected lattice-work around the garden now glistened here and there with fresh white palings, like single new teeth which are stuck between a whole row of old gray ones. The walks in the garden must be swept and garnished, the yard was cleaned up, and, finally, the cover put on the well, which was to have been done all the years when the children were small.
It was the captain who, in an almost vociferous good humor, was zealously on the move everywhere.
Sometimes he took a kind of rest and stood puffing on the steps or in the window of the large room which looked down toward the country highway; or in the shades of the evening he took a little turn down to the gate and sat there on the stone fence with his pipe. If any one passed bygoing south, he would say, "Are you going to the store to buy a plug of tobacco, Lars? If you meet a fine young lady in a cariole, greet her from the captain at Gilje; it is my daughter who is coming from the city."
If the person was some poor old crone of the other sex, to her astonishment a copper coin fell down on the road before her: "There, Kari; there, Siri: you may want something to order a crutch carriage with."
A surprise which was so much the greater as the captain at other times cherished a genuine liking for flaying old beggar women. The whole stock of tempestuous oaths and of abusive words coined in the inspiration of the moment, which was in his blood from the drill-ground and military life, must now and then have an outbreak. The old women who went on crutches were long accustomed to this treatment, and knew what to expect when they were going away from the house, after having first got a good load in their bags in the kitchen. It was like a tattoo about their ears, accompanied by Pasop's wild barking.
But in these days, while he was going about in joyful expectation and awaiting his daughter's return home, he was what made him a popular man both in the district and among his men, straightforward and sportive, something of the old gay Peter Jäger.
The captain had just been in again in the afternoon and tried the concert pitch on the clavichord, which was constantly lowering, and compared his deep bass with its almost soundless rumbling G, when Jörgen thought he saw, through the window, a movable spot on one of the light bits of the highway, which was visible even on the other side of the lake.
The captain caught up his field-glasses, rushed out on the steps and in again, called to Ma—and afterwards patiently took his post at the open window, while he called Ma in again every time they came into the turns.
Down there it did not go so quickly. Svarten stopped of his own accord at every man he met on the way; and then Great-Ola must explain.
A young lady with a duster tightly fastened about her waist, parasol and gloves, and such a fine brass-bound English trunk on the back of the cariole, was in itself no common thing. But that it was the daughter of the captain at Gilje who was coming home raised the affair up to the sensational, and the news was therefore well spread over the region when, toward evening, the cariole had got as far as the door at home.
There stood mother and father and Jörgen and Thea and the sub-officer, Tronberg, with his small bag yonder at the corner of the house, and the farm-hands and girls inside the passageway—and Great-Olawas cheated out of lifting the young lady down on the steps, for she herself jumped from the cariole step straight into the arms of her father, and then kissed her mother and hugged Thea and pulled Jörgen by the hair a little forced dance around on the stairs, so that he should feel the first impression of her return home.
Yes, it was the parasol she had lost on the steps and which a bare-footed girl came up with; Ma had a careful eye upon it—the costly, delicate, fringed parasol with long ivory handle had been lying there between the steps and the cariole wheel.
The captain took off her duster himself—The hair, the dress, the gloves; that was the way she looked, a fine grown lady from head to foot.
And so they had the Gilje sun in the room!
"I have been sitting and longing all day for the smell of thepetumand to see a little cloud of smoke about your head, father—I think you are a little stouter—and then your dress-coat—I always thought of you in the old shiny one. And mother—and mother!" She rushed out after her into the pantry, where she stayed a long time.
Then she came out more quietly.
A hot fire was blazing in the kitchen. There stood Marit, a short, red-cheeked mountain girl, with white teeth and small hands, stirring the porridge so that the sweat dropped from her face; she knew very well that Great-Ola would have it so that fifteenmen could dance on the surface, and now she got the help of the young lady. After that Inger-Johanna must over and spin on Torbjörg's spinning-wheel.
The captain only went with her and looked on with half moistened eyes, and when they came in again Inger-Johanna got the bottle from the sideboard, and gave each of them out there a dram in honor of her return.
The supper-table was waiting in the sitting-room on a freshly laid cloth—red mountain trout and her favorite dish, strawberries and cream.
They must not think of waking her, so tired as she was last night, father had said.
And therefore Thea had sat outside of the threshold from half-past six, waiting to hear any noise, so that she could rush in with the tray and little cakes, for Inger-Johanna was to have her coffee in bed.
Jörgen kept her company, taken up with studying the singular lock on her trunk, and then with scanning the light, delicate patent leather shoes. He rubbed them on his forehead and his nose, after having moistened them with his breath.
Now she was waking up in there, and open flew the door for Jörgen, Thea, and Pasop, and afterwards Torbjörg with the cup of coffee.
Yes, she was at home now.
The fragrance of the hay came in through theopen window, and she heard them driving the rumbling loads into the barn.
And when she saw, from the window, the long narrow lake in the valley down below, and all the mountain peaks which lifted themselves so precipitously up towards the heavens over the light fog on the other side, she understood some of her mother's feeling that here it was cramped, and that it was two hundred long miles to the city. But then it was so fragrant and beautiful—and then, she was really home at Gilje.
She must go out and lie in the hay, and let Jörgen hold the buck that was inclined to butt, so she could get past, and then look at his workshop and the secret hunting gun he was making out of the barrel and lock of an old army gun.
It was a special confidence to his grown-up sister, for powder and gun were most strictly forbidden him, which did not prevent his having his arsenals of his father's coarse-grained cartridge powder hidden in various places in the hills.
And then she must be with Thea and find out all about the garden, and with her father on his walks here and there; they went up by the cow-path, with its waving ferns, white birch stems, and green leaves, over the whole of the sloping ridge of Gilje.
It was like a happy, almost giddy, intoxication of home-coming for three or four days.
It came to be more like every-day life, when Ma began to talk about this and that of the household affairs and to make Inger-Johanna take part in her different cares and troubles.
What should be done with Jörgen? They must think of having him go to the city soon. Ma had thought a good deal about writing to Aunt Alette and consulting with her. Father must not be frightened about spending too much money. If Aunt Alette should conclude to take him to board, then it wouldn't involve the terrible immediate outlay of money. They could send many kinds of provisions there, butter and cheese,fladbröd, dried meat, and bacon as often as there was an opportunity.
She must talk with father about this sometime later in the winter, when she had heard what Aunt Alette thought.
And with Thinka they had gone through a great deal. Ma had had all she could do to keep father out of it—you know how little he can bear annoyances—and she had found it a matter almost of life and death on Wednesdays to intercept Jörgen, when he brought the mail, to get hold of Thinka's letters. This spring Ma had written time after time, and represented to her what kind of a future she was preparing for herself, if she, in weakness and folly, gave way to her rash feelings for this clerk, Aas.
But in the beginning, you see, there came someletters back, which were very melancholy. One could live even in poorer circumstances, she wrote,—it seems that there was a rather doubtful prospect of his getting a situation as a country bailiff that she had set her hopes on.
Ma had placed it seriously before her how such a thing as that might end. Suppose he was sick or died, where would she and perhaps a whole flock of children take refuge?
"It depends on overcoming the first emotion of the fancy. Now she is coming home in the autumn, and it could be wished that she had gotten over her feelings. My brother Birger is so headstrong; but maybe it was for the best that, as my sister-in-law writes, as soon as he got a hint of the state of affairs, he gave Aas his dismissal and sent him packing that very day. The last two or three letters show that Thinka is quieter."
"Thinka is horribly meek," exclaimed Inger-Johanna with flashing eyes. "I believe they could pickle her and put her down and tie up the jar; she would not grumble. If Uncle Birger had done so to me, I would not have stayed there a day longer."
"Inger-Johanna! Inger-Johanna!" Ma shook her head. "You have a dangerous, spoiled temper. It is only the very, very smallest number of us women who are able to do what they would like to."
The captain did not disdain the slightest occasionto bring forward his daughter just come home from the city.
He had turned the time to account, for in the beginning of the next week he would be obliged to go on various surveys up on the common land and then to the drills.
They had made a trip down to the central part of the district, to Pastor Horn's, and on the way stopped and called on Sexton Semmelinge and Bardon Kleven, the bailiff. They had been to Dr. Bauman, the doctor of the district; and now on Sunday they were invited to Sheriff Gülcke's—a journey of thirty-five miles down the valley.
It was an old house of acalêche, repaired a hundred times, which was drawn out of its hiding-place, and within whose chained together arms Svarten and the dun horse—the blind bay had long since been sent away—were to continue their three-months-long attempt to agree in the stall.
If the beasts had any conception, it must most likely have been that it was an enormously heavy plough they were drawing, in a lather, up and down hill, with continual stoppings to get breath and let those who were sitting in it get in and out.
If there was anything the captain adhered to, it was military punctuality, and at half-past four in the morning the whole family in full dress, the captain and Jörgen with their pantaloons turned up, the ladies with their dresses tucked up, were wanderingon foot down the Gilje hills—they were some of the worst on the whole road—while Great-Ola drove the empty carriage down to the highway.
The dun horse was better fitted for pulling than holding back, so that it was Svarten that must be depended on in the hills, and Great-Ola, the captain, and Jörgen must help.
It was an exceedingly warm day, and the carriage rolled on in an incessant dense, stifling dust of the road about the feet of the horses and the wheels. But then it was mainly down hill, and they rested and got breath every mile.
At half-past one they had only to cross the ferry and a short distance on the other side again up to the sheriff's farm.
On the ferry a little toilet was temporarily made, and the captain took his new uniform coat out of the carriage box and put it on. Except that Jörgen had greased his pantaloons from the wheels, not a single accident had happened on the whole trip.
As soon as they came up on the hill, they saw the judge's carriage roll up before them through the gate, and in the yard they recognized the doctor's cariole and the lawyer's gig. There stood the sheriff himself, helping the judge's wife out of the carriage; his chief clerk and his daughters were on the steps.
So far as the ladies were concerned, there must, of course, be a final toilet and a change of clothes before they found themselves presentable. One ofthe two daughters of the lawyer was in a red and the other in a clear white dress, and of the three daughters of the judge, two were in white and one in blue.
That a captain's daughter, with his small salary, came in brown silk with patent leather shoes, could only be explained by the special circumstances, suggested Mrs. Scharfenberg in the ear of old Miss Horn of the parsonage; it was, in all probability, one of the governor's lady's, which had been made over down in the city.
The fact was that young Horn who, it was expected, would be chaplain to his father, the minister, treated Inger-Johanna in a much more complimentary manner than he showed toward Mrs. Scharfenberg's daughter, Bine, to whom he was as good as engaged; and the chief clerk did not seem to be blind to her. They both ran to get a chair for her.
The sofa was assigned to the judge's wife and to Ma, as a matter of course. Mrs. Scharfenberg did not think this quite right either, since her husband had been nominated second for the judgeship of Sogn; and that the sheriff had to-day also invited the rich Mrs. Silje was, her husband said, only a bid for popularity: she was still always what she was—widow of the country storekeeper, Silje.
It was a long time to sit and exchange compliments, before the mainstay of the dinner, the sheriff'sroast, was sufficiently and thoroughly done, and he got a nod from his wife to ask the company out to the table in the large room.
The only one who laughed and talked before the ice was fairly broken was Inger-Johanna, who chatted with the judge and then with Horn and the army doctor.
Ma pursed her lips a little uneasily, as she sat on the sofa and pretended to be absorbed in conversation with Mrs. Brinkman; she knew what they all would say about her afterwards.
It had been a rather warm dinner. Through the abundant provision of the sheriff, the fatigue and hunger after the journey had given place to an extremely lively mood spiced with speeches and songs.
They had sat a long time at the table before the scraping of the judge's chair finally gave the signal for the breaking up.
The sheriff now stood stout and beaming during the thanks for the meal, and demanded and received his tribute as host—a kiss from each one of the young ladies.
The masculine part of the company distributed themselves with their coffee-cups out in the cool hall and on the stairs, or went with their tobacco pipes into the yard, while the ladies sat around the coffee-table in the parlor.
The judge talked somewhat loudly with the sheriff,and the captain, red and hot, stood a little way out in the yard, cooling himself.
The doctor came up and clapped him on the shoulder. "The sheriff really took the spigot out of the bung to-day: we had excellent drink."
"Oh, if one only had a pipe now, and could go and loaf."
"You have got one in your hand, man."
"Really? But filled, you see."
"You just went in and filled it."
"I? No, really; but a light, you see, a light."
"I say, Jäger, Scharfenberg is already up taking a nap."
"Yes, yes; but the bay, you cheated me shamefully in that."
"Oh, nonsense, Peter; your cribber ate himself half out of my stall—That Madeira was strong."
"Rist—my daughter, Inger-Johanna—"
"Yes, you see, Peter, I forgive you that you are a little cracked about her; she may make stronger heads than yours whirl round."
"She is beautiful—beautiful." His voice was assuming an expression of serious pathos.
The two military men, at a sedate, thoughtful pace, walked back to one of the sleeping-rooms in the second story.
In the hall, tall Buchholtz, the judge's chief clerk, was standing, stiff and silent, against the wall, with his coffee-cup in his hand; he was ponderingwhether anyone would notice anything wrong about him. He had been in the coffee room with the ladies and tried to open a conversation with Miss Jäger.
"Have you been here long, Miss Jäger?"
"Three weeks."
"How lo-ong do you intend to stay here?"
"Till the end of August."
"Don't you miss the city u-p here?"
"No, not at all."
She turned from him, and began to talk with her mother. The same questions had now been asked her by all the gentlemen.
The irreproachable Candidate Horn stood by the door enjoying his coffee and the defeat of the chief clerk. He was lying in wait for an opportunity to have a chat with Inger-Johanna, but found an insurmountable obstacle in the judge's well-read wife, who began to talk with her about French literature, a region in which he felt he could not assert himself.
At the request of the sheriff, a general exit took place later. The ladies must go out on the porch and see the young people playing "the widower seeking a mate."
Mrs. Silje sat there, broad and good-natured after all the good eating, and enjoyed it.
"No, but he did not catch her this time, no. Make the strap around your waist tighter, nexttime, sir!" She smiled when the chief clerk's attempt to catch Inger-Johanna failed; "she is such a fine young lady to try for."
Mrs. Scharfenberg found that there was a draught on the stairs, and as she moved into the hall, where the sheriff's wife, always an invalid, sat wrapped up in her shawl, she could not but say to her and the judge's wife that the young lady's reckless manner of running—so that you could even see the stockings above her shoes—smacked rather much of being free. But she was sure Mrs. Silje did not find it in the least unbecoming. She remarked sharply, "She had herself gone so many times on the sunny hillside with the other girls, raking hay in her smock before she was married to the trader."
Ma, indeed, gave Inger-Johanna an anxious hint as soon as she could reach her.
"You must not run so violently, child. It does not look well—you must let yourself be caught."
"By that chief clerk—never!"
Ma sighed.
They kept on with the game till tea time, when those who had been missing after dinner again showed themselves in a rested condition, ready to begin a game of Boston for the evening.
"But Jörgen—where is Jörgen?"
In obedience to the call, somewhat pale and in a cold perspiration, but with a bold front, he came down from the office building, where he had beensitting, smoking tobacco on the sly with the sheriff's clerk and "the execution horse," whose racy designation was due to his unpopular portion of the sheriff's functions.
The game of Boston was continued after supper with violent defeats and quite wonderful exposed hands, between the judge, the captain, the sheriff, and the attorney.
In the other room Ma sat uneasy, wondering when father would think of breaking up—they had a very long journey home, and it was already ten o'clock. The sheriff had urged them in vain to remain all night; but it didn't answer this time; Jäger had definite reasons why they must be home again to-morrow.
She sat in silence, resting her hopes on the sharp little Mrs. Scharfenberg, trusting she would soon dare to show herself in the door of the card room.
But it dragged on; the other ladies were certainly resting their hope on her.
She nodded to Inger-Johanna. "Can't you go in," she whispered, "and remind your father a little of the time—but only as if of your own accord?"
Finally at eleven o'clock they were sitting in the carriage—after the sheriff had again asserted, on the steps, his privilege of an old man towards the young ladies. He was a real master in meeting all the playful ways they had of escaping in order to be saved from the smacking good-by.
The chief clerk and Candidate Horn went with the carriage to the gate.
"It was neither for your sake nor mine, Ma," said the captain.
He was driving, but turned incessantly in order to hear the talk in the carriage, and throw in an observation with it. Jörgen and Thea, who had kept modestly quiet the whole day, but had made many observations, nevertheless, were now on a high horse; Thea especially plumed herself as the only soul who had succeeded in escaping the sheriff.
And now they were on the way home in the light, quiet July night, up hill and up hill—in places down, foot by foot, step by step, except where they dared to let the carriage go faster as they came to the bottom of a hill.
A good level mile or two, where they could all sit in the carriage, was passed over at a gentle jog-trot. It was sultry with a slightly moist fragrance from the hay-cocks, and a slight impression of twilight over the land—Great-Ola yawned, the captain yawned, the horses yawned, Jörgen nodded, Thea slept, wrapped up under Ma's shawl. Now and then they were roused by the rushing of a mountain brook, as it flowed foaming under a bridge in the road.
Inger-Johanna sat dreaming, and at last saw a yellowish brown toad before her, with small, curiouseyes and a great mouth—and then it rose up, so puffed up and ungainly, and hopped down towards her.
The horses stopped.
"Oh, I believe I was dreaming about the sheriff!" said Inger-Johanna, as she woke up shivering.
"We must get out here," came sleepily from the captain, "on the Rognerud hills; Ma can stay in with Thea."
The day was beginning to dawn. They saw the sun bathe the mountain tops in gold and the light creep down the slopes. The sun lay as it were still, and peeped at them first, till it at once bounded over the crest in the east like a golden ball, and colored red the wooded mountain sides and hills on the west side, clear down to the greensward shining with dew.
Still they toiled, foot by foot, up the hills.
On the Gilje lands the people had already been a long time at work spreading out the hay, when they saw them coming.
"It is good to be home again," declared Ma. "I wonder if Marit has remembered to hang the trout in the smoke."
Marit came rushing out of the door of the porch: "There was a fine city traveller came this way last night! He who was here two years ago, and had his shoes mended. I did not know anything better than to let him sleep in the blue chamber."
"Oh, ho! Student Grip! I suppose he is on his way towards home."
Ma looked at once at Inger-Johanna; she fell into a reverie. She stepped hurriedly out of the carriage.
"Jäger is going surveying to-morrow a long distance into the mountains,—clear over to the Grönnelidsaeters," Ma said to him, when he came out of his room in the morning, "and there is so much that must be done."
"So—oh—and to-morrow early." The student hesitated. "My plan is to go home over the mountain, as I did last time—to get a little really fresh air, away from the stuffy town air and the lawbooks."
"But then you could go with Jäger? It will be thirty-five to forty miles you could go together up in the mountains—and for Jäger, it would be a real pleasure to have company. You won't have any objection, I suppose, to my putting up something for you to eat by the way?"
"Thanks—I thank you very much for all your kindness."
"She will not have me, that is plain," he muttered, while he wandered about the yard during the forenoon; they were all asleep except the mistress. But he did not come here to escort the captain.
In the afternoon, when it began to grow a little cool, the captain, Inger-Johanna, Jörgen, andStudent Grip took the lonely road to the mill. Great-Ola and Aslak, the crofter, went with them—something was to be done to the mill-wheel, now that the stream was almost dry.
They stood there studying eagerly how the wheel could best be raised off the axis.
"That Jörgen, that Jörgen, he has got the hang of the wheel!" exclaimed the captain. "You can get Tore, the joiner, to help, Ola, as soon as you come back with the horses from the mountain—and let Jörgen show you how: he understands it, he does—if it is only not a book, he is clever enough."
"You will have to take hold of your forelock and try and cram, Jörgen; do as you did with the rye-pudding—the sooner it is eaten, the sooner it is over," said Grip, to comfort him.
"Look here, I came near forgetting the fish-lines for to-morrow. You will have to go down to the store this evening, Jörgen. We catch the trout ourselves up there, as you will see," said the captain, turning to Grip.
"Oh—oh—yes," he puffed, while they were sauntering toward home together. "I certainly need to go to the mountains now, I always come down again three or four pounds lighter."
"I have wandered about that part of the country from the time I was a schoolboy," remarked Grip. "We must put Lake Bygdin into the geography—thatit was discovered only a few years ago, in the middle of a broad mountain plateau, which only some reindeer hunter or other knew anything about."
"Not laid down on any map, no—as blank as in the interior of Africa, marked out as unexplored," the captain pointed out. "But then there is traffic going on between the districts, both of people and cattle, and the mountains have their names from ancient times down among the common people."
"True, the natives also knew the interior of Africa, but on that account it is not called discovered by the civilized world," said Grip, smiling. "I always wondered what could be found in such a mysterious region in the middle of the country. There might be a great deal there: valleys entirely deserted from ancient times—old, sunken timber halls, and then wild reindeer rushing here and there over the wastes."
"Yes, shooting," agreed the captain; "we get many a tender reindeer steak from over there."
"It was that which attracted me, when I met the reindeer hunter two years ago: I wanted to explore a little, to see what there was there."
"Exactly like all that we imagined about the city," exclaimed Inger-Johanna.
"You ought to go with your father part of the way over the mountains, Miss Inger-Johanna—see if you could find some lofty bower."
"That is an idea, not at all stupid," broke in the captain, "not impossible, not at all! You could ride all the way to the Grönnelidsaeters."
"Ah, if you could carry that through, father!" she exclaimed earnestly. "Now I have also taken a fancy to see what there is there—I believe we always thought the world ended over there at our ownsaeterpastures."
"I have some blankets on the pack-saddle, and where they can get a roof over my head there will be room enough for you too.—Come, come, Morten, will you let people alone!" The captain took out a roll of tobacco and held a piece out to the stable goat, that was coming, leaping, towards them from the yard. "There, mumble-beard—he will have his allowance, the rascal.—Ma," he called, when he saw her coming from the storehouse, "what would you say if I should take Inger-Johanna with me to-morrow? Then they will have company home on Friday with Ola and the horses—she and Jörgen."
"But, dear Jäger, why should she go up there?"
"She can pass the night at Grönnelidsaeter."
"Such a fatiguing trip! It is absolutely without a path and wild where you must go."
"She can ride the horse a good ways beyond thesaeter. Svarten will go as steady as a minister with her and the pack-saddle—both on the mountain and in the bog. I will take the dun horse myself."He had become very eager at the prospect of taking her with him. "Certainly, you shall go. You must put a good lot in the provision bag, Ma. We must be off early to-morrow at five o'clock. Tronberg will join us with a horse farther up, so there will be a way of giving you a mount also, Grip."
Grip started on a run with Jörgen towards the yard, finally caught him, and drove him in through the open kitchen window.
The captain, with his neck burned brown, toiled, red and sweating in his shirt-sleeves, in the mountain fields up under Torsknut.
The packhorses went first with Inger-Johanna and all the equipment, and by the side of the captain walked some farmers who carried their coats on sticks over their shoulders on account of the heat, and eagerly pointed out bounds and marks, every time they stopped and he was to draw some line or other as a possible connection.
They had passed the night at the Grönnelidsaetersand been out on the moors making a sketch survey at five o'clock in the morning, had ridden over flat mountain wastes among willow thickets, while the horses, step by step, waded across windings of the same river.
Now they stopped again after a steep ascent to wait for Tronberg, whom they had seen below on the hills.
The captain took out his spy-glass, and after a cursory glance over the shining icy fields which lay like a distant sea of milk, turned it farther and farther down.
The perspiration rolled in great drops off his forehead and eyelids, so that the glass was blurred, and he was obliged to wipe it again with his large, worn silk handkerchief.
Then he rested the spy-glass on the back of the packhorse, and held it still a long time. "That must be the Rognelid folk, after all, who are moving there west of Braekstad heights. What do you say?"
The people to whom he turned needed only to shade their eyes to agree with him that it was the opposite party whom they were to meet the next morning at Lake Tiske. But they were too polite fellows to express it otherwise than by saying in a flattering manner, "What a spy-glass the captain has!"
During this surveying business he was borne, so to speak, on a royal cushion by the anxious interests of both parties to the contest; it contributed to the pleasure he took in his trips in the mountains in summer to feel himself in that way lifted up by their hands.
"Have you been fishing, Tronberg?" he shouted when the head of the subaltern's "Rauen" appeared nodding down in the steep path. "Trout! Caught to-day?"
"This morning, Captain."
The captain took up the string and looked at the gills. "Yes, they are to-day's."
The subaltern took off his hat, and dried his forehead and head. "One could easily have fried the fish on the rocky wall in the whole of that pan of a valley over there that I came through," Tronberg said.
"Fine fish. See that, Grip,—weighs at least three pounds."
"Goodness sake, the young lady here!" exclaimed the subaltern, involuntarily bringing himself up to a salute when Inger-Johanna turned her horse round and looked at the shiny speckled fish which hung on the pack-saddle.
But old Lars Opidalen, the one who had asked for the survey, gently passed his coarse hand over hers, while he counted the trout on the willow branch. "Can such also be of the earth?" he said, quietly wondering.
"Help the young lady, Lars, while she dismounts: it is not well to ride any longer on this smooth bare rock."
The path ascended, steeper and steeper, with occasional marshy breathing places in between—it was often entirely lost in the gray mountain.
The mournful cry of a fish eagle sounded over them. It circled around, cried, and went off when Jörgen shouted at it. It must have had a nest somewhere up on that rocky wall.
The captain's shotgun was brought out, and Tronberg attempted a shot, but could not get within range. If he could only lie in wait for it behind the great stones up here!
The eagle whirled around again near them with broad, outspread wings.
Suddenly there was a report up above on the slope strewn with stones, and the eagle made some vigorous, flapping strokes with its wings; it struggled so as not to fall down.
The shot had gone through one wing, so that daylight could be seen through the hole in the feathers. The bird evidently found it difficult to preserve its equilibrium.
"What a shame!—it is wounded," exclaimed Inger-Johanna.
"Who shot?" demanded the captain, taken aback.
"Jörgen ran off with the rifle," Tronberg replied.
"Jörgen! He can't make me believe it was his first shot, the rogue! But he shot himself free from a thrashing that time—for it was a good shot, Tronberg. The rascal! He has been most strictly forbidden to meddle with guns."
"Forbidden indeed," murmured Grip. "Is it not remarkable, Miss Inger-Johanna, it is always the forbidden thing in which we are most skilful? It is exactly these prohibitions that constitute our most potent education—But that is going the wayof villains in growth, and leaves its marks behind—makes men with good heads but bad characters."
Grip and Inger-Johanna walked ahead with the horses. A strange, hazy warm smoke lay below over the marshes in the afternoon: it veiled the lines there. Up here on the mountain the air was so sparkling clear.
Foot by foot, the animals picked their way over the piles of stony débris between the enormous fallen masses which lay, scattered here and there, like moss-covered gray houses, with now and then a fairy forelock of dwarf birch upon them, while on the mountain ledges still hung yellow tufts of saxifrage.
"Only see all this warped, twisted, fairy creation. You could say that life is really turned to stone here,—and yet it bubbles up."
He stopped. "Do you know what I could wish, Miss Inger-Johanna?" There was no longer any trace of the strain of irony which usually possessed him. "Simply to be a schoolmaster!—teach the children to lay the first two sticks across by their own plain thoughts. It is the fundamental logs that are laid the wrong way in us. They ought to be allowed to believe just as much and as little as they could really swallow. And to the door with the whole host of these cherished, satisfactory prohibitions! I should only show the results—mix powder and matches together before their eyes till it went into the air, and then say, 'If you please,Jörgen, so far as I am concerned, you can go with the two things in your pocket as much as you like: it is you, yourself, who will be blown into the air.' It is the sense of responsibility that is to be cultivated while the boy is growing up, if he is to be made a man."
"You have an awful lot of ideas, Grip."
"Crotchets, you mean? If I had any talent with the pen,—but I am so totally dependent on word of mouth. You see, there are only four doors, and they are called theology, philology, medicine, and law, and I have temporarily knocked at the last. What I want there, I don't know. Have you heard of the cat which they put into a glass ball and pumped the air out? It noticed that there was something wrong. It was troubled for breath; the air was constantly getting thinner and thinner; and so it put one paw on the hole. I shall also allow myself to put one paw on the draught hole—for here is a vacuum—not up in the skies with the poets, of course. There it lightens and shines, and they write about working for the people and for freedom and for everything lofty and great in as many directions as there are points on a compass—but in reality, down on the earth—for a prosaic person who would take hold and set in motion a little of the phrases—there it is entirely closed. There is no use for all our best thoughts and ideas in the practical world, I can tell you; not even so muchthat a man can manage to make himself unhappy in them.
"And so one lives as best he can his other life with his comrades, and re-baptizes himself in punch with them every time he has been really untrue to himself in the tea parties. But taste this air—every blessed breath like a glass of the finest, finest—nay, what shall I call it?"
"Punch," was the rather short answer.
"No, life! With this free nature one does not feel incited to dispute. I am in harmony with the mountain, with the sun, with all these crooked tough birch-osiers. If people down there only were themselves! But that they never are, except in a good wet party when they have got themselves sufficiently elevated from the bottom of the well. There exists a whole freemasonry, the members of which do not know each other except in that form, or else in Westerman's steam baths when Westerman whips us with fresh birch leaves in a temperature of eighty degrees. The bath-house was our fathers' national club, did you know that?"
"No, indeed; I am learning a great many new things, I think," she said, with half concealed humor.
"Listen, listen! The golden plover whistling," whispered Jörgen.
The sound came from a little marshy spot which was white with cotton grass.
They stood listening.
"Did you ever hear anything so tremendously quiet," said Grip, "after a single little peep. There are such peeps here and there in the country. Abel, he died, he did—of what? Of drink, they said"—he shook his head—"of vacuum."
He was walking in his shirt-sleeves, and flung the willow stick, which he had broken off while he was talking, far down over the rocky incline.
"There, Captain, see the line, as it has been from ancient times for Opidalen," shouted old Lars—"straight, straight along by the Notch, where we shall go down and across the lake—straight toward Rödkampen on Torsknut—there where you see the three green islands under the rocks, Captain." He shook his stick in his eagerness. "For that I shall bring witnesses—and if they were all living here who have fished on our rights in the lake, both in my father's and grandfather's time, there would be a crowd of people against their villainies in Rognelien."
The afternoon shadows fell into the Notch, where the ice-water trickled down through the cracks in the black mountain wall. Here and there the sun still shone on patches of greenish yellow reindeer moss, on some violet, white, or yellow little clusters of high mountain flowers, which exemplified the miracle of living their tinted life of beauty up here close to the snow.
"There comes Mathis with the boat," exclaimed old Lars.
The boat, which was to carry them over to the shelter, crept like an insect far below them on the green mirror of the lake.
The going down was real recreation for the captain's rather stout body, short of breath as he was, and the prospect of being able to indulge in his favorite sport, fishing, contributed greatly to enlivening his temper.
"We are coming here just at the right time: they will bite," he suggested.
When they embarked in the square trough, which was waiting for them down by the fishing-hut, he had the line ready. He had already, with great activity, taken care of the bait, carried in a goat's horn.
Those of the train who could not be accommodated in the boat went around the lake with the horses. They saw them now and then on the crags, while they rowed out.
"What do you say to a trial along the shore there in the shade, Mathis? Don't you think they will take the hook there?—We are not rowing so straight over at once, I think," said the captain slyly.
Under the thwarts Mathis's own line was lying; and Inger-Johanna also wanted to try her hand at it.
The captain put the bait on for her. But she would not sit and wait till they reached the fishingplace; she threw the line out at once and let it trail behind the boat, while, as they rowed, she, off and on, gave a strong pull at it.
"See how handy she is," exclaimed the captain; "it is inborn—you come from a race of fishermen, for I was brought up in the Bergen district, and my father before me. If I had a dollar for every codfish I have pulled out of Alverströmmen, there would be something worth inheriting from me—What! what!"
A swirl was heard far behind in the wake. Inger-Johanna gave a vigorous pull; the yellow belly of a fish appeared a moment in the sunlight above the surface of the water.
She continued, after the first feverish jerk upon the line, in a half risen position, to pull it in.
When she lifted the shining fish high upon the edge of the boat, she burst out into a triumphant cry, "The first fish I have ever caught!"
Grip took the fish off the hook, and threw it far off. "Then it shall also be allowed to keep its life!"
The captain angrily moved his heavy body, so that it shook the boat. But that the ill-timed offering to the deep was made for the honor of the apple of his eye greatly mitigated the stupidity.
And when they got in under the knoll, where he cast his line, he suddenly sang a verse from his youthful recollections of the Bergen quarter, which had slumbered in him for many a long year.