Chapter VIII
Jörgenmust start on his journey before the sleighing disappeared, for the bad roads when the frost was coming out might last till St. John's Day, and to harness the horses in such going would be stark madness. If he were not to lose a whole year, he must go early and be prepared privately for admission to school.
Jörgen was lost in meditations and thoughts about all that from which he was about to be separated. The gun, the sleds, the skis, the turning-lathe, the tools, the wind-mill, and the corn-mill left behind there on the hills, all must be devised with discretion—naturally to Thea first and foremost, on condition that she should take care of them till he came home again.
If he had been asked what he would rather be, he would doubtless have answered "turner," "miller," or "smith;" the last thing in the world which would have presented itself to his range of ideas, to say nothing of coming up as a bent or a longing, would have been the lifting up to the loftier regions of books. But Greece and Latium were lying like an unalterable fate across his path, so that there was nothing to do or even to think about.
On the day of his departure, the pockets of his new clothes, which were made out of the captain'sold ones, were a complete depository for secret despatches.
First, a long letter of fourteen pages, written in the night, blotted with tears, from Thinka to Inger-Johanna, in which with full details she gave the origin, continuation, and hopeless development of her love for Aas. She had three keepsakes from him—a little breastpin, the cologne bottle which he had given her on the Christmas tree, and then his letter to her with a lock of his hair on the morning he had to leave the office. And even if she could not now act against the wishes of her parents, but would rather make herself unhappy, still she had promised herself faithfully never to forget him, to think of him till the last hour.
The second despatch was from Ma to Aunt Alette, and contained—besides some economical propositions—a little suggestion about sounding Inger-Johanna when Captain Rönnow returned from Paris. Ma could not quite understand her this last time.
The captain had never imagined that there would be such a vacuum after Jörgen was gone. In his way he had been the occasion of so much mental excitement, so many exertions and anxieties, and so much heightened furious circulation of blood, that now he was away the captain had lost quite a stimulating influence. He had now no longer anyone to look after and supervise with eyes in the back of his head, to exercise his acuteness on, or take by surprise—only the quiet, unassailable Thea to keep school with.
The doctor prescribed a blood-purifying dandelion tonic for him.
And now when the spring came—dazzling light, gleaming water everywhere, with melting patches of snow and its vanguards of red stone broken on the steep mountain sides—Thinka, with a case-knife in her numb hands, was out in the meadow gathering dandelion roots. They were small, young, and still tender, but they were becoming stronger day by day.
The captain, with military punctuality, at seven o'clock every morning emptied the cup prepared for him and stormed out.
To-day a fierce, boisterous, icy cold blast of rain with hail and snow met him at the outer door and blew far in on the floor. The sides of the mountains were white again.
These last mornings he was accustomed to run down over the newly broken-up potato field, which was being ploughed; but in this weather—
"We must give up the field work, Ola," he announced as his resolution in the yard—"it looks as if the nags would rather have to go out with the snow-plough."
He trudged away; it was not weather to standstill in. The rain drove and pounded in showers down over the windows in the sitting-room with great ponds of water, so that it must be continually mopped up and cloths placed on the window-seats.
Ma and Thinka stood there in the gray daylight over the fruit of their common work at the loom this winter—a roller with still unbleached linen, which they measured out into tablecloths and napkins.
The door opened wide, and the captain's stout form appeared, enveloped in a dripping overcoat.
"I met a stranger down here with something for you, Thinka—wrapped up in oil-cloth. Can you guess whom it is from?"
Thinka dropped the linen, and blushing red advanced a step towards him, but immediately shook her head.
"Rejerstad, that execution-horse, had it with him on his trip up. He was to leave it here." The captain stood inspecting the package. "The sheriff's seal—Bring me the scissors."
In his officiousness, he did not give himself time to take his coat off.
"A para-sol!—A beautiful—new—" Thinka burst out. She remained standing and gazing at it.
"See the old—Hanged if the sheriff isn't making up to you, Thinka."
"Don't you see that here is 'philopena' on the seal, Jäger?" Ma put in, to afford a cover.
"I won a philopena from him—on New Year's Day, when father and I took dinner at Pastor Horn's—after church. I had entirely forgotten it," she said in a husky tone. Her eyes glanced from the floor halfway up to her parents, as she quietly went out, leaving the parasol lying on the table.
"I guess you will use your linen for a wedding outfit, Ma," said the captain, slapping his hands and swinging his hat with a flourish. "What would you say to the sheriff for a son-in-law here at Gilje?"
"You saw that Thinka went out, Jäger." Ma's voice trembled a little. "Very likely she is thinking that it is not long since his wife was laid in the grave. Thinka is very good, and would like to submit to us; but there may be limits to what we can ask." There was something precipitate in her movements over the linen, which indicated internal disturbance.
"The sheriff, Ma; is not he a catch? Fine, handsome man in his best years. Faith, I don't know what you women will have. And, Gitta," he reminded her, a little moved, "it is just the men who have lived most happily in their first marriage who marry again the soonest."
Time flew with tearing haste towards St. John's Day. Spring was brewing in the air and over the lakes. The meadow stood moist and damp, hillock on hillock, like the luxuriant forelocks of horses. The swollen brooks sighed and roared with freshlyshining banks. They boiled over, as it were, with the power of the same generating life and sap that made the buds burst in alder, willow, and birch almost audibly, and shows its nature in the bouncing, vigorous movements of the mountain boy, in his rapid speech, his lively, shining eyes, and his elastic walk.
At the beginning of summer a letter came from Inger-Johanna, the contents of which set the captain's thoughts into a new flight:
June 14, 1843
Dear Parents,—At last a little breath to write to you. Captain Rönnow went away yesterday, and I have as yet hardly recovered my balance from the two or three weeks of uninterrupted sociability while he was here.
It will be pleasant to get out to Tilderöd next week on top of all this. It is beginning to be hot and oppressive here in the city.
There did not pass a day that we were not at a party, either at dinner or in the evening; but the pearl of them was aunt's own little dinners, which she has a reputation for, and at which we spoke only French. The conversation ran on so easily, one expresses one's self so differently, and our thoughts capture each other's already half guessed. Rönnow certainly speaks French brilliantly.
A man who carries himself as he does makes acertain noble, masterly impression; you are transported into an atmosphere of chivalric manly dignity, and hear the spurs jingle, I had almost said musically; you almost forget that there are those who stamp their feet.
When I compare the awkward compliments at balls, which may come smack in your face, with Captain Rönnow's manner of saying and not saying and yet getting a thing in, then I do not deny that I get the feeling of a kind of exhilarating pleasure. He claimed that he had such an illusion from sitting opposite me at the table. I resembled so much a portrait of a historic lady which he had seen at the Louvre; naturally she had black hair and carried her neck haughtily and looked before her, smiling, with an expression which might have been characterized, "I wait—and reject—till he comes, who can put me in my right place."
Well, if it amuses him to think of such things, then I am happy to receive the compliments. It is true there are such godfathers and uncles who are utterly infatuated with their goddaughters, and spoil them with nonsense and sweets. I am afraid that Rönnow is a little inclined to this so far as I am concerned, for, sensible and straightforward as he always is, he continually launches out into superlatives in relation to me; and I really cannot help thinking that it is both flattering and pleasant when he is continually saying that I am made for presidingwhere ladies and gentlemen of the higher circles are received. He really must think more of me than I deserve, because he sees that I am perhaps a little more open and direct than others, and have no natural gift at concealing what I mean, when I am in society.
Yes, yes, that is the thanks you get because you have continually spoiled me; in any case, I do not immediately creep under a chair, but try to sit where I am sitting as long as possible.
But, now, why hasn't such a man married? If he had been younger, and I just a little vainer, he might almost have been dangerous. He still has fine black hair—a little thin, and perhaps he takes a little too much pains with it. There is one thing I cannot understand, and that is why people try to conceal their age.
The captain gave a poke at his wig: "When one goes a-courting, Ma," he said, smiling.
Two mail days later he came home from the post-office with a long letter from Aunt Alette to Ma. She was not a favorite of his. In the first place she was too "well read and cultured;" in the second place she was "sweet;" lastly, she was an old maid.
He seated himself in an armchair, with his arms folded before him, to have it read to him. He plainly regarded it as a bitter document.
My dear Gitta,—It is no easy task, but really a rather complicated and difficult one, you have laid upon the shoulders of an old maid, even if she is your never failing, faithful Aunt Alette. If we could only have talked together, you would have soon guessed my meaning; but now there is no other way for me to free my conscience than to write and write, till it has all come out that I have on my mind.
Now you know well enough that the governor's wife is not in my line, and if it had not been for what you wrote me when you sent Inger-Johanna here, I certainly should not have moved my old limbs so far out of the old town where I have my circle of firm friends, and gone in to make formal calls at the governor's, notwithstanding she is always excessively friendly and means it, too, I dare say.
First and foremost, I must tell you that Inger-Johanna is a lady in every respect, but still with more substance to her, if I may express myself so, and stronger will than our poor Eleonore. It is certain that she in many ways overawes, not to say domineers over, your sister-in-law, strict and domineering as she otherwise has the reputation of being. And, therefore, she must resort to underhand means in many things, when she finds that it won't do to play the game openly before Inger-Johanna, which, according to my best convictions, has been the case with regard to the captain. He certainly came herethis time from his trip to Paris with the full intent of completing his courting, after, like a wise and prudent general, having first surveyed the ground with his own eyes. Simply the manner in which he always addressed and paid his respects to her would have convinced a blind person of that.
The only one, however, who does not understand it, notwithstanding she is besieged in a thousand ways, is the object of his attentions herself. She sits there in the midst of the incense, truly protected against the shrewdness of the whole world by her natural innocence, which is doubly surprising, and, old Aunt Alette says, to be admired in her who is so remarkably clever.
I will not, indeed, absolve her from being a little giddy at all the incense which he and your sister-in-law incessantly burn before her (and what elderly, experienced person would not tolerate and forgive this in a young girl!) But the giddiness does not tend to the desired result, namely, the falling in love, but only makes her a little puffed up in her feeling of being a perfect lady, and is limited to her doing homage to him as the knightly cavalier and—her father's highly honored friend.
It is this, which he, so to speak, is for the present beaten back by, so he is going abroad again, and this evidently after consultation with your sister-in-law. Inger-Johanna, if my old eyes do not deceive me,—and something we two have seen andexperienced, both separately and together, in this world, dear Gitta,—is not found ready for the matrimonial question, inasmuch as her vanity and pride have hitherto appeared as a feeling entirely isolated from this.
There was a snore from the leather-covered chair, and Ma continued, more softly:
She may, indeed, and that tolerably earnestly, wish to rule over a fine salon; but she has not yet been brought clearly to comprehend that with it she must take the man who owns it. There is something in her open nature which always keeps the distance between these two questions too wide for even a captain of cavalry to leap over it. God bless her!
Love is like an awakening, without which we neither know nor understand anything of its holy language; and unhappy are they who learn to know it too late, when they have imprisoned themselves in the so-called bonds of duty. I am almost absolutely sure that love has not yet been awakened in Inger-Johanna—may a good angel protect her!
"Ouf!—such old maids," said the captain, waking up. "Go on, go on—is there any more?"
How far the young student who has a position inthe office is in any degree a hindrance to these plans, I don't dare to say, either pro or con. But the governor's wife thinks or fears something, I am firmly convinced from her whole manner of treating him lately, although she is far too bright to let Inger-Johanna get even the slightest suspicion of her real reason.
I heard it plainly when I took coffee there on Sunday, before they went away to Tilderöd, and she had the maid tell him that she could not see him. There was a not very gracious allusion to his "Sunday professorship of pettifogging ideas," as she called it.
I suppose these must be something of the same sort of ideas that I was enthusiastic about when I was young and read Rousseau'sÉmile, which absorbed me very much, nay, which can yet occupy some of my thoughts. For she stated, as one of his leading ideas, that he, in his headlong blindness, thought that he could simplify the world, and first and foremost education, to a very few natural propositions or so-called principles. And you know, we—still, that is going to be quite too long. To be brief, when Inger-Johanna with impetuosity rushed to the defence of Grip, she saw in him only the son of the idiotic "cadet at Lurleiken," as he is called, one of the well-known, amusing figures of the country; but this one, in addition to his father's distracted ideas, was also equipped with a faculty ofusing that fearful weapon, satire—voilàthe phantom Grip!
Youthful student ideas could perhaps be used gracefully enough as piquant topics of conversation; but instead of that, to set them in motion in a headlong and sensational manner, without regard to the opinion of older people, was a great step, was pretentious, and showed something immature, something raw, which by no means ought to be relished.
I have reported this so much at length in order to show you by the very expressions that there may be here a "good deal of cotton in the linen," as the saying is.
And since I am going to bring my innermost heart to light, I shall have to tell you that he appears to me to be a trustworthy, truthful young man, whose natural disposition is as he speaks and not otherwise, and he carries a beautiful stamp on his countenance and in his whole bearing. If possibly he is a little forgetful of "My son, if you want to get on in the world, then bow," that is worst for him and not to his dishonor, we know.
It was also a truly refreshing enjoyment for me, as if looking into the kingdom of youth, awakening many thoughts, to talk with him, the two evenings this winter when he accompanied me, an old woman, home from the governor's (for him, I have no doubt, a very small pleasure), all the way out to the oldtown, when otherwise I should have been obliged to go anxiously with my servant-girl and a lantern.
"Bah! nobody will attack her," growled the captain, bored.