It seemed as though the spring would never come. All through April the
north wind blew and the nights were frosty. In the middle of the day the
sun shone so warmly that a few big flies began to buzz around, and the
lark proclaimed, on its word of honor, that it was the height of summer.
But the lark is the most untrustworthy creature under heaven. However
much it might freeze at night, the frost was forgotten at the first
sunbeam; and the lark soared, singing, high over the heath, until it
bethought itself that it was hungry.
Then it sank slowly down in wide circles, singing, and beating time to
its song with the flickering of its wings. But a little way from
the earth it folded its wings and dropped like a stone down into the
heather.
The lapwing tripped with short steps among the hillocks, and nodded its
head discreetly. It had no great faith in the lark, and repeated its
wary “Bi litt! Bi litt!” [Note: “Wait a bit! Wait a bit!” Pronounced
_Bee leet_] A couple of mallards lay snuggling in a marsh-hole, and the
elder one was of opinion that spring would not come until we had rain.
Far on into May the meadows were still yellow; only here and there on
the sunny leas was there any appearance of green. But if you lay down
upon the earth you could see a multitude of little shoots--some thick,
others as thin as green darning-needles--which thrust their heads
cautiously up through the mould. But the north wind swept so coldly over
them that they turned yellow at the tips, and looked as if they would
like to creep back again.
But that they could not do; so they stood still and waited, only
sprouting ever so little in the midday sun.
The mallard was right; it was rain they wanted. And at last it
came--cold in the beginning, but gradually warmer; and when it was over
the sun came out in earnest. And now you would scarcely have known
it again; it shone warmly, right from the early morning till the late
evening, so that the nights were mild and moist.
Then an immense activity set in; everything was behindhand, and had to
make up for lost time. The petals burst from the full buds with a little
crack, and all the big and little shoots made a sudden rush. They darted
out stalks, now to the one side, now to the other, as quickly as though
they lay kicking with green legs. The meadows were spangled with flowers
and weeds, and the heather slopes towards the sea began to light up.
Only the yellow sand along the shore remained as it was; it has no
flowers to deck itself with, and lyme-grass is all its finery. Therefore
it piles itself up into great mounds, seen far and wide along the shore,
on which the long soft stems sway like a green banner.
There the sand-pipers ran about so fast that their legs looked like
a piece of a tooth comb. The sea-gulls walked on the beach, where the
waves could sweep over their legs. They held themselves sedately, their
heads depressed and their crops protruded, like old ladies in muddy
weather.
The sea-pie stood with his heels together, in his tight trousers, his
black swallow-tail, and his white waistcoat.
“Til By’n! Til By’n!” he cried [Note: “To Town! To Town!”], and at each
cry he made a quick little bow, so that his coat tails whisked up behind
him.
Up in the heather the lapwing flew about flapping her wings. The spring
had overtaken her so suddenly that she had not had time to find a proper
place for her nest. She had laid her eggs right in the middle of a
flat-topped mound. It was all wrong, she knew that quite well; but it
could not be helped now.
The lark laughed at it all; but the sparrows were all in a hurry-scurry.
They were not nearly ready. Some had not even a nest; others had laid
an egg or two; but the majority had sat on the cow-house roof, week out,
week in, chattering about the almanac.
Now they were in such a fidget they did not know where to begin. They
held a meeting in a great rose-bush, beside the Pastor’s garden-fence,
all cackling and screaming together. The cock-sparrows ruffled
themselves up, so that all their feathers stood straight on end; and
then they perked their tails up slanting in the air, so that they looked
like little gray balls with a pin stuck in them. So they trundled down
the branches and ricochetted away over the meadow.
All of a sudden, two dashed against each other. The rest rushed up,
and all the little balls wound themselves into one big one. It rolled
forward from under the bush, rose with a great hubbub a little way into
the air, then fell in one mass to the earth and went to pieces. And
then, without uttering a sound, each of the little balls suddenly went
his way, and a moment afterwards there was not a sparrow to be seen
about the whole Parsonage.
Little Ansgarius had watched the battle of the sparrows with lively
interest. For, in his eyes, it was a great engagement, with charges and
cavalry skirmishes. He was reading _Universal History_ and the _History
of Norway_ with his father, and therefore everything that happened about
the house assumed a martial aspect in one way or another. When the cows
came home in the evening, they ware great columns of infantry advancing;
the hens were the volunteer forces, and the cock was Burgomaster Nansen.
Ansgarius was a clever boy, who had all his dates at his fingers’ ends;
but he had no idea of the meaning of time. Accordingly, he jumbled
together Napoleon and Eric Blood-Axe and Tiberius; and on the ships
which he saw sailing by in the offing he imagined Tordenskiold doing
battle, now with Vikings, and now with the Spanish Armada.
In a secret den behind the summer-house he kept a red broom-stick, which
was called Bucephalus. It was his delight to prance about the garden
with his steed between his legs, and a flowerstick in his hand.
A little way from the garden there was a hillock with a few small trees
upon it. Here he could lie in ambush and keep watch far and wide over
the heathery levels and the open sea.
He never failed to descry one danger or another drawing near; either
suspicious-looking boats on the beach, or great squadrons of cavalry
advancing so cunningly that they looked like nothing but a single horse.
But Ansgarius saw through their stealthy tactics; he wheeled Bucephalus
about, tore down from the mound and through the garden, and dashed at a
gallop into the farm-yard. The hens shrieked as if their last hour
had come, and Burgomaster Nansen flew right against the Pastor’s study
window.
The Pastor hurried to the window, and just caught sight of Bucephalus’s
tail as the hero dashed round the corner of the cow-house, where he
proposed to place himself in a posture of defence.
“That boy is deplorably wild,” thought the Pastor. He did not at all
like all these martial proclivities. Ansgarius was to be a man of peace,
like the Pastor himself; and it was a positive pain to him to see how
easily the boy learned and assimilated everything that had to do with
war and fighting.
The Pastor would try now and then to depict the peaceful life of the
ancients or of foreign nations. But he made little impression. Ansgarius
pinned his faith to what he found in his book; and there it was nothing
but war after war. The people were all soldiers, the heroes waded in
blood; and it was fruitless labor for the Pastor to try to awaken the
boy to any sympathy with those whose blood they waded in.
It would occur to the Pastor now and again that it might, perhaps,
have been better to have filled the young head from the first with more
peaceful ideas and images than the wars of rapacious monarchs or the
murders and massacres of our forefathers. But then he remembered that he
himself had gone through the same course in his boyhood, so that it must
be all right. Ansgarius would be a man of peace none the less--and if
not! “Well, everything is in the hand of Providence,” said the Pastor
confidingly, and set to work again at his sermon.
“You’re quite forgetting your lunch to-day, father,” said a blond head
in the door-way.
“Why, so I am, Rebecca; I’m a whole hour too late,” answered the father,
and went at once into the dining-room.
The father and daughter sat down at the luncheon-table. Ansgarius was
always his own master on Saturdays, when the Pastor was taken up with
his sermon.
You would not easily have found two people who suited each other better,
or who lived on terms of more intimate friendship, than the Pastor and
his eighteen-year-old daughter. She had been motherless from childhood;
but there was so much that was womanly in her gentle, even-tempered
father, that the young girl, who remembered her mother only as a pale
face that smiled on her, felt the loss rather as a peaceful sorrow than
as a bitter pain.
And for him she came to fill up more and more, as she ripened, the void
that had been left in his soul; and all the tenderness, which at his
wife’s death had been so clouded in sorrow and longing, now gathered
around the young woman who grew up under his eyes; so that his sorrow
was assuaged and peace descended upon his mind.
Therefore he was able to be almost like a mother to her. He taught her
to look upon the world with his own pure, untroubled eyes. It became
the better part of his aim in life to hedge her around and protect her
fragile and delicate nature from all the soilures and perturbations
which make the world so perplexing, so difficult, and so dangerous an
abiding-place.
When they stood together on the hill beside the Parsonage, gazing forth
over the surging sea, he would say: “Look, Rebecca! yonder is an image
of life--of that life in which the children of this world are tossed to
and fro; in which impure passions rock the frail skiff about, to litter
the shore at last with its shattered fragments. He only can defy the
storm who builds strong bulwarks around a pure heart--at his feet the
waves break powerlessly.”
Rebecca clung to her father; she felt so safe by his side. There was
such a radiance over all he said, that when she thought of the future
she seemed to see the path before her bathed in light. For all her
questions he had an answer; nothing was too lofty for him, nothing too
lowly. They exchanged ideas without the least constraint, almost like
brother and sister.
And yet one point remained dark between them. On all other matters she
would question her father directly; here she had to go indirectly to
work, to get round something which she could never get over.
She knew her father’s great sorrow; she knew what happiness he had
enjoyed and lost. She followed with the warmest sympathy the varying
fortunes of the lovers in the books she read aloud during the winter
evenings; her heart understood that love, which brings the highest
joy, may also cause the deepest sorrow. But apart from the sorrows of
ill-starred love, she caught glimpses of something else--a terrible
something which she did not understand. Dark forms would now and then
appear to her, gliding through the paradise of love, disgraced and
abject. The sacred name of love was linked with the direst shame and the
deepest misery. Among people whom she knew, things happened from time
to time which she dared not think about; and when, in stern but guarded
words, her father chanced to speak of moral corruption, she would
shrink, for hours afterwards, from meeting his eye.
He remarked this and was glad. In such sensitive purity had she grown
up, so completely had he succeeded in holding aloof from her whatever
could disturb her childlike innocence, that her soul was like a shining
pearl to which no mire could cling.
He prayed that he might ever keep her thus!
So long as he himself was there to keep watch, no harm should approach
her. And if he was called away, he had at least provided her with armor
of proof for life, which would stand her in good stead on the day of
battle. And a day of battle no doubt would come. He gazed at her with
a look which she did not understand, and said with his strong faith,
“Well, well, everything is in the hand of Providence!”
“Haven’t you time to go for a walk with me to-day, father?” asked
Rebecca, when they had finished dinner.
“Why, yes; do you know, I believe it would do me good. The weather is
delightful, and I’ve been so industrious that my sermon is as good as
finished.”
They stepped out upon the threshold before the main entrance, which
faced the other buildings of the farm. There was this peculiarity about
the Parsonage, that the high-road, leading to the town, passed right
through the farm-yard. The Pastor did not at all like this, for before
everything he loved peace and quietness; and although the district was
sufficiently out-of-the-way, there was always a certain amount of life
on the road which led to the town.
But for Ansgarius the little traffic that came their way was an
inexhaustible source of excitement. While the father and daughter stood
on the threshold discussing whether they should follow the road or go
through the heather down to the beach, the young warrior suddenly came
rushing up the hill and into the yard. He was flushed and out of breath,
and Bucephalus was going at a hand gallop. Right before the door he
reined in his horse with a sudden jerk, so that he made a deep gash in
the sand; and swinging his sword, he shouted, “They’re coming, they’re
coming!”
“Who are coming?” asked Rebecca.
“Snorting black chargers and three war chariots full of men-at-arms.”
“Rubbish, my boy!” said his father, sternly.
“Three phaetons are coming with townspeople in them,” said Ansgarius,
and dismounted with an abashed air.
“Let us go in, Rebecca,” said the Pastor, turning.
But at the same moment the foremost horses came at a quick pace over the
brow of the hill. They were not exactly snorting chargers; yet it was a
pretty sight as carriage after carriage came into view in the sunshine,
full of merry faces and lively colors. Rebecca could not help stopping.
On the back seat of the foremost carriage sat an elderly gentleman and
a buxom lady. On the front seat she saw a young lady; and just as they
entered the yard, a gentleman who sat at her side stood up, and, with a
word of apology to the lady on the back seat, turned and looked forward
past the driver. Rebecca gazed at him without knowing what she was
doing.
“How lovely it is here!” cried the young man.
For the Parsonage lay on the outermost slope towards the sea, so that
the vast blue horizon suddenly burst upon you as you entered the yard.
The gentleman on the back seat leaned a little forward. “Yes, it’s
very pretty here,” he said; “I’m glad that you appreciate our peculiar
scenery, Mr. Lintzow.”
At the same moment the young man’s glance met Rebecca’s, and she
instantly lowered her eyes. But he stopped the driver, and cried, “Let
us remain here!”
“Hush!” said the older lady, with a low laugh. “This won’t do, Mr.
Lintzow; this is the Parsonage.”
“It doesn’t matter,” cried the young man, merrily, as he jumped out of
the carriage. “I say,” he shouted backward towards the other carriages,
“sha’n’t we rest here?”
“Yes, yes,” came the answer in chorus; and the merry party began at once
to alight.
But now the gentleman on the back seat rose, and said, seriously: “No,
no, my friends! this really won’t do! It’s out of the question for us
to descend upon the clergyman, whom we don’t know at all. It’s only ten
minutes’ drive to the district judge’s, and there they are in the habit
of receiving strangers.”
He was on the point of giving orders to drive on, when the Pastor
appeared in the door-way, with a friendly bow. He knew Consul Hartvig by
sight--the leading man of the town.
“If your party will make the best of things here, it will be a great
pleasure to me; and I think I may say that, so far as the view goes--”
“Oh no, my dear Pastor, you’re altogether too kind; it’s out of the
question for us to accept your kind invitation, and I must really beg
you to excuse these young madcaps,” said Mrs. Hartvig, half in despair
when she saw her youngest son, who had been seated in the last carriage,
already deep in a confidential chat with Ansgarius.
“But I assure you, Mrs. Hartvig,” answered the Pastor, smiling, “that so
pleasant an interruption of our solitude would be most welcome both to
my daughter and myself.”
Mr. Lintzow opened the carriage-door with a formal bow, Consul Hartvig
looked at his wife and she at him, the Pastor advanced and renewed his
invitation, and the end was that, with half-laughing reluctance,
they alighted and suffered the Pastor to usher them into the spacious
garden-room.
Then came renewed excuses and introductions. The party consisted of
Consul Hartvig’s children and some young friends of theirs, the picnic
having been arranged in honor of Max Lintzow, a friend of the eldest son
of the house, who was spending some days as the Consul’s guest.
“My daughter Rebecca,” said the Pastor, presenting her, “who will do the
best our humble house-keeping permits.”
“No, no, I protest, my dear Pastor,” the lively Mrs. Hartvig interrupted
him eagerly, “this is going too far! Even if this incorrigible Mr.
Lintzow and my crazy sons have succeeded in storming your house
and home, I won’t resign the last remnants of my authority. The
entertainment shall most certainly be my affair. Off you go, young men,”
she said, turning to her sons, “and unpack the carriages. And you,
my dear child, must by all means go and amuse yourself with the young
people; just leave the catering to me; I know all about that.”
And the kind-hearted woman looked with her honest gray eyes at her
host’s pretty daughter, and patted her on the cheek.
How nice that felt! There was a peculiar coziness in the touch of the
comfortable old lady’s soft hand. The tears almost rose to Rebecca’s
eyes; she stood as if she expected that the strange lady would put her
arms round her neck and whisper to her something she had long waited to
hear.
But the conversation glided on. The young people, with ever-increasing
glee, brought all sorts of strange parcels out of the carriages. Mrs.
Hartvig threw her cloak upon a chair and set about arranging things as
best she could. But the young people, always with Mr. Lintzow at their
head, seemed determined to make as much confusion as possible. Even the
Pastor was infected by their merriment, and to Rebecca’s unspeakable
astonishment she saw her own father, in complicity with Mr. Lintzow,
biding a big paper parcel under Mrs. Hartvig’s cloak.
At last the racket became too much for the old lady. “My dear Miss
Rebecca,” she exclaimed, “have you not any show-place to exhibit in
the neighborhood--the farther off the better--so that I might get these
crazy beings off my hands for a little while?”
“There’s a lovely view from the King’s Knoll; and then there’s the beach
and the sea.”
“Yes, let’s go down to the sea!” cried Max Lintzow.
“That’s just what I want,” said the old lady. “If you can relieve me of
_him_ I shall be all right, for he is the worst of them all.”
“If Miss Rebecca will lead the way, I will follow wherever she pleases,”
said the young man, with a bow.
Rebecca blushed. Nothing of that sort had ever been said to her before.
The handsome young man made her a low bow, and his words had such a ring
of sincerity. But there was no time to dwell upon this impression; the
whole merry troop were soon out of the house, through the garden, and,
with Rebecca and Lintzow at their head, making their way up to the
little height which was called the King’s Knoll.
Many years ago a number of antiquities had been dug up on the top of the
Knoll, and one of the Pastor’s predecessors in the parish had planted
some hardy trees upon the slopes. With the exception of a rowan-tree,
and a walnut-avenue in the Parsonage garden, these were the only trees
to be found for miles round on the windy slopes facing the open sea.
In spite of storms and sand-drifts, they had, in the course of time,
reached something like the height of a man, and, turning their bare and
gnarled stems to the north wind, like a bent back, they stretched
forth their long, yearning arms towards the south. Rebecca’s mother had
planted some violets among them.
“Oh, how fortunate!” cried the eldest Miss Hartvig; “here are violets!
Oh, Mr. Lintzow, do pick me a bouquet of them for this evening!”
The young man, who had been exerting himself to hit upon the right tone
in which to converse with Rebecca, fancied that the girl started at Miss
Frederica’s words.
“You are very fond of the violets?” he said, softly.
She looked up at him in surprise; how could he possibly know that?
“Don’t you think, Miss Hartvig, that it would be better to pick the
flowers just as we are starting, so that they may keep fresher?”
“As you please,” she answered, shortly.
“Let’s hope she’ll forget all about it by that time,” said Max Lintzow
to himself, under his breath.
But Rebecca heard, and wondered what pleasure he could find in
protecting her violets, instead of picking them for that handsome girl.
After they had spent some time in admiring the limitless prospect, the
party left the Knoll and took a foot-path downward towards the beach.
On the smooth, firm sand, at the very verge of the sea, the young people
strolled along, conversing gayly. Rebecca was at first quite confused.
It seemed as though these merry towns-people spoke a language she did
not understand. Sometimes she thought they laughed at nothing; and, on
the other hand, she herself often could not help laughing at their cries
of astonishment and their questions about everything they saw.
But gradually she began to feel at her ease among these good-natured,
kindly people; the youngest Miss Hartvig even put her arm around her
waist as they walked. And then Rebecca, too, thawed; she joined in their
laughter, and said what she had to say as easily and freely as any of
the others. It never occurred to her to notice that the young men, and
especially Mr. Lintzow, were chiefly taken up with her; and the little
pointed speeches which this circumstance called forth from time to time
were as meaningless for her as much of the rest of the conversation.
They amused themselves for some time with running down the shelving
beach every time the wave receded, and then rushing up again when the
next wave came. And great was the glee when one of the young men was
overtaken, or when a larger wave than usual sent its fringe of foam
right over the slope, and forced the merry party to beat a precipitate
retreat.
“Look! Mamma’s afraid that we shall be too late for the ball,” cried
Miss Hartvig, suddenly; and they now discovered that the Consul and
Mrs. Hartvig and the Pastor were standing like three windmills on the
Parsonage hill, waving with pocket handkerchiefs and napkins.
They turned their faces homeward. Rebecca took them by a short cut over
the morass, not reflecting that the ladies from the town could not jump
from tuft to tuft as she could. Miss Frederica, in her tight skirt,
jumped short, and stumbled into a muddy hole. She shrieked and cried
piteously for help, with her eyes fixed upon Lintzow.
“Look alive, Henrik!” cried Max to Hartvig junior, who was nearer at
hand; “why don’t you help your sister?”
Miss Frederica extricated herself without help, and the party proceeded.
The table was laid in the garden, along the wall of the house; and
although the spring was so young, it was warm enough in the sunshine.
When they had all found seats, Mrs. Hartvig cast a searching glance over
the table.
“Why--why--surely there’s something wanting! I’m convinced I saw the
house-keeper wrapping up a black grouse this morning. Frederica, my
dear, don’t you remember it?”
“Excuse me, mother, you know that housekeeping is not at all in my
department.”
Rebecca looked at her father, and so did Lintzow; the worthy Pastor
pulled a face upon which even Ansgarius could read a confession of
crime.
“I can’t possibly believe,” began Mrs. Hartvig, “that you, Pastor, have
been conspiring with--” And then he could not help laughing and making
a clean breast of it, amid great merriment, while the boys in triumph
produced the parcel with the game. Every one was in the best possible
humor. Consul Hartvig was delighted to find that their clerical host
could join in a joke, and the Pastor himself was in higher spirits than
he had been in for many a year.
In the course of the conversation some one happened to remark that
although the arrangements might be countrified enough, the viands were
too town-like; “No country meal is complete without thick milk.” [Note:
Milk allowed to stand until it has thickened to the consistency of
curds, and then eaten, commonly with sugar.]
Rebecca at once rose and demanded leave to bring a basin of milk; and,
paying no attention to Mrs. Hartvig’s protests, she left the table.
“Let me help you, Miss Rebecca,” cried Max, and ran after her.
“That is a lively young man,” said the Pastor.
“Yes, isn’t he?” answered the Consul, “and a deuced good business man
into the bargain. He has spent several years abroad, and now his father
has taken him into partnership.”
“He’s perhaps a little unstable,” said Mrs. Hartvig, doubtfully.
“Yes, he is indeed,” sighed Miss Frederica.
The young man followed Rebecca through the suite of rooms that led to
the dairy. At bottom, she did not like this, although the dairy was
her pride; but he joked and laughed so merrily that she could not help
joining in the laughter.
She chose a basin of milk upon the upper shelf, and stretched out her
arms to reach it.
“No, no, Miss Rebecca, it’s too high for you!” cried Max; “let me hand
it down to you.” And as he said so he laid his hand upon hers.
Rebecca hastily drew back her hand. She knew that her face had flushed,
and she almost felt as if she must burst into tears.
Then he said, softly and earnestly, lowering his eyes, “Pray, pardon
me, Miss Rebecca. I feel that my behavior must seem far too light and
frivolous to such a woman as you; but I should be sorry that you should
think of me as nothing but the empty coxcomb I appear to be. Merriment,
to many people, is merely a cloak for their sufferings, and there are
some who laugh only that they may not weep.”
At the last words he looked up. There was something so mournful, and
at the same time so reverential, in his glance, that Rebecca all of
a sudden felt as if she had been unkind to him. She was accustomed to
reach things down from the upper shelf, but when she again stretched out
her hands for the basin of milk, she let her arms drop, and said, “No,
perhaps it _is_ too high for me, after all.”
A faint smile passed over his face as he took the basin and carried it
carefully out; she accompanied him and opened the doors for him. Every
time he passed her she looked closely at him. His collar, his necktie,
his coat--everything was different from her father’s, and he carried
with him a peculiar perfume which she did not know.
When they came to the garden door, he stopped for an instant, and
looked up with a melancholy smile: “I must take a moment to recover my
expression of gayety, so that no one out there may notice anything.”
Then he passed out upon the steps with a joking speech to the company
at the table, and she heard their laughing answers; but she herself
remained behind in the garden-room.
Poor young man! how sorry she was for him; and how strange that she
of all people should be the only one in whom he confided. What secret
sorrow could it be that depressed him? Perhaps he, too, had lost his
mother. Or could it be something still mote terrible? How glad she would
be if only she could help him.
When Rebecca presently came out he was once more the blithest of them
all. Only once in a while, when he looked at her, his eyes seemed again
to assume that melancholy, half-beseeching expression; and it cut her to
the heart when he laughed at the same moment.
At last came the time for departure; there was hearty leave-taking on
both sides. But as the last of the packing was going on, and in
the general confusion, while every one was finding his place in the
carriages, or seeking a new place for the homeward journey, Rebecca
slipped into the house, through the rooms, out into the garden, and away
to the King’s Knoll. Here she seated herself in the shadow of the trees,
where the violets grew, and tried to collect her thoughts.--“What about
the violets, Mr. Lintzow?” cried Miss Frederica, who had already taken
her seat in the carriage.
The young man had for some time been eagerly searching for the daughter
of the house. He answered absently, “I’m afraid it’s too late.”
But a thought seemed suddenly to strike him. “Oh, Mrs. Hartvig,” he
cried, “will you excuse me for a couple of minutes while I fetch a
bouquet for Miss Frederica?”--Rebecca heard rapid steps approaching;
she thought it could be no one but he.
“Ah, are you here, Miss Rebecca? I have come to gather some violets.”
She turned half away from him and began to pluck the flowers.
“Are these flowers for me?” he asked, hesitatingly.
“Are they not for Miss Frederica?”
“Oh no, let them be for me!” he besought, kneeling at her side.
Again his voice had such a plaintive ring in it--almost like that of a
begging child.
She handed him the violets without looking up. Then he clasped her round
the waist and held her close to him. She did not resist, but closed her
eyes and breathed heavily. Then she felt that he kissed her--over and
over again--on the eyes, on the mouth, meanwhile calling her by her
name, with incoherent words, and then kissing her again. They called to
him from the garden; he let her go and ran down the mound. The horses
stamped, the young man sprang quickly into the carriage, and it rolled
away. But as he was closing the carriage door he was so maladroit as to
drop the bouquet; only a single violet remained in his hand.
“I suppose it’s no use offering you this one, Miss Frederica?” he said.
“No, thanks; you may keep that as a memento of your remarkable
dexterity,” answered Miss Hartvig; he was in her black books.
“Yes--you are right--I shall do so,” answered Max Lintzow, with perfect
composure.--Next day, after the ball, when he put on his morning-coat,
he found a withered violet in the button-hole. He nipped off the flower
with his fingers, and drew out the stalk from beneath.
“By-the-bye,” he said, smiling to himself in the mirror, “I had almost
forgotten _her_!”
In the afternoon he went away, and then he _quite_ forgot her.
The summer came with warm days and long, luminous nights. The smoke of
the passing steamships lay in long black streaks over the peaceful sea.
The sailing-ships drifted by with flapping sails and took nearly a whole
day to pass out of sight.
It was some time before the Pastor noticed any change in his daughter.
But little by little he became aware that Rebecca was not flourishing
that summer. She had grown pale, and kept much to her own room. She
scarcely ever came into the study, and at last he fancied that she
avoided him.
Then he spoke seriously to her, and begged her to tell him if she was
ill, or if mental troubles of any sort had affected her spirits.
But she only wept, and answered scarcely a word.
After this conversation, however, things went rather better. She did not
keep so much by herself, and was oftener with her father. But the old
ring was gone from her voice, and her eyes were not so frank as of old.
The Doctor came, and began to cross-question her. She blushed as red as
fire, and at last burst into such a paroxysm of weeping, that the old
gentleman left her room and went down to the Pastor in his study.
“Well, Doctor, what do you think of Rebecca?”
“Tell me now, Pastor,” began the Doctor, diplomatically, “has your
daughter gone through any violent mental crisis--hm--any--”
“Temptation, do you mean?”
“No, not exactly. Has she not had any sort of heartache? Or, to put it
plainly, any love-sorrow?”
The Pastor was very near feeling a little hurt. How could the Doctor
suppose that his own Rebecca, whose heart was as an open book to him,
could or would conceal from her father any sorrow of such a nature! And,
besides--! Rebecca was really not one of the girls whose heads were full
of romantic dreams of love. And as she was never away from his side,
how could she--? “No, no, my dear Doctor! That diagnosis does you little
credit!” the Pastor concluded, with a tranquil smile.
“Well, well, there’s no harm done!” said the old Doctor, and wrote a
prescription which was at least innocuous. He knew of no simples to cure
love-sorrows; but in his heart of hearts he held to his diagnosis.
The visit of the Doctor had frightened Rebecca. She now kept still
stricter watch upon herself, and redoubled her exertions to seem as
before. For no one must suspect what had happened: that a young man, an
utter stranger, had held her in his arms and kissed her--over and over
again!
As often as she realized this the blood rushed to her cheeks. She washed
herself ten times in the day, yet it seemed she could never be clean.
For what was it that had happened? Was it of the last extremity of
shame? Was she now any better than the many wretched girls whose errors
she had shuddered to think of, and had never been able to understand?
Ah, if there were only any one she could question! If she could only
unburden her mind of all the doubt and uncertainty that tortured her;
learn clearly what she had done; find out if she had still the right to
look her father in the face--or if she were the most miserable of all
sinners.
Her father often asked her if she could not confide to him what was
weighing on her mind; for he felt that she was keeping something from
him. But when she looked into his clear eyes, into his pure open face,
it seemed impossible, literally impossible, to approach that terrible
impure point and she only wept. She thought sometimes of that good Mrs.
Hartvig’s soft hand; but she was a stranger, and far away. So she must
e’en fight out her fight in utter solitude, and so quietly that no one
should be aware of it.
And he, who was pursuing his path through life with so bright a
countenance and so heavy a heart! Should she ever see him again? And
if she were ever to meet him, where should she hide herself? He was an
inseparable part of all her doubt and pain; but she felt no bitterness,
no resentment towards him. All that she suffered bound her closer to
him, and he was never out of her thoughts.
In the daily duties of the household Rebecca was as punctual and
careful as ever. But in everything she did he was present to her memory.
Innunmerable spots in the house and garden recalled him to her thoughts;
she met him in the door-ways; she remembered where he stood when first
he spoke to her. She had never been at the King’s Knoll since that day;
it was there that he had clasped her round the waist, and--kissed her.
The Pastor was full of solicitude about his daughter; but whenever the
Doctor’s hint occurred to him he shook his head, half angrily. How could
he dream that a practised hand, with a well-worn trick of the fence,
could pierce the armor of proof with which he had provided her?
If the spring had been late, the autumn was early.
One fine warm summer evening it suddenly began to rain. The next day it
was still raining; and it poured incessantly, growing ever colder and
colder, for eleven days and nights on end. At last it cleared up; but
the next night there were four degrees of frost. [Note: Réaumur.]
On the bushes and trees the leaves hung glued together after the long
rain; and when the frost had dried them after its fashion, they fell to
the ground in multitudes at every little puff of wind.
The Pastor’s tenant was one of the few that had got their corn in; and
now it had to be threshed while there was water for the machine. The
little brook in the valley rushed foaming along, as brown as coffee,
and all the men on the farm were taken up with tending the machine and
carting corn and straw up and down the Parsonage hill.
The farm-yard was bestrewn with straw, and when the wind swirled in
between the houses it seized the oat-straws by the head, raised them
on end, and set them dancing along like yellow spectres. It was the
juvenile autumn wind trying its strength; not until well on in the
winter, when it has full-grown lungs, does it take to playing with tiles
and chimney-pots.
A sparrow sat crouched together upon the dog-kennel; it drew its head
down among its feathers, blinked its eyes, and betrayed no interest
in anything. But in reality it noted carefully where the corn was
deposited. In the great sparrow-battle of the spring it had been in the
very centre of the ball, and had pecked and screamed with the best of
them. But it had sobered down since then; it thought of its wife and
children, and reflected how good it was to have something in reserve
against the winter.--Ansgarius looked forward to the winter--to
perilous expeditions through the snow-drifts and pitch-dark evenings
with thundering breakers. He already turned to account the ice which lay
on the puddles after the frosty nights, by making all his tin soldiers,
with two brass cannons, march out upon it. Stationed upon an overturned
bucket, he watched the ice giving way, little by little, until the whole
army was immersed, and only the wheels of the cannons remained visible.
Then he shouted, “Hurrah!” and swung his cap.
“What are you shouting about?” asked the Pastor, who happened to pass
through the farm-yard.
“I’m playing at Austerlitz!” answered Ansgarius, beaming.
The father passed on, sighing mournfully; he could not understand his
children.--Down in the garden sat Rebecca on a bench in the sun. She
looked out over the heather, which was in purple flower, while the
meadows were putting on their autumn pallor.
The lapwings were gathering in silence, and holding flying drills in
preparation for their journey; wad all the strand birds were assembling,
in order to take flight together. Even the lark had lost its courage
and was seeking convoy voiceless and unknown among the other gray autumn
birds. But the sea-gull stalked peaceably about, protruding its crop; it
was not under notice to quit.
The air was so still and languid and hazy. All sounds and colors were
toning down against the winter, and that vas very pleasant to her.
She was weary, and the long dead winter would suit her well. She knew
that her winter would be longer than all the others, and she began to
shrink from the spring.
Then everything would awaken that the winter had laid to sleep. The
birds would come back and sing the old songs with new voices; and upon
the King’s Knoll her mother’s violets would peer forth afresh in azure
clusters; it was there that he had clasped her round the waist and
kissed her--over and over again.