It was in the autumn, as before stated. A week after Nils the tailor was
borne into Margit Kampen's home, there came word to him from the
Americans that he must hold himself in readiness to start. He lay just
then writhing under a terrible attack of pain, and, gnashing his teeth,
he shrieked, "Let them go to hell!" Margit stood motionless, as though
he had made no answer. He noticed this, and presently he repeated slowly
and feebly, "Let them--go."
As the winter advanced, he improved so much that he was able to sit up,
although his health was shattered for life. The first time he actually
sat up, he took out his fiddle and tuned it, but became so agitated that
he had to go to bed again. He grew very taciturn, but was not hard to
get along with; and as time wore on, he taught the boy to read, and
began to take work in at home. He never went out, and would not talk
with those who dropped in to see him. At first Margit used to bring him
the parish news; he was always gloomy afterwards, so she ceased to do
so.
When spring had fairly set in, he and Margit would sit longer than usual
talking together after the evening meal. The boy was then sent off to
bed. Some time later in the spring their bans were published in church,
after which they were quietly married.
He did his share of work in the fields now, and managed everything in a
sensible, orderly way. Margit said to the boy, "There is both profit
and pleasure in him. Now you must be obedient and good, that you may do
your best for him."
Margit had remained tolerably stout through all her sorrow; she had a
ruddy face and very large eyes, which looked all the larger because
there was a ring round them. She had full lips, a round face, and looked
healthy and strong, although she was not very strong. At this period of
her life, she was looking better than ever; and she always sang when she
was at work, as had ever been her wont.
One Sunday afternoon, father and son went out to see how the crops were
thriving that year. Arne ran about his father, shooting with a bow and
arrow. Nils had himself made them for the boy. Thus they passed on
directly up toward the road leading past the church and parsonage, down
to what was called the broad valley. Nils seated himself on a stone by
the roadside and fell to dreaming; the boy shot into the road and sprang
after his arrow,--it was in the direction of the church. "Not too far
away!" said the father. While the boy was playing there, he paused, as
though listening. "Father, I hear music!" The father listened too; they
heard the sounds of fiddling, almost drowned at times by loud shouts and
wild uproar; but above all rose the steady rumbling of cart-wheels and
the clatter of horses' feet; it was a bridal procession, wending its way
home from church. "Come here, boy," shouted the father, and Arne knew by
the tones of the voice that he must make haste. The father had hurriedly
risen and hidden behind a large tree. The boy hastened after him. "Not
here, over there!" cried the father, and the boy stepped behind an
alder-copse. Already the carts were winding round the birch-grove; they
came at a wild speed, the horses were white with foam, drunken people
were crying and shouting; father and son counted cart after cart,--there
were in all fourteen. In the first sat two fiddlers, and the wedding
march sounded merrily through the clear air,--a boy stood behind and
drove. Afterwards came a crowned bride, who sat on a high seat and
glittered in the sunshine; she smiled, and her mouth drew to one side;
beside her sat a man clad in blue and with a mild face. The bridal train
followed, the men sat on the women's laps; small boys were sitting
behind, drunken men were driving,--there were six people to one horse;
the man who presided at the feast came in the last cart, holding a keg
of brandy on his lap. They passed by screaming and singing, and drove
recklessly down the hill; the fiddling, the voices, the rattling of
wheels, lingered behind them in the dust; the breeze bore up single
shrieks, soon only a dull rumbling, and then nothing. Nils stood
motionless; there was a rustling behind him, he turned; it was the boy
who was creeping forward.
"Who was it, father?" But the boy started, for his father's face was
dreadful. Arne stood motionless waiting for an answer; then he remained
where he was because he got none. After some time he became impatient
and ventured again. "Shall we go?" Nils was still gazing after the
bridal train, but he now controlled himself and started on. Arne
followed after. He put an arrow into the bow, shot it, and ran. "Do not
trample down the grass," said Nils gruffly. The boy let the arrow lie
and came back. After a while he had forgotten this, and once when his
father paused, he lay down and turned summersaults. "Do not trample down
the grass, I say." Here Arne was seized by one arm, and lifted by it
with such violence that it was almost put out of joint. Afterward, he
walked quietly behind.
At the door Margit awaited them; she had just come in from the stable,
where she had evidently had pretty hard work, for her hair was tumbled,
her linen soiled, her dress likewise, but she stood in the door smiling.
"A couple of the cows got loose and have been into mischief; now they
are tied again."
"You might make yourself a little tidy on Sunday," said Nils, as he went
past into the house.
"Yes, there is some sense in tidying up now that the work is done," said
Margit, and followed him. She began to fix herself at once, and sang
while she was doing so. Now Margit sang well, but sometimes there was a
little huskiness in her voice.
"Stop that screaming," said Nils; he had thrown himself on his back
across the bed. Margit stopped.
Then the boy came storming in. "There has come into the yard a great
black dog, a dreadful looking"--
"Hold your tongue, boy," said Nils from the bed, and thrust out one foot
to stamp on the floor with it. "A devilish noise that boy is always
making," he muttered afterward, and drew his foot up again.
The mother held up a warning finger to the boy. "You surely must see
that father is not in a good humor," she meant. "Will you not have some
strong coffee with syrup in it?" said she; she wanted to put him in a
good humor again. This was a drink the grandmother had liked, and the
rest of them too. Nils did not like it at all, but had drunk it because
the others did so. "Will you not have some strong coffee with syrup in
it?" repeated Margit; for he had made no reply the first time. Nils
raised himself up on both elbows and shrieked, "Do you think I will pour
down such slops?"
Margit was struck with surprise, and, taking the boy with her, went out.
They had a number of things to attend to outside, and did not come in
before supper-time. Then Nils was gone. Arne was sent out into the field
to call him, but found him nowhere. They waited until the supper was
nearly cold, then ate, and still Nils had not come. Margit became
uneasy, sent the boy to bed, and sat down to wait. A little after
midnight Nils appeared.
"Where have you been, dear?" asked she.
"That is none of your business," he answered, and slowly sat down on the
bench.
He was drunk.
After this, Nils often went out in the parish, and always came home
drunk. "I cannot stand it at home here with you," said he once when he
came in. She tried gently to defend herself, and then he stamped on the
floor and bade her be silent: if he was drunk, it was her fault; if he
was wicked, it was her fault too; if he was a cripple and an unfortunate
being for his whole life, why, she was to blame too, and that infernal
boy of hers.
"Why were you always dangling after me?" said he, and wept. "What harm
had I done you that you could not leave me in peace?"
"Lord have mercy on me!" said Margit. "Was it I who went after you?"
"Yes, it was!" he shrieked as he arose, and amid tears he continued:
"You have succeeded in getting what you wanted. I drag myself about from
tree to tree. I go every day and look at my own grave. But I could have
lived in splendor with the finest gard girl in the parish. I might have
traveled as far as the sun goes, had not you and your damned boy put
yourselves in my way."
She tried again to defend herself. "It was, at all events, not the boy's
fault."
"If you do not hold your tongue, I will strike you!"--and he struck her.
After he had slept himself sober the next day, he was ashamed, and was
especially kind to the boy. But soon he was drunk again, and then he
struck the mother. At last he got to striking her almost every time he
was drunk. The boy cried and lamented; then he struck him too. Sometimes
his repentance was so deep that he felt compelled to leave the house.
About this time his fondness for dancing revived. He began to go about
fiddling as in former days, and took the boy with him to carry the
fiddle-case. Thus Arne saw a great deal. The mother wept because he had
to go along, but dared not say so to the father. "Hold faithfully to
God, and learn nothing evil," she begged, and tenderly caressed her boy.
But at the dances there was a great deal of diversion; at home with the
mother there was none at all. Arne turned more and more from her and to
the father; she saw this and was silent. At the dances Arne learned many
songs, and he sang them at home to his father; this amused the latter,
and now and then the boy could even get him to laugh. This was so
flattering to Arne that he exerted himself to learn as many songs as
possible; soon he noticed what kind the father liked best, and what it
was that made him laugh. When there was not enough of this element in
the songs he was singing, the boy added to it himself, and this early
gave him practice in adapting words to music. It was chiefly lampoons
and odious things about people who had risen to power and prosperity,
that the father liked and the boy sang.
The mother finally concluded to take him with her to the stable of
evenings; numerous were the pretexts he found to escape going, but when,
nevertheless, she managed to take him with her, she talked kindly to him
about God and good things, usually ending by taking him in her arms,
and, amid blinding tears, begging him, entreating him not to become a
bad man.
The mother taught the boy to read, and he was surprisingly quick at
learning. The father was proud of this, and, especially when he was
drunk, told Arne he had his head.
Soon the father fell into the habit, when drink got the better of him,
of calling on Arne at dancing-parties to sing for the people. The boy
always obeyed, singing song after song amid laughter and uproar; the
applause pleased the son almost more than it did the father, and finally
there was no end to the songs Arne could sing. Anxious mothers who heard
this, went themselves to his mother and told her of it; their reason for
so doing being that the character of these songs was not what it should
be. The mother put her arms about her boy and forbade him, in the name
of God and all that was sacred, to sing such songs, and now it seemed to
Arne that everything he took delight in his mother opposed. For the
first time he told his father what his mother had said. She had to
suffer for this the next time the father was drunk; he held his peace
until then. But no sooner had it become clear to the boy what he had
done than in his soul he implored pardon of God and her; he could not
bring himself to do so in spoken words. His mother was just as kind as
ever to him, and this cut him to the quick.
Once, however, he forgot this. He had a faculty for mimicking people.
Above all, he could talk and sing as others did. The mother came in one
evening when Arne was entertaining his father with this, and it occurred
to the father, after she had gone out, that the boy should imitate his
mother's singing. Arne refused at first, but his father, who lay over on
the bed and laughed until it shook, insisted finally that he should sing
like his mother. She is gone, thought the boy, and cannot hear it, and
he mimicked her singing as it sounded sometimes when she was hoarse and
choked with tears. The father laughed until it seemed almost hideous to
the boy, and he stopped of himself. Just then the mother came in from
the kitchen; she looked long and hard at the boy, as she crossed the
floor to a shelf after a milk-pan and turned to carry it out.
A burning heat ran through his whole body; she had heard it all. He
sprang down from the table where he had been sitting, went out, cast
himself on the ground, and it seemed as though he must bury himself out
of sight. He could not rest, and got up feeling that he must go farther
on. He went past the barn, and behind it sat the mother, sewing on a
fine, new shirt, just for him. She had always been in the habit of
singing a hymn over her work when she sat sewing, but now she was not
singing. She was not weeping, either; she only sat and sewed. Arne could
bear it no longer he flung himself down in the grass directly in front
of her, looked up at her, and wept and sobbed bitterly. The mother
dropped her work and took his head between her hands.
"Poor Arne!" said she, and laid her own beside his. He did not try to
say a word, but wept as he had never done before. "I knew you were good
at heart," said the mother, and stroked down his hair.
"Mother, you must not say no to what I am going to ask for," was the
first thing he could say.
"That you know I cannot do," answered she.
He tried to stop crying, and then stammered out, with his head still in
her lap: "Mother, sing something for me."
"My dear, I cannot," said she, softly.
"Mother, sing something for me," begged the boy, "or I believe I will
never be able to look at you again."
She stroked his hair, but was silent.
"Mother, sing, sing, I say! Sing," he begged, "or I will go so far away
that I will never come home any more."
And while he, now fourteen in his fifteenth year as he was, lay there
with his head in his mother's lap, she began to sing over him:--
"Father, stretch forth Thy mighty hand,
Thy Holy Spirit send yonder:
Bless Thou the child on the lonely strand,
Nor in its sports let it wander.
Slipp'ry the way, the water deep,--
Lord, in Thy arm but the darling keep,
Then through Thy mercy 't will never
Drown, but with Thee live forever.
"Missing her child, in disquiet sore,
Much for its safety fearing,
Often the mother calls from her door,
Never an answer hearing,--
Then comes the thought: where'er it be,
Blessed Lord, it is near to Thee;
Jesus will guide his brother
Home to the anxious mother."[7]
She sang several verses. Arne lay still: there descended upon him a
blessed peace, and under its influence he felt a refreshing weariness.
The last thing he distinctly heard was about Jesus: it bore him into the
midst of a great light, and there it seemed as though twelve or thirteen
were singing; but the mother's voice rose above them all. A lovelier
voice he had never heard; he prayed that he might sing thus. It seemed
to him that if he were to sing right softly he might do so; and now he
sang softly, tried again softly, and still more softly, and then,
rejoiced at the bliss that seemed almost dawning for him, he joined in
with full voice, and the spell was broken. He awakened, looked about
him, listened, but heard nothing, save the everlasting, mighty roar of
the force, and the little creek that flowed past the barn, with its low
and incessant murmuring. The mother was gone,--she had laid under his
head the half-finished shirt and her jacket.