Arne became habitually silent and shy. He tended cattle and made songs.
He passed his nineteenth birthday, and still he kept on tending cattle.
He borrowed books from the priest and read; but he took interest in
nothing else.
The priest sent word to him one day that he had better become a
school-master, "because the parish ought to derive benefit from your
talents and knowledge." Arne made no reply to this; but the next day,
while driving the sheep before him, he made the following song:--
"Oh, my pet lamb, lift your head,
Though the stoniest path you tread,
Over the mountains lonely,
Still your bells follow only.
"Oh, my pet lamb, walk with care,
Lest you spoil all your wool beware,
Mother must soon be sewing
Skins for the summer's going.
"Oh, my pet lamb, try to grow
Fat and fine wheresoe'er you go!
Know you not, little sweeting,
A spring lamb is dainty eating!"[10]
One day in his twentieth year Arne chanced to overhear a conversation
between his mother and the wife of the former gard owner; they were
disputing about the horse they owned in common.
"I must wait to hear what Arne says," remarked the mother.
"That lazy fellow!" was the reply. "He would like, I dare say, to have
the horse go ranging about the woods as he does himself."
The mother was now silent, although before she had been arguing her own
case well.
Arne turned as red as fire. It had not occurred to him before that his
mother might have to listen to taunting words for his sake, and yet
perhaps she had often been obliged to do so. Why had she not told him of
this?
He considered the matter well, and now it struck him that his mother
scarcely ever talked with him. But neither did he talk with her. With
whom did he talk, after all?
Often on Sunday, when he sat quietly at home, he felt a desire to read
sermons to his mother, whose eyes were poor; she had wept too much in
her day. But he did not have the courage to do so. Many times he had
wanted to offer to read aloud to her from his own books, when all was
still in the house, and he thought the time must hang heavily on her
hands. But his courage failed him for this too.
"It cannot matter much. I must give up tending the herds, and move down
to mother."
He let several days pass, and became firm in his resolve. Then he drove
the cattle far around in the wood, and made the following song:--
"The vale is full of trouble, but here sweet Peace may reign;
Within this quiet forest no bailiffs may distrain;
None fight, as in the vale, in the Blessed Church's name,
Yet if a church were here, it would no doubt be just the same.
"How peaceful is the forest:--true, the hawk is far from kind,
I fear he now is striving the plumpest sparrow to find;
I fear yon eagle's coming to rob the kid of breath,
And yet perchance if long it lived, it might be tired to death.
"The woodman fells one tree, and another rots away,
The red fox killed the lambkin white at sunset yesterday;
The wolf, though, killed the fox, and the wolf itself must die,
For Arne shot him down to-day before the dew was dry.
"I'll hie me to the valley back--the forest is as bad;
And I must see to take good heed, lest thinking drive me mad.
I saw a boy in my dreams, though where I cannot tell--
But I know he had killed his father--I think it was in Hell."[11]
He came home and told his mother that she might send out in the parish
after another herd-boy; he wanted to manage the gard himself. Thus it
was arranged; but the mother was always after him with warnings not to
overtax himself with work. She used also to prepare such good meals for
him at this time that he often felt ashamed; but he said nothing.
He was working at a song, the refrain of which was "Over the lofty
mountains." He never succeeded in finishing it, and this was chiefly
because he wanted to have the refrain in every other line; finally he
gave it up.
But many of the songs he made got out among the people, where they were
well liked; there were those who wished very much to talk with him,
especially as they had known him from boyhood up. But Arne was shy of
all whom he did not know, and thought ill of them, chiefly because he
believed they thought ill of him.
His constant companion in the fields was a middle-aged man, called
Upland Knut, who had a habit of singing over his work; but he always
sang the same song. After listening to this for a few months, Arne was
moved to ask him if he did not know any others.
"No," was the man's reply.
Then after the lapse of several days, once when Knut was singing his
song, Arne asked:
"How did you chance to learn this _one_?"
"Oh, it just happened so," said the man.
Arne went straight from him into the house; but there sat his mother
weeping, a sight he had not seen since his father's death. He pretended
not to notice her, and went toward the door again; but he felt his
mother looking sorrowfully after him again and he had to stop.
"What are you crying for, mother?"
For a while his words were the only sound in the room, and therefore
they came back to him again and again, so often that he felt they had
not been said gently enough. He asked once more:--
"What are you crying for?"
"Oh, I am sure I do not know;" but now she wept harder than ever.
He waited a long time, then was forced to say, as courageously as he
could:--
"There must be something you are crying about!"
Again there was silence. He felt very guilty, although _she_ had said
nothing, and _he_ knew nothing.
"It just happened so," said the mother. Presently she added, "I am after
all most fortunate," and then she wept.
But Arne hastened out, and he felt drawn toward the Kamp gorge. He sat
down to look into it, and while he was sitting there, he too wept. "If I
only knew what I was crying for," mused Arne.
Above him, in the new-plowed field, Upland Knut was singing his song:--
"Ingerid Sletten of Willow-pool
Had no costly trinkets to wear;
But a cap she had that was far more fair,
Although it was only of wool.
"It had no trimming, and now was old,
But her mother who long had gone
Had given it her, and so it shone
To Ingerid more than gold.
"For twenty years she laid it aside,
That it might not be worn away;
'My cap I'll wear on that blissful day
When I shall become a bride.'
"For thirty years she laid it aside
Lest the colors might fade away.
'My cap I'll wear when to God I pray
A happy and grateful bride.'
"For forty years she laid it aside,
Still holding her mother as dear;
'My little cap, I certainly fear
I never shall be a bride.'
"She went to look for the cap one day
In the chest where it long had lain;
But ah! her looking was all in vain,--
The cap had moldered away."[12]
Arne sat and listened as though the words had been music far away up the
slope. He went up to Knut.
"Have you a mother?" asked he.
"No."
"Have you a father?"
"Oh, no; I have no father."
"Is it long since they died?"
"Oh, yes; it is long since."
"You have not many, I dare say, who care for you?"
"Oh, no; not many."
"Have you any one here?"
"No, not here."
"But yonder in your native parish?"
"Oh, no; not there either."
"Have you not any one at all who cares for you?"
"Oh, no; I have not."
But Arne went from him loving his own mother so intensely that it seemed
as though his heart would break; and he felt, as it were, a blissful
light over him. "Thou Heavenly Father," thought he, "Thou hast given her
to me, and such unspeakable love with the gift, and I put this away from
me; and one day when I want it, she will be perhaps no more!" He felt a
desire to go to her, if for nothing else only to look at her. But on the
way, it suddenly occurred to him: "Perhaps because you did not
appreciate her you may soon have to endure the grief of losing her!" He
stood still at once. "Almighty God! what then would become of me?"
He felt as though some calamity must be happening at home. He hastened
toward the house; cold sweat stood on his brow; his feet scarcely
touched the ground. He tore open the passage door, but within the whole
atmosphere was at once filled with peace. He softly opened the door into
the family-room. The mother had gone to bed, the moon shone full in her
face, and she lay sleeping calmly as a child.