Spring comes late in the mountains. The mail that passed along the
highway during the winter three times a week, in April only passes once,
and the inhabitants know then that in the outside world the snow is
thawed, the ice broken; that the steamers are running, and the plow put
into the earth. Here, the snow still lies three ells deep; the cattle
low in the stalls, and the birds come, but hide themselves, shivering
with the cold. Occasionally some traveler arrives, saying he has left
his cart down in the valley, and he has flowers with him, which he
shows,--he has gathered them by the wayside. Then the people become
restless, go about talking together, look at the sky and down in the
valley, wondering how much the sun gains each day. They strew ashes on
the snow, and think of those who are now gathering flowers.
It was at such a time that old Margit Kampen came walking up to the
parsonage and asked to speak with "father."[24] She was invited into the
study, where the priest, a slender, fair-haired, gentle-looking man with
large eyes and spectacles, received her kindly, knew who she was, and
asked her to sit down.
"Is it now something about Arne again?" he inquired, as though they had
often talked together about him.
"Heaven help me!" said Margit; "it is never anything but good I have to
say of him, and yet my heart is so heavy." She looked very sad as she
spoke.
"Has that longing come back again?" asked the priest.
"Worse than ever," said the mother. "I do not even believe he will stay
with me until spring comes to us here."
"And yet he has promised never to leave you."
"True enough; but, dear me, he must manage for himself now; when the
mind is set upon going, go one must, I suppose. But what will become of
me?"
"Still I will believe, as long as possible, that he will not leave you,"
said the priest.
"Certainly not; but what if he should never be content at home? I would
then have it on my conscience that I stood in his way. There are times
when I think I ought to ask him myself to go away."
"How do you know that he is longing now more than ever?"
"Oh, from many things. Since midwinter he has not worked out in the
parish a single day. On the other hand, he has made three trips to town,
and has stayed away a long while each time. He scarcely ever talks now
when he is working, as he often used to do. He sits for hours by the
little window up-stairs, and looks out over the mountains in the
direction of the Kamp gorge; he sometimes stays there a whole Sunday
afternoon, and often when it is moonlight, he sits there far into the
night."
"Does he never read to you?"
"Of course he reads and sings to me every Sunday; but he always seems in
a hurry, except now and then, when he overdoes it."
"Does he never come and talk with you?"
"He often lets so long a time pass without saying a word, that I cannot
help crying when I sit alone. Then, I suppose, he sees this, for he
begins to talk with me, but it is always about trifles, never about
anything serious."
The priest was walking up and down; now he stopped and asked, "Why do
you not speak with him about it?"
It was some time before she made any reply to this; she sighed several
times, she looked first downward, then on either side,--she folded the
handkerchief she carried.
"I came here to-day to have a talk with father about something that lies
heavily on my heart."
"Speak freely, it will lighten the burden."
"I know that; for I have now dragged it along alone these many years,
and it grows heavier each year."
"What is it, my good woman?"
There was a brief pause; then she said, "I have sinned greatly against
my son,"--and she began to cry.
The priest came close up to her. "Confess it to me," said he, "then we
will together pray God that you may be forgiven."
Margit sobbed and dried her eyes, but began to weep afresh as soon as
she tried to speak, and this was repeated several times. The priest
comforted her, and said she surely could not have been guilty of
anything very sinful, that she was no doubt too strict with herself, and
so on. Margit wept, however, and could not muster the courage to begin
until the priest had seated himself by her side and spoken kindly words
to her. Then, in broken sentences, she faltered forth her confession:--
"He had a hard time of it when he was a boy, and so his mind became bent
on travel. Then he met Kristian, he who has grown so very rich over
there where they dig for gold. Kristian gave Arne so many books that he
ceased to be like the rest of us; they sat together in the long
evenings, and when Kristian went away, my boy longed to follow him.
Just at that time, though, his father fell down dead, and Arne promised
never to leave me. Yet I was like a hen that had brooded a duck's egg,
when the young duckling had burst the shell, he wanted to go out on the
great water, and I remained on the bank screaming. If he did not
actually go away himself, his heart went in his songs, and every morning
I thought I would find his bed empty.
"Then there came a letter for him from a far-off country, and I knew it
must be from Kristian. God forgive me, I hid it! I thought that would be
the end of the matter, but still another one came, and as I had kept the
first from him, I had to keep the second one too. But, indeed, it seemed
as though they would burn a hole in the chest where they lay, for my
thoughts would go there from the time I opened my eyes in the morning
until I closed them at night. And you never have known anything so bad
as this, for there came a third! I stood holding it in my hand for a
quarter of an hour; I carried it in my bosom for three days, weighing
within me whether I should give it to him or lay it away with the
others, but perhaps it would have power to lure the boy away from me,
and I could not help it, I put the letter away with the others. Now I
went about in sorrow every day, both because of those that were in the
chest and because of the new ones that might come. I was afraid of
every person who came to our house. When we were in the house together,
and there came a knock at the door, I trembled, for it might be a
letter, and then _he_ would get it. When he was out in the parish, I
kept thinking at home that now perhaps he would get a letter while he
was away, and that it might have something in it about those that had
come before. When he was coming home, I watched his face in the
distance, and, dear me! how happy I was when I saw him smiling, for then
I knew he had no letter! He had grown so handsome, too, just like his
father, but much fairer and more gentle-looking. And then he had such a
voice for singing: when he sat outside of the door at sunset, singing
toward the mountain ridge and listening for the echo, I felt in my heart
that I never could live without him! If I only saw him, or if I knew he
was anywhere around, and he looked tolerably happy, and would only give
me a word now and then, I wished for nothing more on earth, and would
not have had a single tear unshed.
"But just as he seemed to be getting on better, and to be feeling more
at ease among people, there came word from the parish post-office that a
fourth letter had now come, and that in it there were two hundred
dollars! I thought I should drop right down on the spot where I stood.
What should I do now? The letter, of course, I could get out of the way;
but the money? I could not sleep for several nights on account of this
money. I kept it up in the garret for a while, then left it in the
cellar behind a barrel, and once I was so beside myself that I laid it
in the window so that he might find it. When I heard him coming, I took
it away again. At last I found a way, though. I gave him the money and
said it had been out at interest since mother's lifetime. He spent it in
improving the gard, as had been in my own mind, and there it was not
lost. But then it happened that same autumn that he sat one evening
wondering why Kristian had so entirely forgotten him.
"Now the wound opened afresh, and the money burned. What I had done was a
sin, and the sin had been of no use to me!
"The mother who has sinned against her own child is the most unhappy of
all mothers,--and yet I only did it out of love. So I shall be punished,
I dare say, by losing what is dearest to me. For since midwinter he has
taken up again the tune he sings when he is longing; he has sung it from
boyhood up, and I never hear it without growing pale. Then I feel I
could give up all for him, and now you shall see for yourself,"--she
took a scrap of paper out of her bosom, unfolded it, and gave it to the
priest,--"here is something he is writing at from time to time; it
certainly belongs to that song. I brought it with me, for I cannot read
such fine writing; please see if there is anything in it about his going
away."
There was only one stanza on this paper. For the second one there were
half and whole lines here and there, as if it were a song he had
forgotten, and was now calling to mind again, verse by verse. The first
stanza ran,--
"Oh, how I wonder what I should see
Over the lofty mountains!
Snow here shuts out the view from me,
Round about stands the green pine-tree.
Longing to hasten over--
Dare it become a rover?"
"Is it about his going away?" asked Margit, her eyes fixed eagerly on
the priest's face.
"Yes, it is," answered he, and let the paper drop.
"Was I not sure of it! Ah, me! I know that tune so well!" She looked at
the priest, her hands folded, anxious, intent, while tear after tear
trickled down her cheek.
But the priest knew as little how to advise as she. "The boy must be
left to himself in this matter," said he. "Life cannot be altered for
his sake, but it depends on himself whether he shall one day find out
its meaning. Now it seems he wants to go away to do so."
"But was it not just so with the old woman?" said Margit.
"With the old woman?" repeated the priest.
"Yes; she who went out to fetch the sunshine into her house, instead of
cutting windows in the walls."
The priest was astonished at her shrewdness; but it was not the first
time she had surprised him when she was on this theme; for Margit,
indeed, had not thought of anything else for seven or eight years.
"Do you think he will leave me? What shall I do? And the money? And the
letters?" All this crowded upon her at once.
"Well, it was not right about the letters. You can hardly be justified
in withholding from your son what belonged to him. It was still worse,
however, to place a fellow Christian in a bad light when it was not
deserved, and the worst of all was that it was one whom Arne loved and
who was very fond of him in return. But we will pray God to forgive you,
we will both pray."
Margit bowed her head; she still sat with her hands folded.
"How earnestly I would pray him for forgiveness, if I only knew he would
stay!" She was probably confounding in her mind the Lord and Arne.
The priest pretended he had not noticed this. "Do you mean to confess
this to him at once?" he asked.
She looked down and said in a low tone, "If I dared wait a little while
I should like to do so."
The priest turned aside to hide a smile, as he asked, "Do you not think
your sin becomes greater the longer you delay the confession?"
Both hands were busied with her handkerchief: she folded it into a very
small square, and tried to get it into a still smaller one, but that was
not possible.
"If I confess about the letters, I am afraid he will leave me."
"You dare not place your reliance on the Lord, then?"
"Why, to be sure I do!" she said hurriedly; then she added softly, "But
what if he should go anyway?"
"So, then, you are more afraid of Arne's leaving you than of continuing
in sin?"
Margit had unfolded her handkerchief again; she put it now to her eyes,
for she was beginning to weep.
The priest watched her for a while, then he continued: "Why did you tell
me all this when you did not mean it to lead to anything?" He waited a
long time, but she did not answer. "You thought, perhaps, your sin would
become less when you had confessed it?"
"I thought that it would," said she, softly, with her head bowed still
farther down on her breast.
The priest smiled and got up. "Well, well, my dear Margit, you must act
so that you will have joy in your old age."
"If I could only keep what I have!" said she; and the priest thought
she dared not imagine any greater happiness than living in her constant
state of anxiety. He smiled as he lit his pipe.
"If we only had a little girl who could get hold of him, then you should
see that he would stay!"
She looked up quickly, and her eyes followed the priest until he paused
in front of her.
"Eli Boeen? What"--
She colored and looked down again; but she made no reply.
The priest, who had stood still, waiting, said finally, but this time in
quite a low tone "What if we should arrange it so that they should meet
oftener at the parsonage?"
She glanced up at the priest to find out whether he was really in
earnest. But she did not quite dare believe him.
The priest had begun to walk up and down again, but now he paused. "See
here, Margit! When it comes to the point, perhaps this was your whole
errand here to-day, hey?"
She bowed her head far down, she thrust two fingers into the folded
handkerchief, and brought out a corner of it. "Well, yes, God help me;
that was exactly what I wanted."
The priest burst out laughing, and rubbed his hands. "Perhaps that was
what you wanted the last time you were here, too?"
She drew the corner of the handkerchief farther out; she stretched it
and stretched it. "Since you ask me, yes, it was just that."
"Ha, ha, ha, ha! Ah, Margit! Margit! We shall see what we can do; for,
to tell the truth, my wife and daughter have for a long time had the
same thoughts as you."
"Is it possible?" She looked up, at once so happy and so bashful, that
the priest had his own delight in her open, pretty face, in which the
childlike expression had been preserved through all sorrow and anxiety.
"Ah, well, Margit, you, whose love is so great, will, I have no doubt,
obtain forgiveness, for love's sake, both from your God and from your
son, for the wrong you have done. You have probably been punished enough
already in the continual, wearing anxiety you have lived in; we shall,
if God is willing, bring this to a speedy end, for, if He _wishes_ this,
He will help us a little now."
She drew a long sigh, which she repeated again and again; then she
arose, gave her thanks, dropped a courtesy, and courtesied again at the
door. But she was scarcely well outside before a change came over her.
She cast upward a look beaming with gratitude, and she hurried more and
more the farther she got away from people, and lightly as she tripped
down toward Kampen that day, she had not done for many, many years. When
she got so far on her way that she could see the thick smoke curling
gayly up from the chimney, she blessed the house, the whole gard, the
priest, and Arne,--and then remembered that they were going to have
smoked beef for dinner,--her favorite dish!