“That’s what comes of falling in love, Neighbor Niels. Poor Guth Stersen
would not be stretched out yonder on that great black slab, like a
starfish forgotten by the tide, if she had kept her mind on mending her
father’s boat and patching his nets. Saint Usuph, the fisher, console
our old friend in his affliction!”
“And her lover,” added a shrill, tremulous voice, “Gill Stadt, that fine
young man beside her, would not be there now, if instead of making love
to Guth and seeking his luck in those accursed Roeraas mines, he had
stayed at home and rocked his little brother’s cradle, under the smoky
cross-beams of his mother’s hut.”
Neighbor Niels, whom the first speaker addressed, interrupted: “Your
memory is growing old along with yourself, Mother Olly. Gill never had a
brother, and that makes poor Widow Stadt’s grief all the harder to bear,
for her home is now left utterly desolate; if she looks up to heaven for
consolation, she sees nought but her old roof, where still hangs the
cradle of her son, grown to be a tall young man, and dead.”
“Poor mother!” replied old Olly, “it was the young man’s own fault. Why
should he go to Roeraas to be a miner?”
“I do believe,” said Niels, “that those infernal mines rob us of a man
for every escalin’s[3] worth of copper which we get out of them. What do
you think, Father Braal?”
“Miners are fools,” replied the fisherman. “If he would live, the fish
should not leave the water. Man should not enter the bowels of the
earth.”
“But,” asked a young man in the crowd, “how if Gill Stadt had to work in
the mines to win his sweetheart?”
“A man should never risk his life,” interrupted Olly, “for affections
which are far from being worth a life, or filling it. A pretty
wedding-bed Gill earned for his Guth!”
“So then that young woman,” inquired a curious bystander, “drowned
herself in despair at the death of this young man?”
“Who says so?” loudly exclaimed a soldier, pushing his way through the
crowd. “That young girl, whom I knew well, was indeed engaged to marry a
young miner who was lately crushed by falling rocks in the underground
tunnels of Storwaadsgrube, near Roeraas; but she was also the sweetheart
of one of my mates, and as she was going to Munkholm secretly, day
before yesterday, to celebrate with her lover the death of her
betrothed, her boat capsized on a reef, and she was drowned.”
A confused sound of voices arose: “Impossible, master soldier,” cried
the old women. The young ones were silent; and Neighbor Niels
maliciously reminded fisher Braal of his serious statement: “That’s what
comes of falling in love!”
The soldier was about to lose his temper with his opponents; he had
already called them “old witches from the cave of Quiragoth,” and they
were not disposed to bear so grave an insult patiently, when a sharp and
imperious voice, crying “Silence, silence, you old fools!” put an end to
the dispute. All was still, as when the sudden crow of a cock is heard
amid the cackling of the hens.
Before relating the rest of the scene, it may be well to describe the
spot where it occurred. It was--as the reader has doubtless guessed--one
of those gloomy structures which public pity and social forethought
devote to unknown corpses, the last asylum of the dead, whose lives were
usually sad ones; where the careless spectator, the surly or kindly
observer gather, and friends often meet tearful relatives, whom long and
unendurable anxiety has robbed of all but one sad hope. At the period
now remote, and in the uncivilized region to which I have carried my
reader, there had as yet been no attempt, as in our cities of gold and
mud, to make these resting-places into ingeniously forbidding or
elegantly funereal edifices. Daylight did not fall through tomb-shaped
openings, into artistically sculptured vaults, upon beds which seem as
if the guardian of the place were anxious to leave the dead some of the
conveniences of life, and the pillow seems arranged for sleep. If the
keeper’s door were left ajar, the eye, wearied with gazing upon hideous,
naked corpses, had not as now the pleasure of resting upon elegant
furniture and happy children. Death was there in all its deformity, in
all its horror; and there was no attempt to deck its fleshless skeleton
with ribbons and gewgaws.
The room in which our actors stood was spacious and dark, which made it
seem still larger; it was lighted only by a broad, low door opening upon
the port of Throndhjem, and a rough hole in the ceiling, through which a
dull, white light fell, mingled with rain, hail, or snow, according to
the weather, upon the corpses lying directly under it. The room was
divided by an iron railing, breast-high, running across it from side to
side. The public entered the outer portion through the low door; in the
inner part were six long black granite slabs, arranged abreast and
parallel to each other. A small side door served to admit the keeper and
his assistant to either section, their rooms occupying the rear of the
building, close to the water. The miner and his betrothed occupied two
granite beds; decomposition had already begun its work upon the young
woman’s body, showing itself in large blue and purple spots running
along her limbs on the line of the blood-vessels. Gill’s features were
stern and set; but his body was so horribly mutilated that it was
impossible to judge whether his beauty were really so great as old Olly
declared.
It was before these disfigured remains, in the midst of the mute crowd,
that the conversation which we have faithfully interpreted, began.
A tall, withered old man, sitting with folded arms and bent head upon a
broken stool in the darkest corner of the room, had apparently paid no
heed until the moment when he rose suddenly, exclaiming, “Silence,
silence, you old fools!” and seized the soldier by the arm.
All were hushed; the soldier turned and broke into a burst of laughter
at the sight of his strange interrupter, whose pale face, thin greasy
locks, long fingers, and complete costume of reindeer leather amply
justified this mirthful reception. But a clamor arose from the crowd of
women, for a moment confounded: “It is the keeper of the
Spladgest![4]--That infernal doorkeeper to the dead!--That diabolical
Spiagudry!--That accursed sorcerer!”
“Silence, you old fools, silence! If this be the witches’ Sabbath,
hasten away and find your broomsticks; if you don’t, they’ll fly off
without you. Let this worthy descendant of the god Thor alone.”
Then Spiagudry, striving to assume a gracious expression, addressed the
soldier: “You say, my good fellow, that this wretched woman--”
“Old rascal!” muttered Olly; “yes, we are all ‘wretched women,’ to him,
because our bodies, if they fall into his claws, only bring him thirty
escalins’ reward, while he gets forty for the paltry carcass of a man.”
“Silence, old women!” repeated Spiagudry. “In truth, these daughters of
the Devil are like their kettles; when they wax warm, they must needs
sing. Tell me, my valiant king of the sword, your comrade, this Guth’s
lover, will doubtless kill himself in despair at her loss, won’t he?”
Here burst forth the long-repressed storm. “Do you hear the
miscreant,--the old Pagan!” cried twenty shrill, discordant voices. “He
would fain see one less man living, for the sake of the forty escalins
that a dead body brings him.”
“And what if I would?” replied the keeper of the Spladgest. “Doesn’t our
gracious king and master, Christian V.,--may Saint Hospitius bless
him!--declare himself the natural guardian of all miners, so that when
they die he may enrich his royal treasury with their paltry leavings?”
“You honor the king,” answered fisher Braal, “by comparing the royal
treasury to the strong-box of your charnel-house, and him to yourself,
Neighbor Spiagudry.”
“Neighbor, indeed!” said the keeper, shocked by such familiarity. “Your
neighbor! say rather your host! since it may easily chance some day, my
dear boat-dweller, that I shall have to lend you one of my six stone
beds for a week. Besides,” he added, with a laugh, “if I spoke of that
soldier’s death, it was merely from a desire to see the perpetuation of
the custom of suicide for the sake of those great and tragic passions
which ladies are wont to inspire.”
“Well, you tall corpse and keeper of corpses,” said the soldier, “what
are you after, with your amiable grimace, which looks so much like the
last smile of a man who has been hanged?”
“Capital, my valiant fellow!” replied Spiagudry. “I always felt that
there was more wit beneath the helmet of Constable Thurn, who conquered
the Devil with his sword and his tongue, than under the mitre of Bishop
Isleif, who wrote the history of Iceland, or the square cap of Professor
Shoenning, who described our cathedral.”
“In that case, if you will take my advice, my old bag of leather, you
will give up the revenues of the charnel-house, and go and sell yourself
to the viceroy’s museum of curiosities at Bergen. I swear to you, by
Belphegor, that they pay their weight in gold there for rare beasts; but
say, what do you want with me?”
“When the bodies brought here are found in the water, we have to give
half the reward to the fisherman. I was going to ask you, therefore,
illustrious heir to Constable Thurn, if you would persuade your
unfortunate comrade not to drown himself, but to choose some other mode
of death; it can’t matter much to him, and he would not wish to wrong
the unhappy Christian who must entertain his corpse, if the loss of Guth
should really drive him to that act of despair.”
“You are quite mistaken, my charitable and hospitable friend. My comrade
will not have the pleasure of occupying an apartment in your tempting
tavern with its six beds. Don’t you suppose he has already consoled
himself with another Valkyria for the death of that girl? He had long
been tired of your Guth, by my beard!”
At these words, the storm, which Spiagudry had for a moment drawn upon
his own head, again burst more furiously than ever upon the luckless
soldier.
“What, miserable scamp!” shrieked the old women; “is that the way you
forget us? And yet we love such good-for-nothings!”
The young girls still kept silence. Some of them even thought--greatly
against their will, of course--that this graceless fellow was very
good-looking.
“Oh, ho!” said the soldier; “has the witches’ Sabbath come round again?
Beelzebub’s punishment is frightful indeed if he be condemned to hear
such choruses once a week!”
No one can say how this fresh squall would have ended, if general
attention had not at this moment been utterly absorbed by a noise from
without. The uproar increased steadily, and presently a swarm of little
ragged boys entered the Spladgest, tumultuously shouting and crowding
about a covered bier carried by two men.
“Where does that come from?” the keeper asked the bearers.
“From Urchtal Sands.”
“Oglypiglap!” shouted Spiagudry.
One of the side doors opened, a little man of Lappish race, dressed in
leather, entered, and signed to the bearers to follow him. Spiagudry
accompanied them, and the door closed before the curious crowd had time
to guess, by the length of the body on the bier, whether it were a man
or a woman.
This subject still occupied all their thoughts, when Spiagudry and his
assistant reappeared in the second compartment, carrying the corpse of a
man, which they placed upon one of the granite couches.
“It’s a long time since I’ve handled such handsome clothes,” said
Oglypiglap; then, shaking his head and standing on tiptoe, he hung above
the dead man the elegant uniform of a captain in the army. The corpse’s
head was disfigured, and his limbs were covered with blood; the keeper
sprinkled the body several times from an old broken pail.
“By Saint Beelzebub!” cried the soldier, “it is an officer of my
regiment. Let me see; can it be Captain Bollar,--from grief at his
uncle’s death? Bah! he is the heir. Baron Randmer? He lost his estate at
cards yesterday, but he will win it back to-morrow, with his adversary’s
castle. Can it be Captain Lory, whose dog was drowned, or Paymaster
Stunck, whose wife was unfaithful to him? But, really, I don’t see why
he should blow out his brains for that!”
The crowd steadily increased. Just at this instant, a young man who was
crossing the wharf, seeing the mob of people, dismounted from his horse,
handed the bridle to the servant behind him, and entered the Spladgest.
He wore a simple travelling dress, was armed with a sword, and wrapped
in a large green cloak; a black plume, fastened to his hat by a diamond
buckle, fell over his noble face and waved to and fro upon his lofty
brow, shaded by chestnut hair; his boots and spurs, soiled with mud,
showed that he had come a long distance.
As he entered, a short, thick-set man, also wrapped in a cloak and
hiding his hands in huge gloves, replied to the soldier.
“And who told you that he killed himself? That man no more committed
suicide, I’ll be bound, than the roof of your cathedral set itself on
fire.”
As the double-edged sword makes two wounds, this phrase gave birth to
two answers.
“Our cathedral!” said Niels; “it is covered with copper now. It was that
miserable Hans who set it on fire to make work for the miners, one of
whom was his favorite Gill Stadt, whom you see lying yonder.”
“What the devil!” cried the soldier, in his turn; “do you dare tell me,
the second musketeer in the Munkholm garrison, that that man did not
blow out his brains!”
“He was murdered,” coldly replied the little fellow.
“Just listen to the oracle! Go along with you. Your little gray eyes can
see no better than your hands do under the big gloves with which you
cover them in the middle of the summer.”
The little man’s eyes flashed.
“Soldier, pray to your patron saint that these hands may never leave
their mark upon your face!”
“Oh!--enough of this!” cried the soldier, in a rage. Then, pausing
suddenly, he said: “No, there must be no word of a duel before dead
men.”
The little man growled a few words in a foreign tongue, and vanished.
A voice cried out: “He was found on Urchtal Sands.”
“On Urchtal Sands?” said the soldier; “Captain Dispolsen was to land
there this morning, from Copenhagen.”
“Captain Dispolsen has not yet reached Munkholm,” said another voice.
“They say that Hans of Iceland haunts those sands just now,” added a
fourth.
“Then it is possible that this may be the captain,” said the soldier,
“if Hans was the murderer; for we all know that the Icelander murders in
so devilish a fashion that his victims often seem to be suicides.”
“What sort of man is this Hans?” asked some one.
“He is a giant,” said one.
“He is a dwarf,” said another.
“Has nobody seen him, then?” put in a voice.
“Those who see him for the first time, see him for the last time also.”
“Hush!” said old Olly; “they say there are but three persons who ever
exchanged human speech with him,--that reprobate of a Spiagudry, Widow
Stadt, and--but he had a sad life and a sad death--that poor Gill, who
lies yonder. Hush!”
“Hush!” was repeated on all sides.
“Now,” suddenly exclaimed the soldier, “I am sure that this is indeed
Captain Dispolsen. I recognize the steel chain which our prisoner, old
Schumacker, gave him when he went away.”
The young man with the black plume broke the silence abruptly: “Are you
sure it is Captain Dispolsen?”
“Sure, by the merits of Saint Beelzebub!” said the soldier.
The young man left the room hurriedly.
“Get me a boat for Munkholm,” he said to his servant.
“But, the general, sir?”
“Take the horses to him. I will follow to-morrow. Am I my own master, or
not? Come, night is falling, and I am in haste. A boat!”
The servant obeyed, and for some time stood watching his young master as
he moved away from the shore.