“aged mother, worn with toil
And sweating as 'twere blood....”
But some of the wild youths insist on dancing and nothing else. What's
this! Start singing, when they're standing here with the girls all ready
to dance--it's not proper! The singer stops, and meets the protest in
broadest dialect: What? Not proper? Why, it's by Vinje himself! Heated
discussion, _pro_ and _contra,_ arguing and shouting. Never were verses
sung with more effect.
The dance goes on.
The girls from the valley are armoured five layers thick, but who cares
for that! All are used to hard work. And the dance goes on--ay, the
thunder goes on. _Brændevin_ helps things bravely along. The witches'
cauldron is fairly steaming now. At three in the morning the local
police force appears, and knocks on the floor with his stick. _Finis._
The dancers go off in the moonlight, and spread out near and far. And
nine months later, the girls from the valley show proof that after all
they were one layer of armour short. Never was such an effect of being
one layer short.
The river is quieter now--not much of a river to look at: the winter is
come upon it now. It drives the mills and works that stand on its banks,
for, in spite of all, it is and will be a great river still, but it
shows no life. It has shut down the lid on itself.
And the rapids have suffered, too. And I who stood watching them once
and listening, and thought to myself if one lived down there in the
roar of it for ever, what would one's brain be like at last? But now the
rapids are dwindled, and murmur faintly. It would be shame to call it
a roar. _Herregud!_ 'tis no more than a ruin of what it was. Sunk into
poverty, great rocks thrust up all down the channel, with here and there
a stick of timber hung up thwart and slantwise; one could cross dry-shod
by way of stick and stone.
* * * * *
I have done all I have to do in the town, and my pack is on my
shoulders. It is Sunday, and a fine clear day.
I look in at the hotel, to see the porter; he is going with me a bit of
the way up the river. The great good-hearted fellow offers to carry my
things--as if I could not carry them myself.
We go up along the right bank; but the road itself lies on the left; the
way we are taking is only a summer path, trodden only by the lumbermen,
and with some few fresh tracks in the snow. My companion cannot make
out why we do not follow the road: he was always dull of wit; but I have
been up this path twice before these last few days, and I am going up it
once again. It is my own tracks we can see all the time.