The Oddsons were certainly a happy family though not by any means a
harmonious one. The excellent pastor, who was himself neutrally good,
orthodox, and kind-hearted, had often, in the privacy of his own
thought, wondered what hidden ancestral influences there might have
been at work in giving a man so peaceable and inoffensive as himself two
daughters of such strongly defined individuality. There was Augusta, the
elder, who was what Arnfinn called “indiscriminately reformatory,” and
had a universal desire to improve everything, from the Government down
to agricultural implements and preserve jars. As long as she was content
to expend the surplus energy, which seemed to accumulate within her
through the long eventless winters, upon the Zulu Mission, and other
legitimate objects, the pastor thought it all harmless enough; although,
to be sure, her enthusiasm for those naked and howling savages did at
times strike him as being somewhat extravagant. But when occasionally,
in her own innocent way, she put both his patience and his orthodoxy to
the test by her exceedingly puzzling questions, then he could not, in
the depth of his heart, restrain the wish that she might have been more
like other young girls, and less ardently solicitous about the fate of
her kind. Affectionate and indulgent, however, as the pastor was,
he would often, in the next moment, do penance for his unregenerate
thought, and thank God for having made her so fair to behold, so pure,
and so noble-hearted.
Toward Arnfinn, Augusta had, although of his own age, early assumed a
kind of elder-sisterly relation; she had been his comforter during all
the trials of his boyhood; had yielded him her sympathy with that eager
impulse which lay so deep in her nature, and had felt forlorn when life
had called him away to where her words of comfort could not reach him.
But when once she had hinted this to her father, he had pedantically
convinced her that her feeling was unchristian, and Inga had playfully
remarked that the hope that some one might soon find the open Polar Sea
would go far toward consoling her for her loss; for Augusta had glorious
visions at that time of the open Polar Sea. Now, the Polar Sea, and
many other things, far nearer and dearer, had been forced into uneasy
forgetfulness; and Arnfinn was once more with her, no longer a child,
and no longer appealing to her for aid and sympathy; man enough,
apparently, to have outgrown his boyish needs and still boy enough to be
ashamed of having ever had them.
It was the third Sunday after Arnfinn’s return. He and Augusta were
climbing the hillside to the “Giant’s Hood,” from whence they had a wide
view of the fjord, and could see the sun trailing its long bridge of
flame upon the water. It was Inga’s week in the kitchen, therefore her
sister was Arnfinn’s companion. As they reached the crest of the “Hood,”
Augusta seated herself on a flat bowlder, and the young student flung
himself on a patch of greensward at her feet. The intense light of the
late sun fell upon the girl’s unconscious face, and Arnfinn lay, gazing
up into it, and wondering at its rare beauty; but he saw only the clean
cut of its features and the purity of its form, being too shallow to
recognize the strong and heroic soul which had struggled so long
for utterance in the life of which he had been a blind and unmindful
witness.
“Gracious, how beautiful you are, cousin!” he broke forth, heedlessly,
striking his leg with his slender cane; “pity you were not born a queen;
you would be equal to almost anything, even if it were to discover the
Polar Sea.”
“I thought you were looking at the sun, Arnfinn,” answered she, smiling
reluctantly.
“And so I am, cousin,” laughed he, with an other-emphatic slap of his
boot.
“That compliment is rather stale.”
“But the opportunity was too tempting.”
“Never mind, I will excuse you from further efforts. Turn around and
notice that wonderful purple halo which is hovering over the forests
below. Isn’t it glorious?”
“No, don’t let us be solemn, pray. The sun I have seen a thousand
times before, but you I have seen very seldom of late. Somehow, since
I returned this time, you seem to keep me at a distance. You no longer
confide to me your great plans for the abolishment of war, and the
improvement of mankind generally. Why don’t you tell me whether you
have as yet succeeded in convincing the peasants that cleanliness is
a cardinal virtue, that hawthorn hedges are more picturesque than rail
fences, and that salt meat is a very indigestible article?”
“You know the fate of my reforms, from long experience,” she answered,
with the same sad, sweet smile. “I am afraid there must be some thing
radically wrong about my methods; and, moreover, I know that your
aspirations and mine are no longer the same, if they ever have been, and
I am not ungenerous enough to force you to feign an interest which you
do not feel.”
“Yes, I know you think me flippant and boyish,” retorted he, with sudden
energy, and tossing a stone down into the gulf below. “But, by the way,
my friend Strand, if he ever comes, would be just the man for you.
He has quite as many hobbies as you have, and, what is more, he has a
profound respect for hobbies in general, and is universally charitable
toward those of others.”
“Your friend is a great man,” said the girl, earnestly. “I have read his
book on `The Wading Birds of the Norwegian Highlands,’ and none but a
great man could have written it.”
“He is an odd stick, but, for all that, a capital fellow; and I have no
doubt you would get on admirably with him.”
At this moment the conversation was interrupted by the appearance of the
pastor’s man, Hans, who came to tell the “young miss” that there was
a big tramp hovering about the barns in the “out-fields,” where he
had been sleeping during the last three nights. He was a dangerous
character, Hans thought, at least judging from his looks, and it was
hardly safe for the young miss to be roaming about the fields at night
as long as he was in the neighborhood.
“Why don’t you speak to the pastor, and have him arrested?” said
Arnfinn, impatient of Hans’s long-winded recital.
“No, no, say nothing to father,” demanded Augusta, eagerly. “Why should
you arrest a poor man as long as he does nothing worse than sleep in the
barns in the out-fields?”
“As you say, miss,” retorted Hans, and departed.
The moon came up pale and mist-like over the eastern mountain ridges,
struggled for a few brief moments feebly with the sunlight, and then
vanished.
“It is strange,” said Arnfinn, “how everything reminds me of Strand
to-night. What gloriously absurd apostrophes to the moon he could make!
I have not told you, cousin, of a very singular gift which he possesses.
He can attract all kinds of birds and wild animals to himself; he can
imitate their voices, and they flock around him, as if he were one of
them, without fear of harm.”
“How delightful,” cried Augusta, with sudden animation. “What a glorious
man your friend must be!”
“Because the snipes and the wild ducks like him? You seem to have
greater confidence in their judgment than in mine.”
“Of course I have--at least as long as you persist in joking. But,
jesting aside, what a wondrously beautiful life he must lead whom
Nature takes thus into her confidence; who has, as it were, an inner and
subtler sense, corresponding to each grosser and external one; who is
keen-sighted enough to read the character of every individual beast, and
has ears sensitive to the full pathos of joy or sorrow in the song of
the birds that inhabit our woodlands.”
“Whether he has any such second set of senses as you speak of, I
don’t know; but there can be no doubt that his familiarity, not to
say intimacy, with birds and beasts gives him a great advantage as a
naturalist. I suppose you know that his little book has been translated
into French, and rewarded with the gold medal of the Academy.”
“Hush! What is that?” Augusta sprang up, and held her hand to her ear.
“Some love-lorn mountain-cock playing yonder in the pine copse,”
suggested Arnfinn, amused at his cousin’s eagerness.
“You silly boy! Don’t you know the mountain-cock never plays except at
sunrise?”
“He would have a sorry time of it now, then, when there IS no sunrise.”
“And so he has; he does not play except in early spring.”
The noise, at first faint, now grew louder. It began with a series of
mellow, plaintive clucks that followed thickly one upon another, like
smooth pearls of sound that rolled through the throat in a continuous
current; then came a few sharp notes as of a large bird that snaps his
bill; then a long, half-melodious rumbling, intermingled with cacklings
and snaps, and at last, a sort of diminuendo movement of the same round,
pearly clucks. There was a whizzing of wing-beats in the air; two large
birds swept over their heads and struck down into the copse whence the
sound had issued.
“This is indeed a most singular thing,” said Augusta, under her breath,
and with wide-eyed wonder. “Let us go nearer, and see what it can be.”
“I am sure I can go if you can,” responded Arnfinn, not any too eagerly.
“Give me your hand, and we can climb the better.”
As they approached the pine copse, which projected like a promontory
from the line of the denser forest, the noise ceased, and only the
plaintive whistling of a mountain-hen, calling her scattered young
together, and now and then the shrill response of a snipe to the cry of
its lonely mate, fell upon the summer night, not as an interruption, but
as an outgrowth of the very silence. Augusta stole with soundless tread
through the transparent gloom which lingered under those huge black
crowns, and Arnfinn followed impatiently after. Suddenly she motioned to
him to stand still, and herself bent forward in an attitude of surprise
and eager observation. On the ground, some fifty steps from where she
was stationed, she saw a man stretched out full length, with a knapsack
under his head, and surrounded by a flock of downy, half-grown birds,
which responded with a low, anxious piping to his alluring cluck, then
scattered with sudden alarm, only to return again in the same curious,
cautious fashion as before. Now and then there was a great flapping of
wings in the trees overhead, and a heavy brown and black speckled
mountain-hen alighted close to the man’s head, stretched out her neck
toward him, cocked her head, called her scattered brood together, and
departed with slow and deliberate wing-beats.
Again there was a frightened flutter overhead, a shrill anxious whistle
rose in the air, and all was silence. Augusta had stepped on a dry
branch--it had broken under her weight--hence the sudden confusion and
flight. The unknown man had sprung up, and his eye, after a moment’s
search, had found the dark, beautiful face peering forth behind the red
fir-trunk. He did not speak or salute her; he greeted her with silent
joy, as one greets a wondrous vision which is too frail and bright for
consciousness to grasp, which is lost the very instant one is conscious
of seeing. But, while to the girl the sight, as it were, hung trembling
in the range of mere physical perception, while its suddenness held it
aloof from moral reflection, there came a great shout from behind, and
Arnfinn, whom in her surprise she had quite forgotten, came bounding
forward, grasping the stranger by the hand with much vigor,
laughing heartily, and pouring forth a confused stream of delighted
interjections, borrowed from all manner of classical and unclassical
tongues.
“Strand! Strand!” he cried, when the first tumult of excitement had
subsided; “you most marvelous and incomprehensible Strand! From
what region of heaven or earth did you jump down into our prosaic
neighborhood? And what in the world possessed you to choose our barns
as the centre of your operations, and nearly put me to the necessity of
having you arrested for vagrancy? How I do regret that Cousin Augusta’s
entreaties mollified my heart toward you. Pardon me, I have not
introduced you. This is my cousin, Miss Oddson, and this is my
miraculous friend, the world-renowned author, vagrant, and naturalist,
Mr. Marcus Strand.”
Strand stepped forward, made a deep but somewhat awkward bow, and was
dimly aware that a small soft hand was extended to him, and, in the next
moment, was enclosed in his own broad and voluminous palm. He grasped it
firmly, and, in one of those profound abstractions into which he was
apt to fall when under the sway of a strong impression, pressed it with
increasing cordiality, while he endeavored to find fitting answers to
Arnfinn’s multifarious questions.
“To tell the truth, Vording,” he said, in a deep, full-ringing bass,
“I didn’t know that these were your cousin’s barns--I mean that your
uncle”--giving the unhappy hand an emphatic shake--“inhabited these
barns.”
“No, thank heaven, we are not quite reduced to that,” cried Arnfinn,
gayly; “we still boast a parsonage, as you will presently discover,
and a very bright and cozy one, to boot. But, whatever you do, have the
goodness to release Augusta’s hand. Don’t you see how desperately she is
struggling, poor thing?”
Strand dropped the hand as if it had been a hot coal, blushed to the
edge of his hair, and made another profound reverence. He was a tall,
huge-limbed youth, with a frame of gigantic mold, and a large, blonde,
shaggy head, like that of some good-natured antediluvian animal, which
might feel the disadvantages of its size amid the puny beings of this
later stage of creation. There was a frank directness in his gaze, and
an unconsciousness of self, which made him very winning, and which could
not fail of its effect upon a girl who, like Augusta, was fond of the
uncommon, and hated smooth, facile and well-tailored young men, with
the labels of society and fashion upon their coats, their mustaches,
and their speech. And Strand, with his large sun-burned face, his
wild-growing beard, blue woolen shirt, top boots, and unkempt appearance
generally, was a sufficiently startling phenomenon to satisfy even so
exacting a fancy as hers; for, after reading his book about the
Wading Birds, she had made up her mind that he must have few points of
resemblance to the men who had hitherto formed part of her own small
world, although she had not until now decided just in what way he was to
differ.
“Suppose I help you carry your knapsack,” said Arnfinn, who was flitting
about like a small nimble spaniel trying to make friends with some
large, good-natured Newfoundland. “You must be very tired, having roamed
about in this Quixotic fashion!”
“No, I thank you,” responded Strand, with an incredulous laugh, glancing
alternately from Arnfinn to the knapsack, as if estimating their
proportionate weight. “I am afraid you would rue your bargain if I
accepted it.”
“I suppose you have a great many stuffed birds at home,” remarked the
girl, looking with self-forgetful admiration at the large brawny figure.
“No, I have hardly any,” answered he, seating himself on the ground,
and pulling a thick note-book from his pocket. “I prefer live creatures.
Their anatomical and physiological peculiarities have been studied
by others, and volumes have been written about them. It is their
psychological traits, ii you will allow the expression, which interest
me, and those I can only get at while they are alive.”
“How delightful!”
Some minutes later they were all on their way to the Parsonage. The sun,
in spite of its mid-summer wakefulness, was getting red-eyed and drowsy,
and the purple mists which hung in scattered fragments upon the forest
below had lost something of their deep-tinged brilliancy. But Augusta,
quite blind to the weakened light effects, looked out upon the broad
landscape in ecstasy, and, appealing to her more apathetic companions,
invited them to share her joy at the beauty of the faint-flushed summer
night.
“You are getting quite dithyrambic, my dear,” remarked Arnfinn, with
an air of cousinly superiority, which he felt was eminently becoming to
him; and Augusta looked up with quick surprise, then smiled in an absent
way, and forgot what she had been saying. She had no suspicion but that
her enthusiasm had been all for the sunset.