_CONCLUSION_
I can now calmly write down the little, for me so much, that remains to
be told--for many years it would have been impossible.
The storm lasted from Saturday midday until Sunday night, when towards
morning the wind gradually subsided into complete stillness, although
the sea continued restless.
The same day, Monday, at midday, there landed at the parsonage
landing-place, not the minister's white house-boat, that was expected
home, but an ordinary tarred, ten-oared boat, with a number of people in
it.
From it four of the men slowly bore a burden between them up to the
house, while a big man and a little woman went, bowed down, hand in
hand, after them. It was the minister and his wife.
I understood at once what had happened, and my heart cried with despair.
The dreadful message, which came to us directly after, told me nothing
new--it only confirmed my belief that it was the minister's daughter
Susanna they had borne up.
The parsonage boat had been only a little more than three-quarters of a
mile away from home that Saturday morning when the storm came on so
suddenly. A "windfall" had come down with terrible force from the
mountains into the Sound, and had capsized the boat, which was not far
from land.
The minister had quickly helped his wife up on to the boat, and the men
held on round the edge, while they drifted before the wind the short
distance in to the shore. But he searched in vain for his child, to find
her and save her.
With the sea seething round the boat, the strong man three times in his
despair let go his hold in order to swim to the place where he imagined
he saw her in the water. He was going to try again, but his wife, in
great distress, begged his men to hinder him, and they did so.
They said afterwards that they saw drops of perspiration running down
the minister's forehead, as he lay there on the boat in the wintry-cold
sea, and that they believed he even thought of purposely letting go his
hold that he might follow his daughter.
Too late they found out that Susanna was under the boat. She had become
entangled in a rope, so that she could not rise to the surface.
Her death had at any rate been quick and painless.
The whole of Saturday and Sunday, while the storm lasted, they were
compelled to lie weatherbound at a peasant's house in the neighbourhood,
where the minister's wife had kept her bed from exhaustion and grief.
The minister had sat nearly the whole time in the large parlour where
they had laid Susanna, and talked with his God; and on Monday morning,
when they were to go home, he was resigned and cairn, arranged
everything, and comforted his poor, weeping wife.
* * * * *
I had lain in dumb, despairing sorrow the whole afternoon and throughout
the long night, and determined to go the next day and see Susanna for
the last time.
Early in the forenoon, the minister unexpectedly entered our parlour,
and asked to speak to my father. He looked pale and solemn as he sat on
the sofa, with his stick in front of him, and waited.
When my father came in at the door, the minister rose and took his hand,
while the tears stood in his eyes.
After a pause, as if to recover himself, he said that my father saw
before him an unhappy but humble man, whom God had to chasten severely
before his will would bend to Him. He wanted now, because of his
unhappiness, to ask my father not to deny him his old friendship any
longer.
Of the matter that had caused the estrangement he would not now speak;
he had acted to the best of his judgment. There was, however, something
else which now lay on his heart, and here he put his hand on my shoulder
and drew me affectionately to him, as he once more sat down on the sofa.
His daughter Susanna, he continued, sighing at the name, a few days
before God took her to Himself, had admitted him into her confidence,
and told him that she had loved me from the time she was a child, and
that we two had already given each other our promise, with the intention
of telling our parents when I became a student.
At first he had been strongly opposed to the engagement for many
reasons, first and foremost my health and our youth. But Susanna had
shown such intense earnestness in the matter and expressed such
determined will, that, knowing her nature, it became clear to him that
this affection had been growing for many years and could not now be
rooted up. And it was now the greatest comfort he had in the midst of
his sorrow, that the same morning on which they were to start on their
ill-fated journey home, he had given in, and had also promised to use
his influence in getting my father to give his consent.
Instead of this he now stood without a daughter, and only as one
bringing tidings that the disaster had fallen on my father's house too,
and struck his only child. He wished, he hoped with my father's
permission, henceforth to regard me as his son.
My father sat a long time, surprised and pale; he seemed to have great
difficulty in taking in what was said.
At last he rose and in silence gave his hand to the minister. Then he
laid it on my shoulder so that I felt its pressure, looked into my eyes
and said, in a low, wonderfully gentle voice:
"The Lord be with you, my son! Sorrow has visited you young; only, do
not be weak in bearing it!"
He was going out to leave us alone together, but bethought himself in
the doorway, and said that I had better go with the minister and take a
last farewell of Susanna.
A little later the minister and I were walking side by side along the
road. Our relations had now become confidential, and to comfort me he
told me all that Susanna had said to induce him to consent. She knew,
thank God, he concluded with a sigh of relief, that she had in her
father a friend in whom she could confide in the hour of need.
The minister led me into the room with its drawn blinds; he stood for a
moment by the bier, then the tears fell like rain down his broad, strong
face, and he turned and went out.
She lay there in her maidenly white dress. They had twined a wreath of
green leaves with white flowers about her head, and for a moment I saw
again the vision I had at the ball. The delicate hands now lay meekly
folded upon her breast, and on the engagement finger I recognised with
tears my own old bronze ring with the purple glass stones in it, that
she had worn from the moment she had obtained her father's consent. The
expression of the mouth, so energetic in life, was transformed in death
into a quiet, happy smile, in which her beautiful delicate face, with
its broad pure marble brow shone with a heavenly radiance; she lay in
such innocent security, as if she now knew the secret of true love's
victory over everything here on earth, and was only gone in advance,
with white wings on her shoulders, to teach it to me, since God had not
allowed her to share the burden of my cross here below.
When I noticed that they wanted me to go, I silently repeated "Our
Father" over her as a last farewell, pressed one gentle kiss upon her
brow, then one upon her mouth, and one upon her folded hands where the
bronze ring was, and went out without looking back.
Two days after, I followed Susanna's remains to the grave.
* * * * *
One sunshiny day in winter, when I as usual visited the place where she
rested in the churchyard, the snow had drifted over her grave. It lay
pure and dazzlingly white, with the fine upper edge like translucent
marble in the sunlight.
I took this to mean that Susanna would have me think of her in her
shining bridal dress before God, in order to give me courage to go my
lonely way through life, and not to fear that the hardest of all
trials--even insanity, if it came and enthralled me in its
confusion--could separate us.
* * * * *
Late in the summer, when I was to go south by the steamer, together with
the minister and his wife, who had both, in a short time, aged
perceptibly, and who were now moving to a southern parish, I went for
the last time to take leave of my sorrowful friend, the clerk.
He played the beautiful, joyful, beloved piece again for me, which he
had composed when he was twenty, and which I had thought suited Susanna
and me so well, and now he played the continuation too--it was
wonderfully touching and sad, but with comfort in it, like a psalm.
* * * * *
Thus ends a poor, delicate Nordlander's simple story; for to tell how,
with my father's help, I became a student with "_laud_" [There are four
grades in the Academic Degrees Examination--viz., _laudabilis præ
ceteris, laudabilis, haud illaudabilis_, and _non-contemnendus_.]--he
died the same year that I passed my _Examen artium_, a respected but
ruined man--and how I afterwards became something of a literary man, a
private tutor and a master in a school, is only to relate the outward
circumstances of a monotonous life, whose thoughts all dwell in the
past.
My love for Susanna has, as she said to me with such confidence, been
the fountain of health that saved me from the worst madness. When
restlessness came over me, and I roamed about aimlessly in field and
forest, it always came to a crisis, when I saw her, in her white dress,
floating by a little way off, or sometimes even coming gently towards
me; then the danger was over for the time.
During the last two years, when I have been getting worse, I have not
been fortunate enough to see her, and have had a dreary time, often as
if the darkness were closing helplessly round me.
But not long ago, as I lay ill in my garret, Susanna came one night,
when the full moon was shining, up to the bed, in her white bridal
dress, with a wreath upon her beautiful hair, and beckoned to me with
the hand that bore the ring. I know she came to bring me the glad
tidings that I shall soon go hence and see again the love of my youth.
* * * * *