sent upstairs, the captain sat, now quite cozy and comfortable, before
the table, which was still extended, with his tobacco and his taste of
toddy made of the French brandy, whose transformation into Christmas
punch was going on in the kitchen, from which there was also heard the
sizzling of the waffle-iron.
"Only strong, Ma,--only strong!--Then you can manage with the brown
sugar.--Yes, yes," tasting of the wooden dipper which his wife brought
in, "you can treat the sheriff to that with pleasure."
"Now Marit is coming in with the warm waffles,--and then it was this
about the letter of the governor's wife.--You see, Jäger, we cannot
send the child there unless we have her suitably fitted out; she must
have a black silk confirmation dress, city boots and shoes, a hat, and
other things."
"Black silk conf--"
"Yes, and some other dresses, which we must order in Christiania; there
is no help for it."
Captain Jäger began to walk to and fro.
"So, so!--So, so! Well, if that is your idea, then I think we will
decline the invitation with thanks."
"I knew that, Jäger! You would like to have the yolk, but as to
breaking the egg, you hesitate."
"Break the egg? Break my purse, you mean."
"I mean, you can call in a part of the six hundred dollars you got with
me. I have thought and reckoned it over. Inger-Johanna alone will cost
us over one hundred dollars this year, and when Thinka is going to
Ryfylke, we shall not get off with two hundred."
"Over two hundred dollars!--Are you crazy? Are you crazy--really crazy,
Ma? I think you have a screw loose!" He made a sudden turn over the
floor. "The letter shall rather go at once into the stove."
"Very well; you know that I think everything you do is sensible, Jäger."
He stopped, with the letter in his hand and his mouth half open.
"And the slight chance Inger-Johanna might have of being provided for,
that perhaps is not so much to be taken into account. She is certainly
the nearest relation. There is nothing in the way to prevent her being
the heir also.--N-no, do as you will and as you like, Jäger. You
probably see more clearly in this than I do.--And then you will take
the responsibility yourself, Jäger,"--she sighed.
The captain crumpled the letter together, gave her a hasty glance like
a wounded lion, and then stood awhile and stared at the floor. Suddenly
he threw the letter on the table and broke out: "She must go!--But the
cost of the campaign--the cost of the campaign, Ma, that, I learned in
my strategy, must be borne by the enemy! And the governor's wife must
naturally take care of her outfit there."
"The governor's wife, Jäger, must not pay for anything--not a
bit--before she has decided if she will keep her. We must not be
anxious to be rid of her; but _she_ shall be anxious to get her; and
she must ask us for her, both once and twice, you understand."
That the winter was coming on was less noticed this year than usual.
Two children were to be fitted out. Soon spinning-wheel and reel
accompanied, in the short day and long evening, the murmur of the
stove. Ma herself spun all the fine woof for the linsey-woolsey
dresses. There was knitting, weaving, and sewing, nay, also embroidery
on linen--"twelve of everything for each one." And in school hours
in the office the captain worked not less zealously with the French
grammar.
The stiffening cold frost, which blew about the house and cut like
ice from every crack; the cold so fierce that the skin was torn off
the hands when any one was unlucky enough to take hold of the latch
of the outer door or of the porch without mittens; complaints of nail
ache, when the children came in from out-of-doors; or else that the
drinking-water was frozen solid in the tubs and pails, that the meat
must be thawed out,--this was only what was usual in the mountain
region. The doleful, monotonous howling and the long, hungry yelling of
the wolves down on the ice could be heard from the Gilje hills both by
day and by night. The road on the lake lasted a long time. It was there
till long into the spring thaw, though worn, unsafe, and blue with its
dirt-brown mudstreak.
But when it did disappear, and the ice was melted by the heat of the
sun, there lay on the steep hill behind the house a long line of
bleaching linen, so shining white that it seemed as if the snow had
forgotten to go away there.
_Chapter III_
It was midsummer. The mountain region was hazy in the heat; all the
distance was as if enveloped in smoke. The girls on the farm went about
barefooted, in waists and short petticoats. It was a scorching heat,
so that the pitch ran in sticky white lines down from the fat knots in
the timber of the newly built pigsty, where Marit was giving swill to
the hogs. Some sand-scoured wooden milk-pans stood on edge by the well,
drying, while one or two sparrows and wagtails hopped about or perched
nodding on the well-curb, and the blows of the axe resounded from the
wood-shed in the quiet of the afternoon. Pasop lay panting in the shade
behind the outer door, which stood open.
The captain had finished his afternoon nap, and stood by the field
looking at Great-Ola and the horses ploughing up an old grassland which
was to be laid down again.
The bumble-bee was humming in the garden. With about the same
monotonous voice, Thinka and Inger-Johanna, sitting by the stone table
in the summer-house over the cracked blue book-cover and the dog-eared,
well-thumbed leaves, mumbled the Catechism and Commentary, with elbows
and heads close to each other. They had to learn pages eighty-four to
eighty-seven before supper time, and they held their fingers in their
ears so as not to disturb each other.
There was darkness like a shadow just outside of the garden fence. But
they saw nothing, heard nothing; the long passage of Scripture went way
over on the second page.
Then there was a gay clearing of a throat. "Might one interrupt the two
young ladies with earthly affairs?"
They both looked up at the same time. The light hop leaves about the
summer-house had not yet entirely covered the trellis.
With his arms leaning on the garden fence there stood a young man--he
might have been standing there a long time--with a cap almost without a
visor over thick brown hair. His face was sunburned and swollen.
The eyes, which gazed on them, looked dreadfully wicked.
Neither of them saw more; for, by a common impulse at the phenomenon,
they ran in utter panic out of the door, leaving the books spread
open behind them, and up the steps in to Ma, who was in the kitchen
buttering bread for lunch.
"There was a man standing--there was a man out by the garden fence. It
was certainly not any one who goes around begging or anything like that."
"Hear what he has to say, Jörgen," said Ma, quickly comprehending the
situation; "this way, out the veranda door. Appear as if you came of
your own accord."
Both the girls flew in to the windows of the best room in order to peep
out under the curtains.
He was coming in by the steps to the outer door with Jörgen, who
suddenly vanished from his sight into the kitchen.
Little Thea stood in the door of the sitting-room with a piece of bread
and butter, clutching the latch, and, holding the door half shut and
half open, stared at him; she was altogether out of it.
"Is your father at home?"
"Yes, but you must go by the kitchen path, do you hear? And wait till
we have had lunch; he is not going up to the office before that." She
took him for a man who was going to be put on the roll.
"But I am not going to the office, you see."
Ma herself came now; she had managed to get her cap on in her hurry,
but it was all awry.
"A young man, I see, who has perhaps come a long distance to-day.
Please walk in."
Her smile was kind, but her eye underneath it was as sharp as an
officer's review; here were holes and darns with coarse thread for the
nonce and rents in abundance, and it was not easy to free herself from
the suspicion of some questionable rover, especially when he dropped
straight in through the door with the remark: "I come like a tramp
from the mountain wilds, madam. I must make many excuses."
Ma's searching look had in the mean time broken through the shell. The
white streak on the upper part of the forehead, under the shade where
the skin had not been reddened by the sunburn, and his whole manner
determined her to scrutinize him prudently. "Please sit down, Jäger is
coming soon." She incidentally passed by the sewing-table and shut it.
"Won't you let me send you a glass of milk in the mean time?"
A girl came in with a great basin, shaped like a bowl, and vanished
again.
He put it to his mouth, noted with his eye how much he had drunk, drank
again, and took another view.
"It is delightful--is not at all like the mistress of the house, for
she seemed like sour milk, and"--he suppressed a sigh--"dangerously
dignified."
He drank again.
"Yes, now one really must stop; but since and whereas--"
He placed the basin quite empty on the plate.
"Best to attack him at once. Dead broke, will you on my honest face
lend me four--no, that does not sound well, better out with it at
once--five dollars, so that I can get to Christiania?"
The small eyes twinkled quickly. If only the captain had come then!
Some one was walking about out there.
He gazed abstractedly; he repeated his speech to himself. It was always
altered, and now he stood again at the ticklish point--the amount. He
considered if perhaps he only needed to ask for four--three?
There was a growling out in the hall; the dog rushed out, barking
loudly. It was plainly the captain.
The young man rose hurriedly, but sat down again like a spring ready to
jump up out of a chair: he had been in too great haste.
"In the parlor--some sort of fellow who wants to talk with me?" It was
out on the stairs that some one was speaking.
A moment or two later, and the captain appeared in the door.
"I must beg you to excuse me, Captain. I have unfortunately,
unfortunately"--here he began to stammer; bad luck would have it that
one of the two young girls whom he had seen in the summer-house, the
dark one, came in after her father; and so it would not do--"come over
the mountain," he continued. "You will understand that one cannot
exactly appear in the best plight." The last came in a tone of forced
ease.
The captain at that moment did not appear exactly agreeably surprised.
"My name is Arent Grip!"
"Arent Grip!" rejoined the captain, looking at him. "Grip! the same
phiz and eyes! You can never be the son of Perpetuum--cadet at
Lurleiken? He is a farmer, or proprietor I suppose he calls himself,
somewhere among the fjords."
"He is my father, Captain."
"Does he still work as hard as ever at his mechanical ideas?" asked the
captain. "I heard that he had carried the water for his mill straight
through the roof of the cow-barn, so that the cows got a shower bath,
when the pipes sprung a leak."
Inger-Johanna caught a movement of indignation, as if the stranger
suddenly grasped after his cap. "Shame, shame, that those times did not
give a man like my father a scientific education." He said this with a
seriousness utterly oblivious of the captain.
"So, so. Well, my boy, you must be kind enough to take a little lunch
with us, before you start off. Inger-Johanna, tell Ma that we want
something to drink and bread and butter. You must be hungry coming down
from the mountains. Sit down.--And what is now your--your occupation or
profession in the world? if I might ask." The captain sauntered around
the floor.
"Student; and, Captain," he gasped, in order to use quickly the moment
while they were alone, "since I have been so free as to come in here
thus without knowing you--"
"Student!" The captain stopped in the middle of the floor. "Yes, I
would have risked my head on it, saw it at the first glance, but yet
I was a little in doubt. Well, yes," clearing his throat, "nearly
plucked, perhaps; eh, boy?" inquired he good-naturedly. "Your father
also had trouble with his examinations."
"I have not the fractional part of my father's brains, but with what I
have, they gave me this year _laudabilis praeceteris_."
"Son of my friend, Fin Arentzen Grip!" He uttered each one of the
names with a certain tender recognition. "Your father was, all
things considered, a man of good ability, not to say a little of a
genius,--when he failed in his officer's examination, it was all due
to his irregular notions. Well, so you are his son! Yes, he wrote many
a composition for me--the pinch was always with the compositions, you
see."
"And, Captain," began the young man again earnestly, now in a louder
and more decided tone, "since I can thus, without further ceremony,
confidently address you--"
"You can tell Ma," said the captain, when Inger-Johanna again came in
with her taller, overgrown sister, "that it is Student Arent Grip, son
of my old delightful comrade at the Military School."
The result of this last message was that the contemplated plate with a
glass and bread and butter was changed to a little lunch for him and
the captain, spread out on a tray.
The old bread-basket of red lacquer was filled with slices of black,
sour bread, the crusts of which were cracked off. More's the pity, Ma
declared, it had been spoiled in the baking, and the gray, heavy crust
was due to the fact that so much of the grain on the captain's farm
last year was harvested before it was ripe.
The student showed the sincerity of his forbearance of these defects
through an absolutely murderous appetite. The prudential lumps of
salt, which studded the fresh mountain butter with pearly tears in a
superfluous abundance, he had a knack of dodging boldly and incisively,
which did not escape admiring eyes; only a single short stroke of his
knife on the under side of the bread and butter, and the lumps of salt
rained and pattered over the plate.
"You will surely have some dried beef? I guess you have not had much
to eat to-day. Go and get some more, Thinka. A little dram with the
cheese, what? You can believe that we tested many a good old cheese
in the den at your father's, and when we had a spree, we sent for
it, and it circulated round from one party to another; and then the
apples from Bergen which he got by the bushel by freighting-vessel
from home! He was such a greenhorn, and so kind hearted--too confiding
for such rascals as we! Oh, how we hunted through his closet and
boxes!--and then we did our exercises at the same time; it was only
his that the teacher corrected through the whole class." The captain
emptied the second part of his long dram. "Ah!" He held his glass up
against the light, and looked through it, as he was accustomed to. "But
nevertheless, there was something odd about him, you know; you must see
that such a one, straight from the country, does not fit in at once.
Never forget when he first lectured us about perpetual motion. It was
done with only five apples in a wheel, he said, and the apples must be
absolutely mathematically exact. It was that which got out and ruined
him, so people came to--yes, you know--comment on it, and make fun of
him; and that hung on till the examination."
The student wriggled about.
The young ladies, who were sitting with their sewing by the window,
also noticed how he had now forgotten himself; during the whole time he
had kept one boot under the chair behind the other in order to conceal
the sole of his shoes gaping wide open. They were in good spirits,
and hardly dared to look at each other--son of a man who was called
Perpetuum, was a cadet, and gave the cows a bath. Father was dreadfully
amusing when there were strangers present.
"Not a moment's doubt that there were ideas--but there was something
obstinate about him. To come, as he did, straight from the farm, and
then to begin to dispute with the teacher about what is in the book,
never succeeds well, especially in physics in the Military School. And
you can believe that was a comedy."
"Then I will bet my head that it was not my father who was wrong,
Captain."
"Hm, hm--naturally yes, his father to a dot," he mumbled--"Hm, well,
you have got _praeceteris_ all the same,--will you have a drop more?"
came the hospitable diversion.
"No, I thank you. But I will tell you how it was with my father. It
was just as it was with a hound they had once at the judge's. There
was such blood and spirit in him that you would search long to find
his equal; but one day he bit a sheep, and so he had to be cured.
It was done by locking him up in a sheepfold. There he stood, alone
before the ram and all the sheepfold. It seemed to him splendid fun.
Then the ram came leaping at him, and the dog rolled heels over head.
Pshaw, that was nothing; but after the ram came tripping--before he
could rise--all the fifty sheep trip--trip--trip, over him; then he
was entirely confused. Again they stood opposite each other, and once
more the ram rushed in on the dog, and trip--trip--trip--trip, came the
feet of the whole flock of sheep over him. So they kept on for fully
two hours, until the dog lay perfectly quiet and completely stunned. He
was cured, never bit a sheep again. But what he was good for afterwards
we had better not talk about--he had been through the Military School,
Captain."
When he looked up, he met the dark, intense eyes of the mistress fixed
on him; her capped head immediately bent down over the sewing again.
The captain had listened more and more eagerly. The cure of the hound
interested him. It was only at the last expression he discovered that
there was any hidden meaning in it.
"Hm--my dear Grip. Ah! Yes, you think that. Hm, can't agree with
you. There were skilful teachers, and--ho, ho,--really we were not
sheep--rather wolves to meet with, my boy. But the cure, I must admit,
was disgraceful for a good dog, and in so far--well, a drop more?"
"Thank you, Captain."
"But what kind of a road do you say you have been over, my boy?"
With the food and the glass and a half of cordial which he had enjoyed,
new life had come into the young man. He looked at his clothes, and was
even so bold as to put his boots out; a great seam went across one knee.
"I certainly might be set up as a scarecrow for a terror and warning to
all those who will depart from the highway. It was all because at the
post station I met a deer-hunter, an excellent fellow. The chap talked
to me so long of what there was on the mountain that I wanted to go
with him."
"Extremely reasonable," muttered the captain, "when a man is paying for
his son in Christiania."
"I had become curious, I must tell you, and so started off for the
heart of the mountains."
"Is he not even more aggravatingly mad than his father,--to start in
haphazard over the black, pathless mountain?"
"The track led over the débris and stones at the foot at first for five
hours. But I don't know what it is upon the mountain; it was as if
something got into my legs. The air was so fine and light, as if I had
been drinking champagne; it intoxicated me. I should have liked to walk
on my hands, and it would have been of no consequence to any one in the
whole wide world, for I was on the summit. And never in my life have I
seen such a view as when we stood, in the afternoon, on the mountain
crest,--only cool, white, shining snow, and dark blue sky, peak on
peak, one behind the other, in a glory as far as the eye could reach."
"Yes, we have snow enough, my boy. It stands close up against the walls
of the house here all winter, as clear, white, and cold as any one
could wish. We find ourselves very well satisfied with that,--but show
me a beautiful green meadow or a fine field of grain, my boy."
"It seemed to me as if one great fellow of a mountain stood by the side
of another and said: You poor, thin-legged, puny being, are you not
going to be blown away in the blue draught, here on the snow-field,
like a scrap of paper? If you wish to know what is great, take your
standard from us."
"You got _praeceteris_, you said, my man? Yes, yes, yes, yes! What do
you say if we get the shoemaker to put a little patch on your shoes
to-night?"
It was as much as an invitation to stay all night!--Extremely tempting
to postpone the request till next day. "Thank you, Captain, I will not
deny that it might be decidedly practical."
"Tell the shoemaker, Jörgen, to take them as soon as he has put the
heel-irons on those I am to have for the survey of the roads."
Oh! So he is going away, perhaps early to-morrow morning; it must be
done this evening, nevertheless! Now, when the daughters were beginning
to clear off the table, it was best to watch his chance.
The captain began walking up and down the floor with short steps. "Yes,
yes, true! Yes, yes, true! Would you like to see some fine pigs, Grip?"
The student immediately sprang up. The way out! He grabbed his cap. "Do
you keep many, Captain?" he asked, extremely interested.
"Come!--oh, it is no matter about going through the kitchen--come out
a little while on the porch steps. Do you see that light spot in the
woods up there? That is where we took the timber for the cow-house and
the pigsty, two years ago."
He went out into the farmyard bare-headed.
"Marit, Marit, here is some one who wants to see your pigs. Now you
shall be reviewed. There are a sow and seven--you see. Ugh, ugh, yes.
Hear your little ones, Marit!--But it was the brick wall, you see.
Right here was a swamp hole; it oozed through from the brook above. And
now--see the drain there?--as dry as tinder."
Now or never the petition must be presented.
"And now they live like lords all together there," continued the
captain.
"All seven of the dollars--what am I saying, all five of the pigs."
"What?"
"Here is your hat, father!"--Jörgen came from the house--"and there are
some of the people down from Fosse standing there and waiting."
"So? We will only just look into the stable a little."
There stood Svarten and Brunen, just unharnessed, still dripping wet
and with stiff hair after the work at the plough.
"Fine stall, eh?--and very light; the horses don't come out of the door
half blind. Ho, Svarten, are you sweaty now?"
There was a warm and pleasant smell of the stable--and finally--
"Captain, I am going to make a re--"
"But, Ola," interrupted the latter, "see Brunen's crib there! I don't
like those bits. It can't be that he bites it?"
"Ha, ha, ha--no, by no means." Ola grinned slyly; he was not going to
admit in a stranger's presence that the captain's new bay was a cribber!
The captain had become very red; he pulled off his cap, and hurriedly
walked along with it in his hand--"such a rascal of a horse-trader!"
He no longer looked as if he would listen to a request.
Out of the afternoon shade by the stable walls the two men just spoken
of appeared.
"Is this a time of day to come to people?" he blurted out. "Ah well--go
up to the office."
At this he strode over the yard, peeped into the well, and turned
towards the window of the sitting-room.
"Girls! Inger-Johanna--Thinka," he called in a loud tone. "Ask Ma if
that piece of meat is going to lie there by the well and rot."
"Marit has taken it up, we are going to have it for supper," Thinka
tried to whisper.
"Oh! Is it necessary on that account to keep it where Pasop can get
it?--Show the student down into the garden, so that he can get some
currants," he called out of the door, as he went up by the stables to
his office.
Arent Grip's head, covered with thick brown hair, with the scanty flat
cap upon it, could now be seen for a good long time among the currant
bushes by the side of Thinka's little tall, blond one. At first he
talked a great deal, and the sprightly, bright, brown eyes were not
in the least wicked, Thinka thought. She began to feel rather a warm
interest in him.
He found his boots in the morning standing mended before his bed, and a
tray with coffee and breakfast came up to him. He had said he must be
off early.
Now it all depended on making his decisive leap with closed eyes in the
dark.
When he came down, the captain stood on the stairs with his pipe. Over
his fat neck, where the buckle of his military stock shone, grayish
locks of hair stuck out under his reddish wig. He was looking out a
little discontentedly into the morning fog, speculating on whether it
would settle or rise so that he would dare order the mowing to go on.
"So you are going to start, my boy?"
"Captain, can--will you lend me--" in his first courage of the morning
he had thought of five, but it sank to four even while he was on the
stairs, and now in the presence of the captain to--"three dollars? I
have used up every shilling I had to get to Christiania with. You shall
have them by money order immediately."