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THE
FISHER GIRL
BY
BJOeRNSTJERNE BJOeRNSON.
TRANSLATED FROM THE NORWEGIAN
BY
SIVERT AND ELIZABETH HJERLEID.
(_Translators of Ovind._)
LONDON:
TRUeBNER AND CO.
1871.
[_Entered at Stationers' Hall._]
TRANSLATORS' PREFACE.
Encouraged by the general appreciation with which our former
translation "Ovind" was received last winter, we now offer to the
English reader what we believe to be a faithful re-production of Herr
Bjoernson's latest work. The poems are rendered in the metre of the
original, and as in "Ovind" we have taken the liberty of adding
headings to the chapters.
North Ormesby,
Middlesbrough,
December, 1870.
CONTENTS.
CHAP. I.
PEER, PETER, AND PEDRO.
CHAP. II.
"SOME OTHER BOYS."
CHAP. III.
READY FOR CONFIRMATION.
CHAP. IV.
ONE AND ANOTHER.
CHAP. V.
A MISTAKE.
CHAP. VI.
THE SOUND OF THE CLOCK.
CHAP. VII.
THE FIRST ACT.
CHAP. VIII.
AT THE RURAL DEAN'S.
CHAP. IX.
APPREHENSIONS.
CHAP. X.
IS MUSIC LAWFUL?
CHAP. XI.
RECONCILIATION.
CHAP. XII.
THE SCENE.
CHAPTER I.
PEER, PETER, AND PEDRO.
When the herring has for a long time frequented a coast, by degrees, if
other circumstances admit of it, there springs up a town. Not only of
such towns may it be said, that they are cast up out of the sea, but
from a distance they look like washed-up timber and wrecks, or like a
mass of upturned boats that the fishermen have drawn over for shelter
some stormy night; as one draws nearer, one sees how accidentally the
whole has been built, mountains rising in the midst of the
thoroughfare, or the hamlet separated by water into three, four
divisions, while the streets crook and crawl. One condition only is
common to them all, there is safety in the harbour for the largest
ship; there is shelter and calm, and the ships find these enclosures
grateful, when with torn sails and broken bulwarks, they come driving
in from the North Sea to seek for breathing space.
Such a little town is quiet; all the noise there is, is directed to the
quay, where the boats of the peasants are moored, and the ships are
loading and unloading. The only street in our little town lies along
the quay, the white and red painted, one and two-storied houses follow
this, yet not house to house, but with pretty gardens in between;
consequently it is a long broad street, which, when the wind is
landward, smells of that which is on the quay.
It is quiet here,--not from fear of the police, for, as a rule, there
is none,--but from fear of report, as everybody knows everybody. If you
go along the street, you must bow at every window, for there sits an
old lady ready to bow again. Besides you must bow to those you meet,
for all these quiet people are thinking what is becoming to the
inhabitants in general, and to themselves in particular. He who
oversteps the bounds where his standing or position is placed, loses
his good reputation; for you know not only him, but his father and
grandfather and you seek out where there has been a tendency in the
family before to that which is unbecoming.
Many years since to this quiet little town came the well esteemed man,
Peer Olsen; he came from the country, where he had lived as a small
stall keeper and by playing the violin. In this town he opened a little
shop for his old customers, where besides other wares he sold brandy
and bread. One could hear him going backwards and forwards in the room
behind the shop, playing spring dances and wedding marches; every time
he passed the door he peeped through the glass pane, when, if he saw a
customer, he finished up with a trill, and went in. Trade went well, he
married and got a son, whom he named after himself, yet not Peer but
Peter. Little Peter should be what Peer felt HE was not, an educated
man, so the lad was sent to the Latin school. Now when those who should
have been his companions, thrust him out of their play because he was
the son of Peer Olsen, Peer Olsen turned him out to them again, as that
was the only way for the boy to learn manners. Little Peter, therefore,
feeling himself forsaken at the school, grew idle, and gradually became
so indifferent to everything, that his father could neither thrash
smiles nor tears out of him, so the father gave up struggling with him
and put him in the shop. How astonished then--was he not? when he saw
the lad give to each customer what he asked for, without a grain too
much, never even touching so much as a raisin himself preferring not to
talk, but weighing, counting, entering, without any change of
countenance, very slowly, but with scrupulous exactness. His father's
hopes began to revive, and he sent him with a fishing smack to Hamburg,
to enter a Merchant's College, and to learn fine manners; he was away
eight months, that must surely be sufficient. When he came back he had
provided himself with six new suits of clothes, and on landing he put
one suit on the top of another, for "things in actual wear are exempt
from duty." But thickness excepted, he made about the same figure in
the street next day. He walked straight or stiff with his arms
perpendicular, shook hands with a sudden jerk, and bowed as if without
joints to be at once stiff again; he had become politeness itself, but
everything was done without uttering a word, and quickly, with a
certain shyness. He did not sign his name Olsen any more, but Ohlsen,
which led the wits of the town to ask, "How far did Peter Ohlsen get in
Hamburg?" Answer: "As far as the first letter." He even went so far as
to think of calling himself Pedro, but he had to brook so much
annoyance for the h's sake, that he gave it up and signed himself P.
Ohlsen. He extended the business, and though only twenty-two, he
married a red-handed shop girl, for his father had just become a
widower, and it was safer to have a wife than a housekeeper. That day
year he got a son, who that day week was named Pedro. When worthy Peer
Olsen became a grandfather, he felt an inward calling to grow old.
Therefore he left the business to his son, sat outside upon a bench,
and smoked twist tobacco from a short pipe; and when one day he began
to grow tired of sitting there, he wished he might soon die, and even
as all his wishes had quietly been fulfilled, so also was this.
If the son Peter had inherited exclusively the one feature of his
father's character, aptitude for business, the grandson Pedro seemed to
have inherited the other exclusively--talent for music. He was very
slow in learning to read, but quick in learning to sing, and he played
the flute so exquisitely that one might easily perceive he was of a
refined and susceptible nature. But this was only a trouble to the
father, as if the boy should be brought up to his own busy exactness.
Then, when he forgot anything, he was not scolded nor thrashed as the
father had been, but he was pinched. It was done very quietly, and with
a kindness one might almost call polite, but it was done on every
possible occasion. Every night when she undressed him, the mother
counted the blue and yellow marks, and kissed them, but she offered no
resistance, for she was pinched herself. For every tear in his clothes,
(the father's Hamburg suits made up again,) for every blot on his
copy-book she was to blame. So it was constantly: "Don't do that,
Pedro!" "Take care, Pedro!" "Remember, Pedro!" He was afraid of his
father, and his mother wearied him. He did not suffer much from his
companions, as he cried directly, and begged them not to spoil his
clothes, so they called him, "Withered stick!" and took no more notice
of him. He was like a weak featherless duckling, limping after the
rest, and waddling to one side with the little bit he could catch for
himself, nobody shared with him, and therefore he shared with nobody.
But he soon observed that it was different with the poorer children of
the town; for they bore with him because he was better dressed than
themselves. The leader of the flock was a tall powerful girl, who took
him under her special protection. He never tired of looking at her, she
had raven black hair, all in one curl that was never combed except with
the fingers; she had deep blue eyes, short brow; the expression of her
face acted simultaneously. She was full of activity, and excitable; in
the summer, bare-footed, bare-armed, and sunburnt; in the winter, clad
as others in summer. Her father was a pilot and fisherman, she flew
about and sold his fish; she rigged his boat, and when he was out as a
pilot she went fishing alone. Every one who saw her turned to look
again, she was so self-reliant. Her name was Gunlaug, but she was
called "The Fisher Girl," a title she accepted as if by rank. In games
she took the weaker side; it was a necessity of her nature to have
something to care for, and now she cared for this delicate boy.
In her boat he could play his flute, that had been banished at home
because they fancied it drew his thoughts from his lessons. She rowed
him out into the fiord; then she took him with her on her longer
fishing expeditions; and by-and-bye also on the night fishing. At
sunset they rowed out into the light summer stillness, when he would
play his flute, or listen to her as she told him all she knew about the
mermen, dragons, shipwrecks, strange lands and black people, as she had
heard it from the sailors. She shared her viands with him as she shared
her knowledge, and he received all without giving anything in return,
for he had no provisions with him from home, and no imagination from
the school. They rowed till the sun went down behind the snowcapped
mountains, then they drew to shore on some rocky island, and kindled a
fire, i.e. she gathered branches and sticks, while he looked on. She
had bundled along a sailor's jacket of her father's and a rug for him,
and in these he was wrapped. She kept up the fire, while he fell
asleep; she kept herself awake by singing snatches of psalms and songs;
she sang in a full clear voice until he slept--then softly. When the
sun rose again on the other side, and as a harbinger, cast his pale
yellow rays before him over the mountains, she awoke him. The forest
was still black, the fields were dark, but changing to a brown red and
shimmering, until the ridge top glowed, and all the colours came
rushing. Then they pushed the boat in the water again, cut through the
waves in the sharp morning breeze, and were soon aground with the
fishermen.
When winter came and the fishing tours were given up, he sought her in
her own home; he often came and watched her while she worked, but
neither of them spoke much; it was as if they sat together and waited
for the summer. When summer came, however, this new object in life was
unfortunately also gone; Gunlaug's father died; she left the town, and,
at the suggestion of the schoolmaster, the lad was placed in the shop.
There he stood together with his mother, for his father, who little by
little had taken the colour of the grains he weighed, had to keep his
bed in the back room. From there he must yet take part in everything,
must know what each especially had sold, then appeared not to hear,
till he got them so near that he could pinch them. And one night when
the wick had become quite dry in this little lamp, it went out. The
wife wept without exactly knowing why, but the son could not pinch a
tear. As they had sufficient to live on, they gave up the business,
swept away every reminder, and converted the shop into a parlour. There
the mother sat in the window and knitted stockings; Pedro sat in the
room on the other side of the passage, and played his flute. But as
soon as the summer came he bought a light little sailing-boat, drove
out to the rocky island and lay where Gunlaug had lain.
One day as he was resting among the ling, he saw a boat steering
directly towards him; it drew up by the side of his, and Gunlaug
stepped out. She was exactly the same, only full grown and taller than
other women. Just as she saw him, she drew to one side a little quite
slowly; she had not thought about his being grown up too.
This pale thin face she did not know; it was no longer delicate and
fine; it was inanimate. But, as he looked at her, his eye caught a
brightness from the dreams of the past; she went forward again; with
every step she took, a year seemed to fall from off him, and when she
stood beside him, where he had sprung up, then he laughed as a child
and spoke as a child; the old face seemed like a mask over the child;
he was certainly older, but he was not grown.
Yet, though it was the child she was seeking, now, when she had found
it, she knew not what further to do; she smiled and blushed.
Involuntarily he felt, as it were, a power within him; it was the first
time in his life, and in the same minute he grew handsome; it lasted,
perhaps, scarcely a moment, but in that moment she was caught.
She was one of those natures that can only love that which is weak,
that they have borne in their arms. She had intended to be in the town
two days; she stayed two months. During these two months he developed
more than in all the rest of his youth; he was lifted so far out of
dreams and drowsiness as to form plans; he would leave, he would learn
to play! But when one day he repeated this, she turned pale; "Yes,--"
she said, "but we must be married first." He looked at her, she looked
wistfully again, they both grew fiery red, and he said: "What would
people say?"
Gunlaug had never thought over the possibility of his doing other than
agree to what she wished because she acceded to every wish of his. But
now she saw that in the depths of his soul he had never for a moment
thought of sharing anything else with her than what she gave. In one
minute she became conscious that thus it had been the whole of their
lives. She had begun in pity, and ended in love to that which she
herself had tended. Had she been composed but for a single moment!
Seeing her gathering wrath, he was afraid, and exclaimed: "I
will!"----She heard it, but anger over her own folly and his
paltriness, over her own shame and his cowardice, boiled up in such
fervid heat towards the exploding point, that never had a love
beginning in childhood and evening sun, cradled by the waves and
moonlight, led by the flute and gentle song, ended more wretchedly. She
seized him with both her hands, lifted him, and from the very depths of
her heart gave him a good sound thrashing, then rowed straight back to
town, and went direct over the mountains.
He had sailed out like a youth in love about to win his manhood, and he
rowed back as an old man to whom that was a thing unknown. His life
held but one remembrance, and that he had miserably lost, but one spot
in the world had he to turn to, and thither he never dare come again.
In pondering over his own wretchedness, how all this had really come
about, his energy sank as in a morass never to rise again. The boys of
the town, observing his singularity, soon began to tease him, and as he
was an obscure person whom no one rightly knew, either what he lived on
or what he did,--it never occurred to any one to defend him, and soon
he durst no longer go out, at all events, not into the street. His
whole existence became a strife with the boys, who were perhaps of the
same use as gnats in the heat of summer, for without them he would have
sunk down into perpetual drowsiness.
Nine years after, Gunlaug came to the town, quite as unexpectedly as
she had left it. She had with her a girl of eight years, just like
herself formerly, only finer, and as if veiled by a dream. Gunlaug had
been married, it was said, and having had something left her, had now
come to the town to establish a boarding house for seamen. This she
conducted in such a way, that merchants and skippers came to her to
hire their men, and sailors to get hired; besides, the whole town
ordered fish there. She was called "Fish-Gunlaug," or "Gunlaug on the
Bank"; the appellation "Fisher Girl" passed over to the daughter, who
was everywhere at the head of the boys in the town.
Her history it is that shall here be related; she had something of her
mother's natural power, and she got opportunity to use it.