AT THE RURAL DEAN'S.
Quite late in autumn, among the mountains in Bergen's shire, where the
land is sheltered and fruitful, there are occasionally days almost like
summer. On such afternoons, the cattle, even if they have already begun
with the winter feeding, are again let out into the pasture; they are
well fed and frisky, and when they are driven home at night, the scene
is lively. Thus they came down over the mountain track, cows, sheep,
and goats, bellowing, butting, and skipping, their bells merrily
ringing, and were just approaching the farm as Petra was driving by. It
was a beautiful day, the window panes in the long white wooden
buildings glittered in the sun, and above the houses, towered the
mountains, so thickly covered with firs, birch, ash, bird cherry, rowan
trees, and the projecting rocks with juniper bushes, that the houses
seemed quite sheltered by them. Facing the road, in front of the house,
was a garden, apples, cherry, and plum trees flourished in abundance;
red and black currant, and gooseberry bushes grew along the walks and
fences, and above all, towered some grand old ash trees with their
broad and stately crowns. The house looked like a nest half hidden
among the branches, out of reach for everything but the sun. But just
this seclusion awakened a longing in Petra, and when she heard it was
the deanery, she exclaimed: "I must go in here!" and pulling in the
reins, she turned along the garden.
A couple of Finnish dogs rushed out upon her as she drove into the farm
yard, a large square, enclosed with buildings, the cattle stall
opposite the house, another wing of the house to the right, and to the
left the brewery, wash house, and labourers' room. The farm yard was
now full of cattle, and in the midst of them stood a lady, tall and
elegant; she wore a tight fitting dress, and a little silk handkerchief
over her head; round about and above her[2] were goats, white, black,
brown, and parti-coloured, all with their little bells sounding in
harmony; she had a name for each of her goats, and now she had
something nice for them in a dish, which the milkmaid continually
replenished. Upon the low step leading from the house to the farm yard,
the rural dean was standing with a plate of salt, and in front of him
were the cows licking the salt out of his hand and off the step where
he strewed it. The dean was not a tall man, but compact, with short
neck and short forehead; the bushy eyebrows lay over eyes that did not
often look straight before them, but now and then cast a flashing
glance aside. His thick grey hair was cut short, and stood up on all
sides, it grew down over his neck nearly as much as on his head; he
wore no neckerchief, but a shirt stud; in the front the shirt was
open,--one could see his hairy bosom; neither was it buttoned at the
wrists, so the shirt cuffs came down over the small, powerful hands,
now all licked over by the cows; both hands and arms were shaggy. He
glanced sharply from the side, at the stranger lady who had alighted,
and made her way between the goats to where his daughter was standing.
It was impossible, for the noise of the cattle, dogs, and bells, to
hear what they were saying, but now both the ladies were looking at
him, and with the goats around them they came towards the step. The
herdsman, on a sign from the dean, began to drive the cattle away.
Signe, his daughter, called out: (Petra was struck with the harmony of
her voice,) "Father, here is a lady travelling, who would like to rest
a day with us."--"She shall be welcome!" cried the dean in reply, gave
the dish to the lad, and went into his study, in the right wing of the
house, apparently to tidy himself. Petra followed the young lady into
the passage, which was more properly a hall, it was so light and broad;
the driver boy was dismissed, her things carried in, and she herself
shewn into a side room opposite the study, where she took off her
things, and went out again into the passage, to be further shewn into
the dining room.
What a large light room! Nearly the whole wall fronting the garden was
windows, the middle one opened as a door to the garden. The windows
were broad and high, reaching almost to the floor, and they were full
of flowers, plants stood upon stands here and there in the room, and
instead of curtains was interwoven ivy, hanging from two small hedges
of flowers up in the frame above. As there were bushes and flowers on
every side, growing up the walls, and on the greensward before her, it
seemed like a conservatory in the midst of the garden; and yet one had
not been a minute in the room, before the flowers were no longer seen;
for the church standing by itself on a hill to the right was what one
saw,--the blue waters reflecting its image, coursed sparkling on so far
away between the mountains that one could not tell whether it was a
lake, or an arm of the sea curving in. And then the mountains
themselves! Not single, but chains of mountains, each one rearing its
mighty front behind the other, as if the boundary of the world.
When Petra withdrew her eyes, everything in the room seemed hallowed by
the scene without; it was pure and light,--a frame of flowers for a
magnificent picture. She felt surrounded by some unseen presence,
observing her deportment, yea, even her thoughts; she went round the
room, without being conscious of doing so, and touched the things.
Suddenly she caught sight of the life size portrait of a lady smiling
down upon her from over the sofa, facing the light. She was sitting
with her head a little to one side, and folded hands, her right arm
rested on a book, on the back of which, in distinct letters, was
inscribed: "Sabbath Hours." Her light hair and fair complexion, shed
radiance, imparting a Sabbath peace to all around her. Her smile was
grave, but the gravity was affection. She seemed as though she could
draw everyone to her in love; she seemed to understand all, for in
everything she saw only the good. Her countenance bore traces of
delicacy, perhaps this delicacy had been her strength, for there could
be no one who dare abuse it. A wreath of everlastings hung above the
frame; she was dead.
"That was my mother," she heard softly behind her, and she turned,--it
was the daughter, who had gone out and now came in again. The whole
room, seemed as it were, filled with the portrait, everything was
adapted to it, and the daughter was its quiet reflection; she seemed a
little more silent, a little more reserved. The mother received the
glance of all, and gave hers fully in return, the daughter bent hers
down, but in both there was the same peace and mildness. She had also
her mother's figure, but without a trace of weakness,--on the contrary,
the bright colours in her tight-fitting dress, in her apron, and little
silk neckerchief fastened with a Roman pin, cast a glow of freshness
over her face, and yielded a charm, which made her at once the daughter
of the portrait, and the nymph of the place. As she was walking there
among the mother's flowers, Petra felt a strong drawing towards her; in
the presence of such a woman, and in such a place, everything good must
grow;--dare she but step within! She now doubly felt her loneliness;
her glance followed Signe incessantly, Signe felt it and tried to evade
it, but it did not help, she felt embarrassed, and stooped down over
the flowers. At last Petra discovered her impropriety, she felt
ashamed, and would have apologised, but there was something in the
neatly arranged hair, the fine forehead, and the dress, that bade her
be cautious. She looked up at the mother; her, she could already have
embraced! Was it not as if she were bidding her welcome. Dare she
believe it? No one had ever looked thus at her before; it seemed to say
that she knew all that had happened to the wayfarer, and would yet
forgive her. Forbearance, she stood in need of, and she could not take
her eyes from this benevolent glance,--she put her head to one side,
like the portrait, she folded her hands like it, and almost without
knowing it, she exclaimed: "Oh let me stay here!" Signe rose and turned
towards her, she could not answer for amazement. "Do let me stay here!"
begged Petra again, advancing a step towards her: "It is delightful!"
and her eyes filled with tears.
"I will ask my father to come," said the young lady. Petra watched her
till she passed within the study door, but as soon as she was alone,
she was afraid at what she had done, and she trembled when she saw the
dean's astonished face at the door. He came a little better dressed
than before, and with a pipe in his mouth; he held fast hold of it,
taking it from his lips at every whiff, and emitting the smoke in three
puffs, each with a little smack; he repeated this two or three times,
as he stood before Petra in the middle of the floor, not looking at
her, but as if waiting for her to speak. She dare not before this man
repeat her request; he looked so austere. "You wish to stay here?" he
asked, and he gave her a quick bright side glance. Her terror made her
voice tremble a little: "I have no place to go to."--"Where are you
from?" In a low tone she gave the town and her own name. "How did you
get here?"--"I do not know, ... I am seeking ... I can pay for myself,
... I, ... Yes, I don't know," she could say no more for a minute, then
she took fresh courage and continued: "I will do everything you tell
me, if only I may stay here, and not have to go further ... and not
have to ask any more." The daughter had followed her father in, but
remained standing by the stove, where without looking up, she was
fingering the dried rose leaves that lay there. The dean did not reply,
one could only hear the puff of his pipe, as he looked alternately at
her, Petra, and the portrait. Now the same thing may give two very
different impressions: while Petra was praying that the portrait might
influence him to lenience, he thought it whispered: "Protect our child;
take no stranger in to her!"--He turned with a sharp side glance to
Petra: "No, you cannot remain here!"
Petra turned pale, drew a deep heavy sigh looked round
hesitatingly,--and then rushing into a side room, the door of which
stood half open, she threw herself down beside a table, and gave full
vent to her grief and disappointment! Father and daughter looked at
each other; this lack of manners,--rushing into another room without a
word, and then sitting down by herself, was only a counterpart of her
former proceeding,--coming in from the road, begging to stay with them,
and bursting into tears when she did not get permission. The dean went
after her, not to speak to her, but to shut the door. He came back
quite flushed, and said in a subdued tone to the daughter, who was
still standing by the stove: "Have you ever seen her equal?--Who is
she? What is her object?"--The daughter did not at once reply, and
when she answered it was in a still more subdued tone than the
father's.--"She goes the wrong way about, but there is something very
remarkable in her."--The dean paced up and down, looking towards the
door; at last he stopped and whispered: "She cannot be altogether in
her right mind?"--and as Signe did not answer, he came nearer and
repeated more decidedly: "She must be crazy, Signe, half-witted; that
is the remarkable about her."--"I don't think so;" replied Signe, "but
she is certainly very unhappy," and she bent down over the dried rose
leaves with which she was still toying.
The tone of the voice, as well as the movement would have been in no
way striking to another; but it changed the father at once, he walked a
few times up and down, looking at the portrait; at last he said, very
slowly: "You mean, because she looks unhappy,--that mother would have
bidden her stay?"--"Mother would not have given any answer for two or
three days," whispered the daughter, bending lower over the roses. The
gentlest reminder of her up there, when the daughter brought it thus
before him, could make that hairy lion head as mild and gentle as a
lamb's. He felt the truth at once, and stood like a school boy caught
in a trick; he forgot to smoke and walk up and down, and after a long
time he whispered: "Should I bid her remain a few days?"--"You have
already answered her."--"Yes, but it is one thing to receive her
altogether, and another to let her stay here a few days."--Signe seemed
to be pondering the matter, and said at last, "Do as you think best."
The dean would prove the matter yet once more, as he paced the room
again, smoking hard. At last he stopped: "Will you go in, or shall
I?"--"It will certainly do most good if you go," said the daughter and
looked mildly up.
He was just going to turn the door handle, when a loud peal of laughter
was heard from within,--then silence and again another roar. The dean,
who had turned back, went forward again, the daughter after him; for
there must be something the matter with the one in there.
When the door opened, they saw her sitting just where they had left
her, but with a great book open before her, over which she had thrown
herself without knowing it. Her tears had trickled down on to its
leaves; she observed it, and was about to dry them, when her eye caught
sight of an expression of the juicy sort, which she remembered from the
street days of her childhood, but which she had never thought to see in
print. In her amazement, she forgot to weep, but buried herself in the
book,--what an absurd book it was!--She read with open mouth, it grew
worse and worse, so low, but so irresistibly amusing, that it was
impossible to give up, she must read on; she read, till she forgot all
else, she read away both sorrow and hunger, both time and place--with
old Father Holberg, for him it was. She laughed, she roared--even now
when the pastor and his daughter were standing over her, she did not
observe how grave they were, she never thought of her request, but
laughed and asked: "Whatever is this, whatever in the world is this?"
and she turned to the title page.
Then she grew pale, looked up at them, and down again in the book at
the well-known characters; there are things that strike the heart like
a cannon ball, things that we believed to be hundreds of miles away, we
see straight before us,--here on the first page was written: "Hans
Odegaard." Blushing crimson she cried: "Is the book his,--is he coming
here?" she got up.--"He has promised to do so," answered Signe,--and
now Petra remembered, that there was a minister's family in Bergen's
shire, whom he had met abroad.--She had travelled only in a circle,
she had come just in his path. "Is he coming directly? Perhaps he is
here now?" she would at once fly further.--"No, he is ill," said
Signe.--"Yes, that is true, he is ill," said Petra, painfully, and sank
down.
"But tell me," exclaimed Signe, "is it possible you can be----?" "The
Fisher Girl!" put in the pastor. Petra looked up entreatingly at them.
"Yes, I am the Fisher Girl," she said.
But her they knew quite well; for Odegaard had talked of nothing else.
"That is another matter," said the dean,--he perceived there was
something wrong, needing a little friendly help;--"stay here as long as
you will, we shall help you!" Petra looked up in time to see the warm
look Signe gave him in thanks; this did her so much good, that she went
across, and took both Signe's hands, saying, though bashfully: "As soon
as we two are alone, I will tell you all!"
One hour after, Signe knew Petra's whole history, which she at once
communicated to her father. On his advice, Signe wrote the same day to
Odegaard, and continued to do so; as long as Petra was in their house.
When that evening Petra laid down to rest, in the soft eider down, in a
warm room with crackling birch wood in the stove, and the New Testament
laid between the two lights on the white toilet table,--she thanked her
God, as she took the book, for all, the evil as well as the good.
* * *
As a young man, the dean with an ardent temperament and talent for
oratory, had wished to study for the ministry; his parents, people of
wealth, had been against it; they would have preferred to see him
choose what they called an independent position; but their opposition
served only to increase his zeal, and when he had graduated, he went
abroad to study further. During a preliminary stay in Denmark, he used
often to meet a lady, who belonged to a religious sect not sufficiently
strict for him, and to whom he was therefore opposed: he sought
continually to influence her, but the way in which she looked at him,
thereby bringing him to silence, he could never forget during the whole
of his sojourn on the continent. When he returned, he at once visited
her. They had a good deal of intercourse, and grew in intimacy, till at
last they became engaged, and were soon after married. And now it was
evident that each of them had their own private thoughts; he had
purposed to draw her over with all her simple grace, to his gloomy
teaching, and she had been so innocently certain of being able to win
his power and eloquence over to the service of her church. His first
most cautious attempt was met by her first most cautious:--he drew
back, disappointed, mistrustful. She saw it at once, and from that day
he watched for her next attempt, while she did the same for his. But
neither of them tried it again, for both had become afraid: he was
afraid of his own passionate nature, and she, lest by a vain attempt,
she might spoil her opportunity of influencing him; for she never gave
up hope,--she had made it the aim of her life. But it never came to a
conflict; for where she was, such could not be; yet to his active will,
his repressed emotions, he must give vent, and so it happened every
time he entered the pulpit and saw her seated below. The members of his
church were drawn in with him as in a whirlwind, he excited them, and
soon they him. She saw it, and sought to give rest to her foreboding
heart in deeds of benevolence,----and later, when she became a mother,
in the daughter, on whom she lavished her tenderness, physical and
mental, and bore her to her quiet hours. There she gave, there she
took, there in the child's innocence, she watched over her own great
child, there she held the feast of love, and from there she returned to
him in his strictness, with the united mildness of a woman and a
Christian;--it was impossible for him to say anything that could wound
her then. He might indeed love her above all else on earth, but he grew
more sorrowful, the more he became convinced that he could not help her
in the matter of her salvation. With a mother's quiet right, she
withdrew the child also from his religious instruction; the child's
songs, the child's questions soon became a new and deep source of pain
to him,--and now when his violent agitation had excited him to hardness
in the pulpit, his wife only received him with the greater mildness as
they walked home together. The eyes spoke, but the mouth not a single
word. And the daughter clung to his hand, and looked at him with eyes
that were the mother's.
All sorts of subjects were discussed in this house, only not that which
was the root of all their thoughts. But at length this strain could be
born no longer; she smiled still, it is true; but only because she did
not venture to weep. When the time drew near that the daughter must be
prepared for confirmation, and consequently by the right of his office,
he could draw her as quietly over to his instruction, as hitherto the
mother had held her in hers, the anxiety rose to its height, and after
the Sunday when the noting down of the candidates for confirmation was
announced, the mother became ill, like we are when wearied out. She
said smilingly, that she could not walk any more, and a few days later,
also smilingly, that how she could not sit. Though she could not speak
to the daughter she would yet have her always beside her, for she could
see her. And the daughter knew what she would most like; she read to
her out of The Book of Life, and sang to her the hymns of her
childhood, the new and peaceful hymns of her fellow believers. It was
long before the dean realised what was here preparing; but when he did
realise it, he lost the threads, he could only keep his thoughts to one
point,--to hear her say something to him, just a few words, but she was
not able to do it; she could no longer speak. He stood at the foot of
the bed, and watched, and prayed; she smiled upon him, till he fell on
his knees, took the daughter's hand and laid it in the mother's, as if
he said: "Here, you take her,--with you she shall ever remain!" Then
she smiled as never before,--and in that smile she passed away.
After this, it was long before the dean could be led into conversation;
another was appointed to perform his duties,--he himself wandered from
room to room, from place to place, as though seeking something. He went
about quietly; when he spoke it was in a subdued tone, and it was only
by adopting the whole of this silent method, that little by little, the
daughter could share his society. But now she helped him in his search,
every word of the mother's was recalled,--what she would have wished,
became their guide for the future. The daughter's communion with her,
that to which he himself had been a stranger, was now lived over
again;--all was gone over afresh from the first hour the child could
remember; the mother's hymns were sung, her prayers were prayed, the
sermons she had thought most of, were read over one by one, and her
explanations and observations upon them, lovingly remembered in faith.
Thus roused to activity, he felt a desire to visit the place where he
had found her, there, in the same manner, to follow in her footsteps.
They went, and in making her life entirely his own, he partly
recovered. Himself a new beginner, he took an interest in every new
effort around him, the great, the small, national, political,--which
gave him back much of his own young life. His powers streamed in again,
and with them his longings,--now he would preach the Word so that it
would prepare for life, and not alone for death!
Before he again shut himself in with his beloved work in his mountain
home, he felt a desire to take an enlarged view of the world elsewhere.
They therefore continued their journey further, and had now many
pleasing remembrances.
Among these people lived Petra.