button of a nose, hair, that oil and age has robbed of its brilliant
red, drawn smoothly back into a tight screw at the back of her broad
head. Her eyes are a fishy green gray, the left eyelid droops; when
she thinks you are not looking, a sly elusive gleam brightens them,
her pursed lips loosen, and if you happen to see it, you think that
there may be something after all in the stories the gossips whisper
of Marie Larsen. Her dress is exquisitely neat, her apron snowy. No
one in the district can make such a _suprême_ of fish as Marie; no
one can beat her at roasting a capercailzie and serving it with sour
cream sauce, or brew such caudles and possets for a lying-in, or bake
such meats for a funeral feast. And what if there be an old-time tale
of a brat accidentally smothered? And what if the Amtmanden (superior
magistrate), he who had the sickly wife, did send Marie to Germany to
learn cooking? Well, he had money to spare, and was always freehanded.
And if Nils Pettersen did write home and say that he saw her in Hamburg
at a trade--well, other than cooking, sure Nils Pettersen was a bit of
a liar anyhow, and good cooking covers a multitude of frailties. And
if her nose was red and her breath smelt of cloves, who could say they
ever saw her buy a bottle of akavit,--and that was more than could be
said of all the other temperance leaguers. She had a nice cottage, with
marigolds and curly-mint and none-so-prettys nodding down the garden
paths; and if you went inside it was very respectable, and you could
not fail to notice the large brass-bound Bible on a crochet-square on
top of the mahogany chest of drawers, with a sprig of palm marking the
gospel of the previous Sunday. And no one answered the responses more
loudly, or confessed more openly at revival times, or quoted Scripture
more aptly to the confusion of a neighbor than Jomfru Marie Larsen. And
then she had seen life too, and told them round the oven in winter over
a cup of good coffee "tales that were human," just to warn them what
risks they might run if they should be tempted to stray to the ungodly
cities of the wicked world outside.
She stands and smiles at him. "Arcades ambo! Blackguards both!" quotes
he, pointing to a glass. She pours him out a measure and blinks, and
fills a wine-glass with raw spirit for herself, and clinks glasses and
sips like a connoisseur; and then she takes out her knitting and sets
the needles flying. So they sit awhile; his last grand charge has taxed
him, but the quiet maddens him.
"Where's the Frue?" he asks, "the Frue?"
She lays her head sideways on her hand and closes her eyes, saying in
English: "No can have Fruen; she sick, no can have her; be good, Marie
tell you a tale."
She gets up and shuts the doors; he roars at her and tries to rise, but
his knees fail him; he sinks back into the chair and begins to swear.
She knits away, and commences in Norwegian a sing-song recitative like
the drowsy buzz of a fly on a pane.
"Yesterday we had a bazaar, a bazaar in the school-house,--a bazaar for
the poor black heathens in Africa, for the poor black heathens lost in
the darkness of unbelief, and ignorant of the saving of the Lamb. Oh,
it was a blessed work!"
A savage roar from him; but she goes on unheeding with her narrative:--
"And there were tables, with lots of things to be sold; and there were
tables with refreshments; and there were wreaths and flags upon the
walls, and godly texts and paper roses, yellow and red."
She draws out each word to spin the yarn longer, and he curses her for
a Jezebel and foams with rage, and she sips her cognac with a deeper
droop of eyelid and slower click of needle, and proceeds with her
tale:--
"And we had hymns, and the kapelan [curate] played the harmonium; and
then he held a little edifying discourse, and the school children sang,
and Marie had to hand round refreshments, and oh it was a rousing day!
And there was Frue[1] Magistrate Holmsen, and Frue Assessor Schwartz,
and Frue Custom-House Chief's lady and her sister Fröken Dase, she of
the long nose and pinched waist, and her engaged the Candidat. And
there was Frue Doctor Barthelsen, and Frue General-Dealer Steen and
daughter, with a high frill to hide the evils in her neck, and Frue
Insurance Agent--"
[Footnote 1: The title "Frue" is properly borne by the wives of
officials, but all the professional men's wives bear it. "Madam"
is used by the small shopkeepers or lower burgher class, but the
distinction is dying out. A Frue's daughter is Fröken; Madam's
Jeomfrue.]
She dodges a glass adroitly, and raises her voice to drown his shriek
of what the merry devil she means.
"Insurance Agent Hansen, and the Kaptein of the 'Sea Gull'--S-s-s,
you be quiet, Marie tell you tale. There was M'am Sörensen and fat
M'am Larsen,--she's going to have her twelfth, and Larsen only third
mate,--and M'am Johnsen and all the young gentlemen and ladies, and oh
it was a glorious sight!"
She starts a key higher, for he is purple with fury and exertion,--
"And, and we had coffee two-pence a cup, and chocolade [with a
long-drawn stress on the 'lade'] and Brus-selzers and lemonade and
fruit juice and temperance beer--No, no! you be quiet, Marie tell tale!"
He is struggling till the veins stand in cords to get out of his chair,
but in vain; he points to his glass in desperation. She refills it and
her own.
"Yes, temperance beer, a penny a glass; and we had white bread and
brown bread and currant buns and Berlin kringels and ginger-nuts and
little cakes with hundreds and thousands on top! And oh it was grand!"
She is yelling louder and louder, and he is swearing deeper, and the
battle shows no signs of ceasing.
"And then we sold all sorts of things, and drew numbers, and had a
lucky bag; and Hans Jacobsen played on the melodeon; and missionary
Hansen told us about the poor blacks and all his blessed work, and how
the Lord guided his footsteps through the sandy wastes, and how he
baptized a chief and all his wives in the waters of faith. And Nils
Pettersen says they took out more raw alcohol and spent gun-powder and
spoilt cotton goods than the fear of God; and that the 'Bird o' Faith'
cleared one hundred per cent on her freight. But Nils Pettersen was
always a liar; and oh it was a blessed thing to do all that for the
heathen blacks! And then the kapelan spoke again, a touching discourse!"
And she refills her glass, dodging his stick and watching him out
of the tail of her eye as she turns the heel of her stocking, and
repeats the whole of the sermon. His vocabulary is exhausted, and he is
inventing the weirdest oaths, hurling them forth, a deep accompaniment
to her shriller sermon, with its sanctimonious sing-song tune and
unctuous phrasing; for she is, perhaps unwittingly, mimicking the
kapelan to the life. He is getting tired and drowsy, the cognac is
rising to her head, and even a kapelan's sermon must draw to a close;
and as a mother will change her lullaby into a quick hushoo, and
pat mechanically with a drowsy nod as the child drops to sleep, so
Marie puts her knitting tidily into her apron pocket, and folding her
withered old hands breaks into a hymn. He opens his eyes languidly, and
protests feebly with a last damn; but Marie has exorcised the devil
this time. His jaw drops, and muttering softly, he falls into heavy
sleep; and she sings on, till her head too droops on her breast, and
her quavering old woman's voice dies away in an abortive allelujah!
And the motes dance in the golden bar of a waning sun-ray that pierces
the room and crosses the motionless figures; and above stairs the
little mistress is wrapped in rare, delicious, dreamless slumber. And
I like to think that the recording angel registered that sleep to the
credit of Jomfru Marie Larsen!
II.
A SHADOW'S SLANT.
It is a sunny afternoon in mid-summer. A phaeton drawn by a pair of
sturdy gray Stavanger horses, whose dainty heads and the mark of Saint
Olav's thumb on their throats tell their race, is dashing along at a
break-neck pace. The whip curls over them, and the vehicle sways a
little to one side. Two great hounds bound along on the right of it.
A strip of blue fjord and a background of dark mountains, with the
cool ice-kisses of the snow queen still resting on their dusky heads,
can be seen at intervals through the fir and pine trees. A squirrel
scrambles up a rowan-tree, and a cattle-bell tingles far in the woods.
Nature has ever a discordant note in its symphony. A little brown bird
is fluttering in helpless, terrified jerks; it emits, as it rises and
falls, a sharp sound between a chirp and a squeak. A hawk is swooping
over it: a poise--a dip--a few feathers float with the breeze, and
hawk soars up with its prey in its claws.
The red-brown eyes that gleam out of the small, sallow face of the
woman who sits on the left side of the phaeton close for a second; the
delicate nostrils quiver, the lips tighten over a sigh; then the lids
rise again, the eyes are darker, the pupils have a trick of dilating;
a smile subtle in meaning, for much of mocking pain and bitterness is
expressed in its brief passage, flits across her face.
A savage jerk! the horses stop.
"Kiss me!" says the man who is driving. His voice is harsh, and the
eyes that scan her face have a lurid light in them; and as he speaks
a smell of spirit mingles with the smell of the pine chips. Her lips
tighten still more; she turns to obey. She has to rise up a little; he
is very tall. His nose is powerful like a hawk's beak, and his beard is
stirred by the breeze, and his eyes peer out from under their fringe
of black lashes with a cruel, passionate gleam. She almost touches his
face, but falls back from a rough shove:--
"No! keep your kiss and be damned to you!"
A savage whoop, the whip curls out and the reins jerk, and the
quivering horses that know the voice too well dash on; and the hounds
that have felt the whip-cord sting, as the strike of a snake on their
flanks, bay savagely as they join in the race.
On the right of the narrow, winding road a great lake lies hundreds of
feet below; the wheel is not half a foot from the edge, and the vehicle
jolts and leans that way, and the lash coils round and flicks her
cheek, and leaves a sorry sting,--and she never winces at it, but her
small hands clinch, and her lips part, and the red light flashes in her
eyes, and something akin to exultant expectation steals over the thin
small face as they court death each wheel-turn in their mad career.
* * * * *
The stable-door opens, and the horses turn their heads. She--it is
she--goes and passes her fingers gently over the swollen stripes that
make little ridges in the close-clipped hair. Once she lays her cheek
caressingly upon a cruel furrow, and whispers, "Poor little Ola! if I
had only governed my face better, you would not have been so punished!"
and Ola turns his satiny muzzle, softer than the daintiest lady's
breast, and rubs it against her, to coax for the apples that always
follow. She goes from one to the other, and cooes to them, and rubs her
chin against their soft noses; and when the stripes are very bad her
jaws set, and one can see the mark of the teeth through her thin cheeks.
* * * * *
"Come here! I want some brandy!... Now put the glass down and come
back. What's that mark on your cheek?"
"Only the whip touched me."
"And you were too damned proud to say so, eh? By the way, I saw some
gypsies in the park. Johann can do the translating, they are coming
here to play. One of them is a thundering fine girl; I'd like to--What!
what's that you said?"
"I did not make any remark!" a fine scorn trembles about her pale lips,
and her face is a shade grayer.
A pause.
"Where are your rings?"
"Upstairs."
"Go and fetch them! Blast it! I don't buy you rings to leave them
upstairs."
She comes back with them on, and he takes up the slim fingers laden
with jewelled bands, spreads them out on his palm, then closes his
thumb and finger round her wrist, and laughs a rasping laugh.
"Did any mortal man ever see such a hand? You witch! with eyes that
probe into a fellow's soul, and shame him and fear nothing!" and he
tightens his grip, and she winces at his roughness. "There [with a
softening of voice], did I hurt you, you poor little thing, you queer
little womany? Come closer [with fierce, impatient tenderness]; put
down your little old head, a head like a snipe, on my breast! There,
great God, I'm very fond of you!" A tremor runs through his voice. "You
queer little thing! You are no beauty, but you creep in, and I, I love
every inch of you. I'd kiss the ground under your feet, I know every
turn of your little body, the slope of your shoulders,--I that always
liked women to have square shoulders!--the swing of your hips when you
walk. Hips! ha, ha! you haven't got any, you scrap! And yet, by the
Lord, I'd _lick_ you like a dog [slower, with emphasis]! And _you_
don't care for me! You obey me, no matter what I ask." He is holding
her face against his breast, and stroking her head with clumsy touch.
"You wait on me,--ay, no slave better,--and yet I can't get at you,
near you; that little soul of yours is as free as if I hadn't bought
you, as if I didn't own you, as if you were not my chattel, my thing
to do what I please with--do you hear [with fury]--to degrade, to--to
treat as _I please_? No, you are not afraid, you little white-faced
thing; you obey because you are strong enough to endure, not because
you fear me. And I know it; don't you think I don't see it! You pity
me, great God! pity _me_,--me that could whistle any woman to heel!
Yes, you pity me with all that great heart of yours because I am just
a great, weak, helpless, drunken beast, a poor wreck!" And the tears
jump out of his eyes, eyes that are limpid and blue and unspoiled; and
he sobs out: "Kiss me! take my head in your arms! I am a brute, an
infernal brute, but I'm awfully fond of you, you queer little gypsy,
with your big heart and your damnable will! I! I! I who hated women
like poison, who always treated them as such,--I could cry when I look
at you, like a great puling boy, because your spirit is out of my
grasp. Smooth my head! no other little hand in the world has such a
touch as yours. I'd know it among a thousand, my poor little thing!
Don't ever leave me! promise even if I go mad, promise you'll stay! Get
a man to mind me, but stay, won't you? Stay!"
"I'll stay."
"Did any Christian man ever have such an atom for a wife? I believe
you are a gypsy; your hair curls at the ends like a live thing, and
there are red lights in its black, and your eyes have a flash in them
at times and a look as if you were off in other lands! Oh, oh! get me a
little brandy, quick, quick!"
* * * * *
Merrily twang the guitars, and the tambourines rattle as they are swung
aloft by slender curving wrists. The wild cries of a Zingari dance ring
out. Black eyes gleam, and brown skins shine under orange and scarlet
kerchiefs. The grace of panthers and the charm of wild, untamed,
natural things is revealed in every movement. Color, vivacity, dirt,
and rhythm.
Wild the music, wilder the dance; and he sits in his chair on the
veranda, the clean, clear air and the fresh breeze blowing in from
the sea, stirring the white hairs in the curls at his temples, and
listens and looks with no eye or ear for aught of its beauty,--only a
ribald jest as their petticoats rise, or their bosoms quiver in the
fling of the dance. And she, with a crimson shawl drawn round her spare
shoulders and a splash of color in her thin cheeks, holds one hand
tightly pressed over her breast--to still what? What does the music
rouse inside that frail frame? What parts her lips and causes her eyes
to glisten and the thin nostrils to quiver? Is there aught in common
between that slight figure, with its jewelled hands and its too heavy
silken gown, and those tattered healthy Zingari vagabonds? Who knows?
The whole tribe are gathered round him, begging and screaming with one
voice, and he throws silver lavishly to them, and thrusts his hand
with a coarse jest into the open bodice of the girl nearest him. A
brown hand goes to the knife of a swarthy youth with gold rings in his
ears; but at a few strange words from the oldest woman in the group the
girl steps back, and with the quickness of lightning the hag takes her
place and answers his jest in his own tongue. The girl looks curiously,
pityingly, respectfully at the other girl: she is a little more than
a girl as she stands dumbly by during all this scene. Eye seeks eye,
sympathy meets sympathy. What affinity is between these two creatures?
"Kan de rokra Romany?" she asks, with a smile that visits her face as
the ghost of a vanished beauty; and her voice is sweetly soft as she
asks it. A flash of eye, a hurried backward word thrown to the old
woman who joins them on hearing it. She stands between, with a smile
at their wonder, and she holds out her hand, and one slim ivory-tinted
hand rests palm upward in a no less slim but browner one. The old woman
peers into the lines and crosses, and as she scans them a look of
wonder creeps up to her usually inscrutable face. She exchanges words
in an undertone with the gypsy girl at her side.
"I speak Romany too, Deya! An evil fate, isn't it, mother?"
"A mole on your cheek, and a free Romany heart in your breast, your
spirit fights to be free as the Romany chai. Seven suns rise and seven
moons, and the flag is half-mast, and the cage opens and the bird--"
An impatient curse cuts short her words, and they turn to him.
"Here, you old Jezebel! Send these vagabonds of yours down there;
there's plenty to eat."
The servants are bearing beer and food to the lawn.
"Shall I go blind? I dare say you know as much as those infernal
doctors, eh?"
"No; your eyes, and pretty eyes they are, and many a soul they've lost,
they'll last your time, my lord! I see a journey to England; it lies
before you, and no return. Seven times the moon will rise, and the
Romanies go to the South, but the bird--"
"Get to blazes out of this! Help me in, ducky; oh, damn it, be quick!
Get me some brandy, quick, quick! not all brandy, a little milk in it!"
* * * * *
The moon is high in the heavens, and the sea is running into the
creek with a silver sheen on its back; the blinds are drawn up in the
four windows of the bedroom, and the northern night is like unto day
disguised in a domino of silver-gray crape.
He is sleeping. She is standing motionless at the window. The red of
her dressing-gown and the moonlight make her face look more ghostlike,
as she leans her head wearily against the window-frame. She is gazing
sea-ward; a steamer has just passed, and the beacon in the lighthouse
on Jomfru-land gleams like a great bright eye. In how many dreary
vigils has it not greeted her and seemed to say: "Courage! I too am
watching; you are not alone!"
At the end of the wood two tents are pitched, and she can see two
figures outlined against the white palings,--the Romany girl and the
youth with the gold ear-rings. He is holding her in his arms. The
dog-chains rattle now and then; something brown and stealthy creeps
about the duck-house; the white mists in the marshy bit of meadow lying
next the creek dance like spirits, and beckon to her with shadowy arms,
and a faint yellow streak appears in the east. How many more nights
must she stand alone, and watch the morning herald a new day of bondage?
She moves noiselessly away, and goes into the dressing-room, and walks
over to the mirror. She shakes her dusky elf-locks round her face, and
catching up a yellow scarf lying on a chair winds it round her head,
and then peers at herself in the glass. A deft twist turns down the
white frills of her nightgown; she has a gold chain round her neck, and
she laughs a childish, noiseless laugh at her own image. "How strangely
my eyes gleam, and what a gypsy I look! No one would know, no one would
dream of it. I would soon get brown!" and she looks wistfully out
toward the camp again. "In an hour they will go. A heap of fern to lie
on, scant fare, and weary feet; but the freedom, ah, the freedom! The
woods with their wealth of shy, wild things, and the mountains that
make one yearn to soar up over their heights to the worlds above! Free
to follow the beck of one's spirit, a-ah to dream of it!" and the red
light glows in her eyes again. They have an inward look; what visions
do they see? The small thin face is transformed, the lips are softer,
one quick emotion chases the other across it, the eyes glisten and
darken deeply, and the copper threads shine in her swart hair. What is
she going to do, what resolve is she making?
A muttered groan, a stir in the bed rouses her, and throwing aside the
scarf she glides swiftly to his side. She stands and looks down. What
a magnificent head it is, and how repellent! The tossed black locks
with their silver streaks lie scattered on the pillow. The ear suggests
vigorous animalism, the nose is powerful, the broad forehead shines
whitely, and the long lashes curl upward as those of a child. The
sensual-lipped mouth with its cruel lines shows more cruel as the head
is thrown back. She looks at it steadily; no line escapes her,--looks
from it to the hands, nerveless, white; the long, thin thumbs have a
hateful expression, and the backs are short with an ugly joining to the
wrists. He stirs, and a lewd word escapes his lips. She shudders! Again
her eyes wander out with an appealing look (to whom do they appeal,--to
part of herself, to some God of convention?) toward the camp. They are
stirring; she can see the Finn dog run to and fro. She steps away;
irresolution is expressed in her face; her head is thrust forward, her
fingers spread out unconsciously. She glances across the floor; some
shelves are to be nailed up, one of them is leant against the wardrobe
door. As she hesitates, she notices that the shadow of it and the
half-closed door throws a long cross almost to her feet. She folds her
hands involuntarily: a whimper from the bed, a frightened call,--
"Come to me! Where are you? Don't leave me a second! oh, God! don't
leave me! What's that there? Give me a drop of brandy! quick, oh quick!
Kneel down, dearie, close, close to me; lay your little old cheek
against mine, and say a little prayer,--no psalm business, just one out
of your own little head [sob] to suit a poor devil like me!"
* * * * *
The sun is saying good-morning to the moon; she is wan from watching.
The birds are awake, but the man still sleeps; and the little
red-gowned figure crouched at the bed-side, her left hand, with its
heavy gold band, clasped lightly in his, is sleeping too. A half-dried
tear is held in the dark hollow under the closed eyes; the nose looks
pinched in the morning light, and a gray-green shadow stains mouth and
chin, but a smile plays round the dry lips.
The caravan is winding slowly round the curve of the road, and three
plump geese are stowed inside. The Romany lass is humming a song,--a
song about love and dance and song,--and the soul of the sleeping
girl floats along at her side in a dream of freedom. She of the song
looks up: "Six moons will rise, then you will be free!" she mutters to
herself as she passes on; and the sun mounts higher, and the shadow of
the cross is lightening with the coming dawn--who knows?
III.
AN EBB TIDE.
On right and left with flight of light,
How whirled the hills, the trees, the bowers!
With light-like flight, on left and right,
How spun the hamlets, towns, and towers!
Dost quail? The moon is fair to see;
Hurrah! the Dead ride recklessly!
Beloved! Dost dread the shrouded dead?
"Ah, let the dead repose!" she said.
JAMES CLARENCE MANGAN: _Anthology_.
It is a sunshine Sabbath morning. The sea quivers under an armor of
silver scales, and laps, laps with a laugh as it runs into the creek.
The sails of the ships glisten whiter than any snow. The sun distils
the scent from the clove carnations and the sweetbrier leaves, and
coaxes the pungent resin through the cracks in the bark, until the
air is heavy with a smell that would cease to be perfume, were it not
filtered through the salt ooze of the incoming sea-breeze that flutters
the flags on the tall white poles, and tempers the ardor of the young
year's sun.
The kariol bearing the specialist whose skill is of no avail in the
face of a pressing call from the great god Death, has just wound round
the pine-wood in a whirl of dust. The dogs, unbound, lie on the back
veranda, with their black snouts resting on their forepaws, and they
watch him depart without a growl; they have not barked for days past,
nor chased the plucky badger, nor yapped impatiently as the cheeky
squirrels flirted through the branches. Even beggars have come and gone
without a snarling protest; but all last night they howled and bayed
and cowered together as if they could see the passage of invisible
guests. A peculiar stillness seems to brood over the great place. The
maids are sitting in their gowns of Sunday black, with open psalm-books
on their laps; they are listening and whispering with the disturbance
of expectancy.
The housekeeper is talking to the leech woman, quaint survival of older
days, whose business in life is to keep the slimy suckers lively and
apply them. She looks as if she fed them between times on herself, so
bony and colorless a creature is she. They are negotiating the last
ghastly offices that may soon be needed, speculating as to the changes
and their effect on the village. The vicar, she tells, is about to make
the departing life the text of his sermon; every one in the district
is coming to hear it. Why not? A sermon of warning, with a smack of
the Pharisee in it; a "Lord, I thank Thee I am not like unto this man"
note, especially if you know the publican in question, cannot fail to
be attractive; it has an up-to-date interest that the parable of the
far-away-time sinner necessarily lacks.
Upstairs the cow-girl is crouching like a faithful dog outside his
bedroom door; she is listening to the murmured Latin service of the
mass that comes from inside. The windows of the room are wide open,
and the sea stretches away and melts into the horizon in an infinity
of blue and silver. He is lying still on the ebb of his last tide,
and when his eyes open they wander from the little priest before the
extemporized altar, to the bowed head of the woman kneeling beside him.
"Pax Domini sit semper vobiscum!" intones the priest.