Oh, yes, to the tug,--the tug that is to bear them away on a glorious
lonely death-ride, out of the sunny fjord to the glistening sea, away
to where the rainbow ends. At the end of the rainbow you'll find a pot
of gold! But, first, they must pass through the wide wooden gate; it is
open. What is that they say about a wide wooden gate? No, it's about a
road,--it's the wide road that leads to destruction. They have decked
the gate with green too,--the gate through which the children used to
peer with inquisitive, frightened child-eyes, up to the house where
the wicked man dwelt. How they used to scamper away with half-real,
half-acted terror at a cry of, "The man is coming!"--the man who was
a bogie-man to them, a name with which to threaten them when naughty,
about whom their elders told dreadful tales in subdued voices. She
remembers this, and smiles half sadly to see as they reach the narrow
street how the children swarm to meet his coming. There is no school
to-day, and they get under the horses' hoofs, and crowd round the car,
and point with dirty, chubby fore-fingers, and clasp hands, and cluster
together in groups of twos and threes, and gaze with awe-struck eyes,
and whisper, and follow. And one whispers to his comrades how he once
got a drive and a silver piece from "the man," and another how he gave
little Tulla a piece of cake. And she thinks of the train that danced
in the wake of the pied piper, and of his own little ones who know
him not. Perhaps they are dancing and laughing to-day,--to-day, when
the father who gave them no name is being borne along to the tuneful
patter of little feet that are not of his kith nor his kin. She seems
to feel that that thing in the coffin is not he. He is walking next
her, laughing with the rare humor of his best moments; chuckling at
the grand funeral they are giving him,--him the bad man, of whom they
had nought but evil to say. How hard it is to go down hill slowly! She
tells herself that later on in the ages to come, when the little ones
here have gone to their last homes as withered elders, the tales of
the bogie-man of their child-days may have grown into a saga of a wild
Angleman with great wealth, who landed and made himself a home on their
coast, and drank and caroused and bought the strangest things; who took
mad sails in a boat right into the teeth of coming gales that the
pilots feared to brave, when the white-crested horses leaped high over
the rocks, and the sea-dragons roared below, and the gray mews shrieked
shrill warnings to the fishers to hasten them home; who turned the
night into day, and took wild hag-rides with his baying and galloping
horses at midnight, and used to crack his whip and urge them on with
exultant oaths, and never let his little wife out of his sight, but
call for her if he missed her till the woods rang with her name.
They reach the wharf. The tug "Bully-boy," with black funnel and
hissing steam, is lying taut to the pier. Her head is really spinning.
How stupid those eight men are! they haven't backed the horses enough.
Hats off! They lay him on the deck; they have put the old flag under
him and piled the posies on top. She pats the dogs and bids them stay,
and lets the women kiss her, and walks up the plank: one plank! surely
there should be four,--
"For thee it is that I dree such pain
As when wounded even a plank will;
My bosom is pierced, is rent in twain,
That thine may ever bide tranquil,
May ever remain
Henceforward untroubled and tranquil."
No, that's not the verse: she can't get it. "I heard four planks fall
down with a saddening echo?--with a hollow echo?" She stands by the
side of the coffin and gazes quietly at the crowd,--looks at the men
with their uplifted hats, at the black-draped horses (Puck is biting
Olla in the neck), at the children, and the group of dogs; and all the
staring eyes seem to melt into one monster multi-colored eye, that
pierces her through and through. Can't they see she is hollow,--the
fools?
They loosen the hawser and cry "All right!" and "Bully-boy" swings
round, and they steam sea-ward, and she sits and dreams, and the tug
dances and splutters and fusses through the sunlit sea, past fjord
mouths and hamlets, and boats with singing children and yapping dogs;
and she never thinks of the future, nor of the steamer she is to meet
at the city, nor makes any plan,--simply sits and lets her fancies run
riot through her tired brain; sits under a canopy of clear air, and
listens to the strange conceits that arise in her thinking self. She
is a Viking's bond-maid of olden days; she hid on his bark while they
built up his funeral pyre and laid the old warrior down. She watched
them touch the flaming pine-knot to his fiery mausoleum, and set him
adrift to the strain of a fierce, exultant chant of victory, to sail
out on his last voyage for a handigrips with the grim foe Death. Ay,
he too was a primitive man, with the primeval passions of untamed
nature surging up and eating their way to his soul's core, as restless
breakers hollow a place on the coast; and now he is going to rest.
The sun sinks in a superb, audacious blending of hues; orange and
scarlet, pink and blue, and lemon-yellow streaks with splotches of
intensest purple are hurled from a palette of fire in a frenzy of
color. The fishers pause and look curiously at the silent little figure
keeping vigil next the flower-decked coffin, as she passes them in the
pearl-mists of the summer night,--pearl-mists that wrap her in a chilly
shroud; and she fancies that spirit hands spread the canopy of starred
blue over them as they glide on; and the moon peers down and nods to
her, and another moon runs sea-ward on a shining silver river; and
the foam in their wake ripples together like frothing diamond chips;
and the dew falls on the withering flowers, and bathes her pale face
and moistens her dry lips; and the night breeze sings sadly to the
thrumming of unseen harps, and soothes her troubled spirit with tender
whisperings that only the stricken in soul can catch in snatches from
the spirit of nature. The boy takes the wheel, and the captain brews
her some coffee. They have forgotten at the house, in their care for
the funeral, to provide her with food or rugs. She is too deliciously
weary (there is no new effort either to make, unless she chooses) to
care. When he brings it to her she swallows it gratefully, and follows
him to the stuffy little cabin, and lies down as he suggests, with her
head on a pilot coat, and he covers her tenderly with another: she is
so small and frail it takes but little. Somehow it smells "homey," with
its mingled odor of tobacco and brine and man, and touches her chilled,
lone soul like the honest clasp of a warm human hand, with a promise of
rest and shelter to come; and under its homely spell she falls asleep.
And so these two poor human souls, tossed together for good or ill for
a brief space, sleep their last together through the summer night. He,
to no mortal awakening; she, perchance, to a brighter dawn.
THE END.