VIII
Even before their arrival, Jon discovered that his Uncle Magnus was a man who said little, but took good notice of what others did. The way to gain his favor, therefore, was to accept and discharge the duties of the new life as they should arise. Having adopted the resolution to do this, it was surprising how soon these duties became familiar and easy. He entered the school, where he was by no means the lowest or least promising scholar, assisted his mother and Gudrid wherever it was possible, and was so careful a messenger that Magnus by degrees intrusted him with matters of some importance. The household, in a little while, became well-ordered and harmonious, and although it lacked the freedom and homelike feeling of the lonely farm on the Thiörvǎ, all were contented and happy.
Jon had a great deal to learn, but his eagerness helped him. His memory was naturally excellent, and he had been obliged to exercise it so constantly—having so few books, and those mostly his own written copies—that he was able to repeat, correctly, large portions of the native sagas, or poetical histories. He was so well advanced in Latin that the continuance of the study became simply a delight; he learned Danish, almost without an effort, from his uncle’s commercial partner and the Danish clerk in the warehouse; and he took up the study of English with a zeal that was heightened by his memories of Mr. Lorne.
We cannot follow him, step by step, during this period, although many things in his life might instruct and encourage other earnest, struggling boys. It is enough to say that he was always patient and cheerful, always grateful for his opportunity of education, and never neglectful of his proper duties to his uncle, mother, and sister. Sometimes, it is true, he was called upon to give up hours of sport, days of recreation, desires which were right in themselves but could not be gratified,—and it might have gone harder with him to do so, if he had not constantly thought: “How would my father have acted in such a case?” And had he not promised to take the place of his father?
So three years passed away. Jon was eighteen, and had his full stature. He was strong and healthy, and almost handsome; and he had seen so much of the many strangers who every summer come to Rejkiavik—French fishermen, Spanish and German sailors, English travellers and Danish traders—that all his old shyness had disappeared. He was able to look any man in the eyes, and ask or answer a question.
It was the beginning of summer, and the school had just closed. Jon had been assisting the Danish clerk in the warehouse; but toward noon, when they had an idle hour, a sailor announced that there was a new arrival in the harbor; so he walked down the beach of sharp lava-sand to the wooden jetty where strangers landed. A little distance off shore a yacht was moored; the English flag was flying at the stern, and a boat was already pulling toward the landing-place. Jon rubbed his eyes, to be sure that he saw clearly; but no! the figure remained the same; and now, as the stranger leaped ashore, he could no longer contain himself. He rushed across the beach, threw his arms around the man, and cried out, “Lorne! Lorne!”
The latter was too astonished to recognize him immediately.
“Don’t you know me?” Jon asked; and then, half laughing, half crying, said in Latin, “To-day is better than yesterday.”
“Why, can this be my little guide?” exclaimed Mr. Lorne. “But to be sure it is! There are no such wise eyes in so young a head anywhere else in the world.”
Before night the traveller was installed in the guest-room in Uncle Magnus’s house; and then they truly found that he had not forgotten them. After supper he opened a box, and out there came a silver watch for Jon; a necklace, that could not be told from real pearls, for Gudrid; and what a shawl for the mother! Even Uncle Magnus was touched, for he brought up a very old, dusty bottle of Portugal wine, which he had never been known to do before, except one day when the Governor came to see him.
“And now,” said Mr. Lorne, when he was a little tired of being thanked so much, “I want something in return. I am going, by way of the Broad Fiord, to the northern shore of Iceland, and back through the desert; and I shall not feel safe unless Jon goes with me.”
“Oh!” cried Jon.
“I am not afraid this time,” said Gudrid.
Magnus looked at his sister, and then nodded. “Take the boy!” he said. “He can get back before school commences again; and we are as ready to trust him with you as you are to trust yourself with him.”
What a journey that was! They had plenty of ponies, and a tent, and provisions in tin cans. Sometimes it rained or snowed, and they were wet and chilly enough at the end of the day, but then the sun shone again, and the black mountains became purple and violet and their snows and ice-fields sparkled in the blue of the air. They saw many a wild and desolate landscape, but also many a soft green plain and hay-meadow along the inlets of the northern shore; and in the little town of Akureyri Jon at last found a tree—the only tree in Iceland! It is a mountain-ash, about twenty feet high, and the people are so proud of it that every autumn they wrap the trunk and boughs, and even the smallest twigs, in woollen cloth, lest the severity of the winter should kill it.
They visited the Myvatn (Mosquito Lake) in the northeastern part of the island, saw the volcanoes which in 1875 occasioned such terrible devastation, and then crossed the great central desert to the valley of the Thiörvǎ. So it happened that Jon saw Gudridsdale again, but under pleasanter aspects than before, for it was a calm, sunny day when they reached the edge of the table-land and descended into the lovely green valley. It gave him a feeling of pain to find strangers in his father’s house, and perhaps Mr. Lorne suspected this, for he did not stop at the farm, but pushed on to Kyrkedal, where the good old pastor entertained them both as welcome guests. At the end of six weeks they were back in Rejkiavik, hale and ruddy after their rough journey, and closer friends than ever.
Each brought back his own gain—Mr. Lorne was able to speak Icelandic tolerably well, and Jon was quite proficient in English. The former had made the trip to Iceland especially to collect old historical legends and acquire new information concerning them. To his great surprise, he found Jon so familiar with the subject, that, during the journey, he conceived the idea of taking him to Scotland for a year, as an assistant in his studies; but he said nothing of this until after their return. Then, first, he proposed the plan to Magnus and Jon’s mother, and prudently gave them time to consider it. It was hard for both to consent, but the advantages were too evident to be rejected. To Jon, when he heard it, it seemed simply impossible; yet the preparations went on,—his mother and Gudrid wept as they helped, Uncle Magnus looked grave,—and at last the morning came when he had to say farewell.
The yacht had favorable winds at first. They ran along the southern shore to Ingolf’s Head, saw the high, inaccessible summits of the Skaptar Jökull fade behind them, and then Iceland dropped below the sea. A misty gale began to blow from the southwest, forcing them to pass the Faroe Islands on the east, and afterward the Shetland Isles; but, after nearly coming in sight of Norway, the wind changed to the opposite quarter, and the yacht spread her sails directly for Leith. One night, when Jon awoke in his berth, he missed the usual sound of waves against the vessel’s side and the cries of the sailors on deck—everything seemed strangely quiet; but he was too good a sleeper to puzzle his head about it, so merely turned over on his pillow. When he arose the quiet was still there. He dressed in haste and went on deck. The yacht lay at anchor in front of buildings larger than a hundred Rejkiaviks put together.
“This is Leith,” said Mr. Lorne, coming up to him.
“Leith?” Jon exclaimed; “it seems like Rome or Jerusalem! Those must be the King’s palaces.”
“No, my boy,” Mr. Lorne answered, “they are only warehouses.”
“But what are those queer green hills behind the houses? They are so steep and round that I don’t see how anybody could climb up.”
“Hills?” exclaimed Mr. Lorne. “Oh, I see now! Why, Jon, those are trees.”
Jon was silent. He dared not doubt his friend’s word, but he could not yet wholly believe it. When they had landed, and he saw the great trunks, the spreading boughs, and the millions of green leaves, such a feeling of awe and admiration came over him that he began to tremble. A wind was blowing, and the long, flexible boughs of the elms swayed up and down.
“Oh, Mr. Lorne!” he cried. “See! they are praying! Let us wait a while; they are saying something—I hear their voices. Is it English?—can you understand it?”
“The halt on the journey”
Mr. Lorne took him by the hand and said: “It is praise, not prayer. They speak the same language all over the world, but no one can understand all they say.”
There is one rough little cart in Rejkiavik, and this is the only vehicle in Iceland. What then, must have been Jon’s feelings when he saw hundreds of elegant carriages dashing to and fro, and great wagons drawn by giant horses? When they got into a cab, it seemed to him like sitting on a moving throne. He had read and heard of all these things, and thought he had a clear idea of what they were; but he was not prepared for the reality. He was so excited, as they drove up the street to Edinburgh, that Mr. Lorne, sitting beside him, could feel the beating of his heart. The new wonders never ceased: there was an apple tree with fruit; rose bushes in bloom; whole beds of geraniums in the little gardens; windows filled with fruit or brilliant silks or silver-ware; towers that seemed to touch the clouds, and endless multitudes of people! As they reached the hotel, all he could say, in a faltering voice, was, “Poor old Iceland!”
The next day they took the train for Lanark, in the neighborhood of which Mr. Lorne had an estate. When Jon saw the bare, heather-covered mountains, and the swift brooks that came leaping down their glens, he laughed and said:
“Oh, you have a little of Iceland even here! If there were trees along the Thiörvǎ, it would look like yonder valley.”
“I have some moorland of my own,” Mr. Lorne remarked; “and if you ever get to be homesick, I’ll send you out upon it to recover.”
But when Jon reached the house, and was so cordially welcomed by Mrs. Lorne, and saw the park and gardens where he hoped to become familiar with trees and flowers, he thought there would be as much likelihood of being homesick in heaven as in such a place.
Everything he saw tempted him to visit and examine it. During the first few days he could scarcely sit still in the library and take part in Mr. Lorne’s studies. But his strong sense of duty, his long habits of patience and self-denial soon made the task easy, and even enabled him to take a few more hours daily for his own improvement. His delight in all strange and beautiful natural objects was greatly prolonged by this course. He enjoyed everything far more than if he had rapidly exhausted its novelty. Mr. Lorne saw this quality of Jon’s nature with great satisfaction, and was very ready to give advice and information which he knew would be earnestly heeded.
It was a very happy year; but I do not believe that it was the happiest of Jon’s life. Having learned to overcome the restlessness and impatience which are natural to boyhood, he laid the basis for greater content in life as a man. When he returned to Rejkiavik, in his twentieth year, with a hundred pounds in his pocket and a rich store of knowledge in his head, all other tasks seemed easy. It was a great triumph for his mother, and especially for Gudrid, now a bright, blooming maiden of sixteen. Uncle Magnus brought up another dusty bottle to welcome him, although there were only six more left; and all the neighbors came around in the evening. Even the Governor stopped and shook hands, the next day, when Jon met him in the street. His mother, who was with him, said, after the Governor had passed: “I hope thy father sees thee now.” The same thought was in Jon’s heart.
And now, as he is no longer a boy, we must say good-bye to him. We have no fears for his future life; he will always be brave and manly and truthful. But, if some of my readers are still curious to know more of him, I may add that he is a very successful teacher in the school at Rejkiavik; that he hopes to visit Mr. Lorne, in Scotland, very soon; and I should not be in the least surprised if he were to join good old Dr. Hjaltalin, and pay a visit to the United States.
IV
The Two Herd-Boys
When I was in Germany, several years ago, I spent a few weeks of the summer-time in a small town among the Thuringian Mountains. This is a range on the borders of Saxony, something like our Green Mountains in height and form, but much darker in color, on account of the thick forests of fir which cover them. I had visited this region several times before, and knew not only the roads but most of the footpaths, and had made some acquaintance with the people; so I felt quite at home among them, and was fond of taking long walks up to the ruins of castles on the peaks, or down into the wild, rocky dells between them.
The people are mostly poor, and very laborious; yet all their labor barely produces enough to keep them from want. There is not much farming land, as you may suppose. The men cut wood, the women spin flax and bleach linen, and the children gather berries, tend cattle on the high mountain pastures, or act as guides to the summer travellers. A great many find employment in the manufacture of toys, of which there are several establishments in this region, producing annually many thousands of crying and speaking dolls, bleating lambs, barking dogs, and roaring lions.
Behind the town where I lived, there was a spur of the mountains, crowned by the walls of a castle built by one of the dukes who ruled over that part of Saxony eight or nine hundred years ago. Beyond this ruin, the mountain rose more gradually, until it reached the highest ridge, about three miles distant. In many places the forest had been cut away, leaving open tracts where the sweet mountain grass grew thick and strong, and where there were always masses of heather, harebells, foxgloves, and wild pinks. Every morning all the cattle of the town were driven up to these pastures, each animal with a bell hanging to its neck, and the sound of so many hundred bells tinkling all at once made a chime which could be heard at a long distance.
One of my favorite walks was to mount to the ruined castle, and pass beyond it to the flowery pasture-slopes, from which I had a wide view of the level country to the north and the mountain-ridges on both sides. Here it was very pleasant to sit on a rock, in the sunny afternoon, and listen to the continual sound of bells which filled the air. Sometimes one of the herd-boys would sing, or shout to the others across the intervening glens, while the village girls, with baskets of bark, hunted for berries along the edges of the forests. Although so high on the mountain, the landscape was never lonely.
One day, during my ramble, I came upon two smaller herds of cattle, each tended by a single boy. They were near each other, but not on the same pasture, for there was a deep hollow, or dell, between. Nevertheless they could plainly see each other, and even talk whenever they liked, by shouting a little. As I came out of a thicket upon the clearing, on one side of the hollow, the herd-boy tending the cattle nearest to me was sitting among the grass, and singing with all his might the German song commencing,
“Tra, ri, ro!
The summer’s here I know!”
His back was towards me, but I noticed that his elbows were moving very rapidly. Curious to learn what he was doing, I slipped quietly around some bushes to a point where I could see him distinctly, and found that he was knitting a woollen stocking. Presently he lifted his head, looked across to the opposite pasture and cried out, “Hans! the cows!”
I looked also, and saw another boy of about the same age start up and run after his cattle, the last one of which was entering the forests. Then the boy near me gave a glance at his own cattle, which were quietly grazing on the slope, a little below him, and went on with his knitting. As I approached, he heard my steps and turned towards me, a little startled at first; but he was probably accustomed to seeing strangers, for I soon prevailed upon him to tell me his name and age. He was called Otto, and was twelve years old; his father was a wood-cutter, and his mother spun and bleached linen.
“And how much”, I asked him, “do you get for taking care of the cattle?”
“I am to have five thalers” (about four dollars), he answered, “for the whole summer; but it doesn’t go to me—it’s for father. But then I make a good many groschen by knitting, and that’s for my winter clothes. Last year I could buy a coat, and this year I want to get enough for trousers and new shoes. Since the cattle know me so well, I have only to talk and they mind me; and that, you see, gives me plenty of time to knit.”
“I see,” I said; “it’s a very good arrangement. I suppose the cattle over on the other pasture don’t know their boy? He has not got them all out of the woods yet.”
“Yes, they know him,” said Otto, “and that’s the reason they slip away. But the cattle mind some persons better than others; I’ve seen that much.”
Here he stopped talking, and commenced knitting again. I watched him awhile, as he rapidly and evenly rattled off the stitches. He evidently wanted to make the most of his time. Then I again looked across the hollow, where Hans—the other boy—had at last collected his cows. He stood on the top of a rock, flinging stones down the steep slope. When he had no more, he stuck his hands in his pockets and whistled loudly, to draw Otto’s attention; but the latter pretended not to hear. Then I left them; for the shadow of the mountain behind me was beginning to creep up the other side of the valley.
A few days afterwards I went up to the pasture again, and came, by chance, to the head of the little dell dividing the two herds. I had been wandering in the fir-forest, and reached the place unexpectedly. There was a pleasant view from the spot, and I seated myself in the shade, to rest and enjoy it. The first object which attracted my attention was Otto, knitting as usual, beside his herd of cows. Then I turned to the other side to discover what Hans was doing. His cattle, this time, were not straying; but neither did he appear to be minding them in the least. He was walking backwards and forwards on the mountainside, with his eyes fixed upon the ground. Sometimes, where the top of a rock projected from the soil, he would lean over it, and look along it from one end to the other, as if he were trying to measure its size; then he would walk on, pull a blue flower, and then a yellow one, look at them sharply, and throw them away. “What is he after?” I said to myself. “Has he lost something, and is he trying to find it? or are his thoughts so busy with something else that he doesn’t really know what he is about?”
I watched him for nearly half an hour, at the end of which time he seemed to get tired, for he gave up looking about and sat down in the grass. The cattle were no doubt acquainted with his ways—(It is astonishing how much intelligence they have!)—and they immediately began to move towards the forest, and would soon have wandered away, if I had not headed them off and driven them back. Then I followed them, much to the surprise of Hans, who had been aroused by the noise of their bells as they ran from me.
“You don’t keep a very good watch, my boy!” I said.
As he made no answer, I asked, “Have you lost anything?”
“No,” he then said.
“What have you been hunting so long?”
He looked confused, turned away his head, and muttered, “Nothing.”
This made me sure he had been hunting something, and I felt a little curiosity to know what it was. But although I asked him again, and offered to help him hunt it, he would tell me nothing. He had a restless and rather unhappy look, quite different from the bright, cheerful eyes and pleasant countenance of Otto.
His father, he said, worked in a mill below the town, and got good wages; so he was allowed half the pay for tending the cattle during the summer.
“What will you do with the money?” I asked.
“Oh, I’ll soon spend it,” he said. “I could spend a hundred times that much, if I had it.”
“Indeed!” I exclaimed. “No doubt it’s all the better that you haven’t it.”
He did not seem to like this remark, and was afterwards disinclined to talk; so I left him and went over to Otto, who was as busy and cheerful as ever.
“Otto,” said I, “do you know what Hans is hunting all over the pasture? Has he lost anything?”
“No,” Otto answered; “he has not lost anything, and I don’t believe he will find anything, either. Because, even if it is all true, they say you never come across it when you look for it, but it just shows itself all at once, when you’re not expecting.”
“What is it, then?” I asked.
Otto looked at me a moment, and seemed to hesitate. He appeared also to be a little surprised; but probably he reflected that I was a stranger, and could not be expected to know everything, for he finally asked, “Don’t you know, sir, what the shepherd found, somewhere about here, a great many hundred years ago?”
“No,” I answered.
“Not the key-flower?”
Then I did know what he meant, and understood the whole matter in a moment. But I wanted to know what Otto had heard of the story, and therefore said to him, “I wish you would tell me.”
“Well,” he began, “some say it was true, and some that it wasn’t. At any rate, it was a long, long while ago, and there’s no telling how much to believe. My grandmother told me; but then she didn’t know the man; she only heard about him from her grandmother. He was a shepherd, and used to tend his sheep on the mountain,—or maybe it was cows, I’m not sure,—in some place where there were a great many kobolds and fairies. And so it went on from year to year. He was a poor man, but very cheerful, and always singing and making merry; but sometimes he would wish to have a little more money, so that he need not be obliged to go up to the pastures in the cold foggy weather. That wasn’t much wonder, sir, for it’s cold enough up here, some days.
“It was in summer, and the flowers were all in blossom, and he was walking along after his sheep, when all at once he saw a wonderful sky-blue flower of a kind he had never seen before in all his life. Some people say it was sky-blue, and some that it was golden-yellow; I don’t know which is right. Well, however it was, there was the wonderful flower, as large as your hand, growing in the grass. The shepherd stooped down and broke the stem; but just as he was lifting up the flower to examine it, he saw that there was a door in the side of the mountain. Now he had been over the ground a hundred times before, and had never seen anything of the kind. Yet it was a real door, and it was open, and there was a passage into the earth. He looked into it for a long time, and at last plucked up heart and in he went. After forty or fifty steps, he found himself in a large hall, full of chests of gold and diamonds. There was an old kobold, with a white beard, sitting in a chair beside a large table in the middle of the hall. The shepherd was at first frightened, but the kobold looked at him with a friendly face, and said, ‘Take what you want, and don’t forget the best!’
“So the shepherd laid the flower on the table, and went to work and filled his pockets with the gold and diamonds. When he had as much as he could carry, the kobold said again, ‘Don’t forget the best!’ ‘That I won’t,’ the shepherd thought to himself, and took more gold and the biggest diamonds he could find, and filled his hat, so that he could scarcely stagger under the load. He was leaving the hall, when the kobold cried out, ‘Don’t forget the best!’ But he couldn’t carry any more, and went on, never minding. When he reached the door in the mountainside, he heard the voice again, for the last time, ‘Don’t forget the best!’
“The next minute he was out on the pasture. When he looked around, the door had disappeared: his pockets and hat grew light all at once, and instead of gold and diamonds he found nothing but dry leaves and pebbles. He was as poor as ever, and all because he had forgotten the best. Now, sir, do you know what the best was? Why, it was the flower, which he had left on the table in the kobold’s hall. That was the key-flower. When you find it and pull it, the door is opened to all the treasures under ground. If the shepherd had kept it, the gold and diamonds would have stayed so; and, besides, the door would have been always opened to him, and he could then help himself whenever he wanted.”
Otto had told the story very correctly, just as I had heard it told by some of the people before. “Did you ever look for the key-flower?” I asked him.
He grew a little red in the face, then laughed, and answered: “Oh, that was the first summer I tended the cattle, and I soon got tired of it. But I guess the flower doesn’t grow any more, now.”
“How long has Hans been looking for it?”
“He looks every day,” said Otto, “when he gets tired doing nothing. But I shouldn’t wonder if he was thinking about it all the time, or he’d look after his cattle better than he does.”
As I walked down the mountain that afternoon I thought a great deal about these two herd-boys and the story of the key-flower. Up to this time the story had only seemed to me to be a curious and beautiful fairy-tale; but now I began to think it might mean something more. Here was Hans, neglecting his cows, and making himself restless and unhappy, in the hope of some day finding the key-flower; while Otto, who remembered that it can’t be found by hunting for it, was attentive to his task, always earning a little, and always contented.
Therefore, the next time I walked up to the pastures, I went straight to Hans. “Have you found the key-flower yet?” I asked.
There was a curious expression upon his face. He appeared to be partly ashamed of what he must now and then have suspected to be a folly, and partly anxious to know if I could tell him where the flower grew.
“See here, Hans,” said I, seating myself upon a rock. “Don’t you know that those who hunt for it never find it. Of course you have not found it, and you never will, in this way. But even if you should, you are so anxious for the gold and diamonds that you would be sure to forget the best, just as the shepherd did, and would find nothing but leaves and pebbles in your pockets.”
“Oh, no!” he exclaimed; “that’s just what I wouldn’t do.”
“Why, don’t you forget your work every day?” I asked. “You are forgetting the best all the time,—I mean the best that you have at present. Now, I believe there is a key-flower growing on these very mountains; and, what is more, Otto has found it!”
He looked at me in astonishment.
“Don’t you see,” I continued, “how happy and contented he is all the day long? He does not work as hard at his knitting as you do in hunting for the flower; and although you get half your summer’s wages, and he nothing, he will be richer than you in the fall. He will have a small piece of gold, and it won’t change into a leaf. Besides, when a boy is contented and happy he has gold and diamonds. Would you rather be rich and miserable, or poor and happy?”
This was a subject upon which Hans had evidently not reflected. He looked puzzled. He was so accustomed to think that money embraced everything else that was desirable, that he could not imagine it possible for a rich man to be miserable. But I told him of some rich men whom I knew, and of others of whom I had heard, and at last bade him think of the prosperous brewer in the town below, who had so much trouble in his family, and who walked the streets with his head hanging down.
I saw that Hans was not a bad boy; he was simply restless, impatient, and perhaps a little inclined to envy those in better circumstances. This lonely life on the mountains was not good for a boy of his nature, and I knew it would be difficult for him to change his habits of thinking and wishing. But, after a long talk, he promised me he would try, and that was as much as I expected.
Now, you may want to know whether he did try; and I am sorry that I cannot tell you. I left the place soon afterwards, and have never been there since. Let us all hope, however, that he found the real key-flower.