The Fisher Girl

by Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson

V.

[A MISTAKE.]

When Odegaard rung for his coffee next morning, he was informed that Yngve Vold, the merchant, had already called twice to see him. It annoyed him to have to hold intercourse with a stranger just then, but one who sought him so early must have an important errand. He was scarcely dressed before Yngve Vold came again. "You are surprised, I dare say? So am I. Good morning!"--They shook hands, and he laid his light hat upon the table. "You rise late, I have been here twice before; I have something important at heart, and I must speak with you!"--"Take a seat if you please!" he seated himself in an easy chair.--"Thank you, thank you, I would rather walk, I am too excited to sit. I am quite beside myself since the day before yesterday, stark mad, neither more nor less; and it is your doing, partly!"--"Mine?"--"Yes, yours. You brought the girl forward, no one thought about her, no one noticed her except you. But now I have never seen, no, as true as I live, never seen anything so matchless, anything so--well isn't it? No, over the whole of Europe I have never seen such a cursedly curly-haired wonder,--have you? I got no peace, I was bewitched, she was mixed up in everything, I went away, came back again, impossible.--isn't it? Didn't know at first who she was ... the Fisher Girl, they said,--the Senorita they should have called her, the gipsy, the witch; all fire, eyes, bosom, hair,--what?--sparkling, hopping, laughing, trilling, blushing,--something----! Ran after her, you see, up among the trees in the forest, calm evening, ... she stood, I stood, a few words, song, dance,--and then?... well then I gave her my chain, as true as I live, a minute before, I had never thought of it! Next time, same place, same chase, she was afraid, and I;--well,--would you believe it? I could not say a single word, dare not touch her; but when she came back again, would you think it? I proposed to her, I had not thought about it a second before. Now yesterday I was proving myself, stayed away from her, but then faith and soul I'm mad, yes,--I CANNOT, I MUST be with her; if I don't get her I shall shoot myself slap out, there, that's the history. I don't care what my mother says, nor the town, it's no place, no place at all,--she must go away, you see, away, far away from here, she must be 'comme il faut,' go abroad, to France, Paris, I pay, and you arrange. I might go with her myself, live elsewhere, not stay any longer in this little hole; but the fish you see! I'd like to make something out of the place, but it's all in a torpor, no thought, no speculation, but the fish? They don't know how to manage the fish; the Spaniards complain, it must be done in a fresh way, new drying, new curing, the town must rise, business make headway, the fish!--Where was it I left off? the fish, the Fisher Girl,--that suits well: the fish, the Fisher Girl, ha, ha, ha,--to be sure: I pay, you arrange, she shall be my wife, and then----"

Further he did not get; during the conversation he had not observed Odegaard, who had now risen, deathly pale, and stood over him with a fine Spanish cane. The astonishment of the latter is not to be described; he avoided the first strokes. "Take care," said he, "you may hit me!"--"Yes, I may hit you! you see: Spanish, Spanish cane, that suits too!" and the strokes fell over shoulders, arms, hands, face, anywhere and everywhere; the other rushed about the room: "Are you mad, have you lost your reason;--I will marry her!"--"Out!" cried Odegaard, his strength failing him, and down went the light haired, away from this madman, and was soon standing in the street calling up after his light hat. It was thrown out of the window to him; a heavy fall was heard, and when they went up, Odegaard lay unconscious upon the floor.

All this time Petra was sitting up in her bedroom half dressed, and could not get further the whole day long. Every time she attempted it, her hands sank down upon her lap. Her thoughts bent down as an ear of corn fully ripe, as clustering campanulas in the fields. Calmness, security, waving visions, lay over the airy castles in which she dwelt. She recalled the meeting of yesterday, every word, every look, every touch of the hand, every kiss; she would follow the whole way from the meeting to the parting, but never get to the end; for every single remembrance vanished away in a dream, and all dreams returned again with fair promises. But sweet as were these thoughts, she turned from them to think where she had left off; and as soon as she remembered, she was again carried off into the land of the wonderful.

As she did not come down, the mother concluded that Odegaard having returned, she had begun to study again; she had her meals sent up, and was left alone the whole day. When evening came, she got up to make herself ready to go to meet her beloved; she put on the best she had,--the things she had worn at the confirmation; they were not much, but that she had not felt until now. She had but little sense of the elegant, but she was inspired with it to-day: one thing made another look ugly till the right ones were selected, and even then the whole was not beautiful! To-day she would have given worlds to have been the most beautiful,--with the word a remembrance glided in, which she waved away with her hand; nothing, no nothing should come near that might disturb her. She went about quietly putting her room in order, as it was not yet time to go. She opened the window and looked out; warm, rosy clouds lay encamped over the mountains, but a cooling breeze was wafted in with a message from the forest near by. "Yes, now I'm coming! now I'm coming!" She went back once again to the looking-glass to study her bride-like feelings.

Then she heard Odegaard's voice down stairs with the mother, heard that he was being directed the way to her room; he had come to fetch her! A feeling of bashful joy took hold of her, she looked round to see if all was in order for him; then she went to the door. "Come in!" she answered softly to the low tap, and stepped back a little.

As an icy shower over her, as if the earth gave way beneath her, was the impression of the face that met her in the door! She staggered back to get hold of the bed-post; her thoughts slipped from one abyss to another; in less than a second she had fallen from earth's happiest bride to its greatest sinner; she heard it thunder out of that face: in time and eternity he could not forgive her!

In scarcely audible tones he whispered: "I see it, you are guilty!" He leaned against the door and held fast to the lock, as if without that he could not stand. His voice trembled; the tears rolled down his face, though his countenance was perfectly calm.

"Do you know what you have done?" and his eyes crushed her to the earth. She did not answer,--did not even weep; she was paralysed by a complete and hopeless inability,--"Once before, I gave my heart away, and he to whom I gave it, died through my fault. I could not rise above this sorrow, unless one should reach over me and give me the wealth of a whole heart again. This you have done,--and you have done it hypocritically!" He stopped: two or three times he tried in vain to begin again, then with a sudden pang of pain: "And all that I have stored up during these years, thought upon thought, you have had the heart to overturn as though it were an image of clay! Child, child, could you not understand that I was building up myself in you? Now it is past! Can you not now comprehend it: all that I have given, the very warmest, the very depths of my heart, lost as flame in the winter air, no token left?--Who are you, unhappy child?--I believed you to be my most sacred treasure, but alas; you are more than profaned!"--He wept in the bitterness of his grief.

"No, you are too young to comprehend it," he said again; "you know not what you have done.--But yet you must understand," he exclaimed, "what it is, when that which shines upon our lives, that which we believe can yield the flowers and fruit we look for, proves nothing but an enormous deception!--Tell me, what have I done to you that you COULD do anything so cruel? Child, child, had you but told me it yesterday! Why, why, did you lie so fearfully?--It must be my fault, mine, who have instructed you,--have I then forgotten to speak about truth! No,--then where have you thus learnt it?"

She heard him, and it was altogether true. He had tottered to a chair in the window to lean his head against a table standing beside it. He started up again, he wrung his hands, a sob of pain escaped him, then he sank down and was still. "And I, who am not able to help my old father," he said as if to himself, "I CANNOT, I have no calling, I also am to have help from no one, all to be broken in pieces before me, all and everybody forsake me." He was unable to speak more, his head lay in his right hand; the left hung powerlessly down; he looked as though he could not move,--and thus he remained sitting and said nothing. Then he felt something warm against the hand that was hanging down, and startled, he drew it away, it was Petra's breath; she was on her knees beside him, her head bent down, now she folded her hands, and looked up to him with an inexpressible entreaty for mercy. He looked down at her, and neither of them turned away. Then he lifted his hand preventingly against her, as if he felt within him a voice of persuasion that he would not hear,--bent hastily down for his hat that had fallen on the floor, and went quickly to the door; but still more quickly she stopped the way before him, she cast herself down, grasped hold of his knees, and nailed her eyes into him, but all without a sound; he both saw and felt that she was struggling for life. Then his old love was too strong, he bent down once more over her, and with an expressive look, but one that was full of pain, he threw his arms round her and drew her up to him. Yet once more she lay upon his breast, but it groaned and sighed within, like an organ after the last stroke, when there is still air, but no more tone. Again and again he pressed her to his heart;--for the last time! He left her with a passionate cry; "No, no!--you can abandon yourself, but you cannot love!" He was overwhelmed with emotion: "Unhappy child, your future I cannot guide; may God forgive you that you have ruined mine!" He went past her, she did not move, he opened the door and shut it again, she did not speak;--she heard him on the stairs, she heard his last step on the flagstone and down the road,--then she was released, and gave one cry, a single one, but with this came the mother.

When Petra came to herself again, she was lying in bed undressed and well nursed; before her sat the mother with her arms upon her knees; her head in both her hands, and eyes of fire fastened upon her daughter. "Have you read enough with him now?" she asked:--"Have you learnt something?--What is it you are going to be now?"--Petra answered with an outburst of grief. The mother sat and listened to this for a long time, then said with strange solemnity: "May the Lord heartily curse him!"--The daughter started up: "Mother, mother! Not him, not him, but me, me,--not him!"--"Oh; I know them! I know who should have it!"--"No mother, he has been deceived, dreadfully deceived, and that by me, me--it is I who have deceived him!"--She told the whole story hurriedly and sobbing; he must not for a moment be misjudged; she told about Gunnar, and what she had asked of him, how she had hardly understood at the time, what she was doing; next about Yngve Vold's unlucky gold chain, that had taught her so much, and got her so fearfully entangled, and then about Odegaard, how on seeing him, she had forgotten all else. She could not understand how it had all happened, but this she did understand, that she had sinned deeply against them all, and especially against him who had taken her up, and given her all that one human being can give to another. After sitting long silent, at last the mother said: "Then you have committed no sin against ME? Where have I been all this time that you have never said a word to me?"--"Oh! mother, help me, don't be hard on me now; I feel that I shall suffer for it as long as I live; but I shall pray to God that He will let me soon die!--Dear, dear God," she began, as she folded her hands and looked up to Heaven, "dear, dear God, hear me, I have already forfeited my life; there is nothing more for me, I am not fit, I do not know how to live, then, dear God, I pray Thee suffer me to die!"--But Gunlaug, who had hard words uppermost, stifled them, and laid her hand on the daughter's arm, to take it down from such a prayer: "Govern your feelings, child, do not tempt God;--we must live even if it is painful." She drew several heavy sighs and rose up; she had no consolation to offer. The daughter had no doubt now given her entire confidence, but it was too late. Gunlaug never more set foot within that little attic chamber.

Odegaard had taken an illness, that seemed likely to be a dangerous one, so his old father had gone up, and made his study beside him, saying to all who begged him to spare himself, that he could not do it; his work was to watch over his son, each time he lost one of those whom he loved better than his father.

It was thus that matters stood when Gunnar came home.

He frightened his mother by showing himself long before the ship he sailed with,--she thought it was his ghost, and his acquaintances were not much better. To all their curious inquiries, he could give but an unsatisfactory reply. They, however, soon got a better one, for the very day that he came, he was turned out of Gunlaug's house, and that by Gunlaug herself. "Never let me see you here again," she called out, to him on the doorstep, so that it could be heard far and near, "we have had enough of this now!" He had not gone far, before a girl overtook him with a parcel; she had another as well, and made a mistake, and Gunnar found in his a heavy gold chain; he stood looking at it a minute, and turning it over; he had not understood Gunlaug's fury before, but he understood still less why she should send him a gold chain. He called the girl back, she must have made a mistake, and she asked as she gave him the other parcel if it was this. The parcel proved to contain his gifts to Petra. Yes, that was it; but who was to have the gold chain? "Yngve Vold, the Merchant," replied the girl, and went her way. Gunnar stood musing: Yngve Vold the Merchant? Does he give presents?--and Gunlaug has stumbled upon them! Then it is HE who has stolen her from me,--Yngve Vold,--but he shall----his vexation and excitement must have vent, some one must be thrashed, and it proved to be Yngve Vold.

To relate shortly: the unhappy merchant was once again attacked quite unexpectedly, and that upon his own door step. He ran into the office to escape from the infuriated man, but Gunnar ran after him. The clerks rose up "en masse" against him, but he kicked and struck on all sides; chairs, tables, and desks were overthrown; letters, papers, and journals flew about like dust; help came at last from Yngve's warehouse, and after a hard fight, Gunnar was turned into the street.

But here the battle began again in earnest. There were two ships lying on the quay, and one of them was from abroad; being about noon, when the sailors were at liberty, they were glad to join in the fun; they rushed into the fight, crew against crew, many others were sent for, and came running at double quick pace; labouring people, women and children drew up, till at last there was no one who knew why or against whom they were fighting. In vain the captains cursed; in vain the citizens commanded that the only policeman should be sent for: he was just then out on the fiord, fishing. They ran to the magistrate, who was also postmaster; but he had locked himself in with the post that had just arrived, and answered out of the window, that he could not come; his assistant was at a funeral, they must wait. But as they could not wait, several shouted, and especially frightened women, that Arne the blacksmith should be sent for. This being decided by the worthy citizens, his own wife was despatched to seek him, "for the policeman was not at home." He soon came, to the mirth of the school boys; he made a few strokes among the crowd, picked out a burly Spaniard, and struck him promiscuously against the rest.

When all was settled, there came the magistrate with a stick; he found a few old women and children, talking on the field of battle; these he sternly commanded to go home to dinner, which he also did himself.

But the next day he began to look into the matter, the investigation was continued for a time, though no one had the slightest idea who had been the aggrieving parties. One thing, however, all were agreed upon, that Arne the blacksmith had been mingled in the fray, as they had seen him striking on all sides with the Spaniard. For this Arne had to pay one specie dollar fine, for which his wife, who had led him into it, got sundry blows the second Sunday after trinity, which she might well remember. That was the only judicial consequence of the fray.

But it had other consequences. The little town was no longer a quiet town, the Fisher Girl had put it in commotion. The strangest rumours were set afloat,--arising from angry jealousy at her having been able to win to herself the best head in the place, and its two wealthiest matches, besides having several in the background; for Gunnar had grown by degrees into "several young men." Soon there arose a general moral storm. The disgrace of a great street brawl, and sorrow in three of the best families rested on the head of the young girl who had been but half a year confirmed; three engagements at one time, and one of them with her teacher,--her life's benefactor! Indignation might well boil up. Had she not been, from a child, an annoyance to the town, and for all that, had she not had its expectancy manifested in gifts when Odegaard took her up, and had she not now scorned them all, crushed him, and following the instincts of her nature, thrown herself recklessly on a course that would lead to her being an outcast from society, with the gaol for old age?

The mother must have been to blame too; in her sailors' house the child had learnt to be giddy. They would no longer bear the yoke that Gunlaug laid upon them, they would no longer tolerate them, neither mother nor daughter, they would unite to drive them away.

One night a crowd gathered on the bank; there were sailors, who owed Gunlaug money, drunken labourers, for whom she would not procure work, young lads, to whom she would not give credit, and the better class in the back ground. They whistled, they shouted, they called for The Fisher Girl, for Fisher Gunlaug; by and bye a stone was thrown against the door, then another in at the attic window. They did not go away until after midnight. Behind the windows all was dark and still.

The next day not a soul looked in to Gunlaug, not even a child went past, up the hill. But at night the same riot again, only that now all were there without distinction. They broke all the windows, they tore up the garden, and trampled down the shrubs, they threw the young fruit trees about, and then they sang:--

Mother, I've fished up a sailor, oh!

"Ah! have you so?"

Mother, I've fished up a merchant, oh!

"Ah! have you so?"

Mother, I've fished up a pastor's son

"The best you've won!"

Ah! ding dong,

The nose grows long.[^[1]]

Great fishes may bite, but what is the gain,

If into the basket, they ne'er can be ta'en!

Mother, he's gone, the sailor, oh!

"Ah! has he so!"

Mother, he's gone, the merchant, oh!

"Ah! has he so?"

Mother, the pastor's son's going they say!

"Then haul away!"--

Ah! ding dong,

The nose grows long,

Great fishes may bite, but what is the gain,

If into the basket, they ne'er can be ta'en!

They called especially for Gunlaug, they would have been mightily pleased to have heard her matchless fury rage.

Gunlaug was sitting within, and heard every word; but she kept silence; one must be able to bear something for the sake of one's child.