VIII.
[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.