FOOTNOTES:
[8] Probably Newfoundland.
[9] Probably spotted maple.
[10] Upper Canada.
[11] Snails or cockles, as they called their light craft.
[12] I have not wished to attempt a translation of these verses, convinced that for the Swedish reader it is not necessary; and why unnecessarily brush off the golden dust from the butterfly's wings.—Fredrika Bremer.
As, however, the English reader may find it rather more necessary to give a translation of the Norwegian verses, I have made it, and that as much in the simplicity of the original as I could.—M. H.
RETREATING AND ADVANCING.
True delicacy, that most beautiful heart-leaf of humanity, exhibits itself most significantly in little things. Those which we in general call so, are not by any means so little.
J. C. Lous.
It is with our faults as with horseradish; it is terribly difficult to extirpate it from the earth in which it has once taken root; and nothing is more discouraging to the cultivator who will annihilate this weed from his ground, than to see it, so lately plucked up, shooting forth again freshly to the light from roots which remained buried in the earth. One can get quite out of patience; with the weedy soil, and one is, when this soil is one's own dear self, possessed by the most cordial desire to set off far, far from one's self. But how!!!
Susanna was often conscious of this feeling, as she daily laboured to repress the excitements which arose up within her at this time. Still the thoughts and resolutions which awoke within her on the evening just described, had taken hold upon her too strongly for them to be again effaced, and with the motto—"a humble and regular servant-girl," she struggled boldly through the dangers and the events of the day. Her demeanour was calmer; she quietly withdrew herself from taking part in conversation which went beyond her education; in a friendly spirit, she endeavoured to renounce the attentions and interest of others, and busied herself only in attending to the comforts and pleasures of all, as well as in accomplishing, and when possible, anticipating every wish. And such an activity has, more than people imagine, an influence upon the well-being of every-day life. The affectionate will lends even to dead things soul and life. But heavy to the ministering spirits is this life of labour and care for others, where no sunbeam of love, no cordial acknowledgment, falls upon their laborious day.
In the beginning of August, Harald set off, to return in about fourteen days with Alf Lexow, the betrothed of Alette. During his absence, Alette was to pay a visit to her uncle in Hallingdal; but, according to Mrs. Astrid's wish, she yet spent another week at Semb. During these days, Alette and Susanna became better friends, for Alette was touched involuntarily by Susanna's unwearied and unpretending attentions, and besides this, she found in her such a frank mind and such cordial sympathy, that she could not deny herself the pleasure of communicating much of that which lived in the heart of the happy bride. Happy,—indeed Alette was, for long and warmly had she loved Alf Lexow, and should shortly be united to him for ever; and yet often stole a melancholy expression over her charming surface, when the conversation turned to this marriage and to her removal into Nordland. Susanna asked her several times of the cause of this, and as often Alette jestingly evaded the question; but one evening when they had chatted together more friendly than common, Alette said—
"It is a strange feeling to get everything ready for one's own marriage in the belief that one shall not long survive it! This removal to Nordland will be my death, that I know certainly. No, do not look so terrified! It is in no case so dangerous. And thoughts of an early death I have long borne in my mind, and therefore I am accustomed to them."
"Ah!" said Susanna, "those who love and are loved, the happy, should never die! But why this strange foreboding?"
"I do not know myself!" replied Alette, "but it has accompanied me from my earliest youth. My mother was born under the beautiful heaven of Provence, and passed the greater part of her youth in that warm country. The love of my father made her love in our Norway a second country, and here she spent the remainder of her life; she never, however, could rightly bear this cold climate, longed secretly for that warmer land, and died with the longing. To me has she bequeathed this feeling; and although I have never seen those orange groves, that warm blue heaven, of which she so gladly spoke, I drew in from childhood a love to them; I have, besides, inherited my mother's suffering from cold;—my chest is not strong, ah!—the long, dark winters of Nordland; the residence on the sea-shore in a climate which is twice as cold as that to which I have been accustomed, the sea-mists and storms—ah! I cannot long withstand them. But Susanna, you must promise me not to say one word of what I have confided to you, either to Harald or to Lexow!"
"But if they know it," said Susanna, "then you certainly need not go there. Certainly your bridegroom would for your sake seek out a milder country——"
"And not feel at home there, and die of longing for his dear Nordland! No, no, Susanna! I know his love for his native land, and know that this winterly nature which I dread so much, is precisely his life and his health. Alf is a Nordlander in heart and soul, and has, as it were, grown up with the district which his fathers inhabited, and whose advance and prosperity is his favourite scheme, the principal object of his activity. No, no! for my sake he shall not tear himself from his home, his noble efforts. Rather would I, if it must be so, find an early grave in his Nordland!"
Susanna now desired to know, and Alette communicated to her, various particulars of the country which was she thought so terrible, and we will now, with the young friends, cast—
A GLANCE INTO NORDLAND.
All is cold and hard.
Blom.
The spirit of God yet rests upon Nordland.
Z.
A great part of Norway has, as it were, its face turned away from life. "The Old Night," which the ancient world considered to be the original mother of all things, here held the giant child in her dark bosom, and bound it tight in swaddling bands, out of which it could not shape itself to joy and freedom. Neither Nordland nor Finmark see the sun for many months in the year, and the difficulties and dangers of the road shut them out from intercourse with the southern world. The spirit of the North Pole rests oppressively over this region, and when in still August nights it breathes from hence over southern Norway, then withers the half-ripened harvests of the valleys and the plains, and the icy-grey face of hunger stares stiffly from the northern cliffs upon laborious but unhappy human multitudes. The sea breaks upon this coast against a palisadoed fence of rocks and cliffs, around which swarm flocks of polar birds with cries and screams. Storms alternate with thick mists. The cliffs along this coast have extraordinary shapes; now ascend they upwards like towers, now resemble beasts, now present gigantic and terrific human profiles; and one can easily imagine how the popular belief sees in them monsters and giants turned to stone, and why their ancestors laid their Jotunhem in this desolate wilderness.
And a dark fragment of Paganism still lingers about this region even to this day. It is frozen fast into the people's imagination; it is turned to stone in the horrible shapes of nature, which once gave it life. The light of the Gospel endeavours in vain to dissipate the shadows of a thousand years; the Old Night holds them back. In vain the Holy Cross is raised upon all the cliffs; the belief in magic and magic arts lives still universally among the people. Witches sit, full of malice, in their caves, and blow up storms for the sea-wanderers, so that they must be unfortunate; and the ghost Stallo, a huge man, dressed in black, with a staff in his hand, wanders about in the wildernesses, and challenges the solitary traveller to meet him in the contest for life and death.
The Laplander, the nomade of the North, roving free with his reindeer over undivided fields, appears like a romantic feature in this life; but it must be viewed from afar. Near, every trace of beauty vanishes in the fumes of brandy and the smoke of the Lapland hut.
Along the coasts, between the cliffs, and the rocks, and the hundreds of islands which surround this strand, live a race of fishermen, who, rivalling the sea-mew, skim the sea. Night and day, winter and summer, swarm their boats upon the waves; through the whistling tempest, through the foaming breakers, speed they unterrified with their light sails, that from the depths of the sea they may catch the silvery shoals of herrings, the greatest wealth of the country. Many annually are swallowed up of the deep; but more struggle with the elements, and conquer. Thus amid the daily contest are many powers developed, many a hero-deed achieved,[13] and people harden themselves against danger and death, and also against the gentler beauty of life.
Yet it is in this severe region that the eider-duck has its home; it is upon those naked cliffs where its nest is built, from feathers plucked from its own breast, that silky soft down which is scattered abroad over the whole world, that people in the North and in the South may lie warm and soft. How many suffering limbs, how many aching heads, have not received comfort from the hard cliffs of Norway.
Upon the boundaries between Nordland and Finmark lies the city of Tromsö, the now flourishing centre of these provinces. It was here that Alette was to spend her life; it was here that affection prepared for her a warm and peaceful nest, like the eider-duck drawing from its own breast the means of preparing a soft couch in the bosom of the hard rock. And after Alette had described to Susanna what terrified her so much in her northern retreat, she concealed not from her that which reconciled her so forcibly to it; and Susanna comprehended this very well, as Alette read to her the following letter:
Tromsö. May 28th.
Were you but here, my Alette! I miss you every moment whilst I am arranging my dwelling for your reception, and feel continually the necessity of asking, "How do you wish it? what think you of it?" Ah, that you were here, my own beloved, at this moment! and you would be charmed with this "ice and bear land," before which, I know, you secretly shudder. The country around here is not wild and dark; as, for example, at Helgoland. Leafy woods garland the craggy shores of our island, and around them play the waves of the sea in safe bays and creeks. Our well-built little city lies sweetly upon the southern side of the island, only divided from the mainland by a narrow arm of the sea. My house is situated in the street which runs along the large convenient harbour. At this moment above twenty vessels lie at anchor, and the various flags of the different nations wave in the evening wind. There are English, German, and especially Russian, which come to our coast, in order to take our fish, our eider-down, and so on, in exchange for their corn and furs. Besides these, the inhabitants of more southern regions bring hither a vast number of articles of luxury and fashion, which are eagerly purchased by the inhabitants of Kola, and the borders of the White Sea. Long life to Commerce! My soul expands at the sight of its life. What has not commerce done from the beginning of the world for the embellishment of life, for promoting the friendly intercourse of countries and people, for the refinement of manners! It has always given me the most heartfelt delight, that the wisest and most humane of the lawgivers of antiquity—Solon—was a merchant. "By trade," says one of his biographers, "by wisdom and music was his soul fashioned. Long life to commerce! What lives not through it?" What is all fresh life, all movement, in reality, but trade, exchange, gift for gift! In love, in friendship, in the great life of the people, in the quiet family circle, everywhere where I see happiness and prosperity, see I also trade; nay, what is the whole earth if not a colony from the mother country of heaven, and whose well-being and happy condition depend upon free export and import! The simile might be still further carried out, yet—thou good Giver above, pardon us that we have ventured upon it!
And you must not fancy, Alette, that the great interest for trade here excludes the nobler and more refined mental culture. Among the thousand people who inhabit the city, one can select out an interesting circle for social intercourse. We also have a theatre, and many pleasures of refined life. I was yesterday at a ball, where they danced through the whole night, till—daylight. The good music, the tasteful dresses and lovely dancing of the ladies; but above all, the tone of social life, the cordial cheerfulness, astonished several foreigners who were present, and caused them to inquire whether they were really here under the seventieth degree of latitude?
But the winter! Methinks I hear you say, "in summer it may be well enough, but in the long, dark winter." Well then, my Alette, winter—goes on right excellently when people love one another, when it is warm at home. Do you remember, Alette, last autumn, how we read together at Christiansand, in the Morning Paper, the following paragraph from the Tromsö News of the fourteenth of October:
"Already for several days successively have we had snow storms, and at this moment the snow-plough is working to form a road for the church-going people. The grave-like stillness of night and winter spread itself with tempest speed over meadow and valley, and only a few cows wander now like spectres over the snow-covered fields, to pluck their scanty fare from the twigs which are not yet snowed up."
That little winter-piece pleased me, but at the expression, "the grave-like stillness of night and winter," you bowed your loving dear face, with closed eyes, to my breast. Oh, my Alette! thus shall you do in future, when dread of darkness and cold seize upon you; and upon my breast, listening to the beating of my heart and to my love, shall you forget the dark pictures which stand without before your home. Close your eyes; slumber beloved, whilst I watch over you, and then you will, with brightening eyes and blooming cheeks, look upon the night and winter, and feel that its power is not great. Oh, truly can love, this Geiser of the soul, smelt ice and snow, wherever they may be on earth; truly, wherever its warm springs swell forth, a southern clime can bloom; yes, even at the North Pole itself.
Whilst I write this, I hear music, which makes upon me a cheerful and a melancholy impression at the same time. They are eight Russians, who sing one of their national songs, whilst in the quiet evening they sail down the Tromsö-sound. They sing a quartet, and with the most complete purity and melody. They sing in a minor key, but yet not mournfully. They row in the deep shadow of the shore, and at every stroke of the oars the water shines around the boat, and drops, as of fire, fall from the oars. The phenomenon is not uncommon on the Atlantic; and know you not, my Alette, what it is which shines and burns so in the sea? It is love! At certain moments, the consciousness of the sea-insects rises to a high pitch of vividness, and millions of existences invisible to the naked human eye, then celebrate the bliss of their being. In such moments the sea kindles; then every little worm, inspired by love, lights up its tiny lamp. Yet only for a moment burns its flame, then all the quicker to be extinguished. But it dies without pain—dies joyfully. Rich nature! Good Creator!
My heart also burns. I look upon the illuminated element, which may be said to be full of enjoyment; I listen to the melody of the singers, full of joy and pain, and—I stretch forth my arms to you, Alette, my Alette!
"Oh!" exclaimed Susanna, "how this man loves you, and how you must love him! Certainly you must live long, that you may be happy together!"
"And if not long," said Alette, "yet for a short time; yes, a short time I hope to live and to make him happy, to thank him for all his love. And then——"
Alette stooped down and plucked a beautiful full-blown water-lily which grew in the river, by whose banks they stood; she showed it to Susanna, whilst she continued with a pensive smile—
What more then than this?
One moment she is
A friendly ray given,
From her home's shining heaven;
Then is she the flame,
High mid the temple's resounding acclaim—
One moment like this
Bears you up through death's sleep into bliss.—Munch.