Chapter Ten.
Seeking the Uplands.
Now that the great occasion was come,—that brightest day of the year,—the day of going to the seater, how unlike was it to all that the lovers had imagined and planned! How unlike was the situation of the two! There was Rolf, cooped up in a dim cave, his heart growing heavy as his ear grew weary of the incessant dash and echo of the waters! And here was Erica on the free mountain side, where all was silent, except the occasional rattle of a brook over the stones, and the hum of a cloud of summer flies. The lovers were alike in their unhappiness only: and hardly in this, so much the most wretched of the two was Erica.
The sun was hot; and her path occasionally lay under rocks which reflected the heat upon the passenger. She did not heed this, for the aching of her heart. Then she had to pass through a swamp, whence issued a host of mosquitoes, to annoy any who intruded upon their domain. It just occurred to Erica that Rolf made her pass this place on horseback last year, well veiled, and completely defended from these stinging tormentors: but she did not heed them now. When, somewhat higher up, she saw in the lofty distance a sunny slope of long grass undulating in the wind, like the surface of a lake, tears sprang into her eyes; for Rolf had said that when they came in sight of the waving pasture, she would alight, and walk the rest of the way with him. Instead of this, and instead of the gay procession from the farm, musical with the singing of boys and girls, the lowing of the cows, and the bleating of the kids, all rejoicing together at going to the mountain, here she was alone, carrying a widowed heart, and wandering with unwilling steps further and further from the spot where she had last seen Rolf!
She dashed the tears from her eyes, and looked behind her, at the entrance of a ravine which would hide her from the fiord and the dwelling she had left. Thor islet lay like a fragment of the leafy forest cast into the blue waters; but Vogel islet could not be seen. It was not too far down to be seen from an elevation like this; but it was hidden behind the promontories by which the fiord was contracted. Erica could see what she next looked for,—knowing, as she did, precisely where to look. She could see the two graves belonging to the household,—the two hillocks which were railed in behind the house: but she turned away sickening at the thought that Rolf could not even have a grave; that that poor consolation was denied her. She looked behind her no more; but made her way rapidly through the ravine,—the more rapidly because she had seen a man ascending by the same path at no great distance, and she had little inclination to be joined by a party of wandering Laplanders, seeking a fresh pasture for their reindeer; still less by any neighbour from the fiord, who might think civility required that he should escort her to the seater. This wayfarer was walking at a pace so much faster than hers, that he would soon pass; and she would hide among the rocks beside the tarn (small lake upon a mountain) at the head of the ravine till he had gone by.
It was refreshing to come out of the hot, steep ravine upon the grass at the upper end of it. Such grass! A line of pathway was trodden in it straight upwards, by those who had before ascended the mountain; but Erica left this path, and turned to the right, to seek the tarn which there lay hidden among the rocks. The herbage was knee-deep, and gay with flowers,—with wild geranium, pansies, and especially with the yellow blossoms which give its peculiar hue and flavour to the Gammel cheese, and to the butter made in the mountain dairies of Norway. Through this rich pasture Erica waded till she reached the tarn which fed the stream that gambolled down the ravine. The death-cold unfathomed waters lay calm and still under the shelter of the rocks which nearly surrounded them. Even where crags did not rise abruptly from the water, huge blocks were scattered; masses which seemed to have lain so long as to have seen the springing herbage of a thousand summers.
In the shadow of one of these blocks, Erica sank down into the grass. There she, and her bundle, and her long lure were half-buried; and this, at last, felt something like rest. Here she would remain long enough to let the other wayfarer have a good start up the mountain; and by that time she should be cool and tranquillised:—yes, tranquillised; for here she could seek that peace which never failed when she sought it as Christians may. She hid her face in the fragrant grass, and did not look up again till the grief of her soul was stilled.—Then her eye and her heart were open to the beauty of the place which she had made her temple of worship; and she gazed around till she saw something that surprised her. A reindeer stood on the ridge, his whole form, from his branching head to his slender legs, being clearly marked against the bright sky. He was not alone. He was the sentinel, set to watch on behalf of several companions,—two or three being perched on ledges of the rock, browsing,—one standing half-buried in the herbage of the pasture, and one on the margin of the water, drinking as it would not have dreamed of doing if the wind had not been in the wrong quarter for letting him know how near the hidden Erica was.
This pretty sight was soon over. In a few moments the whole company appeared to take flight at once, without her having stirred a muscle. Away they went, with such speed and noiselessness that they appeared not to touch the ground. From point to point of the rock they sprang, and the last branchy head disappeared over the ridge, almost before Erica could stand upright, to see all she could of them.
She soon discovered the cause of their alarm. She thought it could not have been herself; and it was not. The traveller, who she had hoped was now some way up the mountain, was standing on the margin of the tarn, immediately opposite to her, so that the wind had carried the scent to the herd. The traveller saw her at the same moment that she perceived him; but Erica did not discover this, and sank down again into the grass, hoping so to remain undisturbed. She could not thus observe what his proceedings were; but her ear soon informed her that he was close by. His feet were rustling in the grass.
She sat up, and took her bundle and lure, believing now that she must accept the unwelcome civility of an escort for the whole of the rest of the way, and thinking that she might as well make haste, and get it over. The man, however, seemed in no hurry. Before she could rise, he took his seat on the huge stone beside her, crossed his arms, made no greeting, but looked her full in the face.
She did not know the face, nor was it like any that she had ever seen. There was such long hair, and so much beard, that the eyes seemed the only feature which made any distinct impression. Erica’s heart now began to beat violently. Though wishing to be alone, she had not dreamed of being afraid till now: but now it occurred to her that she was seeing the rarest of sights—one not seen twice in a century; no other than the mountain-demon. Sulitelma, as the highest mountain in Norway, was thought to be his favourite haunt; and considering his strange appearance, and his silence, it could hardly be other than himself.
The test would be whether he would speak first; a test which she resolved to try, though it was rather difficult to meet and return the stare of such a neighbour without speaking. She could not keep this up for more than a minute: so she sprang to her feet, rested her lure upon her shoulder, took her bundle in her hand, and began to wade back through the high grass to the pathway, almost expecting, when she thought of her mother’s fate, to be seized by a strong hand, and cast into the unfathomable tarn, whose waters were said to well up from the centre of the earth. Her companion, however, merely walked by her side. As he did not offer to carry her bundle, he could be no countryman of hers. There was not a peasant in Nordland who would not have had more courtesy.
They walked quietly on till the tarn was left some way behind. Erica found she was not to die that way. Presently after, they came in sight of a settlement of Lapps,—a cluster of low and dirty tents, round which some tame reindeer were feeding. Erica was not sorry to see these; though no one knew better than she the helpless cowardice of these people; and it was not easy to say what assistance they could afford against the mountain-demon. Yet they were human beings, and would appear in answer to a cry. She involuntarily shifted her lure, to be ready to utter a call. The stranger stopped to look at the distant tents, and Erica went on, at the same pace. He presently overtook her, and pointed towards the Lapps with an inquiring look. Erica only nodded.
“Why you no speak?” growled the stranger, in broken language.
“Because I have nothing to say,” declared Erica, in the sudden vivacity inspired by the discovery that this was probably no demon. Her doubts were renewed, however, by the next question.
“Is the bishop coming?”
Now, none were supposed to have a deeper interest in the holy bishop’s travels than the evil spirits of any region through which he was to pass.
“Yes, he is coming,” replied Erica. “Are you afraid of him?”
The stranger burst into a loud laugh at her question: and very like a mocking fiend he looked, as his thick beard parted to show his wide mouth, with its two ranges of teeth. When he finished laughing, he said, “No, no—we no fear bishop.”
“‘We!’” repeated Erica to herself. “He speaks for his tribe, as well as himself.”
“We no fear bishop,” said the stranger, still laughing. “You no fear—?” and he pointed to the long stretch of path—the prodigious ascent before them.
Erica said there was nothing to fear on the mountain for those who did their duty to the powers, as it was her intention to do. Her first Gammel cheese was to be for him whose due it was; and it should be the best she could make.
This speech she thought would suit, whatever might be the nature of her companion. If it was the demon, she could do no more to please him than promise him his cheese.
Her companion seemed not to understand or attend to what she said. He again asked if she was not afraid to travel alone in so dreary a place, adding, that if his countrywomen were to be overtaken by a stranger like him, on the wilds of a mountain, they would scream and fly; all which he acted very vividly, by way of making out his imperfect speech, and trying her courage at the same time.
When Erica saw that she had no demon for a companion, but only a foreigner, she was so much relieved as not to be afraid at all. She said that nobody thought of being frightened in summer time in her country. Winter was the time for that. When the days were long, so that travellers knew their way, and when everybody was abroad, so that you could not go far without meeting a friend, there was nothing to fear.
“You go abroad to meet friends, and leave your enemy behind.”
At the moment, he turned to look back. Erica could not now help watching him, and she cast a glance homewards too. They were so high up the mountain that the fiord and its shores were in full view; and more;—for the river was seen in its windings from the very skirts of the mountain to the fiord, and the town of Saltdalen standing on its banks. In short, the whole landscape to the west lay before them, from Sulitelma to the point of the horizon where the islands and rocks melted into the sea.
The stranger had picked up an eagle’s feather in his walk; and he now pointed with it to the tiny cove in which Erlingsen’s farm might be seen, looking no bigger than an infant’s toy, and said, “Do you leave an enemy there, or is Hund now your friend?”
“Hund is nobody’s friend, unless he happens to be yours,” Erica replied, perceiving at once that her companion belonged to the pirates. “Hund is everybody’s enemy; and, above all, he is an enemy to himself. He is a wretched man.”
“The bishop will cure that,” said the stranger. “He is coward enough to call in the bishop to cure all. When comes the bishop?”
“Next week.”
“What day, and what hour?”
Erica did not choose to gratify so close a curiosity as this. She did not reply; and while silent, was not sorry to hear the distant sound of cattle-bells, and Erlingsen’s cattle-bells too. The stranger did not seem to notice the sound, even though quickening his pace to suit Erica’s, who pressed on faster when she believed protection was at hand. And yet the next thing the stranger said brought her to a full stop.—He said he thought a part of Hund’s business with the bishop would be to get him to disenchant the fiord, so that boats might not be spirited away almost before men’s eyes; and that a rower and his skiff might not sink like lead one day, and the man be heard the second day, and seen the third, so that there was no satisfactory knowledge as to whether he was really dead. Erica stopped, and her eager looks made the inquiry which her lips could not speak. Her eagerness put her companion on his guard, and he would explain no further than by saying that the fiord was certainly enchanted, and that strange tales were circulating all round its shores—very striking to a stranger;—a stranger had nothing more to do with the wonders of a country than to listen to them. He wanted to turn the conversation back to Hund. Having found out that he was at Erlingsen’s, he next tried to discover what he had said and done since his arrival. Erica told the little there was to tell—that he seemed full of sorrow and remorse. She told this in hope of a further explanation about drowned men being seen alive; but the stranger stopped when the bells were heard again, and a woman’s voice singing, nearer still. He complimented Erica on her courage, and turned to go back the way he came.
“Stay,” said Erica. “Do come to the dairy, now you are so near.”
The man walked away rapidly.
“My master is here close at hand; he will be glad to see a stranger,” she said, following him, with the feeling that her only chance of hearing something of Rolf was departing. The stranger did not turn, but only walked faster and with longer strides down the slope.
The only thing now to be done was to run forwards, and send a messenger after him. Erica forgot heat, weariness, and the safety of her property, and ran on towards the singing voice. In five minutes she found the singer, Frolich, lying along the ground and picking cloud-berries with which she was filling her basket for supper.
“Where is Erlingsen?—quick—quick!” cried Erica.
“My father? You may just see him with your good eyes,—up there.”
And Frolich pointed to a patch of verdure on a slope high up the mountain, where the gazer might just discern that there were haycocks standing, and two or three moving figures beside them.
“Stiorna is there to-day, besides Jan. They hope to finish this evening,” said Frolich; “and so here I am, all alone: and I am glad you have come to help me to have a good supper ready for them. Their hunger will beat all my berry-gathering.”
“You are alone?” said Erica, discovering that it was well that the pirate had turned back when he did. “You alone, and gathering berries, instead of having an eye on the cattle! Who has an eye on the cattle!” (Note 1.)
“Why, no one,” answered Frolich. “Come now, do not tease me with bidding me remember the Bishop of Tronyem’s cattle. The underground people have something to do elsewhere to-day; they give no heed to us.”
“We must give heed to them, however,” said Erica. “Show me where the cattle are, and I will collect them, and have an eye on them till supper is ready.”
“You shall do no such thing, Erica. You shall lie down here and pick berries with me, and tell me the news. That will rest you and me at the same time; for I am as tired of being alone as you can be of climbing the mountain.—But why are your hands empty? Who is to lend you clothes? And what will the cows say to your leaving your lure behind, when you know they like it so much better than Stiorna’s?”
Erica explained that her bundle and lure were lying on the grass, a little way below; and Frolich sprang to her feet, saying that she would fetch them presently. Erica stopped her, and told her she must not go: nobody should go but herself. She could not answer to Erlingsen for letting one of his children follow the steps of a pirate, who might return at any moment.
Frolich had no longer any wish to go. She started off towards the sleeping-shed, and never stopped till she had entered it, and driven a provision-chest against the door, leaving Erica far behind.
Erica, indeed, was in no hurry to follow. She returned for her bundle and lure: and then, uneasy about the cattle being left without an eye upon them, and thus confided to the negligence of the underground people, she proceeded to an eminence where two or three of her cows were grazing, and there sounded her lure. She put her whole strength to it, in hope that others, besides the cattle, might appear in answer; for she was really anxious to see her master.
The peculiar and far from musical sounds did spread wide over the pastures, and up the slopes, and through the distant woods, so that the cattle of another seater stood to listen, and her own cows began to move,—leaving the sweetest tufts of grass, and rising up from their couches in the richest herbage, to converge towards the point whence she called. The far-off herdsman observed to his fellow that there was a new call among the pastures; and Erlingsen, on the upland, desired Jan and Stiorna to finish cocking the hay, and began his descent to his seater, to learn whether Erica had brought any news from home.
Long before he could appear, Frolich stole out trembling, and looking round her at every step. When she saw Erica, she flew over the grass, and threw herself down in it at Erica’s feet.
“Where is he?” she whispered. “Has he come back?”
“I have not seen him. I dare say he is as far off by this time as the Black Tarn, where I met with him.”
“The Black Tarn! And do you mean that—no, you cannot mean that you came all the way together from the Black Tarn hither. Did you run? Did you fly? Did you shriek? Oh, what did you do?—with a pirate at your heels!”
“By my side,” said Erica. “We walked and talked.”
“With a pirate! But how did you know it was a pirate? Did he tell you so?”
“No: and at first I thought,”—and she sank her voice into a reverential whisper,—“I thought for some time it was the demon of this place. When I found it was only a pirate, I did not mind.”
“Only a pirate! Did not mind!” exclaimed Frolich. “You are the strangest girl! You are the most perverse creature! You think nothing of a pirate walking at your elbow for miles, and you would make a slave of yourself and me about these underground people, that my father laughs at, and that nobody ever saw.—Ah! you say nothing aloud; but I know you are saying in your own mind, ‘Remember the Bishop of Tronyem’s cattle.’”
“You want news,” said Erica, avoiding, as usual, all conversation about her superstitions. “How will it please you that the bishop is coming?”
“Very much, if we had any chance of seeing him. Very much, whether we see him or not, if he can give any help,—any advice... My poor Erica, I do not like to ask, but you have had no good news, I fear.”
Erica shook her head.
“I saw that in your face, in a moment. Do not speak about it till you tell my father; he may help you—I cannot; so do not tell me anything.”
Erica was glad to take her at her word. She kissed Frolich’s hand, which lay on her knee, in token of thanks, and then inquired whether any Gammel cheese was made yet.
“No,” said Frolich, inwardly sighing for news. “We have the whey, but not sweet cream enough till after this evening’s milking; so you are just in time.”
Erica was glad, as she could not otherwise have been sure of the demon having his due.
“There is your father,” said Erica. “Now do go and gather more berries, Frolich; there are not half enough, and you cannot be afraid of the pirate, with your father within call. Now do go.”
“You want me not to hear what you have to tell my father,” said Frolich, unwilling to depart.
“That is very true. I shall tell him nothing till you are out of hearing; he can repeat to you what he pleases afterwards, and he will indulge you all the more for your giving him a good supper.”
“So he will, and I will fill his cup myself,” observed Frolich. “He says the corn-brandy is uncommonly good, and I will fill his cup till it will not hold another drop.”
“You will not reach his heart that way, Frolich. He knows to a drop what his quantity is, and there he stops.”
“I know where there are some manyberries (Note 2) ripe,” said Frolich, “and he likes them above all berries. They lie this way, at the edge of the swamp, where the pirate will never think of coming.”
And off she went, as Erica rose from the grass to curtsey to Erlingsen on his approach.
Note 1. It is a popular belief in Norway that there is a race of fairies or magicians living underground, who are very covetous of cattle; and that, to gratify their taste for large herds and flocks, they help themselves with such as graze on the mountains; making dwarfs of them to enable them to enter crevices of the ground, in order to descend to the subterranean pastures. This practice may be defeated, as the Norwegian herdsman believes, by keeping his eye constantly on the cattle.
A certain Bishop of Tronyem lost his cattle by the herdsmen having looked away from them, beguiled by a spirit in the shape of a noble elk. The herdsmen, looking towards their charge again, saw them reduced to the size of mice, just vanishing through a crevice in the hill-side. Hence the Norwegian proverb used to warn any one to look after his property, “Remember the Bishop of Tronyem’s cattle.”
Note 2. The Molteboeer, or Manyberries, so called from its clustered appearance. It is a delicious fruit, amber-coloured when ripe, and growing in marshy ground.