III.
A scientific enthusiasm is one of the most uncomfortable things a human bosom can harbor. It may be the source of a good deal of private satisfaction to the devotee, but it makes him, in his own estimation, superior to all the minor claims of society. This was, at least in an eminent degree, the case with Maurice Fern. He was not wilfully regardless of other people's comfort; he seemed rather to be unconscious of their existence, except in a dim, general way, as a man who gazes intently at a strong light will gradually lose sight of all surrounding objects. And for all that, he was, by nature, a generous man; in his unscientific moments, when his mind was, as it were, off duty, he was capable of very unselfish deeds, and even of sublime self-sacrifice. It was only a few weeks since he had given his plaid to a shivering old woman in the Scottish stage-coach, and caught a severe cold in consequence; but he had bestowed his charity in a reserved, matter-of-fact way which made the act appear utterly commonplace and unheroic. He found it less troublesome to shiver than to be compelled to see some one else shivering, and his generosity thus assumed the appearance of a deliberate choice between two evils.
Phenomena of this degree of complexity are extremely rare in Norway, where human nature, as everything else, is of the large-lettered, easily legible type; and even Tharald Ormgrass, who, in spite of his good opinion of himself, was not an acute observer, had a lively sense of the foreignness of the guest whom, for pecuniary reasons, he had consented to lodge during the remainder of the summer.
A large, quaint, low-ceiled chamber on the second floor, with a superfluity of tiny greenish window-panes, was assigned to the stranger, and his African servant, Jake, was installed in a smaller adjoining apartment. The day after his arrival Maurice spent in unpacking and polishing his precious instruments, which, in the incongruous setting of rough-hewn timbers and gaily painted Norse furniture, looked almost fantastic. The maid who brought him his meals (for he could waste no time in dining with the family) walked about on tip-toe, as if she were in a sick-chamber, and occasionally stopped to gaze at him with mingled curiosity and awe.
The Ormgrass farm consisted of a long, bleak stretch of hill-side, in part overgrown with sweet-brier and juniper, and covered with large, lichen-painted bowlders. Here and there was a patch of hardy winter wheat, and at odd intervals a piece of brownish meadow. At the top of the slope you could see the huge shining ridge of the glacier, looming in threatening silence against the sky. Leaning, as it did, with a decided impulse to the westward, it was difficult to resist the impression that it had braced itself against the opposite mountain, and thrown its whole enormous weight against the Ormgrass hills for the purpose of forcing a passage down to the farm. To Maurice, at least, this idea suggested itself with considerable vividness as, on the second day after his arrival, he had his first complete view of the glacier. He had approached it, not from below, but from the western side, at the only point where ascent was possible. The vast expanse of the ice lay in cold, ghastly shade; for the sun, which was barely felt as a remote presence in the upper air, had not yet reached the depths of the valley. A silence as of death reigned everywhere; it floated up from the dim blue crevasses, it filled the air, it vibrated on the senses as with a vague endeavor to be heard. Jake, carrying a barometer, a surveyor's transit, and a multitude of smaller instruments, followed cautiously in his master's footsteps, and a young lad, Tharald Ormgrass's son, who had been engaged as a guide, ran nimbly over the glazed surface, at every step thrusting his steel-shod heels vindictively into the ice. But it would be futile for one of the uninitiated to attempt to follow Maurice in his scientific investigations; on such occasions he would have been extremely uninteresting to outside humanity, simply because outside humanity was the last thing he would have thought worth troubling himself about. And still his unremitting zeal in the pursuit of his aim, and his cool self-possession in the presence of danger, were not without a sublimity of their own; and the lustrous intensity of his vision as he grasped some new fact corroborative of some favorite theory, might well have stirred a sympathetic interest even in a mind of unscientific proclivities.
An hour after noon the three wanderers returned from their wintry excursion, Maurice calm and radiant, the ebony-faced Jake sore-footed and morose, and young Gudmund, the guide, with that stanch neutrality of countenance which with boys passes for dignity. The sun was now well in sight, and the silence of the glacier was broken. A thousand tiny rills, now gathering into miniature cataracts, now again scattering through a net-work of small, bluish channels, mingled their melodious voices into a hushed symphony, suggestive of fairy bells and elf-maidens dancing in the cool dusk of the arctic midsummer night.
Fern, with an air of profound preoccupation, seated himself on a ledge of rock at the border of the ice, took out his note-book and began to write.
"Jake," he said, without looking up, "be good enough to get us some dinner."
"We have nothing except some bread and butter, and some meat extract," answered the servant, demurely.
"That will be quite sufficient. You will find my pocket-stove and a bottle of alcohol in my valise."
Jake grumblingly obeyed; he only approved of science in so far as it was reconcilable with substantial feeding. He placed the lamp upon a huge bowlder (whose black sides were here and there enlivened with patches of buff and scarlet lichen), filled the basin with water from the glacier, and then lighted the wick. There was something obtrusively incongruous in seeing this fragile contrivance, indicating so many complicated wants, placed here among all the wild strength of primitive nature; it was like beholding the glacial age confronted with the nineteenth century.
At this moment Fern was interrupted in his scientific meditations by a loud scream of terror, and lifting his eyes, he saw a picturesque combination of yellow, black, and scarlet (in its general outline resembling a girl), fleeing with desperate speed up the narrow path along the glacier. The same glance also revealed to him two red-painted wooden pails dancing down over the jagged bowlders, and just about to make a final leap down upon the ice, when two determined kicks from his foot arrested them. Feeling somewhat solicitous about the girl, and unable to account for her fright, he hurried up the path; there she was again, still running, her yellow hair fluttering wildly about her head. He put his hands to his mouth and shouted. The echoes floated away over the desolate ice-hills, growing ever colder and feebler, like some abstract sound, deprived of its human quality. The girl, glancing back over her shoulder, showed a fair face, convulsed with agitation, paused for an instant to look again, and then dropped upon a stone in a state of utter collapse. One moment more and he was at her side. She was lying with her face downward, her blue eyes distended with fright, and her hands clutching some tufts of moss which she had unconsciously torn from the sides of the stone.
"My dear child," he said, stooping down over her (there was always something fatherly in his manner toward those who were suffering), "what is it that has frightened you so? It is surely not I you are afraid of?"
The girl moved her head slightly, and her lips parted as with an effort to speak; but no sound came.
Fern seized her hand, and put his forefinger on her pulse.
"By Jove, child," he exclaimed, "how you have been running!"
There was to him something very pathetic in this silent resignation of terror. All the tenderness of his nature was stirred; for, like many another undemonstrative person, he hid beneath a horny epidermis of apathy some deep-hued, warm-blooded qualities.
"There now," he continued, soothingly; "you will feel better in a moment. Remember there is nothing to be afraid of. There is nobody here who will do you any harm."
The young girl braced herself up on her elbow, and threw an anxious glance down the path.
"It surely was the devil," she whispered, turning with a look of shy appeal toward her protector.
"The devil? Who was the devil?"
"He was all black, and he grinned at me so horribly;" and she trembled anew at the very thought.
"Don't be a little goose," retorted he, laughing. "It was a far less important personage. It was my servant, Jake. And it was God who made him black, just for the sake of variety, you know. It would be rather monotonous to have everybody as white as you and me."
She attempted to smile, feeling that it was expected of her; but the result was hardly proportionate to the effort. Her features were not of that type which lends itself easily to disguises. A simple maidenly soul, if the whole infinite variety of human masks had been at its disposal, would have chosen just such a countenance as this as its complete expression. There was nothing striking in it, unless an entirely faultless combination of softly curving lines and fresh flesh-tints be rare enough to merit that appellation; nor would any one but a cynic have called it a commonplace face, for the absolute sweetness and purity which these simple lines and tints expressed appealed directly to that part of one's nature where no harsh adjectives dwell. It was a feeling of this kind which suddenly checked Fern in the scientific meditation he was about to indulge, and spoiled the profound but uncharitable result at which he had already half arrived. A young man who could extract scientific information from the features of a beautiful girl could hardly be called human; and our hero with all his enthusiasm for abstract things, was as yet not exalted above the laws which govern his species.
The girl had, under his kindly ministry, recovered her breath and her spirits. She had risen, brushed the moss and loose earth from her dress, and was about to proceed on her way.
"I thank you," she said simply, reaching him her hand in Norse fashion. "You have been very good to me."
"Not at all," he answered, shaking her hand heartily. "And now, wouldn't you please tell me your name?"
"Elsie Tharald's daughter Ormgrass."
"Ah, indeed! Then we shall soon be better acquainted. I am living at your father's house."