VI.
Six weeks later two young Americans were sitting on the deck of the Cunarder Siberia, which had that morning left the Queenstown harbor.
"Jack," said the one, laying his hand on the other's shoulder in a way that expressed an untold amount of friendliness, "I don't think it is good policy to keep silence any longer. I know I have committed my monumental piece of folly, as you prophesied, but I need hardly tell you, Jack, that I didn't know at the time what—what I know now," he finished, hurriedly.
"I never doubted that, Harry," answered the other with a certain solemn impressiveness. "But don't let us talk. I have not reached the stage yet when I can mention her name without a pang; and I fear—I fear I never shall."
They sat for a long while smoking in silence and gazing pensively toward the dim coast-line of Europe, which was gradually fading away upon the eastern horizon.
"Jack," began Vincent abruptly, "I feel as if I had passed through a severe illness."
"So you have, Harry," retorted Cranbrook.
"Oh, pshaw! I don't mean that. That little physical suffering was nothing more than I deserved. But a fever, they say, sometimes purifies the blood, and mine, I think, has left me a cleaner and a wiser fellow than it found me."
The steamer kept ploughing its broad pathway of foam through the billows; a huge cloud of fantastic shape loomed up in the east, and the vanishing land blended with and melted away among its fleecy embankments.
"Are you perfectly sure, Jack," said Vincent, throwing the burning stump of his cigar over the gunwale, "that the experiences of the past year have not been all an excursion into the 'Arabian Nights'? If it were not for that fine marble relief in my trunk which I bought of that miserable buffoon in the Via Sistina, I should easily persuade myself that the actual world were bounded on the east by the Atlantic and on the west by the Pacific Ocean. I was just considering whether I should try to smuggle it through the custom-house, or whether, perhaps, it would be wiser to give Uncle Sam his due."
"And what does the relief represent?" asked Cranbrook, half indifferently.
"It is a copy from an antique one. Agamemnon robbing Achilles of his—"
Cranbrook gave a start, and walked rapidly toward the other end of the boat. In half an hour he returned, stopped in front of Vincent, grasped his hand warmly and said:
"Harry, let us agree never to refer to that which is passed. In your life it was an episode, in mine it was a catastrophe."
Since that day, Annunciata's name has never passed their lips.
There is, however, an epilogue to this tale which cannot well be left untold. In the winter of 187-, ten years after their first Italian sojourn, the two friends again visited Rome together. One beautiful day in February, they found themselves, perhaps not quite by accident, in the neighborhood of the well-remembered villa. They rang the bell at the garden gate and were admitted by a robust young man who seemed to be lounging among the overgrown hedges in some official capacity. The mossy Triton was still prosecuting his thankless task in the midst of his marble basin; the long stairs to the terrace were yet as damp and slippery as of old, and the noseless Roman senator was still persevering in his majestic attitude, although a sprig of maiden-hair was supporting its slender existence in the recess of his countenance which had once been occupied by his stately nose. Vincent and Cranbrook both regarded these familiar objects with peculiar emotions, but faithful to their agreement, they made no comment. At last they stopped before the sarcophagus—and verily Babetta was still there. A clean and chubby-faced Italian baby with large black eyes rose out of its marble depth and hailed them with simple, inarticulate delight. Cranbrook gazed long at the child, then lifted it up in his arms and kissed it. The young man who had opened the gate for them stood by observing the scene with a doubtful expression of suspicion and wonder. As the stranger again deposited the child on the blanket in the bottom of the sarcophagus, he stepped up before the door and called:
"Annunciata!"
A tall, comely matron appeared in the door—and the strangers hastened away.
UNDER THE GLACIER.
In one of the deepest fjord-valleys on the western coast of Norway there lives, even to this day, a legend which may be worth relating. Several hundred years ago, a peasant dwelt there in the parish who had two sons, both born on the same day. During their infancy they looked so much alike that even the father himself could not always tell one from the other; and as the mother had died soon after their birth, there was no one to settle the question of primogeniture. At last the father, too, died, and each son, feeling sure that he was the elder, laid claim to the farm. For well nigh a year they kept wrangling and fighting, each threatening to burn the house over the other's head if he dared to take possession of it. The matter was finally adjusted by the opportune intervention of a neighbor who stood in high repute for wisdom. At his suggestion, they should each plant side by side a twig or sprout of some tree or herb, and he to whose plant God gave growth should be the owner of the farm. This advice was accepted; for God, both thought, was a safer arbiter than man. One of the brothers, Arne, chose a fern (Ormgrass), and the other, Ulf, a sweet-brier. A week later, they went with the wise man and two other neighbors to the remote pasture at the edge of the glacier where, by common consent, they had made their appeal to the judgment of heaven. Arne's fern stood waving in dewy freshness in the morning breeze; but Ulf's sweet-brier lay prostrate upon the ground, as if uprooted by some hostile hand. The eyes of the brothers met in a long, ill-boding glance.
"This is not heaven's judgment," muttered Ulf, under his breath. "Methinks I know the hand that has wrought this dastardly deed."
The umpires, unmindful of the charge, examined the uprooted twig, and decided that some wild animal must have trodden upon it. Accordingly they awarded the farm to Arne. Then swifter than thought Ulf's knife flew from its sheath; Arne turned pale as death and quivered like an aspen leaf. The umpires rushed forward to shield him. There was a moment of breathless suspense. Then Ulf with a wild shout hurled his knife away, and leaped over the brink of the precipice down into the icy gulf below. A remote hollow rumbling rose from the abyss, followed by a deeper stillness. The men peered out over the edge of the rock; the glacier lay vast and serene, with its cold, glittering surface glaring against the sky, and a thousand minute rivulets filled the air with their melodious tinkling.
"God be his judge and yours," said the men to Arne, and hastened away.
From that day Arne received the surname Ormgrass (literally Wormgrass, Fern), and his farm was called the Ormgrass farm. And the name has clung to his descendants until this day. Somehow, since the death of Ulf, the family had never been well liked, and in their proud seclusion, up under the eternal ice-fields, they sought their neighbors even less than they were themselves sought. They were indeed a remarkably handsome race, of a light build, with well-knit frames, and with a touch of that wild grace which makes a beast of prey seem beautiful and dangerous.
In the beginning of the present century Arne's grandson, Gudmund Ormgrass, was the bearer of the family name and the possessor of the estate. As ill luck would have it, his two sons, Arne and Tharald, both wooed the same maiden,—the fairest and proudest maiden in all the parish. After long wavering she at last was betrothed to Arne, as some thought, because he, being the elder, was the heir to the farm. But in less than a year, some two weeks before the wedding was to be, she bore a child; and Arne was not its father.
That same night the brothers met in an evil hour; from words they came to blows, knives were drawn, and after midnight Tharald was carried up to the farm with a deep wound in his shoulder and quite unconscious. He hovered for a week on the brink of death; then the wound began to heal and he recovered rapidly. Arne was nowhere to be found; rumor reported that he had been seen the day after the affray, on board a brig bound for Hull with lumber. At the end of a year Tharald married his brother's bride and took possession of the farm.