FOOTNOTES:
[19] In 1902 the United States negotiated with Denmark for the purchase of St. Thomas, one of these islands, as a coaling station, or naval base; but the Danish Rigsdag refused, by a single vote, to authorize the sale. It is believed that the matter will shortly be again considered by the two countries.
[20] Some nonsense.
CHAPTER VII
THE STORY OF THE DANISH "AHLHEDE"
Soon they were tramping past wind-tossed rye-fields and through sweet-smelling meadows from which, every now and then, a long-legged stork flapped its wings and flew skyward at their approach.
Their way to the boats of pretty Tul Lake,—gleaming through the trees in the sunlight,—lay along the banks of the Gudenna River, which has its source among the picturesque hills near Veile; then meanders northward through ranges of hills and green fields, winding with many a bend and curve on past old Himmelbjaerg, past Silkeborg and Randers, finally emptying through Randers Fjord into the Kattegat.
"Are you looking for the row-boats?" came a sweet voice just behind them. "They are just around the bend. I will show you the way."
Turning in the direction of the voice, Valdemar saw a pretty, rosy-cheeked, blue-eyed little peasant girl, in embroidered bodice and cap, carrying a great arm-load of poppies and forget-me-nots, and, stiltily walking along the middle of the road back of her, was a great white, red-billed stork.
"There are the boats now," she said, pointing down a wooded bank just ahead of them, and turning to go. Fru Ingemann offered her a small coin with her thanks and a smile, but the proud child refused the coin with an indignant: "Nej tak! Ingenting! Ingenting!"[21] and started on her way,—the stork still following in stately tread.
"Is that your stork?" Karl couldn't help calling after her, for he thought it awfully funny to see the big white stork following a little girl in such friendly fashion.
"My stork? Why, no! I have no stork," laughed the merry-faced little peasant maid. "But there is a stork's nest on the top of the white church tower over there, and another one up on farmer Andersen's chimney, where he placed an old wagon wheel last year for them. And over yonder, in the eaves of the village houses, there must be several hundred storks. They are very tame, and often follow the plough in search of food for their nestlings, which they find in the newly-turned earth. This is their nesting time now. Then, when fall comes, they will fly with their little ones down to France and Egypt for the winter. But the same storks always come back. This same one followed me about last year. I think it knows me."
In Karl's land there were no friendly, red-legged storks stalking about the country roads, but he had read all about them in his "Andersen's Fairy Tales."
"Storks bring happiness and good luck," explained Valdemar, "and to kill a stork in Denmark is a greater crime, if anything, than to kill a fox in England."
As the boat moved out into the blue lake, through the silent reeds and water-lilies along the shore, with its drowsy white swans, Karl could still see in the distance the little peasant girl with her wild-flowers, the stork in the middle of the road still keeping stately pace with her. Then he burst out laughing at the funny sight.
Valdemar and Karl were both good oarsmen, and so they rowed far out across the lake, then drifted lazily along, while Fru Ingemann entertained them with one of Evald's charming fairy-tales, parts of Öhlenschläger's delightful "Aladdin," and tales from old Danish Saga-lore.
"Mother, won't you sing something?" begged Valdemar, who always loved to hear his mother's beautiful voice.
"Yes, while you are both rowing back to shore, for it is growing late," said Fru Ingemann, as she began and sang for them one of Weyses's old Saga-like romances.
The cool evening breezes, whispering among the trees, told them that the long, happy day was over, and that they must catch their train back to Aarhus at once.
Then came the day when they went by boat down the coast and sailed up Veile Fjord, to spend two happy days at the Munkebjerg,[22] with many a ramble through the woods, guided to and from all the loveliest views by following the red or the yellow arrows on the trees, pausing now and then, after a stiff climb, to rest a moment in front of some little wooden chalet, or to sit and enjoy the scene from Atilla's Bench or Baron Lovenskjold's Bench, if they had followed the red route, or at Ryeholm's Bench or The Bench of the Four-Leaved Clover, when they had followed the yellow marks.
And from Munkebjerg they had gone to Jellinge, a town perched upon the breezy upland, and there they saw the two large, flat-topped, heather-covered "barrows," or graves, of Gorm the Old and Queen Thyra, of which Valdemar had been telling them, and Karl was surprised to hear that there still remained in Zealand, alone, some thousands of these Viking cairns, or Warrior's Hills, as they are called.
Then, as the end of their short week drew near, the children begged Fru Ingemann to take them by motor-car to Randers, where the famous annual Horse-Fair was being held, and they strolled through the streets of the cheerful old town, with its quaint old houses with their slanting roofs and protruding windows.
The Danish flag, with its sharp white cross on a blood-red field, fluttered everywhere. Hundreds of them decorated the exhibition field, to which the towns-folk and farmers, in their Sunday-best, swarmed, from far and near, to hear the speeches and witness the awarding of prizes to the superbly groomed, arch-necked horses of the famous Jutland breed.
The children had hoped to see the peasants still wearing Hessian boots and velvet coats covered with great silver buttons, but Fru Ingemann told them it was fifty years too late for that. They bought tickets—little bits of blue and white ribbon with "Randers" and the date printed on them—to the cake-man's booth, and there they bought all sorts of cakes fantastically made into queer-shaped men and horses and hearts, all covered with sugar and almonds and candies, each with a little motto on it.
Karen soon grew tired and sleepy, so they did not stay to witness the general fun and frolic and peasant dancing at night. As they left the grounds Karl, who was beginning to learn a few Danish words, exclaimed at an advertisement he saw on a signboard: Industriforeningsbygningen![23] "Valdemar, is all that just one word?" he asked.
"Just one word, Karl," replied his cousin.
"As we are all to leave Monday morning for the Park, and Randers is half-way there," said Fru Ingemann, "I have decided not to return to Aarhus at all, but to remain here over Sunday."
No one wanted to go anywhere on Sunday, so the day was quietly passed at home. In Monday morning's mail came a letter from Uncle Thor, asking how soon Valdemar could start up to Skagen, and also a telegram from Uncle Oscar, saying: "Meet me at noon, Monday, at Ribald. Pleasant surprise for Karl."
"Oh, Aunt Else, what can father's surprise be? I don't see how I can ever wait to find out." But his aunt only advised him to be more patient, for he would soon know.
"Tell me all about the Heath then, Aunt Else, and this Park, where we are going," said Karl, as their train sped rapidly northward through the low moorland hills, past clover fields where herds of fat red Danish cattle stood separately tethered; past prosperous little farms, some of them with their waving rye-fields, others all aglow with yellowing grain.
"Long, long ago," began Fru Ingemann, "in the days when Grandmother Ingemann was only a little girl, before there was any telegraphs or telephones, the very heart of all Jutland—as large a space as the whole island of Zealand—was just a dangerous, wild, barren desert, all sand and peat-bogs. The few Heath-dwellers who tried to live there led very lonely and dangerous lives. The Natmaend, a strange race of gypsy robbers, smugglers and kidnappers, wandered there. History records many dark tragedies enacted on the Heath. It was on Grathe Heath that young King Valdemar the Great met and overpowered his treacherous enemy, Svend; and, a century later, the Heath was the scene of a still grimmer tragedy, the murder of King Erik by Marsk Stig.
"The Ahlhede, or All-Heath, as the Danes called it, had not always been a desert-land, covered for miles with Viking barrows. There had once been beautiful forests of spruce and oak and fir-trees stretching over this four thousand miles of waste land. But what forests the long droughts and merciless west winds and cold blasts from the North Sea failed to destroy the ancient Vikings and their subjects cut down for their ships, huts and for fuel, leaving only a great silent, desolate, desert land. It remained thus for such ages that no one ever believed that it could be reclaimed,—that is, no one until Captain Dalgas set to working out his dreams and theories for conquering it. His hope was to win back to Denmark, through the conquering of the Heath, the territory lost through the Schlesvig-Holstein war. He formed the Heath Society and replanted the treeless wastes.
"To-day, countless farmsteads, meadows and pastures of the Danish peasantry dot the Heath from Germany to the Skaw. Trees again flourish; all has been changed as if by magic, and the plough goes over more and more acres of it every year, until a group of patriotic Danes, like your Uncle Oscar, have taken alarm lest all the breezy stretches of heather be reduced to farms, and none of the old-time Heath be preserved untouched for its own natural beauty's sake."
"Uncle persuaded a lot of Danes away off in Chicago, where he lives, to buy up a lot of the wildest and most beautiful part of it so that Denmark might keep it forever as a Park. Isn't that it, mother?" questioned Valdemar.
"Yes, exactly, Valdemar," replied his mother. "And, because of the untiring efforts of a group of patriotic American Danes, like your Uncle Oscar, a beautiful wild spot of three hundred acres up in Northern Jutland, near Ribald, has been purchased, and will be formally presented to the Danish government as a reservation, with the one condition that, every year, in that spot, when Danish-Americans cross the ocean to meet there and celebrate their Fourth of July on Danish soil, the Stars and Stripes shall float above Denmark's sacred Dannebrog. Now that everything is ready, the Park is to be formally presented to the Danish Government."
"Presented to-day, mother?" asked Karen in surprise.
"Yes, this very afternoon. There will be a great crowd. Every steamer for weeks past has been bringing over hundreds of Americans, and, Karl, look out, for you may meet some of your Chicago friends among them."
"From home, Aunt Else? There's nobody I'd rather see from home than my own mother!" said little Karl, rather wistfully. "Gee! I do wish I could see my mother! I just wonder what daddy's 'great surprise' can be! Oh, just look at the big crowd!"
The train had stopped. "Ribald!" sang out the conductor. In a twinkling the car was emptied. As Fru Ingemann and her charges reached the platform, Karl saw two waving handkerchiefs making their way through the dense crowd towards him, and in an instant more he felt his mother's arms around him.
"Mother! mother! I'm so glad you've come!" he cried in joy. "Daddy, you did give me a pleasant surprise!" He laughed as Fru Ingemann and her sister Amalia greeted each other.
"Aunt Amalia, won't you stay over here in Denmark with us all summer?" urged Valdemar, as the happy little party was being driven rapidly on their way to the Park.
"Yes, Valdemar,—that is, I'm going to remain until your Uncle Oscar can get back from the United States again. That is why I have come—so as to stay with Karl, and let him see some more of Denmark, during his father's absence. And then I'm glad to see this wonderful Park, too, of course."
"Why, Daddy! Must you go back to America, and leave us?" protested Karl, who was having another surprise.
"I'm sorry, but business calls me back to Chicago at once, my little Karl. I leave this afternoon, immediately after the festivities, but I'll come back again soon. Here we are at the Park now."
As Mr. Hoffman, as president of the Danish-American Park, took his place upon the speaker's platform, and began his address, welcoming the thousands of American visitors he saw before him, back to the Fatherland,—to the Park—their Park forever,—a great cheer arose, which was redoubled in volume as the Stars and Stripes were impressively hoisted over the beloved Dannebrog—and then from a thousand voices the Star Spangled Banner floated forth over the Danish hills.
There were complimentary speeches by both the American and Danish ministers, and by Crown Prince Christian. Then every one sang one of those beautiful old national songs the Danes love so well to sing in their woods, and Karl told Valdemar and Karen the story of the "Birth of Old Glory,"—as the United States flag is sometimes called.
In the evening, the whole forest seemed one vast fairy-land, with its myriad sparkling lights, strains of soft music, gay crowds and waving flags. Multitudes of lamps, of all colors and sizes, swung from the trees, throwing a romantic fairy-like light over the rustling beech-trees. Torches had been stuck wherever it had been possible to fasten them, and here and there a huge bon-fire flung its lurid glare over the whole scene, sending up great volumes of black smoke into the darkness overhead.
Three very tired and sleepy children were those whom Fru Ingemann put to bed that night, even before their usual time. The happiness of the long day—so full of new sights, surprises and excitement for Valdemar as well as Karl—was only marred by the leave-taking of Uncle Oscar for his long trip back to his home in far-away Chicago.