Too pale and small beneath the vail of space.
There, too, went forth the sun
Like a white angel, going down to visit
The silent, ice-washed cloisters of the Pole.”
—Richter’s “Titan.”
More than fifty years ago this thing happened: Jan Vedder was betrothed to Margaret Fae. It was at the beginning of the Shetland summer, that short interval of inexpressible beauty, when the amber sunshine lingers low in the violet skies from week to week; and the throstle and the lark sing at midnight, 2 and the whole land has an air of enchantment, mystic, wonderful, and far off.
In the town of Lerwick all was still, though it was but nine o’clock; for the men were at the ling-fishing, and the narrow flagged street and small quays were quite deserted. Only at the public fountain there was a little crowd of women and girls, and they sat around its broad margin, with their water pitchers and their knitting, laughing and chatting in the dreamlike light.
“Well, and so Margaret Fae marries at last; she, too, marries, like the rest of the world.”
“Yes, and why not?”
“As every one knows, it is easier to begin that coil than to end it; and no one has ever thought that Margaret would marry Jan—he that is so often at the dance, and so seldom at the kirk.”