[THE HUNT]
Tora reached home about the same time as her father, who had been out sailing with some friends. He was helped on shore, and his reception at home was warm. The children fled, Tora locked herself into the attic, and dare not even go down to supper, although she was hungry. She had to open the door at last for her sisters; she soon began to quarrel with them, they had been wearing her best shoes and had almost spoiled them. It ended in one of them flinging the shoes at her, and they came to blows over it. Complaints followed, which brought the angry mother upstairs. Tora cried herself to sleep like a child.
The next day she tried to help her mother in the house, not without some hard words and sarcasms about such fine elegant ladies only being in the way. Still she set her will to the task of being a help to her mother, especially in mending the clothes. She gave what she could from her little annuity, so that they were on fairly friendly terms; but it seemed to Tora that she had a right to have some time to herself. A little while before supper, she would take the ferry across to the other side and go up either into the wood above "The Estate" or into the "Groves." There was no peace at home. Whether she went to the wood or "The Estate," she always landed at Bommen, and went up that way, though it was not exactly the most direct one; but she did not know a prettier place in the town than the house in the large garden there, so she gave herself the pleasure of looking at it every day.
Both house and garden had belonged to the Wingaard family, but they had exchanged them for the Fürsts' house in the market-place, where the Wingaards carried on the Fürst business. The brother-in-law, Niels Fürst, therefore now owned the house in the large garden at Bommen.
Tora passed it with a little apprehension, although the man she dreaded was certainly not there, but on board his ship. This became a change and occupation, and formed, as it were, an incident in her walk.
Every time it was over, she went more carelessly up to the wood, or out to the "Groves." In a little Norwegian town like this, all the girls go about as they like. She met others and joined them, or went on by herself; generally she wished to be alone for an hour or two; she went, as a rule, to some particular spot, and when there took out her book, if she had one, or else she wove day-dreams without the aid of books. Or else, and this was now almost always the case, she wrote long letters, one every day, about any curious experience. She had her portfolio with her and an ink-bottle in her pocket; she lay on the grass with the portfolio on a stone, or she sat on a stone with the portfolio spread out on her lap and the ink-bottle by her side. That did splendidly: true open-air letters, where the words seemed to fly before the wind, and every varying thought found ready utterance. And how delightful it was in the thicket, just dappled by the sunbeams, enlivened by the twittering of the birds, a little startled by the rustle of a squirrel in the boughs! The distant sounds from the harbour, from the works by the river-bank, the voices in the "Groves" and on the road, with every now and then a strain of music, only made the silence of the place where she was sitting the deeper. This was her one bit of summer poetry. As soon as she opened her eyes in the morning, she began to long for it; the noise and quarrelling in the house passed by her as though they did not concern her--it was here that she lived. Her great expedition to Fru Gröndal, and her remarkable return home in the steamer, were of course recorded up here in letters to Milla, Nora, and Tinka; on the fourth day, she read over the work of the three previous ones; she was very pleased, she knew she had successfully varied the theme. She became, however, somewhat thoughtful as she read the first letter, for she remembered the others, and the difference had become by degrees too great. If the girls were by chance to compare them, one of those tiresome scenes might easily result when she would have to pay the reckoning. No, she would have no more of that. In the first letter she had treated the matter seriously, described her confusion, her blunders, her fright; no one who read it could doubt that she had been with a person of whom she had been frightened. In the second letter she made fun of herself, of him, and the whole affair. In the third, she described how a maiden with dark hair was wandering on a foreign strand, when a merman rose from the sea who had fair whiskers and curly hair. In her terror, the dark maiden fled on board a ship, to return to her own country. But the merman swam after the ship the whole way, with his hand on his heart; when she got to land he gave a wail of sorrow, she heard it still in her dreams at night.
She tore up all the letters, and did not write any others.
Still she continued her walks. She had not the slightest idea that Niels Fürst had returned to the town, that a friend had taken his duty for him, and that he was quietly studying languages to prepare himself for a new career, more brilliant than his earlier one, and that he was living in his own house. Still less did she know that on the first day of his return to the town he had seen her, in the looking-glass fixed outside his window, look shyly across at the house as she passed, and that he saw the same thing happen the next day. He knew that this was not the shortest way up to the wood, which was where she went the first day, or out to the "Groves," where she had gone on the second; on both occasions he had put on his hat and gone out, the third day he sat ready to follow her; now he thought he understood. He knew something about girls who will and will not; they acted exactly in this way.
To-day she came as usual, glanced apprehensively across, and strolled on with her portfolio under her arm. Some one stopped her, and she thus chanced to look round and so detected him. He was already advancing quickly; he was in pursuit, he had struck the trail.
She said good-bye, and as soon as she could do so unobserved, she quickened her ordinary pace to the quickest of which she was capable. She was frightened, unaccountably frightened. Perhaps it would have been wiser to have turned back, but to-day she could not endure his gaze, and there was no one else about. So she walked on, and on, and on, but suspected that he was gaining on her--she almost knew it. She dare not run on the high-road, but she trusted to the fact that she was more at home in the "Groves" than he was, and that she could slip away. She therefore left the road and made her way through the wood; she saw to her terror that he plunged into it as well, so she ventured to run up the hill, but in the direction from which he came; then she stooped down behind a large stone. She was quite successful, for almost directly afterwards she saw him pass by a little below the place where she crouched, her heart beating as though it would burst her dress. Here, where no one could see him, he ran, he climbed, he jumped--nothing checked his straight upward course. She waited till he was out of sight, and then ran off through the wood in the opposite direction from that in which he had gone; she did not stop till she found herself far above "The Estate" on a rock under a fir-tree, with leafy trees all round, and, while hot and panting she looked round her, thinking how wonderful the view was which she took in in a rapid glance, he rose before her mind's eye as he had looked when he hurried past the stone. He was horrible! That man could do anything!