UNDER NORTHERN SKY.
I.
HOW MARIE LARSEN EXORCISED A DEMON.
There has been a mighty storm; it has been raging for two days,—a storm in which the demon of drink has reigned like a sinister god in the big white house, and the frightened women have cowered away, driven before the hot blast of the breath upon which curses danced, and the blaze of ire in the lurid eyes of the master. Only the pale little mistress has stood unmoved through the whirlwind of his passion. Who knows? Maybe that roused him to higher, madder paroxysms of impotent rage; for he abuses her most when he loves her most,—a way man has, he being a creature of higher understanding.
All yesterday the bells jangled, until one by one a violent jerk snapped the connecting wire, and hurled them with a last echoing crash on the hall floor. The serving-men kept out of it, as men do. The horses cowered to the sides of their boxes, and set their hind legs hard, and pointed their ears when they heard his halting step. The great hounds shrank shiveringly into their boxes, and refused to come forth at his threatening call; and when he lashed their houses in his rage they winced at each blow, and showed their fangs when he turned away.
Night brought little rest, for lamps and candles were lit in every room. Champagne replaced brandy; then brandy, champagne; and then both mingled in one glass. And in measure as the liquid fire was tossed down the poor parched throat, the brain grew clearer; the intellect, with its Rabelaisque fertility of diseased imagining, keener; the sting the tongue carried more adder-like, and the ingenuity of its blasphemies more devilish. The tired women crept to bed at midnight, to start in their sleep at the hoot of every night-owl, the flitter of every bat, and the whistle of every passing steamer,—all save the little mistress of the great house, with its stores of linen and silver, its flower-filled garden, its farmyard with lowing sleek kine, its meadows in prime heart heavy with the sweetness of red clover, its line of brown nets pegged down to catch the incoming eager salmon at the mouth of the fjord, and the wood with its peaceful nooks of cool green and its winding paths, with their brown carpet of last year's pine-needles and fir-cones. She sits wearily in her low chair, with her thin hands clasped on her sharp knees and her shawl drawn round her shoulders, for in spite of the fire the first hour of the morning sends its chill breath into the room. He is lying on the sofa talking to himself, emphasizing his words with his heavy stick. A table with decanters and glasses stands next him.
"Women! ay, women! man's curse. At the end of the race they beat us always. We get one soft spot with our mother's milk, and well they know it, well they know it. What a man I would have been And curse follows curse, and worse than that; as from the lips of the stepdaughter in the fairy tale, the words that drop from his lips are the toads and vipers of filth. "If one could forget! There was one, one long ago,—I might have spared her; she pleaded hard against me. Why do I think of her to-night? It is years, years ago. Ah, but I was big and beautiful in those days! She, she was an innocent little thing. I fascinated her like a snake, and I can see her eyes. They were blue, with long lashes. I can see them now, curse them! She and the child, gibbering idiots both! Oh [groan], curses on you for a devil, to plague me thus! Keep away! I say, keep away! How the ghosts dance about the room! There is another one I had forgotten. Light more candles, more! Mutter, mutter,—a sourdine epic of Hades. She closes her eyes. The stick whirls past her, striking a vase off a table near her; she gets up, hands it to him without a word. He hiccoughs and laughs; and then he heaves one sob, and cries bitterly, with the great tears gushing forth in jets. She picks up his handkerchief and puts it into his hand, and he looks at her with a piteous softening of his wild eyes; and he says quietly, hiccoughing all the while like a child tired after a fit of passion,—for man in all his passions has a little of the inconsequent child; it is only woman who sins with clear seeing,—