Aa lukelei aa lura, lura, luralai!"
Only the housemaid, who is consumptive, and who stays for the little mistress's sake, her own days in the land being numbered, has taken her Bible up to the lookout in the wood, and laid it open on the stone table. She is crushing the Linnae, as she kneels, into a fragrant incense, rocking to and fro to the somber rhythm of the last book of Ecclesiastes.
And the master of them all is sitting exhausted in his big chair, and Marie Larsen and he are doing battle. She came on the scene just as the grand retreat was sounded, and took the enemy by stratagem. She lifted the little mistress bodily up, and carried her upstairs, leaving him, as she puts it, "to ramp like a bull of Basan below." She lays her on her bed, takes off her shoes, pulls down the blind, and pours out some drops out of a little blue bottle she carries in her pocket, talking as she might to a child: "There, Tulla, take naptha drops, very good drops; you go sleep, good sleep; Marie mind him, Marie not afraid," and with a final pat she goes down. He is laughing between his oaths at the stampede of petticoats, and he holds out his arms when she comes in.
She is a little square woman, between fifty and sixty, with a ruby button of a nose, hair, that oil and age has robbed of its brilliant red, drawn smoothly back into a tight screw at the back of her broad head. Her eyes are a fishy green gray, the left eyelid droops; when she thinks you are not looking, a sly elusive gleam brightens them, her pursed lips loosen, and if you happen to see it, you think that there may be something after all in the stories the gossips whisper of Marie Larsen. Her dress is exquisitely neat, her apron snowy. No one in the district can make such a suprême of fish as Marie; no one can beat her at roasting a capercailzie and serving it with sour cream sauce, or brew such caudles and possets for a lying-in, or bake such meats for a funeral feast. And what if there be an old-time tale of a brat accidentally smothered? And what if the Amtmanden (superior magistrate), he who had the sickly wife, did send Marie to Germany to learn cooking? Well, he had money to spare, and was always freehanded. And if Nils Pettersen did write home and say that he saw her in Hamburg at a trade—well, other than cooking, sure Nils Pettersen was a bit of a liar anyhow, and good cooking covers a multitude of frailties. And if her nose was red and her breath smelt of cloves, who could say they ever saw her buy a bottle of akavit,—and that was more than could be said of all the other temperance leaguers. She had a nice cottage, with marigolds and curly-mint and none-so-prettys nodding down the garden paths; and if you went inside it was very respectable, and you could not fail to notice the large brass-bound Bible on a crochet-square on top of the mahogany chest of drawers, with a sprig of palm marking the gospel of the previous Sunday. And no one answered the responses more loudly, or confessed more openly at revival times, or quoted Scripture more aptly to the confusion of a neighbor than Jomfru Marie Larsen. And then she had seen life too, and told them round the oven in winter over a cup of good coffee "tales that were human," just to warn them what risks they might run if they should be tempted to stray to the ungodly cities of the wicked world outside.
She stands and smiles at him. "Arcades ambo! Blackguards both!" quotes he, pointing to a glass. She pours him out a measure and blinks, and fills a wine-glass with raw spirit for herself, and clinks glasses and sips like a connoisseur; and then she takes out her knitting and sets the needles flying. So they sit awhile; his last grand charge has taxed him, but the quiet maddens him.
"Where's the Frue?" he asks, "the Frue?"
She lays her head sideways on her hand and closes her eyes, saying in English: "No can have Fruen; she sick, no can have her; be good, Marie tell you a tale."
She gets up and shuts the doors; he roars at her and tries to rise, but his knees fail him; he sinks back into the chair and begins to swear. She knits away, and commences in Norwegian a sing-song recitative like the drowsy buzz of a fly on a pane.
"Yesterday we had a bazaar, a bazaar in the school-house,—a bazaar for the poor black heathens in Africa, for the poor black heathens lost in the darkness of unbelief, and ignorant of the saving of the Lamb. Oh, it was a blessed work!"
A savage roar from him; but she goes on unheeding with her narrative:—