Erica found that this free leave to cry unseen was a great help towards stopping her tears; and she ceased weeping entirely while listening to all that Frolich had to say in favour of Rolf being still alive and safe. It was no great deal that could be said; only that Hund’s news was more likely to be false than true, and that there was no other evidence of any accident having happened.
“My dear!” exclaimed Erica; “where is he now, then?—why is he not here? O, Frolich! I can hardly wonder that we are punished when I think of our presumption. When we were talking beside those graves on the day of Ulla’s funeral, he laughed at me for even speaking of death and separation. ‘What! at our age!’ he said. ‘Death at our age,—and separation!’—and that with Henrica’s grave before our eyes!”
“Then, perhaps, this will prove to be a short and gentle separation, to teach him to speak more humbly. There is no being in the universe that would send death to punish light gay words, spoken from a joyful heart. If there were, I and many others should have been in our graves long since. Why, Erica! this is even a worse reason than Hund’s word. Now, just tell me, Erica, would you believe anything else that Hund said?”
“In a common way, perhaps not: but you cannot think what a changed man he is, Frolich. He is so humbled, so melancholy, so awe-struck, that he is not like the same man.”
“He may not be the better for that. He was more frightened than anybody at the moment the owl cried, on your betrothment night, when you fancied that Nipen had carried off Oddo. Yet never did I see Hund more malicious than he was half an hour afterwards. I doubt whether any such fright would make a liar into a truthful man, in a moment.”
Erica now remembered and told the falsehood of Hund about what he was doing when the boat was spirited away:—a falsehood told in the very midst of the humiliation and remorse she had described.
“Why there now!” exclaimed Frolich, ceasing her stirring for a moment to look round; “what a capital story that is! and how few people know it! and how neatly you catch him in his fib! And why should not something like it be happening now with Rolf? Rolf knows all the ins and outs of the fiord: and if he has been playing bo-peep with his enemies among the islands, and frightening Hund, is it not the most natural thing in the world that Hund should come scampering home, and get his place, and say that he is lost, while waiting to see whether he is or not!—O dear!” she exclaimed after a pause, during which Erica did not attempt to speak, “I know what I wish.”
“You wish something kind, dear, I am sure,” said Erica, with a deep sigh.
“We have so many,—so very many nice, useful things,—we can go up the mountains and sail away over the seas,—and look far abroad into the sky. I only wish we could do one little thing more. I really think, having so many things, we might have had just one little thing more given us;—and that is wings. I grudge them to yonder screaming eagles, when I want them so much.”
“My dear child, what strange things you say?”