She spoke gravely now, and with a steadier voice, but her eyes hung upon his face with an eager look of expectation, as if yearning to detect there some gleam of hope, some contradiction of the dismal truth. He read that look aright, and it pierced him like a sharp sword. He made a brave effort to respond to its appeal, but his features seemed hard as stone, and he could only cry out against his destiny, and bewail his misfortune and hers.
Toward evening, Ralph was sitting in an open boat, listening to the measured oar-strokes of the boatmen who were rowing him out to the nearest stopping-place of the steamer. The mountains lifted their great placid heads up among the sun-bathed clouds, and the fjord opened its cool depths as if to make room for their vast reflections. Ralph felt as if he were floating in the midst of the blue infinite space, and, with the strength which this feeling inspired, he tried to face boldly the thought from which he had but a moment ago shrunk as from something hopelessly sad and perplexing.
And in that hour he looked fearlessly into the gulf which separates the New World from the Old. He had hoped to bridge it; but, alas! it cannot be bridged.
A SCIENTIFIC VAGABOND.
I.
THE steamer which as far back as 1860 passed every week on its northward way up along the coast of Norway, was of a very sociable turn of mind. It ran with much shrieking and needless bluster in and out the calm, winding fjords, paid unceremonious little visits in every out-of-the-way nook and bay, dropped now and then a black heap of coal into the shining water, and sent thick volleys of smoke and shrill little echoes careering aimlessly among the mountains. It seemed, on the whole, from an aesthetic point of view, an objectionable phenomenon—a blot upon the perfect summer day. By the inhabitants, however, of these remote regions (with the exception of a few obstinate individuals, who had at first looked upon it as the sure herald of dooms-day, and still were vaguely wondering what the world was coming to,) it was regarded in a very different light. This choleric little monster was to them a friendly and welcome visitor, which established their connection with the outside world, and gave them a proud consciousness of living in the very heart of civilization. Therefore, on steamboat days they flocked en masse down on the piers, and, with an ever-fresh sense of novelty, greeted the approaching boat with lively cheers, with firing of muskets and waving of handkerchiefs. The men of condition, as the judge, the sheriff, and the parson, whose dignity forbade them to receive the steamer in person, contented themselves with watching it through an opera-glass from their balconies; and if a high official was known to be on board, they perhaps displayed the national banner from their flag-poles, as a delicate compliment to their superior.
But the Rev. Mr. Oddson, the parson of whom I have to speak, had this day yielded to the gentle urgings of his daughters (as, indeed, he always did), and had with them boarded the steamer to receive his nephew, Arnfinn Vording, who was returning from the university for his summer vacation. And now they had him between them in their pretty white-painted parsonage boat, with the blue line along the gunwale, beleaguering him with eager questions about friends and relatives in the capital, chums, university sports, and a medley of other things interesting to young ladies who have a collegian for a cousin. His uncle was charitable enough to check his own curiosity about the nephew’s progress in the arts and sciences, and the result of his recent examinations, till he should have become fairly settled under his roof; and Arnfinn, who, in spite of his natural brightness and ready humor, was anything but a “dig,” was grateful for the respite.
The parsonage lay snugly nestled at the end of the bay, shining contentedly through the green foliage from a multitude of small sun-smitten windows. Its pinkish whitewash, which was peeling off from long exposure to the weather, was in cheerful contrast to the broad black surface of the roof, with its glazed tiles, and the starlings’ nests under the chimney-tops. The thick-leaved maples and walnut-trees which grew in random clusters about the walls seemed loftily conscious of standing there for purposes of protection; for, wherever their long-fingered branches happened to graze the roof, it was always with a touch, light, graceful, and airily caressing. The irregularly paved yard was inclosed on two sides by the main building, and on the third by a species of log cabin, which, in Norway, is called a brew-house; but toward the west the view was but slightly obscured by an elevated pigeon cot and a clump of birches, through whose sparse leaves the fjord beneath sent its rapid jets and gleams of light, and its strange suggestions of distance, peace and unaccountable gladness.