Tales from Two Hemispheres

by Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen

He understood her not, but fearing to ask, he remained silent.

His words and his eyes always drew her nearer and nearer to him; and the forest and its strange voices seemed a dark, opposing influence, which strove to take possession of her heart and to wrest her away from him forever; she helplessly clung to him; every thought and emotion of her soul clustered about him, and every hope of life and happiness was staked on him.

One evening Vigfusson and old Lage Ulfson had been walking about the fields to look at the crop, both smoking their evening pipes. But as they came down toward the brink whence the path leads between the two adjoining rye-fields, they heard a sweet, sad voice crooning some old ditty down between the birch-trees at the precipice; they stopped to listen, and soon recognized Aasa’s yellow hair over the tops the rye; the shadow as of a painful emotion flitted over the father’s countenance, and he turned his back on his guest and started to go; then again paused, and said, imploringly, “Try to get her home if you can, friend Vigfusson.”

Vigfusson nodded, and Lage went; the song had ceased for a moment, now it began again:

“Ye twittering birdlings, in forest and glen
I have heard you so gladly before;
But a bold knight hath come to woo me,
I dare listen to you no more.
For it is so dark, so dark in the forest.
“And the knight who hath come a-wooing to me,
He calls me his love and his own;
Why then should I stray through the darksome woods,
Or dream in the glades alone?
For it is so dark, so dark in the forest.”

Her voice fell to a low unintelligible murmur; then it rose, and the last verses came, clear, soft, and low, drifting on the evening breeze:

“Yon beckoning world, that shimmering lay
O’er the woods where the old pines grow,
That gleamed through the moods of the summer day
When the breezes were murmuring low
(And it is so dark, so dark in the forest);
“Oh let me no more in the sunshine hear
Its quivering noonday call;
The bold knight’s love is the sun of my heart—
Is my life, and my all in all.
But it is so dark, so dark in the forest.”

The young man felt the blood rushing to his face—his heart beat violently. There was a keen sense of guilt in the blush on his cheek, a loud accusation in the throbbing pulse and the swelling heart-beat. Had he not stood there behind the maiden’s back and cunningly peered into her soul’s holy of holies? True, he loved Aasa; at least he thought he did, and the conviction was growing stronger with every day that passed. And now he had no doubt that he had gained her heart. It was not so much the words of the ballad which had betrayed the secret; he hardly knew what it was, but somehow the truth had flashed upon him, and he could no longer doubt.

Vigfusson sat down on the moss-grown rock and pondered. How long he sat there he did not know, but when he rose and looked around, Aasa was gone. Then remembering her father’s request to bring her home, he hastened up the hill-side toward the mansion, and searched for her in all directions. It was near midnight when he returned to Kvaerk, where Aasa sat in her high gable window, still humming the weird melody of the old ballad.

By what reasoning Vigfusson arrived at his final conclusion is difficult to tell. If he had acted according to his first and perhaps most generous impulse, the matter would soon have been decided; but he was all the time possessed of a vague fear of acting dishonorably, and it was probably this very fear which made him do what, to the minds of those whose friendship and hospitality he had accepted, had something of the appearance he wished so carefully to avoid. Aasa was rich; he had nothing; it was a reason for delay, but hardly a conclusive one. They did not know him; he must go out in the world and prove himself worthy of her. He would come back when he should have compelled the world to respect him; for as yet he had done nothing. In fact, his arguments were good and honorable enough, and there would have been no fault to find with him, had the object of his love been as capable of reasoning as he was himself. But Aasa, poor thing, could do nothing by halves; a nature like hers brooks no delay; to her love was life or it was death.