“What has happened to you, John?” she asked, gently. “I thought that matter about the foreigner was settled long ago.”
“I tell you, no!” he shouted, wildly; “it is not settled. It never will be settled as long as there is breath left in my body. This time I mean to have my own way. Jens Skoug has come back from America, and he says that America is the place for me. I knew it all along, and whether you will follow me or not, I am going.”
“Follow you, John? Yes, if go you must, then I will follow you. But to America I will not go willingly, unless I know what we are to do there, and how we are to make our living. It is a long, long distance, John, across the great ocean; they speak a language there which neither you nor I understand.”
Fiddle-John turned impatiently on his heel, as if to say that he knew all that twaddle from of old; but Ingeborg, giving the lamb to Alf, went up to him, laid her hand on his arm, and said:
“You and I have lived together for so many years, John, and we love each other too well ever to be happy away from each other. Don’t let us speak harsh words. They rankle in the bosom and cause pain, long after they are spoken. If you must go to America, I will go with you. But I have a feeling that I shall never get there alive. I beg of you, don’t decide rashly and don’t believe all that Jens Skoug tells you. He was not a truthful child, and I doubt if he has grown up to be a good man. Let us say no more about it to-night. We will sleep on it, and see how it will look to us to-morrow.”
Fiddle-John was not a bad fellow; on the contrary, he was quite soft-hearted and easily moved. This wife of his had toiled in poverty and ill-health all her life long, and he had never offered to lift a finger to help her. Yet she loved him, accepting her lot meekly, and never uttering a word of reproach against him. He had never observed before how thin and worn she looked, how hollow her cheeks were, and how large her eyes. He felt for the first time in his life a pang of remorse. He had not been a good husband, he thought; not as good as he might have been. But then he was a great man, and great men were never the best of husbands. And when he reached America, and his greatness became generally recognized, and fortune began to smile upon him, then he would shower kindness upon her, and she would be rewarded a thousand-fold for all she had suffered. Surely, he would turn over a new leaf—in America.
Thus Fiddle-John consoled himself, when his conscience grew uneasy. When only they got to America, he reasoned, then everything would be right. He would have started without delay if Ingeborg’s health had not failed so rapidly that the doctor positively forbade her to think of travelling. The look of suffering and sweet forbearance upon her face seemed a perpetual reproach to Fiddle-John, and he roamed restlessly from one end of the valley to the other, playing, singing, and telling his stories, in order to earn money for the voyage, he said to his sons; but, in reality, to escape from the unspoken reproach of his wife’s countenance. But the day soon came when he needed no longer to flee from her presence. One bright spring day, just as the snow was melting, and the bare spots on the meadows steamed in the sun, Ingeborg closed her weary eyes forever; and a few days later she was laid to rest in the shadow of the old church down on the headland, where the song-thrush warbles through the brief Arctic summer night.
II.
Down in the valley the Easter bells were chiming; the bell-strokes trembled through the clear, sun-steeped air. There was commotion in the valley, too, in spite of the fact that it was Easter Sunday. Out in the middle of the fiord lay a huge black steamer, which panted and shrieked, as if it were in distress, and sent volumes of gray smoke out of its chimneys. Around about little black fragments of coal-dust were drizzling through the air and swimming on the water; and the gulls which kept whirling about the smoke-stacks were quite shocked when they caught the reflections of themselves in the tide; with wild screams they plunged into the fiord. They probably mistook themselves for crows.