This series of Scandinavian Classics is published by The American-Scandinavian Foundation in the belief that greater familiarity with the chief literary monuments of the North will help Americans to a better understanding of Scandinavians, and thus serve to stimulate their sympathetic coöperation to good ends

SCANDINAVIAN CLASSICS
VOLUME XIV
∵
THE FAMILY AT GILJE
BY
JONAS LIE

ESTABLISHED BY
NIELS POULSON

THE FAMILY AT GILJE
A DOMESTIC STORY OF THE FORTIES
BY
JONAS LIE
TRANSLATED FROM THE NORWEGIAN
BY SAMUEL COFFIN EASTMAN
WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY JULIUS EMIL OLSON
NEW YORK
THE AMERICAN-SCANDINAVIAN FOUNDATION
LONDON: HUMPHREY MILFORD
OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS
1920

Copyright, 1920, by The American-Scandinavian Foundation
D. B. Updike · The Merrymount Press · Boston · U.S.A.

Preface

To the Honorable Samuel Coffin Eastman, of Concord, New Hampshire, belongs the credit of having given American readers an English version of The Family at Gilje while the author was still at the height of his creative activity. Mr. Eastman, who was a lawyer by profession, was a man of varied interests, the author of a White Mountain Guide which has gone through numerous editions, and the translator of Brandes's Impressions of Russia and Poland. He was familiar with the translations by Mrs. Ole Bull of Jonas Lie's The Pilot and His Wife and The Good Ship Future. The Family at Gilje was called to his attention by Miss Amalia Krohg, of Christiania, and it charmed him so much that he rendered it into English. The translation appeared serially in the Concord magazine, The Granite Monthly, in 1894, and was illustrated with views from Valders, the mountain district where the scene of the story is laid.

When the Committee on Publications decided to include The Family at Gilje in the Scandinavian Classics, their attention was called to Mr. Eastman's excellent version, and permission was secured to reprint it. The translator consented to a revision of his text so as to make it conform to the general style of the Classics and to interpret more accurately some of the Norwegian idioms. His death, in 1917, prevented his coöperation in the work of revision, to which, nevertheless, he had given his cordial assent.

Hanna Astrup Larsen

Introduction

The story of Jonas Lie's life, even though told in brief, will readily yield the key to the various phases of his strange authorship. No one of his long list of books is an adequate index of his powers. The special character of each is the outgrowth of peculiar traits of natural endowment in conjunction with definite facts and experiences of his life. Some of the features of his genius seem strangely incongruous—as different as day and night. These features are clearly reflected in his writings. By critics he has been variously proclaimed "the poet of Nordland," "the novelist of the sea," or "the novelist of Norwegian homes," and is commonly classed as a realist. His reputation and great popularity rest mainly upon his realistic novels. In this field he ranks as one of the leading portrayers of character and social conditions in modern Norse literature; and of his realism The Family at Gilje is possibly the best illustration.

Yet there was much more than an ingenuous realist in Lie.[1] He was also a fascinating mystic; a teller of fantastic stories, profoundly symbolic in character; a great myth-making raconteur of grotesque tales that have a distinct folkloristic flavor, particularly as found in his two volumes entitled Trold. This part of his authorship, though it does not bulk large, and, naturally enough, has not been fathomed by the general reader, is nevertheless a very important part, and is surely the most original and poetic. It appears in a definite though restrained form as mystic romanticism in his first prose work, Second Sight, and then scarcely a trace of it is seen until it bursts forth, twenty years later, with the vigor of long-repressed passion.

It would therefore be unfair to judge Jonas Lie by the single novel in hand—as unfair as it would be to judge Ibsen by a single one of his social dramas—The Pillars of Society, for instance. In Ibsen the imaginative power displayed in Brand and Peer Gynt did not in the social dramas reassert itself in anything but an adumbration of the abandon and exuberance of the dramatic poems. In Lie, however, the mystic and myth-maker reappeared with strength redoubled. Erik Lie, in a book on his father's life (Oplevelser), says with reference to this: "If it had been given to Jonas Lie to continue his authorship in his last years, his Nordland nature would surely—such is my belief—more and more have asserted itself, and he would have dived down into the misty world of the subconscious, where his near-sighted eyes saw so clearly, and whence his first works sprang up like fantastic plants on the bottom of the sea." There is not a trace or an inkling of this clairvoyant power in The Family at Gilje. Its excellences are of a distinctly different nature.

This much, then, must be said to warn the reader against a too hasty appraisement of Lie's genius—his power, range, and vision—on the basis of a single novel. Let him be assured that Jonas Lie stands worthily by the side of Ibsen and Björnson both as a creative author and as a personality. He was of their generation, knew them both well as young men and old, and was a loyal friend to both, as they were to him. He even knew Björnson well enough in the early sixties to give him pointed advice on his authorship. Though he seems never to have taken such liberties with Ibsen,—as Björnson so categorically did during the same decade,—he did lend him a helping hand by paying him in advance for the dramatic poem, Love's Comedy, published in a periodical owned by Lie. It is interesting to note that Ibsen, so punctilious in later years, was aggravatingly slow in forwarding the final batch of manuscript. As a last resource, Lie threatened to complete the drama himself. Later in life, during summer sojourns in the Bavarian Alps, they saw much of each other. In one of his social dramas, An Enemy of the People, Ibsen used Lie, together with traits of Björnson and Apothecary Thaulow (father of the painter) as a model for the genial hero, Dr. Stockmann. Both Ibsen and Björnson were generous in their praise of Lie's many fine qualities. In the sixties, before Lie had written a single novel, Björnson, in an address at Tromsö, in Arctic Norway, where Lie had spent several years of his boyhood, said some striking things about Lie's creative powers. On a later occasion he referred to him as "the great vague possibility," and after Lie's death, in a letter to the family, he said: "I have so much to thank him for. In the luxuriant wealth of my youth he was the purest in heart, the richest in fancy." Björnson understood from the first the clairvoyant mysticism in Lie, and profited by it. In other words, a man who could interest men like Ibsen and Björnson and maintain their admiration and respect for half a century could do so only by dint of rare personal powers.

Although he did not begin his literary career until he was getting on toward forty, at which age both Ibsen and Björnson had won fame, Lie, it may fairly be said, eventually overtook them in the favor of the Scandinavian reading public, and it is not unlikely that with this public he will hold his own in comparison with them. This is surely due to the realism of his social novels. Though he at times roamed far afield from the standards of realism, as has been indicated, he never was identified with extremists in any literary school, despite the sweeping force of popular currents. As a realist he was a patient plodder, following his own instincts, and in the course of long years he hammered out a literary vehicle distinctly his own, so surcharged, in fact, with the idiosyncrasies of his individuality as to make it most difficult to recast in a foreign idiom.

From the above it will appear that Lie was an interesting dual personality. Further consideration of his life will show that he was both romanticist, or mystic, and realist by right of blood, as well as through environment and personal experience.

Scandinavian romanticism began in Denmark with the opening of the nineteenth century, as a revival of the past, the exploitation of Northern antiquities for modern literary material. In Norway, a generation or so later, romanticism grew out of an enthusiastic study of popular ballads and folk-lore stories still found on the lips of the peasantry. In connection with this there developed an intense interest in rural scenery and life on the part of both artists and poets. The movement continued for a generation, until the early seventies, and found its best conscious literary expression in Björnson's peasant idyls. When Jonas Lie had resolved to become an author (1870), there was one region of romantic inspiration that had not been utilized. This was Nordland, one of the northerly provinces of Norway, beyond the Arctic Circle, under the glory of the midnight sun, where, however, a long and sunless winter fostered in the minds of the inhabitants a brooding melancholy which peopled mountain and sea, nature's every nook and cranny, with strange and awe-inspiring creatures. In this nature of colossal contrasts Jonas Lie spent several years of his boyhood, and the tremendous impression left on his sensitive and poetic mind are very evident in his first novel, Second Sight (Den Fremsynte), also known in English as The Visionary and The Seer. This, together with some lesser stories that followed, gave the Nordland stamp to Lie's earliest fiction—the stamp of romanticism, mysticism, and clairvoyance. The effect of this environment was accentuated by powerful innate impulses, for his ancestral heritage reveals a double strain, to which allusion has already been made. On his father's side there were, for several generations, brains, energy, and good sense, with a predilection for law and administration. The father himself was a country magistrate of sterling uprightness. Here, then, plainly enough, is the source of the novelist's realism, as found, for example, in The Family at Gilje, but nothing whatever to indicate the poet and romancer. These surely can be traced to the mother, who was a most remarkable woman, born in one of the northern provinces, and, as Lie himself believed, with either Finnish (i.e., Lappic) or Gypsy blood in her veins, and possibly both. Professor Boyesen, in Essays on Scandinavian Literature, says of Lie's mother: "I remember well this black-eyed, eccentric little lady, with her queer ways and still more extraordinary conversation. It is from her that Jonas Lie has inherited the fantastic strain in his blood, the strange superstitious terrors, and the luxuriant wealth of color which he lavished upon his first novel, The Man of Second Sight. She was unusually gifted intellectually, had pronounced literary interests, and revealed some decided clairvoyant qualities." Lie himself said of her: "There was something of a seer in her—something that reminded one of spae-women and the like." "Imagine," says Arne Garborg,[2] in his book on Lie, "this restless blood infused into the strong, sober, practical nature of the Lies: what should come of such a mixture but that peculiar combination of reality and romanticism that we know by the name of Jonas Lie, the poet of Finnish magic and sorcery—and of plain reality." In Nordland, where his maternal inheritance had its source, Lie as a boy found things fit to satisfy the cravings of such an imagination as the Finn in him possessed. In this Brobdingnagian realm he heard tales and legends of Finnish sorcery, of shipwrecks caused by fierce water-bogies (draugs), of giant trolls, and a thousand other demoniacal creatures of morbid popular fancy, until he was chilled with terror, the effects of which clung to him for life, made him as a mature man afraid of the dark, and finally cropped out in tales of weird and grotesque imagery.

These, then, are the fundamental facts that are necessary for comprehension of the duality in Lie's nature and authorship.

Jonas Lie was born in southern Norway, in 1833, and at the age of five removed with the family to Nordland. His life as an author began in 1870; but between these dates there was a period of very unusual experiences. His vivid imagination, stirred by the witchery of life in Nordland, made the prosy tasks of school seem direst punishment. He was counted a dullard and an incorrigible mischief-maker. At the age of thirteen it was his passion to become a sailor. The father, at his wits' end, compromised by sending him to a naval academy. Here he was at times thought mad by his instructors, who saw something of his semi-somnambulistic antics. Near-sightedness, however, proved an obstacle to his continuance in this path to maritime glory, which he was destined to win by a different route. After an awakening experience in a Bergen school, where an eccentric poet-pedagogue thought him a "lad of pairts," and his classmates voted him a prize liar on account of his Nordland stories, he took a short cut to the university at Heltberg's so-called Student Factory in Christiania, the head-master of which—a prodigy who has been immortalized in literature by both Björnson and Garborg—proved an inspiring and fructifying force to his groping genius. At this institution, among a motley horde of country bumpkins, shipwrecked city talent, and budding genius, he found Björnson, also preparing for the university. Both were profoundly impressed by the genius of the asthmatic head-master in his dogskin jacket, who led his young barbarians by forced marches through the Alpine passes of Latin syntax into the classic domain of Livy and Horace. We shall see that he came to Lie's rescue at a later period.

Lie entered the university in 1851, and took a degree in law in 1858. It had been a difficult task for him to decide what professional study to pursue. He thought at first that he had leanings toward theology, bought the necessary books, kept them a day, then exchanged them for law books, after having paid a brief but adequate visit to the clinical laboratory. These years at the university, when a romantic interest in everything Norwegian filled the air with mystic expectancy of great things to come in the way of a regenerated Norway, aroused Lie. Association with Björnson, Ibsen, Vinje,[3] Nordraak,[4] and a score of other gifted young men was stimulating, yet he did not become a disciple or slavish follower of any of these more vehement natures. He had his own ideas, and was boldly independent when occasion demanded it, as both King Oscar and Björnson later in life ascertained to their discomfort, each of them having tried in vain to make the "amiable" author conform to their plans and ideas. Among the many friends that Lie made in the capital city during his university days, Björnson became the most intimate. He seems from the very first to have espied the artist in Lie, and did much to help him in understanding his own strange self. It had begun to worry Lie that his friends thought him eccentric. And not only this: the mystic, superstitious, magic-loving Finn in his nature often frightened him. Hence he made great efforts to counteract his tendency to fantastic musing and to develop his paternal heritage: the rationalist and realist in himself. For this purpose the determination to study law was doubtless a wise step. But his legal studies did not suppress his literary yearnings, which found expression in verse that did not at first go beyond a circle of intimate friends. He saw no prospect of making a living with his pen, and so entered a government office—a decision hastily made under pressure of respect for his stern and practical father, who had announced a visit to the capital city. Nevertheless, he dreamed of becoming an author, and began contributing poems to the daily press. They seemed labored and heavy, and attracted no particular attention. On the other hand, he prepared some well-written articles on European politics, which indicated insight and careful thinking. These articles made such a favorable impression on Björnson that he offered to secure him the editorship of a Christiania daily. But Lie was unwilling. He had made arrangements to practise law at Kongsvinger, not far from the capital. After a year's work in the new field, he married a cousin, Thomasine Lie, to whom he had long been betrothed. Together they had planned that he was to be an author, and his hasty decision to become a lawyer was a severe shock to her. From the beginning she had faith in his literary possibilities; and it was evidently her steady hand on the rudder, throughout a long life, that guided the bark of his genius through many dangerous reefs. But for her good sense and loving loyalty, there would probably not have been a Jonas Lie in Norwegian literature. He often remarked that her name might well appear on the title-page of most of his books. In this most interesting partnership, his was the creative spirit, hers the practical guiding hand.

Lie's new home was in the heart of a rich timber district, which at that time was at the high tide of a tremendous business boom. Here he achieved immediate success as a lawyer. Moreover, through an influential friend, he became the financial agent of two banking houses in the capital. This gave him the opportunity—and he had the necessary courage—to take a hand in bold business enterprises on a large scale. He prospered; the future seemed roseate; he began to dream of such affluence as to enable him to devote himself to literature. Meanwhile he wrote verses for all manner of occasions, and even published a volume of these poems (1866). Both he and his wife had unusual social qualifications. She was a fine musician, a woman of character and much intellectual force, and a most competent housewife. In this home of culture many prominent men were entertained—first of all, Ole Bull, whom Lie adored. Mighty schemes for the glorification of Mother Norway were discussed as these two "visionaries" sat brewing their toddy. Björnson, too, was often there, and Sverdrup, the statesman.

Meanwhile clouds ominous of disaster appeared on the commercial horizon. The period 1865–68 witnessed the greatest financial panic that Norway had ever experienced. Lie had forebodings of a catastrophe, but too late to save himself. He had been lavish with his signature, and was tremendously involved. The crash meant more than life and death to him. It was a matter of honor, integrity, conscience. He lost everything, and was in debt to the extent of over $200,000. Lie, the lawyer, was ruined. He resolved to return to literature, for instinct urged him with "almost explosive force," to use his own phrase. As for his financial obligations, he made a monumental resolution, as did Walter Scott in a similar predicament, to pay every dollar through his authorship; and for years he dropped every penny that he did not absolutely need into that abyss of debt. Friends finally convinced him of the hopelessness of his purpose. With what a heavy heart Lie carried the tale of his bankruptcy to his faithful wife several of his novels testify. Financial crashes play no small part in his writings, and the pathetic force with which these situations are handled sounds a distinctly personal note.

With wife and children Lie returned to Christiania in the autumn of 1868—empty-handed. How he managed to keep his head above water by the aid of loyal friends like Björnson, Sverdrup, whose private secretary he was for a time, and old Heltberg, of the Student Factory, who came to engage him as a teacher of rhetoric and composition, is an interesting story which need not be told here. But through all his trials one determination was fixed and inflexible: he would make literature his life-work. It was not long before his thoughts reverted to his early experiences in Nordland. After several years of subjection to the stern reality of legal and commercial enterprise, the Finn was again asserting himself. His first novel, Second Sight, was the result. He read it to his wife; she thought it magnificent, but later applied the pruning-knife drastically. Then Björnson was called in. He concurred in the wife's opinion, and immediately wrote the great Copenhagen publisher, Hegel, pronouncing the novel a "sea-mew" that would fly over all the Scandinavian North, and urging hasty publication. This was in November, 1870. By Christmas the book was in the shops. In large part it purports to be the autobiography of a visionary Nordlander, who tells of his beloved home, and recounts marvellous stories of the Arctic north; but through this bead-string of episodes and descriptions there is interwoven a pathetic tale of love, love so tender, so delicate, that the words describing it seem to come tripping on tiptoe. Unpromising as the novel seems in the beginning, when one almost expects a study in the pathology of second sight, it nevertheless develops into such beauty as to make it the Romeo and Juliet of Scandinavian literature.

Every step of Jonas Lie's development from this first novel to The Family at Gilje (1883) is of interest to the student of literature. It was a period of hard study, careful, conscientious work, and high resolve to master his powers and to utilize his varied experiences for literary purposes, in order to be able to serve Mother Norway,—for one must never forget the intense patriotic ardor of all Norway's great writers, artists, and musicians. By the aid of a government stipend, Lie was enabled to visit Nordland and the western coast to promote his literary production, and soon afterward a second and larger stipend for the purpose of foreign travel made it possible for him to visit Rome, the Mecca of all Scandinavian artists and literati of the period. There he remained more than three years, a time of fruitful toil and stimulating experience. In 1872 he sent home two books relating to life on the western and northern coast, The Good Ship Future, and a collection of short stories.

Lie was not content, however, to be "the poet of Nordland," as he at once had been named. His ambition was to be more national. In the broader realms of literary activity the giant figures of Ibsen and Björnson towered. They were deep in the problems of the day. How could he become national and modern? Instinct led him on in paths that unconsciously he had already trodden. In this nation of seafarers he was the first in modern literature to discover the coast-dwellers and to portray their struggles on the sea. His first book contained a description of a storm in northern waters that makes the reader hold his breath. In the volume of short stories, which in their scenes sweep along the western coast, and in The Good Ship Future as well, there was a distinct odor of the sea. This was natural enough: he had spent his early years in Nordland and in Bergen, the centre of Norwegian shipping, and he loved the sea passionately. In his next novel, The Pilot and his Wife, he put to sea with sails hoisted to the top.

The critics apparently had not felt the sea-breezes in his first books; but in the last there blew such a lusty gale that all, both critics and public, sniffed its fresh and salty breath with keenest relish. The book was a success, which his previous novel had not quite been, and it marks the beginning of Lie's sane and natural realism as consciously applied, in its main problem, to a modern social question, making the story, in its essence, a novel of character, a psychological study of the relation of man and wife, and not primarily a novel of adventure, which assumption gave Lie the designation "novelist of the sea." The success of the book brought the author, in 1874, by vote of the Storting, a life stipend known as a "poet's salary," which recognition put him in a class with Ibsen and Björnson. The great honor seems to have had a depressing effect, for Lie now scored four failures in succession. He was back in Norway, trying to portray social phenomena of the capital city. The reviewers were most irritating and offensive, and he felt obliged temporarily to desert the field. With the novel Rutland (1881), he returned to the sea. This story surpasses The Pilot in every respect. The sea is described with the fondness of a lover. Like The Pilot, it also deals with a problem of the home, but what chiefly impressed the public in reading the book was that the seamen, that important element of the Norwegian people, had found an adequate interpreter.

His next book, Forward (Gaa Paa) (1882), was likewise a maritime novel, with panoramas in the life of the fisher folk on the western coast. At the same time it forecast the new age of industrial development, and revealed growing sympathy and increased understanding in matters of national import. The author seems to have become convinced that a novelist, too, might be able to lend a hand in paving the way for progress. In this book he had by his vivid portrayal attacked stagnation, superstition, sluggishness, and had proclaimed the new gospel of work, activity, enterprise. It had been begun during the latter part of a three years' sojourn in Germany. It was completed in Norway during the autumn of 1882, after which Lie took up his abode in Paris, where he made his home for many years.

For his next work, A Life Prisoner (1883), Lie found his theme in the slums of Christiania. The treatment was not naturalistic enough to satisfy the critics. Lie was of course not unmindful of the new literary movement, but he possessed then, as always, sufficient individual momentum to carry him through the ephemeral phases of literary fads. His novels are not barometers of the prevailing literary atmosphere. He believed in a realism of true naturalism, which has stood the test of time. In this last work he brings a waif of modern society close to the hearts of his readers, and needs no explosions of pent-up indignation, no spirit of class hatred, to make his readers understand this unfortunate product of a bad environment. In his reply to the critics, Lie spoke forcibly on the new literary method, summing up his views in these words: "The main thing is to picture life so that the reader sees, hears, feels, comprehends it; by what esthetic means this is accomplished must be the author's own affair in each individual case. But experience has shown that of all methods direct ones are often the least effective. A single deft touch may save a dozen pages of detailed description." Lie was not a student of the base; he did not even have an artistic liking for evil. There are few bad characters in his works.

It was immediately after his controversy with the critics, in 1883, that The Family at Gilje appeared—a superb illustration of Lie's realism of naturalness. An American critic has said of good realistic writing that it does not so much arouse the pleasure of surprise as that of recognition. To intelligent Norwegian readers of the day that was strikingly true of The Family at Gilje. To many readers it seemed like living their lives over again. This may not be a very severe test of the greatness of a novel. Greatness will depend upon other things—the breadth and depth of its humanity. Another point: "The right understanding of men and women leads to the right relations of men and women, and in this way a novel may do good" (F. Marion Crawford). Most of Lie's novels seem to have been written with this object in view. It is evident that in an attempt to portray life for this purpose, social and other questions are sure to appear—not thrust into the reader's face as a problem demanding that he take sides, but brought to his attention naturally, as such things ordinarily come in life. Discreetly done, as Lie surely could do it, this may be a most effective way of revolutionizing conscience. In this artistic manner Lie was, and no doubt consciously, a reformer. To be sure, this is not art for art's sake; it is something more human: art engaged in the pursuit of stimulating noble and healthful thought for the purpose of raising the average of human happiness.

It was this calm and restrained realistic method that Lie now applied in a series of novels which succeeded The Family at Gilje. As in this work, the scenes are usually laid in a preceding generation, preferably among the official class in the country. In these homes, which Lie knew so well, we feel that we are with real and natural people among whom problems are not discussed, but experienced. Yet these novels were not so conservative as they seemed. They had persuasive power in behalf of modern ideas with respect to such fundamental things as marriage, home, and children. There was even something of the essence of social dynamite in some of them. The Family at Gilje gave the champions of women new arguments, but they could not approve of the author's advanced sympathies in The Commodore's Daughters, one of the realistic novels which now flowed from Lie's pen and which included: A Maelstrom (1884), The Commodore's Daughters (1885), A Wedded Life (1887), Maisa Jons (1888), and Evil Powers (1890). Suddenly there came a change in his literary method, seemingly induced by some unpleasant experience with good friends. He had learned that the conduct of the best of men is often swayed by primal instinct rather than by disciplined reason. In this mood he reverted to the trusty Finn of his bosom who so long had lain dormant, and let him discourse on life and human nature. He proved voluble, resourceful, and original. The result was published in two volumes (1891 and 1892), entitled Trold. They are, in part, phantasmagorias charged with the symbolism of Norse legendary lore, where trolls are the personified manifestation of evil forces in nature. The opening sentence of the illuminating introduction says: "That there are trolls in human beings every one knows who has an eye for that sort of thing."

In the most characteristic of these stories, of which there are a dozen in each volume, Lie has personified primal instincts,—allegorized some of the strange facts and mystic forces of nature, man, and society. Others are in lighter vein and have a more human cast, being mere playful satires on social phenomena. They form a marvellous medley. At first it seems quite impossible to believe that the author of The Family at Gilje can be the begetter of things so fantastic and grotesque. But when the reader thinks of the early Nordland stories, he understands, and then feels inclined to regret, that the Finn had so long lain dormant. One is tempted to believe that a little of the troll element could easily have been used to give a tinge of terror to his calm realism; and this is in fact what he has done most effectively in the novel Dyre Rein (1896), which in other respects much resembles The Family at Gilje.

After the publication of Trold, Lie, even where he does not introduce troll effects, is not hesitant about using more tragic methods and more dramatic scenes than during the period of the strictly realistic novels. There is, moreover, a decided trend toward a wider scope and more cosmopolitan aims, as in When the Iron Curtain Falls (1901), a bolder symbolism, as in Niobe (1893) and in his last work, East of the Sun, West of the Moon, and Beyond the Towers of Babylon (1905), in which, however, as the title indicates, the story is top-heavy with symbolism. It runs parallel with the main narrative as an introduction to each chapter. The whole is the tale of a genius, hampered and harassed by malicious trolls in human guise—evidently an adumbration of the author's own personal experience. But he is, as always, charitable: "Human nature is so complex!"

In other words: the last fifteen years of Lie's authorship reveal him in full possession of the realistic powers of the preceding period, illuminated by a profound comprehension of the mystic forces of life that so often determine human fates.

Like Ibsen, Lie lived abroad for many years, mainly in Paris, but usually spending his summers in the Bavarian Alps, where most of his writing was done. There were too many distractions in Paris, where his home was a centre of the colony of Scandinavian artists and literary workers. In the summer of 1893, after an absence of ten years, he felt the need of visiting Norway again. An intense feeling of homesickness had seized him, as the following incident will indicate. He had called on a Norwegian family in Paris who had just received a plant from Norway in Norwegian earth. "Thinking himself unobserved," one of his daughters tells, "I saw him turn from the company, take a pinch of that earth and put it to his mouth. Whether he kissed it or ate it I do not know. But he looked very solemn."

In Norway he was received most cordially. On the occasion of his sixtieth birthday, Brandes proclaimed him "the most amiable of geniuses." He was interviewed, banqueted, and serenaded almost to distraction, and was glad to get back to Paris, happy, however, in having experienced the touching devotion of his countrymen. A decade of arduous toil followed, after which he began to make plans for returning to Norway to spend the last years of his life. A cozy home was built at Fredriksværn, on the southern coast, and in 1906 the family took possession of it. The next year, however, his faithful wife, the guardian of his genius, passed away. Dependent upon her companionship and solicitous care, he did not long survive her. He died July 5, 1908.

The Norwegian Storting took fitting cognizance of his death, and, as had been done at Ibsen's demise, decreed that interment should be made at the expense of the State.

"Blessed are the merciful," said the pastor at his bier.

"Be merciful!" is the sentiment that echoes and reëchoes throughout Jonas Lie's pages.

Julius E. Olson

The University of Wisconsin
February, 1920

[1] Pronounced as Lee in English.

[2] Arne Garborg is one of Norway's greatest novelists. He is also a gifted lyric poet, and an exceedingly clever controversialist. Most of his works are written in Landsmaal, a composite of the peasant dialects. His biography of Lie is a classic.

[3] A peasant poet, kindred in spirit to both Burns and Heine.

[4] The composer of, among other notable things, the melody to Björnson's well-known national song. Before his death, at the age of twenty-four, he had given Edvard Grieg an electric spark from the dynamo of his Norse enthusiasm, which fired Grieg's imagination, and made him par excellence the representative of Norse melody.

THE FAMILY AT GILJE

THE FAMILY AT GILJE

Chapter I

It was a clear, cold afternoon in the mountain region. The air lay blue with the frost, with light rose tints over all the sharp crests, ravines, and peaks, which, like a series of gigantic drifts, tower above tower, floated up towards the horizon. Below, hills and wooded mountain slopes shut the region in with white walls, constantly narrower and narrower, nearer and nearer, always more contracting.

The snow was late this year, but in return, now that the Christmas season had come, lay so heavy on fir and spruce that it bent down both needles and twigs. The groves of birches stood up to their waists in snow; the small clusters of tile-roofed houses of the district were half buried, with snow-drifts pressing down over the roofs. The entrances to the farmyards were deeply dug paths, from which the gate and fence posts stuck up here and there like the masts of sunken boats.

The snow-plough had recently gone through the highway, and on the steep red-tiled roof of the captain's house men were busy shovelling down the great frozen snow-drifts, which hung threatening over the ends of the roof.

The captain's house was specially prominent in the district. It was unpainted and built of square logs, like the greater part of that kind of houses a generation ago.

Over the garden fence and almost up under the window-frames lay the snow-drifts with tracks of sleds and skis in their icy crust, which smoked a little in the frosty north wind under the sun.

It was the same cold, disagreeable north wind which, every time the outer door was opened, blew against the kitchen door until that opened too, and, if it was not closed again, soon after, one or another door on the next floor,—and that made the captain come down from his office, flushed and passionate, to make inquiries and fret and fume over the whole house as to who had gone there first and who had gone last. He could never understand why they did not keep the door shut, though the matter was most easily to be understood,—for the latch was old and loose, and the captain would never spend any money on the smith for a new one.

In the common room below, between the sofa and the stove, the captain's wife, in an old brown linsey-woolsey dress, sat sewing. She had a tall, stiff figure, and a strong, but gaunt, dried-up face, and had the appearance of being anxiously occupied at present by an intricate problem—the possibility of again being able to put a new durable patch on the seat of Jörgen's trousers; they were always bottomless—almost to desperation.

She had just seized the opportunity for this, while Jäger was up in his office, and the children were gone to the post-office; for she went about all day long like a horse grinding clay in a brickyard.

The mahogany sewing-table inlaid with mother-of-pearl and several different kinds of wood, which stood open before her, must have been a family heirloom; in its condition of faded antiquity, it reminded one not a little of her, and in any event did not at all correspond either with the high-backed, rickety, leather armchair, studded with brass nails, in which she sat, nor with the long birchen sofa covered with green linsey-woolsey, which stood like a solitary deserted land against the wall, and seemed to look longingly over to the brown, narrow folding-table, which, with its leaves let down, stood equally solitary and abandoned between the two windows.

The brown case with the four straight legs against the farther wall, with a heap of papers, books, hats, and the spy-glass upon it, was an old clavichord, which, with great trouble, she had had transported up into the mountain region, out of the effects of her home, and on which she had faithfully practised with her children the same pieces which she herself had learned.

The immense every-day room, with the bare timber walls, the unpainted sanded floor, and the small panes with short curtains fastened up in the middle, was in its whole extent extremely scantily furnished; it was half a mile from chair to chair, and everything had a rural meagreness such as one could often see in the homes of officials in the mountain districts in the forties. In the middle of the inner wall, before the great white fire-wall, the antique stove with the Naes iron-works stamp and the knotty wooden logs under it jutted out into the room like a mighty giant. Indeed, nothing less than such a mass of iron was needed to succeed in warming up the room; and in the woods of the captain's farm there was plenty of fuel.

Finally abandoning all more delicate expedients for the trousers, she had laid on a great patch covering everything, and was now sewing zealously. The afternoon sun was still shedding a pale yellow light in the window-frames; it was so still in the room that her movements in sewing were almost audible, and a spool of thread which fell down caused a kind of echo.

All at once she raised herself like a soldier at an order and gave attention. She heard her husband's quick, heavy step creaking on the stairs.

Was it the outside door again?

Captain Jäger, a red, round, and stout man in a threadbare uniform coat, came hastily in, puffing, with the still wet quill-pen in his mouth; he went straight to the window.

His wife merely sewed more rapidly; she wished to use the time, and also prudently to assume the defensive against what might come.

He breathed on the frosty pane in order to enlarge the part that could be seen through. "You will see there is something by the mail. The children are running a race down there in the road,—they are running away from Jörgen with the sled."

The needle only flew still faster.

"Ah, how they run!—Thinka and Thea. But Inger-Johanna! Come here, Ma, and see how she puts down her feet—isn't it as if she was dancing? Now she means to be the first in, and so she will be the first, that I promise you. It is no story when I tell you that the lass is handsome, Ma; that they all see. Ah, come and look how she gets ahead of Thinka! Just come now, Ma!"

But "Ma" did not stir. The needle moved with forced nervous haste. The captain's wife was sewing a race with what was coming; it was even possible that she might get the last of the patch finished before they entered, and just now the sun disappeared behind the mountain crest; they were short days it gave them up there.

The steps outside were taken in two or three leaps, and the door flew open.

Quite right—Inger-Johanna.

She rushed in with her cloak unfastened and covered with snow. She had untied the strings of her hood on the way up the steps, so that her black hair fell down in confusion over her hot face. Breathless, she threw her flowered Valders mittens on a chair. She stood a moment to get her breath, brushed her hair under her hood, and shouted out:

"An order for post-horses at the station, for Captain Rönnow and Lieutenant Mein. The horses are to be here at Gilje at six o'clock to-morrow morning. They are coming here."

"Rönnow, Ma!" roared the captain, surprised; it was one of the comrades of his youth.

Now the others also came storming in with the details.

The mother's pale face, with its marked features and smooth black hair in loops down over her cheeks in front of her cap, assumed a somewhat thoughtful, anxious expression. Should the veal roast be sacrificed which she had reserved for the dean, or the pig? The latter had been bought from the north district, and was fearfully poor.

"Well, well, I bet he is going to Stockholm," continued the captain, meditatively drumming on the window-frame. "Adjutant, perhaps; they would not let that fellow stay out there in the West. Do you know, Ma, I have thought of something of this sort ever since the prince had so much to do with him at the drill-ground. I often said to him, 'Your stories, Rönnow, will make your fortune,—but look out for the general, he knows a thing or two.' 'Pooh! that goes down like hot cakes,' said he. And it looks like it—the youngest captain!"

"The prince—" The captain's wife was just through with the trousers, and rose hastily. Her meagre, yellowish face, with its Roman nose, assumed a resolute expression: she decided on the fatted calf.

"Inger-Johanna, see to it that your father has his Sunday wig on," she exclaimed hurriedly, and hastened out into the kitchen.

The stove in the best room was soon packed full, and glowing. It had not been used since it had been rubbed up and polished with blacking last spring, and smoked now so that they were obliged to open door and windows to the cold, though it was below zero.

Great-Ola, the farm-hand, had been busy carrying large armfuls of long wood into the kitchen, and afterwards with brushing the captain's old uniform coat with snow out on the porch; it must not look as if he had dressed up.

The guest-chamber was made ready, with the beds turned down, and the fire started, so that the thin stove snapped, and the flies suddenly woke up and buzzed under the ceiling, while the wainscot was browned outside of the fire-wall and smelled of paint. Jörgen's hair was wet and combed; the girls changed their aprons to be ready to go down and greet the guests, and were set to work rolling up pipe-lighters for the card-table.

They kept looking out as long as the twilight lasted, both from the first and second story windows, while Great-Ola, with his red peaked cap, made a path in the snow to the carriage-road and the steps.

And now, when it was dark, the children listened with beating hearts for the slightest sound from the road. All their thoughts and longings went out towards the strange, distant world which so rarely visited them, but of which they heard so much that sounded grand and marvellous.

There are the bells!

But, no; Thinka was entirely wrong.

They had all agreed to that fact, when Inger-Johanna, who stood in the dark by a window which she held a little open, exclaimed, "But there they are!"

Quite right. They could hear the sleigh-bells, as the horse, moving by fits and starts, laboriously made his way up the Gilje hills.

The outside door was opened, and Great-Ola stood at the stairs, holding the stable lantern with a tallow candle in it, ready to receive them.

A little waiting, and the bells suddenly sounded plainly in the road behind the wood-shed. Now you could hear the snow creaking under the runners.

The captain placed the candlestick on the table in the hall, the floor of which had been freshly scoured, washed, and strewn with juniper. He went out on the stairs, while the children, head to head, peeped out of the kitchen door, and kept Pasop, who growled and fretted behind them, from rushing out and barking.

"Good-evening, Rönnow! Good-evening, Lieutenant! Welcome to Gilje!" said the captain with his strong, cheerful voice, while the vehicle, which at the last post-house was honored with the name of double sleigh, swung into the yard and up to the steps. "You are elegantly equipped, I see."

"Beastly cold, Peter,—beastly cold, Peter," came the answer from the tall figure wrapped in furs, as he threw down the reins, and, now a little stiff in his movements, stepped out of the sleigh, while the steaming horse shook himself in his harness so that the bells rang loudly. "I believe we are frozen stiff. And then this little rat we have for a horse would not go. It is a badger dog they have harnessed in order to dig our way through the snow-drifts. How are you, Peter? It will be pleasant to get into your house. How goes it?" he concluded, upon the steps, shaking the captain's hand. "Bring in the case of bottles, Lieutenant."

While the two gentlemen took off their furs and travelling-boots in the hall and paid for the horse, and Great-Ola carried the trunk up to the guest-chamber, an odor of incense diffused itself from the large room, which at once roused Captain Rönnow's cavalier instinct to a recollection of the lady, whom, in the joy of seeing his old comrade once more, he had forgotten. His large, stately figure stopped before the door, and he adjusted his stock.

"Do I look tolerably well, Peter, so I can properly appear before your wife?" he said, running his hand through his black curly hair.

"Yes, yes, fine enough—devilish fine-looking fellow, Lieutenant.—If you please, gentlemen. Captain Rönnow and Lieutenant Mein, Ma," he said, as he opened the door.

The mistress of the house rose from her place at the table, where she was now sitting with fine white knitting-work. She greeted Captain Rönnow as heartily as her stiff figure would allow, and the lieutenant somewhat critically. It was the governor's sister to whom the salaam was made, as Captain Rönnow afterwards expressed it—an old, great family.

She disappeared a little later into domestic affairs, to "get them something for supper."

Captain Rönnow rubbed his hands from the cold, wheeled around on one leg on the floor, and thus placed himself with his back to the stove. "I tell you we are frozen stiff, Peter,—but—Oh, Lieutenant, bring in the case of bottles."

When Lieutenant Mein came in again, Rönnow took a sealed bottle with a label, and held it, swinging by the neck, before the captain.

"Look at it, Peter Jäger! Look well at it!" and he moved over towards his friend. "Genuine arrack from Atschin in hither—farther—East—or West India. I present it to you. May it melt your heart, Peter Jäger!"

"Hot water and sugar, Ma!" shouted the captain out into the kitchen, "then we shall soon know whether you only mean to deceive us simple country folks with stories. And out with the whist-table till we have supper! We can play three-handed whist with a dummy."

"Brrr-rr-whew, what kind of stuff is it you've got in your tobacco box, Jäger?" said Captain Rönnow, who was filling his pipe at it; "powder, sneezing powder, I believe! Smell it, Lieutenant. It must be tansy from the nursery."

"Tideman's three crown, fellow! We can't endure your leaf tobacco and Virginia up here in the mountain districts," came from Jäger, who was pulling out and opening the card-table. "Only look at the next box under the lead cover, and you will find some cut-leaf tobacco, Bremen leaf, as black and high flavored as you want. Up here it is only to the goats that we can offer that kind, and to the folk who come from Bergen; they use strong tobacco there to dry out the wet fog."

The door opened, and the three girls and their little brother came in, carrying the tray with the glasses and the jug of hot water, which task they seemed to have apportioned among themselves according to the rules for the procession at the Duke of Marlborough's funeral, where, as is known, the fourth one carried nothing.

The tall, blond Kathinka marched at the head with the tray and glasses with the clinking teaspoons in them. She attempted the feat of curtseying, while she was carrying the tray, and blushed red when it was ready to slip, and the lieutenant was obliged to take hold of it to steady it.

He immediately noticed the next oldest, a brunette with long eyelashes, who was coming with the smoking water-jug on a plate, while the youngest, Thea, was immediately behind her with the sugar-bowl.

"But, my dear Peter Jäger," exclaimed Rönnow, astonished at the appearance of his friend's almost grown-up daughters, "when have you picked up all this? You wrote once about some girls,—and a boy who was to be baptized."

At the same moment Jörgen came boldly forward, strutting over the floor, and made his best bow, while he pulled his bristly yellow locks instead of his cap.

"What is your name?"

"Jörgen Winnecken von Zittow Jäger."

"That was heavy! You are a perfect mountain boy, are you not? Let me see you kick as high as your name."

"No, but as high as my cap," answered Jörgen, going back on the floor and turning a cart-wheel.

"Bold fellow, that Jörgen!" And with that, as Jörgen had done his part, he stepped back into obscurity. But while the gentlemen were pouring out the arrack punch at the folding-table, he kept his eyes uninterruptedly fastened on Lieutenant Mein. It was the lieutenant's regularly trimmed black moustache, which seemed to him like bits that he had not got into his mouth properly.

"Oh, here, my girl!" said Rönnow, turning to one of the daughters, who stood by his side while he was putting some sugar into the steaming glass, "what is your name?"

"Inger-Johanna."

"Yes, listen"—he spoke without seeing anything else than the arm he touched to call her attention. "Listen, my little Inger-Johanna! In the breast pocket of my fur coat out in the hall there are two lemons—I didn't believe that fruit grew up here in the mountains, Peter!—two lemons."

"No, let me! Pardon me!" and the lieutenant flew gallantly.

Captain Rönnow looked up, astonished. The dark, thin girl, in the outgrown dress which hung about her legs, and the three thick, heavy, black cables, braided closely for the occasion, hanging down her back, stood distinct in the light before him. Her neck rose, delicately shaped and dazzlingly fresh, from the blue, slightly low-cut, linsey-woolsey dress, and carried her head proudly, with a sort of swan-like curve.

The captain grasped at once why the lieutenant was so alert.

"Bombs and grenades, Peter!" he exclaimed.

"Do you hear that, Ma?" the captain grunted slyly.

"Up here among the peasants the children—more's the pity—grow up without any other manners than those that they learn of the servants," sighed the mother. "Don't stand so bent over, Thinka, straighten up."

Thinka straightened up her overgrown blond figure and tried to smile. She had the difficult task of hiding a plaster on one side of her chin, where a day or two before she had fallen down through the cellar trap-door in the kitchen.

Soon the three gentlemen sat comfortably at their cards, each one smoking his pipe and with a glass of hot arrack punch by his side. Two moulded tallow candles in tall brass candlesticks stood on the card-table and two on the folding-table; they illuminated just enough so that you could see the almanac, which hung down by a piece of twine from a nail under the looking-glass, and a part of the lady's tall form and countenance, while she sat knitting in her frilled cap. In the darkness of the room the chairs farthest off by the stove could hardly be distinguished from the kitchen door—from which now and then came the hissing of the roasting meat.

"Three tricks, as true as I live—three tricks, and by those cards!" exclaimed Captain Rönnow, eager in the game.

"Thanks, thanks," turning to Inger-Johanna who brought a lighted paper-lighter to his expiring pipe. "Th-a-nks"—he continued, drawing in the smoke and puffing it out, his observant eyes again being attracted by her. Her expression was so bright, the great dark eyes moving to and fro under her eyebrows like dark drops, while she stood following the cards.

"What is your name, once more, my girl?" he asked absently.

"Inger-Johanna," she replied with a certain humor; she avoided looking at him.

"Yes, yes.—Now it is my turn to deal! Your daughter puts a bee in my bonnet, madam. I should like to take her with me to Christiania to the governor's, and bring her out. We would make a tremendous sensation, that I am sure of."

"At last properly dealt! Play."

With her hands on the back of her father's chair, Inger-Johanna gazed intently on the cards; but her face had a heightened glow.

Rönnow glanced at her from one side. "A sight for the gods, a sight for the gods!" he exclaimed, as he gathered together with his right hand the cards he had just arranged, and threw them on the table. "Naturally I mean how the lieutenant manages dummy—you understand, madam," nodding to her with significance. "Heavens! Peter, that was a card to play.—Here you can see what I mean," he continued. "Trump, trump, trump, trump!" He eagerly threw four good spades on the table, one after another, without paying any attention to what followed.

The expression of the lady's face, as she sat there and heard her innermost thoughts repeated so plainly, was immovably sealed; she said, somewhat indifferently, "It is high time, children, you said good-night; it is past your bed-time. Say good-night to the gentlemen."

The command brought disappointment to their faces; not obeying was out of the question, and they went round the table, and made curtsies and shook hands with the captain and the lieutenant.

The last thing Jörgen noticed was that the lieutenant turned round, stretched his neck, and gaped like Svarten as they went out.

Their mother straightened up over her knitting-work. "You used to visit my brother's, the governor's, formerly, Captain Rönnow," she ventured. "They are childless folk, who keep a hospitable house. You will call on them now, I suppose."

"Certainly I shall! To refrain from doing that would be a crime! You have, I should imagine, thought of sending one of your daughters there. The governor's wife is a person who knows how to introduce a young lady into the world, and your Inger-Johanna—"

The captain's wife answered slowly and with some stress; something of a suppressed bitterness rose up in her. "That would be an entirely unexpected piece of good fortune; but more than we out-of-the-way country folk can expect of our grand, distinguished sister-in-law. Small circumstances make small folk, more's the pity; large ones ought to make them otherwise.—My brother has made her a happy wife."

"Done. Will you allow an old friend to work a little for your attractive little Inger?" returned Captain Rönnow.

"I think that Ma will thank you. What do you say, Gitta? Then you will have a peg to hang one of them on. It can't be from one of us two that Inger-Johanna has inherited her beauty, Ma!" said Captain Jäger, coughing and warding off his wife's admonitory look; "but there is blood, both on her father's and mother's side. Her great-grandmother was married off up in Norway by the Danish queen because she was too handsome to be at court—it was your grandmother, Ma! Fröken von—"

"My dear Jäger," begged his wife.

"Pshaw, Ma! The sand of many years has been strewed over that event."

When the game was again started, the captain's wife went with her knitting-work to the card-table, snuffed first one candle and then the other, leaned over her husband, and whispered something.

The captain looked up, rather surprised. "Yes, indeed, Ma! Yes, indeed—'My camel for your dromedary,' said Peter Vangensten, when he swapped his old spavined horse for Mamen's blooded foal. If you come with your arrack from Holland and farther India, then I put my red wine direct from France against it—genuine Bordeaux, brought home and drawn straight from the hogshead! There were just two dozen the governor sent us with the wagon the autumn Jörgen was baptized.—The two farthest to the left, Ma! You had better take Marit with you with the lantern. Then you can tell the governor's wife that we drank her health up here among the snow-drifts, Rönnow."

"Yes, she is very susceptible to that kind of thing, Peter Jäger."

When the captain's wife came in again, she had the stiff damask tablecloth on her arm, and was accompanied by a girl who helped move the folding-table out on the floor. It was to be set for supper, and the card-table must be moved into the best room, across the hall, which was now warm.

"Can you wait, Ma, till the rubber is played?"

Ma did not answer; but they felt the full pressure of her silence; her honor was at stake—the roast veal.

And they played on silently, but at a tearing pace as with full steam.

Finally the captain exclaimed, while Ma stood immovable with the cloth in the middle of the floor, "There, there, we must get away, Rönnow!"

In the chamber above, impatient hearts were hammering and beating.

While Jörgen went to sleep with the image before him of his lieutenant who gaped like Svarten when he came out of the stable door into the light, and after Torbjörg had put out the candle, the sisters stole out into the great, cold, dark hall. There they all three stood, leaning over the balustrade, and gazing down on the fur coats and mufflers, which hung on the timber wall, and on the whip and the two sabre sheaths and the case of bottles, which were dimly lighted by the stable lantern on the hall table.

They smelt the odor of the roast as it came up, warm and appetizing, and saw when the guests, each with his punch-glass in his hand and with flickering candle, went across the hall into the large room. They heard the folding-table moved out and set, and later caught the sound of the clinking of glasses, laughter, and loud voices.

Every sound from below was given a meaning, every fragment of speech was converted into a romance for their thirsty fancy.

They stood there in the cold till their teeth chattered and their limbs shook against the wood-work, so that they were obliged to get into bed again to thaw out.

They heard how the chairs made a noise when the guests rose from the table, and they went out in the hall again, Thinka and Inger-Johanna,—Thea was asleep. It helped a little when they put their feet upon the lowest rail of the balustrade, or hung over it with their legs bent double under them.

Thinka held out because Inger-Johanna held out; but finally she was compelled to give up, she could not feel her legs any more. And now Inger-Johanna alone hung down over the balustrade.

A sort of close odor of punch and tobacco smoke frozen together rose up through the stairs in the cold, and every time the door was opened and showed the heavy, smoky, blue gleam of light in the great room, she could hear officers' names, fragments of laughter, of violent positive assertions, with profane imprecations by all possible and impossible powers of the heavens above and the earth beneath, and between them her father's gay voice,—all chopped off in mince-meat every time the door was shut.

When Inger-Johanna went to bed again, she lay thinking how Captain Rönnow had asked her twice what her name was, and then again how at the card-table he had said, "I should like to take her with me to the governor's wife; we would make a tremendous sensation." And then what came next, "Naturally I mean how the lieutenant plays dummy,"—which they thought she did not understand.

The wind blew and howled around the corner of the house, and whistled down through the great plastered chimney-pipe in the hall—and she still, half in her dreams, heard Captain Rönnow's "Trump! trump! trump! trump!"

The next day Ma went about the house as usual with her bunch of keys; she had hardly slept at all that night.

She had become old before her time, like so many other "mas," in the household affairs of that period—old by bearing petty annoyances, by toil and trouble, by never having money enough, by bending and bowing, by continually looking like nothing and being everything—the one on whom the whole anxious care of the house weighed.

But—"One lives for the children."

That was Ma's pet sigh of consolation. And the new time had not yet come to the "mas" with the question whether they were not also bound to realize their own personal lives.

But for the children it was a holiday, and immediately after breakfast they darted into the great room.

There stood the card-table, again moved against the wall, with the cards thrown in a disorderly pile over the paper on which the score had been kept. It had been folded up and burned on one end for a lighter; and by its side, during a preliminary cleaning, the three pipes were lying, shoved aside. One window was still open, notwithstanding the wind blew in so that the fastening hook rattled.

There was something in the room—a pungent odor, which was not good; no, but there was, nevertheless, something about it—something of an actual occurrence.

Outside of the window Great-Ola stood with his hands on the shovel in the steep snow-drift, listening to Marit's account of how the captain had left a broad two-kroner piece for drink money on the table up in the guest-chamber and the lieutenant a shilling under the candlestick, and how the mistress had divided them among the girls.

"The lieutenant was not so butter-fingered," suggested Marit.

"Don't you know that a lieutenant would be shot if he gave as much as his captain, girl," retorted Great-Ola, while she hurried in with the keys of the storehouse and the meal-chest.

From the captain's sleeping-room the sound of his snoring could be heard for the whole forenoon. The guests did not go to bed, and started at six o'clock in the morning, when the post-boy came to the door—after the second bottle, also, of Rönnow's Indian arrack had been emptied, and a breakfast with whiskey, brawn, and the remnants of the roast veal had strengthened them for the day's journey.

But the thing to be done was to have a good time on the holiday. The sisters bustled about in the hall with their skis, and Jörgen was trying how the outer steps would do for a ski slide.

Soon they were out on the long steep hill behind the cow-barn—the ski-staff in both hands in front for a balance, their comforters streaming out behind their necks. In the jump Inger-Johanna lost her balance and almost—no, she kept up!

It was because she looked up to the window of the sleeping-room to see if her father appreciated her skill.

He was walking about and dressing. Ma had at last, about dinner time, ventured to wake him up.

Chapter II

Two days before Christmas Great-Ola with Svarten and his load was expected from Christiania, where he went twice a year, St. John's Day and Christmas, for the household supplies. To-day was the ninth day; but in sleighing like this, when the horse's feet struck through at every step, no one could be sure of anything.

The load, met on the run, far down the slippery, slushy hill, by the children and the barking, one-eyed Pasop, came along in the afternoon, while Svarten, even in his exertions on the steep part of the hill, neighed and whinnied with pleasure at being home again and longing to get into the stall by the side of Brunen. He had had quite enough of the journey, and worked himself into a foam in the harness to get over the Gilje hill.

Marit, the cook, and Torbjörg were out in the porch before the kitchen; the three girls and Jörgen stood wholly absorbed by the load and the horse, and the captain himself came down the stairs.

"Well, Great-Ola, how has Svarten pulled through? Sweaty and tired, I see! Did you get my uniform buttons? Ah, well! I hope you did not forget the tobacco!—And my watch, could they do anything with that?—Have you the bill?—Well, then, you must put up Svarten—he shall have an extra feed of oats to-day. What? What have you got there?"

Besides the bill, Great-Ola had taken out of his inside vest pocket a letter wrapped up in paper, blue postal paper, with a beautiful red seal on it. The captain looked at it a moment with surprise. It was the writing of the governor's wife and her seal in the wax, and without saying a word he hastened in to his wife.

The load from the city, the great event of the half year, occupied the attention of the whole household. Its contents interested all, not the children alone, and when Great-Ola, later in the evening, sat in the kitchen, where he was treated as a guest on account of his return home, and told about his trip to the city and about Svarten and himself, what miracles they had wrought on such and such hills—and the load weighed this time at least two hundred pounds more than the last—then there was a sort of glamor about him and Svarten, too.

One evening he had even found his way in a snowstorm, and once the salt-bag was forgotten, and then Svarten actually would not stir from the inn-yard, but lashed his tail at every cut of the whip, and kept looking back, until the boy came running out of the hall and shouted out about the bag, then off he started willingly enough.

The captain had gone in and had wandered up and down in the room for a while with the letter of the governor's wife in blue postal paper in his hand. He looked very much offended at Ma, when she seemed to think more about the load from the city than about his letter. She only suggested gently that they must talk about all that in the evening.

"All that—you say, Ma!—that Inger-Johanna is invited down there next winter—and we have Rönnow to thank for it. That is short and clear enough, I should think! What? What?" he roared out impatiently. "Is it not plain?—or have you some notions about it?"

"No—no, dear Jäger!"

"Well, then you should not delay the whole unloading of the goods with your quiet sigh, full of importance, and your secret meanings which always make me mad. You know I hate it! I go straight to the point always!"

"I was merely thinking about your uniform coat, whether the tailor has sent the pieces with it, you know—"

"You are right, you are right, Gitta," and out he rushed like a flash.

The unpacking went on in the kitchen, before the spice closet with its numerous compartments, where raisins, prunes, almonds, the different kinds of sugar, allspice, and cinnamon, were each put into their own places. Now and then fell a tribute, a prune, two almonds, three raisins, to each of the children; and it could not be denied that this load from the city was like a foretaste of Christmas Eve.

At first the captain was intensely interested in getting hold of the ink bottles, the tobacco, and the strong wares which were to be kept in the cellar—everything else must be put aside for them. And then he flew in and out, with one bill or another in his hand and a quill pen full of ink, to compare with the general bill which his wife had nailed up on the upper door of the spice closet.

"Ma, can you conceive such extortion?" stopping suddenly before the bill, which still finally was always found to be right, and then turning thoughtfully round again, while he dried his pen in his chocolate-colored every-day wig.

His plethoric, vociferous, somewhat confused nature always became furious when he saw a bill; it operated like a red cloth on a bull, and when, as now, all the half year's bills came storming down on him at once, he both roared and bellowed. It was an old story for his wife, who had acquired a remarkable skill in taking the bull by the horns.

The wrongs, which thus he did not suffer, seemed nevertheless to awaken an increasing storm of resentment in him. With a violent tug at the door-latch, and his wig awry, he would come suddenly in, exclaiming,—"Seventy-five dollars, three shillings, seventeen pence!—seventy-five—dollars—three shillings—and seventeen pence!—it is almost enough to make one crazy. And so you ordered citron—citron,"—he put on a falsetto tone, and laughed out of pure rage. "He, he, he, he!—now have we the means for that? And then, almond soap for the guest-chamber!" This last came in a deep, suppressed, gloomy bass. "I cannot understand how you could have hit on that!"

"My dear, that was thrown in. Don't you see that it isn't carried out for anything?"

"Thrown in—oh, thrown in—yes, there you see how they cheat! Seventy-five dollars, three shillings, and seventeen pence—plainly that is enough to be frightened at. Where shall I find the money?"

"But you have already found it, Jäger!—Remember the servants," she whispered quickly. It was a quiet prayer to put off the rest of the outburst till later in the afternoon, between themselves.

The captain's various ecstatic flashes of passion about the bills went over the house that afternoon like a refreshing and purifying thunderstorm before Christmas. The children, cowed and tortured, took refuge during the storm under the protection of their mother, who warded off the blast; but when his step was again heard in the office, they went on, just as persevering and inquisitive as before, peeping into and shaking out the bags in order to find a raisin or two or a currant that had been forgotten, collecting the twine, looking after the weight, and cutting up the bar soap.

During all these anxieties the tall form of the mistress stood in uninterrupted activity, bowed like a crane over the box with the city wares, which had been lifted in on the kitchen floor. Jars, willow baskets filled with hay, small bags, and an infinity of packages in gray wrappers, tied up with twine, small and great, vanished by degrees into their different resting-places, even to the last, the bag with the fine wheat flour, which was brought in by Great-Ola and put by itself in the meal-chest in the pantry.

When the spice closet was finally shut, the captain stood there for the twentieth time. With the air of a man who had been made to wait and been tormented long enough, he gently tapped her on the shoulder with his fingers and said, rather reproachfully, "It really astonishes me, Gitta, that you don't pay more attention to the letter we have received to-day."

"I haven't been able to think of anything else than your troubles with the bills, Jäger. Now I think you might taste the French brandy this evening, to see if it is good enough for the Christmas punch. Cognac is so dear."

"That's a good idea, Gitta!—Yes, yes—only let us have supper soon."

The plates with oatmeal porridge and the blue milk in the cold cups were placed upon the table; they stood like black, dreary islands over the cloth, and presented no temptation to linger over the evening meal.

After the necessary part of it was swallowed and the children were sent upstairs, the captain sat, now quite cozy and comfortable, before the table, which was still extended, with his tobacco and his taste of toddy made of the French brandy, whose transformation into Christmas punch was going on in the kitchen, from which there was also heard the sizzling of the waffle-iron.

"Only strong, Ma,—only strong!—Then you can manage with the brown sugar.—Yes, yes," tasting of the wooden dipper which his wife brought in, "you can treat the sheriff to that with pleasure."

"Now Marit is coming in with the warm waffles,—and then it was this about the letter of the governor's wife.—You see, Jäger, we cannot send the child there unless we have her suitably fitted out; she must have a black silk confirmation dress, city boots and shoes, a hat, and other things."

"Black silk conf—"

"Yes, and some other dresses, which we must order in Christiania; there is no help for it."

Captain Jäger began to walk to and fro.

"So, so!—So, so! Well, if that is your idea, then I think we will decline the invitation with thanks."

"I knew that, Jäger! You would like to have the yolk, but as to breaking the egg, you hesitate."

"Break the egg? Break my purse, you mean."

"I mean, you can call in a part of the six hundred dollars you got with me. I have thought and reckoned it over. Inger-Johanna alone will cost us over one hundred dollars this year, and when Thinka is going to Ryfylke, we shall not get off with two hundred."

"Over two hundred dollars!—Are you crazy? Are you crazy—really crazy, Ma? I think you have a screw loose!" He made a sudden turn over the floor. "The letter shall rather go at once into the stove."

"Very well; you know that I think everything you do is sensible, Jäger."

He stopped, with the letter in his hand and his mouth half open.

"And the slight chance Inger-Johanna might have of being provided for, that perhaps is not so much to be taken into account. She is certainly the nearest relation. There is nothing in the way to prevent her being the heir also.—N-no, do as you will and as you like, Jäger. You probably see more clearly in this than I do.—And then you will take the responsibility yourself, Jäger,"—she sighed.

The captain crumpled the letter together, gave her a hasty glance like a wounded lion, and then stood awhile and stared at the floor. Suddenly he threw the letter on the table and broke out: "She must go!—But the cost of the campaign—the cost of the campaign, Ma, that, I learned in my strategy, must be borne by the enemy! And the governor's wife must naturally take care of her outfit there."

"The governor's wife, Jäger, must not pay for anything—not a bit—before she has decided if she will keep her. We must not be anxious to be rid of her; but she shall be anxious to get her; and she must ask us for her, both once and twice, you understand."

That the winter was coming on was less noticed this year than usual. Two children were to be fitted out. Soon spinning-wheel and reel accompanied, in the short day and long evening, the murmur of the stove. Ma herself spun all the fine woof for the linsey-woolsey dresses. There was knitting, weaving, and sewing, nay, also embroidery on linen—"twelve of everything for each one." And in school hours in the office the captain worked not less zealously with the French grammar.

The stiffening cold frost, which blew about the house and cut like ice from every crack; the cold so fierce that the skin was torn off the hands when any one was unlucky enough to take hold of the latch of the outer door or of the porch without mittens; complaints of nail ache, when the children came in from out-of-doors; or else that the drinking-water was frozen solid in the tubs and pails, that the meat must be thawed out,—this was only what was usual in the mountain region. The doleful, monotonous howling and the long, hungry yelling of the wolves down on the ice could be heard from the Gilje hills both by day and by night. The road on the lake lasted a long time. It was there till long into the spring thaw, though worn, unsafe, and blue with its dirt-brown mudstreak.

But when it did disappear, and the ice was melted by the heat of the sun, there lay on the steep hill behind the house a long line of bleaching linen, so shining white that it seemed as if the snow had forgotten to go away there.

Chapter III

It was midsummer. The mountain region was hazy in the heat; all the distance was as if enveloped in smoke. The girls on the farm went about barefooted, in waists and short petticoats. It was a scorching heat, so that the pitch ran in sticky white lines down from the fat knots in the timber of the newly built pigsty, where Marit was giving swill to the hogs. Some sand-scoured wooden milk-pans stood on edge by the well, drying, while one or two sparrows and wagtails hopped about or perched nodding on the well-curb, and the blows of the axe resounded from the wood-shed in the quiet of the afternoon. Pasop lay panting in the shade behind the outer door, which stood open.

The captain had finished his afternoon nap, and stood by the field looking at Great-Ola and the horses ploughing up an old grassland which was to be laid down again.

The bumble-bee was humming in the garden. With about the same monotonous voice, Thinka and Inger-Johanna, sitting by the stone table in the summer-house over the cracked blue book-cover and the dog-eared, well-thumbed leaves, mumbled the Catechism and Commentary, with elbows and heads close to each other. They had to learn pages eighty-four to eighty-seven before supper time, and they held their fingers in their ears so as not to disturb each other.

There was darkness like a shadow just outside of the garden fence. But they saw nothing, heard nothing; the long passage of Scripture went way over on the second page.

Then there was a gay clearing of a throat. "Might one interrupt the two young ladies with earthly affairs?"

They both looked up at the same time. The light hop leaves about the summer-house had not yet entirely covered the trellis.

With his arms leaning on the garden fence there stood a young man—he might have been standing there a long time—with a cap almost without a visor over thick brown hair. His face was sunburned and swollen.

The eyes, which gazed on them, looked dreadfully wicked.

Neither of them saw more; for, by a common impulse at the phenomenon, they ran in utter panic out of the door, leaving the books spread open behind them, and up the steps in to Ma, who was in the kitchen buttering bread for lunch.

"There was a man standing—there was a man out by the garden fence. It was certainly not any one who goes around begging or anything like that."

"Hear what he has to say, Jörgen," said Ma, quickly comprehending the situation; "this way, out the veranda door. Appear as if you came of your own accord."

Both the girls flew in to the windows of the best room in order to peep out under the curtains.

He was coming in by the steps to the outer door with Jörgen, who suddenly vanished from his sight into the kitchen.

Little Thea stood in the door of the sitting-room with a piece of bread and butter, clutching the latch, and, holding the door half shut and half open, stared at him; she was altogether out of it.

"Is your father at home?"

"Yes, but you must go by the kitchen path, do you hear? And wait till we have had lunch; he is not going up to the office before that." She took him for a man who was going to be put on the roll.

"But I am not going to the office, you see."

Ma herself came now; she had managed to get her cap on in her hurry, but it was all awry.

"A young man, I see, who has perhaps come a long distance to-day. Please walk in."

Her smile was kind, but her eye underneath it was as sharp as an officer's review; here were holes and darns with coarse thread for the nonce and rents in abundance, and it was not easy to free herself from the suspicion of some questionable rover, especially when he dropped straight in through the door with the remark: "I come like a tramp from the mountain wilds, madam. I must make many excuses."

Ma's searching look had in the mean time broken through the shell. The white streak on the upper part of the forehead, under the shade where the skin had not been reddened by the sunburn, and his whole manner determined her to scrutinize him prudently. "Please sit down, Jäger is coming soon." She incidentally passed by the sewing-table and shut it. "Won't you let me send you a glass of milk in the mean time?"

A girl came in with a great basin, shaped like a bowl, and vanished again.

He put it to his mouth, noted with his eye how much he had drunk, drank again, and took another view.

"It is delightful—is not at all like the mistress of the house, for she seemed like sour milk, and"—he suppressed a sigh—"dangerously dignified."

He drank again.

"Yes, now one really must stop; but since and whereas—"

He placed the basin quite empty on the plate.

"Best to attack him at once. Dead broke, will you on my honest face lend me four—no, that does not sound well, better out with it at once—five dollars, so that I can get to Christiania?"

The small eyes twinkled quickly. If only the captain had come then! Some one was walking about out there.

He gazed abstractedly; he repeated his speech to himself. It was always altered, and now he stood again at the ticklish point—the amount. He considered if perhaps he only needed to ask for four—three?

There was a growling out in the hall; the dog rushed out, barking loudly. It was plainly the captain.

The young man rose hurriedly, but sat down again like a spring ready to jump up out of a chair: he had been in too great haste.

"In the parlor—some sort of fellow who wants to talk with me?" It was out on the stairs that some one was speaking.

A moment or two later, and the captain appeared in the door.

"I must beg you to excuse me, Captain. I have unfortunately, unfortunately"—here he began to stammer; bad luck would have it that one of the two young girls whom he had seen in the summer-house, the dark one, came in after her father; and so it would not do—"come over the mountain," he continued. "You will understand that one cannot exactly appear in the best plight." The last came in a tone of forced ease.

The captain at that moment did not appear exactly agreeably surprised.

"My name is Arent Grip!"

"Arent Grip!" rejoined the captain, looking at him. "Grip! the same phiz and eyes! You can never be the son of Perpetuum—cadet at Lurleiken? He is a farmer, or proprietor I suppose he calls himself, somewhere among the fjords."

"He is my father, Captain."

"Does he still work as hard as ever at his mechanical ideas?" asked the captain. "I heard that he had carried the water for his mill straight through the roof of the cow-barn, so that the cows got a shower bath, when the pipes sprung a leak."

Inger-Johanna caught a movement of indignation, as if the stranger suddenly grasped after his cap. "Shame, shame, that those times did not give a man like my father a scientific education." He said this with a seriousness utterly oblivious of the captain.

"So, so. Well, my boy, you must be kind enough to take a little lunch with us, before you start off. Inger-Johanna, tell Ma that we want something to drink and bread and butter. You must be hungry coming down from the mountains. Sit down.—And what is now your—your occupation or profession in the world? if I might ask." The captain sauntered around the floor.

"Student; and, Captain," he gasped, in order to use quickly the moment while they were alone, "since I have been so free as to come in here thus without knowing you—"

"Student!" The captain stopped in the middle of the floor. "Yes, I would have risked my head on it, saw it at the first glance, but yet I was a little in doubt. Well, yes," clearing his throat, "nearly plucked, perhaps; eh, boy?" inquired he good-naturedly. "Your father also had trouble with his examinations."

"I have not the fractional part of my father's brains, but with what I have, they gave me this year laudabilis praeceteris."

"Son of my friend, Fin Arentzen Grip!" He uttered each one of the names with a certain tender recognition. "Your father was, all things considered, a man of good ability, not to say a little of a genius,—when he failed in his officer's examination, it was all due to his irregular notions. Well, so you are his son! Yes, he wrote many a composition for me—the pinch was always with the compositions, you see."

"And, Captain," began the young man again earnestly, now in a louder and more decided tone, "since I can thus, without further ceremony, confidently address you—"