Ilka on the Hill-Top and Other Stories by Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen (the reading list TXT) 📕

the girl, still clinging to his arm, "it is very wrong in you to talk to him in that way. You know very well that he would never do us any harm. You know he cannot move anything as large as the glacier."

"The devil only knows what he can't do," muttered Tharald, with a little explosive grunt, which might be interpreted as a qualified concession. The fact was, he was rather ashamed of his senseless violence, but did not feel it to be consistent with his dignity to admit unconditionally that he had been in the wrong.

"These learned chaps are not to be trusted, child," he went on, in a tone of serious remonstrance. "It isn't safe to have one of them fellows running about loose. I heard of one up in the West Parish last summer, who was staying with Lars Norby. He was running about with a bag and a hammer, and poking his nose into every nook and cranny of the rocks. And all the while he stayed there, the devil ran riot on the farm. Three cows slinked, the bay mare followed suit, and the chickens took the cramps, and died as fast as they were hatched. There was no luck in anything. I tell you, my lass, the Almighty doesn't like to have anybody peeping into His hand, and telling Him when to trump and when to throw a low card. That is the long and short of it. If we don't ship this fellow, smooth-faced and nice as he may be, we shall have a run of bad luck here, such as you never saw the like of before."

In the meanwhile, Maurice, not wishing to overhear the conversation, had entered the house, and father and daughter were left to continue their parley in private. There was really, as Elsie thought, some plausibility in the old man's prognostications, and the situation began to assume a very puzzling aspect to her mind. She admitted that scientists, viewed as a genus, were objectionable; but insisted that Fern, to whose personal charms she was keenly alive, was an exception to the rule. She felt confident that so good a man as he could never have tried to pry into the secrets of God Almighty. Tharald yielded grumblingly, inch by inch, and thus saved his dignity, although his daughter, in the end, prevailed. She obtained his permission to request the guest to remain, and not interpret too literally the rather hasty words he had used. Thus a compromise was effected. Fern suspended his packing, and resumed his objectionable attitude toward the mysteries of creation.

About a week after this occurrence, Maurice was walking along the beach, watching some peasant lads who were spearing trout in a brook near by. The sun had just dipped below the western mountain peaks, and a cool, bluish twilight, which seemed the essence of atmospheric purity, purged of all accessory effects, filled the broad, placid valley, and made it a luxury to breathe. The torches of the fishermen flitted back and forth between the slender stems of the birches, and now and then sent up a great glare of light among the foliage, which shone with a ghostly grayish green. The majestic repose of this scene sank deeply into Fern's mind; dim yearnings awoke in him, and a strange sense of kinship with these mountains, fjords, and glaciers rose from some unknown depth of his soul. He seemed suddenly to love them. Whenever he thought of Norway in later years, the impression of this night revived within him. After a long ramble over the sand, he chanced upon a low, turf-thatched cottage lying quite apart from the inhabited districts of the valley. The sheen of the fire upon the hearth-stone fell through the open door and out upon the white beach, and illuminated faintly the middle portion of a long fishing-net, which was suspended on stakes, for drying. Feeling a little tired, he seated himself on a log near the door, and gazed out upon the gleaming glaciers in the distance.

While he was sitting thus, he was startled at the sound of a voice, deep, distinct, and sepulchral, which seemed to proceed from within the cottage.

"I see a book sealed with seven seals," the voice was saying. "Two of them are already broken, and when the third shall be broken--then it is all black--a great calamity will happen."

"Pray don't say that, Gurid," prayed another voice, with a touching, child-like appeal in it (and he instantly recognized it as Elsie's). "God is so very strong, you know, and He can certainly wipe away that black spot, and make it all bright again. And I don't know that I have done anything very wrong of late; and father, I know, is really very good, too, even if he does say some hard things at times. But he doesn't mean anything by it--and I am sure--"

"Be silent, child!" interrupted the first voice. "Thou dost not understand, and it is well for thee that thou dost not. For it is written, 'He shall visit the sins of the fathers upon the children, even unto the third and fourth generation.'"

"How terrible!"

"Hush! Now I see a man--he is tall and beautiful--has dark hair and rather a dark face."

"Pray don't say anything more. I don't want to know. Is he to break the seals?"

"Then there is water--water--a long, long journey."

Maurice had listened to this conversation with feelings of mingled amusement and pity, very much as he would have listened to a duet, representing the usual mixture of gypsy and misguided innocence, in an old-fashioned opera. That he was playing the eavesdropper had never entered his mind. The scene seemed too utterly remote and unreal to come within the pale of moral canons. But suddenly the aspect of affairs underwent a revolution, as if the misguided young lady in the opera had turned out to be his sister, and he himself under obligation to interfere in her behalf. For at that moment there came an intense, hurried whisper, to which he would fain have closed his ears:

"And does he care for me as I do for him?"

He sprang up, his ears tingling with shame, and hurried down the beach. Presently it occurred to him, however, that it was not quite chivalrous in him to leave little Elsie there alone with the dark-minded sibyl. Who knew but that she might need his help? He paused, and was about to retrace his steps, when he heard some one approaching, whom he instinctively knew to be Elsie. As she came nearer, the moon, which hung transfixed upon the flaming spear of a glacier peak, revealed a distressed little face, through whose transparent surface you might watch the play of emotions within, as one watches the doings of tiny insects and fishes in an aquarium.

"What have they been doing to my little girl?" asked Fern, with a voice full of paternal tenderness. "She has been crying, poor little thing."

He may have been imprudent in addressing a girl of seventeen in this tender fashion; but the truth was, her short skirts and the two long braids of yellow hair were in his mind associated with that age toward which you may, without offence, assume the rôle of a well-meaning protector, and where even a kiss need not necessarily be resented. So far from feeling flattered by the unwished-for recollection of Elsie's feeling for him, he was rather disposed to view it as a pathological phenomenon,--as a sort of malady, of which he would like to cure her. It is not to be denied, however, that if this was his intention, the course he was about to pursue was open to criticism. But it must be borne in mind that Fern was no expert on questions of the heart,--that he had had no blighting experiences yielding him an unwholesome harvest of premature wisdom.

For a long while they walked on in silence, holding each other's hands like two children, and the sound of their footsteps upon the crisp, crunching sand was singularly exaggerated by the great stillness around them.

"And whom is it you have been visiting so late in the night, Elsie?" he asked, at last, glancing furtively into her face.

"Hush, you mustn't talk about her," answered she, in a timid whisper. "It was Gurid Sibyl, and she knows a great many things which nobody else knows except God."

"I am sorry you have resort to such impostors. You know the Bible says it is wrong to consult sibyls and fortune-tellers."

"No, I didn't know it. But you mustn't speak ill of her, or she will sow disease in your blood and you will never see another healthy day. She did that to Nils Saetren because he mocked her, and he has been a cripple ever since."

"Pshaw, I am not afraid of her. She may frighten children--"

"Hush! Oh, don't!" cried the girl, in tones of distress, laying her hand gently over his mouth. "I wouldn't for the world have anything evil happen to you."

"Well well, you foolish child," he answered, laughing. "If it grieves you, I will say nothing more about it. But I must disapprove of your superstition all the same."

"Oh, no; don't think ill of me," she begged piteously, her eyes filling with tears.

"No no, I will not. Only don't cry. It always makes me feel awkward to see a woman cry."

She brushed her tears away and put on a resolute little pout, which was meant to be resigned if not cheerful.

Fifteen minutes later they were standing at the foot of the stairs leading up to his room. The large house was dark and silent. Everybody was asleep. Thinking the opportunity favorable for giving her a bit of parting advice, Maurice seized hold of both her arms and looked her gravely in the eyes. She, however, misinterpreting the gesture, very innocently put up her lips, thinking that he intended to kiss her. The sweet, child-like trustfulness of the act touched him; hardly knowing what he did, he stooped over her and kissed her. As their eyes again met, a deep, radiant contentment shone from her countenance. It was not a mere momentary brightening of the features, such as he had often noticed in her before, but something inexpressibly tender, soul-felt, and absolute. It was as if that kiss had suddenly transformed the child into a woman.


V.


Summer hurried on at a rapid pace, the days grew perceptibly shorter, and the birds of passage gathered in large companies on the beach and on the hill-tops, holding noisy consultations to prepare for their long southward journey. Maurice still stayed on at the Ormgrass Farm, but a strange, feverish mood had come over him. He daily measured the downward progress of the glacier in agitated expectancy, although as a scientific experiment it had long ceased to yield him any satisfaction. That huge congealed residue of ten thousand winters had, however, acquired a human interest to him which it had lacked before; what he had lost as a scientist he had gained as a man. For, with all respect for Science, that monumental virgin at whose feet so many cherished human illusions have already been sacrificed, it is not to be denied that from an unprofessional point of view a warm-blooded, fair-faced little creature like Elsie is a worthier object of a bachelor's homage. And, strive as he would, Maurice could never quite rid himself of the impression that the glacier harbored in its snowy bosom some fell design against Elsie's peace and safety. It is even possible that he never would have discovered the real nature of his feelings for