She took the arm which he offered her silently, but with a simple dignity which a princess might have envied her.
"I cannot stay out long," she said. "My mother would miss me."
"I shall not detain you long. I have only a confession to make to you. I was sitting on the loggia this afternoon when Padre Gregorio came, and I heard what you said to him."
He had expected her to blush or show some sign of embarrassment. But she only lifted her calm, clear countenance toward him and said:
"You were kinder and better than all the men I had known, and it gave me trouble to think that you should be unhappy when you die. Therefore I asked the padre; but I do not believe any more that the padre is always right. God is better and wiser than he, and God will find a way where a priest would find none."
There was something inexpressibly touching in the way she uttered these simple words. Cranbrook, although he was, for reasons of his own, disappointed at her perfect composure, felt the tears mounting to his eyes, and his voice shook as he answered:
"I am not afraid of my lot in the next world, Annunciata; and although it is kind of you to be troubled about it, I fear you can do nothing to improve it. But my fate in this world I yearn to lay in your hands. I love you very dearly, Annunciata, and all I need to make me what I aspire to be is to have you give me a little affection in return. What do you say, Annunciata? do you think you could? Would you be my wife, and go with me to my own country and share my life, whatever it may be."
"But signore," she replied, after a moment's deliberation; "my mother would not like it, and Babetta would cry the whole day long when I was gone."
"I am speaking seriously, Annunciata, and you must not evade my question. It all depends upon you."
"No, it also depends upon mother and Babetta. But I know you would be good and kind to me, Signore Giovanni, and you would always treat me well; for you are a good and kind man. I should like to be your wife, I think, but I do not know whether I should like to go with you across the great sea."
Cranbrook was hopelessly perplexed, and for an instant even inclined to question whether she might not be ridiculing him; but a glance at her puzzled face showed him that she was grappling earnestly with the great problem, and apparently endeavoring to gain time by uttering the first thought that suggested itself to her mind. The gloom of the plane-trees now enveloped them, and only here and there a quivering ray of moonlight pierced through the dense roof of leaves. The marble phantoms of the Cæsars gazed sternly at the daring intruders who had come to disturb their centuries' repose, and the Roman senator at the end of the avenue held his outstretched hand toward them, as if warning them back from the life that lay beyond the moment's great resolution. And yet, before the moon had faded out of the sky, the great resolution was irrevocably taken. When they parted in the hall, leading up to Cranbrook's room, Annunciata consented with the faintest show of resistance to being kissed, and she even responded, though vaguely and doubtingly, to his vehement caresses. "Felicissima notte, Signore Giovanni," she murmured, as she slowly disengaged herself from his embrace. "You are a dear, good man, and I will go with you across the great sea."
Since their first parting, Vincent and Cranbrook had seen little of each other. They had met occasionally in the Vatican galleries, in the palace of the Cæsars, and on the Monte Pincio, and had then stopped to shake hands and to exchange a few friendly inquiries, but Cranbrook, for a reason which he strove hard to embellish, had hitherto refrained from inviting Harry to visit him in his dwelling. The latter had of course noticed this omission, but had attributed it to a very pardonable desire on Jack's part to keep him in ignorance as to the real state of his finances. "He is probably living in some cheap hovel," he thought, "and he is too proud to wish me to know it. But he needn't be afraid of my intruding upon his privacy until he himself opens his door to me." Unfortunately for both, Harry was not destined to carry out this amiable intention. A hostile fate led him to encroach upon his friend's territory when he was least suspecting it.
It was a sunny day early in February. Antonio Cæsarelli had saddled an uncommonly hoary and wise-looking donkey, named Abraham, and, as was his wont every Saturday, had repaired with it to the Piazza del Fiori, where he sold broccoli and other vegetables of the cabbage species. About noon, Annunciata came to bring him his dinner, and after having enjoyed for a while the sensation she made among the cabbage-dealers, betook herself on a journey of exploration through the city. Pietro's tale of the miracles performed at the monkey theatre had given a lively impetus to her imagination, and being unable to endure any longer his irritating airs of superior knowledge, she had formed the daring resolution to put his veracity to the test. She arrived quite breathless in the Piazza delle Terme, and with much flutter and palpitation inquired the price of a ticket. The door-keeper paused in his stentorian address to the multitude that was gathered about him, and informed her that ten soldi would admit her to the enchanted realm within. Poor Annunciata's countenance fell; she pulled her seven soldi from her pocket, counted them three or four times deliberately in her hand, and cast appealing glances at the stony-hearted Cerberus. At this moment she discovered a handsome young gentleman who, with his eyes fixed on her face, was elbowing his way through the crowd.
"Come along, my pretty lass," he said, in doubtful Italian. "Put those coppers in your pocket and let me get your ticket for you."
Annunciata was well aware that it was a dangerous thing to accept favors from unknown gentlemen, but just then her conscience refused to assert itself. Nevertheless, she summoned courage to answer, though in a voice which betrayed inward wavering:
"No, I thank you, signore; I would rather not."
"Oh, stuff, my child! I won't harm you, and your mother need never know."
He seized her gently by the arm and pointed toward the canvas door which was drawn aside to admit another spectator. A gorgeously attired monkey, riding on a poodle, became visible for an instant through the aperture. That was too much for Annunciata's conscience.
"But really, signore, I ought not!" she murmured, feebly.
"But we all do so many things that we ought not to do," answered he, with a brusque laugh. "However, I won't bite you; you needn't be afraid of me."
And before she knew it he had pushed her in through the door, and she found herself standing in a large tent, with long circular rows of benches which rose ampitheatrically from the arena toward the canvas walls. It was not quite to her taste that he conducted her to a seat near the roof, but she did not feel at liberty to remonstrate. She sat staring rigidly at the performances of the poodles and the monkeys, which were, no doubt, very wonderful, but which, somehow, failed to impress her as such, for she felt all the while that the gentleman at her side was regarding her with unaverted gaze. The thought of Signore Giovanni shot through her mind, and she feared she should never dare to look into his honest eyes again. Her heart kept hammering against her side, her blood burned in her cheeks, and she felt guilty and miserable. And yet she saw, in a sort of blind and unconscious way, that her escort was a very dazzling phenomenon, and in external finish much superior to her plain and unassuming lover. Gradually, as she accustomed herself to her novel situation, she began to bestow her furtive admiration upon the various ornaments which he carried about his person in the shape of scarf-pin and sleeve-buttons, and she also found time to observe that his linen and his handkerchief were immaculate and of exceeding fineness. The tout ensemble of his personality made the impression of costliness which, to her unsophisticated soul, was synonymous with high birth and an exalted social position.
"If only Signore Giovanni would dress like that," she thought, "how much more I should love him!"
That was a very disloyal thought, and her conscience immediately smote her. She arose, thanked her companion tremulously for his kindness, and hastened toward the door. When she was once more under the open sky, she drew a full breath of relief, and then hurried away as if the earth burned under her feet. It was nearly five o'clock when she reached the garden-gate of the villa; she paused for a moment to collect her thoughts, to arrange her excuses, and to prepare for the scolding which she knew was in store for her. She was just about to turn the key when, to her horror, she saw her unknown companion stepping out of a fiacre, and fearlessly approaching her.
"Surely, child, you didn't imagine you could run away from me in that style," he said smilingly. "Our acquaintance is not to come to such an untimely end. You must tell me your name, and, I was going to say, where you live, but that key will relieve you from the latter necessity. But, in order to prove to you that I am an honest fellow and mean no harm to you, here is my card. My name is Henry Vincent, I am an American, and—and—I should like to meet you again, if you have no objection."
Annunciata was now seriously alarmed.
"Signore," she faltered, "I am an honest girl, and you must not speak to me thus."
"By Jove! So am I an honest fellow, and no one need be ashamed of my acquaintance. If you had anything to fear from me, do you suppose I would offer you my card, and give you my name? But I must meet you again; if you don't give me the opportunity, I shall make my opportunity myself, and that might get you into a scrape and be unpleasant for both of us. Well, what do you say?"
The young girl stood for a while pondering. Her first impulse was to cut short the interview by mentioning Cranbrook's name and revealing her own relation to him. She had an idea that Cranbrook was a sort of national character and that all Americans must have heard of him. A second glance at Vincent's splendid attire, however, turned the scale in his favor.
"About noon next Saturday," she said, scarcely audibly, "I shall be in the Piazza del Fiori. My father will be there, too."
With a swift movement she tore the garden-gate open, slammed it behind her and ran up the path toward the terrace.
March, the very name of which makes a New Englander shiver, is a glorious month in Rome. Then a warmer tone steals into the sky, the clouds become airier and more buoyant in color and outline, and the Sabine Mountains display, with the varying moods of the day, tints of the most exquisite softness and delicacy. Cranbrook, from his lofty hermitage, had an excellent opportunity to observe this ever-changing panorama of earth and sky; but it had lost its charm to him. The long, cool vistas between the cloud-banks no more lifted the mind above itself, pointing the way into a great and glorious future. A vague dread was perpetually haunting him; he feared that Annunciata did not love him as he wished to be loved; that she regretted, perhaps, having bound herself to him and was not unwilling to break loose from him. But what was life to him without Annunciata? He must bide his time, and by daily kindness teach her to love him. That she was not happy might have other causes, unknown to him. Her vehement self-accusations and tearful protestations that she was not true to him might be merely the manifestations of a morbidly sensitive conscience.
Vincent in the meanwhile had changed his attitude completely toward the old masters. After his first meeting with Annunciata, his artistic sense had been singularly quickened. He might be seen almost daily wending his way, with a red-covered Baedeker under his arm, to the gate of a certain villa, where he would breathe the musty air of the deserted gallery for hours together, gaze abstractedly out of the windows, and sometimes, when he was observed, even make a pretence of sketching. Usually it was Monna Nina or Pietro who came to open the gate for him on such occasions, but, at rare intervals, it happened that Annunciata was sent to be his cicerone. She always met him with fear and trembling, but so irresistible was the fascination which he exerted over her, that he seemed to be able to change her mood at will. When he greeted her with his lazy smile her heart gave a great thump, and she laughed responsively, almost in spite of herself. If he scowled, which he was sometimes pleased to do when Monna Nina or Pietro had taken her place for several successive days, she looked apprehensive and inquired about his health. The costly presents of jewelry which he had given her, she hid guiltily in the most secret drawer of her chest, and then sat up late into the night and rejoiced and wept over them.
As for Vincent, it must be admitted that his own infatuation was no less complete. He had a feeling as if some new force had entered his life and filled it with a great, though dimly apprehended, meaning. His thought had gained a sweep and a width of wing which were a perpetual surprise to him. Not that he reasoned much about if he only felt strong and young and mightily aroused. He had firmly resolved to make Annunciata his wife, and he was utterly at a loss, and even secretly irritated at her reluctance to have their relation revealed to her parents. He could brook no obstacle in his march of conquest, and was constantly chafing at the necessity of concealment. He had frequently thought of anticipating Annunciata's decision, by presenting himself to her parents as a Crœsus from beyond the sea, who entertained the laudable intention of marrying their fair daughter; but somehow the character of Cophetua was ridiculously melodramatic, and Annunciata, with her imperial air, would have made a poor job of the beggar-maid.
It was on the tenth of March, 186-, a memorable date in the lives of the three persons concerned in this narrative. Cranbrook had just finished a semi-æsthetic and semi-political letter to a transatlantic journal, in which he figured twice a month as "our own correspondent." It was already late in the night; but the excitement of writing had made him abnormally wakeful, and knowing that it was of no use to go to bed, he blew out his lamp, lit a cigar and walked out upon the loggia. There was a warm and fitful spring wind blowing, and the unceasing rustling of the ilex leaves seemed cool and soothing to his hot and overwrought senses. In the upper strata of the air, a stronger gale was chasing dense masses and torn shreds of cloud with a fierce speed before the lunar crescent; and the broad terrace beyond the trees was alternately illuminated and plunged in gloom. In one of these sudden illuminations, Cranbrook thought he saw a man leaning against the marble balustrade; something appeared to be unwinding itself slowly from his arms, and presently there stood a woman at his side. Then the moon vanished behind a cloud, and all was darkness. Cranbrook began to tremble; a strange numbness stole over him. He stood for a while motionless, then lifted his hand to his forehead; but he hardly felt its touch; he only felt that it was cold and wet. Several minutes passed; a damp gust of wind swept through the tree-tops and a night-hawk screamed somewhere in the darkness. Presently the moon sailed out into the blue space, and he saw again the two figures locked in a close embrace. The wind bore toward him a dear familiar voice which sounded tender and appealing; his blood swept like fire through his veins. Hardly knowing what he did, he leaped down the stairs which led from the loggia into the court rushed through the garden toward the terrace, grappled for a moment with somebody, thrust against something hard which suddenly yielded, and then fell down—down into a deep and dark abyss.
When he awoke he felt a pair of cold hands fumbling with his shirt-collar; trees were all about him and the blue moonlit sky above him. He arose, not without difficulty, and recognized Annunciata's face close to his; she looked frightened and strove to avoid his glance.
"The Holy Virgin be praised, Signore Giovanni!" she whispered. "But Signore Enrico, he seems to be badly hurt."
He suddenly remembered what had happened; but he could bring forth no sound; he had a choking sensation in his throat and his lips seemed numb and lifeless. He saw Annunciata stooping down over a form that lay outstretched on the ground, but the sight of her was repulsive to him and he turned away.
"Help me, Signore Giovanni," she begged in a hoarse whisper. "He may be dead and there is no one to help him."
Half mechanically he stooped down—gracious heavens! It was Vincent! In an instant all his anger and misery were forgotten.
"Hurry, Annunciata," he cried; "run for a doctor. Great God! what have you done?"
Six weeks later two young Americans were sitting on the deck of the Cunarder Siberia, which had that morning left the Queenstown harbor.
"Jack," said the one, laying his hand on the other's shoulder in a way that expressed an untold amount of friendliness, "I don't think it is good policy to keep silence any longer. I know I have committed my monumental piece of folly, as you prophesied, but I need hardly tell you, Jack, that I didn't know at the time what—what I know now," he finished, hurriedly.
"I never doubted that, Harry," answered the other with a certain solemn impressiveness. "But don't let us talk. I have not reached the stage yet when I can mention her name without a pang; and I fear—I fear I never shall."
They sat for a long while smoking in silence and gazing pensively toward the dim coast-line of Europe, which was gradually fading away upon the eastern horizon.
"Jack," began Vincent abruptly, "I feel as if I had passed through a severe illness."
"So you have, Harry," retorted Cranbrook.
"Oh, pshaw! I don't mean that. That little physical suffering was nothing more than I deserved. But a fever, they say, sometimes purifies the blood, and mine, I think, has left me a cleaner and a wiser fellow than it found me."
The steamer kept ploughing its broad pathway of foam through the billows; a huge cloud of fantastic shape loomed up in the east, and the vanishing land blended with and melted away among its fleecy embankments.
"Are you perfectly sure, Jack," said Vincent, throwing the burning stump of his cigar over the gunwale, "that the experiences of the past year have not been all an excursion into the 'Arabian Nights'? If it were not for that fine marble relief in my trunk which I bought of that miserable buffoon in the Via Sistina, I should easily persuade myself that the actual world were bounded on the east by the Atlantic and on the west by the Pacific Ocean. I was just considering whether I should try to smuggle it through the custom-house, or whether, perhaps, it would be wiser to give Uncle Sam his due."
"And what does the relief represent?" asked Cranbrook, half indifferently.
"It is a copy from an antique one. Agamemnon robbing Achilles of his—"
Cranbrook gave a start, and walked rapidly toward the other end of the boat. In half an hour he returned, stopped in front of Vincent, grasped his hand warmly and said:
"Harry, let us agree never to refer to that which is passed. In your life it was an episode, in mine it was a catastrophe."
Since that day, Annunciata's name has never passed their lips.
There is, however, an epilogue to this tale which cannot well be left untold. In the winter of 187-, ten years after their first Italian sojourn, the two friends again visited Rome together. One beautiful day in February, they found themselves, perhaps not quite by accident, in the neighborhood of the well-remembered villa. They rang the bell at the garden gate and were admitted by a robust young man who seemed to be lounging among the overgrown hedges in some official capacity. The mossy Triton was still prosecuting his thankless task in the midst of his marble basin; the long stairs to the terrace were yet as damp and slippery as of old, and the noseless Roman senator was still persevering in his majestic attitude, although a sprig of maiden-hair was supporting its slender existence in the recess of his countenance which had once been occupied by his stately nose. Vincent and Cranbrook both regarded these familiar objects with peculiar emotions, but faithful to their agreement, they made no comment. At last they stopped before the sarcophagus—and verily Babetta was still there. A clean and chubby-faced Italian baby with large black eyes rose out of its marble depth and hailed them with simple, inarticulate delight. Cranbrook gazed long at the child, then lifted it up in his arms and kissed it. The young man who had opened the gate for them stood by observing the scene with a doubtful expression of suspicion and wonder. As the stranger again deposited the child on the blanket in the bottom of the sarcophagus, he stepped up before the door and called:
"Annunciata!"
A tall, comely matron appeared in the door—and the strangers hastened away.
In one of the deepest fjord-valleys on the western coast of Norway there lives, even to this day, a legend which may be worth relating. Several hundred years ago, a peasant dwelt there in the parish who had two sons, both born on the same day. During their infancy they looked so much alike that even the father himself could not always tell one from the other; and as the mother had died soon after their birth, there was no one to settle the question of primogeniture. At last the father, too, died, and each son, feeling sure that he was the elder, laid claim to the farm. For well nigh a year they kept wrangling and fighting, each threatening to burn the house over the other's head if he dared to take possession of it. The matter was finally adjusted by the opportune intervention of a neighbor who stood in high repute for wisdom. At his suggestion, they should each plant side by side a twig or sprout of some tree or herb, and he to whose plant God gave growth should be the owner of the farm. This advice was accepted; for God, both thought, was a safer arbiter than man. One of the brothers, Arne, chose a fern (Ormgrass), and the other, Ulf, a sweet-brier. A week later, they went with the wise man and two other neighbors to the remote pasture at the edge of the glacier where, by common consent, they had made their appeal to the judgment of heaven. Arne's fern stood waving in dewy freshness in the morning breeze; but Ulf's sweet-brier lay prostrate upon the ground, as if uprooted by some hostile hand. The eyes of the brothers met in a long, ill-boding glance.
"This is not heaven's judgment," muttered Ulf, under his breath. "Methinks I know the hand that has wrought this dastardly deed."
The umpires, unmindful of the charge, examined the uprooted twig, and decided that some wild animal must have trodden upon it. Accordingly they awarded the farm to Arne. Then swifter than thought Ulf's knife flew from its sheath; Arne turned pale as death and quivered like an aspen leaf. The umpires rushed forward to shield him. There was a moment of breathless suspense. Then Ulf with a wild shout hurled his knife away, and leaped over the brink of the precipice down into the icy gulf below. A remote hollow rumbling rose from the abyss, followed by a deeper stillness. The men peered out over the edge of the rock; the glacier lay vast and serene, with its cold, glittering surface glaring against the sky, and a thousand minute rivulets filled the air with their melodious tinkling.
"God be his judge and yours," said the men to Arne, and hastened away.
From that day Arne received the surname Ormgrass (literally Wormgrass, Fern), and his farm was called the Ormgrass farm. And the name has clung to his descendants until this day. Somehow, since the death of Ulf, the family had never been well liked, and in their proud seclusion, up under the eternal ice-fields, they sought their neighbors even less than they were themselves sought. They were indeed a remarkably handsome race, of a light build, with well-knit frames, and with a touch of that wild grace which makes a beast of prey seem beautiful and dangerous.
In the beginning of the present century Arne's grandson, Gudmund Ormgrass, was the bearer of the family name and the possessor of the estate. As ill luck would have it, his two sons, Arne and Tharald, both wooed the same maiden,—the fairest and proudest maiden in all the parish. After long wavering she at last was betrothed to Arne, as some thought, because he, being the elder, was the heir to the farm. But in less than a year, some two weeks before the wedding was to be, she bore a child; and Arne was not its father.
That same night the brothers met in an evil hour; from words they came to blows, knives were drawn, and after midnight Tharald was carried up to the farm with a deep wound in his shoulder and quite unconscious. He hovered for a week on the brink of death; then the wound began to heal and he recovered rapidly. Arne was nowhere to be found; rumor reported that he had been seen the day after the affray, on board a brig bound for Hull with lumber. At the end of a year Tharald married his brother's bride and took possession of the farm.
One morning in the early summer of 1868, some thirty-five years after the events just related, the fjord valley under the glacier was startled by three shrill shrieks from the passing steamer, the usual signal that a boat was wanted to land some stray passenger. A couple of boats were pushed out from the beach, and half a dozen men, with red-peaked caps and a certain picturesque nonchalance in their attire, scrambled into them and soon surrounded the gangway of the steamer. First some large trunks and boxes were lowered, showing that the passenger, whoever he might be, was a person of distinction,—an impression which was still further confirmed by the appearance of a tall, dark-skinned man, followed by a woolly-headed creature of a truly Satanic complexion, who created a profound sensation among the boatmen. Then the steamer shrieked once more, the echoes began a prolonged game of hide-and-seek among the snow-hooded peaks, and the boats slowly ploughed their way over the luminous mirror of fjord.
"Is there any farm here, where my servant and myself can find lodgings for the summer?" said the traveller, turning to a young peasant lad. "I should prefer to be as near to the glacier as possible."
He spoke Norwegian, with a strong foreign accent, but nevertheless with a correct and distinct enunciation.
"My father, Tharald Ormgrass, lives close up to the ice-field," answered the lad. "I shouldn't wonder if he would take you, if you will put up with our way of living."
"Will you accompany me to your father's house?"
"Yes, I guess I can do that." (Ja, jeg kan nok det.)
The lad, without waiting for further summons, trotted ahead, and the traveller with his black servant followed.
Maurice Fern (for that was the stranger's name) was, as already hinted, a tall, dark-complexioned man, as yet slightly on the sunny side of thirty, with a straight nose, firm, shapely mouth, which was neither sensual nor over-sensitive, and a pair of clear dark-brown eyes, in which there was a gleam of fervor, showing that he was not altogether incapable of enthusiasm. But for all that, the total impression of his personality was one of clear-headed decision and calm energy. He was a man of an absorbing presence, one whom you would have instinctively noticed even in a crowd. He bore himself with that unconscious grace which people are apt to call aristocratic, being apparently never encumbered by any superfluity of arms and legs. His features, whatever their ethnological value might be, were, at all events, decidedly handsome; but if they were typical of anything, they told unmistakably that their possessor was a man of culture. They showed none of that barbaric frankness which, like a manufacturer's label, flaunts in the face of all humanity the history of one's origin, race, and nationality. Culture is hostile to type; it humanizes the ferocious jaw-bones of the Celt, blanches the ruddy lustre of the Anglo-Saxon complexion, contracts the abdominal volume of the Teuton, and subdues the extravagant angularities of Brother Jonathan's stature and character. Although respecting this physiognomic reticence on the part of Mr. Fern, we dare not leave the reader in ignorance regarding the circumstances of which he was the unconscious result.
After his flight from Norway, Arne Ormgrass had roamed about for several months as "a wanderer and a vagabond upon the earth," until, finally, he settled down in New Orleans, where he entered into partnership with a thrifty young Swede, and established a hotel, known as the "Sailors' Valhalla." Fortune favored him: his reckless daring, his ready tongue, and, above all, his extraordinary beauty soon gained him an enviable reputation. Money became abundant, the hotel was torn down and rebuilt with the usual barbaric display of mirrors and upholstery, and the landlords began to aspire for guests of a higher degree. Then, one fine day, a young lady, with a long French name and aristocratic antecedents, fell in love with Arne, not coolly and prudently, as northern damsels do, but with wildly tragic gesticulations and a declamatory ardor that were superb to behold. To the Norseman, however, a passion of this degree of intensity was too novel to be altogether pleasing; he felt awed and bewildered,—standing, as he did, for the first time in his life in the presence of a veritable mystery. By some chance their clandestine meetings were discovered. The lady's brother shot at Arne, who returned the shot with better effect; then followed elopement—marriage—return to the bosom of the family, and a final grand tableau with parental blessing and reconciliation.
From that time forth, Arne Fern, as he was called (his Norse name having simply been translated into English), was a man of distinction. After the death of his father-in-law, in 1859, he sold his Louisiana property and emigrated with his wife and three children to San Francisco, where by successful real-estate investments he greatly increased his wealth. His eldest son, Maurice, was, at his own request, sent to the Eastern States, where educational advantages were greater; he entered, in due time, one of the best and oldest universities, and, to the great disappointment of his father, contracted a violent enthusiasm for natural science. Being convinced, however, that remonstrance was vain, the old gentleman gradually learned to look with a certain vague respect upon his son's enigmatical pursuits, and at last surprised the latter by "coming down quite handsomely" when funds were required for a geological excursion to Norway.
A scientific enthusiasm is one of the most uncomfortable things a human bosom can harbor. It may be the source of a good deal of private satisfaction to the devotee, but it makes him, in his own estimation, superior to all the minor claims of society. This was, at least in an eminent degree, the case with Maurice Fern. He was not wilfully regardless of other people's comfort; he seemed rather to be unconscious of their existence, except in a dim, general way, as a man who gazes intently at a strong light will gradually lose sight of all surrounding objects. And for all that, he was, by nature, a generous man; in his unscientific moments, when his mind was, as it were, off duty, he was capable of very unselfish deeds, and even of sublime self-sacrifice. It was only a few weeks since he had given his plaid to a shivering old woman in the Scottish stage-coach, and caught a severe cold in consequence; but he had bestowed his charity in a reserved, matter-of-fact way which made the act appear utterly commonplace and unheroic. He found it less troublesome to shiver than to be compelled to see some one else shivering, and his generosity thus assumed the appearance of a deliberate choice between two evils.
Phenomena of this degree of complexity are extremely rare in Norway, where human nature, as everything else, is of the large-lettered, easily legible type; and even Tharald Ormgrass, who, in spite of his good opinion of himself, was not an acute observer, had a lively sense of the foreignness of the guest whom, for pecuniary reasons, he had consented to lodge during the remainder of the summer.
A large, quaint, low-ceiled chamber on the second floor, with a superfluity of tiny greenish window-panes, was assigned to the stranger, and his African servant, Jake, was installed in a smaller adjoining apartment. The day after his arrival Maurice spent in unpacking and polishing his precious instruments, which, in the incongruous setting of rough-hewn timbers and gaily painted Norse furniture, looked almost fantastic. The maid who brought him his meals (for he could waste no time in dining with the family) walked about on tip-toe, as if she were in a sick-chamber, and occasionally stopped to gaze at him with mingled curiosity and awe.
The Ormgrass farm consisted of a long, bleak stretch of hill-side, in part overgrown with sweet-brier and juniper, and covered with large, lichen-painted bowlders. Here and there was a patch of hardy winter wheat, and at odd intervals a piece of brownish meadow. At the top of the slope you could see the huge shining ridge of the glacier, looming in threatening silence against the sky. Leaning, as it did, with a decided impulse to the westward, it was difficult to resist the impression that it had braced itself against the opposite mountain, and thrown its whole enormous weight against the Ormgrass hills for the purpose of forcing a passage down to the farm. To Maurice, at least, this idea suggested itself with considerable vividness as, on the second day after his arrival, he had his first complete view of the glacier. He had approached it, not from below, but from the western side, at the only point where ascent was possible. The vast expanse of the ice lay in cold, ghastly shade; for the sun, which was barely felt as a remote presence in the upper air, had not yet reached the depths of the valley. A silence as of death reigned everywhere; it floated up from the dim blue crevasses, it filled the air, it vibrated on the senses as with a vague endeavor to be heard. Jake, carrying a barometer, a surveyor's transit, and a multitude of smaller instruments, followed cautiously in his master's footsteps, and a young lad, Tharald Ormgrass's son, who had been engaged as a guide, ran nimbly over the glazed surface, at every step thrusting his steel-shod heels vindictively into the ice. But it would be futile for one of the uninitiated to attempt to follow Maurice in his scientific investigations; on such occasions he would have been extremely uninteresting to outside humanity, simply because outside humanity was the last thing he would have thought worth troubling himself about. And still his unremitting zeal in the pursuit of his aim, and his cool self-possession in the presence of danger, were not without a sublimity of their own; and the lustrous intensity of his vision as he grasped some new fact corroborative of some favorite theory, might well have stirred a sympathetic interest even in a mind of unscientific proclivities.
An hour after noon the three wanderers returned from their wintry excursion, Maurice calm and radiant, the ebony-faced Jake sore-footed and morose, and young Gudmund, the guide, with that stanch neutrality of countenance which with boys passes for dignity. The sun was now well in sight, and the silence of the glacier was broken. A thousand tiny rills, now gathering into miniature cataracts, now again scattering through a net-work of small, bluish channels, mingled their melodious voices into a hushed symphony, suggestive of fairy bells and elf-maidens dancing in the cool dusk of the arctic midsummer night.
Fern, with an air of profound preoccupation, seated himself on a ledge of rock at the border of the ice, took out his note-book and began to write.
"Jake," he said, without looking up, "be good enough to get us some dinner."
"We have nothing except some bread and butter, and some meat extract," answered the servant, demurely.
"That will be quite sufficient. You will find my pocket-stove and a bottle of alcohol in my valise."
Jake grumblingly obeyed; he only approved of science in so far as it was reconcilable with substantial feeding. He placed the lamp upon a huge bowlder (whose black sides were here and there enlivened with patches of buff and scarlet lichen), filled the basin with water from the glacier, and then lighted the wick. There was something obtrusively incongruous in seeing this fragile contrivance, indicating so many complicated wants, placed here among all the wild strength of primitive nature; it was like beholding the glacial age confronted with the nineteenth century.
At this moment Fern was interrupted in his scientific meditations by a loud scream of terror, and lifting his eyes, he saw a picturesque combination of yellow, black, and scarlet (in its general outline resembling a girl), fleeing with desperate speed up the narrow path along the glacier. The same glance also revealed to him two red-painted wooden pails dancing down over the jagged bowlders, and just about to make a final leap down upon the ice, when two determined kicks from his foot arrested them. Feeling somewhat solicitous about the girl, and unable to account for her fright, he hurried up the path; there she was again, still running, her yellow hair fluttering wildly about her head. He put his hands to his mouth and shouted. The echoes floated away over the desolate ice-hills, growing ever colder and feebler, like some abstract sound, deprived of its human quality. The girl, glancing back over her shoulder, showed a fair face, convulsed with agitation, paused for an instant to look again, and then dropped upon a stone in a state of utter collapse. One moment more and he was at her side. She was lying with her face downward, her blue eyes distended with fright, and her hands clutching some tufts of moss which she had unconsciously torn from the sides of the stone.
"My dear child," he said, stooping down over her (there was always something fatherly in his manner toward those who were suffering), "what is it that has frightened you so? It is surely not I you are afraid of?"
The girl moved her head slightly, and her lips parted as with an effort to speak; but no sound came.
Fern seized her hand, and put his forefinger on her pulse.
"By Jove, child," he exclaimed, "how you have been running!"
There was to him something very pathetic in this silent resignation of terror. All the tenderness of his nature was stirred; for, like many another undemonstrative person, he hid beneath a horny epidermis of apathy some deep-hued, warm-blooded qualities.
"There now," he continued, soothingly; "you will feel better in a moment. Remember there is nothing to be afraid of. There is nobody here who will do you any harm."
The young girl braced herself up on her elbow, and threw an anxious glance down the path.
"It surely was the devil," she whispered, turning with a look of shy appeal toward her protector.
"The devil? Who was the devil?"
"He was all black, and he grinned at me so horribly;" and she trembled anew at the very thought.
"Don't be a little goose," retorted he, laughing. "It was a far less important personage. It was my servant, Jake. And it was God who made him black, just for the sake of variety, you know. It would be rather monotonous to have everybody as white as you and me."
She attempted to smile, feeling that it was expected of her; but the result was hardly proportionate to the effort. Her features were not of that type which lends itself easily to disguises. A simple maidenly soul, if the whole infinite variety of human masks had been at its disposal, would have chosen just such a countenance as this as its complete expression. There was nothing striking in it, unless an entirely faultless combination of softly curving lines and fresh flesh-tints be rare enough to merit that appellation; nor would any one but a cynic have called it a commonplace face, for the absolute sweetness and purity which these simple lines and tints expressed appealed directly to that part of one's nature where no harsh adjectives dwell. It was a feeling of this kind which suddenly checked Fern in the scientific meditation he was about to indulge, and spoiled the profound but uncharitable result at which he had already half arrived. A young man who could extract scientific information from the features of a beautiful girl could hardly be called human; and our hero with all his enthusiasm for abstract things, was as yet not exalted above the laws which govern his species.
The girl had, under his kindly ministry, recovered her breath and her spirits. She had risen, brushed the moss and loose earth from her dress, and was about to proceed on her way.
"I thank you," she said simply, reaching him her hand in Norse fashion. "You have been very good to me."
"Not at all," he answered, shaking her hand heartily. "And now, wouldn't you please tell me your name?"
"Elsie Tharald's daughter Ormgrass."
"Ah, indeed! Then we shall soon be better acquainted. I am living at your father's house."
Two weeks had passed since Maurice's arrival at the farm. Elsie was sitting on the topmost step of the store-house stairs, intent upon some kind of coarse knitting-work, whose bag-like convexity remotely suggested a stocking. Some straggling rays of the late afternoon sun had got tangled in the loose locks on her forehead, which shone with a golden translucence. At the foot of the stairs stood her father, polishing with a woollen rag the tarnished silver of an ancient harness. At this moment Fern was seen entering the yard at the opposite side, and with his usual brisk step approaching the store-house. Elsie, looking up from her knitting, saw at once that there was something unusual in his manner—something which in another man you might have called agitation, but which with him was but an intenser degree of self-command.
"Good-evening," he said, as he stopped in front of her father. "I have something I wish to speak with you about."
"Speak on, young man," answered Tharald, rubbing away imperturbably at one of the blinders. "Elsie isn't likely to blab, even if what you say is worth blabbing."
"It is a more serious affair than you think," continued Fern, thrusting his peaked staff deep into the sod. "If the glacier goes on advancing at this rate, your farm is doomed within a year."
The old peasant raised his grizzly head, scratched with provoking deliberation the fringe of beard which lined his face like a frame, and stared with a look of supercilious scorn at his informant.
"If our fare don't suit you," he growled, "you needn't stay. We shan't try to keep you."
"I had no thought of myself," retorted Fern, calmly; for he had by this time grown somewhat accustomed to his host's disagreeable ways. "You will no doubt have observed that the glacier has, within the last thirty years, sent out a new branch to the westward, and if this branch continues to progress at its present rate, nothing short of a miracle can save you. During the first week after my arrival it advanced fifteen feet, as I have ascertained by accurate measurements, and during the last seven days it has shot forward nineteen feet more. If next winter should bring a heavy fall of snow, the nether edge may break off, without the slightest warning, and an avalanche may sweep down upon you, carrying houses, barns, and the very soil down into the fjord. I sincerely hope that you will heed my words, and take your precautions while it is yet time. Science is not to be trifled with; it has a power of prophecy surer than that of Ezekiel or Daniel."
"The devil take both you and your science!" cried the old man, now thoroughly aroused. "If you hadn't been poking about up there, and digging your sneezing-horn in everywhere, the glacier would have kept quiet, as it has done before, as far back as man's memory goes. I knew at once that mischief was brewing when you and your black Satan came here with your pocket-furnaces, and your long-legged gazing-tubes, and all the rest of your new-fangled deviltry. If you don't hurry up and get out of my house this very day, I will whip you off the farm like a dog."
Tharald would probably have continued this pleasing harangue for an indefinite period (for excitement acted as a powerful stimulus to his imagination), had he not just then felt the grasp of a hand upon his arm, and seen a pair of blue eyes, full of tearful appeal, raised to his.
"Get away, daughter," he grumbled, with that shade of gruffness which is but the transition to absolute surrender. "I am not talking to you."
"Oh, father," cried 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 role 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.