Arne; A Sketch of Norwegian Country Life Part 12

"It's the weather-vane," said Eli; and after a little while she added in a lower tone, as if to herself, "it must have come unfastened."

But Arne had been like one who wished to speak and could not. Now he said, "Do you remember that tale about the thrushes?"

"Yes."

"It was you who told it, indeed. It was a nice tale."

"I often think there's something that sings when all is still," she said, in a voice so soft and low that he felt as if he heard it now for the first time.

"It is the good within our own souls," he said.

She looked at him as if she thought that answer meant too much; and they both stood silent a few moments. Then she asked, while she wrote with her finger on the window-pane, "Have you made any songs lately?"

He blushed; but she did not see it, and so she asked once more, "How do you manage to make songs?"

"Should you like to know?"

"Well, yes;--I should."

"I store up the thoughts that other people let slip."

She was silent for a long while; perhaps thinking she might have had some thoughts fit for songs, but had let them slip.

"How strange it is," she said, at last, as though to herself, and beginning to write again on the window-pane.

"I made a song the first time I had seen you."

"Where was that?"

"Behind the parsonage, that evening you went away from there;--I saw you in the water."

She laughed, and was quiet for a while.

"Let me hear that song."

Arne had never done such a thing before, but he repeated the song now:

"Fair Venevill bounded on lithesome feet Her lover to meet," &c.[4]

[4] As on page 68.

Eli listened attentively, and stood silent long after he had finished. At last she exclaimed, "Ah, what a pity for her!"

"I feel as if I had not made that song myself," he said; and then stood like her, thinking over it.

"But that won't be my fate, I hope," she said, after a pause.

"No; I was thinking rather of myself."

"Will it be your fate, then?"

"I don't know; I felt so then."

"How strange." She wrote on the panes again.

The next day, when Arne came into the room to dinner, he went over to the window. Outdoors it was dull and foggy, but indoors, warm and comfortable; and on the window-pane was written with a finger, "Arne, Arne, Arne," and nothing but "Arne," over and over again: it was at that window, Eli stood the evening before.

XI.

ELI'S SICKNESS.

Next day, Arne came into the room and said he had heard in the yard that the clergyman's daughter, Mathilde, had just gone to the town; as she thought, for a few days, but as her parents intended, for a year or two. Eli had heard nothing of this before, and now she fell down fainting. Arne had never seen any one faint, and he was much frightened. He ran for the maids; they ran for the parents, who came hurrying in; and there was a disturbance all over the house, and the dog barked on the barn steps. Soon after, when Arne came in again, the mother was kneeling at the bedside, while the father supported Eli's drooping head. The maids were running about--one for water, another for hartshorn which was in the cupboard, while a third unfastened her jacket.

"G.o.d help you!" the mother said; "I see it was wrong in us not to tell her; it was you, Baard, who would have it so; G.o.d help you!"

Baard did not answer. "I wished to tell her, indeed; but nothing's to be as I wish; G.o.d help you! You're always so harsh with her, Baard; you don't understand her; you don't know what it is to love anybody, you don't." Baard did not answer. "She isn't like some others who can bear sorrow; it quite puts her down, poor slight thing, as she is.

Wake up, my child, and we'll be kind to you! wake up, Eli, my own darling, and don't grieve us so."

"You always either talk too much or too little," Baard said, at last, looking over to Arne, as though he did not wish him to hear such things, but to leave the room. As, however, the maid-servants stayed, Arne thought he, too, might stay; but he went over to the window.

Soon the sick girl revived so far as to be able to look round and recognize those about her; but then also memory returned, and she called wildly for Mathilde, went into hysterics, and sobbed till it was painful to be in the room. The mother tried to soothe her, and the father sat down where she could see him; but she pushed them both from her.

"Go away!" she cried; "I don't like you; go away!"

"Oh, Eli, how can you say you don't like your own parents?" exclaimed the mother.

"No! you're unkind to me, and you take away every pleasure from me!"

"Eli, Eli! don't say such hard things," said the mother, imploringly.

"Yes, mother," she exclaimed; "now I _must_ say it! Yes, mother; you wish to marry me to that bad man; and I won't have him! You shut me up here, where I'm never happy save when I'm going out! And you take away Mathilde from me; the only one in the world I love and long for!

Oh, G.o.d, what will become of me, now Mathilde is gone!"

"But you haven't been much with her lately," Baard said.

"What did that matter, so long as I could look over to her from that window," the poor girl answered, weeping in a childlike way that Arne had never before seen in any one.

"Why, you couldn't see her there," said Baard.

"Still, I saw the house," she answered; and the mother added pa.s.sionately, "You don't understand such things, you don't." Then Baard said nothing more.

"Now, I can never again go to the window," said Eli. "When I rose in the morning, I went there; in the evening I sat there in the moonlight: I went there when I could go to no one else. Mathilde!

Mathilde?" She writhed in the bed, and went again into hysterics.

Baard sat down on a stool a little way from the bed, and continued looking at her.

But Eli did not recover so soon as they expected. Towards evening they saw she would have a serious illness, which had probably been coming upon her for some time; and Arne was called to a.s.sist in carrying her up-stairs to her room. She lay quiet and unconscious, looking very pale. The mother sat by the side of her bed, the father stood at the foot, looking at her: afterwards he went to his work. So did Arne; but that night before he went to sleep, he prayed for her; prayed that she who was so young and fair might be happy in this world, and that no one might bar away joy from her.