Arne: Early Tales and Sketches Part 12

"You may well be astonished! From Boen?"

"Is that so strange?" asked Arne, but did not look at her as he spoke.

"From Boen?" cried the mother, once more.

"Well, why not as well from there as from another gard?" Arne now looked up a little.

"From Boen and Birgit Boen! Baard, who gave your father the blow that was his ruin, and that for Birgit Boen's sake!"

"What do you say?" now cried the youth. "Was that Baard Boen?"

Son and mother stood and looked at each other. Between the two a whole life was unfolded, and this was a moment wherein they could see the black thread which all along had been woven through it. They fell later to talking about the father's proud days, when old Eli Boen herself had courted him for her daughter Birgit, and got a refusal. They went through his whole life just as far as where he was knocked down, and both found out that Baard's fault had been the least. Nevertheless, it was he who had given the father that fatal blow,--he it was.

"Am I not yet done with father?" then thought Arne, and decided at the same moment to go.

When Arne came walking, with the hand-saw on his shoulder, over the ice and up toward Boen, it seemed to him a pretty gard. The house always looked as though it were newly painted; he was a little chilled, and that was perhaps why it seemed so cozy to him. He did not go directly in, but went beyond toward the stable, where a flock of s.h.a.ggy goats were standing in the snow, gnawing at the bark of some fir branches. A shepherd dog walked to and fro on the barn-bridge, and barked as though the devil himself was coming to the gard; but the moment Arne stood still, he wagged his tail and let him pat him. The kitchen door on the farther side of the house was often opened, and Arne looked down there each time; but it was either the dairy-maid, with tubs and pails, or the cook, who was throwing something out to the goats. Inside the barn they were threshing with frequent strokes, and to the left, in front of the wood-shed, stood a boy chopping wood; behind him there were many layers of wood piled up.

Arne put down his saw and went into the kitchen; there white sand was spread on the floor, and finely cut juniper leaves strewed over it; on the walls glittered copper kettles, and crockery stood in rows. They were cooking dinner. Arne asked to speak with Baard. "Go into the sitting-room," some one said, pointing to the door. He went; there was no latch to the door, but a bra.s.s handle; it was cheerful in there, and brightly painted, the ceiling was decorated with many roses, the cupboards were red, with the owner's name in black, the bed-stead was also red, but bordered with blue stripes. By the stove sat a broad-shouldered man, with a mild face, and long, yellow hair; he was putting hoops about some pails; by the long table sat a tall, slender woman, with a high linen cap on her head, and dressed in tight-fitting clothes; she was sorting corn into two heaps. Besides these there were no others in the room.

"Good day, and bless the work!" said Arne, drawing off his hat. Both looked up; the man smiled, and asked who it was.

"It is he who is to do carpentering."

The man smiled more, and said, as he nodded his head and began his work again,--

"Well, then, it is Arne Kampen!"

"Arne Kampen?" cried the wife, and stared fixedly before her.

The man looked up hastily, and smiled again. "The son of tailor Nils,"

he said, and went on once more with his work.

After a while, the wife got up, crossed the floor to the shelf, turned, went to the cupboard, turned again, and as she at last was rummaging in a table drawer, she asked, without looking up,--

"Is _he_ to work _here_?"

"Yes, that he is," said the man, also without looking up. "It seems no one has asked you to sit down," he observed, addressing himself to Arne.

The latter took a seat; the wife left the room, the man continued to work; and so Arne asked if he too should begin.

"Let us first have dinner."

The wife did not come in again; but the next time the kitchen-door opened it was Eli who came. She appeared at first not to notice Arne; when he rose to go to her, she stood still, and half turned to give him her hand, but she did not look at him. They exchanged a few words; the father worked on. Eli had her hair braided, wore a tight-sleeved dress, was slender and straight, had round wrists and small hands. She laid the table; the working-people dined in the next room, but Arne with the family in this one; it so happened that they had their meals separately to-day; usually they all ate at the same table in the large, light kitchen.

"Is not mother coming?" asked the man.

"No, she is up-stairs weighing wool."

"Have you asked her?"

"Yes; but she says she does not want anything."

There was silence for a while.

"But it is cold up-stairs."

"She did not want me to make a fire."

After dinner Arne began work; in the evening he was again with the family in the sitting-room. Then the wife, too, was there. The women were sewing. The husband was busy with some trifles, and Arne helped him; there was a prolonged silence, for Eli, who usually led in conversation, was also silent. Arne thought with dismay that it probably was often thus at his own home; but he realized it now for the first time. Eli drew a long breath at last, as though she had restrained herself long enough, and then she fell to laughing. Then the father also laughed, and Arne, too, thought it was laughable, and joined in. From this time forth they talked of various things; but it ended in Arne and Eli doing most of the talking, the father putting in an occasional word.

But once, when Arne had been speaking for some time and happened to look up, he met the eyes of the mother, Birgit; she had dropped her sewing, and sat staring fixedly at him. Now she picked up her work again, but at the first word he spoke she raised her eyes.

Bed-time came, and each one went his way. Arne thought he would notice the dream he had the first night in a new place; but there seemed to be no sense in it. The whole day long he had talked little or none with the master of the gard, but at night it was of him he dreamed. The last thing was that Baard sat playing cards with tailor Nils. The latter was very angry and pale in the face; but Baard smiled and won the game.

Arne remained several days, during which time there was scarcely any talking, but a great deal of work. Not only those in the family room were silent, but the servants, the tenants, even the women. There was an old dog on the gard that barked every time strangers came; but the gard people never heard the dog without saying "hush!" and then he went growling off and laid down again. At home at Kampen there was a large weather-vane on the house, which turned with the wind; there was a still larger vane here, to which Arne's attention was attracted because it did not turn. When there was a strong current of wind, the vane struggled to get loose, and Arne looked at it until he felt compelled to go up on the roof and set the vane free. It was not frozen fast, as he had supposed, but a pin was stuck through it that it might be kept still.

This Arne took out and threw down; the pin struck Baard, who came walking along. He glanced up.

"What are you doing there?"

"I am letting loose the vane."

"Do not do so; it makes such a wailing noise when it is in motion."

Arne sat astride the gable.

"That is better than always being quiet."

Baard looked up at Arne, and Arne looked down on Baard; then Baard smiled.

"He who has to howl when he talks had much better keep silent, I am sure."

Now it often happens that words haunt us long after they were uttered, especially when they were the last ones heard. So these words haunted Arne when he crept down in the cold from the roof, and were still with him in the evening when he entered the family room. Eli was standing, in the twilight, by a window, gazing out over the ice which lay glittering beneath the moon's beams. Arne went to the other window and looked out as she was doing. Within all was cozy and quiet, without it was cold; a sharp wind swept across the valley, so shaking the trees that the shadows they cast in the moonlight did not lie still, but went groping about in the snow. From the parsonage there glimmered a light, opening out and closing in, a.s.suming many shapes and colors, as light is apt to do when one gazes at it too long. The mountain loomed up beyond, dark and gloomy, with romance in its depths and moonshine on its upper banks of snow. The sky was aglow with stars, and a little flickering northern light appeared in one quarter of the horizon, but did not spread. A short distance from the window, down toward the lake, there were some trees whose shadows kept prowling from one to the other, but the great ash stood alone, writing on the snow.

The night was very still,--only now and then something shrieked and howled with a long, wailing cry.

"What is that?" asked Arne.

"It is the weather-vane," said Eli; and afterwards she continued more softly, as though to herself: "It must have been let loose."

But Arne had been feeling like one who wanted to speak and could not.

Now he said:--

"Do you remember the story about the thrushes that sang?"

"Yes."

"Why, to be sure, it was you who told that one! It was a pretty story."

She said, in so gentle a voice that it seemed as though it were the first time he heard it,--