Captain Mansana & Mother's Hands Part 9

"Dear, it is nearly seven o'clock. What has become of the horses?"

"I had thought of sleeping here to-night, and not starting till to-morrow morning."

"Sleep here, mother?" She turned towards her mother with a look of surprise.

"I want very much to talk to you this evening."

The daughter recognised in her mother's eyes the same expression she had seen there at the station at Christiania: and she flushed. Then she turned back again into the room.

"Yes, suppose we take a walk." The mother came and put her arm round her neck.

Shortly after they were down by the river. It was between lights, and the softened hues of plain and ridge gave one a feeling of uncertainty.

A perfumed air was wafted from wood and meadow, and the rush of the river rose fiercely to their ears.

"It was of your father I wished to speak."

"My father?"

The daughter tried to stop her, but the mother went on.

"It was here I first saw him. Did you never hear his name mentioned in Christiania?"

"No." A tolerably long silence followed the "No."

"If I have never spoken of him freely, I had my reasons, Magne. You shall hear them now. For now I can tell you everything; I have not been able to do so before."

She waited for the daughter to make some rejoinder; but she made none.

The mother turned half round and pointed up towards the station, that is, towards the house which stood beside it.

"Can you see that broad roof there, to the right of the hotel? There are the a.s.sembly rooms, the library, and the rest. Your father has the credit of it; he gave all the timber. Well, it was there I first saw him, or rather from there I first saw him. I sat among the people who were going to hear him; the whole of the ground-floor is one single room with broad sloping galleries, and it is built after the American fashion; you know that your father went over there when he had finished his studies. Come, now, let us go on farther; I love this path by the riverside. I walked along it with your father just six weeks to the hour and day after I had first seen him, and by that time we were married."

"I know."

"You also know that I was maid of honour to the Queen when I came here.

She intended going farther out towards the fjord, but first we were to spend a few days here among the mountains.

"We came here one Sat.u.r.day afternoon (as you and I have to-day) and remained over Sunday. There was a great crowd of people on Sunday to see the Queen; they knew she was to go to church. In the afternoon they all thronged to the a.s.sembly rooms to hear your father speak.

I had seen the announcement of it in the hotel. The Queen read it too; I stood at her side and said, 'I do so terribly want to go.'

'Yes, go,' she answered, 'but you must be escorted by one of the gentlemen-in-waiting.' 'Here among the peasants!' I asked, and I took measures to go alone.

"I found a seat under the gallery, but near a large window, from which I could see a long way down the road. And as Karl Mander didn't come at the right time (he very seldom did) all necks were stretched to get a glimpse of him on the road; so I saw that he was to come from that direction. I looked, too, with the rest, and a long way off there were three men visible, walking arm-in-arm, one tall and two smaller, the tallest in the middle. I have very good sight, and thought at once that he could not be one of those, for they had been having too festive a time. They happened to stand still just at the moment, then they came along wavering, first to the right, then to the left. People began to whisper and t.i.tter. As the three drew nearer I felt instinctively that the tall one was Karl Mander, and felt ashamed."

"Was he drunk?"

"Yes, he was, and the others as well; and very drunk too, both the doctor and the lawyer; and the worst of it was, they were neither of them his friends or partisans. It was a trick they had played on him, for that was what people were in the habit of doing. They had undertaken to make him drunk; but they had become still more drunk themselves."

"How horrible, mother!" She wanted to stop; but the mother went on.

"Yes. I had read all kinds of things about Karl Mander--but it was a different thing to see him."

"Were you not afraid?"

"Yes. It was disgusting. But when they came near enough for me to distinguish their faces, and all the people in the crowd who could see them laughed aloud, I shook off my fear; and when they came quite close, Karl Mander appeared to me such a marvel that I absolutely delighted in him. I admit it."

"How a marvel?"

"He was the embodiment of beaming joy! Picture a whole brigade of cavalry in the maddest gallop, you would not get such a sense of exuberant delight! The powerful figure with the mighty head held these two little men, one under each arm, as though he were dragging along two poachers. And as he did so he laughed and shouted like a boisterous child. He looked as kindly and gladsome as the longest day in the year up at the North Pole. As for the others who had set themselves to make him tipsy--for, as I have told you, it was the fashionable amus.e.m.e.nt at that time to make Karl Mander drunk--he brought them alongside in triumph. He was tremendously proud of it. He was tall and broad-shouldered, in his light checked woollen suit, which was very thin and fine; for he could not endure heat, he was foremost among the worshippers of cold water, and bathed in it, even when he had to break the ice. He held his hat, which was a soft one and could be folded up, in his left hand. That was how he was always seen; he never wore his hat at home, and out of doors he carried it in his hand.

"A great bushy head of hair, extraordinarily thick and brown; which at this moment was falling over the lofty brow--(yes, your brow is like his)--and then the beard! I have never seen so beautiful a beard. It was of a light colour and very thick, but the chief peculiarity of it was its delicate curliness. It was positively beautiful in itself--as a beard seldom is.

"And then those deep shining eyes--yours are _something_ like them--and the clearly cut curve of the nose! He was a gentleman."

"Was he?"

"Heaven! haven't I managed to give you that impression?"

"Yes, yes--but others have----" She was silent, and the mother paused.

"Magne! I have not been able, I have not wished, to shield you from all this. As long as you were a child, a young girl, I could not explain everything to you exactly as it was. It would also have led you to try to defend that which you had not yet the power to defend, and that would have done you harm. And there was something else besides.

"But now you shall know it. Since your childhood I have never given you any advice which did not come from your father. You never saw him, but all the same I can say that you have never seen nor heard anything but him. Through me, you understand!"

"How so, mother?"

"Well, we are coming to that. Now I must make you understand how I came to marry him."

"Yes, dear!"

"He stood there on the platform and drank down water, gla.s.s after gla.s.s. He drank the entire contents of the water-bottle and called for more. The people laughed, and he laughed. He held the water-bottle and gla.s.s in a drunken grasp, and he looked up and round him, as though he was not properly conscious of himself or of us. And he laughed. But through it all I saw the G.o.dlike in him.

"A free man's open, joyous spirit, dear; unruffled self-reliance in reaching out for that which he needed. You should have seen his firm, capable hands, hardened by toil. And his face--the face of a man who overflows with all good gifts."

"What did people say?"

"They knew him, they were only amused. And he was amused. When he began to speak he had his tongue completely under control. It seemed to me that the voice was unnatural, it sounded as though it came from inward depths. But it was his natural voice. He had hardly begun when something happened. A crowd of ladies and gentlemen strolled by, among them some of the Queen's suite. We could see them from our place near the window, and he saw them too; we saw that they pointed in.

"He stopped short, turned quite pale, and drew a breath so deep that we all heard it. Then he drank more water. It was long before he could go on speaking. They all looked at him, some whispered among themselves.

Up to now he had spoken like a great machine which gives the first irregular beats with pauses between. But now he rose, and when he began to speak again he was sober. I tell you he was absolutely sober. Let me tell you by degrees, or you won't understand.

"His speech--do you know to what it can be compared? A fugue of Bach's.

There was something fulminating but abundant, uninterruptedly abundant, and often so gentle; but there was this great difference, that he often groped for a word, changed it, altered it again, and yet it was incessant, and reverberant in spite of it all--that was the wonderful part of it. An irresistible reckless eagerness and haste. One wondered if there could be more, and there was always more, and nearly always something extraordinary.

"I had often heard people described as being possessed by some force of nature, but I had never seen it. Least of all at the Court, where marked personality is rare. I was at last face to face with one. The man who stood there was _obliged_ to speak--in the same way, probably, as at a generous table he was _obliged_ to drink. I knew that he managed his two farms, and worked on them himself when he had time, and I imagined that I could see the giant finding relaxation in the work; but I saw clearly that his mind would work on as actively all the same, and that head and hands would vie with each other which should weary first.

"It was of work that he spoke. He led off by a reference to the Queen.