Glimpses of Three Coasts Part 21

"Raphaels,--lots of Raphaels."

"I don't care for Raphaels, anyhow. I'll tell you who I like; I like Veronese."

"Well, I'm very fond of Tintoretto."

"I like t.i.tians; they're so delicate, don't you know?"

"Well, who's that man that's painted such dreadful things,--all mixed up, don't you know? In some places you see a good many of them."

"You don't mean Rembrandt, do you? There are a lot of Rembrandts in Munich."

"There was one picture I liked. I think it was a Christ; but I ain't sure. There were four children on the ground, I remember."

When the real sunset came we were threading the rocky labyrinths of the Bergen Fjord. It is a field of bowlders, with an ocean let in; nothing more. Why the bowlders are not submerged, since the water is deep enough for big ships to sail on, is the perpetual marvel; but they are not. They are as firm in their places as continents, myriads of them only a few feet out of water; and when the sun as it sinks sends a flood of gold and red light athwart them, they turn all colors, and glow on the water like great smoke crystals with fire shining through. To sail up this fjord in the sunset is to wind through devious lanes walled with these jewels, and to look off, over and above them, to fields of purple and gray and green, islands on islands on islands, to the right and to the left, with the same jewel-walled lanes running east and west and north and south among them; the sky will stream with glowing colors from horizon to horizon, and the glorious silence will be broken by no harsher sound than the low lapsing of waters and the soft whirr of gray gulls' wings.

And so we came to Bergen in the bright midnight of the last of our four days.

Months afterwards Sanna sent me a few extracts from descriptions given by a Norwegian writer of some of the spots we had seen in the dim upper distances along the fjords,--some of those illuminated s.p.a.ces of green high up among the crags, which looked such sunny and peaceful homes.

Her English is so much more graphic than mine that I have begged her permission to give the extracts as she wrote them:--

"Grand, glorious, and serious is the Sogne Fjord. Serious in itself, and still more serious we find it when we know where and how people do live there between mountains. And we must wonder or ask, Is there really none places left, or no kind of work for those people to get for the maintenance of the life, but to go to such desolate and rather impa.s.sable a place?...

"More than half of the year are the two families who live on the farm of Vetti separated from all other human beings. During the winter can the usual path in the gra.s.s not be pa.s.sed in case of snow, ice, and perpetual slips, which leave behind trace long out in the summer, because the sun only for a short time came over this long enormous abyss, and does not linger there long, so that the snow which has been to ice do melt very slow, and seldom disappear earlier than in July. The short time in the winter when the river Utla is frozen may the bottom of the pa.s.s well be pa.s.sed, though not without danger, on account of the mentioned slips, which, with the power of the hurricane, are whizzing down in the deep, and which merely pressure of the air is so strong that it throw all down.

"Late in the autumn and in the spring is all approach to and from Vetti quite stopped; and late in the autumn chiefly with ground and snow slips, which then get loosened by the frequent rain. The farm-houses is situate on a steep slope, so that the one end of the lowest beam is put on the mere ground, and the other end must be put on a wall almost three yards high. The fields are so steep, and so quite near the dreadful precipice, that none unaccustomed to it do venture one's self thither; and when one from here look over the pa.s.s, and look the meadows which is more hanging than laying over the deep, and which have its gra.s.s mowed down with a short scythe, then one cannot comprehend the desperate courage which risk to set about and occupy one's self here, while the abyss has opened its swallow for receiving the foolhardy.

"A little above the dwelling-houses is a quite tolerable plain; and when one ask the man why he has not built his houses there, he answers that owing to the snow-slips it is impossible to build there.

"Through the valley-streams the Afdals River comes from the mountains, run in a distance of only twenty yards from the farm-houses, and about one hundred yards from the same pour out itself with crash of thunder in a mighty foss. The rumble of the same, and that with its hurling out caused pressure of the air, is in the summer so strong that the dwelling-houses seems to shiver, and all what fluids there in open vessels get placed on the table is on an incessant trembling, moving almost as on board a ship in a rough sea. The wall and windows which turns to the river are then always moistened of the whipped foam, which in small particles continually is thrown back from the foss.

"By the side of this foss, in the hard granite wall which it moisten, is a mined gut (the author says he can't call it a road, though it is reckoned for that), broad enough that one man, and in the highest one small well-trained horse, however not by each other's side, can walk therein. This gut, which vault is not so high that an full-grown man can walk upright, is the farm's only road which rise to a considerable height.

"But as this gut could not get lightened in a suitable height, one has filled up or finished the remaining gap with four timber beams, four or five yards long, which is close to the gut, and with its upper end leans on a higher small mountain peak, which beside this is the fastening for the bridge over the waterfall. In these beams is cut in flukes, just as the steps of a staircase, and when one walks up these flukes one looks between the beams the frothing foss beneath one's self, while one get wrapped up of its exhalation clouds.

"The man told me that the pa.s.s also is to be pa.s.sed with horse, the time of the summer, and that all then is to be carried in a pack-saddle to the farm, of his own horse, which is accustomed to this trip. And when one know the small Laerdalske horses'

easiness, and the extraordinary security wherewith they can go upon the most narrow path on the edge of the most dreadful precipices, in that they place or cast the feet so in front of each other that no path is too narrow for them, then it seems a little less surprising.

"From the Vetti farm continues the pa.s.s in a distance of about twenty-one English miles, so that the whole pa.s.s, then, is a little more than twenty-four miles, and shall on the other side of the farm be still more narrow, more difficult, and more dreadful. The farmer himself and his people must often go there to the woods, and for other things for his farm. There belongs to this farm most excellent saeter and mountain fields, wherefore the cattle begetting is here of great importance; and also the most excellent tract of firs belong to this farm.

"I was curious to know how one had to behave from here to get the dead buried, when it was impossible that two men could walk by the side of each other through the pa.s.s, and I did even not see how one could carry any coffin on horseback. I got the following information: The corpse is to be laid on a thin board, in which there is bored holes in both ends in which there is to be put handles of rope; to this board is the corpse to be tied, wrapped up in its linen cloth. And now one man in the front and one behind carry it through the pa.s.s to the farm Gjelde, and here it is to be laid into the coffin, and in the common manner brought to the churchyard. If any one die in the winter, and the bottom of the pa.s.s must be impa.s.sable then as well as in the spring and in the autumn, one must try to keep the corpse in an hard frozen state, which is not difficult, till it can be brought down in the above-mentioned manner.

"A still more strange and sad manner was used once at a cottager place called Vermelien. This place is lying in the little valley which border to the Vetti's field. Its situation by the river deep down in the pa.s.s is exceedingly horrid, and it has none other road or path than a very steep and narrow foot-path along the mountain wall side with the most dreadful precipice as by the Vetti.

"Since the cottager people here generally had changed, no one had dead there. It happened, then, the first time a boy, on seventeen years old, died. One did not do one's self any hesitation about the manner to bring him to his grave, and they made a coffin in the house. The corpse was put in the coffin, and then the coffin brought outside; and first now one did see with consternation that it was not possible to carry the corpse with them in this manner. What was to do then?

"At last they resolved to let the coffin be left as a _memento mori_, and to place the dead upon a horse, his feet tied up under the belly of the horse; against the mane on the horse was fastened a well-stuffed fodder bag, that the corpse may lean to the same, to which again the corpse was tied. And so the dead must ride over the mountain to his resting-place by Fortun's church in Lyster."

THE KATRINA SAGA.

I.

"Forr English Ladies." This was the address on the back of a much-thumbed envelope, resting on top of the key-rack in the dining-room of our Bergen hotel. If "For" had been spelled correctly, the letter would not have been half so likely to be read; but that extra outsider of an _r_ was irresistibly attractive. The words of the letter itself were, if not equally original in spelling, at least as unique in arrangement, and altogether the advertis.e.m.e.nt answered its purposes far better than if it had been written in good English. The _navete_ with which the writer went on to say, "I do recommend me,"

was delicious; and when she herself appeared there was something in her whole personal bearing entirely in keeping with the childlike and unconscious complacency of her phraseology. "I do recommend me" was written all over her face; and, as things turned out, if it had been "I do guarantee me," it had not been too strong an indors.e.m.e.nt. A more tireless, willing, thoughtful, helpful, eager, shrewd little creature than Katrina never chattered. Looking back from the last day to the first of my acquaintance with her, I feel a remorseful twinge as I think how near I came to taking instead of her, as my maid for a month's journeying, a stately young woman, who, appearing in answer to my advertis.e.m.e.nt, handed me her card with dignity, and begged my pardon for inquiring precisely what it would be that she would have to do for me, besides the turning of English into Norwegian and _vice versa_. The contrast between this specific gravity and Katrina's hearty and unreflecting "I will do my best to satisfy you in all occasions," did not sufficiently impress me in the outset. But many a time afterward did I recall it, and believe more than ever in the doctrine of lucky stars and good angels.

When Katrina appeared, punctually to the appointed minute, half an hour before the time for setting off, I saw with pleasure that she was wrapped in a warm cloak of dark cloth. I had seen her before, flitting about in shawls of various sorts, loosely pinned at the throat in a disjointed kind of way, which gave to her appearance an expression that I did not like,--an expression of desultory if not intermittent respectability. But wrapped in this heavy cloak, she was decorum personified.

"Ah, Katrina," I said, "I am very glad to see you are warmly dressed.

This summer you keep in Norway is so cold, one needs winter clothes all the time."

"Yes, I must," she replied. "I get fever and ague in New York, and since then it always reminds me. That was six years ago; but it reminds me,--the freezing at my neck," putting her hand to the back of her neck.

It was in New York, then, that she had learned so much English. This explained everything,--the curious mixture of volubility and inaccuracy and slang in her speech. She had been for several months a house-servant in New York, "with an Irish lady; such a nice lady. Her husband, he took care of a bank: kept it clean, don't you see, and all such tings. And we lived in the top in the eight story: we was always going up and down in the elewator."

After this she had been a b.u.t.ton-hole maker in a great clothing-house, and next, had married one of her own countrymen; a nephew, by the way, of the famous Norwegian giant at Barnum's Museum,--a fact which Katrina stated simply, without any apparent boast, adding, "My husband's father were guyant, too. There be many guyants in that part of the country."

Perhaps it was wicked, seeing that Katrina had had such hopes of learning much English in her month with me, not to have told her then and there that _g_ in the English word _giant_ was always soft. But I could not. Neither did I once, from first to last, correct her inimitable and delicious p.r.o.nunciations. I confined my instructions to the endeavor to make her understand clearly the meanings of words, and to teach her true synonymes; but as for meddling with her p.r.o.nunciations, I would as soon have been caught trying to teach a baby to speak plain. I fear, towards the last, she began to suspect this, and to be half aware of the not wholly disinterested pleasure which I took in listening to her eager prattle; but she did not accuse me, and I let her set off for home not one whit wiser in the matter of the sounds of the English language than she had been when she came away, except so far as she might have unconsciously caught them from hearing me speak. It is just as well: her English is quite good enough as it is, for all practical purposes in Norway, and would lose half its charm and value to English-speaking people if she were to learn to say the words as we say them.

To set off by boat from Bergen means to set off by boats; it would not be an idle addition to the phrase, either, to say, not only by boats, but among boats, in, out, over, and across boats; and one may consider himself lucky if he is not called upon to add,--the whole truth being told,--under boats. Arriving at the wharf, he is shown where his steamer lies, midway in the harbor; whether it be at anchor, or hoisted on a raft of small boats, he is at first at a loss to see.

However, rowing alongside, he discovers that the raft of small boats is only a crowd, like any other crowd, of movable things or creatures, and can be shoved, jostled, pushed out of the way, and compelled to give room. A Norwegian can elbow his boat through a tight-packed ma.s.s of boats with as dexterous and irresistible force as another man can elbow his way on foot, on dry land, in a crowd of men. So long as you are sitting quiet in the middle of the boat, merely swayed from side to side by his gyrations, with no sort of responsibility as to their successive direction, and with implicit faith in their being right, it is all very well. But when your Norwegian springs up, confident, poises one foot on the edge of his own boat, the other foot on the edge of another boat, plants one of his oars against the gunwale of a third boat, and rests the other oar hard up against the high side of a steamboat, and then authoritatively requests you to rise and make pathway for yourself across and between all these oars and boats, and leap varying chasms of water between them and the ladder up the steamer's side, dismay seizes you, if you are not to the water born.

I did not hear of anybody's being drowned in attempting to get on board a Bergen steamer. But why somebody is not, every day in the week, I do not know, if it often happens to people to thread and surmount such a labyrinth of small rocking boats as lay around the dampskib "Jupiter," in which Katrina and I sailed for Christiania.

The Northern nations of Europe seem to have hit upon signally appropriate names for that place of torment which in English is called steamboat. There are times when simply to p.r.o.nounce the words _dampskib_ or _dampbaad_ is soothing to the nerves; and nowhere oftener than in Norway can one be called upon to seek such relief. It is an accepted thing in Norway that no steamboat can be counted on either to arrive or depart within one, two, or three hours of its advertised time. The guide-books all state this fact; so n.o.body who, thus forewarned, has chosen to trust himself to the dampskib has any right to complain if the whole plan of his journey is disarranged and frustrated by the thing's not arriving within four hours of the time it had promised. But it is not set down in the guide-books, as it ought to be, that there is something else on which the traveller in Norwegian dampskibs can place no dependence whatever; and that is the engaging beforehand of his stateroom. To have engaged a stateroom one week beforehand, positively, explicitly, and then, upon arriving on board, to be confronted by a smiling captain, who states in an off-hand manner, as if it were an every-day occurrence, that "he is very sorry, but it is impossible to let you have it;" and who, when he is pressed for an explanation of the impossibility, has no better reason to give than that two gentlemen wanted the stateroom, and as the two gentlemen could not go in the ladies' cabin, and you, owing to the misfortune of your s.e.x, could, therefore the two gentlemen have the stateroom, and you will take the one remaining untenanted berth in the cabin,--this is what may happen in a Norwegian dampskib. If one is resolute enough to halt in the gangway, and, ordering the porters bearing the luggage to halt also, say calmly, "Very well; then I must return to my hotel, and wait for another boat, in which I can have a stateroom; it would be quite out of the question, my making the journey in the cabin," the captain will discover some way of disposing of the two gentlemen, and without putting them into the ladies' cabin; but this late concession, not to the justice of your claim, only to your determination in enforcing it, does not in any wise conciliate your respect or your amiability. The fact of the imposition and unfairness is the same. I ought to say, however, that this is the only matter in which I found unfairness in Norway. In regard to everything else the Norwegian has to provide or to sell, he is just and honest; but when it comes to the question of dampskib accommodations, he seems to take leave of all his sense of obligation to be either.

As I crept into the narrow trough called a berth, in my hardly won stateroom, a vision flitted past the door: a tall and graceful figure, in a tight, shabby black gown; a cla.s.sic head, set with the grace of a lily on a slender neck; pale brown hair, put back, braided, and wound in a knot behind, all save a few short curls, which fell lightly floating and waving over a low forehead; a pair of honest, merry gray eyes, with a swift twinkle at the corners, and a sudden serious tenderness in their depths; a straight nose, with a nostril spirited and fine as an Arabian's; a mouth of flawless beauty, unless it might be that the upper lip was a trifle too short, but this fault only added to the piquancy of the face. I lifted myself on my elbow to look at her. She was gone; and I sank back, thinking of the pictures that the world raved over, so few short years ago, of the lovely Eugenie.

Here was a face strangely like hers, but with far more fire and character,--a Norwegian girl, evidently poor. I was wondering if I should see her again, and how I could manage to set Katrina on her track, and if I could find out who she was, when, lo, there she stood by my side, bending above me, and saying something Norwegian over and over in a gentle voice; and Katrina behind her, saying, "This is the lady what has care of all. She do say, 'Poor lady, poor lady, to be so sick!' She is sorry that you are sick." I gazed at her in stupefied wonder. This radiant creature the stewardess of a steamboat! She was more beautiful near than at a distance. I am sure I have never seen so beautiful a woman. And coming nearer, one could see clearly, almost as radiant as her physical beauty, the beauty of a fine and sweet nature shining through. Her smile was transcendent. I am not over-easy to be stirred by women's fair looks. Seldom I see a woman's face that gives me unalloyed pleasure. Faces are half-terrifying things to one who studies them, such paradoxical masks are they; only one half mask, and the other half bared secrets of a lifetime. Their mere physical beauty, however great it may be, is so underlaid and overlaid by tokens and traces and scars of things in which the flesh and blood of it have played part that a fair face can rarely be more than half fair. But here was a face with beauty such as the old Greeks put into marble; and shining through it the honesty and innocence of an untaught child, the good-will and content of a faithful working-girl, and the native archness of a healthful maiden. I am not unaware that all this must have the sound of an invention, and there being no man to bear witness to my tale, except such as have sailed in the Norwegian dampskib "Jupiter," it will not be much believed; nevertheless, I shall tell it. Not being the sort of artist to bring the girl's face away in a portfolio, the only thing left for me is to try to set it in the poor portraiture of words. Poor enough portraiture it is that words can fashion, even for things less subtle than faces,--a day or a sky, a swift pa.s.sion or a thought. Words seem always to those who work with them more or less failures; but most of all are they impotent and disappointing when a face is to be told. Yet I shall not cast away my sketch of the beautiful Anna. It is the only one which will ever be made of her. Now that I think of it, however, there is one testimony to be added to mine,--a testimony of much weight, too, taken in the connection, for it was of such involuntariness.

On the second day of my voyage in the "Jupiter," in the course of a conversation with the captain, I took occasion to speak of the good-will and efficiency of his stewardess. He a.s.sented warmly to my praise of her; adding that she was born of very poor parents, and had little education herself beyond knowing how to read and write, but was a person of rare goodness.

I then said, "And of very rare beauty, also. I have never seen a more beautiful face."

"Yes," he replied; "there is something very not common about her. Her face is quite antic." "Antique," he meant, but for the first few seconds I could not imagine what it was he had intended. He also, then, had recognized, as this phrase shows, the truly cla.s.sic quality of the girl's beauty; and he is the only witness I am able to bring to prove that my description of her face and figure and look and bearing are not an ingenious fable wrought out of nothing.

From Katrina, also, there came testimonies to Anna's rare quality.

"I have been in long speech with Anna," she said before we had been at sea a day. "I tink she will come to Bergen, by my husband and me. She can be trusted; I can tell in one firstest minute vat peoples is to be trusted. She is so polite always, but she pa.s.ses ghentlemens without speaking, except she has business. I can tell."

Shrewd Katrina! Her husband has a sort of restaurant and billiard-room in Bergen,--a place not over-creditable, I fear, although keeping within the pale of respectability. It is a sore trial to Katrina, his doing this, especially the selling of liquor. She had several times refused her consent to his going into the business, "but dis time,"

she said, "he had it before I knowed anyting, don't you see? He didn't tell me. I always tink dere is de wifes and children, and maybe de mens don't take home no bread; and den to sit dere and drink, it is shame, don't you see? But if he don't do, some other mans would; so tere it is, don't you see? And tere is money in it, you see." Poor Katrina had tried in vain to shelter herself and appease her conscience by this old sophistry. Her pride and self-respect still so revolted at the trade that she would not go to the place to stay. "He not get me to go tere. He not want me, either. I would not work in such a place."

But she had no scruples about endeavoring to engage Anna as a waiter-girl for the place.

"She will be by my husband and me," she said, "and it is always shut every night at ten o'clock; and my husband is very strict man. He will have all right. She can have all her times after dat; and here she have only four dollars a mont, and my husband gives more tan dat. And I shall teach to her English; I gives her one hour every day. Dat is great for her, for she vill go to America next year. If she can English speak, she get twice the money in America. Oh, ven I go to America, I did not know de name of one ting; and every night I cry and cry; I tink I never learn; but dat Irish lady I live by, she vas so kind to me as my own mother. Oh, I like Irish peoples; the Irish and the Americans, dey are what I like best. I don't like de English; and Chermans, I don't like dem; dey vill take all out of your pocket. She is intended;[9] and dat is good. When one are intended one must be careful; and if he is one you love, ten you don't vant to do anyting else; and her sweetheart is a nice young fellow. He is in the engyne in a Hamburg boat. She has been speaking by me about him."

The dampskib "Jupiter" is a roller. It is a marvel how anything not a log can roll at such a rate. The stateroom berths being built across instead of lengthwise, the result is a perpetual tossing of heads _versus_ feet. As Katrina expressively put it, "It is first te head, and den te feets up. Dat is te worstest. Dat makes te difference."