Glimpses of Three Coasts Part 24

"I vill understand! I vill!" she exclaimed; and the good-natured doctor took pains to explain to her at some length; at the end of his explanation she turned to me triumphantly, with a nod: "Now I know very well; it is another kind of strongth from the strongth of a machine. It is not such strongth that you can see, or you can make with your hands; but it is strongth all the same,"--a definition which might be commended to the careful attention of all persons in the habit or need of using the word "dynamic."

It is five miles from Christiania out and up to the Frogner Saeter, first through pretty suburban streets which are more roads than streets, with picturesque wooden houses, painted in wonderful colors,--lilac, apple-green, white with orange-colored settings to doors and windows, yellow pine left its own color, oiled, and decorated with white or with maroon red. They look like the gay toy-houses sold in boxes for children to play with. There is no one of them, perhaps, which one would not grow very weary of, if he had to see it every day, but the effect of the succession of them along the roadside is surprisingly gay and picturesque. Their variety of shape and the pretty little balconies of carved lattice-work add much to this picturesqueness. They are all surrounded by flower-gardens of a simple kind,--old-fashioned flowers growing in clumps and straight borders, and every window-sill full of plants in bloom; windows all opening outward like doors, so that in a warm day, when every window-sash is thrown open, the houses have a strange look of being a-flutter. There is no expression of elegance or of the habits or standards of great wealth about these suburban houses of Christiania; but there is a very rare and charming expression of comfort and good cheer, and a childlike simplicity which dotes on flowers and has not outgrown the love of bright colors. I do not know anywhere a region where houses are so instantly and good-naturedly attractive, with a suggestion of good fellowship, and sensible, easy-going good times inside and out.

The last three miles of the road to the saeter are steadily up, and all the way through dense woods of fir and spruce,--that grand Norway spruce, which spreads its boughs out generously as palms, and loads down each twig so full that by their own weight of shining green the lower branches trail out along the ground, and the upper ones fold a little and slant downwards from the middle, as if avalanches of snow had just slid off on each side and bent them. Here were great beds of ferns, cl.u.s.ters of bluebells, and territories of Linnaea. In June the mountain-side must be fragrant with its flowers.

Katrina glowed with pleasure. In her colder, barrener home she had seen no such lavishness as this.

"Oh, but ven one tinks, how Nature is wonderful!" she cried. "Here all dese tings grow up, demselves! noting to be done. Are dey not wort more dan in gardens? In gardens always must be put in a corn before anyting come up; and all dese nice tings come up alone, demselves."

"Oh, but see vat G.o.d has done; how much better than all vat people can; no matter vat dey make."

Half-way up the mountain we came to a tiny house, set in a clearing barely big enough to hold the house and let a little sun in on it from above.

"Oh, I wish-shed I had dat little house!" she exclaimed. "Dat house could stand in Bergen. I like to carry dat home and dem trees to it; but my husband, he would not like it. He likes Bergen house bestest."

As we drew near the top, we met carriages coming down. Evidently it was the custom to drive to the Frogner Saeter.

"I tink in dat first carriage were Chews," said Katrina, scornfully.

"I do hate dem Chews. I can't bear dat kind of people."

"Why not, Katrina?" I asked. "It is not fair to hate people because of their religion."

"Oh, dat I don't know about deir religion," she replied carelessly. "I don't tink dey got much religion anyhow. I tink dey are kind of thieves. I saw it in New York. Ven I went into Chew shop, he say a ting are tree dollar; and I say, 'No, dat are too dear.' Den he say, 'You can have for two dollar;' and I say, 'No, I cannot take;' and den he say, 'Oh, have it for one dollar and half;' and I tink all such tings are not real. I hate dem Chews. Dey are all de same in all places. Dey are chust like dat if dey come in Norway. Very few Chews comes in Norway. Dat is one good ting."

In a small open, part clearing, part natural rocky crest of the hill, stood the saeter: great s.p.a.ces of pink heather to right and left of it, a fir wood walling it on two sides; to the south and the east, a clear off-look over the two bays of the Christiania Fjord, past all their islands, out to sea, and the farthest horizon. Christiania lay like an insignificant huddle of buildings in the nearer foreground; its only beauty now being in its rich surrounding of farm-lands, which seemed to hold it like a rough brown pebble in an emerald setting.

The house itself fronted south. Its piazza and front windows commanded this grand view. It was of pine logs, smoothed and mortised into each other at the corners. Behind it was a hollow square of the farm buildings: sheds, barns, and the pretty white cottage of the overseer.

The overseer's wife came running to meet us, and with cordial good-will took us into the house, and showed us every room. She had the pride of a retainer in the place; and when she found that none of its beauty was lost on me, she warmed and grew communicative. It will not be easy to describe the charm of this log-house: only logs inside as well as out; but the logs are Norway pine, yellow and hard and shining, taking a polish for floors and ceiling as fine as ash or maple, and making for the walls belts and stripes of gold color better than paper; all cross beams and part.i.tions are mortised at the joinings, instead of crossing and lapping. This alone gives to these Norwegian houses an expression quite unlike that of ordinary log-houses. A little carved work of a simple pattern, at the cornices of the rooms and on the ceiling beams, was the only ornamentation of the house; and a great gla.s.s door, of a single pane, opening on the piazza, was the only luxurious thing about it. Everything else was simply and beautifully picturesque. Old Norwegian tapestries hung here and there on the walls, their vivid reds and blues coming out superbly on the yellow pine; curious antique corner cupboards, painted in chaotic colors of fantastic brightness; old fireplaces built out into the room, in the style of the most ancient Norwegian farm-houses; old bra.s.ses, sconces, placques, and candlesticks; and a long dining-table, with wooden benches of hollowed planks for seats, such as are to be seen to-day in some of the old ruined baronial castles in England.

In the second-story rooms were old-fashioned bedsteads: one of carved pine, so high that it needed a step-ladder to mount it; the other built like a cupboard against the wall, and shut by two sliding doors, which on being pushed back disclosed two narrow bunks. This is the style of bed in many of the Norwegian farm-houses still. On the sliding door of the upper bunk was a small photograph of the prince imperial; and the woman told us with great pride that he had slept one night in that bed.

Upstairs again, by narrow winding stairs, and there we found the whole floor left undivided save by the big chimney-stack which came up in the middle; the gable ends of the garret opened out in two great doors like barn-doors; under the eaves, the whole length of each side, was a row of bunk beds, five on each side, separated only by a board part.i.tion. This was a great common bedroom, "used for gentlemen at Christmas-time," the woman said. "There had as many as fifteen or twenty gentlemen slept in that room."

At Christmas, it seems, it is the habit of the family owning this unique and charming country-house to come up into the woods for a two weeks' festivity. The snow is deep. The mercury is well down near zero or below; but the road up the mountain is swept level smooth: sledges can go easier in winter than carriages can in summer; and the vast outlook over the glittering white land and shining blue sea full of ice islands must be grander than when the islands and the land are green. Pine logs in huge fireplaces can warm any room; and persons of the sort that would think of spending Christmas in a fir-wood on a mountain-top could make a house warm even better than pine logs could do it. Christmas at the Frogner Saeter must be a Christmas worth having.

"The house is as full as ever it can hold," said the woman, "and fifty sit down to dinner sometimes; they think nothing of driving up from Christiania and down again at midnight."

What a place for sleigh-bells to ring on a frosty night; that rocky hill-crest swung out as it were in clear s.p.a.ce of upper air, with the great Christiania Fjord stretching away beneath, an ice-bound, ice-flaked sea, white and steel-black under the winter moon! I fancied the house blazing like a many-sided beacon out of the darkness of the mountain front at midnight, the bells clanging, the voices of lovers and loved chiming, and laughter and mirth ringing. I think for years to come the picture will be so vivid in my mind that I shall find myself on many a Christmas night mentally listening to the swift bells chiming down the mountain from the Frogner Saeter.

The eastern end of the piazza is closed in by a great window, one single pane of gla.s.s like the door; so that in this corner, sheltered from the wind, but losing nothing of the view, one can sit in even cold weather. Katrina cuddled herself down like a kitten, in the sun, on the piazza steps, and looking up at me, as I sat in this sheltered corner, said approvingly,--

"Dis you like. I ask de voman if we could stay here; but she got no room: else she would like to keep us. I tink I stay here all my life: only for my husband, I go back."

Then she pulled out the Saga and read some pages of Ingeborg's Lament, convulsing me in the beginning by saying that it was "Ingeborg's Whale." It was long before I grasped that she meant "Wail."

"What you say ven it is like as if you cry, but you do not cry?" she said. "Dat is it. It stands in my dictionary, whale!" And she reiterated it with some impatience at my stupidity in not better understanding my own language. When I explained to her the vast difference between "whale" and "wail," she was convulsed in her turn.

"Oh, dere are so many words in English which do have same sound and mean so different ting," she said, "I tink I never learn to speak English in dis world."

While we were sitting there, a great speckled woodp.e.c.k.e.r flew out from the depths of the wood, lighted on a fir near the house, and began racing up and down the tree, tapping the bark with his strong bill, like the strokes of a hammer.

"There is your Gertrude bird, Katrina," said I. She looked bewildered.

"The woman that Christ punished," I said, "and turned her into the Gertrude bird; do you not know the old story?" No, she had never heard it. She listened with wide-open eyes while I told her the old Norwegian legend, which it was strange that I knew and she did not,--how Christ and Peter, stopping one day at the door of a woman who was kneading her bread, asked her for a piece. She broke a piece for them; but as she was rolling it out, it grew under her roller till it filled her table. She laid it aside, saying it was too large, broke off another piece, rolled it out with the same result; it grew larger every moment. She laid that aside, and took a third bit, the smallest she could possibly break off: the same result; that too grew under her roller till it covered the table. Then her heart was entirely hardened, and she laid this third piece on one side, saying, "Go your ways, I cannot spare you any bread to-day." Then Christ was angry, and opened her eyes to see who he was. She fell on her knees, and implored his forgiveness; but he said, "No. You shall henceforth seek your bread from day to day, between the wood and the bark." And he changed her into a bird,--the Gertrude bird, or woodp.e.c.k.e.r. The legend runs, however, that, relenting, the Lord said that when the plumage of the bird should become entirely black, her punishment should be at an end.

The Gertrude bird grows darker and darker every year, and when it is old, has no white to be seen in its plumage. When the white has all disappeared, then the Lord Christ takes it for his own, so the legend says; and no Norwegian will ever injure a Gertrude bird, because he believes it to be under G.o.d's protection, doing this penance.

"Is dat true?" asked Katrina, seriously. "Dat must have been when de Lord was going about on dis earth; ven he was ghost. I never hear dat."

I tried to explain to her the idea of a fable.

"Fable," she said, "fable,--dat is to teach people to be giving ven dey got, and not send peoples away vidout notings. Dat's what I see, many times I see. But I do not see dat de peoples dat is all for saving all dey got, gets any richer. I tink if you give all the time to dem dat is poorer, dat is de way to be richer. Dere is always some vat is poorer."

In the cosey little sitting-room of her white cottage, the farmer's wife gave us a lunch which would not have been any shame to any lady's table,--scrambled eggs, bread, rusks, milk, and a queer sort of election cake, with raisins but no sugar. This Katrina eyed with the greed of a child; watched to see if I liked it, and exclaimed, "We only get dat once a year, at Christmas time." Seeing that I left a large piece on my plate, she finally said, "Do you tink it would be shame if I take dat home? It is too good to be leaved." With great glee, on my first word of permission, she crammed it into her omnivorous pocket, which already held a dozen or more green apples that she had persisted in picking up by the roadside as we came.

As we drove down the mountain, the glimpses here and there, between the trees, of the fjord and islands were even more beautiful than the great panorama seen from the top. Little children ran out to open gates for us, and made their pretty Norwegian courtesies, with smiles of grat.i.tude for a penny. We met scores of peasant women going out to their homes, bearing all sorts of burdens swung from a yoke laid across their shoulders. The thing that a Norwegian cannot contrive to swing from one side or the other of his shoulder-yoke must be very big indeed. The yokes seem equally adapted to everything, from a b.u.t.ter-firkin to a silk handkerchief full of cabbages. Weights which would be far too heavy to carry in any other way the peasants take in this, and trot along between their swinging loads at as round a pace as if they had nothing to carry. We drove a roundabout way to our hotel, to enable Katrina to see an old teacher of hers; through street after street of monotonous stucco-walled houses, each with a big open door, a covered way leading into a court behind, and glimpses of clothes-lines, or other walls and doorways, or green yards, beyond.

Two thirds of the houses in Christiania are on this plan; the families live in flats, or parts of flats. Sometimes there are eight or ten bra.s.s bell-handles, one above another, on the side of one of these big doorways, each door-bell marking a family. The teacher lived in a respectable but plain house of this kind,--she and her sister; they had taught Katrina in Bergen when she was a child, and she retained a warm and grateful memory of them; one had been married, and her husband was in America, where they were both going to join him soon.

Everywhere in Norway one meets people whose hearts are in America,--sons, husbands, daughters, lovers. Everybody would go if it were possible; once fourteen thousand went in one year, I was told.

These poor women had been working hard to support themselves by teaching and by embroidering. Katrina brought down, to exhibit to me, a dog's head, embroidered in the finest possible silks,--silks that made a hair-stroke like a fine pen; it was a marvellously ingenious thing, but no more interesting than the "Lord's Prayer written in the circ.u.mference of two inches," or any of that cla.s.s of marvels.

"Dey take dese to America," Katrina said. "Did you ever see anyting like dem dere? Dey get thirty kroner for one of dem dogs. It is chust like live dog."

After we returned, Katrina disappeared again on one of her mysterious expeditions, whose returns were usually of great interest to me. This time they brought to both of us disappointment. Coming in with a radiant face, and the usual little newspaper bundle in her hand, she cried out, "Now I got you de bestest ting yet," and held out her treasures,--a pint of small berries, a little larger than whortleberries, and as black and shining as jet. "Dis is de bestest berry in all Norway," she exclaimed, whipping one into her own mouth; "see if you like."

I incautiously took three or four at once. Not since the days of old-fashioned Dover's and James's powders have I ever tasted a more nauseous combination of flavors than resided in those glittering black berries.

"You not like dem berries?" cried poor Katrina, in dismay at my disgust, raising her voice and its inflections at every syllable. "You not like dem berries? I never hear of n.o.body not liking dem berries.

Dey is bestest we got! Any way, I eat dem myself," she added philosophically, and retreated crestfallen to her room, where I heard her smacking her lips over them for half an hour. I believe she ate the whole at a sitting. They must have been a variety of black currant, and exclusively intended by Nature for medicinal purposes; but Katrina came out hearty and well as ever the next day, after having swallowed some twelve or sixteen ounces of them.

By way of atoning for her mishap with the berries, she ran out early the next morning and bought a little packet of odds and ends of strong-scented leaves and dust of several kinds, and, coming up behind my chair, held it close under my nose, with,--

"Ain't dat nice smell? Ain't dat better as dem berries? Oh, I tink I never stop laughing ven I am at home ven I tink how you eat dem berries. Dey are de bestest berries we got."

On my approving the scent, she seemed much pleased, and laid the little packet on my table, remarking that I could "chust smell it ven I liked." She added that in the winter-time they kept it in all Norwegian houses, and strewed it on the stoves when they were hot, and it "smelled beautiful." They called it "king's smoke," she said, and n.o.body would be without it.

It is easy to see why the Norwegians, from the king down, must need some such device as this to make tolerable the air in their stove-heated rooms in winter. It was appalling to look at their four and five storied stoves, and think how scorched the air must be by such a ma.s.s of heated iron. The average Norwegian stove is as high as the door of the room, or even higher. It is built up of sections of square-cornered hollow iron pipe, somewhat as we build card-houses; back and forth, forward and back, up and across, through these hollow blocks of cast-iron, goes the heated air. It takes hours to get the tower heated from bottom to top; but once it is heated there is a radiating ma.s.s of burnt iron, with which it must be terrible to be shut up. The open s.p.a.ces between the cross sections must be very convenient for many purposes,--to keep all sorts of things hot; and a man given to the habit of tipping back in his chair, and liking to sit with his feet higher than his head, could keep his favorite att.i.tude and warm his feet at the same time,--a thing that couldn't be done with any other sort of stove.

One of my last days in Christiania was spent on the island of Hovedoen, a short half-hour's row from the town. Here are the ruins of an old monastery, dating back to the first half of the twelfth century, and of priceless interest to antiquarians, who tell, inch by inch, among the old gra.s.s-grown stones, just where the abbot sat, and the monks prayed, and through which arch they walked at vespers. Bits of the old carved cornices are standing everywhere, leaning up against the moss-grown walls, which look much less old for being h.o.a.ry with moss. One thing they had in the monastery of Hovedoen,--a well of ice-cold, sparkling water, which might have consoled them for much lack of wine; and if the limes and poplars and birches were half as beautiful in 1147 as they are now, the monks were to be envied, when a whole nunneryful of nuns took refuge on their island in the time of the first onslaught on convents. What strolls under those trees! There are several species of flowers growing there now which grow nowhere else in all the region about, and tradition says that these nuns planted them. The paths are edged with heather and thyme and bluebells, and that daintiest of little vetches, the golden yellow, whose blossoms were well named by the devout sisters "Mary's golden shoes." As we rowed home at sunset over the amber and silver water, Katrina sang Norwegian songs; her voice, though untrained and shrill, had sweet notes in it, and she sang with the same childlike heartiness and innocent exultation that she showed in everything else. "Old Norway" was the refrain of the song she liked most and sang best; and more than one manly Norwegian voice joined in with hers with good-will and fervor.

At the botanical gardens a Victoria regia was on the point of blooming. Day after day I had driven out there to see it; each day confident, each day disappointed. The professor, a quaint and learned old man, simple in speech and behavior, as all great scientific men are, glided about in a linen coat, his shears hanging in a big sheath on one side his belt, his pruning-knife on the other, and a big note-book in his breast-pocket. His life seemed to me one of the few ideal ones I had ever seen. His house stands on a high terrace in the garden, looking southward, over the city to the fjord. It is a long, low cottage, with dormer windows sunk deep in the red-tiled roof, shaded by two great horsechestnut trees, which are so old that clumps of gra.s.s have grown in their gnarled knots. Here he plants and watches and studies; triumphs over the utmost rigors of the Norway climate, and points with pride to a dozen varieties of Indian corn thriving in his grounds. Tropical plants of all climes he has cajoled or coerced into living out-of-doors all winter in Norway. One large house full of begonias was his special pride; tier after tier of the splendid velvet leaves, all shades of color in the blossoms: one could not have dreamed that the world held so many varieties of begonia. He was annoyed by his Victoria regia's tardiness. There it lay, lolling in its huge lake,--in a sultry heated air which it was almost dangerous for human lungs to breathe. Its seven huge leaves spread out in round disks on which a child could stand safe. In the middle, just out of the water, rose the mysterious red bud. It was a plant he had himself raised in one year from seed; and he felt towards it as to a child.

"I cannot promise. I did think it should have opened this morning. It has lifted itself one inch since last night," he said. "It is not my fault," he added apologetically, like a parent who cannot make a child obey. Then he showed me, by his clasped hands, how it opened; in a series of spasmodic unclosings, as if by throes, at intervals of five or six minutes; each unclosing revealing more and more of the petals, till at last, at the end of a half-hour, the whole snowy blossom is unfolded: one day open, then towards night, by a similar series of throe-like movements, it closes, and the next morning, between nine and eleven, opens again in the same way, but no longer white. In the night it has changed its color. One look, one taste, one day, of life has flushed it rose-red. As the old professor told me this tale, not new, but always wonderful and solemn, his face kindled with delight and awe. No astronomer reckoning the times and colors of a recurring planet could have had a vivider sense of the beauty and grandeur of its law. The last thing I did in Christiania was to drive for the third time to see if this flower had unfolded. It had apparently made no movement for twenty-four hours.

"I tought you not see dat flower," said Katrina, who had looked with some impatience on the repeated bootless journeys. "I tink it is hoombug. I tink it is all shtories."

To me there was a half-omen in the flower's delay. Norway also had shown me only half its beauty; I was going away wistful and unsatisfied. "You must have another Victoria next summer," I said to the quaint old professor, when I bade him good-by; and as Katrina ran swiftly off the deck of the steamer, that I might not see any tears in her eyes, bidding me farewell, I said also to her, "Next summer, Katrina. Study the Frithiof's Saga, and read me the rest of it next summer."

I hope she will not study it so well as to improve too much in her renderings. Could any good English be so good as this?

FRITHIOF AND INGEBORG.

Two trees growed bold and silent: never before the north never seen such beauties; they growed nicely in the garden.