Ilka on the Hill-Top and Other Stories Part 7

The Ormgra.s.s farm consisted of a long, bleak stretch of hill-side, in part overgrown with sweet-brier and juniper, and covered with large, lichen-painted bowlders. Here and there was a patch of hardy winter wheat, and at odd intervals a piece of brownish meadow. At the top of the slope you could see the huge shining ridge of the glacier, looming in threatening silence against the sky. Leaning, as it did, with a decided impulse to the westward, it was difficult to resist the impression that it had braced itself against the opposite mountain, and thrown its whole enormous weight against the Ormgra.s.s hills for the purpose of forcing a pa.s.sage down to the farm. To Maurice, at least, this idea suggested itself with considerable vividness as, on the second day after his arrival, he had his first complete view of the glacier. He had approached it, not from below, but from the western side, at the only point where ascent was possible. The vast expanse of the ice lay in cold, ghastly shade; for the sun, which was barely felt as a remote presence in the upper air, had not yet reached the depths of the valley. A silence as of death reigned everywhere; it floated up from the dim blue creva.s.ses, it filled the air, it vibrated on the senses as with a vague endeavor to be heard. Jake, carrying a barometer, a surveyor's transit, and a mult.i.tude of smaller instruments, followed cautiously in his master's footsteps, and a young lad, Tharald Ormgra.s.s's son, who had been engaged as a guide, ran nimbly over the glazed surface, at every step thrusting his steel-shod heels vindictively into the ice. But it would be futile for one of the uninitiated to attempt to follow Maurice in his scientific investigations; on such occasions he would have been extremely uninteresting to outside humanity, simply because outside humanity was the last thing he would have thought worth troubling himself about.

And still his unremitting zeal in the pursuit of his aim, and his cool self-possession in the presence of danger, were not without a sublimity of their own; and the l.u.s.trous intensity of his vision as he grasped some new fact corroborative of some favorite theory, might well have stirred a sympathetic interest even in a mind of unscientific proclivities.

An hour after noon the three wanderers returned from their wintry excursion, Maurice calm and radiant, the ebony-faced Jake sore-footed and morose, and young Gudmund, the guide, with that stanch neutrality of countenance which with boys pa.s.ses for dignity. The sun was now well in sight, and the silence of the glacier was broken. A thousand tiny rills, now gathering into miniature cataracts, now again scattering through a net-work of small, bluish channels, mingled their melodious voices into a hushed symphony, suggestive of fairy bells and elf-maidens dancing in the cool dusk of the arctic midsummer night.

Fern, with an air of profound preoccupation, seated himself on a ledge of rock at the border of the ice, took out his note-book and began to write.

"Jake," he said, without looking up, "be good enough to get us some dinner."

"We have nothing except some bread and b.u.t.ter, and some meat extract,"

answered the servant, demurely.

"That will be quite sufficient. You will find my pocket-stove and a bottle of alcohol in my valise."

Jake grumblingly obeyed; he only approved of science in so far as it was reconcilable with substantial feeding. He placed the lamp upon a huge bowlder (whose black sides were here and there enlivened with patches of buff and scarlet lichen), filled the basin with water from the glacier, and then lighted the wick. There was something obtrusively incongruous in seeing this fragile contrivance, indicating so many complicated wants, placed here among all the wild strength of primitive nature; it was like beholding the glacial age confronted with the nineteenth century.

At this moment Fern was interrupted in his scientific meditations by a loud scream of terror, and lifting his eyes, he saw a picturesque combination of yellow, black, and scarlet (in its general outline resembling a girl), fleeing with desperate speed up the narrow path along the glacier. The same glance also revealed to him two red-painted wooden pails dancing down over the jagged bowlders, and just about to make a final leap down upon the ice, when two determined kicks from his foot arrested them. Feeling somewhat solicitous about the girl, and unable to account for her fright, he hurried up the path; there she was again, still running, her yellow hair fluttering wildly about her head. He put his hands to his mouth and shouted. The echoes floated away over the desolate ice-hills, growing ever colder and feebler, like some abstract sound, deprived of its human quality.

The girl, glancing back over her shoulder, showed a fair face, convulsed with agitation, paused for an instant to look again, and then dropped upon a stone in a state of utter collapse. One moment more and he was at her side. She was lying with her face downward, her blue eyes distended with fright, and her hands clutching some tufts of moss which she had unconsciously torn from the sides of the stone.

"My dear child," he said, stooping down over her (there was always something fatherly in his manner toward those who were suffering), "what is it that has frightened you so? It is surely not I you are afraid of?"

The girl moved her head slightly, and her lips parted as with an effort to speak; but no sound came.

Fern seized her hand, and put his forefinger on her pulse.

"By Jove, child," he exclaimed, "how you have been running!"

There was to him something very pathetic in this silent resignation of terror. All the tenderness of his nature was stirred; for, like many another undemonstrative person, he hid beneath a h.o.r.n.y epidermis of apathy some deep-hued, warm-blooded qualities.

"There now," he continued, soothingly; "you will feel better in a moment. Remember there is nothing to be afraid of. There is n.o.body here who will do you any harm."

The young girl braced herself up on her elbow, and threw an anxious glance down the path.

"It surely was the devil," she whispered, turning with a look of shy appeal toward her protector.

"The devil? Who was the devil?"

"He was all black, and he grinned at me so horribly;" and she trembled anew at the very thought.

"Don't be a little goose," retorted he, laughing. "It was a far less important personage. It was my servant, Jake. And it was G.o.d who made him black, just for the sake of variety, you know. It would be rather monotonous to have everybody as white as you and me."

She attempted to smile, feeling that it was expected of her; but the result was hardly proportionate to the effort. Her features were not of that type which lends itself easily to disguises. A simple maidenly soul, if the whole infinite variety of human masks had been at its disposal, would have chosen just such a countenance as this as its complete expression. There was nothing striking in it, unless an entirely faultless combination of softly curving lines and fresh flesh-tints be rare enough to merit that appellation; nor would any one but a cynic have called it a commonplace face, for the absolute sweetness and purity which these simple lines and tints expressed appealed directly to that part of one's nature where no harsh adjectives dwell. It was a feeling of this kind which suddenly checked Fern in the scientific meditation he was about to indulge, and spoiled the profound but uncharitable result at which he had already half arrived. A young man who could extract scientific information from the features of a beautiful girl could hardly be called human; and our hero with all his enthusiasm for abstract things, was as yet not exalted above the laws which govern his species.

The girl had, under his kindly ministry, recovered her breath and her spirits. She had risen, brushed the moss and loose earth from her dress, and was about to proceed on her way.

"I thank you," she said simply, reaching him her hand in Norse fashion. "You have been very good to me."

"Not at all," he answered, shaking her hand heartily. "And now, wouldn't you please tell me your name?"

"Elsie Tharald's daughter Ormgra.s.s."

"Ah, indeed! Then we shall soon be better acquainted. I am living at your father's house."

IV.

Two weeks had pa.s.sed since Maurice's arrival at the farm. Elsie was sitting on the topmost step of the store-house stairs, intent upon some kind of coa.r.s.e knitting-work, whose bag-like convexity remotely suggested a stocking. Some straggling rays of the late afternoon sun had got tangled in the loose locks on her forehead, which shone with a golden translucence. At the foot of the stairs stood her father, polishing with a woollen rag the tarnished silver of an ancient harness. At this moment Fern was seen entering the yard at the opposite side, and with his usual brisk step approaching the store-house. Elsie, looking up from her knitting, saw at once that there was something unusual in his manner--something which in another man you might have called agitation, but which with him was but an intenser degree of self-command.

"Good-evening," he said, as he stopped in front of her father. "I have something I wish to speak with you about."

"Speak on, young man," answered Tharald, rubbing away imperturbably at one of the blinders. "Elsie isn't likely to blab, even if what you say is worth blabbing."

"It is a more serious affair than you think," continued Fern, thrusting his peaked staff deep into the sod. "If the glacier goes on advancing at this rate, your farm is doomed within a year."

The old peasant raised his grizzly head, scratched with provoking deliberation the fringe of beard which lined his face like a frame, and stared with a look of supercilious scorn at his informant.

"If our fare don't suit you," he growled, "you needn't stay. We shan't try to keep you."

"I had no thought of myself," retorted Fern, calmly; for he had by this time grown somewhat accustomed to his host's disagreeable ways.

"You will no doubt have observed that the glacier has, within the last thirty years, sent out a new branch to the westward, and if this branch continues to progress at its present rate, nothing short of a miracle can save you. During the first week after my arrival it advanced fifteen feet, as I have ascertained by accurate measurements, and during the last seven days it has shot forward nineteen feet more.

If next winter should bring a heavy fall of snow, the nether edge may break off, without the slightest warning, and an avalanche may sweep down upon you, carrying houses, barns, and the very soil down into the fjord. I sincerely hope that you will heed my words, and take your precautions while it is yet time. Science is not to be trifled with; it has a power of prophecy surer than that of Ezekiel or Daniel."

"The devil take both you and your science!" cried the old man, now thoroughly aroused. "If you hadn't been poking about up there, and digging your sneezing-horn in everywhere, the glacier would have kept quiet, as it has done before, as far back as man's memory goes. I knew at once that mischief was brewing when you and your black Satan came here with your pocket-furnaces, and your long-legged gazing-tubes, and all the rest of your new-fangled deviltry. If you don't hurry up and get out of my house this very day, I will whip you off the farm like a dog."

Tharald would probably have continued this pleasing harangue for an indefinite period (for excitement acted as a powerful stimulus to his imagination), had he not just then felt the grasp of a hand upon his arm, and seen a pair of blue eyes, full of tearful appeal, raised to his.

"Get away, daughter," he grumbled, with that shade of gruffness which is but the transition to absolute surrender. "I am not talking to you."

"Oh, father," cried the girl, still clinging to his arm, "it is very wrong in you to talk to him in that way. You know very well that he would never do us any harm. You know he cannot move anything as large as the glacier."

"The devil only knows what he can't do," muttered Tharald, with a little explosive grunt, which might be interpreted as a qualified concession. The fact was, he was rather ashamed of his senseless violence, but did not feel it to be consistent with his dignity to admit unconditionally that he had been in the wrong.

"These learned chaps are not to be trusted, child," he went on, in a tone of serious remonstrance. "It isn't safe to have one of them fellows running about loose. I heard of one up in the West Parish last summer, who was staying with Lars Norby. He was running about with a bag and a hammer, and poking his nose into every nook and cranny of the rocks. And all the while he stayed there, the devil ran riot on the farm. Three cows slinked, the bay mare followed suit, and the chickens took the cramps, and died as fast as they were hatched.

There was no luck in anything. I tell you, my la.s.s, the Almighty doesn't like to have anybody peeping into His hand, and telling Him when to trump and when to throw a low card. That is the long and short of it. If we don't ship this fellow, smooth-faced and nice as he may be, we shall have a run of bad luck here, such as you never saw the like of before."

In the meanwhile, Maurice, not wishing to overhear the conversation, had entered the house, and father and daughter were left to continue their parley in private. There was really, as Elsie thought, some plausibility in the old man's prognostications, and the situation began to a.s.sume a very puzzling aspect to her mind. She admitted that scientists, viewed as a genus, were objectionable; but insisted that Fern, to whose personal charms she was keenly alive, was an exception to the rule. She felt confident that so good a man as he could never have tried to pry into the secrets of G.o.d Almighty. Tharald yielded grumblingly, inch by inch, and thus saved his dignity, although his daughter, in the end, prevailed. She obtained his permission to request the guest to remain, and not interpret too literally the rather hasty words he had used. Thus a compromise was effected. Fern suspended his packing, and resumed his objectionable att.i.tude toward the mysteries of creation.

About a week after this occurrence, Maurice was walking along the beach, watching some peasant lads who were spearing trout in a brook near by. The sun had just dipped below the western mountain peaks, and a cool, bluish twilight, which seemed the essence of atmospheric purity, purged of all accessory effects, filled the broad, placid valley, and made it a luxury to breathe. The torches of the fishermen flitted back and forth between the slender stems of the birches, and now and then sent up a great glare of light among the foliage, which shone with a ghostly grayish green. The majestic repose of this scene sank deeply into Fern's mind; dim yearnings awoke in him, and a strange sense of kinship with these mountains, fjords, and glaciers rose from some unknown depth of his soul. He seemed suddenly to love them. Whenever he thought of Norway in later years, the impression of this night revived within him. After a long ramble over the sand, he chanced upon a low, turf-thatched cottage lying quite apart from the inhabited districts of the valley. The sheen of the fire upon the hearth-stone fell through the open door and out upon the white beach, and illuminated faintly the middle portion of a long fishing-net, which was suspended on stakes, for drying. Feeling a little tired, he seated himself on a log near the door, and gazed out upon the gleaming glaciers in the distance.

While he was sitting thus, he was startled at the sound of a voice, deep, distinct, and sepulchral, which seemed to proceed from within the cottage.

"I see a book sealed with seven seals," the voice was saying. "Two of them are already broken, and when the third shall be broken--then it is all black--a great calamity will happen."

"Pray don't say that, Gurid," prayed another voice, with a touching, child-like appeal in it (and he instantly recognized it as Elsie's).

"G.o.d is so very strong, you know, and He can certainly wipe away that black spot, and make it all bright again. And I don't know that I have done anything very wrong of late; and father, I know, is really very good, too, even if he does say some hard things at times. But he doesn't mean anything by it--and I am sure--"

"Be silent, child!" interrupted the first voice. "Thou dost not understand, and it is well for thee that thou dost not. For it is written, 'He shall visit the sins of the fathers upon the children, even unto the third and fourth generation.'"