In God's Way Part 29

Good-night!"

He kissed her, she put both her arms round his neck, drew him down to her, and kissed him. "You darling!"

He went away; she heard his quick step on the stairs and going to the room door; heard him open and shut it.

Again there was that pain in her chest which his coming had dispelled, his very footstep scared away. It was something oppressive, dreadful, unheard-of, something she would never get rid of, and then she began to shiver. Cold, cold, cold; now it had reached to the very innermost. She felt now, with a shudder, why "the whale" had come and taken possession of the little house close by, and would not ever leave it. Now she knew why the others had allowed it.

"Alas! what has happened, what have I done?" moaned she, and tried to hide from herself. Karl's words of love sounded like a whispering voice amid thundering billows. Poor boy! She lay there in the dark that she might not be seen, and in order to think it over. What ought she to do?

She had kept back that last sheet, ought she to show it to Kallem?

When Kallem came up to bed shortly after twelve, she had fallen asleep in the midst of all her sorrowful reflections. He lighted the candle behind her, looked into her face, and listened to her breathing. She was sleeping innocently, open-mouthed.

The next morning she walked backwards and forwards before the south side of the house, equally terrified, equally undecided. There had been snow, but it was nearly all melted again; it was the first snow that winter. A thick fog lay over the mountain ridges, so thick that it looked like a separate, impenetrable country, bordering on the mountains and stretching as far as the eye could reach. A long tongue of this strange country jutted out into the wood like a secret of utmost importance. She felt cold, she could not go far without being seen by people on the road, and to-day she could not let herself be seen, perhaps never again.

A useless fight that, among the different kinds of trees round about the farms. Furthest away from the houses a forest of firs; it looked almost black through the heavy mist; nearer to the houses a wood of leafy trees began, long-necked aspen and twisted birch, showing light yellow against the dark; nearer still there was mountain-ash and bird-cherry, blood-red in colour; maple, too, and other trees in endless variety of shades, from colourless as flax to deep red-gold.

Tall asps and alders, too old to bear foliage, spread their naked branches out over the bright colours of the others, like blue-gray smoke.

She stamped her feet, but could not get any warmth into them; she would not go further, nor yet go in before she had decided what she was to do! What if Kallem did get to know of it? And what if he did not?

The meadows were divided in two by ploughed fields. Besides that there were only dull green fields of rye, sown in harvest-time, clover-fields in stubble. But see those discontented gray-looking fields further away from the houses, that are never noticed except when they are to be plundered; there are too many of them in the country.

But Juanita? How did she get into this harvest picture? The freshest, clearest reminiscence of that first spring? Ah, now awoke her longing for the children. Now she was sure that he was not where they were; so she could travel down to Rendalen's and see them.

As long as that lasted she would not be forced to decide what was the right thing to do; and she needed a respite. Just a short little letter to Karl Meek, that he must not write to her oftener just now, perhaps later on; she would let him know. These few words to Karl--should she telegraph them? Not from here! But she would start at once and telegraph on her way.

There arose in her a purpose, a command as strong as though she had nothing left for her to do but to see the children once again. When Kallem came home soon after, and she was pacing up and down the floor to try and get her feet warm, she said to him that she must see the children again, and it seemed to him that the recollection of her life together with Kule had turned into a longing for the children; this was very natural. "Start at once!" said he; "later on it may be too cold."

He did not quite mean it to have been to-day; but that was what she wished, and in the afternoon he took her to the station.

As soon as she arrived at the Rendalens, she wrote a despairing letter, the meeting with the children had been terrible; they did not know her!

And she, too, hardly recognised them! They were certainly well brought up children, but not as though they had belonged to her sister; there was no family likeness there, but a likeness to him, the father--he come of a stronger race. They were big, fat children; they stared at her without being able to understand her. And all the other strange faces, always noticing and watching her. She would have gone home again directly, if she had not had such a very bad cold. Her next letter was a little more cheerful; not because she was better pleased with the children--they were just like strangers and were wanting in "spirituality;" each time she took them in to her room to talk to them, or play for them, she could feel that it bored them. But her intercourse with the excellent people at the school and in the neighbourhood, afforded her great pleasure; "if only we had something similar," said she, with a sigh.

He had a letter from Rendalen, too, expressing, in strong terms, the delight of the entire little colony at having her amongst them. He put forward "an unanimous request" to be allowed to keep her for a time; she seemed tired after her journey and not very well; it would be good for her to have a rest.

She remained away a fortnight altogether. She came home again one cold day in mid-winter, looking pale, having still a bad cold, and very nervous, incapable of saying how dreadful it was for her to be again amongst people who looked upon her as an improper person. Kallem was alarmed at her cold and at her looking so ill; their meeting could hardly be called a meeting, there was an anxious examination of her chest, a languid account of her visit; she was tired and wished to go to bed.

Kallem asked if she had had any letter from Karl? None had been received here. No, she had had none either. Had she not written to him?

No, Karl had confided a secret to her which she did not approve of.

Often before there had been, so to speak, knots on the thread, which had only been explained to him later, and now, as she did not look up at her husband, he felt that he ought not to ask questions.

She was in bed several days. There was no getting rid of a nasty dry cough she had; otherwise there were no dangerous symptoms; none at all.

The first day she was up he thought she had grown very thin; her face had a tired, delicate expression, and there were dark rings under her eyes. She longed for fresh air, but she refused, in the most determined way, to go for any walks outside the garden. At first she said it was so tiresome; when that excuse did not hold good, she hit upon a better one: she began to cry. He thought this was a strange symptom; was it possible that she was in the family way? He comforted himself with this hope and waited. She went for walks in the garden, and then told him about them with much pride; but she hid from him the fact that she always went out at dusk. Meanwhile she herself thought she was better, and he fancied so too.

Time went on; he was expecting that which he longed to hear, and thought he noticed other symptoms; but he was alarmed too sometimes, as she seemed to him to grow thinner and thinner; he could not get her to eat. One evening, when he was out, she had as usual gone into the garden and walked about at dusk, had felt a chill afterwards, and great oppression on the chest! She was asleep when Kallem went to bed, but he was awakened later by her coughing. He lit the light and saw that she pressed her hand to her chest.

"Have you a pain there?"

"Yes."

"Where is the pain?"

"Here!" and she pointed to the right collar bone.

"Does it hurt you there when you cough?"

"Yes." And at that moment she was seized with a violent fit of coughing. He got up, dressed himself, put fire in the stove, rang the bell for the servant to fetch him some medicine, and then sounded her chest, asking her many questions. She told him about the chill she had had that evening, and that she was in the habit of taking her walks at dusk.

"At dusk!" exclaimed he, and that was sufficient to make her hide her face. She must promise him now to be good and not do such things any more; she would have to stay in bed now for several days. She did not relish the mustard-plaster on her chest; but the cough lozenges were a success. He concealed his distress by joking and by petting her--and in a few days she did actually seem as well as he could expect. And now she had become so obedient; she kept in the house quite quietly for a fortnight. Her cough was less frequent; those violent fits of coughing had made her chest so sore; but, on the whole, she felt tolerably well, only very tired and breathless; feeling as if she had no wish to touch the piano.

A path was made for her in the garden, and she went out there for the first time with Kallem in the middle of the day, but went in again almost directly. At first he was frightened, seriously alarmed; but then from her manner he concluded it was only a little capriciousness.

However, she felt weaker even than she would allow. The next day she tried together with Sigrid; but after the first few steps she became so breathless that she was obliged to stop and rest; she begged Sigrid not to tell; it would pa.s.s over when she "had more practice." The weather was mild, in the middle of the day there were even a few degrees of warmth, and she felt better, could walk further; Kallem was delighted when he saw one day that she had opened the piano.

One evening Soren Pedersen appeared, pale and by himself--two very unusual things. What was the matter? The matter was that Kristen Larssen's ghost haunted the place! Kallem shouted with laughter, but Soren's face never altered; it was quite true that Kristen Larssen's ghost had been seen! The latter years of his life Kristen Larssen had never played the violin; he gave it to Aune. But now he plays the violin, and in his own house! Did n.o.body live there? No, the house was shut up; but all the same he played! Several people had heard it; there was not the slightest doubt. It must be some lover of practical jokes who had got in there. Who kept the key?

"A nephew of the widow."

"And who may that be?"

"Aune."

"There we have it!"

"But Aune has himself helped to search the house; and Aune is the most frightened of the lot."

A servant, whose child was ill--Kallem knew her, he was her doctor--had seen Kristen Larssen one night when she was out, vanishing along by the wall of the house! Since then several others had seen it. "No one doubts it," said he. What did the doctor think of this, that the colonel's wife, went into the saddler's shop one day to tell them that she had dreamt she saw Kristen Larssen sitting in a long room, amongst many clever and learned men who were all being taught to spell. She had felt drawn to tell Soren Pedersen this, as it was Kristen Larssen who had led him astray. "And will you believe it, doctor, that very night both Aune and I had dreamt that the colonel's wife came to the shop!"

"Now I will tell you something just as strange, Soren Pedersen. The first day that my wife and I were here in the town, we met Andersen, the mason, Karl Meek, Kristen Larssen, Sigrid, you and your wife, all in the course of a quarter of an hour!"

Soren Pedersen rolled his round eyes about in a stupid sort of fashion; there was nothing so very strange in that.

"Not at all; for the other hundred people we took no notice of. Just as you, Soren Pedersen, never think about the hundreds of people you and Aune dream of without seeing them come to the shop the following day."

This did not convince Soren Pedersen.

Superst.i.tion was afloat. One person followed the other's lead; the whole town soon talked of nothing else, and particularly after the minister was mixed up in the affair. He had lived alone with his mother since the spring. His wife and child had been away, and had only returned quite recently. During all this time his preaching had increased in severity, latterly it had had a pa.s.sionate ring which foreboded a storm. He announced at the meeting-house that believers were aware that spirits live and work amongst us, and that many poor souls had to wander about after death; these were well-known facts, sent as warnings to each generation.

When Kallem heard about this he decided to act on a thought which he had had for some time, namely, to get Aune in his power. He was very unwilling; having an inventive mind, he generally managed to get out of most sc.r.a.pes; he could talk so persuasively that he had before this taken Kallem in; but now he was not to escape! His wife agreed to it, so one Sunday morning Kallem hypnotized him, in her presence, down in the office of the hospital--first of all on account of the brandy, but also to clear up this ghost story, which of course no other than this rascal had set afloat! Thus it happened. Now, there was one great difficulty about it: if it were discovered, Aune would be done for; his wife thought of this and interceded for him. There was nothing left but to forbid his proceedings--and then hold their tongues.

This did not prevent Kallem, on his morning rounds, telling Kent, who did not believe in ghosts more than he himself did, that he had discovered where the tale of Kristen Larssen's ghostly reappearance sprang from; the whole was a prearranged affair. So, when Dr. Kent met Josephine one day visiting one of his patients, and knowing that nothing was so dear to her as hearing news of her brother, he repeated Kallem's words. During dinner little Edward, who held forth everlastingly about these ghost stories, told them that Kristen Larssen had again appeared to two boys; one was a son of Aune, and the other was a son of the lay-preacher! Edward was bursting with excitement.

Shortly and decidedly, his mother proved to him that this was nothing but deception; one of the doctors from the town had found out who was at the bottom of this fraud; there was not such a thing as Kristen Larssen's ghost at all.

As soon as the boy had left the dinner-table, the minister reproved Josephine for her tactless conduct.

"How, tactless?"

"Yes, that you could say that to the boy; did you hear how he at once tried to screen himself by saying that I believed in ghosts?" The minister's tone was not arrogant or even reproachful, and she felt that he was right; therefore she did not answer. But it did not rest here, soon after she was in the study.

"I have been thinking of what you said." He was lying on the sofa, smoking, but got up to make room for her; he was glad she came in. She, however, remained standing. "Is the boy to believe a thing because you say it, even if it be untrue?"

"No; but then you could leave it to me to correct the error."