In God's Way Part 8

Not a single word of sympathy, not even a look from Josephine.

From their childhood Ole and she had been constantly together; they had written to each other when he was away at Christiania, he once a fortnight, she as often as she had anything to write about. When he was at home for his holidays they met daily. During the two years that she was at a French school and away in Spain their correspondence had been more active than ever, on her part, too, and when she came home again--changed though she was otherwise--to him she was always the same. Her father had helped him with his studies and enabled him to give all his attention to them; he was to pa.s.s his last examination at Christmas; everyone prophesied that it would be one of the first and best ever pa.s.sed in theology. Undoubtedly he had her, and possibly her brother too, to thank for his having been helped. In former days they had both of them brought him to their father, to the head-master, to the apothecary, and to many other families; and now through her he was accepted everywhere. In everyday life she spoke but little, and was often rather difficult to get on with; but she was a firm and true friend. At times she would censure him (for he was not always according to her taste); it was all part of their intercourse and he did not attach much importance to it, nor she either; from the very first she had always been his guardian. As yet he had not dared to say that he loved her; there was no necessity for it, and, in fact, it was almost too sacred to be mentioned. He was as sure of her as of his own faith.

He was a peasant, his chief characteristic was a certain trustful, solid collectiveness. G.o.d provided for his faith; his well-being and future were provided for--of course also by G.o.d; but through Josephine.

In his eyes she was the cleverest, most beautiful and healthiest girl not only in the town but in the whole country, and she was very rich.

This last must be taken into consideration too; as a small boy he had been an ambitious dreamer, but now his dreams had a different bent.

His fellow-students knew all about it; as well as Melancthon, they called him the "bishop-theme from the bay," or the "bay bishop." He had got accustomed to this, it was almost a necessity for him; there was something child-like in his smiling trustfulness that suited him well; then he was so handsome, with his fair, open face; and when that is the case it is quite excusable to be ambitious.

Now he felt that he had been hurled down from his secure and pleasant height! Anyone who having been safe and secure, for the first time is thoroughly defeated, feels so completely out of it all. The worst of this was that Josephine did not appear to wish to have anything to do with him; he looked repeatedly across to her, but she went on arranging her flowers and gra.s.s just as if he did not exist.

At last it was exactly as though they all had glided away and he too were no longer there. He sat without seeming to sit, heard without hearing, saw without seeing. The supper was being got ready up before the house; they all went up there as soon as the table was laid; they ate, they drank, they laughed and made merry; but he was not with them, he stood there staring out across the bay--far, far away. A young man, clerk in some business, spoke to him about the routes of the different steamers and how badly they were managed; a girl with crooked teeth, red hair in plaits and a freckled face (he had formerly been her master), a.s.sured him that sailors were by no means so well educated as one might expect from people who travelled so much. The hostess came and asked how it was he would not eat anything, and the host took wine with him; in doing so they showed him the usual respect; but both of them cast a hurried, searching glance at his eyes, which made him tremble. He felt they doubted. In his ceaseless and ever-increasing pain, he saw nothing but doubt and scorn on every side, even in the fact of the general merriment. Edward Kallem was especially full of fun and they all collected round him. It was in his honor too (he had come home a fortnight ago) that the expedition had been got up. As in a dream, Ole saw that Josephine's flowers had been placed on the table, and he heard how everyone praised the blending of their colors; she herself was sitting at a little stone table with two girl friends--was that to prevent his joining her? There was much noise and fun going on at the other side. He saw her talking and laughing, all the young men waiting upon her; Edward joined them several times; he made them laugh too. Ole noticed all this with a strange feeling of fear. The noise jarred on him, the laughter made him feel ashamed, he could not swallow a morsel, and the wine had a bad taste; everyone seemed as though they were worked by machinery, the house, the bay, the schooner, the mountains, all seemed so overwhelmingly near.

A dead calm had set in, so that the whole party were obliged to walk back to town. They started on their walk singing and all together; but almost immediately some of the numerous summer visitors came pouring out from the houses along the road, and, as they were all acquaintances, they stopped to speak. The newcomers joined them and walked on with them; then came others, and each time they stopped, and each time the party broke up and became more divided. In that way Ole was able to keep behind without anyone's noticing it. He could not bear their company and their merriment any longer.

Now it was that everything was, as it were, concentrated in Josephine.

The being attacked and overthrown by Edward, the shame of this defeat, his wounded religious feelings ... it all was due to the fact that she had not upheld him, neither by word nor by look; had shunned him before, and now had gone and left him! He could not stand that; for she had grown to be so much, too much, for him, he knew it and was not ashamed. That which once had been his highest aim, namely, to be a missionary, had fallen from him like scales, when he saw she no longer cared about it. Whenever his mother had said that he should never become a missionary, his answer was that G.o.d must be obeyed before man.

But when Josephine, in her strong sort of way, had looked closer into the reality of things, he gave up all his wishes without her needing even to say a word on the subject. He said to himself that he would surely be punished for having so great a love for any one person. But he could not help it.

With these and thousands of similar thoughts in his mind, he lagged behind, and turned off from the road up into the wood; there he lay down, waiting until their summer acquaintances should pa.s.s back again.

He soon turned over, and lay with his face downwards, the cool blades of gra.s.s p.r.i.c.kling both cheeks and forehead, and the half-wet earth he seemed to inhale suited his mood. All these tiny blades of gra.s.s were as nothing in the shade; and so it was with him--through her he reached the sunny side of life, without her all was shadow.

A voice within him seemed to say her brother had taken her from him.

Her brother, who, until a very few days ago, had not cared a straw about her, whilst Ole had always been with her since they were children together, had rowed with her, read to her, been to her both brother and sister in one, and had faithfully written to her when they were separated; her own brother had never done any one of all these things.

Even his defeat of to-day he credited to her account; for if he had not, for her sake, been so conscientious in working for his examination, to which he had been a.s.sisted by her father, then he would probably have known more about all those matters under discussion to-day--he would perhaps not have been defeated at all; this, too, he suffered for the sake of his fidelity.

As long as Josephine was a child and half grown up, Edward had seldom been together with her without teasing her. She was very thin, with large, black eyes, often uncombed hair, red hands, altogether scraggy; he nicknamed her "the duckling," and once when she had hurt her foot and went about limping, "the lame duckling."

He could never really make her out, she was so defiant, and yet shy--kept always at a distance. And then, time upon time, she was the cause of his getting a beating. She considered it "just" to tell each time he did anything wrong. And if he beat her for telling, then it was "just" to tell about that too. He took a dislike to her. Soon, however, they were separated, through his leaving his father's house. After that unlucky day, when father and son met on the road to Store-Tuft, the apothecary took pity on his old friend and, taking the boy from him, adopted him entirely as his own son. What the father had never been able to succeed in succeeded now. The boy was at once taken away from school, and allowed to devote himself to his chief interest, natural history. Chemical and physical a.n.a.lysis or botanical expeditions were his highest aim, and for two years he studied nothing but what belonged to those branches. After that he went through other necessary studies with a private master, and very quickly; he began his medical studies after pa.s.sing his second examination. As long as he was at home he only saw his sister when she came across to the apothecary's to see him, and, as their interests were entirely opposed, their intercourse became almost nil. Later on, the apothecary used to take him abroad with him in the holidays; Edward was so clever at languages, which he certainly was not. It was not often, therefore, that the brother and sister met in their holiday time. But from the time that, as a student, he had first travelled abroad with the apothecary, and she saw her brother come home, grown-up, with new fashions, both in ideas and in dress, energetic, full of life, a very ideal, especially a woman's ideal of youth, from that time she had always secretly admired him. He, for his part, either overlooked her completely, or else teased her; it cost her many an hour's torture, but she swallowed it all, so as to be allowed to be where he was, even if only quietly in a corner.

Ole understood her, though she never betrayed herself. To him, too, she spoke seldom of Edward without calling him "disgusting," "meddlesome,"

"chatterbox," etc., etc. But Ole's faithful attention to her every time she sat there neglected by her brother, and with wounded feelings heaped up "treasures" for him in her heart.

A great change had taken place in Edward--his inquisitiveness had become a desire for knowledge, his restlessness was now energy. But at the same time his sister also underwent a change to an extent that he knew nothing about. It was exactly two years and a half since he had seen her last; she had been in France and Spain for two years, and in the last holidays, when she was at home, he had been away travelling in England with the apothecary; this year, too, they had been away for a couple of months. This sister whom he now met again was like a stranger to him. He was much taken up with her after their first meeting.

She was not handsome, he told Ole, as soon as they two met (to Ole's greatest astonishment). But he never wearied talking of the new and peculiar sort of impression she produced up here among all the others.

Their mother must surely have looked too much at some Spanish woman during the time before Josephine's birth. If it had not been for that indescribable something about the eyes which distinguishes one person from the other all the world over--if it had not been for that something about the eyes--she might very well have lived among Spaniards and been taken for their countrywoman. The effect of this in a Norwegian household may be imagined! She talked well, rapidly, and to the point; but, all the same, was rather silent--kept herself at a distance. She dressed conspicuously, liked bright colors, and was always in the height of fashion, thereby almost challenging people, but in all other respects she was timid and shy.

From this time Edward really became a brother to her. Their father was away, and during his absence she lived at the head-master's and was not always easily got at; but whenever it was possible they were together.

She had a feeling that he wanted to study her thoroughly, so she was on her guard; but it flattered her greatly that, whenever there was anyone present, his eyes always sought hers and he appealed to her in everything.

While Ole, in deep distress, pressed his face down in the gra.s.s in the little wood where he lay, he could see in his mind's eye Josephine at a ball, her brother dancing first with this one, then with the other--sometimes even several dances with the same partner, but with her only one little "turn," out of compa.s.sion.

But now?

Now she had become a precious sister to Edward, and she and Ole were to be separated.

Why should Edward break in upon and spoil their intercourse, he who knew so little about it?--taking to himself all manner of rights which he did not in the least deserve? Just after being together for a few days, was he to decide who was suitable for her to be with, and who was not?

Why, before them all, had he thus attacked him, casting scorn and derision on his calling in life?--not only mocking him, but mocking G.o.d himself.

As this thought pa.s.sed through Ole Tuft's mind, a strange and strong light seemed to rise up and spread over all the mountains far away on the other side of the bay. He felt it in the back of his neck as he lay there with his face buried in the gra.s.s. Then there seemed to come a whisper from over there, filling all the air around him, "What hast thou done with me?"

Oh! how crushed he felt, he seemed forced down into the ground. Now he knew that his suffering was like a sharp razor cutting away all that was diseased out of his flesh. He had lost his cause to-day simply because he stood there as a liar. "Thou shalt have no other G.o.ds but me!" No, no, forgive me, spare me! "Thou with thy vain, sensual dreams!

Let the night serve thee as it did Jacob, to wrestle with me, writhing worm that thou art!"

The air around him seemed full of the sound of a thousand wings.

It was not the first time that the solemnity of the Old Testament had come upon him from the heights and taken root in him. These questions of great or small; as to whether he should hazard "the greatest"--or be contented, like everyone else, with mediocrity--this was nothing new to him.

But were he to meet Josephine in good humor again, those questions would cease to exist, with one stroke of her hand she made them vanish.

And such was the case now. Without any warning, it was as if a fresh protest from her came and overwhelmed him. Josephine would never have turned from him to-day because her brother wished it, never! And if she had understood it in that way, she would have done just the opposite.

No, she turned from him because he was such a poor creature--for nothing else. Perhaps, too, because she did not wish to be forced into a discussion, she was so very shy. Neither had she turned to her brother. She sat in the middle of the group in the garden, and later on, when they dined, she and a couple of girl friends had been at a separate table. And when the party broke up she had made no effort to be where her brother collected so many round him--why, in the world, had he not thought of that before? She was true to him; upon my word, she was true and faithful! He rose up; why, in the name of fortune, had he not seen that sooner?

He had wished that she would help him one way or another--at least, would comfort him and show him how sorry she was for him. But all that sort of thing was utterly opposed to Josephine's nature. How could he even think of it? Especially as there had been all this disturbance and everyone was on the lookout as to what she would do.

He had been a great stupid. Delighted with this discovery, he hopped down through the wood and across the ditch, on his homeward way, after the others.

Great heavens, how he loved her! He saw her before him as she was sometimes when she thought him too child-like; through all her majesty he could always catch a good, kind look from her!

The late sunset left no red sky behind, the night was dull and gray, a deserted road winding down hill; by the roadside were some small factories, the houses being up on the hill, poor places all of them, and a few shabby-looking summer villas here and there, low trees, and a few bushes spread about.

He saw it all without seeing it, occupied as he was with his own thoughts. Not a soul on the road--yes, far off in the distance was a solitary individual going toward the town. He slackened his pace so as not to overtake this person, and never noticed that besides that person walking in front of him was another advancing to meet him. At last he could distinguish one from the other. Surely--it could never be--was he mistaken? No, he recognized the hat, and then the walk, the whole figure, there was only one such! Josephine was coming back to fetch him! It was just like her.

"But where have you been?" said she. Her large-featured face was flushed, her breath came quickly, her voice was rather hesitating, and the parasol she held in her left hand was not altogether steady. He did not answer; he gazed at her face, her dress, the feather in her hat, her tall, fine figure, till involuntarily she smiled; so much dumb admiration and grat.i.tude would pierce through any kind of armor.

"Josephine! Oh, Josephine!" Joy and admiration were reflected from the crown of his flat hat and down to his very boots. She went gaily up to him and laid her right hand on his left arm, pushing him gently forward; he was to walk on.

His face was all stained by the gra.s.s he had been burrowing in, she thought he had been crying: "You are silly, Ole," she whispered.

Such a gray summer's night, when nothing really sleeps nor yet is fully awake, gives one a strange, unsatisfied feeling. For these two it was as would be a dimly lighted room for two who were secretly engaged. She allowed her hand to remain resting on his arm, and when his eyes met hers she looked at him as though watching over a child.

"You see, I thought," said he, "I thought, only fancy I thought--" The tears stood in his eyes.

"You are very silly, Ole," whispered she again! And thus ended the storm of that day.

Her hand still rested on his arm; it looked as if she were leading him to prison. He could only just feel a very slight pressure, but it went to his very marrow. Now and then her silk dress just touched his leg, they were keeping step together, he seemed carried along by the electric current of her vicinity. They were utterly alone, and the silence round them was complete; they could hear their own steps and the rustling of the silk dress. He kept the arm on which her hand lay, painfully quiet, half afraid that the hand might fall down and be broken. There was just this one drawback--for there must always be something not quite perfect, that he felt an ever-increasing guilty desire to take her hand and tuck it under his arm in the usual way; he could have pressed it then. But he dared not do it.

They walked on and on. He looked upward and discovered there was no moon. "There is no moon," said he.

"It would have been lighter if there had been," answered she, smiling.

"Much lighter." Their voices had met and the sound of them mingled, floating together like birds in the air.

But just on that account they found it difficult to say more. As Ole walked along pondering over what he could venture to say next, he felt both touched and proud. He thought of that snowy Sat.u.r.day evening long ago, when the other boys at school had treated him so badly, and he had fled away to Store-Tuft; he thought of all his misery that day; but his promotion as it were dated from then, he had walked into the town from the other side, but with her on his arm--stop though, not quite. There had been the same drawback then too.

Should he tell her? Would she not think it too outspoken.

"We are quite alone now, we too," thus cunningly would he try to lead up to it; but he could not depend on his voice, it would betray him.