Magnhild Dust Part 21

"Magnhild!" was called from the carriage, at the moment those walking had fully turned their faces toward it.

Magnhild looked up; a lady in black was smiling at her. Magnhild sprang directly toward her; the coachman stopped his horses. It was Fru Bang.

The lady drew Magnhild up to her and kissed her. A stout military man by the lady's side bowed.

The lady was thin. She wore a mourning suit of the latest style. Jet beads, strewed all over the costume, sparkled with every movement; from the jaunty hat, with waving plume, flowed a black veil which was wound about the neck. As from out the depths of night she gazed, with her glowing eyes, which acquired, in this setting, an especially fascinating radiance. Melancholy resignation seemed to command, as it were, the countenance, to hold sway over every nerve, to control the smile about the mouth, to languish in these eyes.

"Yes, I am changed," said she, languidly.

Magnhild turned from the lady to the stout officer. The lady's eyes followed.

"Do you not recognize Bang? Or did you not see him?"

His size had increased tenfold, the flesh resembling heavy layers of padding; he occupied at least two thirds of the carriage, crowding his wife, for one shoulder and arm covered hers. He looked good-natured and quite contented. But when one looked from his plump, heavy face and body back to the lady, she appeared spiritualized--aye, to the very finger-tips of the hand from which she was now drawing the glove.

Steadfastly following Magnhild's eyes, she stroked back from Magnhild's brow a lock of hair which had crept forward, and then let her hand pa.s.s slowly, softly over her cheek.

"You are in mourning?" asked Magnhild.

"The whole land should be in mourning, my child!" And after a pause, came a whispered, "He is dead!"

"You must remember that there is no time to lose if we would reach the steamer," said Bang.

The lady did not look up at her husband's words; she was busy with the lock she had just stroked back. Bang gave the coachman a sign, the carriage was set in motion.

"I am going to America," whispered Magnhild, as she descended from the carriage step.

The lady gazed after her a moment, then she seemed to grasp in its full extent what it implied that Skarlie's wife was going far, far away--what suppositions might be therewith connected and what consequences. For her face resumed somewhat of its old brightness, her frame regained its elasticity: at once she was on her feet, had turned completely round, and was waving her handkerchief. With what charming grace she did it!

Her husband would not permit the carriage to halt again. He contented himself with following his wife's example by waving one hand. The movement must have been accompanied by an admonition to sit down, for the lady disappeared forthwith.

The plume in her hat waved over his shoulder. More could not be seen; she must have let herself glide back into her place.

DUST.

CHAPTER I.

The drive from the town to Skogstad, the large gard belonging to the Atlung family, with its manufacturing establishment on the margin of the woodland stream, at the usual steady pace, might possibly occupy two hours; but in the fine sleighing we had been having it could scarcely take an hour and a half. The road was a chaussee running along the fjord. All the way from town I had the fjord on the right-hand side, and on the left broad fields, gently sloping down from the heights and dotted with villas and gards, surrounded by hedges of trees and having avenues leading to them.

Farther on, the heights became mountains, and rose more abruptly from the sh.o.r.e; here, too, they became more and more rugged, and at last had no other growth than the pine forest, from the uppermost ridge all the way down to the fjord, forest, forest, far as the eye could reach. This belonged to Skogstad; the factory on the Skogstad River prepared the raw material.

The Atlungs were of French descent, having settled here in the times of the Huguenots, and were people of plain origin who had bettered their condition by marrying into the once wealthy and influential Atlung family, taking its name, which sounded not unlike their own.

I thoroughly enjoyed the drive. It had recently been snowing, and the snow still lay on the trees; not a breath of wind had left its traces in the wood. On the other hand, it had been thawing a little, which the deciduous trees that here began to press forward farther down toward the road could not tolerate; the sole covering they wore was the new-fallen snow of the morning.

Between both the white landscape and the snow-laden air, the fjord appeared black. It was not far to the opposite side, and there still loftier mountains loomed up, now also white, but of that subdued tint imparted by the atmosphere.

Where I was driving the sea lay close up to the edge of the snow, only a few sea-weeds, some pebbles, and in some places not so much as these, separated the two forms and hues of the same element--reality and poetry, where the poetry is just as real as the reality, simply not so enduring.

As soon as I had advanced as far as the forest, this attracted my undivided attention. The fir-trees held great armfuls of snow; in some places it had been showered around; nevertheless there was still so much uncovered that a shimmer of dark green overspread the whiteness of the entire forest. On a nearer view it could be seen that the single uncovered branches were thrust forth, as it were, defiantly, and that the red-tinted lower boughs had pierced the snow-drifts.

Higher up mighty trunks were visible, most of them dark, although some of the younger ones were brighter: taken all together an a.s.semblage of well-laden giants, and this gave an air of solemnity to the thicket. The foremost trees, which were low enough not to impede the view, and which while growing had been disfigured either by man or beast, perhaps too by the storms (for they had borne the brunt of these), had not the regular shapes of the others; they were more gnarled, affording the snow an opportunity to commit what ravages it chose among them. Their lowest branches were in some places quite bowed to the ground, often making the tree appear like an unbroken ma.s.s of white; others were fantastically transformed into clumsy dwarfs, with only upper parts to their bodies, or into sundry human forms, each with a white sack drawn over the head, or a shirt that was not put on right.

Alongside of these awkward figures I noticed small cl.u.s.ters of deciduous trees, over which but the faintest suspicion of snow was spread; a single one, which stood apart from the rest, looked as though its outmost white branches, as they grew finer and finer, gradually flowed into the air; then there were young spruce trees which formed pyramid upon pyramid of regular layers of snow. Close down by the sea, where there were more stones, might now and then be seen a bramble bush. The snow had spread itself on every thorn, so that the bush looked as if it were strewed over with white berries.

I rounded a naze with a crag upon it, and here is where Skogstad proper begins. The ridge recedes and is broken by the river. Again we see gently sloping fields, and here lies the gard. The river flows farther away; the red roof and a row of buildings alongside become visible. On either side of the gard lie the hous.e.m.e.n's places with their surrounding grounds, but they are separated from the gard by fields on the one side and by a wood or park on the other.

At the sight of the park I forgot all that had gone before. Originally it was intended to slope down to the sea; but the stony ground had evidently rendered this impossible, and so the trees on the lower square had been felled; but in the course of years, instead of pine woods a vigorous growth of deciduous trees had shot up. These, being of the same year's growth, were of an equal height, and extended all the way up to the venerable pine trees in the park. The effect of the delicate encircling the ponderous, the light opposed to the heavy, the low and perpetually level at the foot of the upward-soaring and powerful, was very fine.

The eye reveled in this, searching for forms; I would combine a hundred branches in one survey, because they ran parallel in the same curve, at about the same height; or I would single out one solitary bough from the rest and follow it from its first ramification through the branches of its branches to the most delicate twig,--a distended, transparent white wing, or a monstrous fern leaf strewed all over with white down. Then I was compelled once more to cease following the forms and turn to the colors; the unequal coating presented an infinite variety.

I turned my back on my traveling companion, the fjord, and wound my way up to the gard. Where the park ended, the garden began, and the road followed this in a gradual ascent. Once there had been a wood here also, and the road had pa.s.sed through it; but of the wood there was left but a few yards, on either side, thus forming the avenue. Large, old trees were about being replaced by young ones, whose growth was so dense that in some places I could not see the gard I was driving toward. But the snow-romance followed, decking the sinking giants with white flags, powdering the young and fresh ones, and playing Christmas masquerade with the deformed ones.

CHAPTER II.

The impressions of nature play their part in our antic.i.p.ations of what we are about to meet. What was there so white and refined in the experience that awaited me here?

She was not clad in white, to be sure, the last time I saw her, the bright attractive being whom I was now to meet again. On her wedding journey, and in Dresden, some nine years previous to this time, we had last been together. True, she was dressed in gala attire every day--a whim of the young bridegroom, in his blissful intoxication; but most frequently she wore blue, not once did she appear in white; nor would it have been becoming to her.

I remember them especially as they sang at the piano, he sitting, because he was playing the accompaniment, she standing and usually with her hand on his shoulder; but what they sang was indeed white, at least it was always of the character of a more or less jubilant anthem. She was the daughter of a sectarian priest, and they had just come from the parsonage and from the wedding feast. Since then I had heard of them from time to time at the parsonage, and from that source I had received repeatedly renewed urgent entreaties to visit them the next time I was in their vicinity. I was now on my way to them.

I had heard the dwelling-house spoken of as one of the largest frame buildings in Norway. It was gray and immensely long. No Atlung had ever been satisfied with what his predecessor had built, and so the house had had an addition made to it by every generation and a partial remodeling of the old portions, so far as it was necessary to make these correspond with the new. I had heard that many and long pa.s.sages (concerning which at festal gatherings rhymes without end were said to have been made) endeavor to unite the interior in the same successful or unsuccessful manner as the out-buildings, sloping roof, balconies, and verandas attempt to keep up the style of the exterior. I have heard how many rooms there are in the house, but I have forgotten it.

The last addition was made by the present owner, and is in a sort of modernized gothic style.

Behind the dwelling the other buildings of the gard form a crescent, which, however, protrudes in rather an unsightly manner on one side.

Between these and the dwelling I now drove in order to alight, according to the post-boy's advice, at a porch in the gothic wing. I did not see a living being about the gard, not even a dog. I waited a little but in vain, then walked through the porch into a pa.s.sage, where I took off my wraps, and then pa.s.sed on into a large bright front room to the right.

Neither did I see any one here; but I heard either two children's voices and a woman's voice, or two female voices and one child's voice, and I recognized the song, for it was one that was just then floating about the country, the lament of a little girl that she was everywhere in the way except in heaven with G.o.d, who was so glad to have unhappy children with Him. It sounded rather strange to hear such a lament in this bright, lively room, filled with guns and other sporting implements, reindeer horns, fox skins, lynx skins, and similar substantial objects, arranged with the most exquisite taste.

I knocked at the door and entered one of the most charming sitting-rooms I have seen in this country, so bright its outlook on the fjord, so large it was, so elegant. The brightly polished wooden panels of the wall were relieved by carved wooden brackets, each bearing a bust or a small statue; the stylish furniture was in every direction gracefully distributed about on the Brussels carpet. Moody and Sankey's dreamy melody flowed out over this like a white or yellow sheet. This hymn belongs to a collection of Christian songs which are among the most beautiful that I know; but it made the same impression here as if beneath this modern room there was a crypt from the Middle Ages where immured nuns were taking part in ceremonies for the dead, amidst smoking lamps, and whence incense and low chanting, inseparably blended, stole up into the bright conceptions and cheerful art of the nineteenth century.

The singing proceeded from one woman and two boys, the elder of the latter seven years old or a little more, and the younger about six. The woman turned her face toward the door, and paused quite astonished at my entrance; the boys were gazing out of the window, and did not look at her; they were wholly absorbed in their singing, and therefore they continued a while after she had ceased.

Of these two boys the one resembled the father's family, the other the mother's; only the mother's eyes had been bestowed on them both. The elder of the boys had a long face, with high brow and sandy hair, and he was freckled like his father. The younger one had his mother's figure, and stooped slightly because the head was set forward on the shoulders.

But in consequence of this his head was usually thrown somewhat backward in order to recover its equilibrium. The result of this again was that the lips were habitually parted, and then the large, questioning eyes and the bright curly hair encircling the fine arched brow were exactly like the mother's. The elder one was tall and thin, and had his father's lounging gait and small, outward turned feet. I observed all this at a glance, while the boys walked across the room to the table by the sofa, as their companion left them. She had advanced, after a moment's hesitation, to meet me; she was evidently not sure whether she knew me or not. On hearing my name, she discovered with a smile that it was only my portrait she had seen, the portrait in the alb.u.m, a souvenir of the wedding journey of the heads of the house. She informed me that Atlung was at the factories, and would be home to dinner, that is to say in about an hour, and that the mistress of the house was at one of the hous.e.m.e.n's places I had seen from the road; it seemed that there was an old man lying at the point of death there.

She made this announcement in a melodious, although rather feeble voice, and with a pair of searching eyes fastened on me. She had heard something about me. I had never thought that I should see one of Carlo Dolci's madonnas step down from a frame to stand in a modern sitting-room and talk with me, and therefore my eyes were certainly not less searching than hers. The way the head was poised on the shoulders, its inclination to one side, the profile of the face, and beyond all else the eyes and the eyebrows, indeed, the bluish green head kerchief, which was drawn far forward, imparting to the pale face something of its own hue--altogether a genuine Carlo Dolci!