O. T., A Danish Romance Part 10

"Come!" whispered Otto, and drew Wilhelm away from her. "She sits like some bird of ill omen there in the hedge."

"What a difference!" exclaimed Wilhelm, as he followed; "yes, what a difference between this monster, nay, between the other girls and Eva!

She was, doubtless, born in the same poverty, in similar circ.u.mstances, and yet they are like day and night. What a soul has been given to Eva!

what inborn n.o.bility! It must be, really, more than a mere freak of Nature!"

"Only do not let Nature play her freaks with you!" said Otto, smiling, and raised his hand. "You speak often of Eva."

"Here it was a.s.sociation of ideas," answered Wilhelm. "The contrast awoke remembrance."

Otto entered his chamber--he opened the window; it was a moonlight night. From the near wood resounded laughter and song. They came from the young men and girls, who, on their wandering, gave themselves up to merriment. Otto stood silent and full of thought in the open window.

Perhaps it was the moon which lent her paleness to his countenance.

On what did he reflect? Upon his departure, perhaps? Only one more day would he remain here, where he felt himself so much at home; but then the journey was toward his own house, to his grandfather, to Rosalie, and the old preacher, who all thought so much of him. Otto stood listening and silent. The wind bore the song more distinctly over from the wood.

"That is their joy, their happiness!" said he. "It might have been my joy also, my happiness!" lay in the sigh which he heaved. His lips did not move, his thoughts alone spoke their silent language. "I might have stood on a level with these; my soul might have been chained to the dust, and yet it would have been the same which I now possess, with which I long to compa.s.s all worlds! the same, endowed with this sentiment of pride, which drives me on to active exertion. My fate wavered whether I should become one such as these or whether I should rise into that circle which the world calls the higher. The mist-form did not sink down into the mire, but rose above into the high refreshing air. And am I become happy through this?" His eye stared upon the bright disk of the moon. Two large tears rolled over his pale cheeks. "Infinite Omnipotence! I acknowledge Thy existence! Thou dost direct all; upon Thee will I depend!"

A melancholy smile pa.s.sed over his lips; he stepped back into the chamber, folded his hands, prayed, and felt rest and peace.

CHAPTER XII

"The travellers roll through the world of men, Like rose leaves in a stream.

The past will ne'er come back again, But fade into a dream."--B. S. INGEMANN.

The following day, the last before Otto's departure, whilst he and Wilhelm were walking in the garden, Sophie approached them with a garland made of oak-leaves: this was intended for Otto; they were now really to lose him.

"Sophie will scarcely be up so early to-morrow morning," said Louise; "she is, therefore, obliged to present her garland to-day. I am never missing at the breakfast-table, as you well know; and I shall then bring my bouquet."

"I shall preserve both until we meet again," returned Otto; "they are vignettes to my beautiful summer-dream. When I again sit in Copenhagen, when the rain patters and the winter approaches with cold and a joyless sky, I shall still see before me Funen with its green woods, flowers, and sunshine; it will appear to me that it must still be so there, and that the garland and bouquet are only withered because they are with me in the winter cold."

"In Copenhagen we shall meet again!" said Sophie.

"And I shall see you again with the swallows!" said Louise, "when my flowers spring up again, when we have again warm summer days! As far as I am concerned, you belong to the summer, and not to the cold, calm winter."

Early on the following morning was Sophie, after all, at the breakfast table. That was to honor Otto. Mamma showed herself as the carriage was at the door. Wilhelm would accompany him as far as Odense. It was, therefore, a double leave taking, here and there.

"We will always remain friends, faithful friends!" said Wilhelm, when they parted.

"Faithful friends!" repeated Otto, and they rolled away toward Middelfart; thus far should mamma's own carriage convey the excellent Otto. Wilhelm remained behind in Odense; his coachman drove Otto, and they discoursed upon the way. They pa.s.sed Vissenberg: the high, wooded hills there have received the name of the Funen Alps. The legend relates of robbers who had here deep pa.s.sages underneath the high-road, where they hung bells which rang when any one pa.s.sed above. The inhabitants are still looked upon with suspicion. Vissenberg appears a kind of Itri, between Copenhagen and Hamburg. [Author's Note: "Itri," Fra Diavolo's birthplace, lies in the Neapolitan States, on the highway between Rome and Naples. The inhabitants are not, without reason, suspected of carrying on the robber's trade.] Near the church there formerly lay a stone, on which Knud, the saint, is said to have rested himself when flying from the rebellious Jutlanders. In the stone remained the impression of where he had sat; the hard stone had been softer than the hearts of the rebellious people.

This, and similar legends, the coachman knew how to relate; he was born in this neighborhood, but not in Vissenberg itself, where they make the false notes. [Author's Note: A number of years ago a band of men were seized in Vissenberg who had forged bank-notes.] Every legend gains in interest when one hears it in the place with which it is connected.

Funen is especially rich in such relations.

"That cairn elevates itself at Christmas upon four red posts, and one can then see the dance and merriment of the goblins within. Through that peasant's farm there drives every night a glowing coach, drawn by four coal-black horses. Where we now see a pond overgrown with reeds and roots there once stood a church, but it sank as the G.o.dless desecrated it; at midnight we still hear their sighs, and hymns of repentance."

It is true that the narrator mixed up together certain leg-ends which related to other places in the country--that he took little springs, and mingled his own thoughts with his relations; but Otto listened to him with great interest. The discourse turned also upon the family at the hall.

"Yes, they are very much liked!" said the coachman; "the gentleman may believe we know how to value them."

"And now, which of the young ladies is the best?" asked Otto.

"Yes, every one is best served by Miss Louise," returned the fellow.

"Miss Sophie is the prettiest," said Otto.

"Yes, she is also very good,--she belongs to the learned ones! She knows German, that she does! she can act comedy very excellently! I once got permission with the rest of the people to be up-stairs in the sitting-room--we stood behind the family; she did not manage her affairs at all badly."

However much the old legends interested Otto, it seemed as though he listened with more pleasure to the simple reasonings of the coachman upon the family who were become so dear to him. Words and thoughts were busied about the objects there. Wilhelm, however, was and still remained the dearest; he recollected with what mildness Wilhelm had stretched forth his hand in reconciliation, when he himself had thrust him from him. Already the happy summer days which he had spent at the country-seat, the whole visit, appeared a beautiful but short dream.

Otto felt an inward impulse to express his grat.i.tude; his pride even, which was a fundamental feature of his character, commanded him to do this. Wilhelm's affection, his desire for a continued friendship, Otto thought he must reward; and on this account he added the following words to the few lines which he gave the coachman before his pa.s.sage over the Little Belt:--

"Wilhelm, in future we will say thou to each other; that is more confidential!" "He is the first to whom I have given my thou," said Otto, when the letter was dispatched. "This will rejoice him: now, however, I myself have for once made an advance, but he deserves it."

A few moments later it troubled him. "I am a fool like the rest!" said he, and wished he could annihilate the paper. He was summoned on board.

The Little Belt is only a river between the two countries; he soon found himself upon Jutland ground; the whip cracked, the wheels turned round, like the wheels of fortune, up and down, yet ever onward.

Late in the evening he arrived at an inn. From his solitary chamber his thoughts flew in opposite directions; now toward the solitary country-seat of his grandfather, among the sand-hills; now toward the animated mansion in Funen, where the new friends resided. He had opened his box and taken out what lay quite at the top, the garland of oak-leaves and the beautiful bouquet of flowers of this morning.

Most people maintain that one dreams at night of that which one has thought much about. According to this, Otto must have thought a deal about the North Sea, for of it he dreamed the whole night,--not of the young ladies.

CHAPTER XIII

"The heat-lark warbles forth his sepulchral melodies."

S. S. BLICHER.

The peninsula of Jutland possesses nothing of the natural beauty which Zealand and Funen present--splendid beeches and odoriferous clover-fields in the neighborhood of the salt sea; it possesses at once a wild and desolate nature, in the heath-covered expanses and the far-stretching moors. East and west are different; like the green, sappy leaf, and grayish white sea-weed on the sea sh.o.r.e. From the Woods of Ma.r.s.elisborg to the woods south of Coldinger Fjord, is the land rich and blooming; it is the Danish Nature in her greatness. Here rises the Heaven Mountain, with its wilderness of coppice and heather; from here you gaze over the rich landscape, with its woods and lakes, as far down as the roaring Cattegat.

The western coast, on the contrary, lies without a tree, without bushes, with nothing but white sand-hills stretching along the roaring ocean, which scourges the melancholy coast with sand-storms and sharp winds.

Between these contrasts, which the east and west coasts present, the Hesperides and Siberia, lies the vast heath which stretches itself from the Lyneborg sand to the Skagen's reef. No hedge shows here the limits of possession. Among the crossing tracks of carriage wheels must thou seek thy way. Crippled oaks, with whitish-green moss overgrown to the outermost branches, twist themselves along the ground, as if fearing storms and the sea-mist. Here, like a nomadic people, but without flocks, do the so-called Tartar bands wander up and down, with their peculiar language and peculiar ceremonies. Suddenly there shows itself in the interior of the heathy wilderness a colony--another, a strange people, German emigrants, who through industry compel the meagre country to fruitfulness.

From Veile, Otto wished to take the road through Viborg, as the most direct and the shortest to his grandfather's estate, which lay between Nisumfjord and Lemvig.

The first heath-bushes accosted him as dear friends of his childhood.

The beautiful beech-woods lay behind him, the expanse of heath began; but the heath was dear to him: it was this landscape which formed the basis of many dear recollections.

The country became ever higher with brown heights, beyond which nothing was visible; houses and farms became more rare, the cherry orchards transformed themselves into cabbage-gardens. Only single spots were free from heather, and here grew gra.s.s, but short, and like moss or duckweed which grows upon ponds: here birds congregated by hundreds, and fluttered twittering into the air as the carriage drove past.

"You know where to find the green spot in the heath, and how to become happy through it," sighed Otto. "Could I only follow your example!"

At a greater distance rose bare hills, without ling or ploughed land; the p.r.i.c.kly heath looked brown and yellow on the sharp declivities. A little boy and girl herded sheep by the way-side; the boy played the Pandean pipe, the little girl sang a psalm,--it was the best song which she knew how to sing to the traveller, in order to win a little present from him.

The day was warm and beautiful, but the evening brought the cold mist from the sea, which, however, in the interior of the country loses something of its power.

"That is a kiss of welcome from my home," said Otto; "the death-kiss of the mermaid! In Funen they call it the elf maiden."

Within the last few years a number of children have been sent from the Orphan Asylum to the heath, in order that, instead of Copenhagen rogues, they may become honest Jutland peasants. Otto had a boy of this description for his coachman. The lad was very contented, and yet Otto became low-spirited from his relation. Recollections from his own life stirred within his breast. "Return thanks to G.o.d," said he, and gave the lad a considerable present; "on the heath thou hast shelter and a home; in Copenhagen, perhaps, the sandy beach would have been thy nightly resting-place, hunger and cold the gifts which the day would bring thee."