Ragna Part 10

When morning had come and they relieved her at her post, she walked out to the high rocky promontory from which she could see the sea. The day was still young and the gra.s.s and bushes were covered with dewdrops.

Ragna gathered a handful of flowers as she went and pressed their wet freshness to her face. She felt grave and old; the bright sunlight seemed like an insult in the fact of the long night and the silent darkened room. She seated herself on a grey lichen-covered boulder overlooking the water. The fjord was like gla.s.s, as far as the eye could reach and it reflected the surrounding mountains like a mirror; to her tired eyes it was unreal, like a pictured scene. As she sat there, a breeze sprang up and tiny ripples ruffled the surface of the water, spreading from sh.o.r.e to sh.o.r.e. The reflections of tree and crag shivered into a thousand fragments. Up the bay a boat was putting out from the little village. Ragna idly watched the rise and fall of the oars. A girl was rowing, swaying to the rhythm of the stroke; she was standing and her red bodice stood out against the background, a vivid patch of colour. She was singing and her clear voice rose in plaintive minor notes. Smoke began to rise from the village chimneys, and a dog barked.

It was Life going on, taking no heed of those who fall by the wayside, Life, the cruel Wheel, crushing the weak, casting to one side those who would clog the onward march--life, the Life of the world to whom the individual existence, the individual pain and strife are of no importance; life continuing the same throughout the ages, no matter who dies, no matter who suffers.

"The mountains do not change, nor the sky, no matter who comes or goes,"

thought Ragna, "and everything goes on just the same, no one is necessary, continuity is everything. If we suffer, if we die, what does it matter? I shall die, we shall all die, and in a few years it will make no difference to anyone; there is no real change, only people come and go. That is the real eternity--just the same old round, over and over again, and on forever." She sat a long time, her chin supported in her palms, her eyes, steel blue, gazing out steadily over the New World made manifest to her.

In after years she often thought of the hours spent there by the fjord in the early morning, and the memory nearly always brought peace to her heart. Her own troubles seemed so trivial, so transient in comparison with the age old changelessness of life, her own life and destiny so unimportant in the endless chain of humanity.

CHAPTER VIII

When all was over, Ragna accompanied her aunt to Christiania. She was given a comfortable room on the first floor and soon settled into the pleasant regularity of the household. It was very quiet--there could be no entertaining until the period of mourning should be over--but intimate friends often came in the afternoon and evening, and very pleasant circles formed about the cheerful lamp. Fru Bjork was a frequent visitor and made much of Ragna. The girl had taken her fancy when they had journeyed to Paris together and moreover she was convinced that the friendship of a serious-minded girl like Ragna was excellent for Astrid. The girls kept up a lively correspondence and in a few months Astrid would be coming home. Ragna looked forward to her coming with some impatience; though they had actually but little in common, there was at least the mutual experience of school-life, and since Ragna's awakening experience, much that had been incomprehensible to her in Astrid's nature now became clear.

"She knew more than I did about things--and I was proud of my ignorance," she reflected. She was as yet unable to realize the difference between Astrid's shallow feminine coquetry and her own awakening consciousness of womanhood.

Fru Boyesen and Fru Bjork had been schoolmates and although differing as to character, were excellent friends, owing to the ties of life-long a.s.sociation and a common point-of-view in social matters. Each of the ladies entertained a tolerant pity for the foibles of the other, which is perhaps the most comfortable _modus vivendi_ to be found.

Ragna's time was well occupied. By her own wish she continued her studies under the best professors obtainable--that part was Aunt Gitta's doing. Literature interested her more than anything else and after a time she was encouraged to try her hand at writing a series of short essays. To her great delight a well-known review accepted them, and this materially affected her relations with her aunt. The good lady had heretofore regarded her as a child to be exhaustively directed and controlled, but a niece whose writings were published was quite a different person in her estimation. In common with many people of prosaic mind she had a genuine respect for intellectual attainments, therefore, Ragna was promoted to a position of semi-independence, her working hours were held sacred, and to give her more time for her literary pursuits such household tasks as had fallen to her share were removed as incompatible. This was a mistake, for the homely work would have been a wholesome antidote to the romantic trend of the girl's mind.

Withdrawn from the ordinary business of the house, she lived an unreal life made up of fanciful imaginings which her philosophical and literary studies were unable to counteract. She had no experience of actualities to control and place in their proper perspective the various social and philosophical theories which formed the greater part of her reading.

Consequently with nothing to counter-balance the paramount influence of the moment, she swayed to the mental att.i.tude of whatever author she happened to be reading, being in turn, or imagining herself a Swedenborgian, an agnostic, an atheist, and a mystic.

She was cynical with Voltaire and romantic with Byron and De Musset. For a considerable period the "categorical imperative" haunted her days and nights, and during three months at least. "Also sprach Zarathustra" was the sun whose rising and setting determined her getting up and her sitting down. But Nietsche did not last long; his doctrine was too foreign to her nature and she returned to Kant as to an old friend.

Fru Boyesen was not a little worried by these moral and spiritual waverings, but never having known anything of the kind herself, was unable to cope with the case. She took a purely material view of the situation. They were now out of mourning, but Ragna seemed to have little taste for society in general, and none for that of young men; she preferred her books, she said, when her aunt rallied her on the subject.

Now Fru Boyesen had been at some pains to obtain for her niece a circle of eligible masculine acquaintances; she had made it known that she considered the girl as her adopted daughter and would make her her heiress, and there was no lack of eligible suitors; so when Ragna had sent two of the most desirable firmly but kindly about their business with no better excuse than that they did not happen to be congenial to her, her aunt felt that it was time to interfere.

She would have considered either of them a most desirable husband for her niece--was not young Nansen tall and handsome as well as the only son of wealthy parents? And was not Peter Na.s.s a most estimable young man and well situated to make a wife comfortable and happy? What was Ragna waiting for? A white blackbird?

Ragna threw her arms about her aunt's neck.

"Dear Aunt Gitta, I am so happy with you! I don't want to marry ever, I think!"

"Not want to marry, child? You are crazy! It is a woman's duty to marry and rear children--the Bible says so. Perhaps you think you are in love with some other young man?"

No, Ragna was in love with no one.

"Well then, why did you refuse Ole Nansen?"

"Because I did not love him."

"Oh, stuff and nonsense! Not love him! Very probably you don't, but that is not essential, not one woman in a hundred 'loves' her husband until after she has married him. The important part is that everything else should be suitable. There's nothing you dislike in him, is there?"

"No, Auntie."

Fru Boyesen raised her eyes to Heaven.

"Well, all I can say is, you'll never get such a chance again; young Nansen is a man in a thousand."

"Are you so anxious to be rid of me, Auntie dear?"

"No, of course not, goosie," she kissed the girl affectionately, "but I should like to see you married, in a home of your own. It would be much better for you, I am sure. I don't really approve of this one-sided life you are leading."

"But, Auntie dear, how could I marry a man who takes no interest in my work? These young men are very nice and all that, but we have absolutely nothing in common. I asked Peter Na.s.s the other day what he thought of the Kantian philosophy, and he said he had never thought about it at all. These young men never like to talk about serious subjects and they refuse to take me seriously when I do."

"Ah, Ragna," said the elder woman, "when you have a home and children to look after, you will find that all your philosophy goes to the wall."

"But that is just what I am afraid of, why should I stifle all my higher instincts in a commonplace marriage?"

She had not told her aunt, however, what was the real matter with her.

The fact was that try as she might, she could not rid herself of the memory of Prince Mirko and that moonlit crossing of the North Sea. His kiss remained imprinted on her lips and his idealized image on her heart. She mentally compared with him the young men of her acquaintance and weighing them in the balance, found them woefully wanting.

One evening, sitting alone with her in the drawing-room, young Nansen had kissed her--the effect had been electrical. Furiously rubbing her offended cheek, she had reprimanded him in such terms of withering scorn that the poor young man fled, never to call again. Afterwards she was ashamed of her outburst, and a.n.a.lysing her feelings, as she had come to do, was obliged to admit to herself that the cause of her resentment was not the temerity of her suitor, but the fact that he had failed to awake in her an answering thrill. She liked the young man, and her vanity would have been pleased by the marriage, for he was the best "parti" in Christiania, but her conscious womanhood revolted at a loveless union.

Was the shadow of a kiss to spoil her life? In vain she reasoned with herself, the unconquerable memory remained; she felt it like an indelible mark on her.

Fru Boyesen in despair at her niece's obstinacy and foolishness, and after many fruitless attempts to bring the girl round to her point of view, finally betook herself to Ragna's old professor, Dr. Tommsen. She laid the case before him and begged him to use his influence with his wayward pupil--she would surely listen to him.

Dr. Tommsen had received Fru Boyesen in his study. He sat, in an old leather-covered armchair between the porcelain stove where a fire was burning, and his large, much belittered writing table, gazing at his visitor in good-humoured perplexity and twiddling his thumbs--a habit of his when not engaged in writing or reading. His spectacles were pushed up on his bulging forehead and his keen grey eyes peered out from under s.h.a.ggy, grizzled eyebrows, which he had a habit of working up and down in a terrifying manner. His sanctum was not often invaded by ladies, and the presence of a portly dame arrayed in green silk trimmed with bugles and yellow lace and protected by a dead-leaf mantle, and the singularity of her coming to him, a bachelor of well-known eccentricity, in order that her niece should be prevailed upon to enter the bonds of matrimony, appealed to his sense of humour.

Therefore, when Fru Boyesen had finished her elaborate exposition of the case, the Doctor pursed up his lips and his eyes twinkled.

"My dear Madam," he said, "I fail to see how I can be of any a.s.sistance to you, I have so little experience in these matters."

"You could advise Ragna, my dear Herr Doctor--she would listen to you.

She must be persuaded to take a reasonable view of life."

"Ah, that depends on what one considers a reasonable view," he said judicially, putting the tips of his fingers together. "From my standpoint your niece's objections appear quite reasonable. You may not be aware, my dear lady, though most people are, that theoretically I disapprove of marriage."

"Disapprove of marriage! Oh, Herr Doctor, you can't mean that!" cried Fru Boyesen horrified, feeling the solid ground slipping from beneath her feet, as it were.

"Precisely, Madam--or to be more exact, I disapprove of marriage as now generally practised. I regard it as a social contract, useful to humanity in general, since no better subst.i.tute has been found as yet, but I certainly do not consider it an ideal state, and it would be against my avowed principles to urge any young person--much more so one of the 'elite,' among whom I place Ragna--to enter upon a form of contract which I personally consider both futile and degrading--an insult to the intelligence."

This was too much for Fru Boyesen; she gasped angrily, but found herself unable to give articulate utterance to her amazement and indignation.

The Professor, his eyes twinkling more and more, pursued in a calm deliberate voice.

"Since you do not answer, I take it that you agree with me in the main--or perhaps your estimation of your niece is not the same as mine?"

"I most certainly do not agree with you, Dr. Tommsen," said Fru Boyesen hotly; "I am a married woman myself, and a respectable one, and I a.s.sure you I have found nothing either degrading or futile in the married state. I do not think you should use such words in connection with a divine inst.i.tution."

"Ah, that is where we differ, dear Madam," returned the Professor, gently rubbing his palms together--it amused him on occasions to tease the conventionally-minded--"You consider it a divine inst.i.tution and I do not--however that is not the point. I admit that some persons are obviously qualified for matrimony and find their vocation in it--you think your niece to be one of those, I do not."

Fru Boyesen interrupted him.

"But there is where you are wrong, Herr Doctor. Ragna is made for marriage, trust an old woman for that. She is not the girl to be an old maid. I am anxious for that reason--if she lets her best years go by and despises the chances that offer, she will regret it when it is too late.

I love her, Herr Doctor, and old women see farther than young ones--I want to see her happy in the way that G.o.d intended her to be."