Strife and Peace Part 9

O flowers, spread with beauty my way!

My harp is broken, but no sigh Spring's spirits gay shall cause to fly.

And I am still so blest; In my heart is heavenly rest.

"He wanders farther, and seeks out every beloved nook. The youth of the country a.s.semble, and surround the aged singer--'the friend of youth and gladness.' They entreat him with his music to beautify their festival:

For spring is dead, with all its pleasure, Without the harp and song's glad measure.

"The old man replies:

Quenched, ye youth, is my fire so wild; My evening twilight is cool, but mild; And the blissful hours of my youth are brought, By your lively songs, into my thought.

Bewail me not; I am still so blest-- In my heart lieth heaven's own rest.

"And now he exhorts the songsters of the wood, flowers, youth, everything that is lovely in nature and in life, to rejoice in its existence, and to praise the Creator. The beauty and joy of all creatures are the garland in his silver hair; and grateful and happy, admiring and singing praises, he sinks softly into the maternal bosom of Nature."

Alette was silent; a tender emotion trembled in her voice as she uttered the last words, and beamed in her charming countenance. The tears of Mrs. Astrid flowed; her hands were convulsively clasped together, whilst she exclaimed, "Oh thus to feel before one dies! and thus to be permitted to die!" She drew Alette to her with a kind of vehemence, kissed her, and then wept silently, leaning on her shoulder. Harald, too, was affected; but he appeared to restrain his feelings, and gazed with earnest and tearful eyes on the group before him.

Silently and un.o.bserved stole Susanna out of the room. She felt a sting in her heart; a serpent raged in her bosom. Driven by a nameless agonised disquiet, she hastened forth into the free air, and ascended, almost without being aware of it herself, the steep footpath up the mountain, where many a time, in calmer moments, she had admired the beautiful prospect.

Great and beautiful scenes had, during the foregoing conversation, arisen before her view;--she felt herself so little, so poor beside them. Ah! she could not once speak of the great and beautiful, for her tongue was bound. She felt so warmly, and yet could warm no one! The happy Alette won without trouble, perhaps even without much valuing it, a regard, an approval, which Susanna would have purchased with her life.

The Barbra-spirit boiled up in her, and with a reproachful glance to heaven she exclaimed, "Shall I then, for my whole life remain nothing but a poor despised maid-servant!"

The heaven looked clown on the young maiden mildly, but smilingly; soft rain-drops sprinkled her forehead; and all nature around her stood silent, and, as it were, in sorrow. This sorrowing calm operated on Susanna like the tenderly accusing glance of a good mother. She looked down into her heart, and saw there envy and pride, and she shuddered at herself. She gazed down into the stream which waved beneath her feet, and she thought with longing, "Oh, that one could but plunge down, deep, deep into these waves, and then arise purified--improved!"

But already this wish had operated like a purifying baptism on Susanna's soul; and she felt fresh and light thoughts ascend within her. "A poor maid-servant!" repeated now Sanna; "and why should that be so contemptible a lot? The Highest himself has served on earth; served for all, for the very least; yes, even for me. Oh!--" and it became continually lighter and warmer in her mind.--"I will be a true maid-servant, and place my honour in it, and desire to be nothing else!

Charm I cannot; beauty and genius, and beautiful talents, I have not; but--I can love and I can serve, and that will I do with my whole heart, and with all my strength, and in all humility; and if men despise me, yet G.o.d will not forsake the poor and faithful maid-servant!"

When Susanna again cast her tearful eyes on the ground, they fell on a little piece of moss, one of those very least children of nature, which in silence and unheeded pa.s.s through the metamorphoses of their quiet life. The little plant stood in fresh green, on its head hung the clear rain-drops, and the sun which now shone through the clouds, glittered in them.

Susanna contemplated the little moss, and it seemed to say to her: "See thou! though I am so insignificant, yet I enjoy the dew of heaven and the beams of the sun, as fully as the roses and the lilacs of the garden!" Susanna understood the speech of the little plant, and grateful and calmed, she repeated many times to herself, with a species of silent gladness--"a humble, a faithful maid-servant!"

When Susanna came home, she found Mrs. Astrid not well. She had been much excited, and on such occasions an attack of the spasms was always to be apprehended. Susanna begged earnestly, and received the permission to watch by her to-night; at least, till Mrs. Astrid slept. Mrs. Astrid had, indeed, another maid with her, but she was old and very deaf, and Susanna had no confidence in her.

Mrs. Astrid retired to rest. Susanna seated herself on a stool by the window, silently occupied with her thoughts, and with knitting a stocking. The window had stood open during the day, and a host of flies had entered the room. Mrs. Astrid was much disturbed by them, and complained that they prevented her sleeping. Quietly Susanna laid bare her white shoulders, neck, and arms, and when the flies in swarms darted down upon her, and her mistress now left at peace slept calmly, Susanna sate still, let the flies enjoy themselves, and enjoyed herself thereby more than one can believe.

FOOTNOTES:

[8] Probably Newfoundland.

[9] Probably spotted maple.

[10] Upper Canada.

[11] Snails or c.o.c.kles, as they called their light craft.

[12] I have not wished to attempt a translation of these verses, convinced that for the Swedish reader it is not necessary; and why unnecessarily brush off the golden dust from the b.u.t.terfly's wings.--_Fredrika Bremer_.

As, however, the _English reader_ may find it _rather_ more necessary to give a translation of the Norwegian verses, I have made it, and that as much in the simplicity of the original as I could.--M. H.

RETREATING AND ADVANCING.

True delicacy, that most beautiful heart-leaf of humanity, exhibits itself most significantly in little things. Those which we in general call so, are not by any means so little.

J. C. LOUS.

It is with our faults as with horseradish; it is terribly difficult to extirpate it from the earth in which it has once taken root; and nothing is more discouraging to the cultivator who will annihilate this weed from his ground, than to see it, so lately plucked up, shooting forth again freshly to the light from roots which remained buried in the earth. One can get quite out of patience; with the weedy soil, and one is, when this soil is one's own dear self, possessed by the most cordial desire to set off far, far from one's self. But how!!!

Susanna was often conscious of this feeling, as she daily laboured to repress the excitements which arose up within her at this time. Still the thoughts and resolutions which awoke within her on the evening just described, had taken hold upon her too strongly for them to be again effaced, and with the motto--"a humble and regular servant-girl," she struggled boldly through the dangers and the events of the day. Her demeanour was calmer; she quietly withdrew herself from taking part in conversation which went beyond her education; in a friendly spirit, she endeavoured to renounce the attentions and interest of others, and busied herself only in attending to the comforts and pleasures of all, as well as in accomplishing, and when possible, antic.i.p.ating every wish.

And such an activity has, more than people imagine, an influence upon the well-being of every-day life. The affectionate will lends even to dead things soul and life. But heavy to the ministering spirits is this life of labour and care for others, where no sunbeam of love, no cordial acknowledgment, falls upon their laborious day.

In the beginning of August, Harald set off, to return in about fourteen days with Alf Lexow, the betrothed of Alette. During his absence, Alette was to pay a visit to her uncle in Hallingdal; but, according to Mrs.

Astrid's wish, she yet spent another week at Semb. During these days, Alette and Susanna became better friends, for Alette was touched involuntarily by Susanna's unwearied and unpretending attentions, and besides this, she found in her such a frank mind and such cordial sympathy, that she could not deny herself the pleasure of communicating much of that which lived in the heart of the happy bride. Happy,--indeed Alette was, for long and warmly had she loved Alf Lexow, and should shortly be united to him for ever; and yet often stole a melancholy expression over her charming surface, when the conversation turned to this marriage and to her removal into Nordland. Susanna asked her several times of the cause of this, and as often Alette jestingly evaded the question; but one evening when they had chatted together more friendly than common, Alette said--

"It is a strange feeling to get everything ready for one's own marriage in the belief that one shall not long survive it! This removal to Nordland will be my death, that I know certainly. No, do not look so terrified! It is in no case so dangerous. And thoughts of an early death I have long borne in my mind, and therefore I am accustomed to them."

"Ah!" said Susanna, "those who love and are loved, the happy, should never die! But why this strange foreboding?"

"I do not know myself!" replied Alette, "but it has accompanied me from my earliest youth. My mother was born under the beautiful heaven of Provence, and pa.s.sed the greater part of her youth in that warm country.

The love of my father made her love in our Norway a second country, and here she spent the remainder of her life; she never, however, could rightly bear this cold climate, longed secretly for that warmer land, and died with the longing. To me has she bequeathed this feeling; and although I have never seen those orange groves, that warm blue heaven, of which she so gladly spoke, I drew in from childhood a love to them; I have, besides, inherited my mother's suffering from cold;--my chest is not strong, ah!--the long, dark winters of Nordland; the residence on the sea-sh.o.r.e in a climate which is twice as cold as that to which I have been accustomed, the sea-mists and storms--ah! I cannot long withstand them. But Susanna, you must promise me not to say one word of what I have confided to you, either to Harald or to Lexow!"

"But if they know it," said Susanna, "then you certainly need not go there. Certainly your bridegroom would for your sake seek out a milder country----"

"And not feel at home there, and die of longing for his dear Nordland!

No, no, Susanna! I know his love for his native land, and know that this winterly nature which I dread so much, is precisely his life and his health. Alf is a Nordlander in heart and soul, and has, as it were, grown up with the district which his fathers inhabited, and whose advance and prosperity is his favourite scheme, the princ.i.p.al object of his activity. No, no! for my sake he shall not tear himself from his home, his n.o.ble efforts. Rather would I, if it must be so, find an early grave in his Nordland!"

Susanna now desired to know, and Alette communicated to her, various particulars of the country which was she thought so terrible, and we will now, with the young friends, cast--

A GLANCE INTO NORDLAND.

All is cold and hard.

BLOM.

The spirit of G.o.d yet rests upon Nordland.

Z.

A great part of Norway has, as it were, its face turned away from life.

"The Old Night," which the ancient world considered to be the original mother of all things, here held the giant child in her dark bosom, and bound it tight in swaddling bands, out of which it could not shape itself to joy and freedom. Neither Nordland nor Finmark see the sun for many months in the year, and the difficulties and dangers of the road shut them out from intercourse with the southern world. The spirit of the North Pole rests oppressively over this region, and when in still August nights it breathes from hence over southern Norway, then withers the half-ripened harvests of the valleys and the plains, and the icy-grey face of hunger stares stiffly from the northern cliffs upon laborious but unhappy human mult.i.tudes. The sea breaks upon this coast against a palisadoed fence of rocks and cliffs, around which swarm flocks of polar birds with cries and screams. Storms alternate with thick mists. The cliffs along this coast have extraordinary shapes; now ascend they upwards like towers, now resemble beasts, now present gigantic and terrific human profiles; and one can easily imagine how the popular belief sees in them monsters and giants turned to stone, and why their ancestors laid their Jotunhem in this desolate wilderness.

And a dark fragment of Paganism still lingers about this region even to this day. It is frozen fast into the people's imagination; it is turned to stone in the horrible shapes of nature, which once gave it life. The light of the Gospel endeavours in vain to dissipate the shadows of a thousand years; the Old Night holds them back. In vain the Holy Cross is raised upon all the cliffs; the belief in magic and magic arts lives still universally among the people. Witches sit, full of malice, in their caves, and blow up storms for the sea-wanderers, so that they must be unfortunate; and the ghost Stallo, a huge man, dressed in black, with a staff in his hand, wanders about in the wildernesses, and challenges the solitary traveller to meet him in the contest for life and death.