The Sand-Hills of Jutland Part 18

Time pa.s.sed on, and on, slowly and wretchedly. Then once more Inger heard her name mentioned, and she beheld as it were, directly above her, two clear stars shining. These were two mild eyes that were closing upon earth. So many years had elapsed since a little girl had cried in childish sorrow over "poor Inger," that that child had become an old woman, whom our Lord was now about to call to himself. At that hour, when the thoughts and the actions of a whole life stand in review before the parting soul, she remembered how, as a little child, she had wept bitterly on hearing the history of Inger. That time, and those feelings, stood so prominently before the old woman's mind in the hour of death, that she cried with intense emotion,--

"Lord, my G.o.d! have not I often, like Inger, trod under foot Thy blessed gifts, and placed no value on them? Have I not often been guilty of pride and vanity in my secret heart? But Thou, in Thy mercy, didst not let me sink; Thou didst hold me up. Oh, forsake me not in my last hour!"

And the aged woman's eyes closed, and her spirit's eyes opened to what had been formerly invisible; and as Inger had been present in her latest thoughts, she beheld her, and perceived how deep she had been dragged downwards. At that sight the gentle being burst into tears; and in the kingdom of heaven she stood like a child, and wept for the fate of the unfortunate Inger. Her tears and her prayers sounded like an echo down in the hollow form that confined the imprisoned, miserable soul. That soul was overwhelmed by the unexpected love from those realms afar. One of G.o.d's angels wept for her! Why was this vouchsafed to her? The tortured spirit gathered, as it were, into one thought, all the actions of its life--all that it had done; and it shook with the violence of its remorse--remorse such as Inger had never felt. Grief became her predominating feeling. She thought that for her the gates of mercy would never open, and as in deep contrition and self-abas.e.m.e.nt she thought thus, a ray of brightness penetrated into the dismal abyss--a ray more vivid and glorious than the sunbeams which thaw the snow figures that the children make in their gardens.

And this ray, more quickly than the snow-flake that falls upon a child's warm mouth can be melted into a drop of water, caused Inger's petrified figure to evaporate, and a little bird arose, following the zigzag course of the ray, up towards the world that mankind inhabit.

But it seemed afraid and shy of everything around it; it felt ashamed of itself; and apparently wishing to avoid all living creatures, it sought, in haste, concealment in a dark recess in a crumbling wall.

Here it sat, and it crept into the farthest corner, trembling all over. It could not sing, for it had no voice. For a long time it sat quietly there before it ventured to look out and behold all the beauty around. Yes, it was beauty! The air was so fresh, yet so soft; the moon shone so clearly; the trees and the flowers scented so sweetly; and it was so comfortable where she sat--her feather garb so clean and nice! How all creation told of love and glory! The grateful thoughts that awoke in the bird's breast she would willingly have poured forth in song, but the power was denied to her. Yes, gladly would she have sung as do the cuckoo and the nightingale in spring. Our gracious Lord, who hears the mute worm's hymn of praise, understood the thanksgiving that lifted itself up in the tones of thought, as the psalm floated in David's mind before it resolved itself into words and melody.

As weeks pa.s.sed on these unexpressed feelings of grat.i.tude increased.

They would surely find a voice some day, with the first stroke of the wing, to perform some good act. Might not this happen?

Now came the holy Christmas festival. The peasants raised a pole close by the old wall, and bound an unthrashed bundle of oats on it, that the birds of the air might also enjoy the Christmas, and have plenty to eat at that time which was held in commemoration of the redemption brought to mankind.

And the sun rose brightly that Christmas morning, and shone upon the oat-sheaf, and upon all the chirping birds that flew around the pole; and from the wall issued a faint twittering. The swelling thoughts had at last found vent, and the low sound was a hymn of joy, as the bird flew forth from its hiding-place.

The winter was an unusually severe one. The waters were frozen thickly over; the birds and the wild animals in the woods had great difficulty in obtaining food. The little bird, that had so recently left its dark solitude, flew about the country roads, and when it found by chance a little corn dropped in the ruts, it would eat only a single grain itself, while it called all the starving sparrows to partake of it. It would also fly to the villages and towns, and look well about; and where kind hands had strewed crumbs of bread outside the windows for the birds, it would eat only one morsel itself, and give all the rest to the others.

At the end of the winter the bird had found and given away so many crumbs of bread, that the number put together would have weighed as much as the loaf upon which little Inger had trodden in order to save her fine shoes from being soiled; and when she had found and given away the very last crumb, the grey wings of the bird became white, and expanded wonderfully.

"It is flying over the sea!" exclaimed the children who saw the white bird. Now it seemed to dip into the ocean, now it arose into the clear sunshine; it glittered in the air; it disappeared high, high above; and the children said that it had flown up to the sun.

_Ole, the Watchman of the Tower._

"In the world it is always going up and down, and down and up again; but I can't go higher than I am," said Ole, the watchman of the church tower. "Ups and downs most people have to experience; in point of fact, we each become at last a kind of tower-watchman--we look at life and things from above."

Thus spoke Ole up in the lofty tower--my friend the watchman, a cheerful, chatty old fellow, who seemed to blurt everything out at random, though there were, in reality, deep and earnest feelings concealed in his heart. He had come of a good stock; some people even said that he was the son of a _Conferentsraad_,[5] or might have been that. He had studied, had been a teacher's a.s.sistant, a.s.sistant clerk in the church; but these situations had not done much for him. At one time he lived at the chief clerk's, and was to have bed and board free. He was then young, and somewhat particular about his dress, as I have heard. He insisted on having his boots polished and brushed with blacking, but the head clerk would only allow grease; and this was a cause of dissension between them. The one talked of stinginess, the other talked of foolish vanity. The blacking became the dark foundation of enmity, and so they parted; but what he had demanded from the clerk he also demanded from the world--real blacking; and he always got its subst.i.tute, grease; so he turned his back upon all mankind, and became a hermit. But a hermitage coupled with a livelihood is not to be had in the midst of a large city except up in the steeple of a church. Thither he betook himself, and smoked his pipe in solitude. He looked up, and he looked down; reflected according to his fashion upon all he saw, and all he did not see--on what he read in books, and what he read in himself.

[Footnote 5: A Danish t.i.tle.]

I often lent him books, good books; and people can converse about these, as everybody knows. He did not care for fashionable English novels, he said, nor for French ones either--they were all too frivolous. No, he liked biographies, and books that relate to the wonders of nature. I visited him at least once a year, generally immediately after the New Year. He had then always something to say that the peculiar period suggested to his thoughts.

I shall relate what pa.s.sed during two of my visits, and give his own words as nearly as I can.

THE FIRST VISIT.

Among the books I had last lent Ole was one about pebbles, and it pleased him extremely.

"Yes, sure enough they are veterans from old days, these pebbles,"

said he; "and yet we pa.s.s them carelessly by. I have myself often done so in the fields and on the beach, where they lie in crowds. We tread them under foot in some of our pathways, these fragments from the remains of antiquity. I have myself done that; but now I hold all these pebble-formed pavements in high respect. Thanks for that book; it has driven old ideas and habits of thinking aside, and has replaced them by other ideas, and made me eager to read something more of the same kind. The romance of the earth is the most astonishing of all romances. What a pity that one cannot read the first portion of it--that it is composed in a language we have not learned! One must read it in the layers of the ground, in the strata of the rocks, in all the periods of the earth. It was not until the sixth part that the living and acting persons, Mr. Adam and Mrs. Eve, were introduced, though some will have it they came immediately. That, however, is all one to me. It is a most eventful tale, and we are all in it. We go on digging and groping, but always find ourselves where we were; yet the globe is ever whirling round, and without the waters of the world overwhelming us. The crust we tread on holds together--we do not fall through it; and this is a history of a million of years, with constant advancement. Thanks for the book about the pebbles. They could tell many a strange tale if they were able.

"Is it not pleasant once and away to become like a Nix, when one is perched so high as I am, and then to remember that we all are but minute ants upon the earth's ant-hill, although some of us are distinguished ants, some are laborious, and some are indolent ants?

One seems to be so excessively young by the side of these million years old, reverend pebbles. I was reading the book on New Year's eve, and was so wrapped up in it that I forgot my accustomed amus.e.m.e.nt on that night, looking at 'the wild host to Amager,' of which you may have heard.

"The witches' journey on broomsticks is well known--that takes place on St. John's night, and to Bloksberg. But we have also the wild host, here at home and in our own time, which goes to Amager every New Year's eve. All the bad poets and poetesses, newspaper writers, musicians, and artists of all sorts, who come before the public, but make no sensation--those, in short, who are very mediocre, ride--on New Year's eve, out to Amager: they sit astride on their pencils or quill pens. Steel pens don't answer, they are too stiff. I see this troop, as I have said, every New Year's eve. I could name most of them, but it is not worth while to get into a sc.r.a.pe with them; they do not like people to know of their Amager flight upon quill pens. I have a kind of a cousin, who is a fisherman's wife, and furnishes abusive articles to three popular periodicals: she says she has been out there as an invited guest. She has described the whole affair.

Half that she says, of course, are lies, but part might be true. When she was there they commenced with a song; each of the visitors had written his own song, and each sang his own composition: they all performed together, so it was a kind of 'cats' chorus'. Small groups marched about, consisting of those who labour at improving that gift which is called 'the gift of the gab:' they had their own shrill songs. Then came the little drummers, and those who write without giving their names--that is to say, whose grease is imposed on people for blacking; then there were the executioners, and the puffers of bad wares. In the midst of all the merriment, as it must have been, that was going on, shot up from a pit a stem, a tree, a monstrous flower, a large toadstool, and a cupola. These were the Utopian productions of the honoured a.s.sembly, the entire amount of their offerings to the world during the past year. Sparks flew from these various objects; they were the thoughts and ideas which had been borrowed or stolen, which now took wings to themselves, and flew away as if by magic. My cousin told me a good deal more, which, though laughable, was too malicious for me to repeat.

"I always watch this wild host fly past every New Year's eve; but on the last one, as I told you, I neglected to look at them, for I was rolling away in thought upon the round pebbles--rolling through thousands and thousands of years. I saw them detached from rocks far away in the distant north; saw them driven along in ma.s.ses of ice before Noah's ark was put together; saw them sink to the bottom, and rise again in a sand-bank, which grew higher and higher above the water; and I said, 'That will be Zealand!' It became the resort of birds of various species unknown to us--the home of savage chiefs as little known to us, until the axe cut the Runic characters which then brought them into our chronology. As I was thus musing three or four falling stars attracted my eye. My thoughts took another turn. Do you know what falling stars are? The scientific themselves do not know what they are. I have my own ideas about them. How often in secret are not thanks and blessings poured out on those who have done anything great or good! Sometimes these thanks are voiceless, but they do not fall to the ground. I fancy that they are caught by the sunshine, and that the sunbeam brings the silent, secret praise down over the head of the benefactor. If it be an entire people that through time bestow their thanks, then the thanks come as a banquet--fall like a falling star over the grave of the benefactor. It is one of my pleasures, especially when on a New Year's eve I observe a falling star, to imagine to whose grave the starry messenger of grat.i.tude is speeding.

One of the last falling stars I saw took its blazing course towards the south-west. For whom was it dispatched? It fell, I thought, on the slope by Flensborg Fiord, where the Danish flag waves over Schleppegrell's, Laessoe's, and their comrades' graves. One fell in the centre of the country near Soro. It was a banquet for Holberg's grave--a thank offering of years from many--a thank offering for his splendid comedies! It is a glorious and gratifying fancy that a falling star could illumine our graves. That will not be the case with mine; not even a single sunbeam will bring me thanks, for I have done nothing to deserve them. I have not even attained to blacking," said Ole; "my lot in life has been only to get grease."

THE SECOND VISIT.

It was on a New Year's day that I again ascended to the church tower.

Ole began to speak of toasts. We drank one to the transition from the old drop in eternity to the new drop in eternity, as he called the year. Then he gave me his story about the gla.s.ses, and there was some sense in it.

"When the clocks strike twelve on New Year's night every one rises from table with a brimful gla.s.s, and drinks to the New Year. To commence the year with a gla.s.s in one's hand is a good beginning for a drunkard. To begin the year by going to bed is a good beginning for a sluggard. Sleep will, in the course of his year, play a prominent part; so will the gla.s.s.

"Do you know what dwells in gla.s.ses?" he asked. "There dwell in them health, glee, and folly. Within them dwell, also, vexations and bitter calamity. When I count up the gla.s.ses I can tell the gradations in the gla.s.s for different people. The first gla.s.s, you see, is the gla.s.s of health; in it grow health-giving plants. Stick to that one gla.s.s, and at the end of the year you can sit peacefully in the leafy bowers of health.

"If you take the second gla.s.s a little bird will fly out of it, chirping in innocent gladness, and men will laugh and sing with it, 'Life is pleasant. Away with care, away with fear!'

"From the third gla.s.s springs forth a little winged creature--a little angel he cannot well be called, for he has Nix blood and a Nix mind.

He does not come to tease, but to amuse. He places himself behind your ear, and whispers some humorous idea; he lays himself close to your heart and warms it, so that you become very merry, and fancy yourself the cleverest among a set of great wits.

"In the fourth gla.s.s is neither plant, bird, nor little figure: it is the boundary line of sense, and beyond that line let no one go.

"If you take the fifth gla.s.s you will weep over yourself--you will be foolishly happy, or become stupidly noisy. From this gla.s.s will spring Prince Carnival, flippant and crack-brained. He will entice you to accompany him; you will forget your respectability, if you have any; you will forget more than you ought or dare forget. All is pleasure, gaiety, excitement; the maskers carry you off with them; the daughters of the Evil One, in silks and flowers, come with flowing hair and voluptuous charms. Escape them if you can.

"The sixth gla.s.s! In that sits Satan himself--a well-dressed, conversable, lively, fascinating little man--who never contradicts you, allows that you are always in the right--in fact, seems quite to adopt all your opinions. He comes with a lantern to convey you home to his own habitation. There is an old legend about a saint who was to choose one of the seven mortal sins, and he chose, as he thought, the least--drunkenness; but in that state he perpetrated all the other six sins. The human nature and the devilish nature mingle. This is the sixth gla.s.s; and after that all the germs of evil thrive in us, every one of them spreading with a rapidity and vigour that cause them to be like the mustard-seed in the Bible, 'which, indeed, is the least of all seeds; but when it is grown it is the greatest among herbs, and becometh a tree.' Most of them have nothing before them but to be cast into the furnace, and be smelted there.

"This is the story of the gla.s.ses," said Ole, the watchman of the church tower; "and it applies both to those who use blacking, and to those who use only grease."

Such was the result of the second visit to Ole. More may be forthcoming at some future time.

_Anne Lisbeth; or, The Apparition of the Beach._

Anne Lisbeth was like milk and blood, young and happy, lovely to look at; her teeth were so dazzlingly white, her eyes were so clear; her foot was light in the dance, and her head was still lighter. What did all this lead to? To no good. "The vile creature!" "She was not pretty!"

She was placed with the grave-digger's wife, and from thence she went to the count's splendid country-seat, where she lived in handsome rooms, and was dressed in silks and fineries; not a breath of wind was to blow on her; no one dared to say a rough word to her, nothing was to be done to annoy her; for she nursed the count's son and heir, who was as carefully tended as a prince, and as beautiful as an angel. How she loved that child! Her own child was away from her--he was in the grave-digger's house, where there was more hunger than plenty, and where often there was no one at home. The poor deserted child cried, but what n.o.body hears n.o.body cares about. He cried himself to sleep, and in sleep one feels neither hungry nor thirsty: sleep is, therefore, a great blessing. In the course of time Anne Lisbeth's child shot up. Ill weeds grow apace, it is said: and this poor weed grew, and seemed a member of the family, who were paid for keeping him. Anne Lisbeth was quite free of him. She was a village fine lady, had everything of the best, and wore a smart bonnet whenever she went out. But she never went to the grave-digger's; it was so far from where she lived, and she had nothing to do there. The child was under their charge; _he_ who paid its board could well afford it, and the child would be taken very good care of.

The watch-dog at the lord of the manor's bleach-field sits proudly in the sunshine outside of his kennel, and growls at every one that goes past. In rainy weather he creeps inside, and lies down dry and sheltered. Anne Lisbeth's boy sat on the side of a ditch in the sunshine, amusing himself by cutting a bit of stick. In spring he saw three strawberry bushes in bloom: they would surely bear fruit. This was his pleasantest thought; but there was no fruit. He sat out in the drizzling rain, and in the heavy rain--was wet to the skin--and the sharp wind dried his clothes upon him. If he went to the farm-houses near, he was thumped and shoved about. He was "grim-looking and ugly,"

the girls and the boys said. What became of Anne Lisbeth's boy? What _could_ become of him? It was his fate to be "_never loved_."

At length he was transferred from his joyless village life to the still worse life of a sailor boy. He went on board a wretched little vessel, to stand by the rudder while the skipper drank. Filthy and disgusting the poor boy looked; starving and benumbed with cold he was. One would have thought, from his appearance, that he never had been well fed; and, indeed, that was the fact.

It was late in the year; it was raw, wet, stormy weather; the cold wind penetrated even through thick clothing, especially at sea; and only two men on board were too few to work the sails; indeed, it might be said only one man and a half--the master and his boy. It had been black and gloomy all day; now it became still more dark, and it was bitterly cold. The skipper took a dram to warm himself. The flask was old, and so was the gla.s.s; its foot was broken off, but it was inserted into a piece of wood painted blue, which served as a stand for it. If one dram was good, two would be better, thought the master.

The boy stood by the helm, and held on to it with his hard, tar-covered hands. He looked frightened. His hair was rough, and he was wrinkled, and stunted in his growth. The young sailor was the grave-digger's boy; in the church register he was called Anne Lisbeth's son.

The wind blew as it list; the sail flapped, then filled; the vessel flew on. It was wet, chill, dark as pitch; but worse was yet to come.

Hark! What was that? With what had the boat come in contact? What had burst? What seemed to have caught it? It shifted round. Was it a sudden squall? The boy at the helm cried aloud, "In the name of Jesus!" The little bark had struck on a large sunken rock, and sank as an old shoe would sink in a small pool--sank with men and mice on board, as the saying is; and there certainly were mice, but only one man and a half--the skipper and the grave-digger's boy. None witnessed the catastrophe except the screaming sea-gulls and the fishes below; and even they did not see much of it, for they rushed aside in alarm when the water gushed thundering into the little vessel as it sank.