Chapter 7

He sprang up, his ears tingling with shame, and hurried down the beach. Presently it occurred to him, however, that it was not quite chivalrous in him to leave little Elsie there alone with the dark-minded sibyl. Who knew but that she might need his help? He paused, and was about to retrace his steps, when he heard some one approaching, whom he instinctively knew to be Elsie. As she came nearer, the moon, which hung transfixed upon the flaming spear of a glacier peak, revealed a distressed little face, through whose transparent surface you might watch the play of emotions within, as one watches the doings of tiny insects and fishes in an aquarium.

"What have they been doing to my little girl?" asked Fern, with a voice full of paternal tenderness. "She has been crying, poor little thing."

He may have been imprudent in addressing a girl of seventeen in this tender fashion; but the truth was, her short skirts and the two long braids of yellow hair were in his mind associated with that age toward which you may, without offence, assume the rôle of a well-meaning protector, and where even a kiss need not necessarily be resented. So far from feeling flattered by the unwished-for recollection of Elsie's feeling for him, he was rather disposed to view it as a pathological phenomenon,--as a sort of malady, of which he would like to cure her. It is not to be denied, however, that if this was his intention, the course he was about to pursue was open to criticism. But it must be borne in mind that Fern was no expert on questions of the heart,--that he had had no blighting experiences yielding him an unwholesome harvest of premature wisdom.

For a long while they walked on in silence, holding each other's hands like two children, and the sound of their footsteps upon the crisp, crunching sand was singularly exaggerated by the great stillness around them.

"And whom is it you have been visiting so late in the night, Elsie?" he asked, at last, glancing furtively into her face.

"Hush, you mustn't talk about her," answered she, in a timid whisper. "It was Gurid Sibyl, and she knows a great many things which nobody else knows except God."

"I am sorry you have resort to such impostors. You know the Bible says it is wrong to consult sibyls and fortune-tellers."

"No, I didn't know it. But you mustn't speak ill of her, or she will sow disease in your blood and you will never see another healthy day. She did that to Nils Saetren because he mocked her, and he has been a cripple ever since."

"Pshaw, I am not afraid of her. She may frighten children--"

"Hush! Oh, don't!" cried the girl, in tones of distress, laying her hand gently over his mouth. "I wouldn't for the world have anything evil happen to you."

"Well well, you foolish child," he answered, laughing. "If it grieves you, I will say nothing more about it. But I must disapprove of your superstition all the same."

"Oh, no; don't think ill of me," she begged piteously, her eyes filling with tears.

"No no, I will not. Only don't cry. It always makes me feel awkward to see a woman cry."

She brushed her tears away and put on a resolute little pout, which was meant to be resigned if not cheerful.

Fifteen minutes later they were standing at the foot of the stairs leading up to his room. The large house was dark and silent. Everybody was asleep. Thinking the opportunity favorable for giving her a bit of parting advice, Maurice seized hold of both her arms and looked her gravely in the eyes. She, however, misinterpreting the gesture, very innocently put up her lips, thinking that he intended to kiss her. The sweet, child-like trustfulness of the act touched him; hardly knowing what he did, he stooped over her and kissed her. As their eyes again met, a deep, radiant contentment shone from her countenance. It was not a mere momentary brightening of the features, such as he had often noticed in her before, but something inexpressibly tender, soul-felt, and absolute. It was as if that kiss had suddenly transformed the child into a woman.

V.

Summer hurried on at a rapid pace, the days grew perceptibly shorter, and the birds of passage gathered in large companies on the beach and on the hill-tops, holding noisy consultations to prepare for their long southward journey. Maurice still stayed on at the Ormgrass Farm, but a strange, feverish mood had come over him. He daily measured the downward progress of the glacier in agitated expectancy, although as a scientific experiment it had long ceased to yield him any satisfaction. That huge congealed residue of ten thousand winters had, however, acquired a human interest to him which it had lacked before; what he had lost as a scientist he had gained as a man. For, with all respect for Science, that monumental virgin at whose feet so many cherished human illusions have already been sacrificed, it is not to be denied that from an unprofessional point of view a warm-blooded, fair-faced little creature like Elsie is a worthier object of a bachelor's homage. And, strive as he would, Maurice could never quite rid himself of the impression that the glacier harbored in its snowy bosom some fell design against Elsie's peace and safety. It is even possible that he never would have discovered the real nature of his feelings for her if it had not been for this constant fear that she might any moment be Snatched away from him.

It was a novel experience in a life like his, so lonely amid its cold, abstract aspirations, to have this warm, maidenly spring-breath invading those chambers of his soul, hitherto occupied by shivering calculations regarding the duration and remoteness of the ice age. The warmer strata of feeling which had long lain slumbering beneath this vast superstructure of glacial learning began to break their way to the light, and startled him very much as the earth must have been startled when the first patch of green sod broke into view, steaming under the hot rays of the noonday sun. Abstractly considered, the thing seemed preposterous enough for the plot of a dime novel, while in the light of her sweet presence the development of his love seemed as logical as an algebraic problem. At all events, the result was in both cases equally inexorable. It was useless to argue that she was his inferior in culture and social accomplishments; she was still young and flexible, and displayed an aptness for seizing upon his ideas and assimilating them which was fairly bewildering. And if purity of soul and loving singleness of purpose be a proof of noble blood, she was surely one of nature's noblewomen.

In the course of the summer, Fern had made several attempts to convince old Tharald that the glacier was actually advancing. He willingly admitted that there was a possibility that it might change its mind and begin to recede before any mischief was done, but he held it to be very hazardous to stake one's life on so slim a chance. The old man, however, remained impervious to argument, although he no longer lost his temper when the subject was broached. His ancestors had lived there on the farm century after century, he said, and the glacier had done them no harm. He didn't see why he should be treated any worse by the Almighty than they had been; he had always acted with tolerable fairness toward everybody, and had nothing to blame himself for.

It was perhaps the third time when Tharald had thus protested his blamelessness, that his guest, feeling that reasoning was unavailing, let drop some rather commonplace remark about the culpability of all men before God.

Tharald suddenly flared up, and brought down his fist with a blow on the table.

"Somebody has been bearing tales to you, young man," he cried. "Have you been listening to parish talk?"

"That matters little," answered Fern, coolly. "No one is so blameless that he can claim exemption from misfortune as his just desert."

"Aha, so they have told you that the farm is not mine," continued his host, while his gray eyes glimmered uneasily under his bushy brows. "They have told you that silly nursery tale of the planting of the fern and the sweet-brier, and of Ulf, who sought his death in the glacier. They have told you that I stole the bride of my brother Arne, and that he fled from me over the sea,--and you have believed it all."

At the sound of the name Arne, a flash darted through Maurice's mind; he sprang up, stood for a moment tottering, and then fell back into the chair. Dim memories of his childhood rose up within him; he remembered how his father, who was otherwise so brave and frank and strong, had recoiled from speaking of that part of his life which preceded his coming to the New World. And now, he grasped with intuitive eagerness at this straw, but felt still a vague fear of penetrating into the secret which his father had wished to hide from him. He raised his head slowly, and saw Tharald's face contracted into an angry scowl and his eyes staring grimly at him.

"Well, does the devil ride you?" he burst forth, with his explosive grunt.

Maurice brushed his hand over his face as if to clear his vision, and returned Tharald's stare with frank fearlessness. There was no denying that in this wrinkled, roughly hewn mask there were lines and suggestions which recalled the free and noble mold of his father's features. It was a coincidence of physiognomic intentions rather than actual resemblance--or a resemblance, such as might exist between a Vandyck portrait and the same face portrayed by some bungling village artist.

The old man, too, was evidently seeing visions; for he presently began to wince under Maurice's steady gaze, and some troubled memory dwelt in his eye as he rose, and took to sauntering distractedly about on the floor.

"How long is it since your brother Arne fled over the sea?" asked Maurice, firmly.

"How does that concern you?"

"It does concern me, and I wish to know."

Tharald paused in his walk, and stood long, measuring his antagonist with a look of slow, pondering defiance. Then he tossed his head back with a grim laugh, walked toward a carved oaken press in a corner, took out a ponderous Bible, and flung it down on the table.

"I am beginning to see through your game," he said gruffly. "Here is the family record. Look into it at your leisure. And if you are right, let me know. But don't you tell me that that scare about the glacier wasn't all humbug. If it is your right of entail you want to look up, I sha'n't stand in your way."

Thereupon he stalked out, slamming the door behind him; the walls shook, and the windows shivered in their frames.

A vast sheet of gauzy cloud was slowly spreading over the western expanse of the sky. Through its silvery meshes the full moon looked down upon the glacier with a grave unconcern. Drifts of cold white mist hovered here and there over the surface of the ice, rising out of the deep blue hollows, catching for an instant the moonbeams, and again gliding away into the shadow of some far-looming peak.

On the little winding path at the end of the glacier stood Maurice, looking anxiously down toward the valley. Presently a pale speck of color was seen moving in the fog, and on closer inspection proved to be that scarlet bodice which in Norway constitutes the middle portion of a girl's figure. A minute more, and the bodice was surmounted by a fair, girlish face, which looked ravishingly fresh and tangible in its misty setting. The lower portions, partly owing to their neutral coloring and in part to the density of the fog, were but vaguely suggested.

"I have been waiting for you nearly half an hour, down at the river-brink," called out a voice from below, and its clear, mellow ring seemed suddenly to lighten the heavy atmosphere. "I really thought you had forgotten me."

"Forgotten you?" cried Maurice, making a very unscientific leap down in the direction of the voice "When did I ever forget you, you ungrateful thing?"

"Aha!" responded Elsie, laughing, for of course the voice as well as the bodice was hers. "Now didn't you say the edge of the glacier?"

"Yes, but I didn't say the lower edge. If you had at all been gifted with the intuition proverbially attributed to young ladies in your situation, you would have known that I meant the western edge--in fact here, and nowhere else."

"Even though you didn't say it?"

"Even though I did say it."

Fern was now no longer a resident of the Ormgrass Farm. After the discovery of their true relation, Tharald had shown a sort of sullen, superstitious fear of him, evidently regarding him as a providential Nemesis who had come to avenge the wrong he had done to his absent brother. No amount of friendliness on Maurice's part could dispel this lurking suspicion, and at last he became convinced that, for the old man's sake as well as for his own, it was advisable that they should separate. This arrangement, however, involved a sacrifice which our scientist had at first been disposed to regard lightly; but a week or two of purely scientific companionship soon revealed to him how large a factor Elsie had become in his life, and we have seen how he managed to reconcile the two conflicting necessities. The present rendezvous he had appointed with a special intention, which, with his usual directness, he proceeded to unfold to her.

"Elsie dear," he began, drawing her down on a stone at his side, "I have something very serious which I wish to talk to you about."

"And why do you always want to talk so solemnly to me, Maurice?"

"Now be a brave little girl, Elsie, and don't be frightened."

"And is it, then, so very dreadful?" she queried, trembling a little at the gravity of his manner rather than his words.

"No, it isn't dreadful at all. But it is of great importance, and therefore we must both be serious. Now, Elsie dear, tell me honestly if you love me enough to become my wife now, at once."

The girl cast timid glances around her, as if to make sure that they were unobserved. Then she laid her arms round his neck, gazed for a moment with that trustful look of hers into his eyes, and put up her lips to be kissed.

"That is no answer, my dear," he said, smiling, but responding readily to the invitation. "I wish to know if you care enough for me to go away with me to a foreign land, and live with me always as my wife."

"I cannot live anywhere without you," she murmured, sadly.

"And then you will do as I wish?"

"But it will take three weeks to have the banns published, and you know father would never allow that."

"That is the very reason why I wish you to do without his consent. If you will board the steamer with me to-morrow night, we will go to England and there we can be married without the publishing of banns, and before any one can overtake us."

"But that would be very wrong, wouldn't it? I think the Bible says so, somewhere."

"In Bible times marriages were on a different basis from what they are now. Moreover, love was not such an inexorable thing then, nor engagements so pressing."

She looked up with eyes full of pathetic remonstrance, and was sadly puzzled.

"Then you will come, darling?" he urged, with lover-like persuasiveness. "Say that you will."

"I will--try," she whispered, tearfully, and hid her troubled face on his bosom.

"One thing more," he went on. "Your house is built on the brink of eternity. The glacier is moving down upon you silently but surely. I have warned your father, but he will not believe me. I have chosen this way of rescuing you, because it is the only way."

The next evening Maurice and his servant stood on the pier, waiting impatiently for Elsie, until the whistle sounded, and the black-hulled boat moved onward, ploughing its foamy path through the billows. But Elsie did not come.

Another week passed, and Maurice, fired with a new and desperate resolution, started for the capital, and during the coming winter the glacier was left free to continue its baneful plottings undisturbed by the importunate eyes of science. Immediately on his arrival in the city he set on foot a suit in his father's name against Tharald Gudmundson Ormgrass, to recover his rightful inheritance.

VII.

On a cold, bleak day, in the latter part of March, we find Maurice once more in the valley. He had played a hazardous game, but so far fortune had favored him. In that supreme self-trust which a great and generous passion inspires, he had determined to force Tharald Ormgrass to save himself and his children from the imminent destruction. The court had recognized his right to the farm upon the payment of five hundred dollars to its present nominal owner. The money had already been paid, and the farm lay now desolate and forlorn, shivering in the cold gusts from the glacier. The family had just boarded a large English brig which lay at anchor out in the fjord, and was about to set sail for the new world beyond the sea. In the prow of the vessel stood Tharald, gazing with sullen defiance toward the unknown west, while Elsie, her eyes red with weeping, and her piquant little face somewhat pinched with cold, was clinging close to him, and now and then glancing back toward the dear, deserted homestead.

It had been a sad winter for poor little Elsie. As the lawsuit had progressed, she had had to hear many a harsh word against her lover, which seemed all the harder because she did not know how to defend him. His doings, she admitted, did seem incomprehensible, and her father certainly had some show of justice on his side when he upbraided him as cruel, cold, and ungrateful; but, with the sweet, obstinate loyalty of a Norse maiden, she still persisted in believing him good and upright and generous. Some day it would all be cleared up, she thought, and then her triumph and her happiness would be the greater. A man who knew so many strange things, she argued in her simplicity (for her pride in his accomplishments was in direct proportion to her own inability to comprehend them), could not possibly be mean and selfish as other men.

The day had, somehow, a discontented, dubious look. Now its sombre veil was partially lifted, and something like the shadow of a smile cheered you by its promise, if not by its presence; then a great rush of light from some unexpected quarter of the heavens, and then again a sudden closing of all the sunny paths--a dismal, gray monotony everywhere. Now and then tremendous groans and long-drawn thunderous rumblings were heard issuing from the glaciers, and the ice-choked river, whose voice seldom rose above an even baritone, now boomed and brawled with the most capricious interludes of crashing, grinding, and rushing sounds.

On the pier down at the fjord stood Maurice, dressed from head to foot in flannel, and with a jaunty sailor's hat, secured with an elastic cord under his chin. He was gazing with an air of preoccupation up toward the farm, above which the white edge of the glacier hung gleaming against the dim horizon. Above it the fog rose like a dense gray wall, hiding the destructive purpose which was even at this moment laboring within. Some minutes elapsed. Maurice grew impatient, then anxious. He pulled his note-book from his pocket, examined some pages covered with calculations, dotted a neglected _i_, crossed a _t_, and at last closed the book with a desperate air. Presently some dark figure was seen striding down the hill-side, and the black satellite, Jake, appeared, streaming with mud and perspiration.

"Well, you wretched laggard," cried Maurice, as he caught sight of him, "what answer?"

"Nobody answered nothing at all," responded Jake, all out of breath. "They be all gone. Aboard the ship, out there. All rigged, ready to sail."

A few minutes later there was a slight commotion on board the brig _Queen Anne_. A frolicsome tar had thrown out a rope, and hauled in two men one white and one black. The crew thronged about them,

"English, eh?"

"No; American."

"Yankees? Je-ru-salem! Saw your rig wasn't right, somehow."

General hilarity. Witty tar looks around with an air of magnanimous deprecation.

A strange feeling of exultation had taken possession of Maurice. The light and the air suddenly seemed glorious to him. He knew the world misjudged his action; but he felt no need of its vindication. He was rather inclined to chuckle over its mistake, as if it and not he were the sufferer. He walked with rapid steps toward the prow of the ship, where. Tharald and Elsie were standing. There was a look of invincibility in his eye which made the old man quail before him. Elsie's face suddenly brightened, as if flooded with light from within; she made an impulsive movement toward him, and then stood irresolute.

"Elsie," called out her father, with a husky tremor in his voice. "Let him alone, I tell thee. He might leave us in peace now. He has driven from hearth and home." Then, with indignant energy, "He shall not touch thee, child. By the heavens, he shall not."

Maurice smiled, and with the same sense of serene benignity, wholly unlover-like, clasped her in his arms.

A wild look flashed in the father's eyes; a hoarse groan broke from his chest. Then, with a swift rekindling of energy, he darted forward, and his broad hands fell with a tiger-like grip on Maurice's shoulders. But hark! The voices of the skies and the mountains echo the groan. The air, surcharged with terror, whirls in wild eddies, then holds its breath and trembles. All eyes are turned toward the glacier. The huge white ridge, gleaming here and there through a cloud of smoke, is pushing down over the mountain-side, a black bulwark of earth rising totteringly before it, and a chaos of bowlders and blocks of ice following, with dull crunching and grinding noises, in its train. The barns and the store-house of the Ormgrass farm are seen slowly climbing the moving earth-wall, then follows the mansion--rising--rising--and with a tremendous, deafening crash the whole huge avalanche sweeps downward into the fjord. The water is lashed into foam; an enormous wave bearing on its crest the shattered wrecks of human homes, rolls onward; the good ship _Queen Anne_ is tossed skyward, her cable snaps and springs upward against the mast-head, shrieks of terror fill the air, and the sea flings its strong, foam-wreathed arms against the farther shore.

A dead silence follows. The smoke scatters, breaks into drifting fragments, showing the black naked mountain-side.

The next morning, as the first glimmerings of the dawn pierced the cloud-veil in the east, the brig _Queen Anne_ shot before a steady breeze out toward the western ocean. In the prow stood Maurice Fern, in a happy reverie; on a coil of rope at his feet sat Tharald Ormgrass, staring vacantly before him. His face was cold and hard; it had scarcely stirred from its dead apathy since the hour of the calamity. Then there was a patter of light footsteps on the deck, and Elsie, still with something of the child-like wonder of sleep in her eyes, emerged from behind the broad white sail.

Tharald saw her and the hardness died out of his face. He strove to speak once--twice, but could not.

"God pity me," he broke out, with an emotion deeper than his words suggested. "I was wrong. I had no faith in you. She has. Take her, that the old wrong may at last be righted."

And there, under God's free sky, their hands were joined together, and the father whispered a blessing.

A KNIGHT OF DANNEBROG.

I.