Part 14

He thought it all very snug and cosy, and the piano was a "splendid piece of furniture." As they were looking at it, Josephine opened her lips for the first time, and turning to Ragni, said quickly: "I hear you play so beautifully!"

"Oh----"

"Won't you play something for us?" The minister added: "Please do!"

Ragni looked at her husband--as one who is drowning looks for help. "Ragni requires to be in the proper mood to be able to play," said he.

"Very likely she is tired," said the minister, excusing her; they sat down, the minister and Kallem opposite each other, Josephine on one side; Ragni remained standing.

"Of course you must both of you be tired," continued the minister; "you have been travelling now for so long, and then arranging the house here; I heard from Dr. Kent that you had very nearly finished?"

Yes, so they were; but they had had capital help from Sören Pedersen and his wife Aase. Ragni was afraid that those two were still in the dining-room, and hurried in to see; but they were gone, and were not in the doctor's room either.

The minister's face had assumed quite a fatherly expression. "We have been obliged to employ Sören Pedersen and his wife because the people we otherwise employ were not at liberty. But one ought not to give work to that kind of people."

"Indeed?"

"Oh, they are good workers; but they drink up everything they earn, and then stay away from their work for days; it was the same here too. They scandalize the whole congregation."

"Dear me, that's a pity."

In passing Kallem, Ragni stroked his head with her hand; she had to fetch something off the piano. The minister was nothing abashed by the doctor's flighty tone.

"We have striven to do what we could for them both--yes, for she drinks just as much as he does. You would be astonished if you heard how kind everyone has been to them. But all in vain, and worse than in vain. But I will not go further into that story." He looked at his wife, who sat there in her tight-fitting dress, stiff and impenetrable, a piece of perfection from top to toe. Her eyes so well trained that they saw everything without appearing to see. She would have liked Kallem to have come and spoken to her. Ragni stood farther back, unseen by the others, but directly opposite him.

"It is provoking," he said, "that the former doctor built his house so close to the hospital. It is not pleasant to have strangers so near one."

"Yes, but the old man built it for his brother-in-law. And now he is dead too."

"So I hear; if I could afford to sink more money in houses, I would buy this, although I should have no use for it."

Josephine turned half round, doubtless to see if Ragni still stood there. "I don't think it is for sale," said she; "I know the heirs." Then there was a pause for a little while.

The minister started a new subject; that same morning he had been reading in the _Morgenblad_ about the general state of insecurity all over America. He spoke like one who knew all about it, and turned continually to his wife; if he did look at the others--for instance at Ragni, who had just come back from America--it was merely a passing glance; he invariably returned to his wife.

Pastor Tuft was a stately, good-looking man, especially as a certain degree of stoutness had filled in his bony face; he had a pleasant voice, and his Melancthon eyes sparkled and glistened at all that was said. His speech and manners were, if anything, persuasive; but one felt his power under cover of all his mildness.

His wife quite unexpectedly made an upward movement with her head. "Of course it must be time to be going now," said he, as he rose from his seat; "I am quite forgetting myself. Well--will you go with us?"

Josephine got up too, so did Kallem. But he, too, had a wife who could give glances, warning and imploring.

"Thanks, but we are both tired, we will put it off till another time."

And so they accompanied the others to the door. Kallem then went to the window and looked out after them as they walked away, both so tall and strong-looking. Soon they had left the church behind them; everyone who met them greeted them most respectfully. He stood on there even after they were out of sight. He walked up and down the room a few times, then he turned a somersault (made a wheel on his hands). "Go and fetch Sören Pedersen and his wife Aase to me!"--but he went himself. They were not to be found anywhere; Sigrid told him they had gone directly the minister and his wife came. "Hang it all, now you'll see they are making themselves tipsy! Just go down to them and invite them to come to supper with us. Say we are quite alone." Off went the girl; Kallem shouted out after her: "Insist upon their coming, whether they want to or not."

"Now listen to me, Mr. saddler!" said the doctor, when they both appeared in the parlor again, the wife behind the husband; "listen to me. The minister says that you drink, Pedersen, both you and your wife, and that he cannot get you to give it up?"

"The minister speaks the truth."

"But it is a dreadful disease, Pedersen."

"Oh, yes--in the long run."

"Will you leave it to me to cure you?"

"Oh, most willingly, doctor! but seriously, now; will it take a long time?"

"Two minutes."

"Two minutes?" He smiled; but before the smile had vanished, Kallem was upon him with his eyes, which had a strange and startling expression. The saddler changed colour, he retreated a few steps. The doctor followed and told him to sit down. He did it without hesitation. "Look at me!" Aase was fit to faint. "Sit down, you too!" said the doctor over his shoulder to her, and she collapsed into a chair. Yesterday already the doctor had seen what kind of people he had to do with; it did not take two minutes, before Sören Pedersen was completely mesmerized and his wife Aase too, though she had only been looking on. The doctor commanded them to open their eyes again; they both did so at once. "Now listen here, Sören Pedersen! You just leave off drinking brandy or spirits in any shape or form whatever; no more wine either, nor strong beer--not for one whole month. Do you hear? When that month is past--it is now half-past six--you come here to me on the stroke of the hour. And you too, Aase. Every time he wants to drink, you must cry out. And afterwards you can sing, both of you."

"But we can't sing."

"You will sing all the same."

IV.

Josephine left the town, she took her boy with her to the west-country, to have some sea-bathing; the minister was soon to follow them, he had not had a holiday since he had taken holy orders. He had come here as curate, directly after his examination, and had so completely gained the good-will of his congregation, that when, two years ago, the town and country parishes were separated, the congregation voted unanimously for him, and he got the living. He had worked very hard for about six years; he much required a little rest. Josephine went up to her brother's house one day when he was not at home, she announced that she was about to travel, said good-bye, and left a greeting for her brother.

Ragni understood at once that this journey had simply been arranged so as to escape the necessity of introducing her into society; they would not help to smooth her path. She did not mention it to the unsuspicious Kallem. He soon forgot the whole affair, for he got such an amount of work to do. As Kent wished to go abroad, Kallem would have to take both their practices, in consideration of his having attended to the hospital before Kallem's arrival. The third doctor who belonged to the place was a young military surgeon, he was now at the manœuvres. His name was Arentz; he was possessed of a remarkably broad, powerful chest. Kallem recognized, by the accuracy of his knowledge, the very words of the books he had studied from; at first he had great difficulty in not calling him Niemeyer, but he admired his upright and honorable character. When Kallem found that this life passed on highways and streets was becoming quite unbearable to him, he thought of asking Arentz to help him; if he wished to become an independent man, he must arrange things very differently.

Ragni saw him gulp his food down in the middle of the day and return home in the evening. Sometimes he sat on the veranda with her for a while, or took a turn arm in arm in the garden, or helped her if there was anything she was busy with; but seldom--as he had to go in to his books. A great change took place, however, when his colleague returned; his only thought was that of regaining lost time, so now he was a fixture in the laboratory or office. Ragni very soon installed herself in this sanctum; she got her own chair, her own book-shelf; in fact, the office became the sitting-room.

They each read their own book by the hour, scarcely exchanging ten words. He had got into a long, self-engrossing study, and had no idea what he looked like when he, at intervals during his reading, stretched full length on the sofa, silently gazing at her; or, as was generally the case, stood looking out of the windows. If he did move away a few steps, it would only be to return again at once to his old place at the window. He declared that there was no place where he could think with so much ease as there; this was an inheritance from his father.

He was much attached to his home, and seldom returned to it without a grateful feeling, and went about as happy and light-hearted as a bird. After dinner he was very fond of listening to music; but did not always as much as remark what Ragni was playing.

But she? Each day she bound herself faster and faster to the animate and inanimate things of her home. She again called him her "white pasha," her piano "a fairy tale." "Now for a fairy tale!" she said, when she felt inclined to play, and soon taught him to do the same. She called their bed-room, "amongst the stars." The pigeons which were given her at Whitsuntide, she called "her Whitsuntide-lilies;" Sigrid she called "the seven-armed woman." When she and Kallem were-sitting reading in the office, she felt as if they were out sailing, each in their own boat, each to their own country. "Shall we go in and have a sail?" was what she called it.

He had discovered by her letters from America how fond she was of using figurative language: "We are each working slowly toward each other at opposite ends of a tunnel through the world," she wrote in one of her letters, and always kept returning to the subject of the tunnel; at last "they had reached so near to one another that she could hear him speak!" About the steamers, "that swim above," passing each other with their letters, she wrote that "the desire of the one attracted the other after it."

One evening that they were sitting on the veranda (it was raining, but they were protected by the projecting roof), she said: "A house like this should have a head."

"A head?"

"Yes, a head between the wings as every worthy hen has."

"Oh, that's what you mean, is it?"

"I always feel as if I were under a pair of wings, being hatched."

"Tell me how it is that you did not use biblical figures of speech in your youth?"

"Because I had a father who taught me what the origin of everything was from my tenth year; plants, animals, and people all belong to one family--that was a doctrine that I loved! After that I got a step-father who was a clergyman, and insisted that the earth and human beings had been created perfect from the beginning, and that everything was made for the use of man; but I did not believe it. My own father was a quiet, delicate man, I loved him dearly; I was afraid of my step-father, he was such a strong, violent man."

Kallem asked her to give him a description of her childhood and education, but she answered decidedly, no.

Kristen Larssen had got work to do at the doctor's, he had arranged his laboratory and put up the ventilators, etc. Kallem had never had anything to do with a more silent, suspicious man; but neither with a more clever one. He came one Sunday morning in the beginning of August, arrayed in his best clothes, a long-tailed brown cloth coat, with extraordinarily tight sleeves, an old rusty waistcoat, much too short, and a pair of gray trousers made of the so-called English leather. He went about bare-headed, as a rule; but on grand occasions he carried a hat in his hand; he could not bear anything on his head, unless the weather were fearfully cold. There he stood in the office, tall, thin, with closely-cropped hair, well-scrubbed face with black stubby beard. His whole appearance was lightened up by a white collar spread over a red-striped scarf. The doctor asked him to sit down, and inquired what was the matter with him. His answer was--first an inquiring glance, and then that he had not complained of his health.

Kallem remarked by the answer he had just given him, that it was not easy to tell him what he wanted; but he thought to himself: Now, my friend, you may be content.

At last he said that he knew that "the doctor's wife" had been five or six years in America; and that perhaps she might have some English books to lend him. As he had taught himself a little English, perhaps she would tell him how to proceed further.

Was he thinking of emigrating? Oh, that would not be freedom; "to go and be a slave for the Norwegians ... over there too; no, I don't feel drawn toward that."

"How old are you?"

"About forty, or rather more."

He looked over fifty.

"I daresay my wife would with pleasure teach you English, Larssen, maybe in the evenings."

No, he would not hear of that on any account. Kallem, however, explained to him that pronunciation must be learned by ear; Ragni happened to come in at that moment, and Kallem told her that if Kristen Larssen knew English, it would be like giving him a pair of wings. She blushed, for it was not the first time that her husband had given her some tiresome work to do; of course, he thought she had not sufficient occupation. She, however, would have preferred not to agree. But as she stood looking at Kristen Larssen, she remembered that her husband had never met a cleverer man; she began to feel a certain amount of compassion for him. He was studying an English book at that moment, and could barely understand what it was about. She not only proposed to help him, but tried to persuade him to accept her proffered help. On that very same afternoon, about five o'clock, they began; they sat spelling through a very easy book. When Kallem came home he found them with their heads close together, poring over the same book, the one black and rugged, the other small and well-formed with reddish hair; the one a stiff, grubby face with furrows and wrinkles; the other possessed warm bright eyes and dazzling colouring, and was full of spirit. She held her handkerchief to her mouth, it was evidently a struggle for her to sit beside him at all. Kallem then remembered that he himself had remarked that Kristen Larssen's breath was not of the sweetest. Kallem at once arranged that they were each to have their own book and sit at opposite sides of the table. As soon as ever she could, she escaped. To make up for this Kallem invited Larssen to spend the evening with them, and tried to thaw him up a little; but no, he was just as stiff and wary when he left as when he came. Kallem's thoughts were much taken up by him. Who in all the world could he be, and how had he managed to become like this?

One day Kallem had occasion to go to his house. There he found a thin, stiff-looking woman who was Kristen Larssen's wife, her head wrapped in a black shawl; if the husband had too little covering on his head, she certainly had too much. No children. No fire on the hearth; she said she cooked the food for many days at a time. She went about knitting with a shrewd and suspicious air. Kallem began to think they had agreed to live as cheaply as possible, so as to scrape as much money together as they could for the journey they wished to take. As he wanted an excuse for this visit, he had taken a revolver with him that would not go off; it was in its case, so he had taken case and all with him, but only remarked now that the ammunition for the revolver was in it too. He showed it to her.

"Oh, there are many of that kind here," she answered, and took it up without the slightest fear. "What a charming weapon," she said, and laid it down, locked it, and put the case on a shelf over her husband's work-table. Both the shelf and the table were covered with things waiting to be mended.

"He has too much work out just now," said she, "such trifles must wait."

Work-room, kitchen, and bed-room were all comprised in this one apartment. A bell hung on the wall, a table, a bed, a long bench, and three wooden chairs; otherwise the room was completely bare--then a nasty strong smell.

He went home past Sören Pedersen, the saddler's shop. Kallem had helped him to begin this shop, he was getting on well. There stood Kristen Larssen, with a glass in one hand, a bottle in the other, and Sören Pedersen and his wife were screaming or singing in front of the glass and bottle; it sounded like the long melancholy howling of a dog. Kristen Larssen laughed with a laugh that came from the very essence of his being. There was an unctuous satisfaction in this outburst, the exposure of a malicious heart's innermost feelings, an explorer's hallelujah of wildest delight. Was it that he took an interest in these two people? Who knows? Did he repeat this every day?

Ragni soon had cause again to feel Kallem's talent of making work for everyone.

They were to meet old Pastor Meek and his granddaughter, Tilla Kraby, at a small party given by Dr. Kent; they had just returned from a trip abroad, but were to start again immediately. They had been made much of during this short, and in all probability last, visit to these parts of the country; this party was given for them, and Kallem and his wife, who otherwise did not go out much, went to it solely to have a look at them. The guests of the evening were very late in coming, but in the meantime a very stout lady, barely thirty years of age, was introduced to Ragni; she was bright and good-looking. She startled Ragni by saying: "I don't know whether it will be a disagreeable piece of news to you to hear that I am Sören Kule's sister." As she remarked how very uncomfortable Ragni looked, she quickly took her aside: "Pray do not think otherwise than that I should have acted exactly as you did," she whispered. "And particularly if I had met a man like your husband"--she pressed Ragni's arm. She was clever and free and easy, and had little idea that she was torturing the delicate feelings of the being whose arm she held. The fact that her face and figure had a resemblance to the "whale tribe" was enough; Ragni recognized everything, even the peculiarity of the "swimmers;" she could not help thinking of pork. At last old Pastor Meek and his grand-daughter appeared; their host and his sister--Dr. Kent was not married--went to receive them with almost all the rest of the company after them. One could distinguish amongst the "How do you do's" and "Welcomes" of the foremost, remarks from those who were behind. "How good-looking he is!" "What a traveller Tilla is!" In the meanwhile, Kallem and Ragni stood by and wondered who it was they were like; they seemed to recognize their faces.

Pastor Meek was a man of medium height, broad-shouldered, but rather stout. He carried his head high, it was broad and glistening, encircled by thick white hair. "Now I know!" whispered Ragni, "I am sure they are related to that young man we met the first day we were here. Of course you remember him, he was so good-looking."

"Yes, of course, that's it! The same arched face. They might perfectly belong to the Bourbons."

The old man thanked the company for their welcome in a low voice, but he spoke slowly. His eyes were not cheerful, on the contrary, they were wistful and resigned. He did not give one the impression of being a determined man, but of being kind-hearted and thoughtful. When any of the officials of high standing spoke to him, he put on a stiff, ceremonious manner, quite in the old style.

"The new doctor" was introduced, and Fru Lilli Bing said to Ragni, as if she knew all about it: "Oh, how you two must suit each other! May I introduce you Fru Kallem, Fröken Kraby?" They bowed to one another rather shyly, but began to talk of the young man whom Fröken Kraby was like; he was her nephew and was very musical. This led to their speaking of music, and they never left one another's side for the rest of the evening.

Ragni had seldom--one may say never--with the exception of Kallem, found anyone who had so entirely taken up her thoughts. This quiet, and yet at the same time bright, blondine was so charming, and all she said was the expression of her own thoughts. Alas! she had to leave the town in a few days forever! That this was the first, and perhaps the last, time they were ever to meet, drew them with a kind of melancholy sweetness to each other. Ragni agreed on this account to play when her host, later in the evening, in his chaffing way, asked her to do so; she wished her new friend to learn to know her as well as possible.

"Do stand so that I may see a face I know," she whispered, and then began Solveig's song from "Per Gynt." They had probably expected a showy piece, not such a simple melody; but when the piano had finished "singing," they were all so charmed that the town magistrate, who was general spokesman on such occasions, begged her to repeat it; which she readily did. Then followed the Wizard's March, so unutterably weird; directly after that Selmer's "Child's Frolics," such a delicate, charming contrast; she played it with the same clear understanding and feeling of the smallest nuances; then came a quiet, old-fashioned song by Sinding, each note like a separate word; then a bright, lively song by Svendsen; and finished up with a festival march by Selmer. She was not at all nervous to-day, her eyes flashed out volumes to Tilla, and from her to many others, volumes of all sorts of enchanted tales. The company was much entertained; the town magistrate marched about like a braying trumpet. Old Meek came up to her with old-fashioned gallantry; Tilla whispered to her: "Grandfather is so musical."

An hour later, old Pastor Meek went away; he never stayed longer than that at a party; his grand-daughter left with him, and Kallem and Ragni joined them.