Part 15
The evening was mild, considering that it was the end of August, when there were always such sudden changes after sunset; still it was not so mild but what they were obliged to have on both cloaks and overcoats. There were people out walking everywhere. When they came to the Kallem's house, Ragni, who otherwise was so very retiring and shy, asked if they would not go in with them for a little while, and the old man answered politely that if there was the slightest hope of hearing some more music, the invitation was only too acceptable. So the lamps were lighted in the room, the piano opened, and an Italian barcarole went rowing away out through the open windows. Old Pastor Meek was delighted, and ventured to ask whether his grand-son, who was at the school here, might come and hear Fru Kallem play--of course only if it was quite convenient. Unfortunately, he was so taken up with his music that he had reached the age of nineteen without having passed his student's examination; but as there was no help for it, it was just as well he should hear good music. Ragni replied that it would be a pleasure to her. Kallem asked if he should go to him and tell him he could come? The old man was most grateful to him, and would be still more so, if at the same time the doctor would examine him and see what was the matter with him; there was something wrong. Kallem said that he had noticed it too, and thought he would be able to find out what it was.
The old man sat down to the piano:
"Now you shall hear one of his songs," said he. And with fingers not so stiff as might have been expected, and with a low voice, as though one were fingering a church bell--particularly with a peculiar use of head-voice, he hummed:
When does the morning dawn? When golden rays are floating O'er the snow-covered heights Deep down in the dark rifts, Lifts The stem that turns to the light Till it feels like an angel with wings. Then it is morning, Bright clear morning. But in stormy weather, And when my heart is sad, There's no morn for me, None.
Surely the morning has dawned When the flowers have burst into bloom, And the birds having broken their fast, Are chirping a promise that The woods Shall have fresh green crowns as a gift, The brook have a sight of the sea. Then it is morning, Bright, clear morning. But in stormy weather, And when my heart is sad, There's no morn for me, None.
When does the morning dawn? When the strength that glows through Sorrow and storm, awakens The sun in thy soul, so thy bosom Warmly Embraces the world in this cause: To be truly good to each and all! Then it is morning, Bright, clear morning. The greatest strength thou knowest, And the most dangerous too-- Is it that thou would'st have? Yes.
Both voice and accompaniment were peculiar. Ragni exclaimed: "Oh, how it all floats away!"
Kallem asked whose words they were--evidently a woman's? Tilla answered that it was taken from a newspaper; it was doubtless a translation. But when the others had left them, Ragni confided to Kallem that the "woman's words" was one of her translations! His cousin had got it into a Norwegian-American paper; and from that it had gone further still. This coincidence was sufficient to make Kallem go the very next day to Karl Meek--and three days later the latter, with his piano, books, and clothes, was established up in a large attic in Kallem's house, the one that looked out to the park. Kallem had overcome Ragni's strongest opposition.
V.
From that time there sat at their table a tall, long-haired individual, with legs twisted round those of the chair, with long red fingers always covered with chilblains, and so clammy that Ragni could not touch them. Nor could she bring herself to speak to him after what Kallem had told her about him; all the good and prepossessing qualities that she had seen in him at their first meeting had been effaced by what she had heard. He entered the room quickly, as if he had practised it, and then his coat or his sleeve caught in the door handle, or he did not shut the door the first time he tried, or his legs tripped him up, or he dragged a chair along with him, or knocked up against the servant who had just put down something on the table and was leaving the room. He never looked anyone in the face, his really fine eyes were sleepy and dull, his cheeks were ashen-gray; he studied the patterns on the plate, on the Chinese bread-basket which stood in front of him. He never uttered a word; if anyone spoke to him he was so startled that he answered "yes" or "no" as if he had hot cinders in his mouth. But he ate--according to Ragni's way of reckoning--like a carpenter's horse. And then, when he wiped his clammy hands on his trousers or up in his thick greasy hair, he was worse than Kristen Larssen.
This disgusting youth at her table every blessed day, and in the evenings Kristen Larssen! To say nothing of all the old women Kallem brought in to her so that she might supply them with warm woollen things; children, too, who sometimes were to be clothed from top to toe--his tuberculous friends!
Not only did she feel repelled by the actual persons, but every door was left open; she had not a corner where she could be at liberty, nor could she call her time her own. There was no use talking to him about it, as long as that, which was her greatest horror, was his greatest pleasure. There was a little jealousy, too, mixed up with it: he did not think enough about her and her doings. He had quite put on one side that affair with his sister; the minister and his wife had long since returned to town, Josephine had paid them a flying visit one morning in their garden, with some flowers from old Kallem's grave; the brothers-in-law met in the street and by sick-beds; then, too, Kallem sometimes met his sister, who was very good to the poor; but she did not come to him, nor he to her; neither was there any party given in their honor at the minister's house, as everyone had expected; in fact, there were no more parties at all. Not for a moment did Ragni doubt the reason of this. Kallem did not understand how this unspoken doubt worried her; nor could he be made to see that in a way it shut her out from the town; and she would not worry him with it. He had the privilege of the busy man, to put everything on one side which did not seem "clear" to him. In his daily tubercular chase, the old women and children whom he brought in his train were more to him than "all religious disputes;" and unfortunately, more too than the comfort and sense of beauty which for her were an absolute necessity.
At the further end of the large hospital yard was a long provision store and woodhouse, etc. Kallem had a hall for gymnastics fitted up there, and he and the ashen-gray young man spent most of their evenings there after six o'clock. As long as this lasted, he came home very punctually, did his own exercises, then arranged a class and was himself the leader. It was a miserable affair to begin with, but with his accustomed energy he brought order and go into it. The timid youth had hardly touched his piano since he had been there, he was afraid of Free Kallem. So Kallem went up to him every evening for half an hour with his book; he made Karl play whilst he sat there. In his capacity as doctor he had forced his way to his confidence; he looked after him with watchful friendliness, and soon the youth came into the room more at his ease, and did not sneak away so quickly. And at last she took courage--after earnest entreaties from Kallem--and said to the youth one Sunday morning: "No, don't go upstairs; come, let us try to play some duets together! We will take easy pieces," she added. He was in despair; but as good luck would have it, he nearly overturned the piano stool as he was going to sit down, and almost upset hers too in trying to save his own, and at that they both began to laugh; that helped them through the worst. She sat there fresh and slim, in a red silk dress, with lace at her neck and wrists, her long, white piano fingers well away from his long red ones; her intelligent face often turned toward him, a scent of mignonette from her dress, and the perfume of her hair ... he trembled with shyness. And how ugly he thought himself! And the smell of his hair! He struggled so to play, that he was soon tired and made stupid mistakes. "I am sure you are not inclined for it to-day," said she, and got up.
He went off like a beaten hound; he shrunk from all, he writhed, and for the ninth or ninetieth time made up his mind to run away. He never appeared at dinner-time, and was not to be found in all the house, so Kallem thought he would ask about it; she told him then what a miserable performance it had been; he had got tired after barely half an hour; a young man who could not stand more than that disgusted her. "Oh, you everlasting æsthetic!"--he went to look for the youth, and sacrificed his delightful Sunday afternoon to it, and came home with him toward evening. Then she whispered to him, when they were in the office, that she was going to be very good. Kristen Larssen came, and more patient than any beaten poodle, she sat herself down to give him an English lesson.
From the very first she had felt compassion for this peculiar man; but she froze to an icicle in his society, and in the vicinity of his breath. Therefore, she herself thought that it was horribly cowardly of her to go on with it without a complaint; it was certainly not out of compassion. Punctual to the minute he appeared, in his long brown coat with the tight sleeves, and with a working-man's unbearable smell of stale perspiration from clothes and body. His breath reached right across the table; she felt it too, even if it did not really reach her. He pulled forward his chair, sat down, and opened his book, and when he had found his place, he sent his cold, horrible eyes across to her warm, startled, dove-like ones, startled beyond bounds. His long, black-smudged fingers, covered with black hair like his whole hand, took hold, the one hand of the book, the fingers of the other he used to point with; then he cleared his throat well, and finally began. Usually he asked about something from the last lesson; always intelligent, suspecting a mistake on her part, a want of perception or logic. He made her feel unsafe under the safest circumstances.
When he slowly, and with much deliberation, struggled on, word for word, and she presumed to interrupt him because he had made a mistake, he put down his finger still firmer to mark the place where he had been caught tripping, and looked up at her, vexed and suspicious. Then she in a most uncertain way reiterated her correction; but never could she succeed in making it clear enough to him; he had always to ask for further explanations. She repeated it a third time, and at last he was gracious enough to let it pass--to her account. Each time she interrupted him, she knew what would follow--and knew that wave upon wave of that bad breath would be wafted across to her.
What a piece of work it was for this man to come to her as sure as he always was; never repeating a mistake that once had been corrected; and what capacity he had, enabling him to ask all those extraordinary questions, which sometimes would have done honour to a philologist--all this she neither overlooked nor undervalued. But to her he was so truly fearful. He was too painfully like an old monkey she had seen sedately eating with a silver spoon. This picture hanging grinning over him was like revenge.
There was one circumstance in her daily life which made it very pleasant, it was her work together with the servant; they became very good friends. Both of them got on so well together--Ragni found out what there was to do, and the other one did it. Ragni liked work and was quick about it, the servant was intelligent and anxious to learn; they took a pleasure in each other's society.
A fortnight after the unsuccessful attempt at duet-playing, she said to Karl Meek:
"What do you think about it? Shall we try once more?"
"No, thank you, it--it won't do!" answered he, horrified.
"Oh, yes, I have looked out a duet which you will be able to manage." She took it out, he stood at a distance of two ells and looked at it--grew very red, and passed his hands through his hair.
"Do you know it?" He never answered; it was a piece of his own, he called it the "Mountain Brook," and he had often played it for Kallem upstairs; now it had been arranged as a duet; in this way she wished to make up for the last time.
"Come, now!" In the same red silk dress, with the same lace falling over her long playing-fingers, there she sat, the same figure, the same wonderfully dreamy eyes looking at him, sometimes in a way that made him shiver. But now he was himself in new clothes, and his hair was cut and well arranged, as was his whole person. And the "mountain brook" came rushing from under her nimble fingers; if he were not always able to keep up with her, she waited to take him along. At last, if not quite perfect, it was at all events not so bad but what she graciously promised in the future to go on with it.
He bowed, and would have gone. "It is Sunday," said she, "you can't have anything to do?"
"No."
"Shall we go for a walk?"
"Yes, if you.... Oh, yes!"
Quick as an arrow he came down in overcoat and fur cap, and she appeared in her pretty cloak and the coquettish American hat with feathers.
"Let us go up the hill and meet the doctor."
They went off. She felt she would have to talk the whole time, so she began to describe the snow-storms on the American prairies, and what the consequences could be for both man and beast. He saw how little by little the colour came to her cheeks, and how her small feet could hurry along the road. There was no sun that October day, but it was not cold; the fields were dark and dull, and the foliage was just beginning to turn; but he saw nothing of all that, he was overcome by the thought that she had wished to walk with him, she, the most refined, the most musical woman he knew. For her sake he would so gladly roll in the dust, shoot himself with a pistol, or jump into the lake. This was no imaginary woman, it was Ragni Kallem in the red silk dress under the soft cloak, and the American hat with feathers--the one that all his companions admired so much. Those eyes gazed at him; and he dared not go down to their very depths. She walked and talked with him before everybody. Then he too began to talk, as they went from winter in America to winter in the forest districts. His father, Pastor Meek's son Otto, was a doctor and had married a farmer's daughter from a large farm in the forest district, and lived there like any other peasant. Together with him Karl had been across the river-bed, away up in the solitude of the wooded mountains; he had helped at the felling of timber, the netting of deer, and shooting; he talked of scenery and impressions of which she had not the slightest idea. He described the appearance of a black-cock, its courtship, habits, the flapping of its wings, and its cry so vividly, that she ever after called him the "black-cock."
They did not meet Kallem, and went back therefore by the same road. They played their duet over again, and much better than at first; they wished to practise it well so as to play it some evening when Kallem was sitting in his office! To him Kallem was the greatest and highest he knew.
Little by little she gained influence over the "blackcock," and got accustomed to his oval face, his variable moods, one moment radiant and beaming, the next down in the depths, hasty and impetuous, then humbly submissive, with short spells of industry and long ones of "dolce far niente," very much got up, but at the same time very slovenly; she began to think him quite good-looking, and had no objection to take him by the hand. She helped him with his lessons; especially with his English. His learning was very scrappy, so Kallem proposed that he should leave school and study privately those things that he was so far behind in, and he wrote to Karl's father about it at once. After this Karl often sat in the large room with his books and exercises, played and read, and read and played--alone and together with her.
In the afternoons they were seen out taking long walks together. As soon as the snow lay firm on the ground--it had come the beginning of November--they would go and meet Kallem and drive home with him, each standing on one of the runners of his sledge. As soon as ever the bay was frozen they were out on the ice, the quickest and most agile of all. One sport alone had Kallem and he reserved for themselves, and that was to get Karl to walk on his hands. With the greatest solemnity the doctor would lift up his long legs and hold them up, while the other tried till he could try no longer. At first this went on only in the gymnasium, but soon they began in the room, in the passage, even on the stairs, just before dinner, just before supper too: "Up with your legs, lad!" How Ragni laughed every time he tumbled down again. At last she too became anxious that he should succeed; but he never could manage it; he was "too limp." Then it became a matter of honour for him; and the same for her too. She took a great interest in trying to make a "man" of him; his limp appearance, his tendency to dream and idle away his time, annoyed her greatly; she told him so. But he could not stand much, and soon became cross. Then she punished him by being very reserved. It was of no use his being altogether crushed and that he made hundreds of advances, even that he cried; she allowed him to live in mortal terror of her complaining to Kallem; she helped him with his work, but without either a word or a look but what belonged to the subject; she refused to go out with him; she never saw him--until in Kallem's presence she could again talk as though nothing had happened. Kallem, of course, knew nothing of all these shadows cast over their mutual intercourse.
Kallem associated with no one, he had not time. He was obliged to diminish his practice, so that he took serious steps to come to an agreement with Dr. Arentz, the young military surgeon, that he should be his assistant. This was arranged by the end of November, and from that time he could take more part and interest in the lessons and mutual occupations which rendered them all the more firmly established.
Karl Meek's father travelled into town on purpose to thank them, and to invite them to accompany his son up to the forest district for Christmas. Otto Meek was taller and stouter than his old father; the face was in more grand style, more truly "Bourbon;" but it was melancholy, or rather gloomy. Kallem accepted the invitation, and at once made arrangements with his colleagues to enable him to get away. But as the time drew near Dr. Kent fell ill, and Ragni was obliged, however unwillingly, to start alone with Karl; Kallem would follow them. A fur cloak for driving was bought for her, fur boots, a foot-muff; a valuable fur cap, too, a present from Karl. She looked like a Greenlander when she had it on.
Kallem went to the station with them; Ragni had been crying a little--in honour of its being the first parting since they were married. As she sat in the train and Kallem stood outside, she was going to begin again; he had to get in and scold her. As soon as her tears were checked, he got down again and looked up at Karl, who sat there happy and healthy. "I say, dear old 'black-cock,' from this time I shall always say 'thou' to you and call you Karl, for you are a good fellow!" But Karl jumped right down and threw himself on his neck.
So they departed.
Kallem read a great deal and thought it not altogether unpleasant to be at peace; latterly they had occupied his time very much. But already the third day, which was Christmas Eve, it felt lonely; he thought he would go and take them by surprise; Dr. Kent was better.
On the evening of Christmas Day he was just coming away from Kent and going up to the hospital, when he saw in the distance a small crowd at the gate. A horse and sledge were just driving away; the sledge was full of straw and bed-clothes; some sick person must have been driven in. He heard also children crying. Who had been hurt? It was Andersen, the mason--the same man who had greeted Kallem and his wife from up on the new house, the first day they came to the town. In the winter, mason Andersen went about and did pedlar business whilst his own trade was at a stand-still, and in crossing over a forest ridge he had lost his way, fallen and hurt himself, and had to lie there until, by the merest chance, he had been found. Kallem found his inconsolable wife with the deaconesses, and heard from her that her husband, who was an active man, had made extra haste as it was just before Christmas, and had wanted to take a short cut so as to reach home for Christmas; Andersen was always so "fond of his home." But his sight was bad, and he slipped on his Lapp-shoes and cut and broke his leg, and there he lay not able to move. That was how he kept Christmas. "We waited and waited," she said, "and the children too!"
Kallem went up to the patient, who was in bed in a warm room. The big man with the large brown beard floating over his shirt was altogether unrecognizable. The eyes were pressed together, the eyelids swollen, stiff. The mucous membrane of the eye was inflamed, the cornea was threatened, and as it was painful at the slightest ray of light, there was probably greater danger at hand. Swollen bluish-red patches on the face; the fingers of both hands quite white and without feeling; the backs of the hands twice their usual size and covered with large blisters full of water. The right leg was broken at the upper end of the fibula, the fracture went up into the knee-joint; the wound was as large as a crown-piece, a splinter of bone sticking out like a finger. Compared with this, all other injury to the foot was of little consequence.
Andersen could hardly speak, but now and again groaned that his foot must not be cut off. Kallem answered repeatedly as he helped him, that the next morning's daylight would decide it. The room was at once half-darkened, compresses of boron water were laid on his eyes, with urgent instructions to change constantly; his face was rubbed in with oil and wrapped in a thin sheet of wadding, the same with the hands; the wound in the leg was syringed with carbolic water, and a small bleeding vein was bound up, the wound sprinkled with iodoform and wrapped round with wadding, and put in a wire bandage. If he should awake and feel weak, he was to have ether every second hour, and if in very great pain, then an injection of morphia.
After that he fell asleep; but each time he awoke he complained of unbearable pain--less from the fracture, but more particularly down the shin-bone to the back of the foot; he was in constant fear that his foot would be amputated.