Part 20

When Kallem came home at eight o'clock, the supper table was laid in the dining-room; the lamps were lighted in the office, and it was warm; but both rooms were empty, the big room was dark. Sigrid came in with the tea, and told him that her mistress had gone to bed.

To bed? was she ill?

"I think she was only tired."

Kallem went upstairs directly. It was dark; but he saw in the moonlight a white arm in a night-gown stretched out toward him. "Forgive me," she said; "but I felt so tired, and then there was a letter from my sister which made me sad. No, don't light the candles! It is so nice like this."

What a fresh and healthy atmosphere there was about him, his voice was so strong as he answered: "From your sister?"

"Yes, she does not thrive up yonder."

"Suppose we get her down here?"

"I was just going to ask you for that. How good you are!" and she began to cry.

"But, my darling, why do you cry? I assure you the only reason why I did not speak of it sooner was, that you wanted so much for us to be alone."

"Yes, of course it is delightful. But supposing one of us were to be ill?"

"Nonsense, we are not going to be ill. You are strong now too. Your head is rather hot. Let me feel your pulse! Oh, it is nothing but rest that you need. It was right of you to go to bed. I shall go down and have my supper, I am ravenous; then you can be quiet. You had a letter from Karl?"

"Yes, it is lying on the desk."

"All right, I shall read it while eating. After that I must be busy. Good-night!"

He kissed her, she put both her arms round his neck, drew him down to her, and kissed him. "You darling!"

He went away; she heard his quick step on the stairs and going to the room door; heard him open and shut it.

Again there was that pain in her chest which his coming had dispelled, his very footstep scared away. It was something oppressive, dreadful, unheard-of, something she would never get rid of, and then she began to shiver. Cold, cold, cold; now it had reached to the very innermost. She felt now, with a shudder, why "the whale" had come and taken possession of the little house close by, and would not ever leave it. Now she knew why the others had allowed it.

"Alas! what has happened, what have I done?" moaned she, and tried to hide from herself. Karl's words of love sounded like a whispering voice amid thundering billows. Poor boy! She lay there in the dark that she might not be seen, and in order to think it over. What ought she to do? She had kept back that last sheet, ought she to show it to Kallem?

When Kallem came up to bed shortly after twelve, she had fallen asleep in the midst of all her sorrowful reflections. He lighted the candle behind her, looked into her face, and listened to her breathing. She was sleeping innocently, open-mouthed.

The next morning she walked backwards and forwards before the south side of the house, equally terrified, equally undecided. There had been snow, but it was nearly all melted again; it was the first snow that winter. A thick fog lay over the mountain ridges, so thick that it looked like a separate, impenetrable country, bordering on the mountains and stretching as far as the eye could reach. A long tongue of this strange country jutted out into the wood like a secret of utmost importance. She felt cold, she could not go far without being seen by people on the road, and to-day she could not let herself be seen, perhaps never again.

A useless fight that, among the different kinds of trees round about the farms. Furthest away from the houses a forest of firs; it looked almost black through the heavy mist; nearer to the houses a wood of leafy trees began, long-necked aspen and twisted birch, showing light yellow against the dark; nearer still there was mountain-ash and bird-cherry, blood-red in colour; maple, too, and other trees in endless variety of shades, from colourless as flax to deep red-gold. Tall asps and alders, too old to bear foliage, spread their naked branches out over the bright colours of the others, like blue-gray smoke.

She stamped her feet, but could not get any warmth into them; she would not go further, nor yet go in before she had decided what she was to do! What if Kallem did get to know of it? And what if he did not?

The meadows were divided in two by ploughed fields. Besides that there were only dull green fields of rye, sown in harvest-time, clover-fields in stubble. But see those discontented gray-looking fields further away from the houses, that are never noticed except when they are to be plundered; there are too many of them in the country.

But Juanita? How did she get into this harvest picture? The freshest, clearest reminiscence of that first spring? Ah, now awoke her longing for the children. Now she was sure that he was not where they were; so she could travel down to Rendalen's and see them.

As long as that lasted she would not be forced to decide what was the right thing to do; and she needed a respite. Just a short little letter to Karl Meek, that he must not write to her oftener just now, perhaps later on; she would let him know. These few words to Karl--should she telegraph them? Not from here! But she would start at once and telegraph on her way.

There arose in her a purpose, a command as strong as though she had nothing left for her to do but to see the children once again. When Kallem came home soon after, and she was pacing up and down the floor to try and get her feet warm, she said to him that she must see the children again, and it seemed to him that the recollection of her life together with Kule had turned into a longing for the children; this was very natural. "Start at once!" said he; "later on it may be too cold." He did not quite mean it to have been to-day; but that was what she wished, and in the afternoon he took her to the station.

As soon as she arrived at the Rendalens, she wrote a despairing letter, the meeting with the children had been terrible; they did not know her! And she, too, hardly recognised them! They were certainly well brought up children, but not as though they had belonged to her sister; there was no family likeness there, but a likeness to him, the father--he come of a stronger race. They were big, fat children; they stared at her without being able to understand her. And all the other strange faces, always noticing and watching her. She would have gone home again directly, if she had not had such a very bad cold. Her next letter was a little more cheerful; not because she was better pleased with the children--they were just like strangers and were wanting in "spirituality;" each time she took them in to her room to talk to them, or play for them, she could feel that it bored them. But her intercourse with the excellent people at the school and in the neighbourhood, afforded her great pleasure; "if only we had something similar," said she, with a sigh.

He had a letter from Rendalen, too, expressing, in strong terms, the delight of the entire little colony at having her amongst them. He put forward "an unanimous request" to be allowed to keep her for a time; she seemed tired after her journey and not very well; it would be good for her to have a rest.

She remained away a fortnight altogether. She came home again one cold day in mid-winter, looking pale, having still a bad cold, and very nervous, incapable of saying how dreadful it was for her to be again amongst people who looked upon her as an improper person. Kallem was alarmed at her cold and at her looking so ill; their meeting could hardly be called a meeting, there was an anxious examination of her chest, a languid account of her visit; she was tired and wished to go to bed.

Kallem asked if she had had any letter from Karl? None had been received here. No, she had had none either. Had she not written to him? No, Karl had confided a secret to her which she did not approve of. Often before there had been, so to speak, knots on the thread, which had only been explained to him later, and now, as she did not look up at her husband, he felt that he ought not to ask questions.

She was in bed several days. There was no getting rid of a nasty dry cough she had; otherwise there were no dangerous symptoms; none at all. The first day she was up he thought she had grown very thin; her face had a tired, delicate expression, and there were dark rings under her eyes. She longed for fresh air, but she refused, in the most determined way, to go for any walks outside the garden. At first she said it was so tiresome; when that excuse did not hold good, she hit upon a better one: she began to cry. He thought this was a strange symptom; was it possible that she was in the family way? He comforted himself with this hope and waited. She went for walks in the garden, and then told him about them with much pride; but she hid from him the fact that she always went out at dusk. Meanwhile she herself thought she was better, and he fancied so too.

Time went on; he was expecting that which he longed to hear, and thought he noticed other symptoms; but he was alarmed too sometimes, as she seemed to him to grow thinner and thinner; he could not get her to eat. One evening, when he was out, she had as usual gone into the garden and walked about at dusk, had felt a chill afterwards, and great oppression on the chest! She was asleep when Kallem went to bed, but he was awakened later by her coughing. He lit the light and saw that she pressed her hand to her chest.

"Have you a pain there?"

"Yes."

"Where is the pain?"

"Here!" and she pointed to the right collar bone.

"Does it hurt you there when you cough?"

"Yes." And at that moment she was seized with a violent fit of coughing. He got up, dressed himself, put fire in the stove, rang the bell for the servant to fetch him some medicine, and then sounded her chest, asking her many questions. She told him about the chill she had had that evening, and that she was in the habit of taking her walks at dusk.

"At dusk!" exclaimed he, and that was sufficient to make her hide her face. She must promise him now to be good and not do such things any more; she would have to stay in bed now for several days. She did not relish the mustard-plaster on her chest; but the cough lozenges were a success. He concealed his distress by joking and by petting her--and in a few days she did actually seem as well as he could expect. And now she had become so obedient; she kept in the house quite quietly for a fortnight. Her cough was less frequent; those violent fits of coughing had made her chest so sore; but, on the whole, she felt tolerably well, only very tired and breathless; feeling as if she had no wish to touch the piano.

A path was made for her in the garden, and she went out there for the first time with Kallem in the middle of the day, but went in again almost directly. At first he was frightened, seriously alarmed; but then from her manner he concluded it was only a little capriciousness. However, she felt weaker even than she would allow. The next day she tried together with Sigrid; but after the first few steps she became so breathless that she was obliged to stop and rest; she begged Sigrid not to tell; it would pass over when she "had more practice." The weather was mild, in the middle of the day there were even a few degrees of warmth, and she felt better, could walk further; Kallem was delighted when he saw one day that she had opened the piano.

One evening Sören Pedersen appeared, pale and by himself--two very unusual things. What was the matter? The matter was that Kristen Larssen's ghost haunted the place! Kallem shouted with laughter, but Sören's face never altered; it was quite true that Kristen Larssen's ghost had been seen! The latter years of his life Kristen Larssen had never played the violin; he gave it to Aune. But now he plays the violin, and in his own house! Did nobody live there? No, the house was shut up; but all the same he played! Several people had heard it; there was not the slightest doubt. It must be some lover of practical jokes who had got in there. Who kept the key?

"A nephew of the widow."

"And who may that be?"

"Aune."

"There we have it!"

"But Aune has himself helped to search the house; and Aune is the most frightened of the lot."

A servant, whose child was ill--Kallem knew her, he was her doctor--had seen Kristen Larssen one night when she was out, vanishing along by the wall of the house! Since then several others had seen it. "No one doubts it," said he. What did the doctor think of this, that the colonel's wife, went into the saddler's shop one day to tell them that she had dreamt she saw Kristen Larssen sitting in a long room, amongst many clever and learned men who were all being taught to spell. She had felt drawn to tell Sören Pedersen this, as it was Kristen Larssen who had led him astray. "And will you believe it, doctor, that very night both Aune and I had dreamt that the colonel's wife came to the shop!"

"Now I will tell you something just as strange, Sören Pedersen. The first day that my wife and I were here in the town, we met Andersen, the mason, Karl Meek, Kristen Larssen, Sigrid, you and your wife, all in the course of a quarter of an hour!"

Sören Pedersen rolled his round eyes about in a stupid sort of fashion; there was nothing so very strange in that.

"Not at all; for the other hundred people we took no notice of. Just as you, Sören Pedersen, never think about the hundreds of people you and Aune dream of without seeing them come to the shop the following day."

This did not convince Sören Pedersen.

Superstition was afloat. One person followed the other's lead; the whole town soon talked of nothing else, and particularly after the minister was mixed up in the affair. He had lived alone with his mother since the spring. His wife and child had been away, and had only returned quite recently. During all this time his preaching had increased in severity, latterly it had had a passionate ring which foreboded a storm. He announced at the meeting-house that believers were aware that spirits live and work amongst us, and that many poor souls had to wander about after death; these were well-known facts, sent as warnings to each generation.

When Kallem heard about this he decided to act on a thought which he had had for some time, namely, to get Aune in his power. He was very unwilling; having an inventive mind, he generally managed to get out of most scrapes; he could talk so persuasively that he had before this taken Kallem in; but now he was not to escape! His wife agreed to it, so one Sunday morning Kallem hypnotized him, in her presence, down in the office of the hospital--first of all on account of the brandy, but also to clear up this ghost story, which of course no other than this rascal had set afloat! Thus it happened. Now, there was one great difficulty about it: if it were discovered, Aune would be done for; his wife thought of this and interceded for him. There was nothing left but to forbid his proceedings--and then hold their tongues.

This did not prevent Kallem, on his morning rounds, telling Kent, who did not believe in ghosts more than he himself did, that he had discovered where the tale of Kristen Larssen's ghostly reappearance sprang from; the whole was a prearranged affair. So, when Dr. Kent met Josephine one day visiting one of his patients, and knowing that nothing was so dear to her as hearing news of her brother, he repeated Kallem's words. During dinner little Edward, who held forth everlastingly about these ghost stories, told them that Kristen Larssen had again appeared to two boys; one was a son of Aune, and the other was a son of the lay-preacher! Edward was bursting with excitement. Shortly and decidedly, his mother proved to him that this was nothing but deception; one of the doctors from the town had found out who was at the bottom of this fraud; there was not such a thing as Kristen Larssen's ghost at all.

As soon as the boy had left the dinner-table, the minister reproved Josephine for her tactless conduct.

"How, tactless?"

"Yes, that you could say that to the boy; did you hear how he at once tried to screen himself by saying that I believed in ghosts?" The minister's tone was not arrogant or even reproachful, and she felt that he was right; therefore she did not answer. But it did not rest here, soon after she was in the study.

"I have been thinking of what you said." He was lying on the sofa, smoking, but got up to make room for her; he was glad she came in. She, however, remained standing. "Is the boy to believe a thing because you say it, even if it be untrue?"

"No; but then you could leave it to me to correct the error."

"Are you quite sure that you would do so?"

"Pray, what do you mean by that?"

"Only that you continually teach him things that you yourself cannot possibly believe."

"What are you driving at?" He got very red; for he felt that this was the beginning of an explanation.

"I have often thought of speaking to you of this," she said, "and now the right moment has come. You surely don't believe that the world was created as it is now in six days, six thousand years ago, and that the story of the first man and woman, and the patriarchs is anything but a tradition? Likewise everything about Paradise. The world and human beings cannot have begun by being perfect. But this is what you teach the children, and of late even Edward."

He now walked up and down the room; she stood in the doorway between the room and the passage. Every time he approached her he gave her a decided, yes, even a look full of power; this was not the look of an evil conscience, she felt that. To show her in what spirit he wished to act, he stopped and said, quietly: "Shan't we sit down, Josephine?"

"No," answered she, "I did not come to stay."

"What you call a tradition," he said, "is the everlasting truth that God created everything and everyone, and that sin is a falling away from Him."

"Why not teach them in this wise, instead of by untrue pictures?"

"Children understand pictures best, Josephine."

"Then tell them that it is only a fairy tale."

"That's of no consequence."

"It is of the greatest consequence that children should not learn everlasting truths in an untrue form--at least, so I think."

He saw that she was working herself up into a state of excitement, and reproved her for it; surely they ought to be able to talk together without that.

"No," she said, "I cannot; for you must know that not only our boy's future, but yours and mine too, depend on this." She went up to the desk to be nearer to him, maybe too she needed support.

But he was not to be put down. "If you yourself, Josephine, were as thoroughly convinced of the eternal truth as you pretend to be, and were you protesting for that truth's sake, then all the rest would be of small importance. And what we wish to put in its stead is very uncertain too; we know that everything did not exactly happen as the revered Book tells us; what we do not know is what the real state of things was. This only we do know, that our life proceeds from God, and in God alone can we be happy; therefore, let both children and grown-up people accept the first teachings of our fathers, at any rate for the present." There was all the honest strength of conviction in his words, and they were full of power. She was silent for a long time; but all at once something else came over her.

"Do you know that, if it had not been for the total mismanagement of my intelligence and character when I was a child, I too would have become--different from what I am now?"

"Yes," he said, coldly, "I hear that latterly you have come to this conclusion; that faith is the misfortune of your life."

"I never said that!" she exclaimed, very pale, "never meant it either!" But she added, more quietly: "I have never allowed faith in God and salvation through Jesus to be a restraint on my intelligence. Never!"

"Dear me, how fortunate!" said he, but he sighed deeply afterwards.

"Well, if you don't intend to listen to me," she said, "I will just tell you my business straight out. Either you stop telling the boy those fairy tales which are not innocent ones, since they thus ensnare his understanding, or else, Ole, I can no longer consider you as wholly conscientious."

It was not the first time she had spoken harshly; they had had many a long and bitter quarrel. But she had never spoken quite so harshly, never before attacked his faith in that way. She had pleaded her right to have her own opinions, but always with much abuse of his; she had parried his attacks with sharp weapons; but never before had she talked like that or laid down conditions. For long he had been weighed down by the knowledge that she was brooding over something; but this fully armed purpose, sustained by such strength of mind and so much anger--there they stood facing each other; each sounding the depths of the other's will. He too was boiling over with indignant rage, and to put an end at once to anything she might imagine, he said: "The boy remains with me!"

"With you?" she turned ashy pale. "Have you more right to him than I? Are you his mother?"

"I am his father. The Bible and the law constitute the father owner of the child."

She began to walk up and down, but only between the window and door, as though they were the bars of a cage; her bosom heaved, her breathing was audible, the paleness of her face, her voice, her eyes, all told of the dreadful agitation she was in; she would never have thought him capable of such a thing.

"Are you not ashamed of yourself? Would you keep the boy?"

"Such is my intention, as sure as God orders me to do it. You shall not corrupt our boy!"

"Corrupt him? I? No, that is too much, now I will speak out! From my childhood up you gained power over me in that very same way. Through your unwavering faith you gained power over my mind without my knowing it, for you were so good and devoted. In that way you ruined my nature--that you did--it was meant for other things. You gave me an aim, a choice in life, I knew nothing of it myself. I tell you all this as it was, without blaming you for it. But you must know that you shall not have the same power over my child. Not as long as there is a spark of life in me, in spite of both law and Bible. Now you know that, and you shall see it too!"

Had she but known that for long, very long, he had expected that she would confront him in this way, she would have spared herself such a terrible outburst of passion. He himself was thoroughly master of his feelings.

"Of course, I have led astray your most divine nature, I have known it long! I have done it through that faith which you do not possess. My dear, I was aware of that before you went away!" He spoke slowly and impressively.

"Oh, so you do know it!" she burst forth, passionately; "you do know it! Your faith has never been mine; it did not suit me. But I have had none other instead; I went about thinking it was a sin that I could not have the same faith as you; I was crushed and overwhelmed, not being able to devote all my strength to something of my own. Therefore I have never been like others. It has all been wrong!"

"What would you have been, you?"

"Let me say the worst--a circus rider," answered she, without as much as moving an eye. He stopped abruptly, he could neither believe his ears nor his eyes.

"Circus rider?" He laughed scornfully. "Indeed, it has been a great loss for the world--and for yourself, Josephine, that you did not become one!"