Part 4

"Did we not talk about anything? Of course we did,--Tolstoi and his doctrine of celibacy; Ibsen's Hedda; Strindberg's view of the female animal,--and agreed that Friedrich Nietszche appealed to us immensely. You must make allowances. Here was a man passionately attached to his art,--his art, that he had been treating churlishly for months for the sake of a dream. The dream was out, and he feared her revenge. That is the one potent element of consolation for me. If one has made an idiot of one's self, it is at least self-consoling to have done so for a genius. He chose the better part, if you come to think of it. The man or woman who jeopardizes a great talent--be it of writing, painting, or acting--for marriage sake is bartering a precious birthright for a mess of pottage, mostly indifferent pottage. And even if it were excellent, it is bound to pall when one has it every day. There never was a marriage yet in which one was not a loser; and it is generally the more gifted half who has to pay the heaviest toll.

"I believe he was intensely sorry for me. I asked him once, you know, half playfully, half maliciously, if he had meant something, something deliciously tender,--I quoted it out of one of his letters. He paled to his lips, closed his eyes for a second, and I saw drops of sweat break out on his forehead. I sprang up and turned aside his answer. I remember when I was a little child I never would pick flowers; I always fancied they felt it, and bled to death. I used to sneak behind, and gather up all those my playmates threw down on the road or fields, and put them, stalks down, into the water in the ditch or brook; even now I can't wear them. I did not wish to hurt him either; he could not help his passion-flower withering. I suppose it was written that my love should turn, like fairy gold, into withered leaves in my grasp.

"What, dear,--a white hair? Oh, I saw several lately. How did it end? Oh, he said that he was going away to glean material for a new book; that he would burn my letters,--it was safer and wiser to burn letters. No, I did not ask him; he volunteered it. He asked me, did I not think so? I said yes. But is it not marvellous how dazzlingly swift our thoughts can travel, like light? While I was saying, 'Yes, one often regretted not having burned letters; receipts, receipts for bills, were really the only things of importance to keep,' I was thinking and crying inwardly over my letters. Such letters!--one only writes once like that, I think. All the perfume of the flowers I ever smelt, all the sun-glints on hill and sea, all the strains of music and light and love I had garnered from the glad, fresh, young years when I tossed cowslip balls in the meadows, were crystallized into love-words in those letters of mine. It seemed to me often that the words burnt with a white flame as I wrote them, and I was shy when I saw them written; and he said, 'I shall burn them!' much as you might say, 'I shall take the trimming off that last summer hat of mine.' I did not like to think of his burning them, perhaps with his old washing-bills. Do you know, if I had a finger or toe cut off, I wouldn't like them to take it away; I'd like to bury it. A sort of feel, I suppose.

"Well, we said good-by! I felt as if I had a sponge with a lot of holes in it, instead of a heart, and that all the feeling had oozed away through them. He was glad to go, I think; he felt himself a brute I dare say, yet how could he help it?

* * * * *

"Were you ever at the Scandinavian church in the Docks? I went one Sunday after I came back. I like those blue-eyed, sea-faring folk; and the priest wears a black gown and stiff ruff, like Luther of mixed renown. An apple-tree outside the open door was struggling to open its delicate pink blossoms; each petal had a tinge of soot,--it reminded me of the pretty cheeks of a grimy maid-of-all-work. I sat still; a sunbeam came in and pierced Judas's heart, as he sat at his section of the Last Supper table, and it wrapped me up in a sun haze, so that all was misty around me. The sermon only struck my ear with a soothing, drowsy roll, something like the wave-note of the incurling sea in the Mediterranean,--a legato accompaniment to my thoughts; and I had a grand burial all by myself. I dug a deep grave, and laid all my dreams and foolish wishes and sweet hopes in it. A puff of wind rustled through the rigging of the ships, and set the flags with their yellow cross fluttering, and scattered a few of the tender blooms over it, and--ah, well! it seems hard to realize now. Spring has gone!

"Do you really think that crinolines will be worn?"

THE SPELL OF THE WHITE ELF.

Have you ever read out a joke that seemed excruciatingly funny, or repeated a line of poetry that struck you as being inexpressibly tender, and found that your listener was not impressed as you were? I have; and so it may be that this will bore you, though it was momentous enough to me.

I had been up in Norway to receive a little legacy that fell to me; and though my summer visits were not infrequent, I had never been up there in mid-winter, at least not since I was a little child tobogganing with Hans Jörgen (Hans Jörgen Dahl is his full name), and that was long ago. We are connected. Hans Jörgen and I were both orphans, and a cousin (we called her aunt) was one of our guardians. He was her favorite; and when an uncle on my mother's side (she was Cornish born; my father, a ship captain, met her at Dartmouth) offered to take me, I think she was glad to let me go. I was a lanky girl of eleven, and Hans Jörgen and I were sweethearts. We were to be married some day,--we had arranged all that,--and he reminded me of it when I was going away, and gave me a silver perfume-box, with a gilt crown on top, that had belonged to his mother; and later when he was going to America he came to see me first. He was a long, freckled hobbledehoy, with just the same true eyes and shock head. I was, I thought, quite grown up. I had passed my "intermediate," and was condescending as girls are; but I don't think it impressed Hans Jörgen much, for he gave me a little ring, turquoise forget-me-nots with enamelled leaves and a motto inside (a quaint old thing that belonged to a sainted aunt, they keep things a long time in Norway), and said he would send for me; but of course I laughed at that. He has grown to be a great man out in Cincinnati, and waits always. I wrote later and told him I thought marriage a vocation, and I hadn't one for it; but Hans Jörgen took no notice,--just said he'd wait. He understands waiting, I'll say that for Hans Jörgen.

I have been alone now for five years, working away, though I was left enough to keep me before. Someway I have not the same gladness in my work of late years. Working for one's self seems a poor end, even if one puts by money. But this has little or nothing to do with the white elf, has it?

Christiania is a singular city if one knows how to see under the surface, and I enjoyed my stay there greatly. The Hull boat was to sail at 4.30, and I had sent my things down early; for I was to dine at the Grand at two with a cousin, a typical Christiania man. It was a fine, clear day, and Karl Johann was thronged with folks. The band was playing in the park, and pretty girls and laughing students walked up and down. Every one who is anybody may generally be seen about that time. Henrik Ibsen--if you did not know him from his portrait, you would take him to be a prosperous merchant--was going home to dine; but Björnstjerne Björnson, in town just then, with his grand, leonine head, and the kind, keen eyes behind his glasses, was standing near the Storthing House with a group of politicians probably discussing the vexed question of separate consulship. In no city does one see such characteristic odd faces and such queerly cut clothes. The streets are full of students. The farmers' sons among them are easily recognized by their homespun, sometimes home-made, suits, their clever heads and intelligent faces; from them come the writers and brain-carriers of Norway. The Finns, too, have a distinctive type of head, and a something elusive in the expression of their changeful eyes; but all, the town students too, of easier manners and slangier tongues,--all alike are going, as finances permit, to dine in restaurant or steam-kitchen. I saw the _menu_ for to-day posted up outside the door of the latter as I passed,--"Rice porridge and salt meat soup, 6_d._,"--and Hans Jörgen came back with a vivid picture of childhood days, when every family in the little coast-town where we lived had a fixed _menu_ for every day in the week; and it was quite a distinction to have meat-balls on pickled-herring day, or ale soup when all the folks in town were cooking omelets with bacon. How he used to eat rice porridge in those days! I can see him now put his heels together and give his awkward bow as he said, "Tak for Maden tante!"

Well, we are sitting in the Grand Café after dinner, at a little table near the door, watching the people pass in and out. An ubiquitous "sample-count" from Berlin is measuring his wits with a young Norwegian merchant; he is standing green chartreuse. It pays to be generous even for a German, when you can oust honest Leeds cloth with German shoddy: at least, so my cousin says. He knows every one by sight, and points out all the celebrities to me. Suddenly he bows profoundly. I look round: a tall woman with very square shoulders, and gold-rimmed spectacles is passing us with two gentlemen. She is English, by her tailor-made gown and little shirt-front, and noticeable anywhere.

"That lady," says my cousin, "is a compatriot of yours. She is a very fine person, a very learned lady; she has been looking up referats in the University Bibliothek. Professor Sturm--he is a good friend of me--did tell me. I forget her name; she is married. I suppose her husband he stay at home and keep the house!"

My cousin has just been refused by a young lady dentist, who says she is too comfortably off to change for a small housekeeping business; so I excuse his sarcasm.

We leave as the time draws on, and sleigh down to the steamer. I like the jingle of the bells, and I feel a little sad; there is a witchery about the country that creeps into one and works like a love-philter, and if one has once lived up there, one never gets it out of one's blood again. I go on board, and lean over and watch the people; there are a good many for winter time. The bell rings. Two sleighs drive up, and my compatriot and her friends appear; she shakes hands with them, and comes leisurely up the gang-way. The thought flits through me that she would cross it in just that cool way if she were facing death; it is foolish, but most of our passing thoughts are just as inconsequent. She calls down a remembrance to some one in such pretty Norwegian, much prettier than mine, and then we swing round. Handkerchiefs wave in every hand. Never have I seen such persistent handkerchief-waving as at the departure of a boat in Norway; it is a national characteristic. If you live at the mouth of a fjord, and go to the market-town at the head of it for your weekly supply of coffee-beans, the population give you a "send off" with fluttering kerchiefs; it is as universal as the "Thanks." Hans Jörgen says I am Anglicized, and only see the ridiculous side, forgetting the kind feelings that prompt it.

I find a strange pleasure in watching the rocks peep out under the snow, the children dragging their hand-sleds along the ice. All the little bits of winter life of which I get flying glimpses as we pass, bring back scenes grown dim in the years between. There is a mist ahead; and when we pass Dröbak cuddled like a dormouse for winter's sleep, I go below. A bright coal-fire burns in the open grate of the stove, and the "Rollo" saloon looks very cosy. My compatriot is stretched in a big arm-chair reading. She is sitting comfortably with one leg crossed over the other, in the manner called shockingly unladylike of my early lessons in deportment. The flame flickers over the patent leather of her neat low-heeled boot, and strikes a spark from the pin in her tie. There is something manlike about her; I don't know where it lies, but it is there. Her hair curls in gray-flecked rings about her head; it has not a cut look, seems rather to grow short naturally. She has a charming, tubbed look; of course every lady is alike clean, but some men and women have an individual look of sweet cleanness that is a beauty of itself. She feels my gaze, and looks up and smiles; she has a rare smile,--it shows her white teeth and softens her features.

"The fire is cosy, isn't it? I hope we shall have an easy passage, so that it can be kept in."

I answer something in English.

She has a trick of wrinkling her brows; she does it now as she says,--

"A-ah, I should have said you were Norsk, are you not really? Surely, you have a typical head, or eyes and hair at the least?"

"Half of me is Norsk, but I have lived a long time in England."

"Father of course; case of 'there was a sailor loved a lass,' was it not?"

I smile an assent and add: "I lost them both when I was very young."

A reflective look steals over her face. It is stern in repose; and as she seems lost in some train of thought of her own, I go to my cabin and lie down; the rattling noises and the smell of paint make me feel ill. I do not go out again. I wake next morning with a sense of fear at the stillness; there is no sound but a lapping wash of water at the side of the steamer, but it is delicious to lie quietly after the vibration of the screw and the sickening swing. I look at my watch,--seven o'clock. I cannot make out why there is such a silence, as we only stop at Christiansand long enough to take cargo and passengers. I dress and go out. The saloon is empty, but the fire is burning brightly. I go to the pantry and ask the stewardess when we arrived. Early, she says; all the passengers for here are already gone on shore, and there is a thick fog outside; goodness knows how long we'll be kept. I go to the top of the stairs and look out; the prospect is uninviting, and I come down again and turn over some books on the table, in Russian, I think. I feel sure they are hers.

"Good-morning!" comes her pleasant voice.

How alert and bright-eyed she is! it is a pick-me-up to look at her.

"You did not appear last night; not given in already, I hope!"

She is kneeling on one knee before the fire, holding her palms to the glow; and with her figure hidden in her loose, fur-lined coat, and the light showing up her strong face under the little tweed cap, she seems so like a clever-faced slight man that I feel I am conventionally guilty in talking so freely to her. She looks at me with a deliberate, critical air, and then springs up.

"Let me give you something for your head! Stewardess, a wine-glass!"

I should not dream of remonstrance, not if she were to command me to drink sea-water; and I am not complaisant as a rule.

When she comes back I swallow it bravely, but I leave some powder in the glass; she shakes her head, and I finish this too. We sat and talked, or at least she talked and I listened. I don't remember what she said; I only know that she was making clear to me most of the things that had puzzled me for a long time,--questions that arise in silent hours, that one speculates over, and to which one finds no answer in text-books. How she knew just the subjects that worked in me I knew not; some subtile intuitive sympathy, I suppose, enabled her to find it out. It was the same at breakfast; she talked down to the level of the men present (of course they did not see that it might be possible for a woman to do that), and made it a very pleasant meal.

It was in the evening--we had the saloon to ourselves--when she told me about the white elf. I had been talking of myself and of Hans Jörgen.

"I like your Mr. Hans Jörgen," she said; "he has a strong nature and knows what he wants; there is reliability in him. They are rarer qualities than one thinks in men; I have found through life that the average man is weaker than we are. It must be a good thing to have a stronger nature to lean to. I have never had that."

There is a want in the tone of her voice as she ends, and I feel inclined to put out my hand and stroke hers,--she has beautiful long hands,--but I am afraid to do so. I query shyly,--

"Have you no little ones?"

"Children, you mean? No, I am one of the barren ones; they are less rare than they used to be. But I have a white elf at home, and that makes up for it. Shall I tell you how the elf came? Well, its mother is a connection of mine, and she hates me with an honest hatred; it is the only honest feeling I ever discovered in her. It was about the time that she found the elf was to come that it broke out openly, but that was mere coincidence. How she detested me! Those narrow, poor natures are capable of an intensity of feeling concentrated on one object that larger natures can scarcely measure.

"Now I shall tell you something strange. I do not pretend to understand it; I may have my theory, but that is of no physiological value,--I only tell it to you. Well, all the time she was carrying the elf she was full of simmering hatred, and she wished me evil often enough; one feels those things in an odd way. Why did she? Oh, that--that was a family affair, with perhaps a thread of jealousy mixed up in the knot. Well, one day the climax came, and much was said; and I went away and married, and got ill, and the doctors said I would be childless. And in the mean time the little human soul--I thought about it so often--had fought its way out of the darkness. We childless women weave more fancies into the 'mithering o' bairns' than the actual mothers themselves; the poetry of it is not spoiled by nettle-rash or chin-cough any more than our figures. I am a writer by profession--oh, you knew! No, hardly celebrated; but I put my little chips into the great mosaic as best I can. Positions are reversed; they often are now-a-days. My husband stays at home, and grows good things to eat and pretty things to look at, and I go out and win bread and butter. It is a matter not of who has most brains, but whose brains are most salable. Fit in with the housekeeping? Oh, yes. I have a treasure, too, in Belinda. She is one of those women who must have something to love. She used to love cats, birds, dogs, anything. She is one bump of philo-progenitiveness; but she hates men. She says: 'If one could only have a child, ma'm, without a husband or the disgrace! ugh, the disgusting men!' Do you know, I think that is not an uncommon feeling among a certain number of women. I have often drawn her out on the subject; it struck me, because I have often found it in other women. I have known many, particularly older women, who would give anything in God's world to have a child of 'their own' if it could be got, just as Belinda says, 'without the horrid man or the shame.' It seems congenital with some women to have deeply rooted in their innermost nature a smoldering enmity--ay, sometimes a physical disgust--to men. It is a kind of kin feeling to the race-dislike of white men to black. Perhaps it explains why woman, where her own feelings are not concerned, will always make common cause with woman against man. I have often thought about it. You should hear Belinda's 'serve him right' when some fellow comes to grief! I have a little of it myself [meditatively], but in a broader way, you know. I like to cut them out in their own province.

"Well, the elf was born; and now comes the singular part of it. It was a wretched, frail little being, with a startling likeness to me. It was as if the evil the mother had wished me had worked on the child, and the constant thought of me stamped my features on its little face. I was working then on a Finland saga, and I do not know why it was, but the thought of that little being kept disturbing my work. It was worst in the afternoon time, when the house seemed quietest; there is always a lull then, outside and inside. Have you ever noticed that? The birds hush their singing, and the work is done. Belinda used to sit sewing in the kitchen, and the words of a hymn she used to lilt in half tones--something about joy bells ringing, children singing--floated in to me, and the very tick-tock of the old clock sounded like the rocking of wooden cradles. It made me think sometimes that it would be pleasant to hear small, pattering feet and the call of voices through the silent house; and I suppose it acted as an irritant on my imaginative faculty, for the whole room seemed filled with the spirits of little children. They seemed to dance round me with uncertain, lightsome steps, waving tiny, pink, dimpled hands, shaking sunny, flossy curls, and haunting me with their great innocent child-eyes, filled with the unconscious sadness and the infinite questioning that is oftenest seen in the gaze of children. I used to fancy something stirred in me, and the spirits of unborn little ones never to come to life in me troubled me. I was probably over-worked at the time. How we women digress! I am telling you more about myself than my white elf.

"Well, trouble came to their home, and I went and offered to take it. It was an odd little thing, and when I looked at it I could see how like we were. My glasses dimmed somehow, and a lump kept rising in my throat, when it smiled up out of its great eyes and held out two bits of hands like shrivelled white rose-leaves. Such a tiny scrap it was! it was not bigger, she said, than a baby of eleven months. I suppose they can tell that as I can the date of a dialect; but I am getting wiser," with an emotional softening of her face, and quite a proud look. "A child is like one of those wonderful runic alphabets; the signs are simple, but the lore they contain is marvellous. 'She is very like you,' said the mother; 'hold her.' She was only beginning to walk. I did. You never saw such elfin ears, with strands of silk floss ringing round them, and the quaintest, darlingest wrinkles in its forehead, two long, and one short, just as I have"--putting her head forward for me to see. "The other children were strong, and the one on the road she hoped would be healthy. So I took it there and then, 'clothes and baby, cradle and all.' Yes, I have a collection of nursery rhymes from many nations; I was going to put them in a book, but I say them to the elf now.