Chapter 7
"But the rudest savages of America," said Alette, "know and practise this species of heroism; before me floats another ideal, both of life and death. The strong spirit of past ages, which you, my brother, so highly prize, could not support old age, the weary days, the silent suffering, the great portion of the lot of man. I will prize the spirit which elevates every condition of humanity; which animates the dying hero to praise, not himself, but God, and die; and which to the lonely one, who wanders through the night of life towards his unnoticed grave, imparts a strength, a peace, and enables him in his darkness to triumph over all the powers of darkness. Ah! I who deeply feel myself to be one of the weak ones in the earth, who possess no single drop of Northern heroic blood; I rejoice that we can live and die in a manner which is noble, which is beautiful, which requires not the Berserker-mood, and of which the strongest spirit need not be ashamed. Do you remember, my brother, 'The old poet' of Rein? This poem perfectly expresses the tone of mind which I would wish to possess in my last hour."
Harald recollected but faintly "The old poet," and both he and Mrs. Astrid begged Alette to make them better acquainted with him. Alette could not remember the whole of the poem, but gave an account of the most essential of its contents in these words--
"It is spring. The aged poet wanders through wood and mead, in the country where he once sung, where he had once been happy, amongst those whom he had made glad. His voice is now broken; his strength, his fire, are over. Like a shadow of that which once he was, he goes about in the young world still fresh with life. The birds of spring gather around him, welcome him with joy, and implore him to take his harp and sing to it of the new-born year, of the smiling spring. He answers--
O ye dear little singer quire, No more can I strike the harp with fire; No more in youth is renewed my spring; No more the old poet can gaily sing; And yet I am so blest-- In my heart is heavenly rest.[12]
"He wanders farther through wood and meadow. The brook murmuring between green banks, whispers to him its joy over its loosed bands, and greets the singer as the messenger of spring and freedom:
Thy harp, my fleet stream fondly haileth-- It leaps, it exults, it bewaileth; Let it sound then--O make no delay!-- Like me the days hasten away.
"The aged singer replies:
O spring! which dost leap in thy sheen, No more am I what I have been. The name of the past I hear alone-- A feeble echo of days that are flown. And yet I am so blest; In my heart is heavenly rest.
"He wanders farther. The Dryads surround him in their dance; the Flowers present him garlands, and beg him to sing their festival; the Zephyrs, which were wont to play amid his harp-strings, seek in the bushes, and ask whether he has forgotten them there; caress the old man, and seek again, but in vain. They are about to fly, but he entreats:
O dear ones, depart not I pray! O flowers, spread with beauty my way! My harp is broken, but no sigh Spring's spirits gay shall cause to fly. And I am still so blest; In my heart is heavenly rest.
"He wanders farther, and seeks out every beloved nook. The youth of the country assemble, and surround the aged singer--'the friend of youth and gladness.' They entreat him with his music to beautify their festival:
For spring is dead, with all its pleasure, Without the harp and song's glad measure.
"The old man replies:
Quenched, ye youth, is my fire so wild; My evening twilight is cool, but mild; And the blissful hours of my youth are brought, By your lively songs, into my thought. Bewail me not; I am still so blest-- In my heart lieth heaven's own rest.
"And now he exhorts the songsters of the wood, flowers, youth, everything that is lovely in nature and in life, to rejoice in its existence, and to praise the Creator. The beauty and joy of all creatures are the garland in his silver hair; and grateful and happy, admiring and singing praises, he sinks softly into the maternal bosom of Nature."
Alette was silent; a tender emotion trembled in her voice as she uttered the last words, and beamed in her charming countenance. The tears of Mrs. Astrid flowed; her hands were convulsively clasped together, whilst she exclaimed, "Oh thus to feel before one dies! and thus to be permitted to die!" She drew Alette to her with a kind of vehemence, kissed her, and then wept silently, leaning on her shoulder. Harald, too, was affected; but he appeared to restrain his feelings, and gazed with earnest and tearful eyes on the group before him.
Silently and unobserved stole Susanna out of the room. She felt a sting in her heart; a serpent raged in her bosom. Driven by a nameless agonised disquiet, she hastened forth into the free air, and ascended, almost without being aware of it herself, the steep footpath up the mountain, where many a time, in calmer moments, she had admired the beautiful prospect.
Great and beautiful scenes had, during the foregoing conversation, arisen before her view;--she felt herself so little, so poor beside them. Ah! she could not once speak of the great and beautiful, for her tongue was bound. She felt so warmly, and yet could warm no one! The happy Alette won without trouble, perhaps even without much valuing it, a regard, an approval, which Susanna would have purchased with her life. The Barbra-spirit boiled up in her, and with a reproachful glance to heaven she exclaimed, "Shall I then, for my whole life remain nothing but a poor despised maid-servant!"
The heaven looked clown on the young maiden mildly, but smilingly; soft rain-drops sprinkled her forehead; and all nature around her stood silent, and, as it were, in sorrow. This sorrowing calm operated on Susanna like the tenderly accusing glance of a good mother. She looked down into her heart, and saw there envy and pride, and she shuddered at herself. She gazed down into the stream which waved beneath her feet, and she thought with longing, "Oh, that one could but plunge down, deep, deep into these waves, and then arise purified--improved!"
But already this wish had operated like a purifying baptism on Susanna's soul; and she felt fresh and light thoughts ascend within her. "A poor maid-servant!" repeated now Sanna; "and why should that be so contemptible a lot? The Highest himself has served on earth; served for all, for the very least; yes, even for me. Oh!--" and it became continually lighter and warmer in her mind.--"I will be a true maid-servant, and place my honour in it, and desire to be nothing else! Charm I cannot; beauty and genius, and beautiful talents, I have not; but--I can love and I can serve, and that will I do with my whole heart, and with all my strength, and in all humility; and if men despise me, yet God will not forsake the poor and faithful maid-servant!"
When Susanna again cast her tearful eyes on the ground, they fell on a little piece of moss, one of those very least children of nature, which in silence and unheeded pass through the metamorphoses of their quiet life. The little plant stood in fresh green, on its head hung the clear rain-drops, and the sun which now shone through the clouds, glittered in them.
Susanna contemplated the little moss, and it seemed to say to her: "See thou! though I am so insignificant, yet I enjoy the dew of heaven and the beams of the sun, as fully as the roses and the lilacs of the garden!" Susanna understood the speech of the little plant, and grateful and calmed, she repeated many times to herself, with a species of silent gladness--"a humble, a faithful maid-servant!"
When Susanna came home, she found Mrs. Astrid not well. She had been much excited, and on such occasions an attack of the spasms was always to be apprehended. Susanna begged earnestly, and received the permission to watch by her to-night; at least, till Mrs. Astrid slept. Mrs. Astrid had, indeed, another maid with her, but she was old and very deaf, and Susanna had no confidence in her.
Mrs. Astrid retired to rest. Susanna seated herself on a stool by the window, silently occupied with her thoughts, and with knitting a stocking. The window had stood open during the day, and a host of flies had entered the room. Mrs. Astrid was much disturbed by them, and complained that they prevented her sleeping. Quietly Susanna laid bare her white shoulders, neck, and arms, and when the flies in swarms darted down upon her, and her mistress now left at peace slept calmly, Susanna sate still, let the flies enjoy themselves, and enjoyed herself thereby more than one can believe.
FOOTNOTES:
[8] Probably Newfoundland.
[9] Probably spotted maple.
[10] Upper Canada.
[11] Snails or cockles, as they called their light craft.
[12] I have not wished to attempt a translation of these verses, convinced that for the Swedish reader it is not necessary; and why unnecessarily brush off the golden dust from the butterfly's wings.--_Fredrika Bremer_.
As, however, the _English reader_ may find it _rather_ more necessary to give a translation of the Norwegian verses, I have made it, and that as much in the simplicity of the original as I could.--M. H.
RETREATING AND ADVANCING.
True delicacy, that most beautiful heart-leaf of humanity, exhibits itself most significantly in little things. Those which we in general call so, are not by any means so little.
J. C. LOUS.
It is with our faults as with horseradish; it is terribly difficult to extirpate it from the earth in which it has once taken root; and nothing is more discouraging to the cultivator who will annihilate this weed from his ground, than to see it, so lately plucked up, shooting forth again freshly to the light from roots which remained buried in the earth. One can get quite out of patience; with the weedy soil, and one is, when this soil is one's own dear self, possessed by the most cordial desire to set off far, far from one's self. But how!!!
Susanna was often conscious of this feeling, as she daily laboured to repress the excitements which arose up within her at this time. Still the thoughts and resolutions which awoke within her on the evening just described, had taken hold upon her too strongly for them to be again effaced, and with the motto--"a humble and regular servant-girl," she struggled boldly through the dangers and the events of the day. Her demeanour was calmer; she quietly withdrew herself from taking part in conversation which went beyond her education; in a friendly spirit, she endeavoured to renounce the attentions and interest of others, and busied herself only in attending to the comforts and pleasures of all, as well as in accomplishing, and when possible, anticipating every wish. And such an activity has, more than people imagine, an influence upon the well-being of every-day life. The affectionate will lends even to dead things soul and life. But heavy to the ministering spirits is this life of labour and care for others, where no sunbeam of love, no cordial acknowledgment, falls upon their laborious day.
In the beginning of August, Harald set off, to return in about fourteen days with Alf Lexow, the betrothed of Alette. During his absence, Alette was to pay a visit to her uncle in Hallingdal; but, according to Mrs. Astrid's wish, she yet spent another week at Semb. During these days, Alette and Susanna became better friends, for Alette was touched involuntarily by Susanna's unwearied and unpretending attentions, and besides this, she found in her such a frank mind and such cordial sympathy, that she could not deny herself the pleasure of communicating much of that which lived in the heart of the happy bride. Happy,--indeed Alette was, for long and warmly had she loved Alf Lexow, and should shortly be united to him for ever; and yet often stole a melancholy expression over her charming surface, when the conversation turned to this marriage and to her removal into Nordland. Susanna asked her several times of the cause of this, and as often Alette jestingly evaded the question; but one evening when they had chatted together more friendly than common, Alette said--
"It is a strange feeling to get everything ready for one's own marriage in the belief that one shall not long survive it! This removal to Nordland will be my death, that I know certainly. No, do not look so terrified! It is in no case so dangerous. And thoughts of an early death I have long borne in my mind, and therefore I am accustomed to them."
"Ah!" said Susanna, "those who love and are loved, the happy, should never die! But why this strange foreboding?"
"I do not know myself!" replied Alette, "but it has accompanied me from my earliest youth. My mother was born under the beautiful heaven of Provence, and passed the greater part of her youth in that warm country. The love of my father made her love in our Norway a second country, and here she spent the remainder of her life; she never, however, could rightly bear this cold climate, longed secretly for that warmer land, and died with the longing. To me has she bequeathed this feeling; and although I have never seen those orange groves, that warm blue heaven, of which she so gladly spoke, I drew in from childhood a love to them; I have, besides, inherited my mother's suffering from cold;--my chest is not strong, ah!--the long, dark winters of Nordland; the residence on the sea-shore in a climate which is twice as cold as that to which I have been accustomed, the sea-mists and storms--ah! I cannot long withstand them. But Susanna, you must promise me not to say one word of what I have confided to you, either to Harald or to Lexow!"
"But if they know it," said Susanna, "then you certainly need not go there. Certainly your bridegroom would for your sake seek out a milder country----"
"And not feel at home there, and die of longing for his dear Nordland! No, no, Susanna! I know his love for his native land, and know that this winterly nature which I dread so much, is precisely his life and his health. Alf is a Nordlander in heart and soul, and has, as it were, grown up with the district which his fathers inhabited, and whose advance and prosperity is his favourite scheme, the principal object of his activity. No, no! for my sake he shall not tear himself from his home, his noble efforts. Rather would I, if it must be so, find an early grave in his Nordland!"
Susanna now desired to know, and Alette communicated to her, various particulars of the country which was she thought so terrible, and we will now, with the young friends, cast--
A GLANCE INTO NORDLAND.
All is cold and hard.
BLOM.
The spirit of God yet rests upon Nordland.
Z.
A great part of Norway has, as it were, its face turned away from life. "The Old Night," which the ancient world considered to be the original mother of all things, here held the giant child in her dark bosom, and bound it tight in swaddling bands, out of which it could not shape itself to joy and freedom. Neither Nordland nor Finmark see the sun for many months in the year, and the difficulties and dangers of the road shut them out from intercourse with the southern world. The spirit of the North Pole rests oppressively over this region, and when in still August nights it breathes from hence over southern Norway, then withers the half-ripened harvests of the valleys and the plains, and the icy-grey face of hunger stares stiffly from the northern cliffs upon laborious but unhappy human multitudes. The sea breaks upon this coast against a palisadoed fence of rocks and cliffs, around which swarm flocks of polar birds with cries and screams. Storms alternate with thick mists. The cliffs along this coast have extraordinary shapes; now ascend they upwards like towers, now resemble beasts, now present gigantic and terrific human profiles; and one can easily imagine how the popular belief sees in them monsters and giants turned to stone, and why their ancestors laid their Jotunhem in this desolate wilderness.
And a dark fragment of Paganism still lingers about this region even to this day. It is frozen fast into the people's imagination; it is turned to stone in the horrible shapes of nature, which once gave it life. The light of the Gospel endeavours in vain to dissipate the shadows of a thousand years; the Old Night holds them back. In vain the Holy Cross is raised upon all the cliffs; the belief in magic and magic arts lives still universally among the people. Witches sit, full of malice, in their caves, and blow up storms for the sea-wanderers, so that they must be unfortunate; and the ghost Stallo, a huge man, dressed in black, with a staff in his hand, wanders about in the wildernesses, and challenges the solitary traveller to meet him in the contest for life and death.
The Laplander, the nomade of the North, roving free with his reindeer over undivided fields, appears like a romantic feature in this life; but it must be viewed from afar. Near, every trace of beauty vanishes in the fumes of brandy and the smoke of the Lapland hut.
Along the coasts, between the cliffs, and the rocks, and the hundreds of islands which surround this strand, live a race of fishermen, who, rivalling the sea-mew, skim the sea. Night and day, winter and summer, swarm their boats upon the waves; through the whistling tempest, through the foaming breakers, speed they unterrified with their light sails, that from the depths of the sea they may catch the silvery shoals of herrings, the greatest wealth of the country. Many annually are swallowed up of the deep; but more struggle with the elements, and conquer. Thus amid the daily contest are many powers developed, many a hero-deed achieved,[13] and people harden themselves against danger and death, and also against the gentler beauty of life.
Yet it is in this severe region that the eider-duck has its home; it is upon those naked cliffs where its nest is built, from feathers plucked from its own breast, that silky soft down which is scattered abroad over the whole world, that people in the North and in the South may lie warm and soft. How many suffering limbs, how many aching heads, have not received comfort from the hard cliffs of Norway.
Upon the boundaries between Nordland and Finmark lies the city of Tromsö, the now flourishing centre of these provinces. It was here that Alette was to spend her life; it was here that affection prepared for her a warm and peaceful nest, like the eider-duck drawing from its own breast the means of preparing a soft couch in the bosom of the hard rock. And after Alette had described to Susanna what terrified her so much in her northern retreat, she concealed not from her that which reconciled her so forcibly to it; and Susanna comprehended this very well, as Alette read to her the following letter:
Tromsö. May 28th.
Were you but here, my Alette! I miss you every moment whilst I am arranging my dwelling for your reception, and feel continually the necessity of asking, "How do you wish it? what think you of it?" Ah, that you were here, my own beloved, at this moment! and you would be charmed with this "ice and bear land," before which, I know, you secretly shudder. The country around here is not wild and dark; as, for example, at Helgoland. Leafy woods garland the craggy shores of our island, and around them play the waves of the sea in safe bays and creeks. Our well-built little city lies sweetly upon the southern side of the island, only divided from the mainland by a narrow arm of the sea. My house is situated in the street which runs along the large convenient harbour. At this moment above twenty vessels lie at anchor, and the various flags of the different nations wave in the evening wind. There are English, German, and especially Russian, which come to our coast, in order to take our fish, our eider-down, and so on, in exchange for their corn and furs. Besides these, the inhabitants of more southern regions bring hither a vast number of articles of luxury and fashion, which are eagerly purchased by the inhabitants of Kola, and the borders of the White Sea. Long life to Commerce! My soul expands at the sight of its life. What has not commerce done from the beginning of the world for the embellishment of life, for promoting the friendly intercourse of countries and people, for the refinement of manners! It has always given me the most heartfelt delight, that the wisest and most humane of the lawgivers of antiquity--Solon--was a merchant. "By trade," says one of his biographers, "by wisdom and music was his soul fashioned. Long life to commerce! What lives not through it?" What is all fresh life, all movement, in reality, but trade, exchange, gift for gift! In love, in friendship, in the great life of the people, in the quiet family circle, everywhere where I see happiness and prosperity, see I also trade; nay, what is the whole earth if not a colony from the mother country of heaven, and whose well-being and happy condition depend upon free export and import! The simile might be still further carried out, yet--thou good Giver above, pardon us that we have ventured upon it!
And you must not fancy, Alette, that the great interest for trade here excludes the nobler and more refined mental culture. Among the thousand people who inhabit the city, one can select out an interesting circle for social intercourse. We also have a theatre, and many pleasures of refined life. I was yesterday at a ball, where they danced through the whole night, till--daylight. The good music, the tasteful dresses and lovely dancing of the ladies; but above all, the tone of social life, the cordial cheerfulness, astonished several foreigners who were present, and caused them to inquire whether they were really here under the seventieth degree of latitude?
But the winter! Methinks I hear you say, "in summer it may be well enough, but in the long, dark winter." Well then, my Alette, winter--goes on right excellently when people love one another, when it is warm at home. Do you remember, Alette, last autumn, how we read together at Christiansand, in the Morning Paper, the following paragraph from the Tromsö News of the fourteenth of October:
"Already for several days successively have we had snow storms, and at this moment the snow-plough is working to form a road for the church-going people. The grave-like stillness of night and winter spread itself with tempest speed over meadow and valley, and only a few cows wander now like spectres over the snow-covered fields, to pluck their scanty fare from the twigs which are not yet snowed up."
That little winter-piece pleased me, but at the expression, "the grave-like stillness of night and winter," you bowed your loving dear face, with closed eyes, to my breast. Oh, my Alette! thus shall you do in future, when dread of darkness and cold seize upon you; and upon my breast, listening to the beating of my heart and to my love, shall you forget the dark pictures which stand without before your home. Close your eyes; slumber beloved, whilst I watch over you, and then you will, with brightening eyes and blooming cheeks, look upon the night and winter, and feel that its power is not great. Oh, truly can love, this Geiser of the soul, smelt ice and snow, wherever they may be on earth; truly, wherever its warm springs swell forth, a southern clime can bloom; yes, even at the North Pole itself.