CHAPTER IV

ON THE STEPS

This union of the leaders among the girls, this real desire for knowledge and independent thought, even if it had to endure criticism and even a little derision, was still an incontrovertible proof that the school was now on the high road to success. Even if there were derision expressed in the town, there could be no doubt that every one was struck by the decided, and above all intelligent, comprehension which the superiority of the apparatus, experiments, and method aroused in the scholars on subjects which every one understood, and which belonged to the most special needs of life.

At home the girls overflowed with narrations and desire for information, and constantly asked permission to buy materials for experiments in chemistry and physics, microscopes, and historical pictures which illustrated beliefs and habits of life through all ages.

There was no longer any comparison between girls and boys when energy and information were in question.

This made the lesson hours happy; the great gatherings for "breakfast" at twelve o'clock were feasts, and the pupils ran down the slope in the afternoon without books, unburdened by lessons--free, free, free!

But the happiest of them all remained behind, Fru Rendalen and Karl Vangen.

How Fru Rendalen hurried about with her spectacles awry, a habit she had acquired in later years; it was like meeting a load of hay at hay-harvest, it smells so sweet from such a distance, and one so gladly stands aside to let the mighty, useful, close-packed object pass. Karl Vangen was one constant smile; he had no time to leave off. He beamed with delight if any one so much as looked towards the school, and would tell, over and over again, all the little incidents which occurred there: they were every one either remarkable or amusing.

It was only Tomas who was not quite in accord with them, but there never was much "comfort" about him, if by that one understands confidential intercourse, and even good temper. He either wanted tall Vangen to "give him a back" out in the garden walks, or even sometimes in the sitting-room, while he jumped over him as one boy jumps over another; or he walked up and down, up and down, generally whistling, with his hands in his pockets, till it made one giddy to look at him; or else he would play the piano by the hour together. Sometimes he worked for, and in, the school without intermission; or read a new book regardless of any interruption; or he took endless walks or read aloud, and amused himself with the girls as though they were all comrades; or else he could not bear them, or the school, or anything which belonged to it.

At such times his mother had to take the literature lesson for him, Miss Hall the chemistry and physics, Nora the singing; he would not, he could not.

Then he would come back again, brighter and happier than ever, and do the work of two. His mother put this down as the result of all the years he had lived without regular employment. If they had company he did not appear at all, or else came and carried everything before him, or came and sat silent. If he spoke to any one, it was "Yes, just so," "Quite right." And then he would leave the room and not return. Looked at in a certain way, this showed genius: there was something of a genius about Tomas Rendalen.

Before he went to America he had "discovered" a history teacher: he was very great at "discoveries." She was called Karen Lote, and taught needlework, writing, and drawing. Rendalen had noticed her acquirements in the different kinds of drawing, and found out that the girl possessed a by no means insignificant knowledge of history. "Extend that into the history of civilisation," he said. He was never tired of giving this advice. "Here at home the history of civilisation is worse than meagre, and it is the only one which is worth anything in a school."

He had then begun to make the large collection of historical pictures which the school now possessed, and through these he captivated her interest; he kept it, while he was abroad, by sending a number of these pictures to her, as well as books and advice; and he was hardly home again before he undertook the history lessons of the whole school to explain to her what his ideas were; he sought to show development and connection by a clear historical summary accompanied by maps and pictures; he made it slight for the younger, and more elaborate for the elder ones; only using details as characteristics. He made it one-sided, but there was power and colour in its historical representations. Karen Lote was captivated; the novelty of his appearance, his opinions, his wonderful talent for teaching, his inimitable way of making one believe there was nothing in the world for him beyond what was before him at the moment; his exquisite taste in dress, his well-ordered person, even the slight odour of delicate scent which always followed him, all gave the girl a deep interest in him. Nothing in the six-and-twenty years of her life had ever in the slightest degree approached it. To think of being helped in her work by him every day! The misunderstandings and persecutions which he went through, and his sufferings under them, brought her feelings to a pitch of enthusiasm. But she did not trouble any one with it. Then came the time when he became the principal of the school. He would come and listen to her teaching whenever he had a spare moment, share eagerly in it, or go away without saying a word; remain away for a long time, then come again every day, and take the whole lesson out of her hands; or else walk up and down, up and down, and then remain away again.

Just before Christmas Karen Lote went to Fru Rendalen, and told her that she could not stay a day longer in the school. If she merely heard Rendalen's step in the passage she trembled; when he was near she could not relate the simplest occurrence or give an explanation. "But why?" He treated her with the greatest contempt; she burst into tears. "Contempt?" Yes! either he continually interrupted her, took the whole lesson away from her, or else he did not consider her worth correcting, turned his back on her, did not bow, did not come at all. There was no end to her complaints.

Fru Rendalen assembled the teachers and laid Fröken Lote's complaint before them, convinced that it must be the most extraordinary misunderstanding. But the teacher who had succeeded Fröken Lote as drawing mistress assured her that if she had not had a mother to support, she would have left long ago; she would not have borne his continual corrections in the children's hearing; he was an unbearable tyrant.

Everything must be done in one particular way, without the least variation. He had made her so nervous that she trembled if she even heard him in the passage. And she cried too.

The startled Fru Rendalen turned quickly to the others. "What could this mean? The teachers of languages, her pupils from their childhood, her friends, who through her help had improved themselves abroad, they must speak." They felt sure that Rendalen had not the least idea that he "set people right," and as little that he offended people by interfering, so that the children noticed his immense air of superiority, but all the same it was often very annoying. He was so uncertain both with teachers and children, he never took things twice in the same way, it was always according to his temper. The conclusion which they all came to was that he was most unfit to direct a school. Miss Hall herself, who otherwise had no complaint to make, agreed with this.

Fru Rendalen implored them, for God's sake, to reconsider it; surely they did not wish to ruin the school; she was much agitated, and said that provisionally she would resume the direction. But they must not let this be known. She broke down with all the violence which was natural to her. The others were frightened, there was a touching scene; they praised her son, one against the other; nay, any one who had not heard what had gone before, would have believed that they were all glowing with enthusiasm for him. After all, to form a wonderful plan for a school, according to all the best examples of modern times, and himself to be an exceptional teacher, was something quite different, and a great deal more than to be an able principal. They and his mother soon agreed over this, and consoled themselves with it as well as they could.

But this school had been the object of Rendalen's life; if he were to lose this there would be nothing left for him. From the time that Augusta died, and he learned that it would be better that he should not found a family, the idea of taking his mother's school, and making it all that she had dreamed of, but had not accomplished, had been betrothal, marriage, and the foundation of a family to him. He was proud of it. This gave the intense energy to his early youth, to his work, to his sense of right. It was the object of Karl Vangen's unfailing admiration, the secret text for Fru Rendalen's conversations and letters.

Notwithstanding this, temptations came, and his unruly nature did not always emerge victorious from them, but each time he was seized with a feeling of shame for his ideal, which amounted to dread--that awful dread which his mother had felt while she bore him under her bosom. She had often described this in vivid colours, but it was nothing compared to what he had gone through; it had been terrible. This drove him back to his mother's confidence, and made him hold that confidence fast. There was sober earnest between these two, they had a common aim in life. It might have been that he would have cast her, his aim of life, and this dread to the winds, if his passions had concentrated themselves on, or been seized by, any one person, for there was a wild energy in him which would have made him cling closely to another; but the hereditary restlessness in his nature mingled one impression with another, his dread had time to come between them with ever stronger force, and it became at last the most powerful of all. The aim of life was saved. From the time that he had conquered, a dissatisfied feeling developed itself; it had always been there; it reminded one of his father's power of imagination, his love of perfection.

His studies were forced. Never one thing at a time, but one clashing with the other. If the examination subjects had not in such a special degree been necessary for him, he would never have passed one at all; he was ready long before the time with some things, and was as much behind with others. He was always in advance with the subject he was full of at the moment, it was a link in a visible or ideal entirety. To Karl Vangen, who knew his method of study, it was amazing what he accomplished. It was the same thing with his intercourse with his fellow-creatures; he often seemed to be inattentive, and yet he received original impressions, but they were all on the same lines. He saw images and demonstrations in any thing he was engaged in; not people, but phenomena; not facts, but ideas. As long as Karen Lote was learning his historical method she interested him deeply, but afterwards not in the least; it was much the same with the other teachers, excepting Miss Hall; her teaching was new, and he was eager to see the result of it--first intellectually, then morally.

But _his own work?_ When the long restless rush about the world after appliances and methods was over, after the plans for the school, conceived years ago, and since then endlessly arranged and drafted, were at last set going; especially after the rude resistance from without was overcome, what was it that gradually came over him? Could he not? Would he not? Was it no longer enough for him?

Everyone round him rejoiced in the school, his mother's delight in especial was touching. "This is the school that I have dreamed of, my son, my dear Tomas!" He heard it nearly every day, he thanked her and kissed her for it, he needed it; but all the same.... As for teaching, his principal talent, he could interest himself in making a thing absolutely clear, and in having the main points properly remembered, the most difficult ones understood; it could delight him to give a new view of something to the elder pupils, or to direct their attention to a question of the day. Whenever a problem presented itself, he would take it up with patient ingenuity; beyond that there was nothing--no, nothing! He realised his failings thoroughly, self-occupied though he was; they harassed him more and more. There were times when he could not endure the school. Then he felt himself without spirit, without aspiration, without--he could almost have said without affection--if his mother had not been there, and Karl as well; he was deeply attached to Karl.

This was no longing for a wife and family, at all events in no special degree; indeed, he felt no particular attraction to anything.

Was this the cause of his unhappiness--that he could not attach himself firmly to any conditions? He had been able to do so as a child.

A man who has deliberated in this way from one day to another, and at last, one evening, receives his mother's tears and lamentations because the teachers can no longer endure him as principal, does not start up as at something unexpected. Tomas remained at the piano, where he had been seated when she came in; he touched it with one finger now and then during her long and interrupted narration; he saw her despair and concealed his own. He felt as though now he had nothing more to do here.

He observed quietly that perhaps she had better resume the direction of the school for a time; he went on strumming as he said this, as though it had no further significance. She answered that she had already promised them to-do so. He grew as white as a sheet. She hastened to add, that of course only he could superintend his own plan; she begged him to speak to the teachers at once; he never would speak to any one, they entirely misunderstood him; he offended them by showing no confidence in them, and he was not always considerate. Did he not like them?

This was too much for Tomas; he flung himself down on the piano and cried, got up hastily, put on his hat and coat and went out, heedless of his mother's prayers to him to stay and talk it over with her, as they used to do in old days. He could not do it; for there was something in his mother's behaviour towards him which wounded him. When he had come home she had received him with the greatest admiration, everything he said and did was right; but after the lecture she began to doubt. This had gradually increased, until now she put a note of interrogation to everything he said. At the first complaint from the teachers she had taken the school from him; and she could reconcile this with her pride in his way of ordering it, and a crooning quiet delight over its success.

Not that her doubt was greater than a practical understanding like hers had perhaps a right to; he did not blame her for it, but he could not bear it.

This affair with the teachers was dreadful. He really considered them most excellent, none more so than Karen Lote, otherwise he would never have troubled himself about her.

There must be something at the very root of his behaviour towards people, which was terribly astray when he could be thus utterly misunderstood. Perhaps his own feeling of emptiness and distaste arose from the same cause.

These ladies had raved about him. They and the senior class, and.... Was that, too, nothing but a delusion, or was it past and gone?

"Raved about him." What is that? He drove it from him with contempt, yet once it pleased and deluded him. He had believed it would always continue.

No, he who would have the affection of others must show affection to them. And he could not do it--in the way that others could.

After all that was not strange. His race had perhaps exhausted its power of winning human affection.

Was not that the natural result when generation after generation broke down mankind's precepts of fidelity, and flung aside man's good opinion? The race itself had been ruined, as each one weakened himself and his offspring--ay, and others and their offspring as well.

He walked into the country to the left--the same walk that he had taken that spring evening after he had given his lecture. He recalled to his mind how happy had been his return from America, how he had dreamed of giving his countrymen an example which, if they would follow it, would shine throughout the world. What was nobler for a small country than to centre its greatest powers on the teaching of its children, to expend its surplus there; let the great nations waste theirs on armies!

He remembered how it then delighted him to think that in this way the sins of his forefathers might be expiated.

Everything on earth had been thus developed.

Awakening had come to the strongest races. Instinctively they had felt their failings, and had sought to combat them by an admixture of fresh blood. Everything, therefore, that is strong and good has some family for its progenitor, whose sufferings have been the foundation of its needs, its needs the foundation of its work; its work, its self-command, the foundation of its discoveries--all gathering round the original discovery. When the school should be alive with a hundred young creatures; when sparkling eyes gazed upon the aim which he had set up; when the elder ones among them, influenced by him, and in their turn influenced others--hoisted their colours--it would be remembered that they had lived in the house of one particular family, from that family they would have received their instruction. It was _he_ who had made the school.

But there lay an inherent weakness in its inmost recesses. The germs of destruction lay in him who had built it up. He could not advance it further. He did not possess the necessary long-suffering gentleness. Plenty of foresight, energy, ambition, but--talents for war, perhaps, but not for peace.

As he had walked along that evening after the lecture, sick at heart, anxious--ah! how anxious! because the certainty of years had been baffled, Karl Vangen had trudged silently by his side like a great long-legged dog with honest eyes. He went the same way now, only it was winter, and he was alone; he was ashamed to have any one with him. The suspicion of insecurity which had shaken him the first time was now a certainty. He could not go on--O God! he could not: he was a blight in the school.

The snow in the fields had melted, but farther away it lay in patches, looking ghostly in the moonlight. It still lay thick under the fir-woods; and here and there on the road, which had frozen hard with deep ruts in it, and small sharp stones and solid horse-dung. Where it was bare, or partly bare, it was difficult to walk. He came back so weary in body and mind that he never remembered to have felt more tired. By the new churchyard, where his father and grandfather lay, and where the sea washed up to the other side of the roadway, rolling and black, he felt that a little might bring him into the one or beyond the other--or perhaps to both--they were not incompatible.

It was past twelve, as on the night of the lecture; he would not go home before he felt certain that his mother had given up waiting for him. Under ordinary circumstances she went to bed between nine and ten. But as he struggled up the avenue, he saw that there was a light in the sitting-room; and as he got a little further, that there was one in Karl's room as well. If he had not been so utterly weary he would have turned back, but now things must go as they could.

His mother met him in the hall with a light in her hand. "Oh, Tomas, how you have frightened me!" she whispered.

What did she mean by that? He looked at her; poor thing, she appeared at least ten years older, with such red eyes--so upset, so miserably overdone.

She began, "Tomas, just let us----"

"No, mother," he waved her away with his hand; "I am so fearfully, oh, so fearfully tired." He went slowly across her room to the inner passage without a good-night, without looking round.

She heard his step in the passage, heard him open the door of his room, shut it, and turn the key on the inside! It always awakened memories, that dreadful sound!

Why did he do it? It seemed as though he were shutting her away from him.

As he was lighting his candle he heard Karl at the door between their rooms. Tomas set down the candle, came out from behind the curtain, and saw Karl's pale, anxious face looking in from the doorway.

Why had he and his mother sat up, each in their own room? Evidently so that the mother should be able to talk to her son alone when he came in.

Tomas flung himself on Karl's neck and sobbed violently. All that he had held back, when he saw his mother, now found vent. Karl's firm confidence in him was his chief support. That confidence was there now, he could see it through all his distress precisely as he saw the light streaming behind Karl's head and body in the doorway. It was dark between them. "No, dear Karl, not to-night, I am so tired." Slowly, noiselessly, Karl drew his long legs back again and shut the door behind him. The door-handle was turned, oh, so gently.

Tomas went straight to bed, and slept at once and without interruption through the night. When he woke, raised himself and looked at the clock, it was past eight. The sorrows of yesterday, which had at once rushed upon him, yielded before this proof of a long sound sleep. "There cannot possibly be so much the matter as I believed, if I am not worse than this." He jumped up. "There must be some other work in life reserved for me, if this is not to be the one." He dressed himself quickly, and while doing so determined to go away for several days. He wished to consider, and to be calm while he did so.

This was all the information which his mother received when she came in as he sat at breakfast. He sent a message to Karl, and left at ten o'clock. This was not altogether disagreeable to Fru Rendalen. "He has such sudden changes," she thought. "He will very likely return home a different man." His great failing, of talking and acting according to the temper of the moment, made her take this view, made her question all he said. He was conscious of this now. He hated it.

This time, however, she was mistaken; he returned exactly the same as he had gone away, only she noticed the first time that she talked to him that he was a little bitter against the teachers: "ungrateful asses," he called them. He had taught them more than it was in the power of any human being to do who had not travelled as he had done, and had his experience and reading; he would have nothing to do with them. He annoyed them by his elegant courtliness. This amused him; he was really dreadful with them. He resumed his teaching, with the exception of the singing, which was given over to Nora, who was now both pupil and teacher. He declared that she possessed the gift of teaching in the highest degree.

"Perhaps he could interest himself in the school again," thought Karl, "if there were a new staff of teachers." He spoke of this to Fru Rendalen. She would try to find out, and began by talking to Tomas about the observatory which they had arranged in a small way in the tower. They had been obliged to stop for want of money. By next summer she hoped to have the means to set it going.

"God knows where I shall be then," he answered, and hurried away. "If I were to speak plainly to the teachers," thought his indefatigable mother, "if I could induce them to beg his pardon." She assembled them one day just before Christmas, and told them, betraying emotion as she did so, that her son had repeatedly let fall remarks which showed that he intended to go away. There was a movement of dismay.

Fröken Lote, on whom all eyes were fixed, at last broke the silence. She had not meant it in that way, she had only meant--she had really not meant anything--but she was so dreadfully nervous. She thought he was not pleased with her. The drawing and needle-work mistress, a clear-headed, tall, fair woman, coloured furiously. The Spenser method of drawing which Rendalen had introduced was not clear to begin with, she said, but he was always beyond her; but for all that she ought not to have said anything, indeed she ought not. She began to cry.

The teachers all protested that they felt the greatest gratitude; he had, of course, seen and heard so much on every subject, but it was most embarrassing that he treated them like dirt beneath his feet.

Fru Rendalen took off her spectacles, wiped them, and put them on again; pulled them off again, rubbed them, and put them on.

Well then, Miss Hall would say what was the matter. It was that he treated everything and everybody so unevenly. This made the teachers uncertain, and destroyed the children's sense of justice, and that was almost the greatest loss that a child could sustain. She would so gladly have spoken to Rendalen, said the little American, but he made himself so unapproachable. To-day, too, she felt nervous.

This destroyed Fru Rendalen's plan; she did not know what to answer. All further negotiations were meanwhile broken off.

A loud chorus of joyous girls' voices sounded from the steps, and they all hurried to the window. It was Nora and her pupils. These last few days before Christmas, the pupils had but few lessons to do, and therefore had employed themselves in practising some part songs, the practice always concluding out on the steps--one of Nora's many fancies.

This gave such immense pleasure, that not only all the little ones, who did not join in the singing, waited up there till the great moment, but people would collect in the avenue. As soon as the girls came racing round the corner in walking dress and mounted the steps, the crowd in the avenue increased and drew nearer; Fru Rendalen and the teachers had put on their things, and were now standing at the open windows. The girls had arranged themselves from top to bottom of the steps; the little ones, who did not sing, occupied the sides. Right at the bottom stood Nora, with her fair hair turned back under the hood which was always on the back of her neck.

She had adopted Rendalen's method of conducting--the only thing that restless being did quietly; he merely moved his right wrist, and gave the sign with his left hand. Nora carefully held her right hand in the same place as he did, before her breast. She heard about it often enough.

The song sounded grandly from the steps, the notes were powerfully given. It might be, too, that the view before them heightened the effect by its beauty; perhaps, too, "An Old Manuscript,"[2] which had just been printed in a Christmas number, and which every third person in the town, from twelve years old knew, at first, second, or third hand, may also have enhanced it, for perhaps those dark voices from the past were heard at the same time, and by the power of contrast made the girls' song brighter, and the moment fairer.

Below them lay the town, with the harbour between the two points of land; now that winter was here, full of ships from side to side. At the head of the bay, along the clay banks, were all the workshops and the great timber-yards. To the left, the mountain, with the crowd of houses at the top, the boat harbour below, and out beyond the mountain and the town, the islands and the open sea. Weather on the coast is uncertain; generally, as they looked out, taking in the view as they sang, there were either driving clouds or gleams of sunlight over the landscape, or if it were peaceful and bright inland, it was threatening out to sea. Perhaps this may explain why the girls generally chose melancholy songs.

For the teachers as well as for the pupils, the singing on the steps, from its first beginning, had been the glory of the school. If the work from every class during every week in the year could have woven itself into a thousand delicate threads, and fallen on them as crowns; if all the fruitful incentives, small determinations, uncertain beginnings, could have joined in harmony in those voices, the singing could not have made them happier. As far as the teachers were concerned, perhaps for the very reason that, at the same time, something had occurred to pain them.

The elder girls, especially the members of the Society, looked upon this time as one for exchange of thought. All those higher ideas which one has in common with others, come to the front when there is singing; all strivings after the ideal, have a natural relationship to harmonised notes.

But he who felt it the most was one who had hidden himself behind a closed window, because he would on no account be seen.

He saw Nora beating time, standing there in her light cloak, her hood flung back on her neck.

The song, which sounded out over the town, the one which had first been heard by Fru Engel's grave, contained, as it sounded from these girlish voices, all that he wished for on earth.

How miserable it made him now! He tried, as a counterpoise, to remember all that he had conquered before in many a hard struggle. It was something to remember.

It was not an ordinary victory which he had achieved: was it to end in sorrow? Would the singing soon cease, or sound again after he was gone? He thought of his mother. It was he in reality who was "on the steps." Was it to be in or out?

The whole troop tore away in merry groups down the avenue. The Staff last of all, for Tora had something either to tell or propose; they walked slowly, often pausing. Yes, that was what it all depended upon; to be able to share one's joys and sorrows with others.

V

THE HUNT