Tales of Two Countries
“I’m playing at Austerlitz!” answered Ansgarius, beaming.
The father passed on, sighing mournfully; he could not understand his
children.--Down in the garden sat Rebecca on a bench in the sun. She
looked out over the heather, which was in purple flower, while the
meadows were putting on their autumn pallor.
The lapwings were gathering in silence, and holding flying drills in
preparation for their journey; wad all the strand birds were assembling,
in order to take flight together. Even the lark had lost its courage
and was seeking convoy voiceless and unknown among the other gray autumn
birds. But the sea-gull stalked peaceably about, protruding its crop; it
was not under notice to quit.
The air was so still and languid and hazy. All sounds and colors were
toning down against the winter, and that vas very pleasant to her.
She was weary, and the long dead winter would suit her well. She knew
that her winter would be longer than all the others, and she began to
shrink from the spring.
Then everything would awaken that the winter had laid to sleep. The
birds would come back and sing the old songs with new voices; and upon
the King’s Knoll her mother’s violets would peer forth afresh in azure
clusters; it was there that he had clasped her round the waist and
kissed her--over and over again.
THE PEAT MOOR.
High over the heathery wastes flew a wise old raven.
He was bound many miles westward, right out to the sea-coast, to unearth
a sow’s ear which he had buried in the good times.
It was now late autumn, and food was scarce.
When you see one raven, says Father Brehm, you need only look round to
discover a second.
But you might have looked long enough where this wise old raven came
flying; he was, and remained, alone. And without troubling about
anything or uttering a sound, he sped on his strong coal-black wings
through the dense rain-mist, steering due west.
But as he flew, evenly and meditatively, his sharp eyes searched the
landscape beneath, and the old bird was full of chagrin.
Year by year the little green and yellow patches down there increased
in number and size; rood after rood was cut out of the heathery waste,
little houses sprang up with red-tiled roofs and low chimneys breathing
oily peat-reek. Men and their meddling everywhere!
He remembered how, in the days of his youth--several winters ago, of
course--this was the very place for a wide-awake raven with a family:
long, interminable stretches of heather, swarms of leverets and little
birds, eider-ducks on the shore with delicious big eggs, and tidbits of
all sorts abundant as heart could desire.
Now he saw house upon house, patches of yellow corn-land and green
meadows; and food was so scarce that a gentlemanly old raven had to fly
miles and miles for a paltry sow’s ear.
Oh, those men! those men! The old bird knew them.
He had grown up among men, and, what was more, among the aristocracy. He
had passed his childhood and youth at the great house close to the town.
But now, whenever he passed over the house, he soared high into the air,
so as not to be recognized. For when he saw a female figure down in the
garden, he thought it was the young lady of the house, wearing powdered
hair and a white head-dress; whereas it was in reality her daughter,
with snow-white curls and a widow’s cap.
Had he enjoyed his life among the aristocracy? Oh, that’s as you please
to look at it. There was plenty to eat and plenty to learn; but, after
all, it was captivity. During the first years his left wing was clipped,
and afterwards, as his old master used to say, he was upon _parole
d’honneur_.
This parole he had broken one spring when a glossy-black young she-raven
happened to fly over the garden.
Some time afterwards--a few winters had slipped away--he came back to
the house. But some strange boys threw stones at him; the old master and
the young lady were not at home.
“No doubt they are in town,” thought the old raven; and he came again
some time later. But he met with just the same reception.
Then the gentlemenly old bird--for in the meantime he had grown
old--felt hurt, and now he flew high over the house. He would have
nothing more to do with men, and the old master and the young lady might
look for him as long as they pleased. That they did so he never doubted.
And he forgot all that he had learned, both the difficult French
words which the young lady taught him in the drawing-room, and the
incomparably easier expletives which he had picked up on his own account
in the servants’ hall.
Only two human sounds clung to his memory, the last relics of his
vanished learning. When he was in a thoroughly good humor, he would
often say, “Bonjour, madame!” But when he was angry, he shrieked, “Go to
the devil!”
Through the dense rain-mist he sped swiftly and unswervingly; already he
saw the white wreath of surf along the coast. Then he descried a great
black waste stretching out beneath him. It was a peat moor.
It was encircled with farms on the heights around; but on the low
plain--it must have been over a mile [Note: One Norwegian mile is equal
to seven English miles.] long--there was no trace of human meddling;
only a few stacks of peat on the outskirts, with black hummocks and
gleaming water-holes between them.
“Bonjour, madame!” cried the old raven, and began to wheel in great
circles over the moor. It looked so inviting that he settled downward,
slowly and warily, and alighted upon a tree-root in the midst of it.
Here it was just as in the old days-a silent wilderness. On some
scattered patches of drier soil there grew a little short heather and a
few clumps of rushes. They were withered; but on their stiff stems there
still hung one or two tufts--black, and sodden by the autumn rain. For
the most part the soil was fine, black, and crumbling--wet and full of
water-holes. Gray and twisted tree-roots stuck up above the surface,
interlaced like a gnarled net-work.
The old raven well understood all that he saw. There had been trees here
in the old times, before even his day.
The wood had disappeared; branches, leaves, everything was gone. Only
the tangled roots remained, deep down in the soft mass of black fibres
and water.
But further than this, change could not possibly go; so it must endure,
and here, at any rate, men would have to stint their meddling.
The old bird held himself erect. The farms lay so far away that he
felt securely at home, here in the middle of the bottomless morass. One
relic, at least, of antiquity must remain undisturbed. He smoothed his
glossy black feathers, and said several times, “Bonjour, madame!”
But down from the nearest farm came a couple of men with a horse and
cart; two small boys ran behind. They took a crooked course among the
hummocks, but made as though to cross the morass.
“They must soon stop,” thought the raven.
But they drew nearer and nearer; the old bird turned his head uneasily
from side to side; it was strange that they should venture so far out.
At last they stopped, and the men set to work with spades and axes. The
raven could see that they were struggling with a huge root which they
wanted to loosen.
“They will soon tire of that,” thought the raven.
But they did not tire, they hacked with their axes--the sharpest the
raven had ever seen--they dug and hauled, and at last they actually got
the huge stem turned over on its side, so that the whole tough net-work
of roots stood straight up in the air.
The small boys wearied of digging canals between the water-holes. “Look
at that great big crow over there,” said one of them.
They armed themselves with a stone in each hand, and came sneaking
forward behind the hummocks.
The raven saw them quite well. But that was not the worst thing it saw.
Not even out on the morass was antiquity to be left in peace. He had
now seen that even the gray tree-roots, older than the oldest raven, and
firmly inwoven into the deep, bottomless morass--that even they had to
yield before the sharp axes.
And when the boys had got so near that they were on the point of opening
fire, he raised his heavy wings and soared aloft.
But as he rose into the air and looked down upon the toiling men and the
stupid boys, who stood gaping at him with a stone in each hand, a great
wrath seized the old bird.
He swooped down upon the boys like an eagle, and while his great wings
flounced about their ears, he shrieked in a terrible voice, “Go to the
devil!”
The boys gave a yell and threw themselves down upon the ground. When
they presently ventured to look up again, all was still and deserted as
before. Far away, a solitary blackbird winged to the westward.
But till they grew to be men--aye, even to their dying day--they were
firmly convinced that the Evil One himself had appeared to them out on
the black morass, in the form of a monstrous black bird with eyes of
fire.
But it was only an old raven, flying westward to unearth a sow’s ear
which it had buried.
“HOPE’S CLAD IN APRIL GREEN.”
“You’re kicking up the dust!” cried Cousin Hans.
Ola did not hear.
“He’s quite as deaf as Aunt Maren,” thought Hans. “You’re kicking up the
dust!” he shouted, louder.
“Oh, I beg your pardon!” said Cousin Ola, and lifted his feet high in
air at every step. Not for all the world would he do anything to annoy
his brother; he had too much on his conscience already.
Was he not at this very moment thinking of her whom he knew that his
brother loved? And was it not sinful of him to be unable to conquer a
passion which, besides being a wrong towards his own brother, was so
utterly hopeless?
Cousin Ola took himself sternly to task, and while he kept to the other
side of the way, so as not to make a dust, he tried with all his might
to think of the most indifferent things. But however far away his
thoughts might start, they always returned by the strangest short-cuts
to the forbidden point, and began once more to flutter around it, like
moths around a candle.
The brothers, who were paying a holiday visit to their uncle, the
Pastor, were now on their way to the Sheriff’s house, where there was
to be a dancing-party for young people. There were many students
paying visits in the neighborhood, so that these parties passed like an
epidemic from house to house.
Cousin Hans was thus in his very element; he sang, he danced, he was
entertaining from morning to night; and if his tone had been a little
sharp when he declared that Ola was kicking up the dust, it was really
because of his annoyance at being unable, by any means, to screw his
brother up to the same pitch of hilarity.
We already know what was oppressing Ola. But even under ordinary
circumstances he was more quiet and retiring than his brother. He danced
“like a pair of nut-crackers,” said Hans; he could not sing at all
(Cousin Hans even declared that his speaking voice was monotonous and
unsympathetic); and, in addition to all this, he was rather absent and
ill-at-ease in the society of ladies.
As they approached the Sheriff’s house, they heard a carriage behind
them.
“That’s the Doctor’s people,” said Hans, placing himself in position for
bowing; for the beloved one was the daughter of the district physician.
“Oh, how lovely she is--in light pink!” said Cousin Hans.
Cousin Ola saw at once that the beloved one was in light green; but he
dared not say a word lest he should betray himself by his voice, for his
heart was in his throat.
The carriage passed at full speed; the young men bowed, and the old
Doctor cried out, “Come along!”
“Why, I declare, that was she in light green!” said Cousin Hans; he had
barely had time to transfer his burning glance from the light-pink frock
to the light-green. “But wasn’t she lovely, Ola?”