Tales from Two Hemispheres - Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen (books to read fiction txt) 📗

brooches to her bodice; but a look of hers or a smile would completely disarm him. She had a merry way of doing things which made it all seem like play; but work went rapidly from her hands, while her ringing laughter echoed through the house, and her sunny presence made it bright in the dusky ancestral halls. In her kitchen the long rows of copper pots and polished kettles shone upon the walls, and the neatly scoured milk-pails stood like soldiers on parade about the shelves under the ceiling. Bjarne would often sit for hours watching her, and a strange spring-feeling would steal into his heart. He felt a father's pride in her stately growth and her rich womanly beauty. "Ah!" he would say to himself, "she has the pure blood in her veins and, as true as I live, the farm shall be hers." And then, quite contrary to his habits, he would indulge in a little reverie, imagining the time when he, as an aged man, should have given the estate over into her hands, and seeing her as a worthy matron preside at the table, and himself rocking his grandchildren on his knee. No wonder, then, that he eyed closely the young lads who were beginning to hover about the house, and that he looked with suspicion upon those who selected Saturday nights for their visits. [5] When Brita was twenty years old, however, her father thought that it was time for her to make her choice. There were many fine, brave lads in the valley, and, as Bjarne thought, Brita would have the good sense to choose the finest and the bravest. So, when the winter came, he suddenly flung his doors open to the youth of the parish, and began to give parties with ale and mead in the grand old style. He even talked with the young men, at times, encouraged them to manly sports, and urged them to taste of his home-brewed drinks and to tread the spring-dance briskly. And Brita danced and laughed so that her hair flew around her and the silver brooches tinkled and rang on her bosom. But when the merriment was at an end, and any one of the lads remained behind to offer her his hand, she suddenly grew grave, told him she was too young, that she did not know herself, and that she had had no time as yet to decide so serious a question. Thus the winter passed and the summer drew near.

In the middle of June, Brita went to the saeter [6] with the cattle; and her sister, Grimhild, remained at home to keep house on the farm. She loved the life in the mountains; the great solitude sometimes made her feel sad, but it was not an unpleasant sadness, it was rather a gentle toning down of all the shrill and noisy feelings of the soul. Up there, in the heart of the primeval forest, her whole being seemed to herself a symphony of melodious whispers with a vague delicious sense of remoteness and mystery in them, which she only felt and did not attempt to explain. There, those weird legends which, in former days, still held their sway in the fancy of every Norsewoman, breathed their secrets into her ear, and she felt her nearness and kinship to nature, as at no other time.

One night, as the sun was low, and a purple bluish smoke hung like a thin veil over the tops of the forest, Brita had taken out her knitting and seated herself on a large moss-grown stone, on the croft. Her eyes wandered over the broad valley which was stretched out below, and she could see the red roofs of the Blakstad mansion peeping forth between the fir-trees. And she wondered what they were doing down there, whether Grimhild had done milking, and whether her father had returned from the ford, where it was his habit at this hour to ride with the footmen to water the horses. As she sat thus wondering, she was startled by a creaking in the dry branches hard by, and lifting her eye, she saw a tall, rather clumsily built, young man emerging from the thicket. He had a broad but low forehead, flaxen hair which hung down over a pair of dull ox-like eyes; his mouth was rather large and, as it was half open, displayed two massive rows of shining white teeth. His red peaked cap hung on the back of his head and, although it was summer, his thick wadmal vest was buttoned close up to his throat; over his right arm he had flung his jacket, and in his hand he held a bridle.

"Good evening," said Brita, "and thanks for last meeting;" although she was not sure that she had ever seen him before.

"It was that bay mare, you know," stammered the man in a half apologetic tone, and shook the bridle, as if in further explanation.

"Ah, you have lost your mare," said the girl, and she could not help smiling at his helplessness and his awkward manner.

"Yes, it was the bay mare," answered he, in the same diffident tone; then, encouraged by her smile, he straightened himself a little and continued rather more fluently: "She never was quite right since the time the wolves were after her. And then since they took the colt away from her the milk has been troubling her, and she hasn't been quite like herself."

"I haven't seen her anywhere hereabouts," said Brita; "you may have to wander far, before you get on the track of her."

"Yes, that is very likely. And I am tired already."

"Won't you sit down and rest yourself?"

He deliberately seated himself in the grass, and gradually gained courage to look her straight in the face; and his dull eye remained steadfastly fixed on her in a way which bespoke unfeigned surprise and admiration. Slowly his mouth broadened into a smile; but his smile had more of sadness than of joy in it. She had, from the moment she saw him, been possessed of a strangely patronizing feeling toward him. She could not but treat him as if he had been a girl or some person inferior to her in station. In spite of his large body, the impression he made upon her was that of weakness; but she liked the sincerity and kindness which expressed themselves in his sad smile and large, honest blue eyes. His gaze reminded her of that of an ox, but it had not only the ox's dullness, but also its simplicity and good-nature.

They sat talking on for a while about the weather, the cattle, and the prospects of the crops.

"What is your name?" she asked, at last.

"Halvard Hedinson Ullern."

A sudden shock ran through her at the sound of that name; in the next moment a deep blush stole over her countenance.

"And my name," she said, slowly, "is Brita Bjarne's daughter Blakstad."

She fixed her eyes upon him, as if to see what effect her words produced. But his features wore the same sad and placid expression; and no line in his face seemed to betray either surprise or ill-will. Then her sense of patronage grew into one of sympathy and pity. "He must either be weak-minded or very unhappy," thought she, "and what right have I then to treat him harshly." And she continued her simple, straightforward talk with the young man, until he, too, grew almost talkative, and the sadness of his smile began to give way to something which almost resembled happiness. She noticed the change and rejoiced. At last, when the sun had sunk behind the western mountain tops, she rose and bade him good-night; in another moment the door of the saeter-cottage closed behind her, and he heard her bolting it on the inside. But for a long time he remained sitting on the grass, and strange thoughts passed through his head. He had quite forgotten his bay mare.

The next evening when the milking was done, and the cattle were gathered within the saeter enclosure, Brita was again sitting on the large stone, looking out over the valley. She felt a kind of companionship with the people when she saw the smoke whirling up from their chimneys, and she could guess what they were going to have for supper. As she sat there, she again heard a creaking in the branches, and Halvard Ullern stood again before her, with his jacket on his arm, and the same bridle in his hand.

"You have not found your bay mare yet?" she exclaimed, laughingly. "And you think she is likely to be in this neighborhood?"

"I don't know," he answered; "and I don't care if she isn't."

He spread his jacket on the grass, and sat down on the spot where he had sat the night before. Brita looked at him in surprise and remained silent; she didn't know how to interpret this second visit.

"You are very handsome," he said, suddenly, with a gravity which left no doubt as to his sincerity.

"Do you think so?" she answered, with a merry laugh. He appeared to her almost a child, and it never entered her mind to feel offended. On the contrary, she was not sure but that she felt pleased.

"I have thought of you ever since yesterday," he continued, with the same imperturbable manner. "And if you were not angry with me, I thought I would like to look at you once more. You are so different from other folks."

"God bless your foolish talk," cried Brita, with a fresh burst of merriment. "No, indeed I am not angry with you; I should just as soon think of being angry with--with that calf," she added for want of another comparison.

"You think I don't know much," he stammered. "And I don't." The sad smile again settled on his countenance.

A feeling of guilt sent the blood throbbing through her veins. She saw that she had done him injustice. He evidently possessed more sense, or at least a finer instinct, than she had given him credit for.

"Halvard," she faltered, "if I have offended you, I assure you I didn't mean to do it; and a thousand times I beg your pardon."

"You haven't offended me, Brita," answered he, blushing like a girl. "You are the first one who doesn't make me feel that I am not so wise as other folks."

She felt it her duty to be open and confiding with him in return; and in order not to seem ungenerous, or rather to put them on an equal footing by giving him also a peep into her heart, she told him about her daily work, about the merry parties at her father's house, and about the lusty lads who gathered in their halls to dance the Halling and the spring-dance. He listened attentively while she spoke, gazing earnestly into her face, but never interrupting her. In his turn he described to her in his slow deliberate way, how his father constantly scolded him because he was not bright, and did not care for politics and newspapers, and how his mother wounded him with her sharp tongue by making merry with him, even in the presence of the servants and strangers. He did not seem to imagine that there was anything wrong in what he said, or that he placed himself in a ludicrous light; nor did he seem to speak from any unmanly craving for sympathy. His manner was so simple and straightforward that what Brita probably would have found strange in another, she found perfectly natural in him.

It was nearly midnight when they parted{.} She hardly slept at all