"Well, when he came--in that condition----"
"Yes, of course."
"And his way of expressing himself. He never found the right words first, he stopped and changed them even as they poured out. And, in the meantime, if he caught something up in his hand he stood there with it.
If it were the tumbler--and it generally was--he grasped it tightly, and so, because of it, would keep his hand still for a quarter of an hour at a time. His personality was so pathetically simple, or how shall I express it? He was a seer, not a prophet--yes, I told you that before. But seers are quite different, they don"t know themselves so well, they have absolutely no vanity. Heavens, how I longed to go and take off his cuffs! One could see that he was not accustomed to wear them: some one must have told him that it would not do to make a speech from a platform without cuffs on. He had crumpled and tumbled them; they had come unfastened, or perhaps never had been fastened; they got in the way and slipped over his hands. He struggled with them. There was something wrong about the waistcoat too; it was b.u.t.toned wrong, I believe, and puckered up at one side, so that it showed one of his braces--to me at any rate, where I sat looking at him sideways and with the light full upon him. Ah, that mighty creature with the stooping head! The tears rose in my eyes. Who would not have been willing to follow him?
"I felt as deeply as it could be felt that _he must be helped_. I did not know that I was to help him; I only knew that he must be helped and sustained."
A rush of memory so overpowered her that she could not go on, she turned away.
PART III
The daughter saw her mother in a new light. Surely this was not she who ordered and managed her house, who sent wise letters to her, with earnest, well-weighed words! How her pa.s.sion had transfigured and beautified her!
"But how did you feel, dearest mother?"
"I was not conscious of what I felt. We went away from there the day after, and our next halting-place was close to his two farms. I had my wits so far about me, however, that when some of us had to be quartered out, I chose the house which was nearest his. And when the tempest within me was no longer to be resisted I wrote to him, without signing my name. I asked him for an interview. He was to meet me on the road that went through his wood, between his house and ours. I dropped the letter into his own letter-box on the road. You can imagine what a state I was in when I tell you that I had appointed ten o"clock in the evening, as I thought that then it would be dark! I had not noticed that it was still light at that time, so far north had we come. The result was that I did not dare to go out until eleven, and then I was sure there would be no one to meet. But there he was! Mighty and stooping, his hat pressed together in his hand, he came forward, hesitatingly, shyly, and awkwardly, glad. "I knew it was you," he said."
"Oh, mother! what did you do?"
"All at once I began to wonder where I had got the courage from! I did not even know what I wanted with him! When I saw him I could have turned and fled. But his wonderful gait, those long firm strides, his hat in hand, his s.h.a.ggy head.... I felt I must see it all. And the wonderful thing he said: "I knew it was you." How could he have known it? I don"t remember whether I asked him, or if he saw my surprise, but he explained that he had seen me as we came away from the lecture; he had heard who I was. It was wonderful to hear the deep voice, which for me meant something so absolutely exceptional, as though resounding from the far future, making embarra.s.sed excuses for having said anything that might have wounded me. Before he succeeded in getting out "wounded _you_," he stammered--"wounded the Queen--wounded the Queen and her ladies--wounded _you_!" He had so many other subjects he might have touched upon, and so many other themes he might have chosen. He could have said so much that was good of the Queen, much that he knew to be true; but he had forgotten it. So he went on, his eyes looking into mine--trusting, but commanding eyes, whose attraction I felt. There seemed to be an echo in the silent wood of his unfathomable honesty.
And his eyes went on repeating, "Don"t you believe it, too?" No one can imagine how unconscious he was of the effect they produced. He spoke, and I listened, and we drew nearer and nearer to each other. But the joy I felt, and which could not find words--what should I have said? At last it became uncontrollable--it burst all bounds. I suddenly heard myself laugh! And you should have seen how, all of a sudden, he laughed with me! Laughed, so that the woods re-echoed! The fishermen were just rowing past to be at their post when the sun should rise. They rested on their oars and listened. They all knew the sound of his laughter. I recognised its sound from the time when I saw him coming between his two satellites. There was a faun in him--a northern faun, of course, a wild man of the woods, unrestrained, but innocent, leading two bears, one under each arm! Yes, something of that kind. Not a troll, you understand, for they are stupid and malignant."
"You say "innocent," mother? How do you mean that he was innocent, since he was so wild?"
"Because nothing harmed him. Whatever he might have known or experienced, he remained a great child all the same. Yes, I tell you, refined and as aloof from evil. He had such a power of refinement in himself that what did not appeal to his nature was annihilated by it.
It no longer existed for him."
"Oh, mother, how was it all? Oh, why have you been given this experience, and not I!" She had hardly spoken the words when she turned and ran swiftly away. The mother let her alone; she sat on a stone and waited her return. It was good to rest with her thoughts. She sat a long time alone, and would willingly have sat longer; but the clouds began to gather. Then Magne came back with a nosegay of the most beautiful wild flowers and delicate gra.s.ses arranged about a fir branch covered with cones, grey-green young cones.
"Mother, he was like this nosegay, wasn"t he? What, dear mother, are you crying?"
"I am crying for joy, my child; for joy and regret both together. One day you will come to understand that those are the most comforting tears in the world."
But Magne had thrown herself down on the ground by her side. "Mother, you don"t know how happy you have made me to-day!"
"I see I have, dear child; I was right to wait; it was a struggle, but I did right."
"Mother, dear mother, let us go back to the forest at home, to the road through our forest! Let me hear more! It was there it happened, then!
Mother, tell me! What came next, sweetest mother! Ah, how lovely you are! There is always something fresh to discover in you."
The mother stroked her hair in silence, soothingly.
"Mother, I know that woodland road on summer nights. Laura walked there with me when she was engaged, and told me how it all happened, and the fishers rode past that time too, just as we came to an opening. We hid ourselves behind a great boulder; and the thrush began to sing, and many other birds, but the thing that affected me most was the scented air."
"Yes, doesn"t it? And that is why I have always thought since that the woodland scent hung around Karl. Ah, I must tell you how curiously unconscious he was--what other word can I use? We stood still and looked over the lake. "Oh, what a longing that gives," said I. "Yes, a longing to bathe, doesn"t it?" said he."
Magne broke into hearty laughter; the mother smiled. "Now it no longer seems so strange to me. The water was more to him than it is to us--he used to plunge into a bath at the most unexpected times: when he was not to be found in his farms or at his office, that was always where he was. It was his strongest natural craving; he loved the cold embrace of the elements, he said.
"And how he laughed to himself when he saw how I was laughing! We laughed in unison."
"Then, mother, what happened? I can really wait no longer."
"I came home just as other people were getting up. And the next night was like that one, and the next after that, and the next after that again. One night it rained, and we both walked along under the same umbrella, and that was what brought things to a climax."
"To a climax?--how?"
"After once being obliged to walk arm-in-arm, we always went arm-in-arm afterwards."
"But other people, mother? Weren"t you afraid of what they would say?"
"No; other people didn"t exist for me. I can"t remember how it all went on--it happened that one night we had sat down."
"Ah! now we are coming to it!"
"I asked to be allowed to sit down; I felt I could walk no longer. The night was glorious--silence and we two! He went on talking with his eyes looking into mine; he didn"t know himself how they shone with happiness. I couldn"t speak--I could hardly breathe--I was obliged to rest. And a few minutes after I sat on his knee."
"Was it he who----"
"I cannot quite remember. I only remember the first time my arms were about his neck and my face against his hair and beard. It was rapture, something absolutely new--it was bliss. The feeling of those giant arms round me transported me far, far away. But we were there on the boulder all the same."
"Were you as though beside yourself----?"
"Yes, that is just it! that is what it is called--but it really means being in possession of oneself, raised up to higher things. By his side I was myself twice over. That is love; nothing else deserves the name."
"Mother, mother! it was you, then, who sprang into his arms! It was you!"
"Yes, I am afraid it was I. I suppose he was too modest, too shy to begin that sort of thing. Yes, I know in my heart it was I. For life must be preserved. It was a question of nothing less. To be able to help him, to follow him, and worship him, and give myself up to him, that or nothing. I believe, too, that that was what I said to him, if I did say a single word."
"Oh, you know that you said it!"
"I believe I did; but in looking back upon such moments as those one does not know whether one was feeling or speaking." She looked out into the long valley. She stood like one who is about to sing, with lifted head and open mouth, listening for the music before it sounds. But it was not so: it was the sound of bygone music that she heard.
A little while afterwards she said quite softly--the daughter was obliged to draw nearer to her, for the sound of the river swallowed up some of the words:
"Now you shall hear something, Magne; you have never heard it from me, and others are not likely to have told you."
"What is it, mother? You almost frighten me."
"At the time I met your father I was already engaged."
"What do you say? You, mother?"
"Yes, I was engaged, and was to be married; and it was my last month with the Queen. The engagement had taken place, and was to be carried out with the highest sanction."