He was really there again, the old, mad Petter Nord. As soon as he approached the village the Spirit of Fasting went away from him with disgust and contempt.
Halfvorson could not keep still for a moment. The heavy gale, which he alone perceived, swept him forward and back on the deck. As he pa.s.sed Petter, he murmured a few words, so that the latter could know by what paths his despairing thoughts wandered.
"They found her on the ground, half dead--blood everywhere about her," he said once. And another time: "Was she not good? Was she not beautiful? How could such things come to her?" And again: "She has made me good too. Could not see her sitting in sorrow all day long and ruining the account-book with her tears." Then this came: "A clever child, besides. Won her way with me. Made my home pleasant. Got me acquaintances among fine people. Understood what she was after, but could not resist her." He wandered away to the bow of the boat. When he came back he said: "I cannot bear to have her die."
He said it all with that helpless voice, which he could not subdue or control. Petter Nord had a proud feeling that such a man as he who wore a royal crown on his brow had no right to be angry with Halfvorson. The latter was separated from men by his infirmity, and could not win their love. Therefore he had to treat them all as enemies. He was not to be measured by the same standard as other people.
Petter Nord sank again into his dreams. _She_ had remembered him all these years, and now she could not die before she had seen him.
Oh, fancy that a young girl for all these years had been thinking of him, loving him, missing him!
As soon as they landed and reached the tradesman"s house, he was taken to Edith, who was waiting for him in the arbor.
The happy Petter Nord woke from his dreams when he saw her. She was a fair vision, this girl, withering away in emulation with the rootless birches around her. Her big eyes had darkened and grown clearer. Her hands were so thin and transparent that one feared to touch them for their fragility.
And it was she who loved him. Of course he had to love her instantly in return, deeply, dearly, ardently! It was bliss, after so many years, to feel his heart glow at the sight of a fellow-being.
He had stopped motionless at the entrance of the arbor, while eyes, heart and brain worked most eagerly. When she saw how he stood and stared at her, she began to smile with that most despairing smile in the world, the smile of the very ill, that says: "See, this is what I have become, but do not count on me! I cannot be beautiful and charming any longer. I must die soon."
It brought him back to reality. He saw that he had to do not with a vision, but with a spirit which was about to spread its wings, and therefore had made the walls of its prison so delicate and transparent. It now showed so plainly in his face and in the way he took Edith"s hand, that he all at once suffered with her suffering,-- that he had forgotten everything but grief, that she was going to die. The sick girl felt the same pity for herself, and her eyes filled with tears.
Oh, what sympathy he felt for her from the first moment. He understood instantly that she would not wish to show her emotion.
Of course it was agitating for her to see him, whom she had longed for so long, but it was her weakness that had made her betray herself. She naturally would not like him to pay any attention to it. And so he began on an innocent subject of conversation.
"Do you know what happened to my white mice?" he said.
She looked at him with admiration. He seemed to wish to make the way easier for her. "I let them loose in the shop," she said. "They have thriven well."
"No, really! Are there any of them left?"
"Halfvorson says that he will never be rid of Petter Nord"s mice.
They have revenged you, you understand," she said with meaning.
"It was a very good race," answered Petter Nord, proudly.
The conversation lagged for a while. Edith closed her eyes, as if to rest, and he kept a respectful silence. His last answer she had not understood. He had not responded to what she had said about revenge. When he began to talk of the mice, she believed that he understood what she wished to say to him. She knew that he had come to the town a few weeks before to be revenged. Poor Petter Nord!
Many a time she had wondered what had become of him. Many a night had the cries of the frightened boy come to her in dreams. It was partly for his sake that she should never again have to live through such a night, that she had begun to reform her uncle, had made his house a home for him, had let the lonely man feel the value of having a sympathetic friend near him. Her lot was now again bound together with that of Petter Nord. His attempt at revenge had frightened her to death. As soon as she had regained her strength after that severe attack, she had begged Halfvorson to look him up.
And Petter Nord sat there and believed that it was for love she had called him. He could not know that she believed him vindictive, coa.r.s.e, degraded, a drunkard and a bully. He who was an example to all his comrades in the working quarter, he could not guess that she had summoned him, in order to preach virtue and good habits to him, in order to say to him, if nothing else helped: "Look at me, Petter Nord! It is your want of judgment, your vindictiveness, that is the cause of my death. Think of it, and begin another life!"
He had come filled with love of life and dreams to celebrate love"s festival, and she lay there and thought of plunging him into the black depths of remorse.
There must have been something of the glory of the kingly crown shining on her, which made her hesitate so that she decided to question him first.
"But, Petter Nord, was it really you who were here with those three terrible men?"
He flushed and looked on the ground. Then he had to tell her the whole story of the day with all its shame. In the first place, what unmanliness he had shown in not sooner demanding justice, and how he had only gone because he was forced to it, and then how he had been beaten and whipped instead of beating some one himself. He did not dare to look up while he was speaking; he did expect that even those gentle eyes would judge him with forbearance. He felt that he was robbing himself of all the glory with which she must have surrounded him in her dreams.
"But Petter Nord, what would have happened if you had met Halfvorson?" asked Edith, when he had finished.
He hung his head even lower. "I saw him well enough," he said. "He had not gone away. He was working in his garden outside the gates.
The boy in the shop told me everything."
"Well, why did you not avenge yourself?" said Edith.
He was spared nothing.--But he felt the inquiring glance of her eyes on him and he began obediently: "When the men lay down to sleep on a slope, I went alone to find Halfvorson, for I wished to have him to myself. He was working there, staking his peas. It must have rained in torrents the day before, for the peas had been broken down to the ground; some of the leaves were whipped to ribbons, others covered with earth. It was like a hospital, and Halfvorson was the doctor. He raised them up so gently, brushed away the earth and helped the poor little things to cling to the twigs. I stood and looked on. He did not hear me, and he had no time to look up. I tried to retain my anger by force. But what could I do? I could not fly at him while he was busy with the peas.
My time will come afterwards, I thought.
"But then he started up, struck himself on the forehead and rushed away to the hotbed. He lifted the gla.s.s and looked in, and I looked too, for he seemed to be in the depths of despair. Yes, it was dreadful, of course. He had forgotten to shade it from the sun, and it must have been terribly hot under the gla.s.s. The cuc.u.mbers lay there half-dead and gasped for breath; some of the leaves were burnt, and others were drooping. I was so overcome, I too, that I never thought what I was doing, and Halfvorson caught sight of my shadow. "Look here, take the watering-pot that is standing in the asparagus bed and run down to the river for water," he said, without looking up. I suppose he thought it was the gardener"s boy.
And I ran."
"Did you, Petter Nord?"
"Yes; you see, the cuc.u.mbers ought not to suffer on account of our enmity. I thought myself that it showed lack of character and so on, but I could not help it. I wanted to see if they would come to life. When I came back, he had lifted the gla.s.s off and still stood and stared despairingly. I thrust the watering-pot into his hand, and he began to pour over them. Yes, it was almost visible what good it did in the hotbed. I thought almost that they raised themselves, and he must have thought so too, for he began to laugh.
Then I ran away."
"You ran away, Petter Nord, you ran away?"
Edith had raised herself in the arm-chair.
"I could not strike him," said Petter Nord.
Edith felt an ever stronger impression of the glory round poor Petter Nord"s head. So it was not necessary to plunge him into the depths of remorse with the heavy burden of sin around his neck. Was he such a man? Such a tender-hearted, sensitive man! She sank back, closed her eyes and thought. She did not need to say it to him. She was astonished that she felt such a relief not to have to cause him pain.
"I am so glad that you have given up your plans for revenge, Petter Nord," she began in friendly tones. "It was about that that I wished to talk to you. Now I can die in peace."
He drew along breath. She was not unfriendly.
She did not look as if she had been mistaken in him. She must love him very much when she could excuse such cowardice.--For when she said that she had sent for him to ask him to give up his thoughts of revenge, it must have been from bashfulness not to have to acknowledge the real reason of the summons. She was so right in it.
He who was the man ought to say the first word.
"How can they let you die?" he burst out.
"Halfvorson and all the others, how can they? If I were here, I would refuse to let you die. I would give you all my strength. I would take all your suffering."
"I have no pain," she said, smiling at such bold promises.
"I am thinking that I would like to carry you away like a frozen bird, lay you under my vest like a young squirrel. Fancy what it would be to work if something so warm and soft was waiting for one at home! But if you were well, there would be so many--"
She looked at him with weary surprise, prepared to put him back in his proper place. But she must have seen again something of the magic crown about the boy"s head, for she had patience with him. He meant nothing. He had to talk as he did. He was not like others.
"Ah," she said, indifferently, "there are not so many, Petter Nord.
There has hardly been any one in earnest."
But now there came another turn to his advantage. In her suddenly awoke the eager hunger of a sick person for compa.s.sion. She longed for the tenderness, the pity that the poor workman could give her.
She felt the need of being near that deep, disinterested sympathy.
The sick cannot have enough of it. She wished to read it in his glance and his whole being. Words meant nothing to her.
"I like to see you here," she said. "Sit here for a while, and tell me what you have been doing these six years!"