"That compliment is rather stale."
"But the opportunity was too tempting."
"Never mind, I will excuse you from further efforts. Turn around and notice that wonderful purple halo which is hovering over the forests below. Isn"t it glorious?"
"No, don"t let us be solemn, pray. The sun I have seen a thousand times before, but you I have seen very seldom of late. Somehow, since I returned this time, you seem to keep me at a distance. You no longer confide to me your great plans for the abolishment of war, and the improvement of mankind generally. Why don"t you tell me whether you have as yet succeeded in convincing the peasants that cleanliness is a cardinal virtue, that hawthorn hedges are more picturesque than rail fences, and that salt meat is a very indigestible article?"
"You know the fate of my reforms, from long experience," she answered, with the same sad, sweet smile. "I am afraid there must be some thing radically wrong about my methods; and, moreover, I know that your aspirations and mine are no longer the same, if they ever have been, and I am not ungenerous enough to force you to feign an interest which you do not feel."
"Yes, I know you think me flippant and boyish," retorted he, with sudden energy, and tossing a stone down into the gulf below. "But, by the way, my friend Strand, if he ever comes, would be just the man for you.
He has quite as many hobbies as you have, and, what is more, he has a profound respect for hobbies in general, and is universally charitable toward those of others."
"Your friend is a great man," said the girl, earnestly. "I have read his book on "The Wading Birds of the Norwegian Highlands," and none but a great man could have written it."
"He is an odd stick, but, for all that, a capital fellow; and I have no doubt you would get on admirably with him."
At this moment the conversation was interrupted by the appearance of the pastor"s man, Hans, who came to tell the "young miss" that there was a big tramp hovering about the barns in the "out-fields," where he had been sleeping during the last three nights. He was a dangerous character, Hans thought, at least judging from his looks, and it was hardly safe for the young miss to be roaming about the fields at night as long as he was in the neighborhood.
"Why don"t you speak to the pastor, and have him arrested?" said Arnfinn, impatient of Hans"s long-winded recital.
"No, no, say nothing to father," demanded Augusta, eagerly. "Why should you arrest a poor man as long as he does nothing worse than sleep in the barns in the out-fields?"
"As you say, miss," retorted Hans, and departed.
The moon came up pale and mist-like over the eastern mountain ridges, struggled for a few brief moments feebly with the sunlight, and then vanished.
"It is strange," said Arnfinn, "how everything reminds me of Strand to-night. What gloriously absurd apostrophes to the moon he could make!
I have not told you, cousin, of a very singular gift which he possesses.
He can attract all kinds of birds and wild animals to himself; he can imitate their voices, and they flock around him, as if he were one of them, without fear of harm."
"How delightful," cried Augusta, with sudden animation. "What a glorious man your friend must be!"
"Because the snipes and the wild ducks like him? You seem to have greater confidence in their judgment than in mine."
"Of course I have--at least as long as you persist in joking. But, jesting aside, what a wondrously beautiful life he must lead whom Nature takes thus into her confidence; who has, as it were, an inner and subtler sense, corresponding to each grosser and external one; who is keen-sighted enough to read the character of every individual beast, and has ears sensitive to the full pathos of joy or sorrow in the song of the birds that inhabit our woodlands."
"Whether he has any such second set of senses as you speak of, I don"t know; but there can be no doubt that his familiarity, not to say intimacy, with birds and beasts gives him a great advantage as a naturalist. I suppose you know that his little book has been translated into French, and rewarded with the gold medal of the Academy."
"Hush! What is that?" Augusta sprang up, and held her hand to her ear.
"Some love-lorn mountain-c.o.c.k playing yonder in the pine copse,"
suggested Arnfinn, amused at his cousin"s eagerness.
"You silly boy! Don"t you know the mountain-c.o.c.k never plays except at sunrise?"
"He would have a sorry time of it now, then, when there IS no sunrise."
"And so he has; he does not play except in early spring."
The noise, at first faint, now grew louder. It began with a series of mellow, plaintive clucks that followed thickly one upon another, like smooth pearls of sound that rolled through the throat in a continuous current; then came a few sharp notes as of a large bird that snaps his bill; then a long, half-melodious rumbling, intermingled with cacklings and snaps, and at last, a sort of diminuendo movement of the same round, pearly clucks. There was a whizzing of wing-beats in the air; two large birds swept over their heads and struck down into the copse whence the sound had issued.
"This is indeed a most singular thing," said Augusta, under her breath, and with wide-eyed wonder. "Let us go nearer, and see what it can be."
"I am sure I can go if you can," responded Arnfinn, not any too eagerly.
"Give me your hand, and we can climb the better."
As they approached the pine copse, which projected like a promontory from the line of the denser forest, the noise ceased, and only the plaintive whistling of a mountain-hen, calling her scattered young together, and now and then the shrill response of a snipe to the cry of its lonely mate, fell upon the summer night, not as an interruption, but as an outgrowth of the very silence. Augusta stole with soundless tread through the transparent gloom which lingered under those huge black crowns, and Arnfinn followed impatiently after. Suddenly she motioned to him to stand still, and herself bent forward in an att.i.tude of surprise and eager observation. On the ground, some fifty steps from where she was stationed, she saw a man stretched out full length, with a knapsack under his head, and surrounded by a flock of downy, half-grown birds, which responded with a low, anxious piping to his alluring cluck, then scattered with sudden alarm, only to return again in the same curious, cautious fashion as before. Now and then there was a great flapping of wings in the trees overhead, and a heavy brown and black speckled mountain-hen alighted close to the man"s head, stretched out her neck toward him, c.o.c.ked her head, called her scattered brood together, and departed with slow and deliberate wing-beats.
Again there was a frightened flutter overhead, a shrill anxious whistle rose in the air, and all was silence. Augusta had stepped on a dry branch--it had broken under her weight--hence the sudden confusion and flight. The unknown man had sprung up, and his eye, after a moment"s search, had found the dark, beautiful face peering forth behind the red fir-trunk. He did not speak or salute her; he greeted her with silent joy, as one greets a wondrous vision which is too frail and bright for consciousness to grasp, which is lost the very instant one is conscious of seeing. But, while to the girl the sight, as it were, hung trembling in the range of mere physical perception, while its suddenness held it aloof from moral reflection, there came a great shout from behind, and Arnfinn, whom in her surprise she had quite forgotten, came bounding forward, grasping the stranger by the hand with much vigor, laughing heartily, and pouring forth a confused stream of delighted interjections, borrowed from all manner of cla.s.sical and uncla.s.sical tongues.
"Strand! Strand!" he cried, when the first tumult of excitement had subsided; "you most marvelous and incomprehensible Strand! From what region of heaven or earth did you jump down into our prosaic neighborhood? And what in the world possessed you to choose our barns as the centre of your operations, and nearly put me to the necessity of having you arrested for vagrancy? How I do regret that Cousin Augusta"s entreaties mollified my heart toward you. Pardon me, I have not introduced you. This is my cousin, Miss Oddson, and this is my miraculous friend, the world-renowned author, vagrant, and naturalist, Mr. Marcus Strand."
Strand stepped forward, made a deep but somewhat awkward bow, and was dimly aware that a small soft hand was extended to him, and, in the next moment, was enclosed in his own broad and voluminous palm. He grasped it firmly, and, in one of those profound abstractions into which he was apt to fall when under the sway of a strong impression, pressed it with increasing cordiality, while he endeavored to find fitting answers to Arnfinn"s multifarious questions.
"To tell the truth, Vording," he said, in a deep, full-ringing ba.s.s, "I didn"t know that these were your cousin"s barns--I mean that your uncle"--giving the unhappy hand an emphatic shake--"inhabited these barns."
"No, thank heaven, we are not quite reduced to that," cried Arnfinn, gayly; "we still boast a parsonage, as you will presently discover, and a very bright and cozy one, to boot. But, whatever you do, have the goodness to release Augusta"s hand. Don"t you see how desperately she is struggling, poor thing?"
Strand dropped the hand as if it had been a hot coal, blushed to the edge of his hair, and made another profound reverence. He was a tall, huge-limbed youth, with a frame of gigantic mold, and a large, blonde, s.h.a.ggy head, like that of some good-natured antediluvian animal, which might feel the disadvantages of its size amid the puny beings of this later stage of creation. There was a frank directness in his gaze, and an unconsciousness of self, which made him very winning, and which could not fail of its effect upon a girl who, like Augusta, was fond of the uncommon, and hated smooth, facile and well-tailored young men, with the labels of society and fashion upon their coats, their mustaches, and their speech. And Strand, with his large sun-burned face, his wild-growing beard, blue woolen shirt, top boots, and unkempt appearance generally, was a sufficiently startling phenomenon to satisfy even so exacting a fancy as hers; for, after reading his book about the Wading Birds, she had made up her mind that he must have few points of resemblance to the men who had hitherto formed part of her own small world, although she had not until now decided just in what way he was to differ.
"Suppose I help you carry your knapsack," said Arnfinn, who was flitting about like a small nimble spaniel trying to make friends with some large, good-natured Newfoundland. "You must be very tired, having roamed about in this Quixotic fashion!"
"No, I thank you," responded Strand, with an incredulous laugh, glancing alternately from Arnfinn to the knapsack, as if estimating their proportionate weight. "I am afraid you would rue your bargain if I accepted it."
"I suppose you have a great many stuffed birds at home," remarked the girl, looking with self-forgetful admiration at the large brawny figure.
"No, I have hardly any," answered he, seating himself on the ground, and pulling a thick note-book from his pocket. "I prefer live creatures.
Their anatomical and physiological peculiarities have been studied by others, and volumes have been written about them. It is their psychological traits, ii you will allow the expression, which interest me, and those I can only get at while they are alive."
"How delightful!"
Some minutes later they were all on their way to the Parsonage. The sun, in spite of its mid-summer wakefulness, was getting red-eyed and drowsy, and the purple mists which hung in scattered fragments upon the forest below had lost something of their deep-tinged brilliancy. But Augusta, quite blind to the weakened light effects, looked out upon the broad landscape in ecstasy, and, appealing to her more apathetic companions, invited them to share her joy at the beauty of the faint-flushed summer night.
"You are getting quite dithyrambic, my dear," remarked Arnfinn, with an air of cousinly superiority, which he felt was eminently becoming to him; and Augusta looked up with quick surprise, then smiled in an absent way, and forgot what she had been saying. She had no suspicion but that her enthusiasm had been all for the sunset.
III.
In a life so outwardly barren and monotonous as Augusta"s--a life in which the small external events were so firmly interwoven with the subtler threads of yearnings, wants, and desires--the introduction of so large and novel a fact as Marcus Strand would naturally produce some perceptible result. It was that deplorable inward restlessness of hers, she reasoned, which had hitherto made her existence seem so empty and unsatisfactory; but now his presence filled the hours, and the newness of his words, his manner, and his whole person afforded inexhaustible material for thought. It was now a week since his arrival, and while Arnfinn and Inga chatted at leisure, drew caricatures, or read aloud to each other in some shady nook of the garden, she and Strand would roam along the beach, filling the vast unclouded horizon with large glowing images of the future of the human race. He always listened in sympathetic silence while she unfolded to him her often childishly daring schemes for the amelioration of suffering and the righting of social wrongs; and when she had finished, and he met the earnest appeal of her dark eye, there would often be a pause, during which each, with a half unconscious lapse from the impersonal, would feel more keenly the joy of this new and delicious mental companionship. And when at length he answered, sometimes gently refuting and sometimes a.s.senting to her proposition, it was always with a slow, deliberate earnestness, as if he felt but her deep sincerity, and forgot for the moment her s.e.x, her youth, and her inexperience. It was just this kind of fellowship for which she had hungered so long, and her heart went out with a great grat.i.tude toward this strong and generous man, who was willing to recognize her humanity, and to respond with an ever-ready frankness, unmixed with petty suspicions and second thoughts, to the eager needs of her half-starved nature. It is quite characteristic, too, of the type of womanhood which Augusta represents (and with which this broad continent of ours abounds), that, with her habitual disregard of appearances, she would have scorned the notion that their intercourse had any ultimate end beyond that of mutual pleasure and instruction.
It was early in the morning in the third week of Strand"s stay at the Parsonage. A heavy dew had fallen during the night, and each tiny gra.s.s-blade glistened in the sun, bending under the weight of its liquid diamond. The birds were improvising a miniature symphony in the birches at the end of the garden; the song-thrush warbled with a sweet melancholy his long-drawn contralto notes; the lark, like a prima donna, hovering conspicuously in mid air, poured forth her joyous soprano solo; and the robin, quite unmindful of the tempo, filled out the pauses with his thoughtless staccato chirp. Augusta, who was herself the early bird of the pastor"s family, had paid a visit to the little bath-house down at the brook, and was now hurrying homeward, her heavy black hair confined in a delicate muslin hood, and her lithe form hastily wrapped in a loose morning gown. She had paused for a moment under the birches to listen to the song of the lark, when suddenly a low, half articulate sound, very unlike the voice of a bird, arrested her attention; she raised her eyes, and saw Strand sitting in the top of a tree, apparently conversing with himself, or with some tiny thing which he held in his hands.
"Ah, yes, you poor little sickly thing!" she heard him mutter. "Don"t you make such an ado now. You shall soon be quite well, if you will only mind what I tell you. Stop, stop! Take it easy. It is all for your own good, you know. If you had only been prudent, and not stepped on your lame leg, you might have been spared this affliction. But, after all, it was not your fault--it was that foolish little mother of yours. She will remember now that a skein of hemp thread is not the thing to line her nest with. If she doesn"t, you may tell her that it was I who said so."
Augusta stood gazing on in mute astonishment; then, suddenly remembering her hasty toilet, she started to run; but, as chance would have it, a dry branch, which hung rather low, caught at her hood, and her hair fell in a black wavy stream down over her shoulders. She gave a little cry, the tree shook violently, and Strand was at her side. She blushed crimson over neck and face, and, in her utter bewilderment, stood like a culprit before him, unable to move, unable to speak, and only returning with a silent bow his cordial greeting. It seemed to her that she had ungenerously intruded upon his privacy, watching him, while he thought himself un.o.bserved. And Augusta was quite unskilled in those social accomplishments which enable young ladies to hide their inward emotions under a show of polite indifference, for, however hard she strove, she could not suppress a slight quivering of her lips, and her intense self-reproach made Strand"s words fall dimly on her ears, and prevented her from gathering the meaning of what he was saying. He held in his hands a young bird with a yellow line along the edge of its bill (and there was something beautifully soft and tender in the way those large palms of his handled any living thing), and he looked pityingly at it while he spoke.