Part 55 (1/2)

”I am dying, my Seraphitus, having loved no one but you,” said she, mechanically moving to throw herself down.

Seraphitus blew softly on her brow and eyes. Suddenly, as a traveler is refreshed by a bath, Minna had forgotten that acute anguish; it had vanished under that soothing breath, which penetrated her frame and bathed it in balsamic effluence, as swiftly as the breath had pa.s.sed through the air.

”Who and what are you?” said she, with an impulse of delicious alarm. ”But I know.--You are my life.--How can you look down into the gulf without dying?” she asked after a pause.

Seraphitus left Minna clinging to the granite, and went as a shadow might have done to stand on the edge of the crag, his eyes sounding the bottom of the fiord, defying its bewildering depths; his figure did not sway, his brow was as white and calm as that of a marble statue--deep meeting deep.

”Seraphitus, if you love me, come back!” cried the girl. ”Your danger brings back all my torments. Who--who are you to have such superhuman strength at your age?” she asked, feeling his arms around her once more.

”Why,” said Seraphitus, ”you can look into far vaster s.p.a.ce without a qualm;” and raising his hand, the strange being pointed to the blue halo formed by the clouds round a clear opening just over their heads, in which they could see the stars, though it was daylight, in consequence of some atmospheric laws not yet fully explained.

”But what a difference!” she said, smiling.

”You are right,” he replied; ”we are born to aspire skywards. Our native home, like a mother's face, never frightens its children.”

His voice found an echo in his companion's soul; she was silent.

”Come! let us go on,” said he.

They rushed on together by the paths faintly visible along the mountain side, devouring the distance, flying from shelf to shelf, from ledge to ledge, with the swiftness of the Arab horse, that bird of the desert. In a few minutes they reached a green carpet of gra.s.s, moss, and flowers, on which no one yet had ever rested.

”What a pretty _soe_!” cried Minna, giving the native name to this little meadow; ”but how comes it here, so high up?”

”Here, indeed, the Norwegian vegetation ceases,” said Seraphitus; ”and if a few plants and flowers thrive on this spot, it is thanks to the shelter of the rock which protects them from the Polar cold.--Put this spray in your bosom, Minna,” he went on, plucking a flower; ”take this sweet creature on which no human eye has yet rested, and keep the unique blossom in memory of this day, unique in your life! You will never again find a guide to lead you to this _soeter_.”

He hastily gave her a hybrid plant which his eagle eye had discerned among the growth of _silene acaulis_ and saxifrage, a real miracle developed under the breath of angels. Minna seized it with childlike eagerness; a tuft of green, as transparent and vivid as an emerald, composed of tiny leaves curled into cones, light brown at the heart, shaded softly to green at the point, and cut into infinitely delicate teeth. These leaves were so closely set that they seemed to mingle in a dense ma.s.s of dainty rosettes.

Here and there this cus.h.i.+on was studded with white stars edged with a line of gold, and from the heart of each grew a bunch of purple stamens without a pistil. A scent that seemed to combine that of the rose and of the orange-blossom, but wilder and more ethereal, gave a heavenly charm to this mysterious flower, at which Seraphitus gazed with melancholy, as though its perfume had expressed to him a plaintive thought, which he alone understood. To Minna this amazing blossom seemed a caprice of Nature, who had amused herself by endowing a handful of gems with the freshness, tenderness, and fragrance of a plant.

”Why should it be unique? Will it never reproduce its kind?” said she to Seraphitus, who colored and changed the subject.

”Let us sit down--turn round--look! At such a height you will perhaps not be frightened. The gulfs are so far below that you cannot measure their depth; they have the level perspective of the sea, the indefiniteness of the clouds, the hue of the sky. The ice in the fiord is an exquisite turquoise, the pine forests are visible only as dim brown streaks. To us the depths may well be thus disguised.”

Seraphitus spoke these words with that unction of tone and gesture which is known only to those who have attained to the highest places on the mountains of the earth, and which is so involuntarily a.s.sumed that the most arrogant master finds himself prompted to treat his guide as a brother, and never feels himself the superior till they have descended into the valleys where men dwell.

He untied Minna's snow-shoes, kneeling at her feet. The girl did not notice it, so much was she amazed at the imposing spectacle of the Norwegian panorama--the long stretch of rocks lying before her at a glance, so much was she struck by the perennial solemnity of those frozen summits, for which words have no expression.

”We have not come here by unaided human strength!” said she, clasping her hands. ”I must be dreaming!”

”You call a fact supernatural, because you do not know its cause,” he replied.

”Your answers are always stamped with some deep meaning,” said she. ”With you I understand everything without an effort.--Ah! I am free!”

”Your snow-shoes are off, that is all.”

”Oh!” cried she, ”and I would fain have untied yours, and have kissed your feet!”

”Keep those speeches for Wilfrid,” said Seraphitus mildly.

”Wilfrid!” echoed Minna in a tone of fury, which died away as she looked at her companion. ”You are never angry!” said she, trying, but in vain, to take his hand. ”You are in all things so desperately perfect!”