Part 10 (1/2)

When morning had come and they relieved her at her post, she walked out to the high rocky promontory from which she could see the sea. The day was still young and the gra.s.s and bushes were covered with dewdrops.

Ragna gathered a handful of flowers as she went and pressed their wet freshness to her face. She felt grave and old; the bright sunlight seemed like an insult in the fact of the long night and the silent darkened room. She seated herself on a grey lichen-covered boulder overlooking the water. The fjord was like gla.s.s, as far as the eye could reach and it reflected the surrounding mountains like a mirror; to her tired eyes it was unreal, like a pictured scene. As she sat there, a breeze sprang up and tiny ripples ruffled the surface of the water, spreading from sh.o.r.e to sh.o.r.e. The reflections of tree and crag s.h.i.+vered into a thousand fragments. Up the bay a boat was putting out from the little village. Ragna idly watched the rise and fall of the oars. A girl was rowing, swaying to the rhythm of the stroke; she was standing and her red bodice stood out against the background, a vivid patch of colour. She was singing and her clear voice rose in plaintive minor notes. Smoke began to rise from the village chimneys, and a dog barked.

It was Life going on, taking no heed of those who fall by the wayside, Life, the cruel Wheel, crus.h.i.+ng the weak, casting to one side those who would clog the onward march--life, the Life of the world to whom the individual existence, the individual pain and strife are of no importance; life continuing the same throughout the ages, no matter who dies, no matter who suffers.

”The mountains do not change, nor the sky, no matter who comes or goes,”

thought Ragna, ”and everything goes on just the same, no one is necessary, continuity is everything. If we suffer, if we die, what does it matter? I shall die, we shall all die, and in a few years it will make no difference to anyone; there is no real change, only people come and go. That is the real eternity--just the same old round, over and over again, and on forever.” She sat a long time, her chin supported in her palms, her eyes, steel blue, gazing out steadily over the New World made manifest to her.

In after years she often thought of the hours spent there by the fjord in the early morning, and the memory nearly always brought peace to her heart. Her own troubles seemed so trivial, so transient in comparison with the age old changelessness of life, her own life and destiny so unimportant in the endless chain of humanity.

CHAPTER VIII

When all was over, Ragna accompanied her aunt to Christiania. She was given a comfortable room on the first floor and soon settled into the pleasant regularity of the household. It was very quiet--there could be no entertaining until the period of mourning should be over--but intimate friends often came in the afternoon and evening, and very pleasant circles formed about the cheerful lamp. Fru Bjork was a frequent visitor and made much of Ragna. The girl had taken her fancy when they had journeyed to Paris together and moreover she was convinced that the friends.h.i.+p of a serious-minded girl like Ragna was excellent for Astrid. The girls kept up a lively correspondence and in a few months Astrid would be coming home. Ragna looked forward to her coming with some impatience; though they had actually but little in common, there was at least the mutual experience of school-life, and since Ragna's awakening experience, much that had been incomprehensible to her in Astrid's nature now became clear.

”She knew more than I did about things--and I was proud of my ignorance,” she reflected. She was as yet unable to realize the difference between Astrid's shallow feminine coquetry and her own awakening consciousness of womanhood.

Fru Boyesen and Fru Bjork had been schoolmates and although differing as to character, were excellent friends, owing to the ties of life-long a.s.sociation and a common point-of-view in social matters. Each of the ladies entertained a tolerant pity for the foibles of the other, which is perhaps the most comfortable _modus vivendi_ to be found.

Ragna's time was well occupied. By her own wish she continued her studies under the best professors obtainable--that part was Aunt Gitta's doing. Literature interested her more than anything else and after a time she was encouraged to try her hand at writing a series of short essays. To her great delight a well-known review accepted them, and this materially affected her relations with her aunt. The good lady had heretofore regarded her as a child to be exhaustively directed and controlled, but a niece whose writings were published was quite a different person in her estimation. In common with many people of prosaic mind she had a genuine respect for intellectual attainments, therefore, Ragna was promoted to a position of semi-independence, her working hours were held sacred, and to give her more time for her literary pursuits such household tasks as had fallen to her share were removed as incompatible. This was a mistake, for the homely work would have been a wholesome antidote to the romantic trend of the girl's mind.

Withdrawn from the ordinary business of the house, she lived an unreal life made up of fanciful imaginings which her philosophical and literary studies were unable to counteract. She had no experience of actualities to control and place in their proper perspective the various social and philosophical theories which formed the greater part of her reading.

Consequently with nothing to counter-balance the paramount influence of the moment, she swayed to the mental att.i.tude of whatever author she happened to be reading, being in turn, or imagining herself a Swedenborgian, an agnostic, an atheist, and a mystic.

She was cynical with Voltaire and romantic with Byron and De Musset. For a considerable period the ”categorical imperative” haunted her days and nights, and during three months at least. ”Also sprach Zarathustra” was the sun whose rising and setting determined her getting up and her sitting down. But Nietsche did not last long; his doctrine was too foreign to her nature and she returned to Kant as to an old friend.

Fru Boyesen was not a little worried by these moral and spiritual waverings, but never having known anything of the kind herself, was unable to cope with the case. She took a purely material view of the situation. They were now out of mourning, but Ragna seemed to have little taste for society in general, and none for that of young men; she preferred her books, she said, when her aunt rallied her on the subject.

Now Fru Boyesen had been at some pains to obtain for her niece a circle of eligible masculine acquaintances; she had made it known that she considered the girl as her adopted daughter and would make her her heiress, and there was no lack of eligible suitors; so when Ragna had sent two of the most desirable firmly but kindly about their business with no better excuse than that they did not happen to be congenial to her, her aunt felt that it was time to interfere.

She would have considered either of them a most desirable husband for her niece--was not young Nansen tall and handsome as well as the only son of wealthy parents? And was not Peter Na.s.s a most estimable young man and well situated to make a wife comfortable and happy? What was Ragna waiting for? A white blackbird?

Ragna threw her arms about her aunt's neck.

”Dear Aunt Gitta, I am so happy with you! I don't want to marry ever, I think!”

”Not want to marry, child? You are crazy! It is a woman's duty to marry and rear children--the Bible says so. Perhaps you think you are in love with some other young man?”

No, Ragna was in love with no one.

”Well then, why did you refuse Ole Nansen?”

”Because I did not love him.”

”Oh, stuff and nonsense! Not love him! Very probably you don't, but that is not essential, not one woman in a hundred 'loves' her husband until after she has married him. The important part is that everything else should be suitable. There's nothing you dislike in him, is there?”

”No, Auntie.”

Fru Boyesen raised her eyes to Heaven.

”Well, all I can say is, you'll never get such a chance again; young Nansen is a man in a thousand.”