Part 12 (2/2)

There was silence for a while.

”But it is cold up-stairs.”

”She did not want me to make a fire.”

After dinner Arne began work; in the evening he was again with the family in the sitting-room. Then the wife, too, was there. The women were sewing. The husband was busy with some trifles, and Arne helped him; there was a prolonged silence, for Eli, who usually led in conversation, was also silent. Arne thought with dismay that it probably was often thus at his own home; but he realized it now for the first time. Eli drew a long breath at last, as though she had restrained herself long enough, and then she fell to laughing. Then the father also laughed, and Arne, too, thought it was laughable, and joined in. From this time forth they talked of various things; but it ended in Arne and Eli doing most of the talking, the father putting in an occasional word.

But once, when Arne had been speaking for some time and happened to look up, he met the eyes of the mother, Birgit; she had dropped her sewing, and sat staring fixedly at him. Now she picked up her work again, but at the first word he spoke she raised her eyes.

Bed-time came, and each one went his way. Arne thought he would notice the dream he had the first night in a new place; but there seemed to be no sense in it. The whole day long he had talked little or none with the master of the gard, but at night it was of him he dreamed. The last thing was that Baard sat playing cards with tailor Nils. The latter was very angry and pale in the face; but Baard smiled and won the game.

Arne remained several days, during which time there was scarcely any talking, but a great deal of work. Not only those in the family room were silent, but the servants, the tenants, even the women. There was an old dog on the gard that barked every time strangers came; but the gard people never heard the dog without saying ”hus.h.!.+” and then he went growling off and laid down again. At home at Kampen there was a large weather-vane on the house, which turned with the wind; there was a still larger vane here, to which Arne's attention was attracted because it did not turn. When there was a strong current of wind, the vane struggled to get loose, and Arne looked at it until he felt compelled to go up on the roof and set the vane free. It was not frozen fast, as he had supposed, but a pin was stuck through it that it might be kept still.

This Arne took out and threw down; the pin struck Baard, who came walking along. He glanced up.

”What are you doing there?”

”I am letting loose the vane.”

”Do not do so; it makes such a wailing noise when it is in motion.”

Arne sat astride the gable.

”That is better than always being quiet.”

Baard looked up at Arne, and Arne looked down on Baard; then Baard smiled.

”He who has to howl when he talks had much better keep silent, I am sure.”

Now it often happens that words haunt us long after they were uttered, especially when they were the last ones heard. So these words haunted Arne when he crept down in the cold from the roof, and were still with him in the evening when he entered the family room. Eli was standing, in the twilight, by a window, gazing out over the ice which lay glittering beneath the moon's beams. Arne went to the other window and looked out as she was doing. Within all was cozy and quiet, without it was cold; a sharp wind swept across the valley, so shaking the trees that the shadows they cast in the moonlight did not lie still, but went groping about in the snow. From the parsonage there glimmered a light, opening out and closing in, a.s.suming many shapes and colors, as light is apt to do when one gazes at it too long. The mountain loomed up beyond, dark and gloomy, with romance in its depths and moons.h.i.+ne on its upper banks of snow. The sky was aglow with stars, and a little flickering northern light appeared in one quarter of the horizon, but did not spread. A short distance from the window, down toward the lake, there were some trees whose shadows kept prowling from one to the other, but the great ash stood alone, writing on the snow.

The night was very still,--only now and then something shrieked and howled with a long, wailing cry.

”What is that?” asked Arne.

”It is the weather-vane,” said Eli; and afterwards she continued more softly, as though to herself: ”It must have been let loose.”

But Arne had been feeling like one who wanted to speak and could not.

Now he said:--

”Do you remember the story about the thrushes that sang?”

”Yes.”

”Why, to be sure, it was you who told that one! It was a pretty story.”

She said, in so gentle a voice that it seemed as though it were the first time he heard it,--

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