"And her husband came, you said. The Captain?"

"Yes, the Captain, he came. And you can reckon for yourself the state he was in. And we were all the same for that matter, all the town was. The engineer, he was out of his senses for a long while, so they told us at the hotel, and when the Captain arrived, the engineer went off inspecting up the river, just because he couldn't bear to talk any more about it."

"So the Captain didn't see him, then?"

"No. H'm! Nay, I don't know," said the porter, looking around. "No, I don't know anything about that--no."

His answer was so confused, it was evident that he did know. But it was of no importance, and I did not question him again.

"Well, thanks for coming up with me," I said, and shared a little money with him for a winter wrap or something of the sort. And I took leave of him, and wanted him to turn back.

He seemed anxious, however, to go on with me a little farther. And, to get me to agree, he suddenly confesses that the Captain had seen the engineer while he was here--yes. The porter, good foolish creature, had understood enough of the maids' gossip in the kitchen to make out that there was something wrong about the engineer and this cousin of his who had come to stay; more than this, however, he had not seen. But, as regards the meeting between the two men, it was he himself who had acted as guide to the Captain on his way up to find the engineer.

"He said he must find him, and so we went up together. And the Captain, he asked me on the way, what could there be to inspect up the river now it was frozen over? And I couldn't see myself, I told him. And so we walked up all day to about three or four in the afternoon. 'We might see if he's not in the hut here,' I said, for I'd heard the lumbermen used the place. Then the Captain wouldn't let me go on with him any farther, but told me to wait. And he walked up to the hut by himself, and went in. He'd not been in the place more than a bare couple of minutes, when out he comes, and the engineer with him. There was a word or so between them--I didn't hear; then all of a sudden the Captain flings up one arm like that, and lands out at the engineer, and down he goes. Lord! but he must have felt it pretty badly. And not content with that, he picks him up and lands out at him again as hard as before. Then he came back to me and said we'd be going home."

I grew thoughtful at this. It seemed strange that this porter, a creature who bore no grudge or ill-will to any one, should leave the engineer up there at the hut without aid. And he had shown no disapproval in his telling of the thrashing. The engineer must have been miserly with him, too, I thought, and never paid him for his services, but only ordered him about and laughed at him, puppy that he was. That would be it, no doubt. And this time, perhaps, I was not misled by jealous feelings of my own.

"But the Captain--he was free with his money, if you like," said the porter at last. "I paid off all my owings with what he gave me--ay, indeed I did."

When at last I had got rid of the man, I crossed the river; the ice was firm enough. I was on the main road now. And I walked on, thinking over the porter's story. That scene at the hut--what did it amount to, after all? It merely showed that one of the two men was big and strong, the other a little, would-be sportsman heavily built behind. But the Captain was an officer--it was something of that sort, perhaps, he had been thinking. Perhaps he ought to have thought a little more in other ways while there was yet time--who can say? It was his wife! who had been drowned. The Captain might do what he pleased now; she would never come again.

But if she did, what then? She was born to her fate, no doubt. Husband and wife had tried to patch up the damage, but had failed. I remember her as she was six or seven years back. She found life dull, and fell in love a trifle here and there perhaps, even then, but she was faithful and delicate-minded. And time went on. She had no occupation, but had three maid-servants to her house; she had no children, but she had a piano. But she had no children.

And Life can afford to waste.

Mother and child it was that went down.

EPILOGUE

A wanderer plays with muted strings when he comes to fifty years. Then he plays with muted strings.

Or I might put it in this way.

If he comes too late for the harvest of berries in autumn, why, he is come too late, that is all; and if one fine day he finds he can no longer be gay and laugh all over his face in delight of life, 'tis because he is old, no doubt; blame him not for that! And there can be no doubt that it requires a certain vacuity of mind to go about feeling permanently contented with oneself and all else. But we have all our softer moments. A prisoner is being driven to the scaffold in a cart. A nail in the seat irks him; he shifts aside a little, and feels more at ease.

A Captain should not pray that G.o.d may forgive him--as he forgives his G.o.d. It is simply theatrical. A wanderer who cannot reckon every day on food and drink, clothes and boots, and house and home, feels just the right degree of privation when all these luxuries are lacking. If you cannot manage one way, why, there will be another. But if the other way should also fail, then one does not forgive one's G.o.d, but takes up the responsibility oneself. Shoulder against what comes--that is, bow to it.

A trifle hard for flesh and blood, and it greys a man's hair sadly. But a wanderer thanks G.o.d for life; it was good to live!

I might put it that way.

For why these high demands on life? What have we earned? All the boxes of sweetmeats a sweet-tooth could wish for? Well and good. But have we not had the world to look upon each day, and the soughing of the woods to hear? There is nothing so grand in all the world as that voice of the woods.

There was a scent of jasmine in a shrubbery, and one I know thrilled with joy, not for the jasmine's scent but for all there was--for the light in a window, a memory, the whole of life. He was called away from the jasmines after, but he had been paid beforehand for that little mishap.

And so it is; the mere grace that we are given life at all is generous payment in advance for all the miseries of life--for every one of them.

No, do not think we have the right to more sweetmeats than we get. A wanderer's advice: no superst.i.tion. What is life's? All. But what is yours? Is fame? Oh, tell us why! A man should not so insist on what is "his." It is comical; a wanderer laughs at any one who can be so comical. I remember one who could not give up that "his." He started to lay a fire in his stove at noon, and by evening he got it to burn at last. He couldn't leave the comfortable warmth to go to bed, but sat there till other people got up, lest it should be wasted. A Norwegian writer of stage plays, it was.

I have wandered about a good deal in my time, and am grown foolish now, and out of bloom. But I do not hold the perverse belief of old men generally, that I am wiser than I was. And I hope I may never grow wise; 'tis a sign of decrepitude. If I thank G.o.d for life, it is not by virtue of any riper wisdom that has come to me with age, but because I have always taken a pleasure in life. Age gives no riper wisdom; age gives nothing but age.

I was too late for the berries this year, but I am going up that way all the same. I am allowing myself this little treat, by way of reward for having worked well this summer. And I reach my goal on the 12th of December.

It is true, no doubt, that I might have stayed down among the villages.

I could have managed somehow, no doubt, as did all the others who had found it time to settle down. And Lars Falkenberg, my colleague and mate, he had urged me to take up a holding with keep for a wife and two cows and a pig. A friend's advice; _vox populi._ And then, why, one of the cows might be an ox to ride, a means of transport for my shivering age! But it came to naught--it came to naught! My wisdom has not come with age; here am I going up to Trovatn and the waste lands to live in a wooden hut!

What pleasure can there be in that? _Ai_, Lars Falkenberg, and _ai,_ every one else, have no fear; I have a man to come up with things I need.

So I drift about and about by myself, looking after myself, living alone. I miss that seal of Bishop Pavel's. One of his descendants gave it to me, and I had it in my waistcoat pocket this summer, but, looking for it now, I find I have lost it. Well, well; but, anyhow, I have been paid in advance for that mishap, in having owned it once.

But I do not feel the want of books to read.

The 12th of December--I can keep a date in mind and carelessly forget things more important. It is only just now I remember about the books--that Captain Falkenberg and his wife had many books in their house--novels and plays--a whole bookcase full. I saw it one day when I was painting windows and doors at vreb. Entire sets of authors they had, and authors' complete works--thirty books. Why the complete works?

I do not know. Books--one, two, three, ten, thirty. They had come out each Christmas--novels, thirty volumes--the same novel. They read them, no doubt, the Captain and his wife; knew every time what they should find in the poets of the home; there was always such a lot about all coming right in the end. So they read them, no doubt. How should I know?

Heavens, what a host of books! Two men could not shift the bookcase when I wanted to paint behind; it took three men and a cook to move it. One of the men was Grindhusen; he flushed under the weight of those poets of the home, and said: "I can't see what folk want with such a mighty crowd of books!"

Grindhusen! As if he knew anything about it! The Captain and his wife had all those books, no doubt, that none should be lacking; there they were all complete. It would make a gap to take away a single one; they were paired each with the rest, uniform poetry, the same story throughout.

An elk-hunter has been up here with me in the hut. Nothing much; and his dog was an ill-tempered brute. I was glad when he went on again. He took down my copper saucepan from the wall, and used it for his cooking, and left it black with soot.

It is not my copper saucepan, but was here in the hut, left by some one who was here before. I only rubbed it with ashes and hung it up on the wall as a weather-guide for myself. I am rubbing it up again now, for it is a good thing to have; it turns dim unfailingly when there is rain or snow coming on.

If Ragnhild had been here, now, she would have polished up that saucepan herself. But then, again, I tell myself, I would rather see to my own weather-guides; Ragnhild can find something else to do. And if this place up in the woods were our clearing, then she would have the children, and the cows, and the pig. But _my_ copper things I prefer to do myself, Ragnhild.

I remember a lady, the mistress of a house: she did no work at all, and saw to nothing, least of all to herself. And ill she fared in the end.

But six or seven years back I had never believed any one could be so delicate and lovely to another as she. I drove her once, upon a journey, and she was shy with me, although she was a lady, and above me. She blushed and looked down. And the strange thing was that she made me feel a kind of shyness myself, although I was only her servant. Only by looking at me with her two eyes when she spoke to me, she showed me treasures and beauty beyond what I knew before; I remember it still. Ay, here I sit, remembering it yet, and I shake my head and say to myself how strange it was--how strange! And then she died. And what more?

Nothing more. I am still here, but she is gone. But I should not grieve at her death. I had been paid beforehand, surely, for that loss, in that she looked at me with her two eyes--a thing beyond my deserts. Ay, so it must be.

Woman--what do the sages know of woman?

I know a sage, and he wrote of woman. Wrote of woman in thirty volumes of uniform theatre-poetry: I counted the volumes once in a big bookcase.

And at last he wrote of the woman who left her own children to go in search of--the wonderful! But what, then, were the children? Oh, it was comical: a wanderer laughs at anything so comical.

What does the sage know of woman?

To begin with, he was not a sage at all till he grew old, and all he knew of woman then was from memory. But then, again, he can have no memory of her, seeing he never knew her. The man who has an apt.i.tude for wisdom busies himself jealously with his little apt.i.tude and nothing else; cultivates and cherishes it; holds it forth and lives for it.

We do not turn to woman for wisdom. The four wisest heads in the world, who have delivered their findings on the subject of woman, simply sat and invented her out of their own heads--octogenarians young or old they were, that rode on oxen. They knew nothing of woman in holiness, woman in sweetness, woman as an indispensable, but they wrote and wrote about her. Think of it! Without finding her.

Heaven save me from growing wise! And I will mumble the same to my last turn: Heaven save me from growing wise!