Seldom had any one rowed faster than he did; now he shot past the islands into the bay, up to the landing-place before the house. If the cement stone contained the right proportions, here was what would make Helene and himself independent of every one; AND THAT AT ONCE!
A little later, with dirty hands and clothes, his face bathed in perspiration, he rushed up to his mother with the result of his investigations.
"Here is something for you to see."
She was reading; she looked up and turned as white as a sheet.
"Is that the cement stone?" she asked, as she put down her book.
"Did you know about it?" he exclaimed, in the greatest astonishment.
"Good gracious, yes," she answered. She walked across to the window, came back again, pressing her hands together. "So you have found it too?"
"Who did before me?"
"Your father, Rafael, your father, the first time that I was here, a little time before we were to leave." She paused. "He came rushing in as you did just now—not so quickly, not so quickly, he was weak in the legs, but otherwise just like you." She let her eyes rest, with a peculiar look, on Rafael's dirty hands. The hands themselves were not well shaped, they were almost exactly his father's.
Rafael noticed nothing.
"Had HE found the bed of cement stone, then?"
"Yes. He locked the door behind him. I got up from my chair and asked him how he dared? He could hardly speak." She paused for a moment, recalling it all again. "Yes, and it was THAT stuff."
"What did he say, mother?"
She had turned to leave the room.
"Your father believed that I had brought luck to the house."
"And why was it not so, then?"
She faced him quickly. He coloured.
"Pardon, mother, you misunderstood me. I meant, why did it come to nothing about the cement?"
"You did not know your father: there were too many hooks about him for him to be able to carry out anything."
"Hooks?"
"Yes! eccentricity, egotism, passion, which caught fast in everything."
"What did he propose to do?"
"No one was to be allowed to have anything to do with it, no one was to know of it, he was to be everything! For this reason the timber was to be cut down and sold; and when we were married—I say when we were married, the whole of my fortune was to be used as well."
He saw the horror with which she still regarded it; she was passing through the whole struggle again; and he understood that he must not question her further. She made a gesture with her hand; and he asked hurriedly, "Why did you not tell me before, mother?"
"Because it would have brought you no good," she answered decidedly.
He felt, nay, he saw that she believed that it would bring him no good now. She again raised her hand, and he left her.
When he was once more in the boat, taking his great news to the parsonage, he thought to himself, Here is the reason of my father's and mother's deadly enmity.
The cement stone! She did not trust him, she would not give him both herself and her fortune, so there was no cement, nor were any trees felled.
"Well, he scored after all. Yes, and mother too; but God help ME!"
Then he reckoned up what the timber and the fortune together would have been worth, and what further sum could have been raised on the property, the value of the cement-bed being taken into consideration. He understood his father better than his mother. What a fortune, what power, what magnificence, what a life!
At the parsonage he carried every one with him.
The Dean, because he saw at once what this was worth. "You are a rich man now," he said. The Dean's wife, because she felt attracted by his ability and enthusiasm. Helene? Helene was silent and frightened. He turned towards her and asked if she would come with him in the boat to see it. She really must see how extensive the bed was.
"Yes, dear, go with him," said her father.
Rafael wished to sit behind her in the boat and hastened towards the bow; but, without a word, she passed him, sat down, and took her oars; so, after all, he had to sit in front of her.
They thus began at cross purposes. His back was towards her, he saw how the water foamed under her oars, there was a secret struggle, a tacit fear, which was heard in the few words which they exchanged, and which merely increased their constraint.
When they drew near to their destination they were flushed and hot. Now he was obliged to turn round to look for the place of landing. To begin with, they went slowly along the whole cement-bed as far as it was visible. He was now turned so as to face her, and he explained it all to her. She kept her eyes fixed on the cliff, and only glanced at him, or did not look at him all. They turned the boat again, in order to land at the place where he intended the factory to stand. A portion of the rock would have to be blasted to make room, the harbour too must be made safer so that vessels might lie close in, and all this would cost money.
He landed first in order to help her, but she jumped on shore without his assistance; then they climbed upwards, he leading the way, explaining everything as he went; she following with eyes and ears intent.
All for which, from her childhood, she had worked so hard at Hellebergene, and all which she had dreamed of for the estate, had become so little now. It would be many years before the trees yielded any return. But here was promise of immediate prosperity and future wealth if, as she never doubted, he proved to be correct. She felt that this humbled her, made her of no account, but ah! how great it made him seem!
The rowing, the climbing, the excitement, gave animation to Rafael's explanations; face and figure showed his state of tension. She felt almost giddy: should she return to the boat and row away alone? But she was too proud thus to betray herself.
It seemed to her that there was the look of a conqueror in his eyes; but she did not intend to be conquered. Neither did she wish to appear as the one who had remained at home and speculated on his return. That would be simply to turn all that was most cherished, most unselfish in her life, against herself. Something in him frightened her, something which, perhaps, he himself could not master—his inward agitation. It was not boisterous or terrifying; it was glowing, earnest zeal, which seemed to deprive him of power and her of will, and this she would not endure.
Hardly had they gained the summit from which they could look out over the islands to the open sea, and across to Hellebergene, to the parsonage, and the river flowing into the inner bay, than he turned away from it all towards her, as she stood with heaving breast, glowing cheeks, and eyes which dare not turn away from the sea.
"Helene," he whispered, approaching her; he wished to take her in his arms.
She trembled, although she did not turn round; the next moment she sprang away from him, and did not pause till she had got down to the boat, which she was about to push off, but bethought herself that it would be too cowardly, so she remained standing and watched him come after her.
"Helene," he called from above, "why do you run away from me?"
"Rafael, you must not," she answered when he rejoined her. The strongest accent of both prayer and command of which a powerful nature is capable sounded in her words. She in the boat, he on the shore; they eyed one another like two antagonists, watchful and breathing hard, till he loosed the boat, stepped in and pushed off.
She took her seat; but before doing the same he said:
"You know quite well what I wanted to say to you." He spoke with difficulty.
She did not answer and got out her oars; her tears were ready to flow. They rowed home again more slowly than they had come.
A lark hovered over their heads. The note of a thrush was heard away inland. A guillemot skimmed over the water in the same direction as their own, and a tern on curved wing screamed in their wake. There was a sense of expectation over all. The scent of the young fir-trees and the heather was wafted out to them; farther in lay the flowery meadows of Hellebergene. At a great distance an eagle could be seen, high in air, winging his way from the mountains, followed by a flock of screaming crows, who imagined that they were chasing him. Rafael drew Helene's attention to them.
"Yes, look at them," she said; and these few words, spoken naturally, helped to put both more at their ease. He looked round at her and smiled, and she smiled back at him. He felt in the seventh heaven of delight, but it must not be spoken. But the oars seemed to repeat in measured cadence, "It—is—she. It—is—she. It—is—she." He said to himself, Is not her resistance a thousand times sweeter than—
"It is strange that the sea birds no longer breed on the islands in here," he said.
"That is because for a long time the birds have not been protected; they have gone farther out."
"They must be protected again: we must manage to bring the birds back, must we not?"
"Yes," she answered.
He turned quickly towards her. Perhaps she should not have said that, she thought, for had he not said "we"?
To show how far she was from such a thought, she looked towards the land. "The clover is not good this year."
"No. What shall you do with the plot next year?"
But she did not fall into the trap. He turned round, but she looked away.
Now the rush of the river tossed them up and down in a giddy dance, as the force of the stream met the boat. Rafael looked up to where they had walked together the first day. He turned to see if she were not, by chance, looking in the same direction. Yes, she was!
They rowed on towards the landing-place at the parsonage, and he spoke once or twice, but she had learned that that was dangerous. They reached the beach.
"Helene!" said he, as she jumped on shore with a good-bye in passing, "Helene!" But she did not stay. "Helene!" he shouted, with such meaning in it that she turned.
She looked at him, but only remained for a moment. No more was needed! He rowed home like the greatest conqueror that those waters had ever seen. Ever since the Vikings had met together in the innermost creek, and left behind them the barrow which is still to be seen near the parsonage—yes, ever since the elk of the primaeval forest, with mighty antlers, swam away from the doe which he had won in combat, to the other which he heard on the opposite shore. Since the first swarm of ants, like a waving fan, danced up and down in the sunlight, on its one day of flight. Since the first seals struggled against each other to reach the one whom they saw lie sunning herself on the rocks.
Fru Kaas had seen them pass as they rowed out at a furious pace. She had seen them row slowly back, and she understood everything. No sooner had the cement stone been found than—
She paced up and down; she wept.
She did not put any dependence on his constancy; in any case it was too early for Rafael to settle himself here: he had something very different before him. The cement stone would not run away from him, or the girl either, if there were anything serious in it. She regarded his meeting with Helene as merely an obstacle in the way, which barred his further progress.
Rafael rowed towards home, bending to his oars till the water foamed under the bow of his boat. Now he has landed; now he drags the boat up as if she were an eel-pot. Now he strides quickly up to the house.
Frightened, despairing, his mother shrank into the farthest corner of the sofa, with her feet drawn up under her, and, as he burst in through the door and began to speak, she cried out: "Taisez-vous! des egards, s'il vous plait." She stretched out her arms before her as if for protection. But now he came, borne on the wings of love and happiness. His future was there.
He did what he had never done before: went straight up to her, drew her arms down, embraced and kissed her, first on the forehead, then on the cheeks, eyes, mouth, ears, neck, wherever he could; all without a word.
He was quite beside himself.
"Mad boy," she gasped; "des egards, mais Rafael, donc!—Que—" And she threw herself on his breast with her arms round his neck.
"Now you will forsake me, Rafael," she said, crying.
"Forsake you, mother! No one can unite the two wings like Helene."
And now he began a panegyric on her, without measure, and unconscious that he said the same thing over and over again. When he became quieter, and she was permitted to breathe, she begged to be alone: she was used to being alone. In the evening she came down to him, and said that, first of all, they ought to go to Christiania, and find an expert to examine the cement-bed and learn what further should be done. Her cousin, the Government Secretary, would be able to advise them, and some of her other relations as well. Most of them were engineers and men of business. He was reluctant to leave Hellebergene just now, he said, she must understand that; besides, they had agreed not to go away until the autumn. But she maintained that this was the surest way to win Helene; only she begged that, with regard to her, things should remain as they were till they had been to Christiania. On this point she was inflexible, and it was so arranged.
As was their custom, they packed up at once. They drove over to the parsonage that same evening to say good-bye. They were all very merry there: on Fru Kaas's side because she was uneasy, and wished to conceal the fact by an appearance of liveliness; on the Dean's part because he really was in high spirits at the discovery which promised prosperity both to Hellebergene and the district; on his wife's because she suspected something. The most hearty good wishes were therefore expressed for their journey.
Rafael had availed himself of the general preoccupation to exchange a few last words with Helene in a corner. He obtained a half-promise from her that when he wrote she would answer; but he was careful not to say that he had spoken to his mother. He felt that Helene would be startled by a proceeding which came quite naturally to him.
As they drove away, he waved his hat as long as they remained in sight. The waving was returned, first by all, but finally by only one.
The summer evening was light and warm, but not light enough, not warm enough, not wide enough; there did not seem room enough in it for him; it was not bright enough to reflect his happiness. He could not sleep, yet he did not wish to talk; companionship or solitude were alike distasteful to him. He thought seriously of walking or rowing over to the parsonage again and knocking at the window of Helene's room. He actually went down to the boathouse and got out the boat. But perhaps it would frighten her, and possibly injure his own cause. So he rowed out and out to the farthest islands, and there he frightened the birds. At his approach they rose: first a few, then many, then all protested in a hideous chorus of wild screams. He was enveloped in an angry crowd, a pandemonium of birds. But it did not ruffle his good humour. "Wait a bit," he said to them. "Wait a bit, until the islands at Hellebergene are 'protected,' and the whole estate as well. Then you shall come and be happy with us. Good-bye till then!"
CHAPTER 4
He came to Christiania like a tall ship gay with flags. His love was the music on board.
His numerous relations were ready to receive him. Of these many were engineers, who were a jour with all his writings, which they had taken care should be well known. Some of the largest mechanical undertakings in the country were in their hands, so that they had connections in every direction.
Once more the family had a genius in its midst; that is to say, one to make a show with. Rafael went from entertainment to entertainment, from presentation to presentation, and wherever he or his mother went court was paid to them.
In all this the ladies of the family were even more active than their lords; and they had not been in the town many days before every one knew that they were to be the rage.
There are some people who always will hold aloof. They are as irresponsive as a sooty kettle when you strike it. They are like peevish children who say "I won't," or surly old dogs who growl at every one. But HE was so exceedingly genial, a capital fellow with the highest spirits. He had looks as well; he was six feet high; and all those six feet were clothed in perfect taste. He had large flashing eyes and a broad forehead. He was practised in making clear to others all in which he was interested, and at such times how handsome he looked! He was a thorough man of the world, able to converse in several languages at the cosmopolitan dinners which were a speciality of the Ravns. He was the owner of one of the few extensive estates in Norway, and had the control, it was said, of a considerable fortune besides.
The half of this would have been enough to set all tongues wagging; therefore, first the family, then their friends, then the whole town feted him. He was a nine days' wonder! One must know the critical, unimaginative natives of Christiania, who daily pick each other to pieces to fill the void in their existences; one must have admired their endless worrying of threadbare topics to understand what it must be when they got hold of a fresh theme.
Nothing which flies before the storm is more dangerous than desert sand, nothing can surpass a Christiania FUROR.
When it became known that two of his relations who were conversant with the subject, together with a distinguished geologist and a superintendent of mines, had been down to Hellebergene with Rafael, and had found that his statements were well grounded, he was captured and borne off in triumph twenty times a day. It was trying work, but HE was always in the vein, and ready to take the rough with the smooth. In all respects the young madcap was up to the standard, so that day and night passed in a ceaseless whirl, which left every one but himself breathless. The glorious month at Hellebergene had done good. He was drawn into endless jovial adventures, so strange, so audacious, that one would have staked one's existence that such things were impossible in Christiania. But great dryness begets thirst. He was in the humour of a boy who has got possession of a jam-pot, whose mouth, nose, and hands are all besmirched. It is thus that ladies like children best; then they are the sweetest things in the world.
Like a tall, full-grown mountain-ash covered by a flock of starlings, he was the centre of a fluttering crowd. It only remained for him to be deified, and this too came to pass. One day he visited several factories, giving a hint here, another there (he had great practical knowledge and a quick eye) and every hint was of value.
At last in a factory of something the same description as the one in France where he had been the means of economising half the motive power, he suggested a similar plan; he saw on the spot how it could be effected. This became the subject of much conversation. It grew and grew, it rose like the sea after days of westerly gales. This new genius, but little over twenty, would surely some day be the wonder of the country. It soon became the fashion for every manufacturer to invite him to visit his factory, and it was only after they were convinced that they had a god among them that it became serious, for enthusiasm in a manufacturer strikes every one. The ladies only waited for this important moment to go at a bound from the lowest degree of sense to the fifth degree of madness. Their eyes danced on him like sunlight on polished metal. He himself paid little heed to degree or temperature; he was too happy in his genial contentment, and too indifferent as well. One thing which greatly helped to bring him to the right pitch was the family temperament, for it was so like his own. He was a Ravn through and through, with perhaps a little grain of Kaas added. He was what they called pure Ravn, quite unalloyed. He seemed to them to have come straight from the fountain-head of their race, endowed with its primitive strength. This strong physical attribute had perhaps made his abilities more fertile, but the family claimed the abilities, too, as their own.
Through Hans Ravn, Rafael had learned to value the companionship of his relations; now he had it in perfection. For every word that he said appreciative laughter was ready—it really sparkled round him. When he disagreed with prevailing tastes, prejudices, and morals, they disagreed too. When his precocious intelligence burst upon them, they were always ready to applaud. They even met him half-way—they could foresee the direction of his thoughts. As he was young in years and disposition, and at the same time knew more than most young people, he suited both old and young. Ah! how he prospered in Norway!
His mother went with him everywhere. Her life had at one time appeared to her relations to be most objectless, but how much she had made of it! They respected her persevering efforts to attain the goal, and she became aware of this. In the most elegant toilettes, with her discreet manner and distinguished deportment, she was hurried from party to party, from excursion to excursion, until it became too much for her.
It went too far, too; her taste was offended by it; she grew frightened. But the train of dissipation went on without her, like a string of carriages which bore him along with it while she was shaken off. Her eyes followed the cloud of dust far away, and the roll of the wheels echoed back to her.
Helene—how about Helene? Was she too out in the cold? Far from it. Rafael was as certain that she was with him as that his gold watch was next his heart. The very first day that he arrived he wrote a letter to her. It was not long, he had not time for that, but it was thoroughly characteristic. He received an answer at once; the hostess of the pension brought it to him herself. He was so immensely delighted that the lady, who was related to the Dean and who had noticed the post mark, divined the whole affair—a thing which amused him greatly.
But Helene's letter was evasive; she evidently knew him too little to dare to speak out.
He never found time to draw the hostess into conversation on the subject, however. He came home late, he got up late, and then there were always friends waiting for him; so that he was not seen in the pension again until he returned to dress for dinner, during which time the carriage waited at the door, for he never got home till the last moment.
When could he write? It would soon all be done with, and then home to Helene!
The business respecting the cement detained him longer than he had anticipated. His mother made complications; not that she opposed the formation of a company, but she raised many difficulties: she should certainly prefer to have the whole affair postponed. He had no time to talk her round, besides, she irritated him. He told it to the hostess.
A curious being, this hostess, who directed the pension, the business of the inmates, and a number of children, without apparent effort. She was a widow; two of her children were nearly twenty, but she looked scarcely thirty. Tall, dark, clever, with eyes like glowing coals; decided, ready in conversation as in business, like an officer long used to command, always trusted, always obeyed; one yielded oneself involuntarily to her matter-of-course way of arranging everything, and she was obliging, even self-sacrificing, to those she liked—it was true that that was not everybody. This absence of reserve was especially characteristic of her, and was another reason why all relied on her. She had long ago taken up Fru Kaas—entertained her first and foremost. Angelika Nagel used in conversation modern Christiania slang which is the latest development of the language. In the choice of expressions, words such as hideous were applied to what was the very opposite of hideous, such as "hideously amusing," "hideously handsome." "Snapping" to anything that was liquid, as "snapping good punch." One did not say "PRETTY" but "quite too pretty" or "hugely pretty." On the other hand, one did not say "bad" for anything serious, but with comical moderation "baddish." Anything that there was much of went by miles; for instance, "miles of virtue." This slipshod style of talk, which the idlers of large towns affect, had just become the fashion in Christiania. All this seemed new and characteristic to the careless emancipated party which had arisen as a protest against the prudery which Fru Kaas, in her time, had combated. The type therefore amused her:—she studied it.
Angelika Nagel relieved her of all her business cares, which were only play to her. It was the same thing with the question of the cement undertaking. In an apparently careless manner she let drop what had been said and done about it, which had its effect on Fru Kaas. Soon things had progressed so far that it became necessary to consult Rafael about it, and as he was difficult to catch, she sat up for him at night. The first time that she opened the door for him he was absolutely shy, and when he heard what she wanted him for he was above measure grateful. The next time he kissed her! She laughed and ran away without speaking to him—that was all he got for his pains. But he had held her in his arms, and he glowed with a suddenly awakened passion.
She, in the meantime, kept out of his way, even during the day he never saw her unless he sought her. But when he least expected it she again met him at the door; there was something which she really MUST say to him. There was a struggle, but at last she twisted herself away from him and disappeared. He whispered after her as loud as he dared, "Then I shall go away!"
But while he was undressing she slipped into his room.
The next day, before he was quite awake, the postman brought him the warrant for a post-office order for fifteen thousand francs. He thought that there must be a mistake in the name, or else that it was a commission that had been entrusted to him. No! it was from the French manufacturer whose working expenses he had reduced so greatly. He permitted himself, he wrote, to send this as a modest honorarium. He had not been able to do so sooner, but now hoped that it would not end there. He awaited Rafael's acknowledgment with great anxiety, as he was not sure of his address.
Rafael was up and dressed in a trice. He told his news to every one, ran down to his mother and up again; but he had not been a moment alone before the superabundance of happiness and sense of victory frightened him. Now there must be an end of all this, now he would go home. He had not had the slightest prickings of conscience, the slightest longings, until now; all at once they were uncontrollable. SHE stood upon the hilltop, pure and noble. It became agonising. He must go at once, or it would drive him mad. This anxiety was made less acute by the sight of his mother's sincere pleasure. She came up to him when she heard that he had shut himself into his room. They had a really comfortable talk together—finally about the state of their finances. They lived in the pension because they could no longer afford to live in an hotel. The estate would bring nothing in until the timber once more became profitable, and her capital was no longer intact—notwithstanding the prohibition. Now she was ready to let him arrange about the cement company. On this he went out into the town, where his court soon gathered round him.
But the large sum of money which was required could not be raised in a day, so the affair dragged on. He grew impatient, he must and would go; and finally his mother induced her cousin, the Government Secretary, to form the company, and they prepared to leave. They paid farewell visits to some of their friends, and sent cards and messages of thanks to the rest. Everything was ready, the very day had come, when Rafael, before he was up, received a letter from the Dean.
An anonymous letter from Christiania, he wrote, had drawn his attention to Rafael's manner of life there, and he had in consequence obtained further information, the result being that he was, that day, sending his daughter abroad. There was nothing more in the letter. But Rafael could guess what had passed between father and daughter.
He dressed himself and rushed down to his mother. His indignation against the rascally creatures who had ruined his and Helene's future—"Who could it have been?"—was equalled by his despair. She was the only one he cared for; all the others might go to the deuce. He felt angry, too, that the Dean, or any one else, should have dared to treat him in this way, to dismiss him like a servant, not to speak to him, not to put him in a position to speak for himself.
His mother had read the letter calmly, and now she listened to him calmly, and when he became still more furious she burst out laughing. It was not their habit to settle their differences by words; but this time it flashed into his mind that she had not persuaded him to come here merely on account of the cement, but in order to separate him from Helene, and this he said to her.
"Yes," he added, "now it will be just the same with me as it was with my father, and it will be your fault this time as well." With this he went out.
Fru Kaas left Christiania shortly afterwards, and he left the same evening—for France.
From France he wrote the most pressing letter to the Dean, begging him to allow Helene to return home, so that they could be married at once. Whatever the Dean had heard about his life in Christiania had nothing to do with the feelings which he nourished for Helene. She, and she alone, had the power to bind him; he would remain hers for life.
The Dean did not answer him.
A month later he wrote again, acknowledging this time that he had behaved foolishly. He had been merely thoughtless. He had been led on by other things. The details were deceptive, but he swore that this should be the end of it all. He would show that he deserved to be trusted; nay, he HAD shown it ever since he left Christiania. He begged the Dean to be magnanimous. This was practically exile for him, for he could not return to Hellebergene without Helene. Everything which he loved there had become consecrated by her presence; every project which he had formed they had planned together; in fact, his whole future—He fretted and pined till he found it impossible to work as seriously as he wished to do.