Читать книгу Ragna - Anna Miller Costantini - Страница 9

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Lars Andersen met his daughter at Molde. He seemed to have grown older, and his face had a care-worn look. "The Grandmother was ill," he said; "she had been ailing for some time, but now was bedfast and could not live long."

Though he was truly glad to welcome Ragna home again, his undemonstrative manner gave hardly a hint of it and the girl felt her joy at seeing him effectually repressed and chilled.

At dinner with her father and the Captain she sat almost silent until the old sailor rallied her on her dulness.

"You had more to say for yourself, Fröken, when the Prince was with us!"

"The Prince! What Prince?" asked Andersen.

"Prince Mirko of Montegria, who crossed with us from Hamburg to Christiansand, on his way to the Court of Russia." The Captain went on to give a roseate account of the Prince, his condescension, his amiability, and wound up with:

"Little Ragna entertained him as though she had been a court-lady, and you may well be proud of her!"

Andersen frowned; he knew more of men and of the ways of the world than did the good Captain, who in many respects was but a grown-up child, and he was displeased that his young and inexperienced daughter should have been thrown into such companionship with a strange young man, prince or no prince, as the Captain's account suggested.

Still, he did not wish to hurt the feelings of his old friend, and since it was over and done with, the less said about the matter, the better. Ragna, watching his face, guessed with newborn intuition the trend of his thoughts, and with feminine diplomacy changed the subject, leading the talk to her stay at the convent and entertaining the two men with a lively account of the nuns, and of her school-fellows.

Her father studied her with a clearing face.

"What a child it still is," he thought, "this Prince Mirko nonsense has rolled off her mind like water off a duck's back!" So he mused, and putting aside his cares, encouraged her to continue her chatter. The Captain was delighted to see his friend unbend, and joined his efforts to Ragna's to keep the ball rolling.

So the evening passed merrily enough and it was not till the girl was alone in her room that she let herself go. Rather scornfully she thought:

"Oh, yes, they all think me a child! I am nearly nineteen, and they think I have learned nothing but French verbs and embroidery. Well, let them think it, better so! But if they knew, if they could guess!"

She shook out her long golden hair—it fell nearly to her knees—she slipped out of her clothes and winding her long gauze scarf about her, looked at herself in the glass, turning this way and that. Her body, wonderfully white and firm had slight graceful curves like those of a young nymph. She played with her hair, draping it about her shoulders and bosom—truly this was a new Ragna! Then a sudden shame came over her; she put on her nightgown, and blowing out the candle, plunged into bed and lay blinking in the darkness. The thought she had had was not: "I am beautiful," but "He would think me beautiful."

"This must not go on," she said to herself. "You were a fool, Ragna, to let him kiss you—you are a fool to think about him at all. Why can't you let it be just an episode—as he said? Of course he was only playing with you. What do you suppose it meant to him to say a few complimentary things to a little country girl—and kiss her?" But she thought of the quiver in his deep voice, as he talked to her, on deck that last evening, the passionate vibration of it that had fascinated and stirred her, body and soul. She thought of his burning lips on hers and his arms straining her to him so closely that it hurt her. No, in that moment at least he had been sincere, he had loved her! The formal leave-taking under the eyes of Angelescu and the Captain had meant nothing. Oh! why could she not have been a princess—now she would never see him again! Great tears welled up in her eyes and rolled down, wetting her pillow, but she did not wipe them away. She was thinking how dull it would be at home—how unendurable after this one brief glimpse into the reality of life and emotion. Her innermost soul rebelled; she threw out her arms, then strained them to her bosom.

"I want to live, to live, to live!" she cried to herself.

When she was calmer her clear mind reasserted its power as she reflected that after all she was very young still, that the future might bring much.

"It shall," she promised herself. "I will make it! I will not, I will not be buried alive!"

She had not stopped to ask herself if she loved Prince Mirko; as a fact she did not, but he had awakened her to life, he was identical to her with Life and emotion. The mere fact of his being a stranger to her, quite outside her limited field of experience, of his being a Prince and heir to a throne, endowed him in her eyes with a halo of romance. In default of a real hero, he would become her dream-hero, the axle round which would revolve the wheel of her intimate thought.

In the morning, when dressed for the homeward journey, she joined her father in the dining-room; she presented to his eyes the same innocently childlike expression she had worn the evening before, and he kissed her smooth brow, little dreaming of the thoughts which filled her head.

As they drew nearer home, and the familiar mountains, the Trolltinder with its jagged crest, and oddly shaped Romser Horn, loomed up against the sky, Ragna felt her spirits rising. The air was cool and crisp, the little horse trotted briskly along, shaking his short stiff mane, the meadows were carpeted with flowers: forget-me-nots, pansies, and the purple swamp orchids, the pine-trees filled the air with balsam. It was home, the country of her birth. They rounded the last turn in the long road; the sun was setting and the long rays illuminated the summits of the mountains which her childish imagination had peopled with gnomes and trolls.

Now they were turning in at the wooden gateway—another few minutes and there was the long low cinnamon-coloured house, smoke rising hospitably from the chimneys, behind it the stables and sod-roofed cottages, and on the steps stood a welcoming group, mother, the sisters. "Oh, how they have grown," thought Ragna, "and there is Aunt Gitta too!" she cried. Behind them stood the servants, smiling and excited.

Almost before the stulkjarre had stopped, Ragna was out over the wheel, embracing them all in turn, laughing and trying to answer a dozen questions at once.

Fru Andersen held her daughter at arm's length, to see her better.

"It is my 'little' Ragna no longer," she wailed. "You are taller than I, and you have changed, dear—you went away a child, you come back a woman!"

Her husband interrupted her, calling for the servants to take in Ragna's luggage, and the good woman's further comments, if there were any, were lost in the bustle that ensued.