Читать книгу Mary - Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson - Страница 4

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The doctor long feared that Krog, too, would die—of pure over-exertion. During his long solitude he had been unaccustomed to give as much of himself, or to receive as much, as life with Marit demanded and gave. Not until she died did it become apparent how weak he was, how little power of resistance was left him. It took months to restore the feeble remnant so far that he could again bear to have people about him. They told him that the child had been taken to his sister's. They asked him if he would like to see it. He turned away almost angrily. The first thing that seriously occupied his thoughts when he grew stronger was the disposal of his business. About this he consulted with a relation, a cross-grained bachelor, generally known as "Uncle Klaus." Through him the business was sold; but not the house in which it was carried on; this was to remain exactly as it was, in remembrance of Marit.

Anders Krog's first walk was down to the chapel and the grave; and this told upon him so terribly that he became ill again. As soon as he recovered, he announced that it was his intention to go abroad and to remain abroad. His sister came to him in alarm: "This cannot be true. You surely do not mean to leave us and your child?"

"Yes," answered he, bursting into tears; "I cannot bear to live in these rooms."

"But you will at least see the child before you go!"

"No! no! Anything rather than that!"

And he left without seeing her.

But it was, naturally, the child that drew him home again. When she was about three years old she was photographed, and that photograph was irresistible. Such a likeness to her mother, such childlike charm, he could not stay away from. From Constantinople, where he received it, he wrote: "It has taken me nearly three years to go through again the experiences of one. I cannot say that I am in complete possession of them all yet. Many more are certain to recur to me when I see the places again where we were together. But the deeper life and thoughts of these three years have at least taught me no longer to dread these places. On the contrary, I am longing to see them."

The meeting with the new Marit was a joy. Not at once, for she naturally began by being afraid of the strange man with the large eyes. But this made the joy all the greater when she gradually, cautiously, approached him. And when she at last sat upon his knee with her two new dolls, a Turkish man and woman, and shoved them up against his nose to make him sneeze, because "auntie" had sneezed, he said, with tears in his eyes: "I have had only one meeting that was sweeter."

She came, with her nurse, to live with him. Their first walk together was to her mother's grave, on which he wished her to lay flowers. She did it, but was determined to take them away with her again. All their efforts were in vain. The nurse at last picked others for her; but these she would not have; she wanted her own. They were obliged to let her take them and to make her lay the new ones on the grave. Anders thought: This is not like her mother.

The attempt was repeated. Mother's grave was to have fresh flowers every day, and Marit was to lay them there. Anders divided the flowers into two bunches; he carried the one and she the other. She was to leave hers and have his to take home again. But this plan succeeded no better; indeed, worse; for when they were ready to leave the churchyard, she insisted that he, too, should take his flowers back with him. He was obliged to give in to her. Next day he tried something different. She carried flowers to her mother's grave, and he gave her sweets to induce her to let them lie there. Yes, she would give up the flowers in exchange for the sweets, which she put into her mouth. But when they were ready to go, she was determined to have the flowers too. He was quite cast down.

It then occurred to him to tell her that Mother was cold; Marit must cover her up. She thereupon proposed that Mother should come home to her own bed. Her father had told her that the empty bed beside his was Mother's; now she constantly asked if Mother were not coming soon. She could not come, he said; she must lie out there in the cold. This produced the desired effect. Marit herself spread the flowers over the grave and let them lie. On the way home she repeated several times: "Mother is not cold now."

Anders wondered what she understood by "Mother." He wished her to be able to recognise her mother's portraits, but before showing her them, exercised her eye with pictures of animals and things. From these he proceeded to photographs of his sister, of himself, and of others whom she knew. When she was quite familiar with them, he produced the earliest photograph of her mother. There was no difficulty; she was shown several, and quickly learned to distinguish them from all others. In the afternoon, when she had been laid down to sleep, she asked to have "Mother" in her arms. Anders did not understand immediately, and she became impatient. Then he brought the first photograph of her mother. She took it at once, clasped it in her arms, and fell asleep. Not until she was four years old, and saw a mother in the kitchen tending her sick child, was he sure that she understood what a mother is; for then she said: "Why doesn't my mother come and undress me and dress me?"

In the end father and daughter became fast friends. But the greatest pleasure of all came when she was old enough for him to tell her about Mother. About Mother, who had come across the sea to Father, bringing little Marit with her. The walks which he had taken with Mother, the two took together—every one of them. He rowed her as Mother had rowed him; they went to town together as Mother and Father had done. There she sat in the chairs which Mother had bought and sat in. At table she sat in Mother's place; in conservatory and garden among the flowers she was Mother, and helped as Mother had done.

What a clever, beautiful child she was! She had her mother's red hair and brilliantly white skin, her large eyes, and the same delicate, long line of eyebrow. Possibly she would also have the same aquiline nose. The hands with the long fingers were not her mother's, nor was the figure. That very slight forward bend at the joining of head and neck was like her father's. She had not her mother's prettily squared shoulders; Marit's sloped, and the arms descended from them in a more even line. Anders could not resist going up every evening to look at her when she was being undressed. The mixture of the masculine and feminine Krog types, which had hitherto been so uncommon, but which her mother had to a certain extent represented, was complete in her. She grew tall, her eyes large, her head shapely. Her father could not get her to associate with other children; it bored her. They did not transport themselves quickly enough into her imaginary world, which was certainly a curious one. The fields were a circus—her father had told her about Buffalo Bill's. The Indians galloped across the plain; she herself, on a white horse, leading. The ridges were boxes, and they were full of people. This the other children could not see. Nor could they understand the travel-game on the table, which her father had taught her to play.

When she was nearly seven, she compelled her father, who was a good cyclist, to buy her a bicycle and teach her to ride it. But this was the drop which caused the cup to overflow. He decided to call in help.

In Paris he had made the acquaintance of a distant relation, Mrs. Dawes by name. This lady had married in England, but after the death of her only child she left her husband, and supported herself by keeping a boarding-house in Paris. In this boarding-house Krog had admired her extremely. He had seldom met a cleverer woman. Now he asked her if she would come and keep his house and educate his child. She promptly telegraphed "Yes," and within a month had sold her business, travelled to Norway, and entered upon all her duties. A disease of the hip-joint from which she had long suffered had become worse, so that she had difficulty in walking. But from the wheeled arm-chair which she brought with her, and which her stout person completely filled, she managed the whole household, including Anders himself. He was quite alarmed by her cleverness. She seldom left her chair, and yet she knew of everything that happened. Walls did not conceal from her eyes; distance did not exist for her. Much of this power of hers was explained by the acuteness of her senses, by her cleverness in interpreting words and signs, reading looks and expressions and drawing inferences from them, and by her skill in the art of questioning. But there was something that defied explanation. When danger threatened any one she loved, she was aware of it—sitting in her chair. With a loud exclamation—always in English on such occasions—she sprang up, and actually ran. This happened, for instance, on the memorable day when Marit, on her bicycle, fell into the river and was fished out again by two men from the steamer; for it was close to the landing-place that the accident occurred; she was on her way there. On the way home she and Mrs. Dawes met—the one dripping with sea-water and screaming, the other dripping with perspiration and screaming.

Mrs. Dawes went the round of the house every day—outside, if necessary, as well as inside—but she seldom went farther. On this round she saw everything—including what was about to happen, the servants declared.

There was a suggestion of floating about her. She sat floating in paper. She carried on, at least according to Anders Krog, a constant correspondence with every one who had ever lived in her house. It was carried on in all languages and upon all subjects; a considerable part of her time was spent in introducing what she read—and she read far into the night—into her letters. She moved her chair to the table on which lay her desk; then she turned away from the table to read. Fastened to the arm of the chair was a reading-desk, on which she laid the book; she seldom held it in her hand. Memoirs were her favourite reading; gossip from them she at once transferred to her letters. Next came art magazines and books of travel. She had a little money of her own, and bought what she wanted.

Along with all this she taught the child. The two sat at the big table in the drawing-room, "Aunt Eva" in her chair of state, the little girl opposite her. But whenever it was necessary, Marit had to come round and stand beside Aunt Eva's desk. The hours of instruction passed so pleasantly that the little one often forgot that she was at lessons. Her father, whose library opened out of the drawing-room, often forgot it too, when he came in and listened to the conversations or to what Mrs. Dawes was telling.

Lessons might be easy, but something else was difficult and led to conflict. Mrs. Dawes wished to bring about a general alteration in the child's habits, and here she had the father against her. But he was, of course, worsted, and that before he understood what she was about. Marit had to learn to obey; she had to learn the meaning of punctuality, of order, of politeness, of tact. She had to practise every day, to hold herself straight at table, to wash her hands an unlimited number of times, always to tell where she was going—and all this against her own will, and really against her father's, too.

Mrs. Dawes had one sure base from which to operate. This was the child's unbounded faith in her mother's perfection. She convinced Marit that her mother had never gone to bed later than eight o'clock. Before getting into bed, too, Mother had always arranged her clothes upon a chair and set her shoes outside the door.

From what Mother had done, and done to perfection, Mrs. Dawes went on to what Mother would have done if she had been in Marit's place, and, also, to what she would not have done if she had been Marit. This proved harder. When Mrs. Dawes, for instance, assured her that her mother had never ridden out of sight on her bicycle, Marit asked: "How do you know that?" "I know it because I know that your father and mother were never away from each other." "That is true, Marit," said her father, glad to be able for once to confirm one of Mrs. Dawes's assertions; most of them were not true.

The farther the work of education progressed, the more interested in it did Mrs. Dawes become, and the stronger did her hold on the child grow. She set herself the task of eradicating Marit's dream-life, an inheritance from her mother, which flourished exuberantly as long as her father encouraged it and took pleasure in it.

One spring Marit rushed in and told her father that in a hollow in the old tree between Mother's and Grandmother's graves there was a little nest, and in the nest were tiny, tiny little eggs. "It's a message from Mother, isn't it?" He nodded, and went with her to look at it. But when they came near, the bird flew out piping lamentably. "Mother says we are not to go nearer?" questioned Marit. To this her father answered: "Yes." "It would be the same as disturbing Mother if we did?" continued she. He nodded.—They walked back to the house, perfectly happy, talking of Mother all the way. When Marit told Mrs. Dawes about this afterwards, Mrs. Dawes said to her: "Your father answers 'Yes' to such questions because he does not want to grieve you, child. If your Mother could send you a message, she would come herself." There was no end to the revolution which those few cruel words wrought. They altered even the relation between the child and her father.

The lessons went on steadily, and so did the training, until Marit was nearly thirteen—tall, very thin, large-eyed, with luxuriant red hair and a pure white skin guiltless of freckles, which was Mrs. Dawes's pride.

About this time Krog came in one day from the library to stop the lessons. This had not happened during all the years they had gone on. Marit was allowed to go. Mrs. Dawes accompanied Anders into the library.

"Be kind enough to read this letter."

She read, and learned what she had had no idea of—that the man who was standing before her, watching her face whilst she read, was a millionaire—and that not in kroner, but in dollars. Since receiving the bank deposits and shares at the time of his uncle's death, he had drawn nothing from America—and this was the result.

"I congratulate you," said Mrs. Dawes, and seized his right hand in both of hers. Her eyes filled with tears: "And I understand you, dear Mr. Krog; it is your wish that we should travel now."

He looked at her, a glad smile in his bright eyes. "Have you any objection, Mrs. Dawes?"

"Not if we take servants with us. You know how lame I am."

"Servants you shall have, and we shall keep a carriage wherever we are. Lessons can go on, can't they?"

"Of course they can. Better than ever!" She beamed and wept. She said to herself that she had never felt so happy.

A fortnight later the three, with maid and manservant, had left Krogskogen.