Part 19
So the days passed. Miss Irene Holm went back and forth to her dancing lessons. More pupils came to her, a half-score young peasants formed an evening class that met three times a week in Peter Madsen’s big room on the edge of the woods. Miss Holm walked the half mile in the darkness, timid as a hare, pursued by all the old ghost stories of the ballet school. At one place she had to pass a pond deeply fringed with willows. She would stare up at the trees that stretched their great arms weirdly in the blackness, her heart hanging dead as a stone in her breast.
They danced three hours each evening. Miss Holm called out, commanded, skipped here and there, and danced with the gentlemen pupils until two deep red spots appeared on her withered cheeks. Then it was time to go home. A boy would open the gate for her, and hold up a lantern to start her on the way. She heard His “Good night” behind her and then the locking of the gate, as it rasped over the rough stone pavement. Along the first stretch of the path was a hedge of bushes that bent over at her and nodded their heads.
It was nearly spring when Miss Holm’s course of lessons came to an end. The company at Peter Madsen’s decided to finish off with a ball at the inn.
III
It was quite an affair, this ball, with a transparency, “Welcome,” over the door, and a cold supper at two crowns a plate, with the pastor’s daughter and the curate to grace the table.
Miss Holm wore a barège gown much betrimmed, and Roman bands around her head. Her fingers were full of keepsake rings from her ballet-school friends. Between the dances she sprinkled lavender water about the floor, and threatened the “ladies” with the bottle. Miss Holm never felt so young again on any such festive occasion. The ball began with a quadrille. The parents of the pupils and other older people stood around the walls, each looking after his own young ones with secret pride. The young dancers walked through the quadrille with faces set as masks, placing their feet as carefully as if they were walking on peas. Miss Holm was all encouraging smiles and nods as she murmured her French commands. The music was furnished by Mr. Broderson and his son, the latter maltreating the piano kindly lent for the occasion by the pastor.
Then the round dances began, and the tone grew more free and easy. The elder men discovered the punch bowl in the next room, and the gentlemen pupils danced in turn with Miss Holm. She danced with her head on one side, raising herself on her toes, and smiling with her faded grace of sixteen years. After a while the other couples stopped dancing to watch Miss Holm and her partner. The men came out of the other room, stood in the doorway, and murmured admiration as Miss Holm passed, raising her feet a little higher under her skirt, and rocking gracefully in the hips. The pastor’s daughter was so amused that she pinched the curate’s arm repeatedly. After the mazurka, the schoolteacher cried out, “Bravo!” and they all clapped hands. Miss Holm bowed the elegant ballet courtesy, laying two fingers on her heart.
When supper-time came, she arranged a polonaise and made them all join in. The women giggled and nudged each other in their embarrassment, and the men said: “Well--let’s get in line--” One couple began a march song, beating time with their feet.
Miss Holm sat next the schoolteacher, in the place of honor under the bust of his Majesty the King. They all grew solemn again at the table, and Miss Holm was almost the only one who conversed. She spoke in the high-pitched tone of the actors in the modern society dramas of Scribe. After a while the company became more jovial, the men began to laugh and drink toasts, touching glasses across the table. Things were very lively at the end of the table where the young people sat, and it was not easy to obtain quiet for the schoolmaster, who rose to make a speech. He spoke at some length, mentioning Miss Holm and the nine Muses, and ending up with a toast to “The Priestess of Art, Miss Irene Holm!” All joined in the cheers, and everybody came up to touch glasses with Miss Holm.
Miss Holm had understood very little of the long speech, but she felt greatly flattered. She rose and bowed to the company, her glass held high in her curved arm. Her face-powder, put on for the festive occasion, had quite disappeared in the heat and exertion, and two deep red spots shone on her cheeks.
The fun waxed fast and furious. The young people began to sing, the old men drank a glass or two extra on the sly, and stood up from their places to hit each other on the shoulder, amid shouts of laughter. The women threw anxious glances at the sinners, fearing they might indulge too deeply. Amid all the noise Miss Holm’s laugh rang out, a girlish laugh, bright and merry as thirty years before in the ballet school.
Then the schoolmaster said that Miss Holm ought to dance. “But I have danced.” Yes, but she should dance for them--a solo--that would be fine.
Miss Holm understood at once--and a great desire grew up in her heart--she was to dance--a solo! But she pretended to laugh, and smiling up at Peter Madsen’s wife, she said: “The gentleman says I ought to dance,” as if it were the most absurd thing in the world.
Several heard it, and they all called out in answer, “Yes, yes, do dance.”
Miss Holm blushed to the roots of her hair, and said that she thought the fun was getting just a little too outspoken. “And, besides, there was no music; and one couldn’t dance in long skirts.” A man somewhere in the background called out: “You can lift them up, can’t you?” The guests all laughed at this, and began to renew their entreaties.
“Well, yes, if the young lady from the rectory will play for me?--a tarantella.” They surrounded the pastor’s daughter, and she consented to lend her services. The schoolmaster rose and beat on his glass: “Ladies and gentlemen,” he announced, “Miss Holm will do us the honor to perform a solo dance for us.” The guests cheered, and the last diners arose from the table. The curate’s arm was black and blue where the young lady from the rectory had pinched him.
Miss Holm and the pastor’s daughter went to the piano to try the music. Miss Holm was feverish with excitement, and tripped back and forth, trying the muscles of her feet. She pointed to the humps and bumps in the floor: “I’m not quite used to dancing in a circus.” Then again: “Well, the fun can begin now;” her voice was hoarse with emotion. “I’ll come in after the first ten bars,” she said to the pianist; “I’ll give you a sign when to begin.” Then she went out into a little neighboring room and waited there. The audience filed in and stood around in a circle, whispering and very curious. The schoolmaster brought the lights from the table, and stood them up in the windows. It was quite an illumination. Then there came a light knock at the door of the little room.
The rector’s daughter began to play, and the guests looked eagerly at the closed door. At the tenth bar of the music it opened, and they all clapped loudly. Miss Holm danced out, her skirt caught up with a Roman scarf. It was to be “la grande Napolitaine.” She danced on toetips, she twisted and turned. The audience gazed, dumbfounded, in admiration at the little feet that moved up and down as rapidly as a couple of drumsticks. They cheered and clapped wildly as she stood on one leg for a moment.
She called out “Quicker,” and began to sway again. She smiled and nodded and waved her arms. There was more and more motion of the body from the waist up, more gestures with the arms; the dance became more and more mimic. She could no longer see the faces of her audience; she opened her mouth, smiling so that all her teeth, a few very bad teeth, could be seen; she began to act in pantomime; she felt and knew only that she was dancing a solo--at last a solo, the solo for which she had waited so long. It was no longer the “grande Napolitaine.” It was Fenella who knelt, Fenella who implored, Fenella who suffered, the beautiful, tragic Fenella.
She hardly knew how she had risen from the floor, or how she had come from the room. She heard only the sudden ceasing of the music, and the laughter--the terrible laughter, the laughter she heard and the laughter she saw on all these faces, to which she had suddenly become alive again.
She had risen from her knees, raised her arms mechanically, from force of habit, and bowed amid shouting. In there, in the little room, she stood, supporting herself on the edge of the table. It was all so dark around and in her--so empty. She loosened the scarf from her gown with strangely stiff hands, smoothed her skirts, and went back again to the room where the audience were now clapping politely. She bowed her thanks, standing by the piano, but she did not raise her eyes. The others began to dance again, eager to resume the fun. Miss Holm went about among them, saying farewell. Her pupils pressed the paper packages containing their money into her hands. Peter Madsen’s wife helped her into her cloak, and at the door she was met by the pastor’s daughter and the curate, ready to accompany her home.
They walked along in silence. The young lady from the rectory was very unhappy about the evening’s occurrence, and wanted to excuse it somehow, but didn’t know what to say. The little dancer walked along at her side, pale and quiet.
Finally the curate, embarrassed at the silence, remarked hesitatingly: “You see, miss--these people--they don’t understand tragic art.” Miss Holm did not answer. When they came to her door she bowed and gave them her hand in silence. The rector’s daughter caught her in her arms and kissed her. “Good night, good night,” she said, her voice trembling. Then she waited outside with the curate until they saw a light in the little dancer’s room.
* * * * *
Miss Holm took off her barège gown and folded it carefully. She unwrapped the money from the paper parcels, counted it, and sewed it into a little pocket in her bodice. She handled the needle awkwardly, sitting bowed over the tiny light.
The next morning her champagne basket was lifted onto a wagon of the country post. It rained, and Miss Holm huddled down under a broken umbrella. She drew her legs up under her, and sat on her basket like a Turk. When it was time to leave, the driver ran alongside. The young lady from the rectory came running up bareheaded. She had a white basket in her hands, and said she had brought “just a little food for the journey.”
She bent down under the umbrella, caught Miss Holm’s head in her hands, and kissed her twice. The old dancer broke into sobs, and grasping the young girl’s hand, she kissed it violently.
The rector’s daughter stood and looked for a long time after the old umbrella swaying on top of the little cart.
Miss Irene Holm had announced a “spring course in modern society dances” in a little town nearby. Six pupils were promised. It was thither she was going now--to continue the thing we call Life.
THE OUTLAWS BY SELMA LAGERLÖF
[Illustration]
_Selma Lagerlöf, at one time teacher at Landskrona, has just recently been crowned the people’s favorite authoress at the national Swedish festival held in 1907. She was born in 1858, on the ancestral estate of Wärmland, where she found the material for her first stories, “Gösta Berling’s Saga,” a fantastic collection of child-reminiscences modeled after the problem-literature then in vogue, and rendered enormously popular by reason of a happy linking of the old romanticism with the new realistic truthfulness to nature._
_In 1895 she traveled abroad, and soon after produced her famous Sicilian tales. Her “Memoirs of Madame Ristori,” the great Italian tragic actress, containing important pictures of Madame Ristori’s contemporaries, Tommaso Salvini, Dumas Père, and others, have lately been translated into English._
_Selma Lagerlöf’s style, ideally represented in “The Outlaws,” the best of her tales, is calm, sure, broad, and poetic._
[Illustration]
THE OUTLAWS BY SELMA LAGERLÖF
Translated by Grace Isabel Colbron.
A peasant had killed a monk and fled to the woods. He became an outlaw, upon whose head a price was set. In the forest he met another fugitive, a young fisherman from one of the outermost islands, who had been accused of the theft of a herring net. The two became companions, cut themselves a home in a cave, laid their nets together, cooked their food, made their arrows, and held watch one for the other. The peasant could never leave the forest. But the fisherman, whose crime was less serious, would now and then take upon his back the game they had killed, and would creep down to the more isolated houses on the outskirts of the village. In return for milk, butter, arrow-heads, and clothing he would sell his game, the black mountain cock, the moor hen, with her shining feathers, the toothsome doe, and the long-eared hare.
The cave which was their home cut down deep into a mountain-side. The entrance was guarded by wide slabs of stone and ragged thorn-bushes. High up on the hillside there stood a giant pine, and the chimney of the fireplace nestled among its coiled roots. Thus the smoke could draw up through the heavy hanging branches and fade unseen into the air. To reach their cave the men had to wade through the stream that sprang out from the hill slope. No pursuer thought of seeking their trail in this merry brooklet. At first they were hunted as wild animals are. The peasants of the district gathered to pursue them as if for a baiting of wolf or bear. The bowmen surrounded the wood while the spear carriers entered and left no thicket or ravine unsearched. The two outlaws cowered in their gloomy cave, panting in terror and listening breathlessly as the hunt passed on with noise and shouting over the mountain ranges.
For one long day the young fisherman lay motionless, but the murderer could stand it no longer, and went out into the open where he could see his enemy. They discovered him and set after him, but this was far more to his liking than lying quiet in impotent terror. He fled before his pursuers, leaped the streams, slid down the precipices, climbed up perpendicular walls of rock. All his remarkable strength and skill awoke to energy under the spur of danger. His body became as elastic as a steel spring, his foot held firm, his hand grasped sure, his eye and ear were doubly sharp. He knew the meaning of every murmur in the foliage; he could understand the warning in an upturned stone.
[Illustration: =Selma Lagerlöf=]
When he had clambered up the side of a precipice he would stop to look down on his pursuers, greeting them with loud songs of scorn. When their spears sang above him in the air, he would catch them and hurl them back. As he crashed his way through tangled underbrush something within him seemed to sing a wild song of rejoicing. A gaunt, bare hilltop stretched itself through the forest, and all alone upon its crest there stood a towering pine. The red brown trunk was bare, in the thick grown boughs at the top a hawk’s nest rocked in the breeze. So daring had the fugitive grown that on another day he climbed to the nest while his pursuers sought him in the woody slopes below. He sat there and twisted the necks of the young hawks as the hunt raged far beneath him. The old birds flew screaming about him in anger. They swooped past his face, they struck at his eyes with their beaks, beat at him with their powerful wings, and clawed great scratches in his weather-hardened skin. He battled with them laughing. He stood up in the rocking nest as he lunged at the birds with his knife, and he lost all thought of danger and pursuit in the joy of the battle. When recollection came again and he turned to look for his enemies, the hunt had gone off in another direction. Not one of the pursuers had thought of raising his eyes to the clouds to see the prey hanging there, doing schoolboy deeds of recklessness while his life hung in the balance. But the man trembled from head to foot when he saw that he was safe. He caught for a support with his shaking hands; he looked down giddily from the height to which he had climbed. Groaning in fear of a fall, afraid of the birds, afraid of the possibility of being seen, weakened through terror of everything and anything, he slid back down the tree trunk. He laid himself flat upon the earth and crawled over the loose stones until he reached the underbrush. There he hid among the tangled branches of the young pines, sinking down, weak and helpless, upon the soft moss. A single man might have captured him.
* * * * *
Tord was the name of the fisherman. He was but sixteen years old, but was strong and brave. He had now lived for a whole year in the wood.
The peasant’s name was Berg, and they had called him “The Giant.” He was handsome and well-built, the tallest and strongest man in the entire county. He was broad-shouldered and yet slender. His hands were delicate in shape, as if they had never known hard work, his hair was brown, his face soft-colored. When he had lived for some time in the forest his look of strength was awe-inspiring. His eyes grew piercing under bushy brows wrinkled by great muscles over the forehead. His lips were more firmly set than before, his face more haggard, with deepened hollows at the temples, and his strongly marked cheek-bones stood out plainly. All the softer curves of his body disappeared, but the muscles grew strong as steel. His hair turned gray rapidly.
Tord had never seen any one so magnificent and so mighty before. In his imagination, his companion towered high as the forest, strong as the raging surf. He served him humbly, as he would have served a master, he revered him as he would have revered a god. It seemed quite natural that Tord should carry the hunting spear, that he should drag the game home, draw the water, and build the fire. Berg, the Giant, accepted all these services, but scarce threw the boy a friendly word. He looked upon him with contempt, as a common thief.
The outlaws did not live by pillage, but supported themselves by hunting and fishing. Had not Berg killed a holy man, the peasants would soon have tired of the pursuit and left them to themselves in the mountains. But they feared disaster for the villages if he who had laid hands upon a servant of God should go unpunished. When Tord took his game down into the valley they would offer him money and a pardon for himself if he would lead them to the cave of the Giant, that they might catch the latter in his sleep. But the boy refused, and if they followed him he would lead them astray until they gave up the pursuit.
Once Berg asked him whether the peasants had ever tried to persuade him to betrayal. When he learned what reward they had promised he said scornfully that Tord was a fool not to accept such offers. Tord looked at him with something in his eyes that Berg, the Giant, had never seen before. No beautiful woman whom he had loved in the days of his youth had ever looked at him like that; not even in the eyes of his own children, or of his wife, had he seen such affection. “You are my God, the ruler I have chosen of my own free will.” This was what the eyes said. “You may scorn me, or beat me, if you will, but I shall still remain faithful.”
From this on Berg gave more heed to the boy and saw that he was brave in action but shy in speech. Death seemed to have no terrors for him. He would deliberately choose for his path the fresh formed ice on the mountain pools, the treacherous surface of the morass in springtime. He seemed to delight in danger. It gave him some compensation for the wild ocean storms he could no longer go out to meet. He would tremble in the night darkness of the wood, however, and even by day the gloom of a thicket or a deeper shadow could frighten him. When Berg asked him about this he was silent in embarrassment.
Tord did not sleep in the bed by the hearth at the back of the cave, but every night, when Berg was asleep the boy would creep to the entrance and lie there on one of the broad stones. Berg discovered this, and although he guessed the reason he asked the boy about it. Tord would not answer. To avoid further questions he slept in the bed for two nights, then returned to his post at the door.
One night, when a snow-storm raged in the tree-tops, piling up drifts even in the heart of the thickets, the flakes swirled into the cave of the outlaws. Tord, lying by the entrance, awoke in the morning to find himself wrapped in a blanket of melting snow. A day or two later he fell ill. Sharp pains pierced his lungs when he tried to draw breath. He endured the pain as long as his strength would stand it, but one evening, when he stooped to blow up the fire, he fell down and could not rise again. Berg came to his side and told him to lie in the warm bed. Tord groaned in agony, but could not move. Berg put his arm under the boy’s body and carried him to the bed. He had a feeling while doing it as if he were touching a clammy snake; he had a taste in his mouth as if he had eaten unclean horseflesh, so repulsive was it to him to touch the person of this common thief. Berg covered the sick boy with his own warm bear-skin rug and gave him water. This was all he could do, but the illness was not dangerous, and Tord recovered quickly. But now that Berg had had to do his companion’s work for a few days, and had had to care for him, they seemed to have come nearer to one another. Tord dared to speak to Berg sometimes, as they sat together by the fire cutting their arrows.
“You come of good people, Berg,” Tord said one evening. “Your relatives are the richest peasants in the valley. The men of your name have served kings and fought in their castles.”
“They have more often fought with the rebels and done damage to the king’s property,” answered Berg.