Part 16
And now she had many boys to care for, whom she had got places in the country round about, while in the course of years she had striven to put several young geniuses from the neighborhood in the way of getting on down in the cities.
She was imperious, and gave occasion for people's talk by her unusually independent conduct; but to her face she met pure respect. She was still, at her fortieth year, delicate and slender, with undiminished, even if more quiet, fire in her eyes, and hair black as a raven.
She sought for talents in the children like four-leaved clover on the hills, as she was said to have expressed it; and when Grip, down at Thinka's, talked of Jörgen's happy escape from his surroundings as one of the few green leaves in his life, he then suppressed the most secret thought he cherished, that her little school was an offshoot propagated by his ideas.
In the twilight the next afternoon a form stole up to the fence around her schoolroom--the longing to catch, if possible, a glimpse of her drove him nearer and nearer.
Now he was standing close to the window.
An obscure form now and then moved before it.
An uncertain gleam was playing about in there from the mouth of the stove. The lamp was not yet lighted, and he heard the voice of a boy reciting something which he had learned by heart, but did not know well; it sounded like verse--it must be the children from the captain's house.
The entry door was open, and a little later he was standing in it, listening breathlessly.
He heard her voice--her voice.
"Recite it, Ingeborg--boys are so stupid in such things."
It was a poem from the Norwegian history. Ingeborg's voice came clearly:
_And that was young Queen Gyda, The flower in King Harald's spring-- Walks yet so proud a maiden Over the mountain ling?_
_Highborn was she and haughty, Her seat she would not share; The Hordaland damsels away she sent, And the Rogaland girls must fare._
_She willed a kingdom united To the outermost skerrie bare, A king for a queen, the whole of a man For a maid--and none to share._
He stood as if rooted to the floor, until he heard Inger-Johanna say, "I will now light the lamp, and give you your lessons for to-morrow."
Immediately he was away before the window.
He saw her head in the glow of the lamp just lighted--that purity in the shape of her eyebrows and in the lines of her face--that unspeakably beautiful, serious countenance, only even more characteristically stamped--that old erect bearing with the tall, firm neck.
It was a picture which had stood within him all these years--of her who should have been his if he had attained to what he ought to have attained in life--if it had offered him what it should have--and if he himself had been what he ought to have been.
He stood there stupefied as if in a dizzy intoxication--and then went away with long strides, when he heard the children coming out into the entry.
His feet bore him without his knowing it.
Now he was far down the Gilje hills, and the moonlight began to shine over the ridges. He still hurried on; his blood was excited; he saw--almost talked with her.
A sleigh came trotting slowly behind him with the bells muffled by the frost.
It was old Rist, who was sitting nodding in his fur coat, exhausted by what he had enjoyed at Gilje.
"If you are going over the lake, Grip, jump on behind," he said by way of salutation, after looking at him a little.
"I tell you, if you could only leave off drinking," he began to admonish--
Before the lamp thus--it ran in Grip's thoughts--she set the milky shade slowly down over the chimney, and a gleam passed over her delicate mouth and chin--the dark, closely fitting dress--and the forehead, while she bowed her magnificent head--she looked up--straight towards the window--
"And if you will only try to resist it--at the time the fit comes on--which is the same as the very Satan himself."
Grip was not inclined to hear any more, and it was cold to hang on over the lake.
He jumped off and let old Rist continue his talk in the idea that he was standing behind him.
It was a cold, biting wind out on the ice.
For a while he saw his own shadow, with his hands in his coat pockets, moving away, while the moon sailed through the clouds--the lamp shone so warmly on her face--
* * * * *
Three days afterwards, towards evening, Inger-Johanna stood at the window looking out. Her breast heaved with strong emotion.
Grip had died of pneumonia down at the Lövviggaard.
She had been down and taken care of him till now she had come home--talked with him, heard herself live in his wild raving, and had received his last intelligent look before it was quenched....
The moon was so cold and clear in the heavens. The whole landscape with the mountains and all the great pure forms shone magically white in the frost--white as in the snow-fields of the lofty mountains....
"The power of the spirit is great," she said, sighing in sorrowful, yet trembling meditation--"he gave me something to live on."
THE END
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Transcriber's Note
Footnotes have been placed at end of their respective chapter.
Obvious punctuation and spelling errors have been repaired.