The Road Leads On

CHAPTER ONE

The third generation now guides the destiny of Jensen’s great store in Segelfoss. Originally founded by one Per Jensen, dubbed Per paa Bua, it continued under the direction of his son Theodore, also “paa Bua,” who traded far and wide, stood forth as a true son of progress and was rain or blue sky to all who crossed his path. Nor was that so very long ago, either; people in town do not have to strain their minds to remember him, for he was contemporary with the old Lieutenant’s son, Willatz, who simply went bothering his head about music and came to nought in this world.

Theodore, on the contrary, came to a very great deal. His achievements could be listed at length: village burgomaster, heavy tax-payer, a merchant trading in a grand manner hitherto unknown, once even with a commercial traveler to take in the towns of northern Norway, three men in the store itself, and an office manager to keep his books for him. An active fellow, that Theodore paa Bua, aspiring, waxing ever more prosperous, owner of a fish-sloop and two herring-seines, each with its boat and full equipment, growing more and more kindly with the years, taking a paternal interest in those who were feeling life’s pinch, and in time becoming well-liked. In bad years for both sea and soil, many a one was compelled to go to Theodore paa Bua for the bread to keep him alive, and this could not be denied. But, as a matter of course, they would first have to pay him extravagant homage, or, at least, to wag their heads, overwhelmed by all his power and wealth. “A single sack of flour?” he might ask. “How long do you think that will last that family of yours?” Then, hearing the poor wretch reply that he dared not think of going into him for more, Theodore might turn to one of his clerks and say: “Let him have two sacks!” And, after issuing such an order, it was only right and proper that he should inwardly swell to the bursting point.

He had cast eyes in the direction of Frøken Holmengraa, the mill-owner’s daughter, but nothing ever came of that. No, in that particular Theodore paa Bua’s vanity had overshot its mark and, since his office manager had been merely a bauble to flash in the fair one’s eyes, his first move was to let the poor chap go. There was more to it than that, however: though he continued to maintain his balance and promptly saw the error of his ways, he shortly took advantage of the situation and, one fine day, married the sexton’s juvenile daughter who had by no means spurned his courtship. Thus, in spite of his folly in certain directions, Theodore proved that he had a remarkably level head on his shoulders, for he gained a delightful wife, ardent and handsome as a young filly, and if it happened that she was no more than seventeen, she was really sufficiently developed for all that.

How silly the mill-owner’s daughter had been! Her father’s affairs had been running steadily downhill of late and there she might have struck a bargain, accepted Theodore paa Bua and stepped into a new life of splendour and security. Snobbishness and a devil-may-care pride alone had caused her to stand thus in her own light, and little enough did she gain for that pride of hers, for in the end she found her level as an ordinary housekeeper in Tromsø.

Thus badly had things gone for the once mighty mill-folk, Herr Holmengraa and his daughter Mariane.

But what then of Segelfoss Manor and all its vast estate? The old Lieutenant had been a true nobleman; in his day he had put up a church for the people of Segelfoss, had donated portraits of the Apostles for the altar and a basin of sterling silver for the baptismal fount and everything else he could think of. He had had no less than seven-and-twenty house servants and his enormous lands under cultivation had extended to the very boundary of the neighbouring parish—a glorious and a princely domain. His wife had been a titled lady from Hanover, Germany and together they had lived in the great white house with its tall pillars, a palace which could be seen from steamers out at sea. Proud and upright he had been, a man of truth and courage. To indicate the worth of a signature, it had been said: “As good as that Willatz Holmsen’s!” His word had held like an oath, the nod of his head had been like a benediction upon his people about him.

But to what avail had all that been? The time came when that sort of thing didn’t go any longer. The Holmsens of Segelfoss were doomed. The fate of the third generation. They persisted in living along like grand folk with not a single penny coming in. And it took no end of money to pay off that house full of servants and to scatter charity throughout the parish, for travel and for the grand receptions such as were held when Carl XV came touring the north or when the prefect and his council stopped with them over the Sessions. And, added to all that, were finally the funds despatched to their son, living the life of a gentleman as a student of music in costly schools abroad. Things were bound to come to a bad end with them. As for the old Lieutenant and his lady, they both died and got out of the way in time, but their son, young Willatz Holmsen—why, he had nothing left to do but to sell out.... That had been before Segelfoss had grown into a regular town, before land and houses had been worth an established price, the very development which had given Theodore paa Bua his chance. For no sooner had young Willatz turned everything movable into cash than Theodore began casting his eyes in the direction of the house with its tall white pillars, that palace, that country seat of kings, and in this his vanity was hugely triumphant. He became sole owner of the glories of Segelfoss Manor.

Yes, those had been hard times, wretchedly hard times up in Nordland. Cheap fish, deep sleep and depression—not a farthing over sixty skilling a barrel for prime round-fish. But, for one who had means left over from a former day, it was no trick at all to acquire a palace and land for city lots all up and down the sea. Of course it must not be assumed that Theodore paa Bua was so bloated with wealth that his purchase left no hole in his pocket—as a matter of fact, he found himself sweating no end to meet his payments—but an extension of time was his for less than the asking, so far into the depths had this Holmsen descended. A pity it was how much young Willatz owed both at home and abroad! Yes, and he was obliged to charter a steamer to transport all the handsome furnishings and costly works of art of all kinds from the halls of Segelfoss Manor south to a possible market. A tragic evidence indeed of the power of life and of fate.

And what then were Theodore paa Bua and his wife to do with that palace of theirs? They had a table and chairs for one of the parlours and beds for a bedroom or two. But in this palace there were two grand reception halls downstairs to say nothing of twenty or more guest rooms upstairs, and the plush carpets in some of these rooms were red, and those in others were blue; and the walls of one of the grand salons downstairs were done with a golden floral design, and the walls of the other were hung with pure silk. But nowhere was there to be found a solitary chair to sit upon. After he had become burgomaster, Theodore put one of these salons to good use as a council chamber and went far to impress his fellow townsmen with this meeting-place straight out of wonderland....

A daughter was born to them and the mother was overjoyed. The father had taken the trouble to order some fireworks from Trondhjem but declined to set them off. The following year they had another daughter, a blessed new creation which again brought joy to the mother, though the father, viewing the situation with a practical eye, failed to share her elation. Again no fireworks were set off. But at length, when the father was over forty and the mother was barely half his age, they had a son who pleased them both, a ten-pound baby with much hair on his head and real strength in his grip, a robust little chap. That evening the father got out a certain sky-rocket he had hidden away and tried to touch it off. Nothing happened, however. He struggled with live coals and direct flame, but the thing refused to go off. Oh well, all that meant was that the powder had gone mouldy with the years.

The boy was christened Gordon Tidemand, a name which the mother with all her book-learning—she was the sexton’s daughter, bear in mind—had run across some place or other. As a name that was quite all right, there was nothing worth arguing about there, and the lad did not die; on the contrary, he throve, ate and drank like any healthy child, but in time he developed brown eyes. No one was able to understand it—brown eyes! And that was quite all right, too; his blue-eyed parents regarded the situation as an interesting freak of nature and mentioned it quite openly to others: “Will you simply look at what brown eyes he has!” they said. They did nothing to conceal the fact of those sparkling brown little eyes.

But then one day the father was assailed by frightful misgivings.

Had it been back in the days of his hot-blooded youth, Theodore paa Bua would surely have held his wife responsible for those brown eyes. But as things now were with him, taken up every minute of his day with that enormous business of his and all his other affairs, to say nothing of his repeated exasperation over being the father of all those little girls—an endless procession of girls—he again made the best of the situation and used sound common sense. On one or two occasions he had thumped the table at his wife, and he had gone so far as to squint searchingly into her face each time she called for help from the warehouse to slaughter a calf or smoke some salmon, but further than that he had never gone. Nor had he even for a moment considered dismissing that handsome devil of a Gypsy lad who worked for him down at the warehouse and who was such an able hand with the salmon net.

A practical, superior sort of chap, that Theodore paa Bua, even though he was hardly the man for such an attitude, hardly one of those whose tombstone’s are forever cluttered up with fulsome inscriptions. No, he was simply an honest fellow with a slightly twisted sense of ethics. His fireworks had failed to go off; not a single rocket had he been able to despatch with a blazing thrust at the stars. But what of it? In truth, the stars are well beyond the reach of mortal man! And was it, after all, worth while to get rid of the Gypsy and thus only lose a good servant? Who could trap the salmon as cleverly as he? Who would bring in an unexpectedly large profit in fish at the expense of getting his hands all covered with blisters from handling jellyfish, as he? Who would turn out at all hours of the day or night to meet the steamers and ferry ashore all those piles of freight for the store, as he? Furthermore, didn’t that Gypsy lad, Otto, come of good people in their own way, too? He belonged to the great family of Alexanders who were from Hungary and who were known all through Nordland, wherever they went with that houseboat of theirs.

Moreover, how could Theodore tell? What proof did he have? None save a pair of shining brown eyes and a certain suspicious way his wife had had about her ever since that Gypsy had come to Segelfoss. It was something, was it not, that a new light had kindled in her eyes, that she tiptoed up and downstairs, that she had taken to singing rather frequently of late, and that she was wearing a little gold medallion on a black velvet ribbon about her neck, that little child of nature! Further, if the truth be told, there had once been a desperate embrace involving a kiss and a fumbling of hands one evening out in the smokehouse with Theodore spying on the pair. And last of all, there had been a repetition of the affair one moonlight night right there on the wharf in front of the warehouse door. But these were all, so really what proof did he have! Father Theodore reasoned it out somewhat as follows: In any event, it wasn’t a girl this time and even if everything had not been exactly right and proper, the sin was not on his soul.

Time passed and a governess was brought in for the children, a lady—again if the truth be told—with whom Theodore might sport about a bit and to whom he might pay some open attention in order to prove that he, too, was a man of parts and to indicate to his wife that he could play the same game. Of course he could—just see there! He escorted the lady to church without his wife and, when Christmas came, he presented the lady with a sterling silver napkin-ring. Please, now let his wife chew on that a while! He was simply indifferent to what the world might say of his actions; it had not been he, had it, who had brought a brown-eyed child into the world! Well then, folk would certainly be on his side! And quite apart from all that, the masters of Segelfoss Manor had a way of doing about as they liked!

But his young wife followed his example and thereafter it was the Gypsy Otto who took her to church. There they both sat in the traditional manorial pew to defy all public opinion, even though Otto Alexander was only a Gypsy and a common warehouse hand. Hm, Theodore paa Bua must have thought to himself at that—the situation is growing intolerable! And the Gypsy was through then and there.

Ay, for autumn was at hand and the salmon fishing was over for that year.

But Theodore was not a bad sort; he was willing to balance accounts. He had a plain talk with his wife and mentioned a new arrangement. The children were growing up rapidly and the little girls, in particular, were old enough now to have a regular tutor, a really learned man. Oh that rascal, Theodore paa Bua! That cunning scamp! He was no Cupid’s votary; he was really bored to death with trying to feign an affair with the governess and he was unable to go on simulating a deeply wounded vanity— enough of that sort of thing! No, he was really not so bad.

And it was a splendid solution to the family problem when the governess went her way and a male tutor arrived in the house. Now the children could get some real knowledge into those heads of theirs. Gordon Tidemand, particularly, was in need of manly instruction, brilliant and precocious as he had already proven himself to be, his mind a searching flame. And in time he went to Trondhjem, first to a school where he took first honours, later serving his business apprenticeship as a clerk behind a counter. After that, he spent two years in Germany where he studied “all that pertained to the profession,” such as mercantile trading, accountancy, banking and foreign exchange—pompous and superfluous stuff for a mere coastal trader from Segelfoss, but liberalizing and essential for a cultured man of affairs. Theodore paa Bua was doing his level best to ape the ways of the old Lieutenant by giving his son a complete and refined education abroad, and, since he had made no end of money of late on a couple of herring coups, he could well afford this unusual expense. And not only that: he even assigned his son, that mere youth, the task of buying up some fine old furniture for the halls and parlours of Segelfoss Manor like that which had stood there before—gold-framed mirrors which reached from floor to ceiling, chairs and sofas designed with gilded sphinxes and lion’s paws, paintings and vases, tables and inlaid cabinets; and many an odd piece did Gordon Tidemand pick up and send home in enormous packing cases. It was indeed a spectacle to see how the interior of the palace was beginning to blossom again in all its former splendour. A hodge-podge of ornamental pieces, some imitation, some genuine, clocks which naturally did not run, chandeliers with countless broken prisms, bronzes smeared over with cheap patina, certain pieces of authentic furniture in fine old woods, to say nothing of the many beds ornate with angels and whatnot in the guest rooms. The grandeur of the new furnishings went so far beyond all the old stuff young Willatz had carted away that Theodore and his wife hardly knew what to do with it. No, they decided, they would have to leave things standing where they were until their son returned home.

* * * * *

In London Gordon Tidemand met a young compatriot of his, one Romeo Knoff, likewise abroad to acquire a maze of theory. The latter was from a big trading station in Helgeland, the centre of a populous district, a regular port of call for the coasting steamers and stylishly equipped with dovecots, peacock alleys, a tower on the main building, a warehouse and a ship quay of solid concrete. Not always, however, had the elder Knoff been as solid as his ship quay; not until there had been a couple of remunerative bankruptcies had he emerged to carry on his extensive trading in Lofoten fish, his cooperage and boat-building enterprises, along with divers other activities. A man of energy, a mighty magnate there on his native heath. And the father of two children, a son Romeo and a daughter Juliet—Romeo and Juliet!

After their meeting in London, Romeo Knoff and Gordon Tidemand spent much time in each other’s company; they were of an age and they became close friends, studied the same subjects and were thus both products of the same quality-type of culture. They returned home to Norway together and agreed to exchange visits in due time.

Theodore paa Bua was surely no man to oppose the visit of so polished a gentleman as young Knoff; on the contrary, he felt himself distinctly honoured and was much concerned over the coming event. The Knoffs had originally hailed from abroad, but for several generations now had been traders there in Nordland. Theodore, on the other hand, was Norwegian through and through, had descended from Per paa Bua, and was thus, as it were, no more than a last season’s product, lacking all glamour save that which was part of the Manor itself as the mark of its former owners—the renowned family of Holmsens. But it was a happy stroke of fortune, at least, which had elevated so local a phenomenon as Theodore paa Bua to his present manorial status.

Romeo arrived with his sister Juliet and, even from the steamer, they gained an immediate impression of grandeur—the Manor, bulky behind its pillared front, the long avenue of arching birches, the belfry astride the storehouse roof. Later, when they arrived on the place itself, and stepped inside that magnificent mansion, the two young Knoffs simply threw up their hands and Frøken Juliet said: “Great Heavens, we live in no such style!” Any wonder then, that Theodore paa Bua swelled with pride!

Upon leaving for home, Romeo and Juliet took both Gordon Tidemand and his two sisters along with them, and again did father Theodore have occasion to plume himself.

For several years the young people were constantly exchanging visits and their relationship became familiar indeed. The end of it was a double wedding: Romeo made off with Theodore’s daughter Lillian and Juliet Knoff came to Segelfoss to live. An even exchange is no robbery. It was only Marna, Theodore’s younger daughter, who was left out of it and who remained unmarried for a time.

* * * * *

The town had been quite small to begin with. Segelfoss Manor had been the nucleus, but this lay isolated a fair distance back from the sea. Down by the waterfront stood Theodore’s mighty store and about it the rest of the town. One by one, a number of craftsmen had arrived from the south and settled down: a tailor, a photographer, a blacksmith, a baker and a butcher. Several small tradesmen had also settled there, but the latter were finding it difficult to earn a livelihood. The original butcher had been compelled to give up, but another had come to take his place. A watchmaker had turned up in town one day and had found a good bit of work getting all the old clocks up at the Manor to run, but upon completion of that task he had been forced to depart. He had no other choice....

But Tobias Holmengraa, the man who had come from Mexico to establish his great mill by the river, he had been responsible for no end of activity and local expansion. During his regime, many outsiders had come to settle in town and the place had grown by leaps and bounds. But Holmengraa’s hour of triumph had been, after all, short-lived; Segelfoss and its immediate environs were too small and too impoverished and the distance to cities and towns needing flour too great. Further than that, a flood of hard times engulfed him, he and his workers had a falling-out and all activity perished.

But for all that, the town still advanced step by step; a couple of new buildings last year, a building or two this year, the district doctor chose this as his headquarters, and that meant a drugstore, too. After a span of years have elapsed, just see what we have here now: a post-office, a telegraph station, a Grand Hotel, a circuit courthouse, a bank and a cinema. Left over from a bygone day, a church and parsonage, but as the perfect fruit of today, a schoolhouse and a home for the schoolmaster, a lawyer and a sheriff, each with his separate establishment, a police department and a police station, a little printshop and the offices of the Segelfoss News. Aside from these, there was little that one could expect. Spreading out through the parish lay hosts of small farms and cottages, and the people lived on the yield from soil and sea.

Little remained of the original village and its people. A few whose history dated back to the regime of the old Lieutenant or the era of the mill still survived, but these were few in number and played no part in the present life of the town. They had hidden themselves away and were living secluded lives; like the ghosts of a vanished age, they were for the most part abroad only after dark, existed as the children of night and were glad to remain unseen. They no longer had sons and daughters over whom to watch and worry, for these had grown up and gone out into the world. Just man and wife remained now, alone, forgotten. Some of the men still went in for a bit of home fishing, others found occupation in cleaning up the town at night, two of the real old men were grave-diggers attached to the cemetery.

But once there was a time when these were human beings just like the others who live here, and not so very long ago, either. Theodore paa Bua was alive in those days, but now he is alive no more. One by one they die off and only the real old ones remain.... And at the hour of twilight of an evening, the old women come together about the pump to exchange their mighty memories: the mill was running then with work and good pay for their men, there were clothes to wear and a fire in the stove, coffee steaming in the pot and treacle to pour on their porridge. Now and then God was kind to them and there was a run of herring in the fjord or a good year for cod at Lofoten. And now and then there was a birth or a wedding or a funeral in their neighbourhood and all was so good, so blissful. And now there is that Lassen; he used to be from here and now at last he’s got to be bishop and councillor to the King, just like Joseph at the court of Pharaoh in the land of Egypt.

No Grand Hotel, no cinema, no bank here then. Ah yes, but those were the days!

CHAPTER TWO

Life at Segelfoss was altered considerably under the new regime. The daily routine was on a somewhat grander scale with far less contact with the village folk. Gordon Tidemand chose to drive back and forth between the store and the Manor in a light phaeton, though the distance was anything but great, and he had put on other grand airs, as well. For instance, what business had he to wear those yellow gloves for so short a drive on a summer day? And he had invested in a smart little motor-boat without having a sign of practical use for it, simply for the purpose of racing out to meet incoming mail steamers; after circling about and calling out a couple of words to the captain, he would head straight in for shore. His point in this was possibly merely to show off for the benefit of the passengers lining the rails. Indeed he was a handsome fellow; there was something of the look of a foreigner about him, with his swarthy skin and dark hair, his aquiline nose, his sparkling brown eyes and his firm narrow mouth. He was always smartly attired, his shoes highly polished. No, here was no Per paa Bua, nor a true son of Theodore, either.

During his father’s lifetime the seine-boats had fared forth regularly every year, each exploring its own corner of the sea, ofttimes twice a year, in the fall before the Lofoten fishing, and in the spring after the codfishing was over. The buying and selling of fish, Lofoten cod or herring trapped by his seiners, the salting down, the packing, the shipping—these were the interests upon which Theodore’s mind had fed and from which he had derived his fortune. But these were not the undertakings of which Gordon Tidemand had learned in school or off on his travels abroad; his fund of knowledge consisted of accountancy, foreign commerce and international monetary exchange, subjects which were quite irrelevant to the running of his type of business. What good did it do him to set up a refined and complicated system of accounting for his store which could never under any set of circumstances yield him the profits attendant upon a single lucky stroke of his seiners? He insisted upon maintaining a commercial traveler to carry his line through Nordland, though little business seemed to follow in the fellow’s wake. One day he summoned this salesman to his private office and pointed to a chair. Big business executive that he was, he was polite but terse in his remarks.

“You haven’t been doing much business,” he began.

“No, that’s the way it looks.”

“That last line of ours ought to be going better. Silk nightgowns.”

“Yes,” said the man, “but folks simply shake their heads when I show them.”

“It’s a line from one of the finest houses.”

“Folks up here still seem to prefer to sleep in flannel. They’re old-fashioned, I guess.”

“Well, how about those flannel skirts? The latest mode, you know.”

“Yes,” answered the man with a shake of the head. “But up here, the women would rather have silk.”

“Hm.”

“Wool underneath and silk outside,” said the man with a laugh.

The big business executive frowned at this sign of amusement. “At any rate, you aren’t doing enough business. Something must be the matter. Are you drawing enough for traveling expenses?”

“Yes, I have the same as the rest of us out on the road.”

“But,” his chief said suddenly, “you yourself might possibly equip yourself a little better. Do you call on your trade in clothes like these you are wearing?”

“They are practically brand-new. My last suit possibly got to looking a bit shabby, but this one—”

“Where did you buy it?”

“In Tromsø. At the finest clothing store in Tromsø.”

“Perhaps you ought to have polished brass corners on your sample cases,” said the chief.

The man stared. “You don’t mean it?” he said, aghast.

“I don’t know, it was just a thought. But it isn’t simply a question of sample cases and clothes, it’s a question of general get-up. I’m not sure you grasp my point. Have you ever given a thought to the matter of style and manner? You are the representative of a big house and you should act and appear accordingly. That shirt and that necktie—pardon me for mentioning them!” The chief nodded to indicate that his reference had been sufficient.

But possibly there was some serious flaw in the man’s sense of fashion and progress, possibly he was short on the power discrimination. For instance, he did not even realize that at this point the interview had been concluded. He said: “You see, when we’re on the road, we often have to carry our bags ourselves. Sometimes we miss ship connections and have to travel by motorboat. We can’t always appear spic and span, sometimes we look pretty mussy.”

The chief remained silent.

“And sometimes we aren’t even as clean as we might be when we arrive in certain places.”

The chief remarked in definite conclusion: “All right, but just think over my words. We will really have to inject a little—”

Nevertheless, Gordon Tidemand was not all show and vanity; he had learned, of course, that clothes and a neat appearance are matters of keen significance, but he did not wander off and get lost in the maze of this doctrine. For instance, he was quick to heed his mother’s advice and immediately got busy laying plans to send out a seining expedition.

This mother of his was in many ways worth her weight in gold. She might easily have passed for his sister, so young and good-looking she still was, so joyous, so warmblooded, so clever. She was said to have taken the bit in her teeth during the early years of her marriage, for she had soon lost all interest in her husband, but that had been a good while ago and was already quite forgotten. She was known as Gammelmoderen,¹ but that was a stupid nickname, for it had simply been her husband, that Theodore paa Bua, who had grown old before his time and who had allowed life and marriage to use him up. She, herself, was as good as ever today.

¹ An affectionate term applied to any older woman who is sweet and helpful by nature. Though literally it means “old mother,” the adjective “gammel” has the same affectionate connotation as “old” in “old son,” “old man,” etc.— Translator.

“When will you send out the seines, and who have you got to boss the crews?” she asked.

Gordon Tidemand was so clever with writing materials; he had prepared a list of all his father’s old seiners and began reading it off aloud.

“You’ve written it down to the last comma, haven’t you?” laughed his mother. “But your father used to carry all that around in his head. And what’s that, have you included Nikolai in your list? But he’s been dead for some time now, hasn’t he?”

“Oh well, we’ll simply strike out his name and stick in Altmulig there in his place.”

“But Altmulig is too old. No, you must have a young crew out with the seines.”

“He’s old enough, but he’s tough and wiry. I’d trust that fellow with anything.”

“But we can’t get along without him here on the place.”

“We’ll manage somehow,” concluded her son.

Gammelmoderen was well acquainted with Altmulig and she knew what a quick head he had on his shoulders. Many was the time she had talked with him and listened to his colourful tales. He was an old sailor, a vagabond, who had turned up one day and asked for work. He was thin and surprisingly nimble; he had wandered about the world no end and could certainly tell tall tales. When asked his port of hail, he had claimed the entire world. But where had he come from last? From Latvia.

The chief, Gordon Tidemand, had grown to like the man in the course of their very first interview there in his office. The stranger had promptly dropped his hat to the floor upon entering the room and had stood there with body erect. Ah, discipline!—to which Gordon Tidemand stood in no way opposed. No, he was not the kind upon whom courtesy is likely to be wasted. More than that, he was helpful by nature and had once found a place in his stockroom for a youth from Finmark for the single reason that the lad could play the fiddle. Yes, but here stood a man with skill of a different order. His name? He had mentioned it, otherwise stating that he had been called “alt mulig” (everything possible) from Captain to murderer during his lifetime, so his real name meant nothing, he said. But what was his line of work? Oh, probably it would be best to set him down simply as an alt-muligmand, as a general handy man, as thus he could do anything he might be put to, perhaps even a little bit more.

“All right, then, you may stay!” the chief had said with a smile.

Nor had he ever found cause to regret having taken this man into his service. The old fellow had soon proven his worth in many quarters, had, for instance, extinguished a serious chimney fire there on the place with no more than a bucket of common kitchen salt—the devil and all if that hadn’t conquered the flames! He had tinkered about with the meat-grinder, the wash-wringer and the laundry mangle which were out of repair and had made them as good as new. Without being told, he had scraped and oiled the boats and what tools he could lay his hands on. Then he had reconstructed that filthy old tumbledown pigsty and, with sand and cement, had made it over into a neat, attractive shelter. “Altmulig, come give us a hand!” folk would call out to him whenever a window might happen to stick.

Moreover, he must certainly have been a most deeply religious man, for he would cross himself frequently and the life he lived was one of quiet meditation. No one had ever heard him singing or shouting outlandishly about town, or firing off that revolver of his.

* * * * *

Children were born to the people up at the Manor—two children in three years, and later there were more. Vigour and diligence no end up above, the young mistress tall and slender as a serpent. Then suddenly her figure would begin bulging like that of a leech; ay, how suddenly the change would take place! Mad with youth they were, this couple; they could hardly budge without love, so what could the end of it be but children? Gammelmoderen now had grandchildren to swing on her arm and it began to look as though she would never again be able to call her time her own.

And children were born in the cottages and on the small farms round about; folk married early in life, and in no time were poor, which was exactly what could be expected.

For example, there was Jørn Mathildesen, named thus after his mother, Mathilde, for the reason that he had had no father—well, he married the girl Valborg from Øira. They owned not the tiniest plot of ground and they hadn’t a King’s copper to live on. For clothes all they had were a few old rags they had picked up here and there. But, even so, they got married and settled down in a rickety shack.—“For why did you do it and go throwing yourself away?” folk inquired of Valborg.—“Was I to go on waiting for another forever?” she asked in return.—“And you so pretty and all,” folk said. “If you’re twenty you’re never a day.”—“No,” Valborg answered, “but they began with me the year I was confirmed.”

They begged a bit, did Jørn and Valborg, and they must have done a bit of stealing on the side, too, for a sharp eye was kept on them whenever they entered the shops in town.—“Well, what will you have today?” the shopkeepers would ask, jocosely.—“Have I no leave to come in?” Jørn would answer straight back. Whenever they would leave him in peace, it might be that Jørn would inquire the price of a bit of red and green dress material which had happened to catch his fancy, or to ask the cost of a pound of American bacon. But what good did it do to tell him what things were worth? the dealers might grumble. The fact was, he never bought anything, did he? “Have I no leave to ask?” Jørn would answer.

A wretched existence for Jørn and Valborg, but at least they had no children—no, unfortunately, they didn’t have even a child to their name.

But children there were on the farms throughout the countryside, of these alone there were plenty, and they were no mean blessing. Without children there would be no laughter heard one year to the next, and without children no tiny groping hands and no droll questions to answer. Otherwise, poverty and desolation reigned over each rural home. When autumn came, folk might, of course, slaughter a bit of a sheep and, God be praised, there were still potatoes in the house and milk to be had from the byre, so it really wasn’t so bad to be a farmer in a small way, with three or four kine and a horse in the barn and a few smaller creatures besides. But did they own these things? They were in debt for more than these and their entire farms were worth; they were deep in the books of the merchants in town, they were far behind in their taxes, they were living in tumble-down homes. And it would help little were they to offer a cow or a pair of sheep as a payment against those enormous debts of theirs, and whenever the fishing was lean at Lofoten, they only got in deeper. No, they had little enough to offer Jørn and Valborg when these beggars were making their rounds. And another result was, one poor soul would help out another with a half-sack of potatoes or a pail of milk. And thus folk took full pity one upon another and showed such a splendid spirit of mutual helpfulness as must have delighted the angels.

Honest, everyday people, these, content to be what they were. They lived according to the keen good sense of their forefathers, though they lived so close by the town with all its people of rank and quality and the new imported customs. No thank you, the people of the countryside still lived as they had once learned to live and slow they were to adopt such fancy new articles as white collars for the neck of a man and cut tobacco for an honest man’s pipe.

Ay, the old ways, those are the best! Look there at those boat-sheds of theirs, those little sheds on stilts! Surely they differ in no particular from those which stood here eight centuries ago when Sverre ruled the land, though they still answer every practical purpose. The walls are open strips of birch and aspen, the roofs are of turf and birchbark. And if someone there is who imagines that these boathouse walls ought to be fitted tight against the weather, the reply is obvious that much would be lost thereby, since it is wind blowing in through the cracks which airs out the sails and the fishing gear left hanging there to dry. And observe those massive wooden locks on the doors of the sheds with their prehistoric wooden keys! No iron there, not a single thing which will rust. And when, at last, lock and key have become rotten, what a simple matter it will be to fit new ones at not a single penny’s cost, with the expenditure of only a little time and some deftness of hand—an interesting evening’s work for any ordinary man....

These people were industrious in their own way, too, though they were guided by no mad urge. They busied themselves with cutting the winter’s fuel supply or with a bit of the usual home fishing, each at its proper season of the year. The children tended the flocks and performed whatever other simple tasks might arise; during the berry season, they would go out into the fields, often in foul weather when the autumn’s cold bit deep, often absent the whole day without food. Cranberries and cloudberries, these they would sell in town and bring the money home. Early in life they had learned to amuse themselves with small matters and had suffered no harm in that. Their mothers and sisters looked after house and byre, they spun the wool from the sheep, prepared the loom and wove a glorious thick material for underwear and outer garments, dyed certain balls of yarn and added bright borders and colourful designs to the dresses intended as Sunday best for their little girls and themselves. No living soul was there whom they envied; they could make themselves fine for church— indeed! For there were their Sunday clothes!

Contented farm-folk; poor but contented, they were. For they were accustomed to this way of living and to no other. And there was frequent occasion for merriment in the homes, too. The children, it took so little to make them laugh and squeal, and, often as not, the grown-ups would share in their fun. Evening was the time for games and stories and splendid it was, too, if only to have Karel i Roten drop in, he who was such a master at singing and yodeling, or even old Mons-Karina who chewed tobacco but who steadfastly refused to admit that she did. But it was entertainment flavoured somewhat with eeriness whenever Aase the Lapp would stop by. Ay, though she always arrived with a greeting of “Peace!” and departed with “Peace be with you!” she was none the less regarded as a fearsome person.

Folk were so wedded to their superstitious beliefs in trollfolk and goblins and creatures of the underworld. There might be a man who had dreamed something, another who had been given a sign—so many ominous and unfathomable things as there might be in the world!... There was, for example, that man named Solmund. One evening he was carting home wood and, according to his story, it was frightfully dark in the forest. As he was making his last trip and was homeward bound, he was walking along behind the load. Suddenly he spied the form of a woman seated atop the load of wood in the cart. He was at a loss to understand how in the world she had got there, but it certainly did not seem right to him and he began straightway praying to God to protect both himself and his horse. Coming within sight of home, the horse suddenly lurched forward into a gallop, and ran away. That female creature up there must have prodded it with something, she herself hopping to the ground and standing there to face him.—“Is that you, Aase?” he asked.

“Ay,” she replied.—“Well, what do you want with me?” asked Solmund.—“I want that you shall have me,” answered Aase.—“I’ll have you out of my way!” he said. “Fee-faw-fum! Clear out, do you hear!”—“You’ll have your pay for this!” said Aase. And from that day on the man’s horse was shy. Solmund, poor soul, he had stumbled into the grip of fate....

Aase was tall and dark. Her father, it was said, was a Gypsy, her mother a Lapp. She would always appear in Lappish garb—furs sewed together into a kind of smock—and stride straight into the room like a very queen, proud of her comely person, serious and deliberate of speech. She was an unusually handsome woman, but, like all Lapps, extremely filthy. Some years ago she had probably been a beauty indeed, both in face and in figure. Her face was that of a Lapp and she dressed in Lappish garb, though her outer garment was not embellished with the screamingly bright embroidery and decorative flourishes common to her race—hers was a simple brown smock. From the left side of her belt, from the left side only, there hung a jingling cluster of ceremonial articles: a knife, scissors, sewing implements consisting of a bone needle and a bundle of sinews for thread, a pipe and tobacco, fire-steel and punk, silver gew-gaws and a number of mysterious articles shaped from bone. Aase was forever wandering. God knew when she ever slept! She would simply put in a sudden appearance. She might be in South Parish and in North Parish, both in the same day, though she traveled only afoot....

Here now she suddenly turns up in a cottage....

With the arrival of Aase, the children immediately subside and sneak off into the corners. She has come on no special errand and it is seldom that she asks for anything. Nevertheless the mother of the house makes haste to offer her a few beans of coffee and a bit of tobacco simply as a token of friendly esteem, and it is no less than ordinary politeness which leads the father of the house to inquire whence she has come and whither she is bound. Receiving the appropriate replies, he goes further and asks: “Have you heard as how that Solmund and that horse of his were both drowned in the falls just yesterday as it was?”—“Ay,” Aase answers, but it appears as though the matter is not of the slightest concern to her.—“But a danger it was to be driving that horse so near the falls. Didn’t that Solmund know as much?”—“You ask me and I ask you!” Aase answers.—“And then as to that poor Tobias as was burned from house and home this very week as it was? Have you heard anything more about the fire, you who go about meeting so many folk?”—“No,” Aase answers.... With dreamy eyes she sits there thinking thoughts of her own; now and then she glances up and her brown eyes are eery and fathomless. What is on her mind? Nothing at all, perhaps. Or perhaps it is only that her heart is heavy, perhaps she is suffering for love. She is unmarried and lives in a hut together with an old, old Lapp, so old that it is impossible that he should be her lover. Well, but it must be, then, that Aase is a girl who is doomed to be barren—barren at something past thirty, though still a handsome creature. There is something so strange about Aase; though in a drawling way all her own, she speaks good peasant Norwegian, and true it is that she knows more than other Lapps; she is not without her gifts. She reads but little and she writes not at all. Happening in at some dance and being offered something to drink, she always calls for whiskey and seems able to stand no end of it....

At length she rises to her feet. “Well, so now I’m on my way again,” she says.

“Ho, what’s your need for hurry? You’ve time and plenty,” the father of the house says to be polite.

“I’m on my way to North Parish. There’s a child badly scalded I’m to see.”

At which Mother uncomfortably exclaims: “Oh, then hurry you must! Ay, hurry you must!”

“I arrive at my hour exactly!” says Aase, nodding. “Peace be with you!”

Mother follows her outside with something hidden beneath her apron to give her. When she returns, Father eyes her apprehensively and asks: “Did she spit?”

“No.”

The whole house heaves a sigh of relief, the children emerge from their corners and promptly begin teasing each other and giving imitations.—“My, but your face was white!” says Big Brother to that tiny wee sister of his.—“It was?” she squeals. “Why, I could have walked right up and touched her!”

But oh no! Aase had appeared as slightly more awesome than that! Baby Sister had had no more the courage to go up and touch her than, for instance, her parents had had....

Whether deserving of it or not, Aase enjoyed the reputation of being able to rid folk of their ailments; she was said to have effected a number of remarkable cures in the case of both people and animals and it was believed that she could bring misfortune upon a household by merely spitting on the doorstep. And she gave herself magic airs. “I arrive at my hour exactly!” she had said. She was sent for by folk who had faith in her powers, and no one there was who dared utter a word against her, as that would be the surest way of inviting her revenge.

“Sh! Still now!” says Mother. “Quiet your mouths about that Aase! Outside she can stand and hear right through the wall!”

“I say only that Baby Sister was afraid,” the lad mumbles.

The other children enter the argument at this point, promptly taking sides with the youngest. “It was Big Brother himself who really was afraid!”

Then they all laugh mischievously and Big Brother is made to feel small.... They cuddled up together, became enemies, then friends again....

What a blessing it was to have children! What would a home be without children? A hollow tree-trunk, no more. Afford to have them? Somehow they’d manage to afford them, the parents would decide. And if it were a question of their growing so fast that it would be impossible to keep them in clothes, well—they would be cold in winter anyway, so what if they were likewise a bit chilly in summer? And if the house itself lacked certain comforts, the main point was these children had never been spoiled. During the rains of spring and autumn every turf roof leaked a bit and it would be necessary to set pots to catch the drops. And it was always worst up in the loft where the children slept—there they would lie with cups and pans on all sides of them on the bed. But were they disheartened or petulant when they happened to upset one of these pans and soaked the bed with rain water? No, they would set up a momentary commotion, with laughter or howls of anger which soon subsided. They accepted things as they were, promptly went back to sleep, and in the morning had forgotten that anything at all had occurred. They were accustomed to turf roofs which leaked; they were accustomed to no other kind.

Every Saturday the floors would be scoured till they shone. And then of a sudden it would appear to Mother and Father that the floors were strewn with twigs of juniper, as was the custom in the north, though neither of them had placed them there. They would hardly be able to believe their own eyes. Well? Oh, it had been those thoughtful little girls, God bless their tiny hands! Now it was out why they had sneaked off into the forest in spite of the difficult going. Of course, for they had gone to fetch fresh juniper to strew on the floors for the Sabbath. How clean and pure was the fragrance of juniper there in the warmth of the house! And on each berry there was the mark of a tiny cross. Now what could have been on God’s mind when He gave this symbol to the juniper? There was something quite rare about juniper, it was something more than a mere strew for the floor; if it were desired to sweeten up the house, one would light a twig of juniper and swing the smoke through the air. And when Mother was at the milk pans she would boil a sprig of juniper in each, to make them sweet and clean.

CHAPTER THREE

When the seiners returned empty-handed, the chief’s only words were: “Better luck next time!” He was not one to hang his head, he could take things like a man.

They settled accounts in his private office, one crew at a time, each headed by its own boss. In the days of Theodore paa Bua, it had been the custom for the seine-boss to render a colourful report of his expedition. Theodore would sit there on his high swivel-stool, completely absorbed, nodding or shaking his head from time to time, and firing back many a question.

Not so now.

“No, we didn’t make out so well this time,” says the seine-boss.

The chief offers nothing in reply, merely continues his calculations.

“But I don’t see as how we could do more than what we did.”

The chief continues to figure.

The seine-boss essays further conversation: “Or what do you think yourself?”

The chief lays aside his pen and replies: “What do I think myself? We were unlucky. That’s all there is to be said about it. Better luck next time!”

And thus it went with the second seine-boss and his crew—not a superfluous word from the chief. No, he was quite unlike his father who had sat there before him and chatted away with his seiners. Grand to the point of appearing somewhat ludicrous Theodore paa Bua had been, but a thorough man of the people, and downright kind and helpful when flattered into it. Here today sits his son on the same swivel-stool and is no more than civil and matter-of-fact, his an air which holds him aloof from his people.

Well, after all, what was there to be said about those luckless expeditions? What was there about them to warrant an elaborate verbal exchange? He had laid out provisions and a few weeks’ pay for two crews, but that was nothing to upset him. On the contrary, folk might well say of him: “See, there is a man who is able to stand the loss!” Besides, how could he expect good fortune from the very start? No seine in existence is a pot of gold each year. And what difference did it make if the Segelfoss News did publish a notice calling attention to the fact that both crews had returned home empty-handed?...

Gordon spoke to his mother. “What do you say to a little party?” he asked.

“What kind?”

“A few people in town, a bit of wine and something to eat?”

“I think you’re mad!” laughed his mother. “You’ve made no fortune in herring, have you?”

“That’s just the point,” her son replied.

Oh that Gordon! His style of thought seemed so alien to his mother, so incomprehensible to the widow of Theodore paa Bua, so utterly outlandish! She herself would have done everything in her power to compensate her loss, would have scrimped and saved every penny she could in order to come out even in the end. But to such old-fashioned ideas her son simply shook his head.

“Come, let’s go have a talk with Juliet about it!” he said.

* * * * *

The dinner party proved something of a fizzle.

Gordon Tidemand and his wife had held no grand receptions in their home in the past. After christenings, they had merely entertained the godparents and the pastor and his wife at dinner. This time, however, invitations had been scattered far and wide and many were the guests who arrived at the house. But of good cheer there was a conspicuous lack. What could the matter be? Though the gentlemen were not in evening dress, the ladies had attired themselves in their choicest finery. Moreover, the beautiful Fru Lund was there. She, the doctor’s wife, was in the habit of never going anywhere but on this occasion she had made an exception. And there was enough to eat and the bottles were full of good wine and the maids wore starched white aprons as they went about serving the guests, but these seemed not enough. Dinner was served in the room of golden flowers, champagne appeared on the table, the host made a speech, the district judge made a speech, but there seemed no joy or gusto in anything. Oddly enough, Gordon Tidemand was himself in no way stiff or formal; he played his part admirably and his wife, Juliet, was the perfect hostess. Nor did the pastor put a damper on the spirits of the party; to the contrary, he was the most jovial person present. Was it Herr Holm, the druggist, then, who charmingly or otherwise, was forever cutting up and again was quite himself?

He had been in high spirits upon arriving at the party. Not only had he found something tasty in his own cellar before starting out, he had also stopped in at the hotel on his way. Holm was a bachelor, as was his fellow-Bergenser, the hotel proprietor, and the pair were seen often together.

But what difference should it have made so far as the present dinner party was concerned if Druggist Holm had been in high feather when he arrived? He was no bourgeois. He had been placed next to Gammelmoderen at table and that possibly had been a mistake, for they appeared to be waxing more and more confidential as the dinner progressed.

The pastor made no great shakes about his reverence; he was human just like the rest and frightfully poor in the bargain; his shoes were in wretched condition, his clothes all frayed and mended, but his cheeks were plump and he had a charming head of grey hair. He knew how to take a joke and was the recipient of more than one sly dig. His jovial round face would break into a thousand wrinkles when he laughed and this had inspired Lawyer Pettersen to utter the one bon mot of his life when he called the pastor “Lohengrin.”

“Pettersen clever?” asked the druggist when he heard of the attempted pun. “In the first place it isn’t clever, but if it is, then he must have read it some place!”

Lawyer Pettersen’s head was too small for his gangling body and when the pastor heard his own new nick-name he merely remarked: “Why—that buttonhead!” Nor was this attempted repartee exactly a flash of scintillant wit, but as an appellation it was apt and it stuck to its man.

To be sure, Pastor Ole Landsen was anything but an inspiring preacher and his sermons were ill-attended more often than not. People seemed to prefer the prayer-meetings held in the cottages round about by various itinerant evangelists, but this fact never once aroused the local pastor to ire. “People are rather silly, I believe,” was all he ever said. “It’s cosier to sit right in church now that we’ve got us a stove.”

His wife was a charming little woman, still pretty, still girlish, ready to blush on the slightest provocation. Her face and her personality were strongly dove-like. She was quiet and retiring in manner, but she had a pair of bright little eyes which never missed a thing.

“Sit still, Druggist!” says Gammelmoderen to her dinner partner.

“All right, then still it shall be!”

“Haha, for otherwise I shall have to change my place.”

“If you do, I shall change mine, too!”

The pastor’s wife blushes.

The district judge tells of the inquiry he has held in regard to Tobias’ fire. “It was like pulling teeth to get anything definite out of them,” he says. “They simply sat there scared out of their wits lest they say too much. What they did say was so much foolishness. Here is an example of my questions and the answers I received—it is the daughter I am now examining in an effort to determine the condition in which she found her father when she discovered the fire.

“I am as friendly as can be when I put the following question: ‘How did you find your father when you came to tell him of the fire?’

“‘He was asleep,’ she replies.

“‘In the bedroom?’

“‘Yes.’

“‘Was he undressed? Hadn’t he just been out for a walk?’

“‘No.’

“‘How did you know your father was asleep?’

“‘He was gasping.’

“‘By that do you mean he was snoring?’

“At this she grows red and is certain I am trying to trip her up. Therefore she holds fast to her statement that her father was gasping—and furthermore that he was asleep. I was obliged to drop it right there. The fact is, they had agreed upon what they were to say, but when it came time for them to utter their explanations they got all tangled up. Now the father must have been lying there awake as he had just come in from a walk, but that is not the same thing as to say that he had himself set fire to the house. She was a pretty little girl, too; she had such a pleading way about her. I confess, I felt sorry for her.”

“Her sister is in service with me,” says the druggist. “And what a regular little steam engine she is! She has us all right by the ears.”

General laughter. “Where did you get hold of her?” some one asks.

“Hm?—oh, she was working over at the hotel and had learned a bit of cooking there. I got her from the proprietor. She’s a wonder, though, the witch!”

Gammelmoderen: “Poor Druggist. Did he have his ears pulled all out of shape!”

“That’s right. And she’s a free-thinker, too!”

“Free-thinker?”

“She laughs at people who go to prayer-meetings. She refuses to have anything at all to do with them.”

“My, what you must go through!” smiles Gammelmoderen, her cheeks sweetly flushed with the wine she has drunk.

And at this point the druggist must have inadvertently come in some sort of contact with her under the table, for she suddenly starts up, then settles back in her chair with a sigh of: “Ah!”

The judge continues: “Many times it is a sad duty to be obliged to examine poor people. It is cowardly, I know, but as a rule I allow my clerk to do it. He can conduct an investigation with less trouble to his finer nature —he is from Trondhjem.”

Lawyer Pettersen adjusts his spectacles and smilingly assures the party that during his term as magistrate’s clerk he, too, had many times found it difficult to do his duty when this consisted of taking over the duties of the magistrate, even though he himself was also from Trondhjem.

“Poor fellow!” exclaimed the druggist without a sign of self-restraint.

All at the table smiled, and even the lawyer himself smiled good-naturedly.

“I suspect it is more or less embarrassing for all of us to go snooping into other people’s affairs,” says the pastor, “but that is no reason why we should turn aside from our duty.”

The lawyer: “Yes, there really is something to be said about you clergymen. When I think of the harangues you are in the habit of delivering over a grave—why wouldn’t it be in better taste simply to come out with a bit of straightforward talk?”

The pastor: “Addressed to the dead?”

“I mean instead of singing the praises of the dead, of literally bragging about the dead.”

“Hm-hm,” says the pastor. “Yes, of course it is possible that we do tend to make too much of it. But, don’t you see, since the dead can no longer hear us, it is our task to console as best we may those left behind. What sense would there be in calling a corpse to time? Let the dead man answer for himself in the place where he has gone! To attempt to reckon accounts with him on earth would be an insult to Almighty God.”

The lawyer: “Console those left behind? Even when they are inwardly rejoicing over this very death? I am referring in particular to the disgusting tommyrot shouted over the coffins of dead officials. That’s one thing you clergymen ought to cut out.”

The pastor, in a quiet voice: “There is certainly something in what you say. But with a little experience in such matters, I doubt you would find them so obscure. A man and wife may have lived together like cat and dog, but the moment one of them dies, the other immediately comes to me with a bosom filled with praise and blessings for the departed and begs me to say something fine.”

“Ugh, are we really like that!” exclaims the magistrate’s wife. “I mean, we human beings. I mean, are we as loathsome as that?”

The pastor: “There is really nothing loathsome about that, my good lady. It is of some significance to the children, in any event, that nice things are said at the graves of their parents. Put yourself in the place of the children, if the very opposite were to take place.”

“I would sign a release for all that!” put in the magistrate.

“But you have no children, have you?” the druggist shot back.

“No! No!” exclaimed several of the ladies in unison. “The pastor is right!”

Fru Juliet, with a wry smile: “Just think, Gordon, that’s the way it will be with us: a splendid eulogy simply for the sake of our children, regardless of whether or not we deserve the kind things that are said of us!”

“Right, Juliet! Skoal!”

The doctor’s wife addresses her husband across the table: “Where do you suppose those boys of ours are now?”

The doctor: “Oh you and those boys of ours!”

“Yes, I am a bit uneasy,” she smiles helplessly. And her face is so pretty and her teeth so white.

“They are probably down at the sloop again climbing about in the rigging,” he teases.

“Boys usually know pretty well how to look out for themselves,” says the magistrate.

The doctor agrees at once: “Yes, isn’t it true? But my wife is unable to let them out of her sight.”

Gammelmoderen is seen to leave the table, her hand fumbling a bit with the arm of her chair. No one seems to notice her, but the pastor’s wife blushes red as fire.

Fru Juliet turns to the doctor’s wife and attempts to reassure her: “All you have to do is telephone home and inquire about the boys.”

Coffee and liqueurs were served in the large reception hall, but the affair seemed no more festive than it had before. Gordon Tidemand was disappointed: the devil with trying to provide elaborate dinner-parties for unappreciative people! There each one sat, uttered his few miserable words and then fell silent. No one seemed impressed. He would never invite them again.

With the arrival of the whiskey there were slight signs of life; conversation was resumed, the men rose partially to the occasion, but not a word was uttered concerning the most important of details: this feast at the old palace, this reception in the grand manner, the antique silver, the entertainment itself. Even the doctor who himself had come of a grand home and ought therefore to have understood a thing or two, even he behaved as though the affair were not much of anything.

What did not occur to Gordon Tidemand was that his party was in truth little else, neither one thing nor another, simply a hodge-podge of this and that, from the excellent food and the large variety of wine to the pompous but tasteless interior furnishings. The present occupants of the Manor were simply squatters, the golden flowers on the wall had danced for a finer breed. Gordon Tidemand did not swagger like a peasant, he made no obnoxious parade, but all that he knew he had acquired from his betters, including his modesty. Fru Juliet had been born something more of an aristocrat and whatever she might have lacked in this regard was immediately compensated by her own great natural charm. Now what about Doctor Lund? He was the district doctor, a government official, thus, and not one of your aggressive little medicos setting up practice in a city and doing his best to ruin business for his older colleagues. If it were true that he had originally come of an important family, all that was but a vague memory in his mind by now, and the steady grind of making sick calls had proven anything but a refining influence. He had acquired his wife in a little place up north called Polden. She was of the common people and her name was Esther. She knew nothing of the finer things of life but she was well-equipped with the primitive wisdom of her class, was furthermore a thing of beauty from top to toe, exquisite to look at, though she was already the mother of two husky youngsters. When she rose to leave for the telephone, there was no one in the room whose eyes had failed to follow her.

The postmaster’s wife, Fru Hagen began to play upon the quaint little clavicord which Gordon had picked up abroad and shipped home along with his odd assortment of other antiques. It was his custom to apologize for this instrument, though he had always been careful to add: “But Mozart knew nothing better.” The postmaster’s lady was a small light-haired creature, thin, somewhat pug-nosed, probably in her late twenties. She was nearsighted and she would throw back her head and cross her eyes whenever she attempted to look someone in the face. She played a few lovely things and, when asked, added an encore or two, concluding with a dainty minuet.

Gordon Tidemand: “You seem to be able to get more music out of that contraption than was ever put into it.”

“This contraption is good enough for me,” she replied as she rose. “And see how lovely it is! Just look at the harp, see the beautiful inlay work!”

“Did I hear that you have studied in Berlin?”

“Yes, for a short time.”

“For a long time,” corrects her husband, the postmaster.

“But I really accomplished very little.”

“Oh yes, you did!” affirmed the druggist from where he was sitting.

“Fru Hagen has pupils here. She gives lessons,” explains Fru Juliet.

“Just a few pupils,” admits Fru Hagen, forever putting herself down.

The postmaster declares: “She took singing at first, but then she lost her voice.”

“Oh! And did she never get it back?”

“No. It was during a fire. She was rescued through a window and caught cold.”

“Possibly I never had much voice to lose,” she says with a smile. With that she turns to the druggist and asks: “Haven’t you your guitar with you?”

“Don’t you dare try and bring me out when you’re around!” he replies.

“But I’ve heard you before.”

“Yes. Under excusable circumstances.”

“Hm!” the lawyer puts in tartly.

“Keep still, Lawyer!”

“Hahaha! I’ve never been refused a word in a case before!”

“No—really?”

“Well, I believe I won the case to which you are referring, didn’t I?”

Holm: “Winning cases! So the laws of Norway permit even lawyers to earn their bread!”

The magistrate sits chuckling good-naturedly at this duel of words between two opponents forever on each other’s necks. Then, as the doctor’s wife has just returned to the room, he turns to her and asks: “Well, Fru Lund, and were the boys aloft on the sloop?”

“They are out fishing.”

“Yes, those boys never fail to find some new means of risking their lives!” the doctor remarks to tease his wife.

“We are in mortal danger wherever we are,” cites the lawyer’s wife who is religious.

“Yes, but my husband never seems to think anything is dangerous where my boys are concerned,” remarks Fru Lund.

The doctor wags his head: “There, you see? I never count for anything any more—it’s only her boys these days!”

“Hahaha!”

“Moreover,” says the doctor, “cold feet with her are at once synonymous with fever and headache. In any event death seems imminent.”

“Ugh!” someone groans. “Death!”

“Yes, that’s one thing not one of us can escape,” remarks Lawyer Pettersen with the air of a sage. “And it’s so natural, too.”

The doctor: “So natural, did you say? I know an old man of ninety who is about to die. But that’s the one thing he’s dead set against doing. His appearance is truly frightful, but he simply will not give up. Medicine, fomentations, food! He is so hideous, so emaciated and so downright filthy that one dreads so much as to touch him, but there he lies, for all eyes to gaze upon. An animal creeps off by itself to die.”

The pastor: “Yes, but a human being, Doctor!”

“Well, what is there delicate or refined about a human being, now that you seek the comparison? We have reason enough ourselves to hide. In appearance the human being is enough to make one groan—longish, fattish, unaesthetic bodies, patches of hair here and there, protruding knuckles and flabby flesh, a basketful of odd materials thrown carelessly together to form the most grotesque figure on the face of the globe. Anything beautiful about that, seen objectively?”

“Yes, Fru Lund is beautiful!” Druggist Holm blurts out in a high-pitched voice.

A moment’s stillness, then laughter from all corners of the room. Oh that druggist, that druggist! But Fru Lund was at a loss and the pastor’s wife sat there blushing.

The doctor continues his discourse: “Now turn and look at a bird, take just a common everyday wood-grouse. What a lovely creature she is, what graceful lines and curves, the colour of every known metal in her feathers. Or look upon any flower you choose. A miracle from root to blossom. But a human being?”

“This is only one of those things you have gone speculating about in order to cultivate a knowing attitude,” the pastor gaily remarks.

The lawyer ventures a further learned comment: “But it is man who has been created in God’s image!”

The doctor, somewhat more meekly: “It may be that I was a bit too harsh in my judgment. But I have gained an impression or two from having visited the sick and sat by many a death-bed, impressions which might cause you to hold your nose. Would you like to hear an example?—Once I was called upon to shave a certain corpse. It was a friend of mine who had died, so I decided against calling in outside help. He had been in life a person of so-called refinement. In any event, there was nothing grand about him as he lay there stretched out in death. Well, I lathered his face and started in. He had worn his face cleanshaven, so I had quite some work ahead of me. It went fine while I was shaving his cheeks, but when I came to his upper lip, it seemed that my razor must have pulled, for he groaned. I do not exaggerate—the razor pulled a bit and he groaned. The sound probably came from the skin stretched taut beneath the razor slipping back into place. Well, I got past the upper lip at length, but the worst part still lay before me, the throat, the Adam’s apple. This involved an awkward unnatural position for one who was not used to shaving another—it was necessary for me to bend far forward with the upper part of my body, whilst manipulating the razor. Well, I must have inadvertently placed my left hand upon the chest of the corpse and leaned my weight upon it for an instant. But that was enough. The chest sank beneath my weight and the corpse exhaled a long breath—Good Lord in Heaven, I received that sudden puff of rank air full in the face! It was not my habit to faint, but, believe me, I immediately sank down into a chair behind me. The air from those dead lungs had been killing, an unearthly stink impossible for anyone to imagine!”

The gentlemen were outwardly calm, but they were finding it difficult to restrain their laughter. “So you weren’t able to finish shaving the corpse?” one of them asked.

“Oh yes, I came to, a little later in the afternoon.”

The pastor: “But what were you trying to—? I don’t believe I quite understand—”

“That was your human being!” said the doctor.

The pastor thought this over. “No, it was not,” he said at length. “That was the remains of a human being, the cadaver.”

The chief telegraphist was obliged to go on duty and departed. He had done nothing to shine at the party, had merely sat comfortably smoking. He was a bibliophile and as there was not a single book to be seen in the room, he had had nothing to talk about. His wife remained at the party.

The glasses were changed and tokay was then served. Tokay! Could not even this raise the party from the level of the commonplace? It was, to be sure, a rare old wine from abroad, but no one seemed to take any particular notice of it.

“Skoal, Fru Hagen!” toasted Gordon Tidemand. “I believe you will recognize this wine?”

“I once tasted it in Vienna,” replied the postmaster’s wife.

“Of course. In Austria and Hungary it is tokay one drinks after dinner—in England it is port.”

“Well, in Norway it is whisky and soda,” observed the druggist, swallowing his wine in one gulp.

Laughter—“Yes, in Norway one drinks whiskeys and soda! Many of them.”

“But in France—what would it be in France?”

“Champagne. One continues with champagne.”

“I’ve never tasted this particular wine before,” says the pastor and spells through what is written on the label: “‘Tokay-Zsdaly.’ Splendid, isn’t it?” he adds and smacks his lips.

But as the tokay remained practically untouched in the glasses, Fru Juliet rang for champagne and assorted fruits: apples, grapes and figs! Why, heavens and earth! everyone must certainly have thought to themselves, and the host was able at last to recognize a faint glimmer of the emotion he had striven to arouse in his guests. But the sensation soon passed over, and the party settled back into its deadly mood. What a boring affair! thought Gordon Tidemand bitterly. I’ll never invite them again! Never!

The magistrate glanced at the clock as a suggestion that it might possibly be time to break up, but he immediately decided he could equal his host and hostess in powers of endurance and remained seated where he was. Fru Juliet had the children brought in and showed them off to the group—by way of interlude, that too. Exclamations and the usual amazement, honeyed words, cootchy-cootchy—but there was so much cigar smoke there in the room, the little ones soon began to cough. It was Gammelmoderen who had brought in the children and it was she who led them away. She seemed as good as ever, all fresh and smiling.

“It’s a pity you have no children, Lawyer,” says the druggist.

“Children? How could I ever support them?”

“Poor chap!”

The magistrate now looks at the clock in earnest and rises. Fru Juliet meets him half-way. “What’s the hurry?” she asks, persuasively. “It is so pleasant to have you here.”

“Ah yes, my good lady, but the time has really come.”

All rise, extend their hands, give thanks, and thanks. The druggist was himself to the end. “Strange people to be leaving a treat like this. Now just look at that bottle of champagne, Lawyer! There it stands perishing in its bath of ice with no one to come to its rescue!”

Gordon Tidemand could on longer restrain himself. “No, let’s not try to hold them, Juliet. It is we who are to offer thanks to them for having had the kindness to come and look in on us!”

There was nothing to be said to this. Genuflection seemed really in order!

Later he remarked to his wife: “That was a rotten idea of mine. Did you ever in your life see such people! You can bet, I’ll never repeat this affair!”

Fru Juliet: “Sh, Gordon!”

“Oh, you’re always so ready to excuse!”

“They’ll remember, you’ll see,” she said.

“Do you think so? But they acted as though they had known of such things before.”

“They couldn’t very well say anything while they were here.”

“They didn’t have to say anything. But damned if they oughtn’t to have demonstrated an occasional sign of enthusiasm. Over the tokay, at least?”

Fru Juliet voiced her opinion that it had really been a splendid party, the guests both pleased and pleasing. The druggist had been in high feather and witty indeed, the postmaster’s wife was captivating.

“Yes, she too has been out in the world,” said Gordon Tidemand. “But the others? No, we shall never have them again. Eh, Juliet? Not by a damned sight!”

CHAPTER FOUR

Then came the autumn, then came the winter. And the winter was a dismal time, snow and cold, short days, darkness. The small farms and the lonely cottages had deep pathways through the snow to each other, and now and then a human form might be seen there, walking. It might be of an evening with moon and stars, and it might be the woman from Roten walking over to the neighbouring farm in order to borrow a skirt.

Ay well, and all the menfolk were off in Lofoten and Karel was off in Lofoten and it fell to the lot of that woman of his to keep things going, what with the children and the cowbarn, until some three weeks after Easter when the menfolk would be returning home. It was a hard time for her, she had good use for all her patience and all her frugal ways.

She had once been the girl Georgina, Gina to most, as poor then as now and not much for the eyes of a man, but young and healthy and able at work and she had sung so wondrously with her strong alto voice. Now she was Gina i Roten. She had not come from any high place and she had married into no worse state of poverty than some others, only that she was older now and many times a mother, and forty years. But was that anything! She was used to it and she was used to nothing else. Things might have been worse with her, of course they might; her years went by, one by one, and she had her children and her man and they had their little farm and their cattle in the shed, though ’tis true they owned but little clear. And if her man was a wizard at singing a ditty—ay, and famous for the words he had once set to a waltz—she was something in her own way, too. There was no one like Gina to stand upon the knoll and call home her creatures from the pasture of an evening. “Soo-a! Soo-a!” A melody which sang through the air, though ’twas nought but a cry, a call for the cows to come home, like a prayer in a voice of rich velvet. And in church she would sing out like no one else, and those at her side would fall silent. Her voice she had received from a God who could afford to squander his gifts.

She goes walking along the deep footpath through the snow; ay, and the path is like a deep ditch and she becomes white with snow to her knees. All is not well with her now, she is clean out of feed for her creatures and she must find a remedy. Tomorrow, along with another woman who is also in need of feed, she must search through the parish for hay.

“Good evening!” she greets in the neighbouring cottage.

“Good evening! Oh, is that you, Gina? Sit down.”

“No, sit I really mustn’t,” says Gina and seats herself. “Just passing by I was.”

“What hear you for news?”

“No, what can I hear for news when I’m never outside that door of mine?”

“Ay, we each have our things to do,” says the woman. “We must only thank God for the health that we have.”

Silence.

“Ay,” says Gina, with a bit of trouble on her mind. “I saw as you had a web up last fall?”

“Ay, and that’s no lie.”

“And so much for a web it was, too, I could see. There was yellow and blue and everything else you can mention. If a dress it was for, it was lovely indeed and all that.”

“Both for a dress and a skirt,” the woman replies. “I was beginning to go so naked for clothes.”

“Ay, and a shame it is to be asking. But it might be as you’d give me the loan of the skirt for tomorrow?”

The woman gives a momentary start, then says: “Ho, is it feed then you’re short of?”

“Ay, as it is!” replies Gina, with a violent nod of her head.

No, the woman needed no lengthy reflection to tell her why Gina wished to borrow the skirt. It was no riddle to her. For she too was running short of provender out in the shed. And it was far from likely that Gina wished to dress up and appear fine in the new skirt: she wished to carry home hay in it. It was an ancient tradition that one should carry home hay in a skirt; oh, it was something of an annual event there in the parish—the peasant skirt would hold so much, it was like a balloon when filled. Almost at any time a pair of womenfolk might be seen shuffling along through the snow with tremendous burdens on their backs—skirts tight full of hay and tied up with a rope. These wanderers were part of the winter landscape; there was always someone short of feed and always another who was a bit better off for hay and who was willing to sell a truss or two. The women seldom had a penny to their names before the return of their men from Lofoten, but a new and colourful skirt would be sure to gain them the necessary credit for a bit of hay; more, it would give the neighbours to understand that the need was not the result of mere poverty but of the enormous number of creatures for which one could never provide enough, and which represented a small fortune in themselves.

“But a pity it is to be asking you,” repeats Gina.

“No, that it’s not,” replies the woman, proud to be the owner of a skirt fit to loan. “Who’s to be with you tomorrow?”

Gina mentioned a name.

“Where has she borrowed her skirt?”

Gina mentioned another name.

“Ho!” says the woman. “Then I don’t imagine as you’ll be ashamed to be showing my skirt!”

“No, that I should never be!”

“Here it is. Double thick and summer wool every inch of the thread. Let me hear what you think of the border?”

“A miracle for work,” says Gina. “I’ve no words in my mouth to praise it!”

Gina returns home with the pride and pleasure in her of being able to swagger a bit on the morrow with such a splendid skirt. But on the way home she meets Aase, that witch woman, that cross between Gypsy and Lapp, that wandering plague of a woman.

“Bless the meeting!” says Gina, sweet as butter and stepping far out into the snow to make room for Aase. “Have you come from my place? And none but the children at home there!”

“I didn’t come to see you,” Aase answers. “I only looked inside.”

“Such a pity it was and all that! Had I been home, I should surely have given you a bit of this or that.”

“There’s nothing I’m needing!” Aase mumbles. So saying, she passes on.

Gina hastens home. She knows that her children are hiding scared out of their wits in the corner, that they are daring not so much as to move. Gina has received a bit of a scare herself—she is no greater than she is —but she must appear plucky for the sake of the children.

Entering the house she says at once: “What’s this I see, you’re afraid? Why, what a thing to be! That Aase? My, my! What then if it was? I just met her myself and all I heard was a bit of a kind word. Aren’t you ashamed to cry like that? Here it’s moonlight and all that! And all you have to do is pray to the Father in Heaven. What was I going to say—did she leave straight off?”

The children reply both yea and nay; they don’t know, they can’t remember, they hadn’t dared so much as to breathe—

“Ay, but she didn’t spit then when she left?”

The children give various answers, they really aren’t quite sure, they didn’t look—

The mother weighs the matter in her mind a moment: wouldn’t it be possible for her to run out and overtake Aase, slip something into her hand? Oh yes, she too is somewhat wrought up in her mind. But she doesn’t dare reveal it. Then Lillemor speaks up, Lillemor who is too tiny to be afraid; she asks mama what she is carrying under her arm.

This relieves all minds. “Ay,” says mama. “You simply should see what I have. All come here now to the light! This is the pretty skirt mama is to fill up with hay to bring it home tomorrow. Did you ever see anything so pretty!...”

Three weeks after Easter the cod ran out in East Lofoten and the menfolk returned home. An average year, the fishing light all the way through, but fine prices—a bit of change in their pockets again, wife and children saved once more. And the sun shone brightly and the snow turned brown and brooklets began to form which froze over every night only to become brooklets again with the morning’s sun.

* * * * *

The traveler is ready to depart for Nordland and Finmark with the spring line—silks and woollens, a bit of velvet, a bit of cotton, fashionable frocks, patent leather shoes. The chief, Gordon Tidemand, as usual stares at his salesman and feels he is a bit too shabbily dressed to do credit to the house he represents, but now as usual the man explains that upon his arrival in Tromsø he will purchase a splendid new summer suit from the finest clothier in town.

The interview was otherwise just as usual; sales had shown no satisfactory increase, especially of the more expensive articles wherein real profit lay. Something must be the matter. Weren’t the people up north willing to keep up with the trend of the times?

Oh yes, they were beginning to. But Finmark, after all, was Finmark. Up there one still had to dress according to the climate and daily occupation. But truth to tell, the ladies were already taking to high-heeled shoes.

The chief simply could not understand it; no orders for those marvelous corselettes he was offering. Heavy rose silk from breast to buttock which would fit the form like a glove. Why wouldn’t such dainty garments sell? Expensive? Of course, but how could one expect to appear like a lady without one?

“They’re too tight,” says the traveler.

“Too what?”

“Too tight.” And the traveler adds with a smile: “The ladies are so squeezed in they can’t even swallow when they try to eat.”

He should not have smiled, the chief does not care for his manner; he nods to indicate that the interview has come to an end....

Outside in the store old Altmulig, the jack-of-all-trades, stands waiting. He desires a word from the chief, but he is respectful and religious and does not even expect a personal conversation with his employer; instead, he sends in one of the clerks with a question.

His modesty yields fruit; he is summoned at once into the office. Altmulig has been there but once before, the day he found service on the place.

“Well well, Altmulig, so you’d like to know what you’re to do next, eh?”

“Ay.”

“What are the workmen doing?”

“They’re carting sea-weed for the fields.”

The chief thinks a moment. “How about going over the seines and seeing that they’re in perfect order?”

“Ay ay, sir!”

“No, never mind,” says the chief. “For I don’t suppose we’ll be having any use for them for some time.”

Altmulig: “If I may speak a word, there seems to me to be constant use for them.”

“So?”

“For, by the grace of God, there are always herring in the sea.”

“We couldn’t get any people out with them, right now,” says the chief. “They’re just back from Lofoten, and they want to rest. They’re hardly even willing to chop wood for their cook stoves.”

Altmulig: “I can get them out.”

The chief looks at him: “Do you think you could go out with them yourself?”

Altmulig shakes his head and crosses himself. “The Lord has made an old man of me,” he says. “If only it had been before!”

The chief nods as a sign of conclusion. “Good, get busy with this thing, then. Collect the crews and send them out with the seines. Where do you think we ought to tell them to go?”

Altmulig: “North. I’ve faith in a place called Polden—”

Odd that the chief should have acquired such deep confidence in this old altmuligmand of his in the course of no more than a few months. They had talked together of one thing and another and the old man had shown that he knew a thing or two—he had ability and it had been profitable to take his word in a number of matters. Gordon Tidemand was apparently an executive of vision and optimism, but in truth he sometimes felt the need of expert advice. What for instance did he know about this business of his, aside from book-keeping and the marketing of luxuries! His learning consisted solely of technique, language and office routine, university courses, punctilio—he could read the labels on French pipes and spools of English thread—oh, he had his talents, without a doubt, but at bottom he had but little understanding of business and his intelligence was rather a minus quantity. He was, just what he appeared to be on the surface, a mongrel creature, a mixture of races, no strong characteristics in his nature, a little of this and that, a wizard in the classroom, perhaps, but out of touch with reality. Taken by and large, he was a quite ordinary individual, but he had a burning desire to be a gentleman, in the English sense of the word.

Such was the man, nought more. He was really in sore need of the advice old Altmulig was ready to offer him. Even his mother was something of a rod and a staff to comfort him.

“I’m sending out the seines,” he said to his mother. “I’ve put Altmulig to rounding up the crews.”

“Have you had news of herring?” she asked him.

“No. But, by the grace of God, there are always herring in the sea. If all I did was to wait for news, I’m afraid we’d all pretty much starve to death. We must do something, don’t you think?”

“Things look rather dark, do I understand?”

“How can they possibly look bright? Store business and petty trading like that. People here really aren’t buying anything, either. They’re spinning and weaving themselves. Why, they live like mice in the field—they don’t seem to belong to this human race of ours. Here we are, required to make a living off this little town of ours, this grotesque spectacle of a town, a mere port of loading, a few hundred people with no more than a copper each in their pockets. It’s a mockery. I ought never to have come back home and taken over this business.”

“Well, let’s see once,” says Gammelmoderen. “You’ve quite a bit outstanding on your books. Can’t you try to get some of this in?”

“Get it in, mother? Set Lawyer Pettersen after these people? Collection letters, court proceedings, all that sort of thing? I couldn’t do that and you know it. Why, people would say that I was on the verge.”

“You have the downery and the salmon fishery. You have one thing or another. And first and foremost, you have an entire town leasing land from you. That ought to mean no small yearly income.”

“Yes, but that’s the cursed trouble, don’t you see?” exclaims the son. “I haven’t been able to sell these lands so that something definite could be done with them. No one seems to have money enough to buy.”

His mother: “Your father was opposed to selling off any of his land. He always said that if everything else failed, the rent from his lands would supply him with a solid yearly income, enough to live on at least.”

“Trifling details!” fumed her son. “Small change!” he fumed. “The downery? I have the figures and I can show you. A couple of feather beds, a couple of quilts. The salmon fishery? Nothing.”

“We used to have big fish there once,” mumbled his mother, her mind seeming to dwell lingeringly on the past.

No, there was nothing much there. Segelfoss? What was there to the place? What lived and had its being there? Everything was dead....

“Just take the mail I receive,” explodes son Gordon—“no more than what might come for a sheriff or a school teacher. A letter is slipped into a yellow envelope and importantly addressed to me; one day it arrives and I open it—it has to do with a horse! One man haggles with another man about the price of a mere horse. And I am acquainted with neither them nor the horse. A few weeks ago I received a letter from a man who would like to come and manage the salmon net for me. Yes, that’s the kind of mail I get! You don’t find three men simply taking care of the mail here as you would in a regular place of business!”

Gammelmoderen: “Who was it that wrote you about the salmon net?”

“I don’t remember. He said he had worked here before and knew all about the place.”

“What was his name?”

“Alexander, or something like that.”

Silence.

Gammelmoderen, approaching the matter indirectly: “Well, you are going to send out the seines again. Yes, it’s to be hoped they prove lucky this time....” She rises from her chair, takes a turn over to the window and glances out. “It’s beginning to thaw in earnest, isn’t it?” she says, simply to have something to say. She is restless. Not until she is on the point of leaving does she suddenly remember the point about the man and the salmon net. “Oh yes, Gordon, you must get that man back on the place,” she says. “He was the ablest man your father ever had. My, how he used to work the salmon net! Your father used to ship salmon off to the cities, all the way to Trondhjem. Smoked salmon. Good money. What did you say the man’s name was?”

“Alexander, I believe. What difference does it make?” mumbles the son, hunting about on his desk. “Here’s the letter. His name is Otto Alexander. I didn’t even bother answering him.”

“Yes, but you should do so at once. Sit right down and drop him a line. He will bring you in profits at once, you’ll see. The salmon net certainly isn’t out now, is it? Besides, we could easily use a salmon or two for our own table.”

“Of course, if you say so,” concedes her son. “I can just as well get the fellow here.”

* * * * *

Within the week Altmulig had kept his word and organized a full crew for each of the seining boats. But neither of the two bosses seemed to rely very much upon the old man’s word and they called together to consult with the chief.

“Yes,” said Gordon Tidemand. “He told you what I wanted.”

Ay, but he had made strange signs and crosses with his fingers, like as though he was casting a spell, or such-like.

They were not to concern themselves over that.

And then he had pointed out on the chart where they were to lie, one seine here, the other there. But, might they ask in all humility, wouldn’t such a business seem like a personal affront to the Almighty? Weren’t they to move along from bay to bay and use their spy glass and scan the sea and read the signs and do their best?

The chief rang and gave orders for Altmulig to be brought into the office. “Show me the chart!” he said to the men.

It was a bit of coastal chart borrowed from the sloop. The chief studied it, pretended that he understood it perfectly, put up a grand appearance, picked up a rule and measured: “Here is Polden, this point here!”

“Yes, but—” replied the seine-bosses. “But he said that one of us should drift about in this locality, near a place called Fuglværøy. And in both places both boats should simply lie still.”

The chief measured again, nodded and said: “That’s right. Those are exactly the orders he got from me.”

Altmulig entered the room softly, laid his cap beside him on the floor over by the door and, when recognized, stepped forward and bowed.

Gad, what a courteous fellow this old man is! Gordon Tidemand must have thought. “Your men here don’t seem to understand our orders very well,” he said. “Would you be good enough to repeat them!”

No trouble at all! Altmulig repeated his explanations and stood by his guns; he mentioned Polden and Fuglværøy, mentioned exact distances, mentioned the direction of the sea currents.

I wonder why he doesn’t stand over here and put on a few airs? the chief thought slyly to himself. “Won’t you step over and look at the chart?” he asked.

Altmulig took out his nose-glasses, but found no use for them. He smiled and said: “I have the chart right here in my head.”

“Ay,” said the seine-bosses. “But that we should lie still—”

Altmulig stood by his guns: “Ay, for seven days and seven nights is what I told you. If you have not shot your seines after seven days and seven nights, move seven miles north, up toward Senjen. But you will shoot before then, I know!” Again he crossed himself, both over his forehead and over his breast.

“That’s odd!” mumbled the bosses. “And why are we to lie exactly at these places and not move and not scan all the sea?”

Altmulig delivered himself like a true prophet and seer: “For it is exactly there the herring will turn up if there are any at all in those parts. Don’t you dare to doubt me! The herring, she knows her way through the sea. Whales and other vermin can force her off her course, but that you can see when it happens and move on after the shoal.”

“Have you conjured up herring there?” asks one seine-boss in desperation.

“Ay, for if so, we’ll have nothing at all to do with this business!” chimes in the other.

Altmulig looks up at the chief and asks: “I don’t know—was there anything more—?”

“No.”

He bows, picks up his cap over by the door and leaves the room.

Gad, what discipline! Probably picked up from the skipper of some big ship, Gordon Tidemand thought to himself again. Turning to his men, he curtly remarks: “There! Now you’ve had my orders explained to you a second time!”

Even the chief must have found Altmulig a bit too mystical, but he let the matter go. Why not follow out the old fellow’s directions! The last time the seiners had been out, they had craned their necks and stared about the sea, they had rowed hither and yon and stuck their noses into all the old herring coves they knew of, but they had come home empty-handed. Now let’s see this time! No seine in existence is a pot of gold each year, but every seine has an equal chance of stumbling onto the good fortune which means immediate wealth.

CHAPTER FIVE

During the spring Gordon Tidemand began putting up a residence back up in the mountains. He called it a hunting-lodge, but it was anything but a mere cabin, it was a regular house, a summer residence—in the event that his family might like to spend a few months “in the country.” He was busy with a large corps of workers and the work was progressing rapidly. There were masons, carpenters, and painters; a veranda with a truly dizzying outlook was added and, after that, a flag pole. For the time being, these would be all.

Gordon Tidemand had set much in motion since the amazing coup scored by his seiners. Oh, here was a man with an eye for progress and activity! And now at last he had the means, for the unthinkable, the almost unbelievable had actually come to pass: the capture of a gigantic shoal of herring off Fuglværøy, the miracle which had been reported in all the papers and which had turned the entire countryside upside-down. What else save the power of fate and good fortune had it been! Nor was it for any true master of Segelfoss to shovel vast sums of money into his pockets without putting them to some good use! So he ran his steamer pier far out into deep water to accommodate the largest of ships; by the expansion of store credit he extended a helping hand to many poor folk throughout the parish. There was the type of fellow he was! He even weighed in his mind a plan which he and old Altmulig had once discussed: a dairy in town to supply the entire district round about.

Yes, to be sure, he was good for a thing or two, but his mother shook her head; and when he began building his mountain home she stood there wringing her hands. Oh that Gordon, to think of moving out to the country, away from Segelfoss Manor! Well then, why didn’t Fru Juliet step in? No, how could she do that? She was the mistress of the house, a love bird, a mother, so beautiful, so sweet—she was only a woman, and her figure was lumpy again! No, it was not her place to tie her husband’s hands. Gammelmoderen, on the other hand, did absolutely nothing to stifle her voice; she was a woman of manifold experience and was bursting with advice. The widow of Theodore paa Bua did her reasonable best to restrain her son’s taste for extravagance, though for the time being she decided against having it out with him. On the contrary, she had reason to stand in well with him, to be good friends with him. Had he not heeded her advice about taking on that man, Otto Alexander, he who was so handy at bringing in salmon for the family table and who didn’t mind smoking fish out in the smokehouse even though it was late at night?

Gammelmoderen had become younger than ever; she went fluttering along the roads like a young girl and again she took to wearing a gold medallion about her neck. Bold she was indeed; the talk about her and a certain Gypsy lad had long since died away, but of late it had sprung up anew.—“Notice how she goes about singing?”—“That’s no way to do!”—“She stays with him out in the smokehouse, she goes aboard the sloop Soria with him, they have something to drink aboard, they are worse than any young couple!”—“And to think she has no shame in her!”

And that she surely had not; Gammelmoderen simply lacked all sense of shame, she managed her personal affairs with a conscience as clear as crystal—she was a daredevil, to say the least. But to object seriously to what her son was doing was, of course, not fitting or proper.

“I see so many strange workmen with picks and shovels,” she said. “Are they working for you?”

“Yes. They’re from the south. They are road-builders. They are laying a road up to the lodge.” “What, a carriage road? Listen to me now, Gordon, wouldn’t a footpath really do just as well?”

“No,” her son curtly replied.

And his mother gave in at once: “Ay, possibly you are right about that. What good would a mountain lodge be without a road leading up to it!...”

It seems that Gordon Tidemand had happened to mention his road-building project to his right-hand man, Altmulig; he had stated that he was of a mind to hire some expert people who would first of all do a bit of surveying and then stake out the route.

Ay, Altmulig had indicated that such would not prove so difficult.

“So?” asked the chief. “Do you think you could do it yourself?”

“Such work is right in my line,” replied Altmulig.

Oh that undefeatable fellow! Nothing seemed to leave him at a loss! There were many ways of going about it. A footpath presented no great problems.

“What, a footpath? Really, I say!” sneered the chief.

“Oh, it’s a carriage road you’d be wanting?”

“Of course, for we must figure on the transportation of provisions and equipment. I imagine the family will prefer living up there during the hottest part of the summer.”

“How stupid of me!” said Altmulig. “Well, do you want the line to go up gradually in a long curve, or would you rather take it short with a steep grade?”

“You may decide that for yourself. So far as I personally am concerned, the question of grade is immaterial, but I suppose my wife might occasionally enjoy walking back and forth.”

“We may have to blast our way along part of the way; it’s pretty rough country up there. I can take a little trip up the mountain right away and have a look around, if you say so.”

The chief nodded. “And while you’re up there at the house, you might decide whether we ought to put up an iron fence at the edge of the steep. For the children’s sake, you know....”

An invaluable assistance, that Altmulig. His very manner made a strong appeal to Gordon Tidemand. “Right away,” he had said—as if he might be asked to quit his place at any time, though it was he alone the chief could thank for the fortune he had made in herring! Had he put on airs and strutted, had he jumped up and cracked his heels together the day the wire had arrived from the seiners? Not at all. When the chief had read him the telegram, he had been moved to great depths, apparently; he had crossed himself, he had swallowed a lump in his throat. And his lips had trembled and his eyes had assumed a tint of washed-out blue. But his emotion had passed immediately; he had nodded and said: “Oh, so they shot the two seines together and closed in a bay, did they? What else does it say?”

“Only that the herring are 7—8 and 9—10. But I don’t believe I know what that means.”

“That’s important,” Altmulig had said. “That means so many herring by weight. They are average and better than average fish!” And in a flash he had become levelheaded and practical, a man who knew the next steps to be taken: Buyers, buyers! Wires to every town and city! Salt! Barrels! Order the sloop Soria to clear for the north this very day—“That is, if you agree with me!” he had been careful to add.

The chief had stared at him long. No hint of fishing about for a compliment, not a single boastful word. But the miracle itself, the successful gamble, these had fascinated the old man and he had said: “What a pity I couldn’t have been there to see it!”

That had been all.

Now Gordon Tidemand was not lacking in appreciation and it had been as clear as day to him what a debt of gratitude he owed Altmulig. It had been his desire to make a great fuss over him, to give a feast, a banquet, in his honour, but Altmulig had respectfully declined. Since arriving on the place the old man had lived in a single room in the servants’ hall, but the chief had promptly invited him to occupy one of the guest rooms in the Manor itself, a room with a full-length gold mirror, a carpet on the floor, a mahogany bed graced with gilded angels, a decorative clock on the mantelpiece.... Altmulig had simply shaken his head to all this and humbly and piously said no.

All in all an odd individual, this man. See there, how he still continues to work about the place with his usual care and diligence, with never a thought to spare himself, with never a thought for his age, or even a request for a raise in pay. The chief had of course offered a raise of his own accord, but—

There was no reason for that, the man had answered.

But couldn’t he find some use for a particular sum then, say? Wouldn’t he like to start up something for himself, or possibly make a certain purchase?

“Oh yes. But with your permission, let’s say no more about that!”

The chief had then handed him a sum large enough to have set him up in one business or another, but though several weeks had already passed, the old fellow had continued his position as general handy-man, altering not one detail of his daily routine. The only difference was that some one had seen him down at the post office sending divers money orders abroad.

* * * * *

Drilling and blasting and the singing of men up the side of the mountain, an air of festivity marking the progress of the work. There are several gangs of workmen along the stretch of road under construction; some blasting away rock, others working with cement; some digging up gravel, others wheeling it away. Altmulig goes stalking up and down the entire line, a thoughtful, intelligent foreman.

One day he says: “Blast this rock. It’s been in our way long enough.”

The men did not wish to blast it. The rock weighed well over a thousand pounds, but the workmen were husky and preferred wheeling it away just as it was. “Blast a mere pebble like that?” they said. Altmulig looked at them; they showed that they had been drinking, their whiskey had gone to their heads. In the course of their struggle to lift the rock into a wheel-barrow the wheel broke and the barrow was a wreck.

“Blast that stone!” ordered Altmulig.

No, there was one thing they simply refused to do; their dander was up and they would show that rock its place, they would finish it off man to man! “What the hell!” they said. “That’s one of those stones that sit there just making themselves heavy for spite. Give in? Not on your life!”

Five men succeeded at length in hoisting the stone into a wheel-barrow and wheeling it off to a fill-in. They came staggering back with triumph beaming on their faces. One man appeared to have injured his hand.

Altmulig called to a member of another gang and said: “Go back and blast that stone!”

“Now?” cried the others. “The stone isn’t in your way now, is it?”

The stone was not drilled, it was blasted with a direct charge.

But the workmen refused to pass up the matter, they muttered over their boss’s conduct and asked him if he were crazy. He made no reply. They called him an old fool and stepped up to him. Altmulig backed up against the wall of the cliff in order to protect himself from the rear, two of the worst trouble-makers in close pursuit. They desired to have him speak up and explain himself, he was simply not to stand there with an important look on his face and refuse to account to them, they offered to throw him over the tall rampart, they shook their fists in his face....

Suddenly Altmulig pulls a revolver from his hip-pocket and discharges it in the air. The two started back at the unexpected sound of the shot. “Are you shooting?” they yelled. But the look on the old man’s face must have given them some cause for alarm—he was as pale as death and he was grinding his false teeth in rage.—“What’s the sense of taking it that way?” they said and immediately tamed down. “We didn’t mean any harm by it.”

“Quit standing there chewing the rag!” cried their comrades to get them away.

During the noon knock-off and after they had worked off the effects of their intoxication, Altmulig stepped up and spoke to them: “You fellows are hired to work and obey orders. There isn’t one of you here who can take the responsibility of going against orders, for you aren’t that kind of people. Here you’ve gone to work and wrecked a wheel-barrow and injured a man, and what good did that do you? A wheel-barrow is not built to carry half a ton and a man with crushed fingers can’t work.”

Silence.

“Ay, but to blast a stone afterwards—!” they said.

“That’s the way we show discipline at sea.”

The men continued to mutter: “Well, we aren’t at sea here. And when you shot that revolver—don’t you know you might have hit one of us?”

“That would have been the least of my tricks—if I wanted to!” said Altmulig.

And looking at him they could see that he meant what he said.

But it was not long before peace again prevailed along the entire line.

Other things happened, as well. A bull came bellowing up the stretch of finished road, one of the manorial cattle, a powerful brute. It behaved itself like a fool, stood pawing up the road, dug its horns into the piles of gravel at the side and awoke the dead with its frightful bellowings.

“Go chase away that mosquito, will you!” some one said to a short, wiry, broad-shouldered little fellow from Trondhjem, a man whose name was Francis.

“Ho, so I suppose you think I’m afraid!” said Francis, starting off with a spade in his hand.

Altmulig was at the moment coming up the line and immediately cried: “Stop! What the devil are you thinking of!”

The bull let out a bellow to indicate how deeply he detested this Francis person, but neither bull nor man would retreat. “Stop!” screeched Altmulig again, but the Trønder refused to heed his warning; instead he picked up a stone and threw it. It reached its mark, but it produced no more of an impression on the animal than a mere drop of water. Suddenly the bull takes it into his head to charge. His tail outstretched, earth and pebbles flying out behind, he comes at his adversary and in a trice Francis is sailing through the air, past his comrades, over the parapet, down the mountain slope.

Finished!

The bull pauses for a moment in amazement. The end of the combat already? Then, for lack of something better to do, he gores the road with his horns, throws back his head and bellows.

Altmulig is ready with his orders: “Fetch some chains!” he commands.

Higher up along the line there were some chains used for anchoring the fascines when blasting was going on near the house. Several of the men began running up after them, apparently glad to be able to retreat from the danger zone. The remainder of the gang crouched as best they could behind rocks and portions of jutting cliff.

When the chains arrived they were fastened together with steel wire and carried in a circle about the animal. The entire gang took part in the operation. One of the men thought it best to stretch the chain across the narrow road and thus bar the way. “That won’t work, a bull can jump pretty high. We’ve got to catch him!” said Altmulig. Gradually the circle closed in; these many people yelling at each other at the top of their lungs seemed to confuse the bull—he snorted, but stood still. When he at last decided to launch a further attack, he found the chain encircling one of his forelegs and he was forced to resign from the field. Two men led him peacefully down the road to the Manor.

At this point the Trønder made his reappearance; that wiry little Francis came crawling back up the slope and asked for a hand to help him over the parapet. “Can’t you jump it?” some one asked in fun. “No, for I’m all cut up,” he replied. Ho, that devil of a fellow, he was anything but unscathed! There was a bloody gash in his head and he had a most unhealthy look about him. But he had come through with his life, though he himself could not understand how he had managed it. He was a tough little chap and kept referring to the affair in a humorous vein. “I’m all gravel inside and out!” he said. “Look here, I’m spitting gravel. How about some water, lads!”

“That’s a mean hole in your head,” they said. “You must have scrubbed up the entire landscape, the way it looks.”

“Ay, but let’s talk of that later. Give me some water now!”

He drew in a deep breath and was on the point of fainting. No, he had not come out of his bull-fighting venture unscathed. Later, Doctor Lund examined him and discovered that lie had two broken ribs and had a serious wound in his head.

* * * * *

The people of Segelfoss Manor came up to watch the road-builders at work. There were not only Gordon Tidemand and his wife Juliet, but Frøken Marna as well, she who had been visiting her sister married to Romeo Knoff further south. She was as blond as her mother, Gammelmoderen, and somewhat older than Gordon—she was well on in her twenties now, a handsome lady, quiet in her speech, a bit too quiet, somewhat sluggish, in fact.

And the people from town came up, too: Druggist Holm, the chief telegraphist and his wife, Postmaster Hagen and his wife. These visits of the ladies always acted as a tonic upon the workmen; the blasters would go about drilling for their charges with much whistling and vocal refrain, and the masons seemed unable to work their tiniest trowels without shouting as loud as they could. Frøken Marna did much to stimulate them; ay, to the last man they all seemed hopelessly in love with her.

“You were singing so lustily I really had to come up and see what you were doing,” she might coyly remark.

One day it is Adolf who replies to her: “Would you like to take a few cracks on this drill?”

“I could never hit it with the hammer, I’m sure!” she says with a shake of her head.

“Come on, have a try!”

“Oh no, you must be mad! I know I should hurt your hand.”

But the fellow is head over heels in love with her by this time and he begins at once to talk foolishness: “It would make my hand feel so good, if only you might manage to crush it!”

She stood there smiling at this, but with downcast eyes which gave her a sly, thoughtful look.

The workers undertook to wonder amongst themselves why Frøken Marna had never married and they asked each other what the matter with her could be. “You’ll see,” they said. “She’s the kind who can never find anyone good enough for her. Isn’t that right?” The Trønder Francis is somewhat more crude in his view of the matter; he is strolling about with a bandage about his head and, because he is enjoying workman’s compensation, he affects an air of great luxury. “Unless,” he suggests prettily, “she can’t work up any sensation for a man?”

Adolf, blindly infatuated, stands up for her and strikes a blow in her defence. “There isn’t anything the matter with her, that much I can say for myself. But you always were a filthy-minded swine, Francis—you can’t even look at a skirt without saying something offensive!”

And then one day came Davidsen, editor and publisher of the Segelfoss News, of a mind to write a bit of a story about the new road. As Altmulig was nowhere in sight, he turned to the workmen themselves, took out paper and pencil and began asking important questions. Now it so happened that Editor-Publisher Davidsen was an unpopular character with the men. They did not read his paper, had themselves a nose for news, and had soon learned what the people in town thought of him. He was in truth an able man and a toiler; he had one of his children, a small daughter, to help him in the office, and together they would set up the little sheet each week and it was thus they made their slender living. But no one respected him for all that, perhaps because he was always something of a spectacle in the shabby clothes he was compelled to wear. And inasmuch as fundamentally he was no more than a type-setter and printer, he could by no stretch of the imagination be considered as a person of quality. But he held sound, progressive ideas and no end of social vision, facts which were most apparent when, in meetings of the local commune, he was always able to triumph over the school teachers who knew nothing, thought nothing, were content to be merely radical.

Poor Davidsen, a tall, thin man in ragged clothes, the father of five children, the owner of two cases of type and a hand-press, a pauper thus, a louse.

The workers declined to answer his questions seriously and when he realized that they were only poking fun at him, he made the grave error of becoming annoyed and stooping to argue with them. He got nowhere in this regard, for theirs was the voice of the rabble, arrogant, illogical, deprecating—they winked at each other like baboons and laughed the man down. Francis was unable to work, but he was still able to exert himself in deviltry, and he hit upon a most amusing notion: he stealthily picked up a light charge of blasting powder and exploded it behind the editor’s back. Splendid, splendid! The workers all howled with merriment and the editor found himself squatting some distance away.

“You shouldn’t have done that!” he said.

Francis, roaring with glee: “We’re blasting up here on the mountain!”

“But not without warning, are you?”

Silence.

Davidsen then committed a further error in judgment: he addressed the gang with a bit of a lecture. “You are all too easily pleased with yourselves,” he began. “Was that anything to laugh at? This man here is merely crude, can’t you see that? I pity poor wretches like you who can laugh and have a good time over such an incident as this! It is in th