Part 24 (1/2)
”I vill understand! I vill!” she exclaimed; and the good-natured doctor took pains to explain to her at some length; at the end of his explanation she turned to me triumphantly, with a nod: ”Now I know very well; it is another kind of strongth from the strongth of a machine. It is not such strongth that you can see, or you can make with your hands; but it is strongth all the same,”--a definition which might be commended to the careful attention of all persons in the habit or need of using the word ”dynamic.”
It is five miles from Christiania out and up to the Frogner Saeter, first through pretty suburban streets which are more roads than streets, with picturesque wooden houses, painted in wonderful colors,--lilac, apple-green, white with orange-colored settings to doors and windows, yellow pine left its own color, oiled, and decorated with white or with maroon red. They look like the gay toy-houses sold in boxes for children to play with. There is no one of them, perhaps, which one would not grow very weary of, if he had to see it every day, but the effect of the succession of them along the roadside is surprisingly gay and picturesque. Their variety of shape and the pretty little balconies of carved lattice-work add much to this picturesqueness. They are all surrounded by flower-gardens of a simple kind,--old-fas.h.i.+oned flowers growing in clumps and straight borders, and every window-sill full of plants in bloom; windows all opening outward like doors, so that in a warm day, when every window-sash is thrown open, the houses have a strange look of being a-flutter. There is no expression of elegance or of the habits or standards of great wealth about these suburban houses of Christiania; but there is a very rare and charming expression of comfort and good cheer, and a childlike simplicity which dotes on flowers and has not outgrown the love of bright colors. I do not know anywhere a region where houses are so instantly and good-naturedly attractive, with a suggestion of good fellows.h.i.+p, and sensible, easy-going good times inside and out.
The last three miles of the road to the saeter are steadily up, and all the way through dense woods of fir and spruce,--that grand Norway spruce, which spreads its boughs out generously as palms, and loads down each twig so full that by their own weight of s.h.i.+ning green the lower branches trail out along the ground, and the upper ones fold a little and slant downwards from the middle, as if avalanches of snow had just slid off on each side and bent them. Here were great beds of ferns, cl.u.s.ters of bluebells, and territories of Linnaea. In June the mountain-side must be fragrant with its flowers.
Katrina glowed with pleasure. In her colder, barrener home she had seen no such lavishness as this.
”Oh, but ven one tinks, how Nature is wonderful!” she cried. ”Here all dese tings grow up, demselves! noting to be done. Are dey not wort more dan in gardens? In gardens always must be put in a corn before anyting come up; and all dese nice tings come up alone, demselves.”
”Oh, but see vat G.o.d has done; how much better than all vat people can; no matter vat dey make.”
Half-way up the mountain we came to a tiny house, set in a clearing barely big enough to hold the house and let a little sun in on it from above.
”Oh, I wish-shed I had dat little house!” she exclaimed. ”Dat house could stand in Bergen. I like to carry dat home and dem trees to it; but my husband, he would not like it. He likes Bergen house bestest.”
As we drew near the top, we met carriages coming down. Evidently it was the custom to drive to the Frogner Saeter.
”I tink in dat first carriage were Chews,” said Katrina, scornfully.
”I do hate dem Chews. I can't bear dat kind of people.”
”Why not, Katrina?” I asked. ”It is not fair to hate people because of their religion.”
”Oh, dat I don't know about deir religion,” she replied carelessly. ”I don't tink dey got much religion anyhow. I tink dey are kind of thieves. I saw it in New York. Ven I went into Chew shop, he say a ting are tree dollar; and I say, 'No, dat are too dear.' Den he say, 'You can have for two dollar;' and I say, 'No, I cannot take;' and den he say, 'Oh, have it for one dollar and half;' and I tink all such tings are not real. I hate dem Chews. Dey are all de same in all places. Dey are chust like dat if dey come in Norway. Very few Chews comes in Norway. Dat is one good ting.”
In a small open, part clearing, part natural rocky crest of the hill, stood the saeter: great s.p.a.ces of pink heather to right and left of it, a fir wood walling it on two sides; to the south and the east, a clear off-look over the two bays of the Christiania Fjord, past all their islands, out to sea, and the farthest horizon. Christiania lay like an insignificant huddle of buildings in the nearer foreground; its only beauty now being in its rich surrounding of farm-lands, which seemed to hold it like a rough brown pebble in an emerald setting.
The house itself fronted south. Its piazza and front windows commanded this grand view. It was of pine logs, smoothed and mortised into each other at the corners. Behind it was a hollow square of the farm buildings: sheds, barns, and the pretty white cottage of the overseer.
The overseer's wife came running to meet us, and with cordial good-will took us into the house, and showed us every room. She had the pride of a retainer in the place; and when she found that none of its beauty was lost on me, she warmed and grew communicative. It will not be easy to describe the charm of this log-house: only logs inside as well as out; but the logs are Norway pine, yellow and hard and s.h.i.+ning, taking a polish for floors and ceiling as fine as ash or maple, and making for the walls belts and stripes of gold color better than paper; all cross beams and part.i.tions are mortised at the joinings, instead of crossing and lapping. This alone gives to these Norwegian houses an expression quite unlike that of ordinary log-houses. A little carved work of a simple pattern, at the cornices of the rooms and on the ceiling beams, was the only ornamentation of the house; and a great gla.s.s door, of a single pane, opening on the piazza, was the only luxurious thing about it. Everything else was simply and beautifully picturesque. Old Norwegian tapestries hung here and there on the walls, their vivid reds and blues coming out superbly on the yellow pine; curious antique corner cupboards, painted in chaotic colors of fantastic brightness; old fireplaces built out into the room, in the style of the most ancient Norwegian farm-houses; old bra.s.ses, sconces, placques, and candlesticks; and a long dining-table, with wooden benches of hollowed planks for seats, such as are to be seen to-day in some of the old ruined baronial castles in England.
In the second-story rooms were old-fas.h.i.+oned bedsteads: one of carved pine, so high that it needed a step-ladder to mount it; the other built like a cupboard against the wall, and shut by two sliding doors, which on being pushed back disclosed two narrow bunks. This is the style of bed in many of the Norwegian farm-houses still. On the sliding door of the upper bunk was a small photograph of the prince imperial; and the woman told us with great pride that he had slept one night in that bed.
Upstairs again, by narrow winding stairs, and there we found the whole floor left undivided save by the big chimney-stack which came up in the middle; the gable ends of the garret opened out in two great doors like barn-doors; under the eaves, the whole length of each side, was a row of bunk beds, five on each side, separated only by a board part.i.tion. This was a great common bedroom, ”used for gentlemen at Christmas-time,” the woman said. ”There had as many as fifteen or twenty gentlemen slept in that room.”
At Christmas, it seems, it is the habit of the family owning this unique and charming country-house to come up into the woods for a two weeks' festivity. The snow is deep. The mercury is well down near zero or below; but the road up the mountain is swept level smooth: sledges can go easier in winter than carriages can in summer; and the vast outlook over the glittering white land and s.h.i.+ning blue sea full of ice islands must be grander than when the islands and the land are green. Pine logs in huge fireplaces can warm any room; and persons of the sort that would think of spending Christmas in a fir-wood on a mountain-top could make a house warm even better than pine logs could do it. Christmas at the Frogner Saeter must be a Christmas worth having.
”The house is as full as ever it can hold,” said the woman, ”and fifty sit down to dinner sometimes; they think nothing of driving up from Christiania and down again at midnight.”
What a place for sleigh-bells to ring on a frosty night; that rocky hill-crest swung out as it were in clear s.p.a.ce of upper air, with the great Christiania Fjord stretching away beneath, an ice-bound, ice-flaked sea, white and steel-black under the winter moon! I fancied the house blazing like a many-sided beacon out of the darkness of the mountain front at midnight, the bells clanging, the voices of lovers and loved chiming, and laughter and mirth ringing. I think for years to come the picture will be so vivid in my mind that I shall find myself on many a Christmas night mentally listening to the swift bells chiming down the mountain from the Frogner Saeter.
The eastern end of the piazza is closed in by a great window, one single pane of gla.s.s like the door; so that in this corner, sheltered from the wind, but losing nothing of the view, one can sit in even cold weather. Katrina cuddled herself down like a kitten, in the sun, on the piazza steps, and looking up at me, as I sat in this sheltered corner, said approvingly,--
”Dis you like. I ask de voman if we could stay here; but she got no room: else she would like to keep us. I tink I stay here all my life: only for my husband, I go back.”
Then she pulled out the Saga and read some pages of Ingeborg's Lament, convulsing me in the beginning by saying that it was ”Ingeborg's Whale.” It was long before I grasped that she meant ”Wail.”
”What you say ven it is like as if you cry, but you do not cry?” she said. ”Dat is it. It stands in my dictionary, whale!” And she reiterated it with some impatience at my stupidity in not better understanding my own language. When I explained to her the vast difference between ”whale” and ”wail,” she was convulsed in her turn.
”Oh, dere are so many words in English which do have same sound and mean so different ting,” she said, ”I tink I never learn to speak English in dis world.”
While we were sitting there, a great speckled woodp.e.c.k.e.r flew out from the depths of the wood, lighted on a fir near the house, and began racing up and down the tree, tapping the bark with his strong bill, like the strokes of a hammer.
”There is your Gertrude bird, Katrina,” said I. She looked bewildered.