"Remember, Arne, it's for your sake I've borne it all," Margit said, weeping. "You must never leave me."
"Never, never," he answered fervently.
II.--The Call of the Mountains
Arne grew up reserved and shy; he went on tending the cattle and making songs. He was now in his twentieth year. The pastor lent him books to read, the only thing he cared for.
Many a time he would have liked to read aloud to his mother, but he could not bring himself to do it. One of the songs he made at this time began:
The parish is all restless, but there's peace in grove and wood.
No beadle here impounds you, to suit his crabbed mood;
No strife profanes our little church, tho' there it rages high,
But then we have no little church, and that, perhaps, is why!
The folks round about got to hear of his songs, and would have been glad to talk to him; but Arne was shy of people and disliked them, chiefly because he thought they disliked him.
He gave up tending the cattle, and stayed at home, looking after the farm. He was near his mother all day now, and she would give him dainty meals. In his heart was a song with the refrain "Over the mountains high!" Somehow, Arne could never finish this song.
There was a field labourer named Upland Knut, at whose side Arne often worked. This man had neither parents nor friends, and when Arne said to him, "Have you no one at all, then, to love you?" he answered, "Ah, no! I have no one."
Arne thought of his own mother, and his heart was full of love to her. What if he were to lose her because he had not sufficiently prized her, he thought; and he rushed home, to find his mother sleeping gently like a child.
Mother and son were much together in those days, and once they agreed to go to a wedding at a neighbouring farm.
For the first time in his life Arne drank too much, and all next day he lay in the barn. He was full of self-reproach, and it seemed to him that cowardice was his besetting sin.
Cowardice had been his failing as a boy. It had prevented him taking his mother's part against his father, from leaving home, from mixing with people. Cowardice had made him drunk, and, but for his fear and timidity, his verses would be better.
After searching everywhere for him, Margit eventually found him in the barn. He tried to soothe her, and vowed that he would join his life more closely to his mother's in future. What moved him was that his loving, patient mother said that she had done a grievous wrong against him, and implored his forgiveness.
"Of course, I forgive you," he said.
"God bless you, my dear, dear Arne."
From that day, Arne was not only happier at home, but he began to look at other people more kindly, more with his mother's gentle eyes. But he still went about alone, and a strange longing often possessed his soul.
One summer evening Arne had gone out to sit by the Black Lake, a piece of water very dark and deep. He sat behind some bushes and looked out over the water, and at the hills opposite, and at the homesteads in the valley.
Presently he heard voices close beside him. A young girl, he made out, was grumbling because she had got to leave the parsonage, where she had been staying with Mathilde, the parson's daughter, and it was her father who was taking her home. A third voice, sharp and strident, was heard.
"Hurry up, now, Baard; push off the boat, or we sha'n't be home to-night."
The rattle of cart-wheels followed, and Baard fetched a box out of the cart, and carried it down to the boat.
Then Mathilde, the parson's daughter, came running up calling, "Eli! Eli!"
The two girls wept in each other's arms.
"You must take this," said Mathilde, giving her friend a bird-cage. "Mother wants you to. Yes, you must take Narrifas, and then you'll often think of me."
"Eli! Come, come, Eli!" came the summons from the boat.
A moment after, and Arne saw the boat out in the water, Eli standing up in the stern, holding the bird-cage and waving her hand to Mathilde. His eyes followed the boat, and he watched it draw near to the land. He could see the three forms mirrored in the water, and continued gazing until they had left the boat and gone indoors at the biggest house on the opposite side of the lake.
Mathilde had sat for some time by the landing stage, but she had left now, and Arne was alone when Eli came out again for a last look across the water. Arne could see her image in the lake. "Perhaps she sees me now," he thought. Then, when the sun had set, he got up and went home, feeling that all things were at peace.
Arne's fancies for some time now were of dreams of love and fair maidens. Old ballads and romances mirrored them for him, as the water had mirrored the young girl.
A two-fold longing--the yearning to have someone to love, and a desire to do something great--sprang up together in his soul, and melted into one. Again he began to work at the song, "Over the mountains high," altering it, and thinking each time, "One day it will carry me off." But he never forgot his mother in his thoughts of travel, and decided that he would send for her as soon as he had got a footing abroad.
There was in the parish a merry old fellow of the name of Ejnar Aasen. He was well off, and, in spite of a lameness that made him use a crutch, was fond of organising parties of children to go nutting. All the young people called him "godfather."
Aasen liked Arne, and invited him to join in the next nutting party, and though Arne blushed, and made excuses, he decided to go. He found himself the only young man among many girls. They were not the maidens of whom he had made songs, nor yet was he afraid of them. They were more full of life than anything he had seen, and they could make merry over anything. All of them laughed at Arne, as they caught at the branches, because he was serious, so that he could not help laughing himself.
After a while they all sat on a large knoll, old Aasen in the middle, and told stories. And then they were anxious to tell their dreams, but this could be done only to one person, and Arne was trusted to hear the dreams. The last of the girls to tell her dreams was called Eli, and she was the girl he had seen in the boat.
Arne had to say which was the best dream, and as he said he wanted time to think, they left him sitting on the knoll and trooped off with godfather. Arne sat for some time, and the old yearnings to travel came back, and drove him to his song, "Over the mountains high." Now, at last, he had got the words; and taking paper out of his pocket, he wrote the song through to the end. When he had finished he rose, and left the paper on the knoll; and later, when he found he had forgotten it, he went back. But the paper was gone.
One of the girls, who had returned to seek him, had found--not Arne, but his song.
III.--Love's Awakening
Whenever Arne mentioned his friend Kristen, and wondered why he never heard from him, his mother left the room, and seemed unhappy for days afterwards. He noticed, too, that she would get specially nice meals for him at such times.
He had never been so gentle since his father's death as he was that winter. On Sundays he would read a sermon to his mother, and go to church with her; but she knew this was only to win her consent to his going abroad in the spring. Upland Knut, who had always been alone, now came to live at Kampen. Arne had become very skilful with axe and saw, and that winter he was often busy at the parsonage as well as Kampen.
One day a messenger came from Böen to ask him if he would go over there for some carpentry work. He answered "Yes," without thinking about the matter. As soon as the man had gone, his mother told him that it was Baard Böen who had injured his father; but Arne decided to go all the same.
It was a fine homestead, and Baard and Arne soon became on friendly terms. He had many talks, too, with Eli, and at times would sing his own songs to her, and afterwards feel ashamed.
Then Eli fell ill, and Birgit blamed Baard because Mathilde had gone away from the parsonage on a visit to town without bidding good-bye to Eli. It seemed to Baard that whatever he did was wrong.