Swords & Steam Short Stories

by S. T. Joshi

  Alerik, who had expected this result much sooner, had waited there to receive him. When he had kept him knocking a sufficient time, he put his head out of the window, and inquired who was there.

  “Eystein Hansen,” was the disconsolate reply. “For the love of mercy let me come in and get a few minutes sleep, before morning. I have been rowing about the bay these four hours, and I can’t find my house any where.”

  “This is a very bad sign,” replied Alerik, solemnly. “Houses don’t run away, except from drunken men. Ah, Father Hansen! Father Hansen! What will the minister say?”

  He did not have a chance to persecute the weary old man much longer; for scarcely had he come under the shelter of the house, before he was snoring in a profound sleep.

  Early the next day, Alerik sought his old friends in their brown-washed cottage. He found it not so easy to conciliate them as usual. They were really grieved; and Brenda even said she believed he wanted to be the death of her old man. But he had brought them presents, which he knew they would like particularly well; and he kissed their hands, and talked over his boyish days, till at last he made them laugh. “Ah now,” said he, “you have forgiven me, my dear old friends. And you see, father, it was all your own fault. You put the mischief into me, by boasting before all those young men that I could never bamboozle you again.”

  “Ah thou incorrigible rogue!” answered the old man. “I believe thou hast indeed made a league with the devil; and he gives thee the power to make every body love thee, do what thou wilt.”

  Alerik’s smile seemed to express that he always had a pleasant consciousness of such power. The luhr lay on the table beside him, and as he took it up, he asked, “Who plays on this? Yesterday, when I was out in my boat, I heard very wild pretty little variations on some of my old favourite airs.”

  Brenda, instead of answering, called, “Hilda! Hilda!” and the young girl came from the next room, blushing as she entered. Alerik looked at her with evident surprise. “Surely, this is not your Gunilda?” said he.

  “No,” replied Brenda, “She is a Swedish orphan, whom the all-kind Father sent to take the place of our Gunilda, when she was called hence.”

  After some words of friendly greeting, the visitor asked Hilda if it was she who played so sweetly on the luhr. She answered timidly, without looking up. Her heart was throbbing; for the tones of his voice were like Magnus the Dane.

  The acquaintance thus begun, was not likely to languish on the part of such an admirer of beauty as was Alerik Thorild. The more he saw of Hilda, during the long evenings of the following winter, the more he was charmed with her natural refinement of look, voice, and manner. There was, as we have said, a peculiarity in her beauty, which gave it a higher character than mere rustic loveliness. A deep, mystic, plaintive expression in her eyes; a sort of graceful bewilderment in her countenance, and at times in the carriage of her head, and the motions of her body; as if her spirit had lost its way, and was listening intently. It was not strange that he was charmed by her spiritual beauty, her simple untutored modesty. No wonder she was delighted with his frank strong exterior, his cordial caressing manner, his expressive eyes, now tender and earnest, and now sparkling with merriment, and his “smile most musical,” because always so in harmony with the inward feeling, whether of sadness, fun, or tenderness. Then his moods were so bewitchingly various. Now powerful as the organ, now bright as the flute, now naive as the oboe. Brenda said everything he did seemed to be alive. He carved a wolf’s head on her old man’s cane, and she was always afraid it would bite her.

  Brenda, in her simplicity, perhaps gave as good a description of genius as could be given, when she said everything it did seemed to be alive. Hilda thought it certainly was so with Alerik’s music. Sometimes all went madly with it, as if fairies danced on the grass, and ugly gnomes came and mde faces at them, and shrieked, and clutched at their garments; the fairies pelted them off with flowers, and then all died away to sleep in the moonlight. Sometimes, when he played on flute, or violin, the sounds came mournfully as the midnight wind through ruined towers; and they stirred up such sorrowful memories of the past, that Hilda pressed her hand upon her swelling heart, and said, “Oh, not such strains as that, dear Alerik.” But when his soul overflowed with love and happiness oh, then how the music gushed and nestled!

  “The lark could scarce get out his notes for joy,

  But shook his song together, as he neared

  His happy home, the ground.”

  The old luhr was a great favourite with Alerik; not for its musical capabilities, but because it was entwined with the earliest recollections of his childhood. “Until I heard thee play upon it,” said he, “I half repented having given it to the good Brenda. It has been in our family for several generations, and my nurse used to play upon it when I was in my cradle. They tell me my grandmother was a foundling. She was brought to my great-grandfather’s house by an old peasant woman, on her way to the valley of Westfjordalen. She died there, leaving the babe and the luhr in my great-grandmother’s keeping. They could never find out to whom the babe belonged; but she grew up very beautiful, and my grandfather married her.”

  “What was the old woman’s name?” asked Hilda; and her voice was so deep and suppressed, that it made Alerik start.

  “Virika Gjetter, they have always told me,” he replied. “But my dearest one, what is the matter?”

  Hilda, pale and fainting, made no answer. But when he placed her head upon his bosom, and kissed her forehead, and spoke soothingly, her glazed eyes softened, and she burst into tears. All his entreaties, however, could obtain no information at that time. “Go home now,” she said, in tones of deep despondency. “Tomorrow I will tell thee all. I have had many unhappy hours; for I have long felt that I ought to tell thee all my past history; but I was afraid to do it, for I thought thou wouldst not love me any more; and that would be worse than death. But come tomorrow, and I will tell thee all.”

  “Well, dearest Hilda, I will wait,” replied Alerik; “but what my grandmother, who died long before I was born, can have to do with my love for thee, is more than I can imagine.”

  The next day, when Hilda saw Alerik coming to claim the fulfillment of her promise, it seemed almost like her death-warrant.”He will not love me any more,” thought she, “he will never again look at me so tenderly; and then what can I do, but die?”

  With much embarrassment, and many delays, she at last began her strange story. He listened to the first part very attentively, and with a gathering frown; but as she went on, the muscles of his face relaxed into a smile; and when she ended by saying, with the most melancholy seriousness, “So thou seest, dear Alerik, we cannot be married; because it is very likely that I am thy Great-grandmother” -- he burst into immoderate peals of laughter.

  When his mirth had somewhat subsided, he replied, “Likely as not thou art my great-grandmother, dear Hilda; and just as likely I was thy grandfather, in the first place. A great German scholar (footnote 3) teaches that our souls keep coming back again and again into new bodies. An old Greek philosopher is said to have come back for the fourth time, under the name of Pythagoras. If these things are so, how the deuce is a man ever to tell whether he marries his grandmother or not?”

  “But dearest Alerik, I am not jesting,” rejoined she. “What I have told thee is really true. They did put me to sleep for a hundred years.”

  “Oh, yes,” answered he, laughing, “I remember reading about it in the Swedish papers; and I thought it a capital joke. I will tell thee how it is with thee, my precious one. The elves sometimes seize people, to carry them down into their subterranean caves; but if the mortals run away from them, they, out of spite, forever after fill their heads with gloomy insane notions. A man in Drontheim ran away from them, and thy made him believe he was an earthen coffee-pot. He sat curled up in a corner all the time, for fear somebody would break his nose off.”

  �
�Nay, now thou art joking, Alerik, but really” –

  “No, I tell thee, as thou has told me, it was no joke at all,” he replied. “The Man himself told me he was a coffee-pot.”

  “But be serious, Alerik,” said she, “and tell me, dost hou not believe that some learned men can put people to sleep for a hundred years?”

  “I don’t doubt some of my college professors could,” rejoined he; “provided their tongues could hold out so long.”

  “But, Alerik, dost thou not think it possible that people may be alive, and yet not alive?”

  “Of course I do,” he replied; “the greater part of the world are in that condition.”

  “Oh, Alerik, what a tease thou art! I mean, is it not possible that there are people now living, or staying somewhere, who were moving about on this earth ages ago?”

  “Nothing more likely,” answered he; “for instance, who knows what people there may be under the ice-sea of Folgefond? They say the cocks are heard crowing down there, to this day. How a fowl of any feather got there is a curious question; and what kind of atmosphere he has to crow in, is another puzzle. Perhaps they are poor ghosts, without sense of shame, crowing over the recollections of sins committed in the human body. The ancient Egyptians thought the soul was obliged to live three thousand years, in a succession of different animals, before it could attain to the regions of the blest. I am pretty sure I have already been a lion and a nightingale. What I shall be next, the Egyptians know as well as I do. One of their sculptors made a stone image, half woman and half lioness. Doubtless his mother had been a lioness, and had transmitted to him some dim recollection of it. But I am glad, dearest, they sent thee back in the form of a lovely maiden; for it thou hadst come as a wolf, I might have shot thee; and I shouldn’t like to shoot my--great-grandmother. Or if thou hadst come as a red herring, Father Hansen might have eaten thee in his soup; and then I should have had no Hilda Silfverling.”

  Hilda smiled, as she said, half reproachfully, “I see well that thou dost not believe one word I say.”

  “Oh yes, I do, dearest,” rejoined he, very seriously. “I have no doubt the fairies carried thee off some summer’s night and made thee verily believe thou hadst slept for a hundred years. They do the strangest things. Sometimes they change babies in the cradle; leave an imp, and carry off the human to the metal mines, where he hears only clink! clink! Then the fairies bring him back, and put him in some other cradle. When he grows up, how he does hurry skurry after the silver! He is obliged to work all his life, as if the devil drove him. The poor miser never knows what is the matter with him; but it is all because the gnomes brought him up in the mines, and he could never get the clink out of his head. A more poetic kind of fairies sometimes carry a babe to Aeolian caves, full of wild dreamy sounds; and when he is brought back to upper earth, ghosts of sweet echoes keep beating time in some corner of his brain, to something which they can hear, but which nobody else is the wiser for. I know that is true; for I was brought up in those caves myself.

  Hilda remained silent for a few minutes, as he sat looking in her face with comic gravity. “Thou wilt do nothing but make fun of me,” at last she said. “I do wish I could persuade thee to be serious. What I told thee was no fairy story. It really happened. I remember it as distinctly as I do our sail round the islands yesterday. I seem to see that great bear now, with his paws folded up, on the shelf opposite to me.”

  “He must have been a great bear to have staid there,” replied Alerik, with eyes full of roguery. “If I had been in his skin, may I be shot if all the drugs and gasses in the world would have kept me there, with my paws folded on my breast.”

  Seeing a slight blush pass over her cheek, he added, more seriously, “After all, I ought to thank that wicked elf, whoever he was, for turning thee into a stone image; for otherwise thou wouldst have been in the world a hundred years too soon for me, and so I should have missed my life’s best blossom.”

  Feeling her tears on his hand, he again started off into a vein of merriment. “Thy case was not so very peculiar,” said he. “There was a Greek lady, name Niobe, who was changed to stone. The Greek gods changed women into trees, and fountains, and all manner of things. A man couldn’t chop a walking-stick in those days, without danger of cutting off some lady’s finger. The tree might be--his great-grandmother; and she of course would take it very unkindly of him.”

  “All these things are like the stories of Odin and Frigga,” rejoined Hilda. “They are not true, like the Christian religion. When I tell thee a true story, why dost thou always meet me with fairies and fictions?”

  “But tell me, best Hilda,” said he, “what the Christian religion has to do with penning up young maidens with bears and crocodiles? In its marriage ceremonies, I grant that it sometimes does things not very unlike that, only omitting the important part of freezing the maiden’s heart. But since thou hast mentioned the Christian religion, I may as well give thee a bit of consolation from that quarter. I have read in my mother’s big Bible, that a man must not marry his grandmother; but I do not remember that it said a single word again his marrying his great-grandmother.”

  Hilda laughed, in spite of herself. But after a pause, she looked at him earnestly, and said, “Dost thou indeed think there would be no harm in marrying, under these circumstances, if I were really thy great-grandmother? Is it thy earnest? Do be serious for once, dear Alerik!”

  “Certainly there would be no harm,” answered he. “Physicians have agreed that the body changes entirely once in seven years. That must be because the soul outgrows its clothes; which proves that the soul changes every seven years, also. Therefore, in the course of one hundred years, thou must have had fourteen complete changes of soul and body. It is therefore as plain as daylight, that if thou wert my great-grandmother when thou fell asleep, thou couldst not have been my great-grandmother when they waked thee up.”

  “Ah, Alerik,” she replied, “It is as the good Brenda says, there is no use in talking with thee. One might as well try to twist a string that is not fastened at either end.”

  He looked up merrily in her face. The wind was playing with her ringlets, and freshened the colour on her cheeks. “I only wish I had a mirror to hold before thee,” said he; “that thou couldst see how very like thou art to a -- great grandmother.”

  “Laugh at me as thou wilt,” answered she; “but I assure thee I have strange thoughts about myself sometimes. Dost thou know,” added she, almost in a whisper, “I am not always quite certain that I have not died, and am now in heaven?”

  A ringing shout of laughter burst from the light-hearted lover. “Oh, I like that! I like that!” exclaimed he. “That is good! That a Swede coming to Norway does not know certainly whether she is in heaven or not.”

  “Do be serious, Alerik,” said she imploringly. “Don’t carry thy jests too far.”

  “Serious? I am serious. If Norway is not heaven, one sees plainly enough that it must have been the scaling place, where the old giants got up to heaven; for they have left their ladders standing. Where else wilt thou find clusters of mountains running up perpendicularly thousands of feet right into the sky? If thou wast to see some of them, thou couldst tell whether Norway is a good climbing place into heaven.”

  “Ah, dearest Alerik, thou hast taught me that already,” she replied, with a glance full of affection; “so a truce with thy joking. Truly one never knows how to take thee. Thy talk sets everything in the world, and above it, dancing together in the strangest fashion.”

  “Because they all do dance together,” rejoined the perverse man.

  “Oh, be done! Be done, Alerik!” she said, putting her hand playfully over his mouth. “Thou wilt tie my poor brain all up into knots.”

  He seized her hand and kissed it, then busied himself with braiding the wild spring flowers into a garland for her fair hair. As she gazed on him earnestly, her eyes beaming with love and happiness, he
drew her to his breast, and exclaimed fervently, “Oh, thou art beautiful as an angel; and here or elsewhere, with thee by my side, it seemeth heaven.”

  They spoke no more for a long time. The birds now and then serenaded the silent lovers with little twittering gushes of song. The setting sun, as he went away over the hills, threw diamonds on the bay, and a rainbow ribbon across the distant waterfall. Their hearts were in harmony with the peaceful beauty of Nature. As he kissed her drowsy eyes, she murmured, “Oh, it was well worth a hundred years with bears and crocodiles, to fall asleep thus on thy heart.”

  * * *

  The next autumn, a year and a half after Hilda’s arrival in Norway, there was another procession of boats, with banners, music and garlands. The little church was again decorated with evergreens; but no clarinet players stood at the door to annoy good Father Hansen. The worthy man had in fact taken the hint, though somewhat reluctantly, and had good-naturedly ceased to disturb modern ears with his clamorous vociferation of the hymns. He and his kind-hearted Brenda were happy beyond measure at Hilda’s good fortune. But when she told her husband anything he did not choose to believe, they could never rightly make out what he meant by looking at her so slyly, and saying, “Pooh! Pooh! Tell that to my -- great-grandmother.”

  Footnote 1. A warrior famous in the Northern Sagas for his stormy and untamable character.

  Footnote 2. An elfish spirit, which, according to popular tradition in Norway, appears in the form of a coal black horse.

  Footnote 3. Lessing.

  Dear George, Love Margaret

  Amanda C. Davis

  My Dearest George:

  Only an hour ago I watched your train pull away from the station, and already I am compelled to send my words of love. How will I tolerate these long years without you? Already I miss your voice, your comforting presence. I will bear up. But, my love, I will count the days.