The ice was still undependable in many places on the lakes up there, and in such weather it was impossible to see far ahead. But this Mother did not say. She comforted the woman as well as she could. She had realized that this was a Mrs. Jytte Hjorth, whom she had met at some congress in Copenhagen.
Mrs. Hjorth’s son had just been graduated from medical school; he had passed his examination brilliantly, but he felt rather tired afterward, and so Mrs. Hjorth had come up here with him so that her Egil could have a rest. . . . And yesterday afternoon he had gone skiing with a friend. . . .
She cried and cried. Mrs. Hjorth was a widow and her son was her only child.
Mother got the fire lit in the fireplace and settled Mrs. Hjorth in a comfortable chair before its warmth. Coffee and a dainty breakfast tray helped to calm the poor woman. She had been so upset she had not tasted food since yesterday afternoon. Aunt Signe called the hotel every half hour, but there was no news about Dr. Hjorth and his companion. However, in the mountains it was almost clear now and was beginning to freeze. That would lighten the work of the rescuers a great deal. The fog had sunk down into the valley. Here the weather was gray and gloomy, and in spite of the candles the parlor was dark.
At dinnertime Mrs. Hjorth decided she must go up to the hotel again. She could not endure sitting here any longer. And she did so want Mother to come along.
Mother was not entirely unwilling. She was a little uneasy about Anders. . . . All the youngsters set up a vast howl of protest when she told them.
But, they protested, the Third Christmas Day, the very first whole day they were all together, was the best day in the whole year, with an extra special dinner and with dancing around the lighted Christmas tree afterward, and everything! And then, in Mother’s big bedroom, after they had all undressed, they would run around and play in their nightgowns and pajamas, until Mother came up and lit the candles in front of that lovely little crib Hans had! And told stories! Now if she and Anders were both going to be away, the whole day would be spoiled.
Aunt Signe promised that Thea and she would do the best they could for the children. Besides, they had Grandmother, Mother reminded them. All the children idolized their grandmother. She was so tiny and so dainty, with her snow-white hair and her delicate little face. Because she never petted them, but talked with them as if they were as grown-up and as clever as she herself, each of the boys and girls was certain that he, or she, was Grandmother’s very own favorite.
Yes, that was true, Grandmother was there; that would make things as good as possible until Mother got back.
It was not cheerful at the little mountain hotel. All the men guests were, of course, out on the searching party. Sitting around in the lobbies and parlors, the women were knitting or trying to read, or playing solitaire, but they were restless. Over and over, they asked Mr. Nesheim, the owner, the same questions.
“It would not surprise me,” Mr. Nesheim declared, “if we have to get out and look for some of the searchers, as soon as we have hauled in the Danes!”
Mother sat up all night with Mrs. Hjorth, sleeping when Mrs. Hjorth slept, listening when Mrs. Hjorth was not sleeping. Betweentimes, she speculated upon where Anders was that night, and how things were with him.
At nine Mr. Nesheim awakened them.
“Well, Mrs. Hjorth, now you can be happy. Your son will be here in a few hours. They found them at the southern end of Kroksjoen. Dr. Hjorth is all right, but the lawyer, Petersen, has hurt his foot, so he will have to be brought down by ski sled. By the by,” he said to Mother, as he answered Mrs. Hjorth’s thousand and one questions, “Anders is down in the dining room now.”
Anders looked up from the platter of bacon and eggs—much too obviously casual and uninterested.
“For heaven’s sake, mother, are you here? Ah, you’ve been sitting up with that Danish lady, haven’t you? No, I’m not in the least tired. . . . We hunted down through that draw along Deep Water Creek, you know—and all around Deep Water Lake. We went to every cabin and every saeter, you see. Finally we turned in at Ramstad’s cabin—Nils and I had been sent out with two others from the hotel here, you see—a Dane, a good fellow, by the way, good on skis—and a Swede. We finally convinced them it was no use wandering around in the mountains after it had got pitch-dark, so we turned in. . . . Lay down to sleep a bit, planning to start hunting down toward Hynna as soon as it got light. But then Aasen came early this morning and said they had found them. It was Aasen’s party that found them, you see.”
Suddenly the boy lost his mask of indifference.
“And, mother, do you know what? Nils and I got to go along with Aasen—Johan Aasen, you know—from the Ramstad cabin clear up to the peak above Clear Water. Out on the ice he left us, of course, but we had managed to keep up with him clear to there! Mother, you can’t imagine what a swell fellow he is—Aasen—”
Johan Aasen, the lumberjack from Lismarka, champion skier and prize winner at ever so many ski tournaments both at home and abroad, was the idol and hero of all the boys. The two Boy Scouts who had been on this journey with him over the mountain obviously thought the expedition in search of the vanished Danes just a lucky adventure.
“Aasen said, by the way, that the doctor—the one who is the son of that friend of yours—is a smart fellow. When he saw they were lost, he said they should burrow down in the snow and stay there until daylight. But then the lawyer went to fetch some water—they could hear a stream running nearby under the snow where they were lying—and he stepped down between two rocks and broke his ankle. . . . Tired? Who, me? Of course not, why should I be tired?”
But just the same Anders was quite willing to drive home with Mother in the car “—if Nils wants to, that is. Otherwise, we’ll ski.”
But Nils also was glad to ride. They were standing out on the tun, the three of them, and the boys were tying their skis to the car, when a man on skis streaked past—a slim young man, light-haired, brown-skinned, with sharp light-blue eyes.
“Thanks for your company.” His voice was low and gentle. He nodded to the boys.
“Same to you!” Anders turned to his mother. “That was Johan Aasen.” His whole face beamed.
Nils got in front with the chauffeur, and Anders crawled in with Mother in the back seat. They had scarcely started to drive, before Anders began to sway toward Mother’s breast. He slept. Mother peeped at Nils, but Nils too was slumped down, his head nodding, nodding. . . .
“Tired.” The chauffeur grinned.
So Mother put her arm around her big boy, so that his head should rest well against her shoulder, and sound asleep, the two Boy Scouts drove home from their first lifesaving expedition into the mountains.
7
AFTER THAT THE CHRISTMAS HOLIDAYS PASSED quickly with an abundance of fun and good things all around—except quiet and order in the house.
Every morning there was the same Jerusalem disturbance. It took time to get that herd of children to the breakfast table. And afterward, it took still more time to get them rigged out in their coats and caps and steered out the door. It was necessary to search out the least wet of their garments from all the things that were drying all over the house. And someone was always siting down to crack nuts and nibble at a cooky instead of lacing his, or her, boots, or changing from indoor clothes into ski clothes. Then there would be scolding and fussing.
“Worse youngsters than you I think could not be found if one searched the whole world round—until one got back here again,” Thea stormed.
All the grownups were tired and cross—though in good humor at heart—when at long last the flock was ready to be driven out into the snow.
On the slope between the house and the kitchen garden, Anders had made a fine ski course that was just right for little children to practice on, and he had built two jumps, one tiny one and one a little higher. Some friends of Hans’s and some friends the girls had made on a previous visit at Mother’s, played on the hill all day long, coming to the kitchen door to ask
for a drink of water—meaning pop and cookies!—every once in a while. Thea scolded, because they disturbed her in her dinner preparations, and Ingeborg, the maid, and Mari Moen, who came every day now to help Ingeborg with the ironing and the care of all the children’s clothes, were surly and cross over all the trouble those youngsters made. But the children cared not one bit about the womenfolks’ fussing—they got everything they wanted anyway.
Anders usually disappeared between meals. The other children were so much younger than he that he stayed elsewhere with his companions. Only when Brit was out rolling in the snow, herself a little white ball in her white kidskin coat, was he there to ski down the little “baby hill” with her in front of him standing on his skis. One day he dug out of the attic a pair of tiny skis that he himself had got when he was two years old. For a few hours he kept it up—wildly eager to teach his little niece to ski. He led her around and around down on the lawn, picking her up and brushing her off every time she fell, replacing her skis as fast as she lost them, and scolding severely, his face scowling, when Brit cried because she had snow up her sleeves.
“Shame, shame on you! I thought you were a fine little Norwegian girl, Bitta.”
Next day he was entirely willing to let whosoever wished take over the task of teaching Brit to ski!
So then Hans and the girls had something to quarrel about.
“I think it would be a fine idea for you to remember she is my niece,” Hans said, greatly annoyed. “You are not Brit’s uncle, are you?”
“Uncle!” Siri-Kari and Anne-Lotte jeered in unison. “We’d have to be aunts, anyway! Wouldn’t you like us to be your aunts, Brit?”
“Poor little Aunt Tulla,” said Brit mournfully, shaking her head. Her mother had taught her to say that when she patted Tulla good night and good morning.
“There, you see!” Hans cried triumphantly. “Brit knows very well that only Tulla is her aunt.”
Little as she was, Brit was a finished coquette. She knew full well that Hans was miserable when she pretended she would rather have Siri-Kari and Anne-Lotte pull her around on her skis. But when Hans sought comfort in the company of Little Signe or Ulla, she ran away from the girls and came to him, demanding that he pay attention to her.
“You wouldn’t come over and say good morning to this ugly man, would you, Brit?” Uncle Godfather said to her one morning. And now she shouted “Ugly Man, Ugly Man” at him every time she saw him. Grandmother was the only person for whom she had a little respect, for Grandmother had smacked her fingers one morning when Brit threw nutshells all over the floor and chairs and potted plants. Since then Brit sat very still when Grandmother looked sternly at her. But if Grandmother was reading or embroidering, Brit had to go over to her just the same. She would lay her hands in Grandmother’s lap and make her voice as sweet as sugar:
“Brit’s good girl now, grandma. Brit’s so good, so-o-o good today.”
For the one thing Brit absolutely could not stand was that anyone should not pay her full attention.
New Year’s Eve all the children were allowed to sit up to see the new year in. The Christmas tree was lighted for the last time—tomorrow Mother would take off the trimmings, hang bits of fat and lumps of tallow on it and set it outside the door for the chickadees.
The youngest children—Little Signe and Ulla and Hans—had a hard time holding their eyes open when the clock approached ten. But then they all sat down around the long table in the dining room to play Black Peter. Whenever one of the grownups had to be Black Peter and got whiskers painted on with burnt cork, all the youngsters howled with delight. Anders had taken charge of the cork, and when it was Grandmother who had to have her face blackened, he drew, in place of the usual mustachios, some elegant beau-catcher curls down her cheeks.
“Grandmother, they’re becoming!”
Grandmother had to go look at herself in the mirror and it was easy to see she agreed that she looked well with beau catchers.
“You look like one of Napoleon’s generals,” declared Anders.
“Napoleon,” said Grandmother disgustedly, “was one of the most abominable individuals who ever destroyed life and happiness for worthy people by the ten thousands! I most certainly do not wish to look like one of his generals!”
“Of course not, grandmother. You look like a Danish poet of the Golden Age,” consoled Mother.
Grandmother seemed to like that better.
And now the hands of the old grandfather clock in the corner said twelve and everyone took his glass of mulled red wine and went out under the open sky. The night was cold and clear with stars, and northern lights played high above, over the edge of the black ridge to the north of the valley.
The church clock downtown struck twelve, and the bells began to welcome the new year. Everyone wished everyone else Happy New Year, and thanked one another for the things of the old year.
“Yes, thanks for the old year!” Aunt Signe and Mother said and kissed Grandmother, and when the children saw that, they all wanted to kiss their mothers.
“Thanks, thanks for the old—”
On Second New Year’s Day there was always a ball in the banquet hall of the Savings Bank—from five until nine for children, from nine on for the grownups. But Aunt Signe and Godfather took the little ones, for they enjoyed watching them dance.
Mother remained at home. Tulla still sat by the window—there had been so many birds in the Christmas sheaves today, and she could not understand why, now that it was dark, no more came; she was waiting for them to return. Mother sat down beside her and looked out at the garden sleeping under the deep snow, and saw beyond the snow-laden trees the twinkling lights of the town. Mother had her arm around Tulla when she noticed the new moon, hanging thin as a splinter and pale gold over the edge of the ridge to the south. God be praised, thought Mother, and drew Tulla still closer to her side—for it is an old belief in Norway that what one holds in one’s hands when one sees the New Year’s new moon, one shall not lose that year.
Anders came down just then. He was wearing his new sailor suit for the first time. A sailor suit is the only conceivable “dress-up” suit for boys in Norway. Mother took his hand and held it as she looked at the moon.
“You’re getting so big, boy, that when that suit is worn out I suppose I’ll have to get you a tuxedo for parties.”
Anders laughed, a little embarrassed.
“I’ll sit here with you and Tulla awhile, mother. It is no fun for us older ones to go so early. Can’t even dance, with the floor crawling with little trolls.”
Mother remembered very well from other years—the older children were fish out of water at the New Year’s Ball. They did not feel like mixing with the little ones, who were romping around playing their games right among the dancers. They longed to stay on into the evening and dance when the grownups danced—and the grownups were not very enthusiastic about having them there too long.
But it was a mere transition, as the fox observed when he was being skinned.
Tulla was going to get her sleigh ride after all. True, it could not be in the evening, but she had seen the Christmas lights in Main Street many times anyway, for as often as Mother or Thea had to go downtown on errands, Tulla had been allowed to go along in the car.
Epiphany, or Twelfth Day, marks the end of Christmas in Norway. Hellig Tre Kongers Dag—Holy Three Kings Day—it is called. In olden days it was called Saint Knut’s Day, so people said, “Saint Knut drives Christmas away.” That was why it was the custom in many places in the country for people that day to leave their farms and homes to go driving and racing on the roads and on the ice-covered lakes. They called it the Christmas Race. And they believed the trolls raced that night, led by a terrible old hag of a troll who was called Kari-Tretten, or Kari the Thirteenth.
This year all Mother’s guests were going on a Christmas race and the other children teased Siri-Kari about her name. Was she Kari the Thirteenth? Kari the Thirteenth, Kari the Thirteenth . . .
> “All right, go right ahead and call me that,” said Siri-Kari patronizingly. “I don’t care, because then I’ll be the one to ride in the first sleigh.”
But as the five sleighs drew up, one behind the other, in front of the gate, it appeared that Mother wished to ride in the first sleigh, for that was where Tulla sat. Petter himself always drove the first sleigh, and Petter had been Tulla’s driver every Christmas. . . . He had the same horses he had last year, too—Rauen and Maja. All the children knew them and had to go down and give them bread crusts and sugar lumps, before the procession started.
Tulla sat between Mother and Thea, so they could support her when they went around the curves. She was bundled up to her nose, and the bearskin rug was pulled well up around her. On the seat opposite sat Gunhild with Brit—Mother wished to keep an eye on them because Gunhild was rather timid about driving with horses, even though she thought it was great fun too. But what if she should get so frightened, at some sharp turn or other, that she should let Brit fall out in the snowdrift. . . .
The other children were naturally even more unaccustomed to sleigh riding. They were all children of the automobile age. Ulla from Stockholm had actually never been in a sleigh before.
“Oh, dear Aunt Sigrid, may I sit by the chauffeur?”
Petter chuckled and helped her up beside him on the coachman’s seat. And so she called him “uncle,” for Swedish children say uncle or aunt to all grownups.
“Why does Uncle have a fishing pole along?” asked Ulla, pointing in astonishment at Petter’s whip.
The children had been permitted to invite as many of their friends as there was room for in the sleighs. The last sleigh was only an old freight sled. The youngsters sat on boards and sacks of hay, and it was unbelievable the number there was room for that way.
It was rather cold, but the sky was brilliantly blue and the sun was shining and made the snow-clad trees and the wide moors glitter as if with diamonds, and ruts in the road and the fences and trees threw blue shadows across the snow. Up on the ridge the snow lay so deep over the forest that it looked like one goldenly white mass in the sunlight—“exactly as if it were all covered with whipped cream,” Hans observed materialistically.
Happy Times in Norway Page 4
