Arne; Early Tales and Sketches. Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson
sat down directly opposite her. The mother's eyes were fixed on the bed.
"Arne, you must remember that it was for your sake I bore it all," and she wept, yearning for a loving word in order to gain a support against her own self-accusations, and comfort for all coming time. The boy trembled and could not answer. "You must never leave me," sobbed she.
Then it came suddenly to his mind what she had been, in all this time of sorrow, and how boundless would be her desolation should he, as a reward for her great fidelity, forsake her now.
"Never, never!" he whispered, longing to go to her, yet unable to do so.
They kept their seats, but their tears flowed freely together. She prayed aloud, now for the dead man, now for herself and her boy; and thus, amid prayers and tears, the time passed. Finally she said: —
"Arne, you have such a fine voice, you must sit over by the bed and sing for your father."
And it seemed as though strength was forthwith given him to do so. He got up, and went to fetch a hymn-book, then lit a torch, and with the torch in one hand, the hymn-book in the other, he sat down at the head of the bed and, in a clear voice, sang Kingo's one hundred and twenty-seventh hymn: —
"Turn from us, gracious Lord, thy dire displeasure!
Let not thy bloody rod, beyond all measure,
Chasten thy children, laden with sore oppressions,
For our transgressions."9
CHAPTER V
Arne became habitually silent and shy. He tended cattle and made songs. He passed his nineteenth birthday, and still he kept on tending cattle. He borrowed books from the priest and read; but he took interest in nothing else.
The priest sent word to him one day that he had better become a school-master, "because the parish ought to derive benefit from your talents and knowledge." Arne made no reply to this; but the next day, while driving the sheep before him, he made the following song: —
"Oh, my pet lamb, lift your head,
Though the stoniest path you tread,
Over the mountains lonely,
Still your bells follow only.
"Oh, my pet lamb, walk with care,
Lest you spoil all your wool beware,
Mother must soon be sewing
Skins for the summer's going.
"Oh, my pet lamb, try to grow
Fat and fine wheresoe'er you go!
Know you not, little sweeting,
A spring lamb is dainty eating!"10
One day in his twentieth year Arne chanced to overhear a conversation between his mother and the wife of the former gard owner; they were disputing about the horse they owned in common.
"I must wait to hear what Arne says," remarked the mother.
"That lazy fellow!" was the reply. "He would like, I dare say, to have the horse go ranging about the woods as he does himself."
The mother was now silent, although before she had been arguing her own case well.
Arne turned as red as fire. It had not occurred to him before that his mother might have to listen to taunting words for his sake, and yet perhaps she had often been obliged to do so. Why had she not told him of this?
He considered the matter well, and now it struck him that his mother scarcely ever talked with him. But neither did he talk with her. With whom did he talk, after all?
Often on Sunday, when he sat quietly at home, he felt a desire to read sermons to his mother, whose eyes were poor; she had wept too much in her day. But he did not have the courage to do so. Many times he had wanted to offer to read aloud to her from his own books, when all was still in the house, and he thought the time must hang heavily on her hands. But his courage failed him for this too.
"It cannot matter much. I must give up tending the herds, and move down to mother."
He let several days pass, and became firm in his resolve. Then he drove the cattle far around in the wood, and made the following song: —
"The vale is full of trouble, but here sweet Peace may reign;
Within this quiet forest no bailiffs may distrain;
None fight, as in the vale, in the Blessed Church's name,
Yet if a church were here, it would no doubt be just the same.
"How peaceful is the forest: – true, the hawk is far from kind,
I fear he now is striving the plumpest sparrow to find;
I fear yon eagle's coming to rob the kid of breath,
And yet perchance if long it lived, it might be tired to death.
"The woodman fells one tree, and another rots away,
The red fox killed the lambkin white at sunset yesterday;
The wolf, though, killed the fox, and the wolf itself must die,
For Arne shot him down to-day before the dew was dry.
"I'll hie me to the valley back – the forest is as bad;
And I must see to take good heed, lest thinking drive me mad.
I saw a boy in my dreams, though where I cannot tell —
But I know he had killed his father – I think it was in Hell."11
He came home and told his mother that she might send out in the parish after another herd-boy; he wanted to manage the gard himself. Thus it was arranged; but the mother was always after him with warnings not to overtax himself with work. She used also to prepare such good meals for him at this time that he often felt ashamed; but he said nothing.
He was working at a song, the refrain of which was "Over the lofty mountains." He never succeeded in finishing it, and this was chiefly because he wanted to have the refrain in every other line; finally he gave it up.
But many of the songs he made got out among the people, where they were well liked; there were those who wished very much to talk with him, especially as they had known him from boyhood up. But Arne was shy of all whom he did not know, and thought ill of them, chiefly because he believed they thought ill of him.
His constant companion in the fields was a middle-aged man, called Upland Knut, who had a habit of singing over his work; but he always sang the same song. After listening to this for a few months, Arne was moved to ask him if he did not know any others.
"No," was the man's reply.
Then after the lapse of several days, once when Knut was singing his song, Arne asked:
"How did you chance to learn this one?"
"Oh, it just happened so," said the man.
Arne went straight from him into the house; but there sat his mother weeping, a sight he had not seen since his father's death. He pretended not to notice her, and went toward the door again; but he felt his mother looking sorrowfully after him again and he had to stop.
"What are you crying for, mother?"
For a while his words were the only sound in the room, and therefore they came back to him again and again, so often that he felt they had not been said gently enough. He asked once more: —
"What are you crying for?"
"Oh, I am sure I do not know;" but now she wept harder than ever.
He waited a long time, then was forced to say, as courageously as he could: —
"There must be something you are crying about!"
Again there
Auber Forestier's translation.
Adapted to the metre of the original from the translation of Augusta Plesner and S. Rugeley-Powers.
Adapted to the metre of the original, from the translation of Augusta Plesner and S. Rugeley-Powers.