Mary. Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson
desire which was transmitted from generation to generation was the desire to travel. In the book-cases at Krogskogen books of travel predominated, and additions were constantly made to their number. Even as children the Krogs travelled. They planned tours with the help of books, pictures, and maps. They sat at the table and played at travelling. They voyaged from one town built of coloured card-board houses to another of the same description. They navigated cardboard ships, loaded with beans, coffee, salt, and wooden pegs. In the bay they rowed and sailed and swam from the pier to the island. One day it was from Europe to America, another, from Japan to Ceylon. Or they crossed the ridge, that is the Andes, to the most wonderful Indian villages.
No sooner were they grown up than they insisted on seeing something of the world. They generally began with a voyage to Holland and a visit to their kinsfolk there. Some two hundred years ago a youth of the family, after a very short stay in Holland, went off in a Dutch East Indiaman. He, however, returned to Amsterdam, resolved to become an architect and engineer—the professions were at that time combined. He made himself a name, and in course of time was called to Copenhagen to teach. He entered the military service and rose to the rank of general in the engineer corps. At the time of his retirement his earnings, added to his patrimony, constituted a considerable fortune. He settled at Krogskogen, which he bought after the death of a childless brother. He called himself Hans von Krogh. It was he who erected the present house, which is of stone, a very unusual building material in a Norwegian forest district. The old engineer-architect wanted occupation and amusement. Though he was not married, he made the house large, "for those to come." He rebuilt the farm-steading; he drained and he planted; he sent to Holland for a gardener—old Siemens, of whose strictness and angry insistence upon cleanliness and order stories are still told. For him the General put up hot-houses and built a cottage.
The General lived to be a very old man. After his day nothing special happened until the younger of two brothers emigrated to America and settled on the shores of Lake Michigan—at that time virgin soil. This was regarded as a great event. The man's name was Anders Krog. He prospered over there, and people wondered that he did not marry. He invited one of his brother's sons to come out to him, promising to make him his heir. And thus it came about that Hans, the elder brother of the Anders Krog of our story, went to America.
At exactly the same time, however, arrived a young Norwegian girl, also a Krog; and with her the elderly uncle fell in love. He proposed to Hans to pay his journey home. But the young man felt that he would disgrace himself by returning. He stayed on and set up in business for himself—in the timber trade, which he understood. The undertaking prospered. By rights Hans should have gone home and taken possession of Krogskogen at the time of his father's death; but he refused to do so. The younger brother, Anders, who in the meantime had also taken to trade, and acquired the largest grocery business in the neighbouring town, was obliged to take over the property as well.
Young Anders Krog was not really a good business man. But his extraordinary conscientiousness and considerateness soon gained him the custom of the whole town. Another man in his place might have made a fortune; he did not. When he entered on possession of Krogskogen he had not yet paid up the price of his business in town, and in taking over the property he incurred a still larger debt. For both he had been made to pay well. Travel he must, but he had to content himself with going off for a month each year—one year to England, another to France, and so on. His greatest desire was a visit to America, but on this he dared not venture yet. He contented himself with reading of the new wonderland. Reading was his chief pleasure; next to it came gardening, in which he possessed more skill than most trained gardeners.
This quiet man with the bright eyes was shyer than a girl of fourteen. Every week-day morning he chose, if possible, a seat by himself on the little steamer which took him to town as long as the bay was not frozen over. In going on shore he showed extreme consideration for others; then he hurried off, bowing respectfully to his acquaintances, to his house on the market-place, where he was to be found until evening, when he returned as he had come. At times he cycled. In winter he drove; and at this season he sometimes stayed over night in town, where he occupied two modest attic rooms in his own house.
The town knew of no other man possessing in such a degree all the qualities of a perfect husband. But his invincible modesty made all overtures impossible until … the right woman came. But then he was already over forty. The same fate befell him as had befallen his uncle and namesake at Lake Michigan; a young girl of his own family came and took possession of him. And she was this very uncle's only child.
He was working one Sunday morning, in his shirt-sleeves, in the kitchen and flower garden on the northern side of the house, when a young girl, wearing a broad-brimmed straw hat, laid her ungloved hands on the white fence and looked in between its round tops.
Anders, bending over a flower-bed, heard a playful: "Good morning!" and started up. Speechless and motionless he stood, with earth-soiled hands, his eyes drinking her in like a revelation.
She laughed and said: "Who am I?" Then his thinking power returned. "You are—you must be——"; he got no further, but smiled a welcome.
"Who am I?"
"Marit Krog from Michigan."
He had heard from his sister, who lived on the farther side of the left ridge, that Marit Krog was on her way to Norway. But he had no idea that she had arrived.
"And you are my father's nephew," said she with an English accent. "How like him you are! How very like!"
She stood looking at him for a moment. Then—"May I come in?"
"Of course you may—but first"——looking at his hands and shirt-sleeves, "first I must——."
"I can go in alone," said she frankly.
"Of course—please do! Go in by the front-door. I'll send the maid—" and he hurried towards the kitchen.
She ran round to the front of the house and up the steps. Turning an enormous key, an old work of art (as was also the iron-work on the door), she stepped into the hall or entrance room. Here there was plenty of light. Marit drew a little. She had learned to use her eyes. She saw at once that all these cupboards, large and small, were of excellent Dutch workmanship, and that the room was larger than it seemed; the furniture took up so much space. On her left an old-fashioned carved staircase led up to the second storey. The door straight in front of her led to the kitchen, she concluded, assisted by her sense of smell; and when the maid-servant issued from it she knew that she had guessed rightly. Through the open door she saw a floor flagged with marble, walls covered with china tiles decorated in blue, and, upon the shelf which extended round the walls, brightly polished copper vessels of many different sizes—a Dutch kitchen.
In the hall she stood upon carpets thicker than any her feet had ever trodden. And quite as thick were those on the stairs, secured with the hugest of brass rods. "The people in this house walk on cushions," she thought to herself; and the idea immediately occurred to her that the house was an enormous bed. Afterwards she always called it "the bed." "Shall we go back to bed now?" she would say, laughing. On both sides of the hall she saw doors and pictured to herself the rooms within. To her left, that is, on the right side of the house, she imagined first a smaller room, and beyond it, nearest the sea, a large room, the whole breadth of the building. And she was correct. To her right she imagined the house divided lengthwise into two rooms. And in this also she was correct. Nor was it surprising that she should be, for her father's house on the shores of Lake Michigan was planned in imitation of this. Upstairs she pictured to herself a broad passage the whole length of the house, with moderate-sized rooms on both sides of it. The carpets were extraordinarily thick down here, but she was certain that they were at least as thick upstairs, real cushion carpets. In this house there were no noises. Its inmates were quiet people.
The servant had opened the door to the left. Marit went into the great room and examined all its pictures and ornaments. It was terribly overcrowded, but all the things in themselves had been well chosen, many of them by connoisseurs—that she saw at once. Some of the paintings were, she felt certain, of great value. But what occupied her most was the thought that not until now had she understood her own old father, although