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Ragna. Anna Miller Costantini
he had loved her! The formal leave-taking under the eyes of Angelescu and the Captain had meant nothing. Oh! why could she not have been a princess—now she would never see him again! Great tears welled up in her eyes and rolled down, wetting her pillow, but she did not wipe them away. She was thinking how dull it would be at home—how unendurable after this one brief glimpse into the reality of life and emotion. Her innermost soul rebelled; she threw out her arms, then strained them to her bosom.
"I want to live, to live, to live!" she cried to herself.
When she was calmer her clear mind reasserted its power as she reflected that after all she was very young still, that the future might bring much.
"It shall," she promised herself. "I will make it! I will not, I will not be buried alive!"
She had not stopped to ask herself if she loved Prince Mirko; as a fact she did not, but he had awakened her to life, he was identical to her with Life and emotion. The mere fact of his being a stranger to her, quite outside her limited field of experience, of his being a Prince and heir to a throne, endowed him in her eyes with a halo of romance. In default of a real hero, he would become her dream-hero, the axle round which would revolve the wheel of her intimate thought.
In the morning, when dressed for the homeward journey, she joined her father in the dining-room; she presented to his eyes the same innocently childlike expression she had worn the evening before, and he kissed her smooth brow, little dreaming of the thoughts which filled her head.
As they drew nearer home, and the familiar mountains, the Trolltinder with its jagged crest, and oddly shaped Romser Horn, loomed up against the sky, Ragna felt her spirits rising. The air was cool and crisp, the little horse trotted briskly along, shaking his short stiff mane, the meadows were carpeted with flowers: forget-me-nots, pansies, and the purple swamp orchids, the pine-trees filled the air with balsam. It was home, the country of her birth. They rounded the last turn in the long road; the sun was setting and the long rays illuminated the summits of the mountains which her childish imagination had peopled with gnomes and trolls.
Now they were turning in at the wooden gateway—another few minutes and there was the long low cinnamon-coloured house, smoke rising hospitably from the chimneys, behind it the stables and sod-roofed cottages, and on the steps stood a welcoming group, mother, the sisters. "Oh, how they have grown," thought Ragna, "and there is Aunt Gitta too!" she cried. Behind them stood the servants, smiling and excited.
Almost before the stulkjarre had stopped, Ragna was out over the wheel, embracing them all in turn, laughing and trying to answer a dozen questions at once.
Fru Andersen held her daughter at arm's length, to see her better.
"It is my 'little' Ragna no longer," she wailed. "You are taller than I, and you have changed, dear—you went away a child, you come back a woman!"
Her husband interrupted her, calling for the servants to take in Ragna's luggage, and the good woman's further comments, if there were any, were lost in the bustle that ensued.
CHAPTER VI
The days that followed were occupied with filling in the gap of the past two years. All had much to ask, and Ragna was kept busy answering their questions. Fru Andersen and Fru Boyesen were most interested in the life at the convent, and the latter especially examined Ragna thoroughly as to the studies pursued and the accomplishments acquired.
The sisters, Lotte and Ingeborg, wished to hear about the Prince—a Prince being to them almost as mythical a being as the old gods they had read of in their mythology; they imagined him robed in ermine, his manly brow decorated by a coronet. They never tired of returning to the subject, but were much disappointed by Ragna's matter of fact story, and the Prince lost much of his prestige in their eyes when they learned that he dressed and spoke like an ordinary mortal.
"And you talked to him just as if he were one of us?" asked Lotte in an awe-struck voice. "You really did and you were not a bit scared, not one bit?"
"Of course not, you silly little goose!" laughed Ragna, as if conversation with princes were an everyday occurrence to her. She was not above airing her recently acquired graces before these country mice.
"What did you say to him? What did he talk to you about?" chimed in Ingeborg.
"Oh, about the weather and the gulls and the moon—anything."
"I don't call that very much," said Lotte, much disappointed. "I should have thought you would talk about wars and court-balls, and things like that."
"Oh, dear, no—one doesn't talk about those things, it would seem affected and silly."
"And didn't he make love to you? They always do in stories," queried Lotte, then seeing her sister blush. "I believe he did—and you're too mean to tell. What did you talk about anyway, that makes you blush like that?" she added with a child's terrible perspicacity.
"I'm blushing at your curiosity, that's what I'm blushing at," returned Ragna, angry at having betrayed herself. "And if you went to the Sisters they'd tell you it was ill-bred to ask so many questions and pry into what isn't your business!" Afraid of betraying herself further she got up and left them.
The three girls had been sitting on a rock, not far from the house, where they had long been accustomed to take their work on summer afternoons. The younger girls stared at each other thunderstruck, as Ragna walked away.
"Well," said Lotte, "it's rude to ask a civil question, and it's all right to get up and go off in a temper. What is the matter with her anyway? I'm sure I wish the old Prince had never spoken to her at all, it has turned her head, being taken notice of, that's what it is!"
Ingeborg said nothing; she merely bit off her thread reflectively as she followed Ragna's retreating figure with her eyes. Less impulsive than Lotte, and endowed with a finer intuition, she felt that if Ragna were keeping something from them it would be useless to try and drag it out of her, and not only that, she realized as Lotte did not, that each of us has his or her own little "Secret Garden," of memory and fancy, of which no hand, however intimate, may open the gate. But vaguely conscious of this, herself, she felt how useless it would be to explain it to Lotte, whose frank curiosity knew no such restraint.
Lotte stitched on viciously, indignant at the snub she had received, and giving vent to her feelings in intermittent monologue.
"She thinks us ninnies or children, that's what she does, but she's not so awfully grown up, after all! She's not nineteen yet, and I'm sixteen, and you're nearly fifteen. Oh, yes, we're not good enough for her Ladyship to talk to; she's used to Princes and Kings and Popes, she is! And she thinks she has come back to teach us her fine French manners!"
Ragna walked on, away from her sisters and away from the house. Her path lay some way through the woods, then across two or three pastures and out to a rocky point overlooking the fjord. She marched on, looking neither to the right nor to the left, consumed with vexation for having been so easily led on to retort. Of course Lotte had been annoying, but she had always been a bundle of curiosity. And how sharp the child was! "I must be a transparent fool," thought poor Ragna, "if any child can see through me like that!"
As she crossed the third pasture someone hailed her; she looked up, and saw, sitting on a rock under a tree, her Aunt Gitta, knitting industriously, a sheaf of flowers lying on the ground beside her. Ragna went to her, and she indicated a place on the boulder beside her.
"Sit down, Ragna," she said, "I have been wishing for a chance to talk to you alone."
Ragna obediently seated herself, and drawing the flowers to her, began sorting them and making them up into bouquets. Fru Boyesen coughed once or twice, as though in doubt how to begin. She looked at her niece in a tentative way, but the girl was seemingly intent on her flowers, and gave no assistance.
Finally in a rather embarrassed manner, she began by asking Ragna