The Fisher Maiden/Chapter I
Chapter I.
Where herring have for a long time been caught in abundance, there gradually grows up a town, provided that other circumstances are favorable. Not only may it be said of such towns that they are cast up out of the sea, but at a great distance they actually resemble washed-up timber and fragments of wreck, or a mass of keeled boats, overturned by the fishermen for shelter some stormy night. A nearer view shows how entirely by chance the whole has been built, for here a rock lies in the midst of a thoroughfare, there water divides the borough into three or four parts, while the streets wind and curve in every direction. But there is one quality common to them all: there is refuge in the harbor for the largest ships; it is as snug in there as in a box; and therefore these havens are very grateful to vessels that with tattered sails and battered bulwarks are driven in from the open sea in search of a breathing-place.
In a small town of this kind all is still; everything noisy is banished to the wharves, where are moored the peasants’ boats, and where ships load and unload. Along the wharves runs the one street of our little town; the white and red one and two-story houses are on the opposite side; but they are not built wall to wall, they have neat gardens around them; and so there is a long, broad street which, when the wind blows landward, is filled with the odor of whatever may be on the wharves. It is quiet here—not from fear of the police, for as a rule there is none,—but from dread of gossip, since all the inhabitants know one another. When you walk down the street you must bow at each window, where usually sits an old lady who is ready to return your greeting. Moreover, you must salute every one you meet; for all these people, as they move so noiselessly about, are continually reflecting on what is proper in general and for themselves in particular. He who oversteps the standard prescribed for his rank or social position, forfeits his good name; for not only is he known to his neighbors, but so are his father and his grandfather, and inquiries are at once made as to whether there has ever before been seen a tendency in the family to unseemly behavior.
To this peaceful town fared, many years ago, that worthy man, Per Olsen. He came from the country, where he had earned a livelihood by peddling and fiddling. He opened a shop in the town for his old customers, where, in addition to his other wares, he sold brandy and bread; and be might often be heard pacing up and down in the chamber behind the shop, playing spring-dances and wedding-marches. Each time he passed the glass loop-hole in the door, he would peep through, and if a customer was entering the shop he would wind up his playing with a trill and go in, Business flourished; he married and had a son whom he named after himself, calling him not Per, though, but Peter.
Little Peter was to become what Per knew he was not—an educated man; and so the boy was entered at the Latin school. When those who should have been his comrades thrashed him home from their games because he was a son of Per Olsen, his father thrashed him back again,—there was no other way of educating the boy. Consequently little Peter felt forsaken at school, grew indolent, and gradually became so totally indifferent to everything that his father could neither beat a smile nor a tear out of him. Then Per did away with the floggings and placed the boy in the shop. Greatly was he astonished when he saw his son dealing out to each customer exactly what was asked for, neither giving a grain too much, nor eating a prune himself, but weighing, reckoning, and entering the sales, with unmoved countenance, usually without speaking, and though slowly yet with scrupulous accuracy.
Again the father became hopeful, and sent his son by a herring boat to Hamburg, in order to place him at a commercial college, and give him an opportunity to acquire polished manners. Peter was absent eight months; that was long enough, no doubt. Before starting for home he had provided himself with six new suits of clothes, and when he landed he wore them all, one over the other, “for all articles in actual wear are exempt from duty.” He made precisely the same appearance in the street the next day as when he came ashore, minus his circumference. He walked stiff and straight, without a curve in his arms or hands; he bowed with a sudden jerk, bending as if he had no joints, only to grow the next moment as rigid as ever; he had become the embodiment of politeness, but not a word did he have to say for himself; his manners were abrupt and tinged with a certain shyness. He no longer wrote his name Olsen, but Ohlsen, which gave the wags of the town opportunity for the following conundrum:—
“How far did Peter Olsen get in Hamburg?”
Answer: “To the first letter.”
He had furthermore meditated calling himself “Pedro;” but having had so much annoyance to endure for the sake of the h, he gave up this idea and subscribed himself P. Ohlsen. He enlarged his father’s business, and at the age of twenty-two married a shop-girl with red hands in order to have some one to keep house; for his father had just become a widower and Peter thought it was safer to take a wife than a housekeeper. On the anniversary of their wedding-day, she presented him with a son, who a week later was christened Pedro.
Now that worthy Per Olsen had become a grandfather, he felt, as it were, an inner call to grow old, so he gave up his business to his son, took a seat on a bench outside the door and smoked plug tobacco in a short pipe. Discovering one day that life was growing tedious out there he began to wish for a speedy death, and as all his wishes had been quietly fulfilled, so it was with this one.
While Peter, the son, had inherited exclusively one side of his father’s talents—business shrewdness,—Pedro, the grandson, seemed to have exclusively inherited the other—taste and ear for music. He was very slow in learning to read, but could sing quite early; he played the flute so well that he attracted much attention; he had a refined look and a tender heart. This, however, was only a source of annoyance to his father, who wanted to bring the boy up to his own business-like activity. When Pedro was forgetful about anything, he was neither scolded nor flogged as his father had been; he was pinched. This was done very quietly, with a kindliness of manner that might almost be termed politeness. Each evening when his mother undressed him she counted the black and blue spots on his body and covered them with kisses; but she offered no resistance, for she herself got pinched. For every rent in the boy’s clothes,—which were his father’s Hamburg suits made over,—for every stain on his school-books, she was blamed. Consequently, the continual cry was: “Do not do that, Pedro! Take care, Pedro! Remember, Pedro!”—and the boy was afraid of his father and tired of his mother. At the hands of his comrades he suffered no harm, as he always began to cry at the least provocation and beg them to spare his clothes; but he was nicknamed “withered-branch,” and not deemed worthy of much notice. He was like a sickly, featherless duckling, always waddling about after the flock and running far away by itself to eat the scanty morsel it had succeeded in snatching from the others. No one shared with him, neither did he, therefore, share with any one.
Soon, however, he discovered that his lot would be different among the humbler children of the town; they had more patience with him because he was more genteel than they. A tall, sturdy girl, who held undisputed sway over a whole troop of boys, took a fancy to him. He never grew weary of looking at her. She had raven-black hair which formed one mass of curls about her head, and was never combed save with the fingers; she had vigorous blue eyes, a narrow brow, and all her features blended into but one expression. She was always in a whirl of excitement or at work, went barefoot, bare-armed, and sunburned in the summer, and in the winter was clad as lightly as other children are in the summer. Her father was a pilot and fisherman; she ran from house to house selling his fish, she sat at the oars keeping the boat still against wind and tide, and when he was out piloting, she carried on the fishing alone. No one could pass her without turning to take a second look, so self-reliant was she. Her name was Gunlaug, but she was called the fisher maiden, a title she accepted as her rank. In the childish games she always sided with the weak; she had an impulse to defend others, and she now became the protector of this refined, delicate boy.
In her boat he could play his flute, which had been solemnly forbidden at home, as it was thought it would take his mind from his studies. She rowed him out on the fjord, she took him with her on her long fishing expeditions, soon he even made night excursions with her. They used to row out toward the setting sun in the clear, calm summer evenings, he playing his flute, or listening to her while she told him all she knew about mermen, spectres, shipwrecks, foreign lands, and black people, just as she had heard it from the sailors. She shared her food with him as she did her knowledge, and he accepted all, giving nothing in return; for he neither brought food from home nor imagination from school. They would row about until the sun went down behind the snow-clad mountains and then, landing on some rocky island, kindle a fire, that is, she would gather together twigs and brushwood, while he sat and looked on. She always carried along with her one of her father’s sea jackets and a bed-spread for him; in these she would wrap him. She tended the fire and he went to sleep; she kept herself awake with snatches of songs and hymns, singing in a loud clear voice until he was asleep, then in a softer tone. When the sun once more rose in the opposite horizon, and cast over the mountains a pale yellow light as a harbinger of its approach, she would awaken him. The forest was still dark, the meadow gloomy, but both gradually became suffused with a gleaming, roseate light until the mountain crest glowed and all the colors of the rainbow came pouring over the scene. Then they would push the boat back into the water, plow the waves in the dark morning breeze, and soon near the shore where the other fishermen were anchored.
When winter set in and the trips ceased, he sought her in her home; he came frequently and watched her while she worked; but neither he nor she spoke much; it seemed as if they were merely waiting together for the summer. When it came it robbed him, alas, of the new prospects life was unfolding to him, Gunlaug’s father died, and she left the town, while Pedro, by the advice of his teachers, was put into the shop. There he served behind the counter with his mother; for his father, who had gradually become the color of the groats he had so long been weighing, was forced to take to his bed in the back chamber. Even from there he wanted to have part in everything going on; must know what each one had sold, but would pretend not to hear until he got his wife or son near enough to pinch them. And when the wick had become quite dry in this small lamp, one night it went out. The wife wept, she knew not precisely why; but the son could not press out a tear, As they had money enough to live on, they wound up the business, removed every trace of it, and turned the shop into a sitting-room. There the mother sat by the window knitting stockings; Pedro established himself in the room on the other side of the passage, and devoted his time to flute-playing. No sooner had summer come, however, than he bought a little light sailing-boat, crossed over to the rocky island, and stopped where Gunlaug was wont to anchor.
And one day, as he lay reposing in the heather, he saw a boat steering straight toward him; it came alongside his own, and Gunlaug stepped out. She was wholly unchanged, although she was now fully grown and taller than other women. But the moment she laid eyes on him she slowly drew back; it had not occurred to her that he too had grown up.
She did not know this pale, thin face; it was no longer sickly and refined, it was dull and heavy. But as he gazed at her his eyes became filled with the calm light of bygone dreams; she came forward again, and each step nearer seemed to take a year from him; when she stood beside him, where he had jumped up, he laughed like a child, talked like a child; that old face was like a mask concealing a hidden child: he had become older, it was true, but he had not grown.
Still, it was just this child she was seeking, and now that she had found him again she knew not what next she should do; she laughed and blushed. Involuntarily he felt something like power rising within him; it was for the first time in his life. At the same moment he grew handsome—it was, perhaps, but for an instant, but in that instant she was won.
Hers was one of those natures that can only love the weak on whom tenderness has been lavished by them. She had meant to pass two days in town; she remained two months. During these two months Pedro grew more than during all the rest of his youth; he was so far uplifted beyond his dream-life and lethargy that he made plans—he resolved to go abroad and study music. One day when he was speaking of this, she grew pale and said: “Yes—but then we must get married first.” He looked at her; she fixed her eyes firmly on him in return; then they both flushed crimson, and he said, “What would people say to that?”
Gunlaug had never imagined that he could have a will opposed to her own, because she had never cherished a wish that was not his. But now she read in the depths of his soul that he had never for a moment thought of sharing with her anything but what she herself had given. In one minute she discovered that it had been thus all their lives. She had begun with compassion and ended with love for the object of her own kindness. Well for her could she but have retained her self-control a little while longer. He saw her rising anger, and in terror cried: “I will.” She heard it; but indignation at her own stupidity and his wretched weakness, at her own shame and his cowardice, seethed up with such fiery speed to the point of explosion, that never did love kindled in childhood and radiant sunset, cradled by the waves and moonbeams, with the tones of a flute and low singing for an accompaniment, have a more sorrowful end. She seized him with both hands, lifted him from the ground and thrashed him to her heart's content; then she rowed back to town and forthwith started on foot across the mountains.
Pedro had sailed out that morning a lovesick youth, on his way to conquer manhood; he rowed home again an aged person who had never known manhood. His life owned but one remembrance, and that his own folly had lost; he had but one place of resort in the world, and thither he no longer dared go. While brooding over his own wretchedness and how all this had come to pass, his enterprising mood sank, as it were, into a slough, never more to rise. The small boys of the town, remarking his strange ways, soon began tormenting him, and as he had always been a mysterious character to the townsfolk, no one knowing anything about his ways or means, it did not occur to any one to interfere in his behalf. Soon he scarcely dared stir out of his house, at all events, not in the streets. His whole existence became one struggle with the boys, who doubtless did him the same service as gnats of a hot summer day: without them he would have sunk into an unbroken stupor.
Nine years later Gunlaug returned to the town quite as unexpectedly as she had left it. She brought with her a little girl about eight years old, the image of her former self, only that everything about the child was more refined and seemed, so to speak, as if wrapt in a dream. Gunlaug had been married, it was said, money had been left her, and now she had come back to open a sailor’s inn.
This she managed so well that merchants and skippers got into the habit of coming to her to hire hands, sailors to seek employment. She never charged a penny commission, but despotically wielded the power this agency gave her. Although she was but a woman, and never left her house, she was most emphatically, “the influential man” of the town. She was called “fisher Gunlaug,” or “Gunlaug on the hill-side;” her title of “fisher maiden” was transferred to her daughter, who went ranging about the town at the head of an army of small boys.
It is the daughter’s story which is here to be told. She had something of her mother’s strength of character, and she found opportunity to use it.