The Fisher Maiden/Chapter XII
Chapter XII.
One evening just before Christmas all the tickets were sold for the performance at the theatre of the capital. A new actress, whose name was in everybody’s mouth, was to make her début. She was a product of the people, her mother being a poor fisher-woman. By the help of strangers, who had discovered her talents, she had attained her present position, and she was said to be a genius of great promise. Many strange things were whispered among the audience before the curtain rose. Rumor had it that she had been a terribly wild girl, and that after she was grown up she had betrothed herself to six young men at the same time and had kept up the engagements with all of them for six months. Indeed, the town had been mad with excitement on her account, and she had been escorted out of it by the police. It was very strange that the managers of the theatre would permit such a person to appear. Others insisted that there was not a particle of truth in these reports. Since she was ten years old she had lived in the quiet family of a priest in the Bergen diocese. She was a charming young woman of culture and refinement; they were well acquainted with her and knew that she must have remarkable talent, for she was so beautiful.
Others sat there who were better informed. First among these was Yngve Vold, a wholesale dealer in fish, whose name was well known throughout the country. He had happened to come to the capital to look after his business, but some people said that his hot-tempered Spanish wife made his house so warm for him that he had to travel to get cool. Now he had taken the largest box in the theatre alone and had invited some of his chance acquaintances at the hotel table to go with him and witness “some strange deviltry.” He was in the very best of humor until he discovered—could it possibly be he?—in a box in the second tier and surrounded by a whole crew of sailors—no! yes!—yes, indeed, it was Gunnar Ask!—Gunnar Ask, who, with the help of his mother’s money, had become the owner and captain of The Norse Constitution. While sailing out of the fjord he had happened to come alongside of a ship called The Danish Constitution; and when Gunnar thought he observed that it tried to pass him, he made up his mind that such a thing could not be tolerated. He stretched every stitch of canvas he had; it made the timbers creak in the old Constitution, and the result was that in his efforts to scud before the wind as long as possible, he very unexpectedly ran his vessel aground. Now he was involuntarily detained in the city while his vessel was being calked. One day he had met Petra in town. She had overtaken him on the street and had been so very kind to him both then and afterwards, that he not only forgot the grudge he bore her, but declared himself the most stupid codfish his native town had ever exported, that he had ever been so foolish as to think that he was worthy of such a girl as Petra. To-day he had purchased at a premium tickets for himself and for his whole crew, and he was sitting there, resolving to treat the latter between every act. The sailors, who were all from Petra’s native town, and ranked among her mother’s most welcome guests,—an earthly paradise her tavern was to them,—felt Petra’s honor to be their own, and as they sat there they promised each other that they would applaud in a style that would astonish the audience.
But down in the parquet was seen the thick bristly hair of the priest. He was calm; for he had intrusted Petra’s cause into the hands of a Greater One. By his side sat Signe, now Mrs. Ödegaard. Her husband, Petra, and herself had just returned from a three months’ trip abroad. She looked happy as she sat turned toward Ödegaard with a smiling face; for between them sat an old lady with snow-white hair, which encircled her sun-burnt countenance like a silver crown. She was taller than all those about her, and could be seen by every one in the audience, and it was not long before all the opera-glasses were directed toward her, for it was said that she was the mother of the young actress. She, whose name was a man’s,[1] made so great an impression on the audience, that it reflected honor and credit on the daughter and thus aided the latter in gaining the good-will of the spectators in advance. A young people is full of anticipation. It has faith in its native powers, and thus the sight of the mother awakened the confidence of the audience in the daughter.
Gunlaug was oblivious to everything about her. She cared but little for the performance. What she wanted was to see whether the public were kind to her daughter.
Time passed. The conversation died away in the expectation that gradually deepened and increased as the hour for beginning drew nearer.
A lively flourish of drums, trumpets, and brass instruments at once introduced the overture. “Axel and Valborg,”[2] by Adam Oehlenschlæger, was to be played, and Petra had herself requested this overture. She sat behind the scenes and listened. But before the curtain sat as many of her countrymen as the house could hold, trembling for her, as we always do when the first step is to be taken where we look for a grand revelation from some one we hold dear.
Each one felt as if he were the one that was to make his own début. In such moments many prayers rise to heaven, even from hearts that seldom pray.
The overture was drawing to a close. Peace pervaded the harmonies, and they gradually dissolved as into sunlight.
The overture closed. Anxious silence ensued.
Then the curtain rose!
- ↑ Gunlaug is frequently a man’s name in Norway.
- ↑ “Axel and Valborg” was the tragedy Petra heard the first time she went to the theatre. (See chapter vii., where the overture is described.) One version of this popular Scandinavian legend will be found in the ballad of “Axel and Walborg,” which appears in Alexander Prior’s Ancient Danish Ballads (vol. ii. p. 247); another in Robert Buchanan’s Scandinavian Ballad Stories (pp. 117-159); a third in Oehlenschlæger’s tragedy, “Axel og Valborg;” and a fourth in George Houghton’s charming narrative poem entitled The Legend of St. Olaf’s Kirk, recently published in a revised edition by Houghton, Mifflin & Co.—Tr.