and UMVfRStTY OF CALIFORNIA : IAN wseo i SQUIRE HELLMAN OTHE a little further offj will you ! " " Shall we light it ? " said mother, as she drew back. " Are you mad ? How can it be lighted when there's no oil in it?" " Well, but can't you pour some in, then ? " " Pour in oil ? A likely tale ! Yes, that's just the way when people don't understand these things ; but the storekeeper warned me again and again never to pour the oil in by firelight, as it might catch fire and burn the whole house down." " Then when will you pour the oil into it ? " "In the daytime daytime, d'ye hear ? Can't you wait till day ? It isn't such a great marvel as all that." " Have you seen it burn, then ? " " Of course I have. What a question ? I've seen it burn many 138 WHEN FATHER BROUGHT a time, both at the parsonage and when we tried this one here at the storekeeper's." " And it burned, did it ? '' " Burned ? Of course it did, and when we put up the shutters of the shop, you could have seen a needle on the floor. Look here, now ! Here's a sort of capsule, and when the fire is burning in this fixed glass here, the light cannot creep up to the top, where it isn't wanted either, but spreads out downwards, so that you could find a needle on the floor." Now we should have all very much liked to try if we could find a needle on the floor, but father hung up the lamp to the roof and began to eat his supper. "This evening we must be con- tent, once more, with a pare" said father, as he ate ; " but to-morrow the lamp shall burn in this very house." " Look, father ! Pekka has been splitting pared all day, and filled the outhouse with them." "That's all right. We've fuel now, at any rate, to last us all the winter, for we sha'n't want them for anything else." " But how about the bath-room and the stable ? " said mother, HOME THE LAMP. 139 " In the bath-room we'll burn the lamp," said father. That night I slept still less than the night before, and when I woke in the morning I could almost have wept, if I hadn't been ashamed, when I called to mind that the lamp was not to be lit till the evening. I had dreamt that father had poured oil into the lamp at night and that it had burned the whole day long. Immediately when it began to dawn, father dug up out of that great travelling chest of his a big bottle, and poured something out of it into a smaller bottle. We should have very much liked to ask what was in this bottle, but we dursn't, for father looked so solemn about it that it quite frightened us. But when he drew the lamp a little lower down from the ceiling and began to bustle about it and unscrew it, mother could contain herself no longer, and asked him what he was doing. " I am pouring oil into the lamp." "Well, but you're taking it to pieces ! How will you ever get everything you have unscrewed into its proper place again ? " Neither mother nor we knew 140 WHEN FATHER BROUGHT what to call the thing which father took out from the glass-holder. Father said nothing, but he bade us keep further off. Then he filled the glass-holder nearly full from the smaller bottle, and we now guessed that there was oil in the larger bottle also. " Well, won't you light it now ? " asked mother again, when all the unscrewed things had been put back into their places and father hoisted the lamp up to the ceiling again. " What ! in the daytime ? " " Yes surely we might try it to see how it will burn." " It'll burn right enough. Just wait till the evening, and don't bother." After dinner, scullery - Pekka brought in a large frozen block of wood to split up into pared, and cast it from his shoulders on to the floor with a thud which shook the whole room and set in motion the oil in the lamp. " Steady ! " cries father ; " what are you making that row for ? " "I brought in this /tf>-block to melt it a bit nothing else will do it it is regularly frozen." " You may save yourself the HOME THE LAMP. 141 trouble, then," said father, and he winked at us. " Well, but you can't get a blaze out of it at all otherwise." "You may save yourself the trouble, I say." " Are no more pdreii to be split up, then ? " " Well, suppose I did say that no more/0raz were to be split up ? " " Oh ! 'tis all the same to me if master can get on without 'em." " Don't you see, Pekka, what is hanging down from the rafters there ? " When father put this question he looked proudly up at the lamp and then he looked pity- ingly down upon Pekka. Pekka put his clod in the corner and then, but not till then, looked up at the lamp. " It's a lamp," says father, " and when it burns you don't want any more pare light." " Oh ! " said Pekka, and, without a single word more, he went off to his chopping-block behind the stable, and all day long, just as on other days, he chopped a branch of his own height into little faggots ; but all the rest of us were scarce able to get on with anything. Mother made believe to spin, but 142 WHEN FATHER BROUGHT her supply of flax had not dimin- ished by one-half when she shoved aside the spindle and went out. Father chipped away at first, at the handle of his axe, but the work must have been a little against the grain for he left it half done. After mother went away, father went out also, but whether he went to town or not I don't know. At any rate he forbade us to go out too, and promised us a whipping if we so much as touched the lamp with the tips of our fingers. Why, we should as soon have thought of fingering the priest's gold-em- broidered chasuble. We were only afraid that the cord which held up all this splendour might break and we should get the blame of it. But time hung heavily in the sitting-room, and as we couldn't hit upon anything else, we resolved to go in a body to the sleighing-hill. The town had a right-of-way to the river for fetching water there- from, and this road ended at the foot of a good hill down which the sleigh could run, and then up the other side along the ice rift. "Here come the Lamphill chil- dren," cried the children of the town as soon as they saw us. HOME THE LAMP. 143 We understood well enough what they meant, but for all that we did not ask what Lamphill children they alluded to, for our farm was of course never called Lamphill. " Ah, ah ! We know ! You've gone and bought one of them lamps for your place. We know all about it!" " But how come you to know about it already ? " "Your mother mentioned it to my mother when she went through our place. She said that your father had bought from the store- man one of that sort of lamps that burn so brightly, that one can find a needle on the floor so at least said the justice's maid." " It is just like the lamp in the parsonage drawing - room, your father told us just now, I heard him say so with my own ears," said the innkeeper's lad. "Then you really have got a lamp like that, eh ? " inquired all the children of the town. "Yes, we have ; but it is nothing to look at it in the daytime, but in the evening we'll all go there together." And we went on sleighing down hill and up hill till dusk, and every 144 WHEN FATHER BROUGHT time we drew our sleighs up to the hill-top, we talked about the lamp with the children of the town. In this way the time passed quicker than we thought, and when we had sped down the hill for the last time, the whole lot of us sprang off homewards. Pekka was standing at the chop- ping-block and didn't even turn his head, although we all called to him with one voice to come and see how the lamp was lit. We children plunged headlong into the room in a body. But at the door we stood stock still. The lamp was already burning there beneath the rafters so brightly that we couldn't look at it without blinking. " Shut the door ; it's rare cold," cried father, from behind the table. " They scurry about like fowls in windy weather," grumbled mother from her place by the fire- side. " No wonder the children are dazed by it, when I, old woman as I am, cannot help looking up at it," said the innkeeper's old mother. "Our maid also will never get over it," said the magistrate's step- daughter. HOME THE LAMP. 145 It was only when our eyes had got a little used to the light that we saw that the room was half full of neighbours. " Come nearer, children, that you may see it properly," said father, in a much milder voice than just before. " Knock the snow off your feet, and come hither to the stove, it looks quite splendid from here," said mother, in her turn. Skipping and jumping, we went towards mother, and sat us all down in a row on the bench beside her. It was only when we were under her wing that we dared to examine the lamp more critically. We had never once thought that it would burn as it was burning now, but when we came to sift the matter out we arrived at the conclusion that, after all, it was burning just as it ought to burn. And when we had peeped at it a good bit longer, it seemed to us as if we had fancied all along that it would be exactly as it was. But what we could not make out at all was how the fire was put into that sort of glass. We asked mother, but she said we should see how it was done afterwards. 10 146 WHEN FATHER BROUGHT The townsfolk vied with each other in praising the lamp, and one said one thing, and another said another. The innkeeper's old mother maintained that it shone just as calmly and brightly as the stars of heaven. The magistrate, who had bad eyes, thought it excellent because it didn't smoke and you could burn it right in the middle of the hall without blacken- ing the walls in the least, to which father replied that it was, in fact, meant for the hall, but did capitally for the dwelling room as well, and one had no need now to dash hither and thither with pared, for all could now see by a single light, let them be never so many. When mother observed that the lesser chandelier in church scarcely gave a better light, father bade me take my ABC book, and go to the door to see if I could read it there. I went and ; began to read " Our Father." But then they all said, " The lad knows that by heart." Mother then stuck a hymn book in my hand, and I set off with : u By the waters of Babylon." " Yes ; it is perfectly marvel- lous ! '' was the testimony of the townsfolk. HOME THE LAMP. 147 Then said father, " Now if any one had a needle, you might throw it on the floor and you would see that it would be found at once." The magistrate's step-daughter had a needle in her bosom, but when she threw it on the floor it fell into a crack, and we couldn't find it at all it was so small. It was only after the townsfolk had gone that Pekka came in. He blinked a bit at first at the unusual lamplight, but then calmly proceeded to take off his jacket and rag boots. " What's that twinkling in the roof there enough to put your eyes out ? " he asked at last, when he had hung his stockings up on the rafters. " Come now, guess what it is," said father, and he winked at mother and us. "I can't guess," said Pekka, and he came nearer to the lamp. " Perhaps it's the church chande- lier, eh ? " said father, jokingly. " Perhaps," admitted Pekka ; but he had become really curious, and passed his thumb along the lamp. "There's no need to finger it," 148 WHEN FATHER BROUGHT says father ; " look at it, but don't touch it." " All right, all right ! I don't want to meddle with it ! " said Pekka, a little put out, and he drew back to the bench alongside the wall by the door. Mother must have thought that it was a sin to treat poor Pekka so, for she began to explain to him that it was not a church chandelier at all, but what people called a lamp, and that it was lit with oil, and that was why people didn't want pared any more. But Pekka was so little enligh- tened by the whole explanation that he immediately began to split up the pdre-wood log which he had dragged into the room the day before. Then father said to him that he had already told him there was no need to split pared any more. " Oh ! I quite forgot," said Pekka ; " but there it may bide if it isn't wanted any more," and with that Pekka drove his pare knife into a rift in the wall. " There let it rest at leisure," said father, but Pekka said never a word more. A little while after that he began HOME THE LAMP. 149 to patch up his boots, stretched on tiptoe to reach down a pare from the rafters, lit it, stuck it in a slit faggot, and sat him down on his little stool by the stove. We chil- dren saw this before father who stood with his back to Pekka, planing away at his axe shaft under the lamp. We said nothing, how- ever, but laughed and whispered among ourselves, u If only father sees that, what will he say, I wonder ? " And when father did catch sight of him, he planted himself arms akimbo in front of Pekka, and asked him, quite spite- fully, what sort of fine work he had there since he must needs have a separate light all to himself? " I am only patching up my shoes," said Pekka to father. " Oh, indeed ! Patching your shoes, eh ? Then if you can't see to do that by the same light that does for me, you may take yourself off with your pare into the bath- house or behind it, if you like." And Pekka went. He stuck his boots under his arm, took his stool in one hand and his pare in the other, and off he went. He crept softly through the door into the hall, and out of the hall 150 WHEN FATHER BROUGHT into the yard. The pare light flamed outside in the blast, and played a little while, glaring red, over outhouses, stalls, and stables. We children saw the light through the window and thought it looked very pretty. But when Pekka bent down to get behind the bath-house door, it was all dark again in the yard, and instead of the pare we saw only the lamp mirroring itself in the dark window-panes. Henceforth we never burnt a.pdre in the dwelling room again. The lamp shone victoriously from the roof, and on Sunday evenings all the townsfolk often used to come to look upon and admire it. It was known all over the parish that our house was the first, after the parson- age, where the lamp had been used. After we had set the example, the magistrate bought a lamp like ours, but as he had never learnt to light it, he was glad to sell it to the inn- keeper, and the innkeeper has it still. The poorer farmfolk, however, have not been able to get them- selves lamps, but even now they do their long evening's work by the glare of a pare. But when we had had the lamp HOME THE LAMP. a short time, father planed the walls of the dwelling room all smooth and white, and they never got black again, especially after the old stove, which used to smoke, had to make room for another which discharged its smoke outside and had a cowl. Pekka made a new .fireplace in the bath-house out of the stones of the old stove, and the crickets flitted thither with the stones at least their chirping was never heard any more in the dwelling room. Father didn't care a bit, but we children felt, now and then, during the long winter evenings, a strange sort of yearn- ing after old times, so we very often found our way down to the bath- house to listen to the crickets, and there was Pekka sitting out the long evenings by the light of his pare. PIONEERS. were both in service at the parsonage, he as stable-boy, she as house- maid. He drove the horses, and she was busy about the house. At meal-times, when they sat each at a corner of the table, they joked together sometimes, but usually they were quarrelling. Their master and mistress thought them a singularly ill-assorted couple : in fact, just like cat and dog, people said. But, what with fishing-parties at night, what with helping each other at hay-making and corn-cutting by day, the thought of starting a home together gradually grew strong within them. Far away out in the wilderness they had fixed upon a plot for their cottage, by the side of a marsh. There was forest-land and to spare ; it only wanted clear- 153 PIONEERS. ing. The vast, alder-grown flat could be turned into arable land, and meadow-land could be made out of the low-lying ground on both sides of the brook. If only the hut could be built ! But wages were low, and one needed a horse and cow at least to start with. Thus circumstances delayed the marriage. But, in the course of the year, the bonds between them were knit still closer, and their prospects for the future grew brighter every day. They spent their leisure hours in totting up what their savings already amounted to, and in estimating how long they must still wait till the indis- pensably necessary sum had been scraped together. Nobody dreamed that an eager longing after freedom and a burning desire to keep house on their own account were gradually waxing and waxing in this boy and girl. For they had such a nice easy time of it at the parsonage, no cares at all, and food and clothing found. But their hearts were turned towards the wilderness. Every one was ready with a warning when, one summer, they both refused to continue in service. PIONEERS. 155 " Over yonder the frost rules and rages, and you'll only load your- selves with debt. A family soon grows up, and we've quite enough of beggars already." But they had thought and worked the matter out for the last five years, and their minds were made up. The priest had to put up the banns for them, and in the autumn they quitted his house. The following winter they were still living in lodgings. Ville how- ever, was busy with the building of his hut and did a day's work at the parsonage at odd times, and Anni helped the priest's wife with sewing and weaving. The wedding was celebrated at the Whitsuntide following. The cost of it was paid by the parsonage people, and the vicar himself mar- ried his former servants in the large room of the parsonage. But when the married couple had taken their leave and the priest, standing at the window, saw them disappearing down the path, he shook his head anxiously, and said, " Let the young people try what they can make of it, but the wilderness is not to be cleared away by the capital of a boy and girl." 156 PIONEERS. Finland's wilderness had, how- ever, been cleared by such capital, and yet the vicar was right too. We, the youths of the parish, escorted our dear old friends to their new home. The long summer day passed away as we wandered through the forest bright with vernal green, and we danced away the night in the new hut. The planks of the new dwelling were still quite roughish ; the jagged, unsawn timber ends jutted unevenly out of the knots in the wood and the brown river appeared to be spreading everywhere over the newly reclaimed field. But on the hill-slope the fresh rye shoots glis- tened bright and green amidst the sooty tree-stumps, and on the plot of land cleared for corn the trees were lopped gaunt and dry. The young hostess lit a bonfire on the clearing and milked her cow there for the first time. Ville and I sat on a stone and watched her bustling about in the sickly sheen of the evening sun : she still wore her bridal garments. Ville had no doubt whatever of success. " If only we keep our health and the frost doesn't come " and as if PIONEERS. 157 anticipating my thoughts, he added, " I know that the swamp down there is a regular nest of frost, but if a fellow always keeps his arms a-going, I'll drive the forest further away and open up a place for the sun, and then ... It still feels a little chilly here of an evening perhaps, but come here next summer and have a look at us then." I paid them no visit next summer or the summer after that either. I must confess that I clean forgot them ; but once, when I was at home, I asked how they were getting on. " They have been obliged to get into debt," was my father's answer. " And Anni has been ailing," added my mother. Some years had passed. I was now a student, and had a gun and a retriever, and was passing my autumn vacation in the country. One dull October day I was wandering about the woods and hit upon a narrow path which seemed familiar to me. It began to drizzle ; the dog was scampering on in front. Suddenly he began to growl and then to bark fiercely. We heard in front of us the tramp 158 PIONEERS. of a horse. Presently, at a \urn of the road, the horse became visible ; it was harnessed between a pair of shafts the ends of which dragged upon the ground. A white cloth hung upon the collar-trees, and right across the shafts lay a fastened- down coffin. Behind the car tramped Ville, like a plougher after his plough. He had quite enough to do to keep his load in equilibrium. He looked worn out : his cheeks were pale, his eyes dim and faded. It was only when he heard my name that he recognised me. "But what sort of a load have you got there ? " said I. " My dead wife," was the reply. " Dead ? " " Yes, she is dead." By a little questioning I learnt their brief, predicted story : frost, debt, many children, his wife sick, and at last dead from overwork. Now he had to carry her to the grave, but the roads were so very bad. He only hoped that the coffin might hold out till he reached the church. He tweaked at the reins for the horse had over- stepped the path and was searching PIONEERS. 159 for a little grass among the withered leaves. " Wo-ho ! " It was trying to satisfy its hunger. The beast was in just as wretched a state as the man : it looked like a skeleton. Ville took leave of me and went on his way without lifting his eyes from his load. The shaft-poles cut two parallel furrows in the sandy path. I went in the opposite direction and came to a marsh where they had begun to dig a draining ditch but stopped short when the work was only half done. The path, familiar to me since the bridal tour, led to the little hut. Behind the fence a lean cow was lowing feebly and a pig was grunt- ing in the plot of yard, the wicket- gate of which had been left open. In the middle of the yard stood an empty bed, and the dead woman's bedclothes had been cast upon the fence. The jagged timber-ends still stuck up out of the knots in the wood of which the hut was built. In the frame of the window, the panes of which were dim and dirty, stood a withering balsam in a little birch-wood box. The man had succeeded, howevej, l6o PIONEERS. in clearing out a little bit of the wilderness. A small strip of corn- land of about a couple of acres in width and about half as much land dug up for sowing formed an open- ing in the forest. But at this point his powers seemed to have broken down. The birch-wood he had felled and the alder-groves he had changed into meadows. But be- hind them stood the dark pine forest like an insurmountable wall. There he had been obliged to stop short. I stood for a long time in the yard of the deserted cottage. The wind whined fiercely in the forest, and called forth from the mouth of my gun-barrel, which lay close to my ear, a mournful wailing sound. #*#* The first pioneer has fulfilled his task ; the man can do no more good there now. His strength, his energy are gone, the fire of his eye is ex- tinguished and the self-confidence of his marriage morn has forsaken him. Another will certainly come after him and take over the cottage plot. He perhaps will have better luck. But he will have a lighter task to begin with, for before him no longer PIONEERS. l6l stands the savage forest quite un- touched by man. He can settle down into a ready-made hut, and sow in the plot of land which another has ploughed up before him. That cottage plot will, no doubt, become a large and wealthy farm, and in course of time a village will grow up around it. Nobody thinks of those who first dug up the earth with all their capital, the only capital they pos- sessed their youthful energies. They were merely a simple lad and lass, and both of them came there with empty hands. But it is just with such people's capital that Finland's wildernesses have been rooted up and converted into broad acres. Had these two only remained at the parsonage, he as a coachman and she as a house- maid, then perhaps the course of their own lives would have been free enough of care. But the wilderness would not have been cultivated, and the foreposts of civi- lisation would not have been planted in the midst of the forest. When the rye blooms and the ears of corn ripen in our fields, let us call to mind these first martyrs of colonisation. ii 162 PIONEERS. We cannot raise monuments upon their graves, for the tale of them is by thousands, and their names we know not. LOYAL. I. E had been obliged to pass the summer in town to relieve a well-to-do col- league, who was spending his vacation in the country. He was engaged, but couldn't think of marry- ing till he had got a fixed income. So he had to push his way. It was tiresome and trying to be plodding away in Helsingfors during the summer, and it was especially hard immediately after dinner. The forenoon passed away pretty tole- rably in official work, but at three o'clock one had to be off to the eating-house, where the sun shone right into the room, where it was hot, where the furniture had un- pleasant white coverings, the chan- 163 164 LOYAL. delier was enveloped in a cloth, wretched oil-paintings hung upon the walls, and where one had neither the feeling of home nor the comfort of a tavern. And from thence one had to drag one's self off to one's lodgings in Kronohagen, and go along streets which the architects had made half as small again as they need have been, and past houses with chalked windows. It was midsummer afternoon. All his colleagues had been invited to a picnic somewhere on the coast among the islands. But Antti had no acquaintances, and so, after vainly turning over in his mind what he should do with himself, he had returned to his lodgings. After coming home he usually sat with his elbows resting on the table, smoking and looking through the window over to the other side of the street, where a stone house was being built. Then he would remove the pillow from his bed to his sofa, kick his boots under the table and go to sleep for an hour or two, or perhaps a little more. But even after that a good many hours of the evening still remained empty. What was he to do with -them, those long monotonous hours ? The Concert LOYAL. 165 Room and the restaurants of Bruns- park and Hesperia were dear, and besides, it's not quite the thing to be sitting there every evening. Yet, if he recollected aright, he had sat there nearly every evening, on Saturday evening because it was Saturday, on Sunday for a similar reason ; the other days were regular exceptions. Regarded from the usual place behind the table the world to-day looked more than usually tiresome. The work-place opposite was also empty, the door in the scaffolding was locked, and there was " no ad- mittance except on business." To be in the country now, far away in Savolax, at home with his beloved ! What rapture ! To lie at his ease in the hammock, row, sail, wander hand in hand, sit in her lap and make her sit in his, to kiss and caress when nobody was looking ! He began thinking what he should set about doing, and resolved to write a letter. He took out pen and paper, placed them in front of him, and jotted down the date in the upper corner, and a little below it " Dearest Mia " ! But as he was not quite clear with what he should 1 66 LOYAL. begin and how he should go on, he resolved to first of all sleep off a bit of his midday heaviness. When, after getting up again, he again sat down in front of his writ- ing-paper, where the lately written words were dry and shiny, he didn't feel in the humour for writing even now. He lit a cigarette, but even that did not give him inspiration. There was absolutely nothing to write about. Everybody who, like Antti, has been engaged for three years will know that a subject is often lacking under such circumstances. One ought to give expression to one's love and interpret one's thoughts, but one cannot hit upon fresh words. Antti had already used all the suitable phrases he knew of in the language, besides in- venting not a few brand-new ones. He was obliged to get up and walk up and down the floor, he drank some water, opened the win- dow and leaned out of it. As far as his eye could reach, all the streets were as empty as his own thoughts. Everybody must certainly have gone to the country. It was seven o'clock. By this time they were all picnicing at Hogholm or Degero or Foliso. LOYAL. 167 He rallied all his energies and succeeded in putting down on his writing-paper : " It is now mid- summer afternoon, and I am sitting alone in my room and writing to you. If you only knew how I ..." But here he stopped short, he suddenly felt himself quite used up, he could no more get along with it than when as a schoolboy he had been obliged to write essays on sub- jects he didn't understand. While he was staring at his finger- nails, he heard in the street below the rapid steps and jerky talk of peo- ple who are in a violent hurry. Two pretty girls were hastening down to the sea-shore. They had presumably got leave to be out for the whole night. They had their best clothes on, white hoods with long fringes, and clothes which fitted closely to their supple and vigorous shapes. Antti fell a-thinking that for three years he had been faithful to his sweetheart, and vanquished like a man all the temptations which had come in his way. . . . The girls swung rapidly round the corner, and the street was as empty as before. Antti's thoughts were also empty. " But why can't I go'too ? Why 1 68 LOYAL. can't I share in the popular fes- tivities at Degero, whither the steam- boat goes every half-hour ? Such a splendid evening as it is, too ! I swal- low dust all the week through, and when, for once in a way, the oppor- tunity of flying to Nature's bosom presents itself, I lock myself up in my room ! " He stretched himself, puffed the air out of his lungs and tapped him- self in the ribs. He felt quite a stitch in the side from too much sitting down. There was one impediment, how- ever. It was mail-day, and he would miss the post if he postponed Avriting his letter now. Mia will certainly walk the whole of the two miles to the post-office, and if she finds nothing there, she will be un- happy and accuse him of coldness, and then there will be long explana- tions and reassurances. But then, at any rate, one would have some- thing to write about afterwards. Besides, when one returns from a little pleasure trip, one can always manage to scrape together news enough to fill a sheet. But it is of no very great consequence. A fel- low doesn't always feel in the humour to write love-letters. If LOYAL. 169 she is offended she must get pleased again, that's all ! If Antti had only been able to search his own heart he would have discovered that this very same frame of mind, an almost unconscious im- patience, had revealed itself within him once or twice before. That very winter, when his sweetheart was in town, and they were con- stantly together, a sort of inertia, a sort of unwillingness to give free play to his feelings, had come over him. He could not throw into his voice the tenderness he wished to show, and it was only now and then at the soirees of the " Finnish Lite- rary Society," when she had a new dress on, or when he had become a little warmed up by refreshments, that he could still wax enthusiastic, as he had done during the earlier days of his engagement, and so make heart and voice vibrate in unison. He stuck the letter he had begun into his drawer, hastily dressed him- self, filled his cigar-case with ciga- rettes, stuffed a box of matches into his pocket, and sprang rapidly down the stairs as if he were afraid of being too late. When one looked at him from behind as he hurried along, he gave one the idea of a 170 LOYAL. man who was about to do something which he felt was not quite right. In a few moments he was standing by the side of a steamboat at the South Haven, and watching the pleasure-seekers stepping on board. Carters, whose horse-collars were covered with birch-leaves in honour of Midsummer Day, drove, one after the other, through the market-place down to the strand. Groups of men with flowers in their hats, and women with roses in their breasts, were hastening down to the steam- boat with their wraps across their arms. The steamboat was bright with flags from stem to stern, and mid- summer birch boughs covered the railings of the deck. Antti also had bought a little bouquet from a flower-girl. They are all hastening out into the country. They are all hastening on board along the landing-stage. Antti still hesitates. But just when they are about to unloose the ropes, he skips on board too. II. BUT why does he sit so disconso- lately there on a stone by the way- LOYAL. 171 side a little distance from the pleasure-ground whence the sounds of music and a merry hum proceed incessantly ? Why does he long to be away from all this merry-making the very moment he has got there, and only awaits another steamboat to take him back to town ? When a cat has pounced down upon a flock of chickens without success, she sneaks shamefacedly away with her tail between her legs, and vexation in her heart. Antti was convinced within him- self that he had meant to pounce upon nothing, but, for all that, he had turned aside hither, sullen and depressed, and was now prodding about in the sand with his cane. The girls from the steamboat had skipped down upon the bridge. They were unusually free and light- some in their movements, and their kirtles rustled all aboutthem. Young men came forward to meet them, nonchalantly took them round their waists or under their arms, and, without more ado, swung them round once or twice before they let them go. In a long stream, which filled the whole road, they then hastened towards the pleasure-ground, frisk- ing and bouncing as they went. 172 LOYAL. Antti went slowly forward, though there was a slight tickling sensation in the soles of his feet, and he let those who were in a hurry pass him by. One petticoat after another whisked past him. The lasses pre- tended to fly from the lads who pelted after them. But they soon allowed themselves to be caught, and, hand in hand, they reached the pleasure place. When Antti came up the dancing was in full swing. The musicians stood in the centre. The sport was fast and furious. The dancers held tightly to each other all through ; they took big steps and long hops, their movements were brisk, and they swung rapidly round and round. Hoods shrunk down upon shoulders, and hats over necks, and here and there a cigar could be seen stuck nonchalantly in the corner of a mouth. There were soldiers there, broad- chested sailors, sturdy peasants from the islands, artisans, and a few students in broad-brimmed hats. The women were shop-girls, milli- ners, tobacconist nymphs, artisans' daughters, and servant-girls. Antti knew one or two of them by sight, and a few of them by name. But LOYAL. 173 nobody knew him. For it was a long time since he had made one of them. And not a soul there troubles itself about him. For every one there has her own young man, nay, there are some of the lads who have a sweetheart under each arm. Antti has nothing but his stick on which he leans now and then, while he glances from one group to the other. Mia is, somehow or other, far, far away. The women here are, in his opinion, quite pretty. Amongst the mob there were some so young, so smart, and so fresh, that it was delightful to look at them. There was some- thing so fresh about them, some- thing so naive, something of the artless joy of young calves. They are now celebrating their mid- summer fete ; they have the whole night before them ; their masters and mistresses are all in the country, and they have resolved, for once in the year, to revel on the island, on the green meadow, among the rocks and trees. What on earth were they laughing at ? Whatever could they find to amuse them in the dull witticisms of their gallants ? Antti could not for the life of him make it out. But 174 LOYAL. he would very much have liked to have been just such a belauded hero in their estimation. He also would have liked to clip them round the neck, whisper some such tickling jest in their ears, learn all their little ways, and for that evening, at any rate, appropriate to himself those half-shamefaced confidences to which girls abandon themselves so readily. For a long time he stood lurking there with stiff, darkened looks, stolid features, and a load upon his heart. Suppose now he were to join the group and partake of its pastimes ? Nobody there knew him. What harm could it do to anybody? And how was any one the better for the life he was living now ? Living, indeed ! It was not living ; it was withering ! The cowardly idealism of these latter days is regular non- sense, or, any rate, sheer childish- ness. Yes, cowardly, and nothing else. People don't dare to live now as Nature bids them. It is an eternal avoiding opportunities and balancing chances. Not one in a hundred is really loyal at heart. Now look at those people there ! . Their life is something quite dif- ferent. They know nothing about LOYAL. 175 the silly prejudices of educated people. They all enjoy life in its fulness, the women as well as the men. That is why they are all so fresh, gay, and lively. They know how to celebrate their midsummer fete, and rejoice in the feast of the sun. Thus spoke his thoughts, and his eyes followed a fresh and lovely girl who is standing there bareheaded, fanning her burning cheeks with her handkerchief. He plucked up courage and drew near to her. He asks how the young lady is, and remarks that it is fine weather. He tries to be free and easy, but his voice strikes him as hollow and affected. The girl replies as if he were a perfect stranger, nay, almost with awe. When Antti asks her if she will have a dance, she answers, " Yes ! " but discreetly, solemnly, just as if she were a fashionable young lady, and with nothing at all of that frank abandonment with which Antti saw her skip just now to- wards another cavalier who was coming to her with an invitation. During the dance Antti pulled her towards him, and pressed her hand, but without meeting with any 176 LOYAL. response. He knows that they do not go well together don't get along at all, somehow. Whenever he tries to put some go into it and swings her round, they get out of step and have to stop and begin all over again. When the dance is over they stand for some time side by side without speaking a word. " May I offer you some tea ? " asks Antti at last. " No, thank you ; it is warm enough without that." " Perhaps you would like a little lemonade, or something of that sort ? " " Nothing, thank you." "Are you looking out for any acquaintance, Miss ? " " Acquaintance ? What do you mean ? " "Why, because Miss, you seem to be peeping about so." " No ; I have no particular ac- quaintance." " Then are you quite alone here, Miss ? " To this Antti got no answer at all. " Do you intend to stay here long. Miss ? " "I don't think of leaving just yet.!' LOYAL. 177 "Wouldn't you like a little walk ? It is certainly very pretty in the woods over there." " One can walk at any time. I have come here to dance." " The dance is just over." The same instant up came a young artisan swell in a white waistcoat, and took the girl to dance. They treated each other as equals. They whirled now to the right and now to the left, and laughed good- naturedly whenever anyone bumped against them. Antti followed them with his eyes. He waited for them to separate, but when the music ceased they went off for a walk with their arms round each other's waists. All the other couples did the same thing, and soon the whole wood was swarming with people. Every hill- slope was alive with them, and there was a laughing, and a whisper- ing, and a giggling at the foot of every tree. And so that is why Antti sits there so downcast and almost de- vout, prodding about in the sand with his stick, and with more than half a mind to go home. It seems to him that he is some- what superfluous here, and he feels 12 178 LOYAL. that he has not been a success. The world is such a meaningless blank to him now ; life tastes like mouldy wood which does not taste of any- thing at all. He is quite nauseated by the dance-music, which has now begun again, and by the noise in the pleasure-ground also. When such- like folks set to dancing, they hop about like so many calves. It is really, after all, a very rough-and- tumble business. He feels the want of Mia. A longing after love suddenly over- comes him, and he is seized with an irresistible desire to write to her, right tenderly and affectionately. Had he been disloyal ? In thought, perhaps. But the fact that he is ready to be off with the very first steamboat proves that he is man enough to overcome temptation and has a will of his own. III. No sooner did he get into his room than he took from the drawer the letter he had already begun : " DEAREST MIA, It is now Mid- summer afternoon, and I am sitting LOYAL. 179 alone in my room and writing to you. If you only knew how I " here begins the continuation, which ran on now quite easily " love you beyond everything. You have no idea how I long for you, how I regard the prospect of one day possessing you as my highest bliss. Why are you not here that I might say it to you by word of mouth, and whisper it in your ear ? Why can I not press you to my breast, kiss your forehead, your red cheeks, your rosy lips, caress you, and throw my arms round your neck ? " Without you I am nothing ! I thought I would amuse myself a little to-day, so I joined a popular pleasure party at Degero. But I very soon came back again came back again full of grief and longing. I couldn't get on at all in such society. Perhaps I am a little too aristocratic ; but, anyway, I feel almost a physical repulsion when I think of how it was there and what I saw. Nothing is so unbeautiful, I think, as when a half-fuddled mob of that sort from town is let loose in the country in the midst of lovely scenery. I was glad to withdraw from it as quickly as possible. As l8o LOYAL. soon as ever I had drunk a cup of tea, I took the first boat and came straight to town. " Yet I don't at all repent that I went there, for on the way back I began to feel so lonely, so disturbed, my thoughts were of you alone, my own Mia. If I were a poet, if I had the pencil of a painter, what a picture would I not draw of my frame of mind, and what a splendid description I would give of the scenery I saw and admired from the deck of the steamboat. In the front of our steamboat, The Nixey } the water foamed and frothed as we passed through the eastern rocky channel. The sea was as still as the forest along the shore. The islands and the sound lay so lovely there in the clearness of the midsummer night. On the shore burned the bonfires, and here and there one could hear songs and music. What a delicious voyage ! But how many hundreds of times more splendid and more beautiful it would have been if you, my own Mia, had been sitting beside me ! " But although you were not actually present, you were never- theless with me in spirit. I thought of you the whole time. I conjured LOYAL. l8l up our own pretty little house which we will make for ourselves when I get regular employment. We will live simply for each other, we will choose our own society, we will only invite some of our best friends. u Do you love me, Mia, as you used to do ? Such strange thoughts are borne in upon me sometimes. I wonder whether you love me now as you loved me when we were first engaged. I am sometimes jealous of the whole world, and fancy that nobody cares about me not even you. You are forgetting me, per- haps, in the country yonder, where there are so many young people. Forgive me these doubts, which I only mention to you because I promised to be candid. I know that it is all imagination, that not even in thought could you be dis- loyal to me ; but I feel like this because I am so lonely here, so for- saken by everybody. It would make me so happy to hear that I am mistaken. Say that you love me I know you do but I implore you to tell me so, and repeat it a thousand times. " Oh, how delightful it really is to know that there is somebody whom 1 82 LOYAL. one loves and who loves one in return, to whom one can tell all one's sorrows and open one's heart and one's whole soul ! " Farewell, my own dear, beloved Mia ! Write me a long letter write about everything you think and feel. Every stroke written by your hand, every word uttered by your lips, is dearer to me than gold. What is all earthly gold compared with " Antti paused for a mo- ment to reflect how he should go on, but the same instant a happy thought occurred to him, and he added " our good fortune in hav- ing discovered one another's hearts? " My love to Aunt and Uncle. A thousand ardent kisses from your eternally loyal " ANTTI. " P.S. I haven't said half I want to say yet, but I must carry this letter to the railway this very night. I will put it in the post-box at the station, lest it go astray, and you pay a visit to the post-office in vain. When I come home again and lay me down to sleep, my last thought before I close my eyes will be yourself. Ever thine." LOYAL. 183 Such a tender, affectionate letter Mia had not received from Antti for a long time. She who knew of nothing else, who thought of noth- ing else but Antti, she who believed that no other man was so upright, so pure, so noble for she knew all about his views on all subjects she was so glad when she received this fresh proof of her sweetheart's love that she locked herself in her own room straightway, and wrote him this letter : She began : " Dearest, dearest, dearest Antti ! " And then she said that she was still all of a tremble with rapture at the thought that he loved her so intensely. She had read through his letter again and again, and when she went to sleep, she meant to lay it under her pillow. She had cried when she thought how lonely Antti must be in that nasty Helsingfors. Alas ! if only she could do something to hasten on the founding of their own little home ! "How could you imagine, Antti, that I would ever be disloyal to you ? I think of nothing else, I care for nothing else but you, only you. I take no part in the pastimes of the young people here, as you may suppose, 184 LOYAL. except very, very seldom. And if you only wish it, I will see no society at all, nor go any excursions, nor accept any invitations, just as you do not dance nor take any pleasure in popular amusements. Often I sit in the garden beneath the birch- tree in which your name is carved and in whose shadow we spent so many unforgettable moments last summer. I sit and sew, and hum the songs you love. Sometimes I put out the boat, and row out upon the lake. How lovely it is there ! But you have indeed become a poet. Again and again I have read your fine description of the steamboat journey along the rocky coast. I read it out to papa and mamma too. You are not angry, are you ? They think so much of you, and always ask me what you write about." Mia wrote and wrote sheet after sheet. She was " so happy, so happy." She had been wrong in doubting Antti's feelings and thinking that he was growing cold. Her conscience almost reproached her for having been able to think so ill of her own loyal Antti. And she concluded her letter like this : " Oh, oh, how frightfully much I LOYAL. love you ! Farewell, dearest, most beloved Antti. I send you thou- sands and thousands of kisses. Thy little MIA." UNWIN BROTHERS, CHItWORTH AND LONDON. A NEW DEPARTURE. "THE ENGLISH TADCHNITZ." 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