# A Perilous Incognito

If Ewald could have made a triumphal entry into the town at the head of a conquering host, sentenced his father (and some others whom he owed grudges) to death, and then magnanimously pardoned them, he would have been satisfied. But as he saw no way of accomplishing anything so magnificent, he had to choose the next best thing, which was to land incognito, ...
I. — II. — III. — IV. — V.
A PERILOUS INCOGNITO.
By Hjalmar H. Boyesen.
Part I.
I.
REVENGE! There is something truculent in the very sound of it. But Ewald Nordahl's revenge was not intended to be truculent. It was to be rather in the nature of glowing coals heaped upon the appropriate party's head, or something of that sort. It was to be proof positive that Ewald Nordahl was a greater man than anybody in the benighted town of his birth had suspected—particularly than his father, Captain P. T. Nordahl, of The North Star, had suspected. If Ewald could have made a triumphal entry into the town at the head of a conquering host, sentenced his father (and some others whom he owed grudges) to death, and then magnanimously pardoned them, he would have been satisfied. But as he saw no way of accomplishing anything so magnificent, he had to choose the next best thing, which was to land incognito, cut a superb figure in the eyes of the natives, spend money with splendid heedlessness, and at last, when he had set the whole town agog, dramatically unmask. Though he was not aware of it, it was from the Bible he had borrowed this innocent plot. The incident in the story of Joseph where, as governor of Egypt, he says to the frightened Israelites, "I am your brother Joseph," had always thrilled him.
During long years of hardship and toil, Ewald Nordahl had hugged this revenge to his bosom; and though he had a suspicion that it was a trifle boyish, and "dime-novelish," he had grown so fond of it that he could not persuade himself to give it up. The terrible wrong rankled yet in his breast; and even now, after the lapse of fifteen years, he often caught himself groaning at the thought of it. What made it doubly hard to bear, was the fact that he had been, nay, was yet, sincerely fond of his father. That he was the son of the brave captain who had received no end of medallions from foreign governments for saving ships and crews with peril to his own, and performed no end of brave deeds on the high seas, had been his pride and delight. He had looked up to him with all the enthusiasm of boyish hero-worship. There had been a devoted comradeship between them, and each had been the other's heartiest admirer. And now to be wronged and cruelly humiliated by this very object of his most ardent admiration—it was more than the stanchest heart could endure. Ewald felt at first annihilated, and would have remained annihilated, if the desire for revenge had not rekindled his ambition.
To make a long story short, the circumstances were about as follows: Captain Nordahl, after having been a widower for five or six years, took unto himself a new wife. He was then a man in his best years, and, moreover, well-to-do, so there was no reason in the world why he should not marry. His second wife was young and pretty, and she bore him, in rapid succession, half a dozen daughters. Somehow she had not been in the house for a month before Ewald had managed to get on a war footing with her; and his whole boyhood from his eleventh year had been passed in the practice of more or less active hostilities. He could not, by any stretch of charity, be called a good boy; and it was scarcely to be wondered at that his stepmother did not love him. When her husband was at sea, she left Ewald to his own devices, making no pretence of controlling him. But when the captain, during two or three months of the year, made the house resound with his Boreas voice, she invited, by her spasms of educational zeal, perpetual conflicts. She filled his ears with tales of his son's depravity; and when he, in his easy-going way, replied, "Well, mother, don't be too hard on him. I was a tough case myself when I was a boy but I have turned out a pretty decent sort of man after all. Let him work off his spirits in mischief; then he will be rid of them," it soon became evident to Mrs. Nordahl that her husband had a tender spot in his heart for his only son; while all the little girls with which she had enriched him came in for a much smaller share of his attention. And it was this vicarious jealousy on her children's behalf which made her resolve, by fair means or foul, to get the boy out of the house. It happened that twenty-five dollars had disappeared from the captain's desk, and she had no hesitation in accusing Ewald of the theft. She would not have done it, perhaps, if she could have foreseen the effect upon her husband. He sat speechless for some moments and stared into the empty air. He turned pale; and his eyes grew small, pinched, and wicked. "How do you know it?" he burst forth, hoarsely.
She gave, somewhat tremulously, her reasons, which were all invented. Then the captain rose; he was ugly to look at. His eyes had an unpleasant sparkle in them; the muscles about his mouth had a fierce, pained tension, which changed his whole face. He walked upstairs with stiff sea-legs, and the stairs creaked under his weight. His red neck, with its queer little "curlicue," had a look so angry and threatening that it sent a terror to his wife's heart as she gazed after him. And the same terror spread through the whole house. The little girls played with a sort of hysterical unconcern, but stopped every now and then to strain their ears as the sound of heavy blows was heard from above.
"Is papa killing Ewald, mamma?" they asked their mother; and they meant it literally. No, the mother replied, with uncontrollable tremulousness, he was only punishing him, because Ewald was a bad boy.
Her heart shot up into her throat. Doors and windows shook. There was a tremendous noise, and at last a heavy fall. She heard her husband descend the stairs and walk out of the house.
"Oh, God!" she cried, clasping the first child within reach, in nameless terror, "why hast thou brought this calamity upon us?"
She thought, indeed, that her husband had killed Ewald. She feared to open the door of the room where he lay, and yet hovered about it, listened at the key hole, and mumbled snatches of prayers and meaningless words that flitted through her brain. She sat up all night waiting for her husband's return; but he did not come. In the morning she summoned courage to open the fateful door. The room was empty. Ewald was gone.
Fifteen years had now elapsed since these occurrences. Ewald had somehow found his way to America; had been a gold-digger in California; had then gone into the cattle business, in the early days, when there were fortunes to be made on the great Western plains, and had finally, in a daring land speculation, swept in a sum which made him momentarily dizzy. He was now rich enough to carry out his plot, rich enough to play the transatlantic Crœsus with éclat. His father was yet alive, but he had read in the papers that his stepmother was dead; that was a pity, for he could ill afford to miss her face among the witnesses of his triumph. There was, however, on the other hand, an advantage in her absence, for he had feared that her keen eyes might have prematurely penetrated his incognito. His full, close-cropped beard, the long, blonde, drooping mustache, an additional eight inches of growth, and fifteen years' added maturity would seem a sufficient disguise to ordinary eyes, and only the eyes of hate or of love could possibly have unmasked him. As with the lapse of time the memory of his boyish exploits had faded, he felt assured that he had neither the one nor the other to fear: an absolute neutrality of feeling prevailed in regard to him throughout the town.
During his tent life in California Ewald had found much pleasure in imagining the scene of his landing attended by two gold-laced servants. But when he arrived in London, where he had meant to engage them, he had a series of comic disasters which would of itself fill a lengthy chapter. He had some twenty or thirty interviews with aspirants for the position; but some of them, he felt, took a critical view of him, and perhaps laughed at him in their sleeves; and others had such an imposing presence and such formidable side-whiskers, that he might, in the end, feel tempted to wait on them. The fact at the bottom of his perplexities was his sound democratic aversion for the very pomp which in his boyish dreams he had accustomed himself to regard as indispensable. And the end of it was, that he started out for Norway alone and unattended, carried his valise with his own hands, and made no sensation whatever. He drove to his hotel in a primitive-looking vehicle (which was the only one to be had), and finally found himself alone in a house which professed to be a hotel, although, like a genteel person who has come down in the world, it discreetly veiled its public character. Ewald felt like an intruder as he sat down with the landlord and his wife to an awkward triangular dinner, and was disposed to take offence, as if an improper question had been addressed to him, when at the end of the meal mine host handed him the register and begged him to sign his name. It had half escaped his mind that, like a disguised prince, he was to travel incognito; and as he once more weighed the risks of his plot, he sat irresolute, looking at the pen as if in doubt as to its use. However, it was absurd to back out when he was on the eve of his triumph. So he boldly scrawled the first name that came into his head: for the purpose of concealing his own, one name was as good as another.
William Graham, Chicago, III.,
was the entry in the register.
"William Graham—William Graham," he repeated, mentally, as if to impress the sound upon his memory. He had a vague recollection of having met in a casual way a man bearing such a name, but he could not recall either his appearance or any other circumstance connected with him.
"How is the shipping nowadays?" he asked the landlord, handing him a cigar across the table.
"Very little money in it, sir. The English underbid us in all markets."
"Who are the largest ship-owners in town?"
"Oh, that is hard to tell. There is Reimert & Co., who do a big business yet, and Berg & Martensen, who have been in luck of late years, and old Captain Nordahl, who would have scraped together a snug pile if he hadn't had so many daughters to raise for other folks to marry. He has had three weddings now in the family in one year, and I tell ye, sir, it takes a long purse to stand that sort of drain."
"But I suppose the captain's can stand it as well as any," said Ewald, merely to give a fresh start to the landlord's garrulity.
"Well, having no sons, ye know," the unsuspecting host continued, "he can afford to do handsomely by his daughters. He had a boy once, but he was a bad lot. God only knows where he is now—I reckon he's dead long ago. They say it went hard with the old man, for he set much store by the youngster. When Nicolas Beimert, his second wife's brother, died, a couple of years ago, he took his two children into his house, too; the boy he has sent to England to learn business, and the girl—well, they say she twists the captain round her little finger. And I tell ye—the captain is as tough a customer on a ship's deck as ever sailed the seas. If you sail under him you've got to have an eye and an ear on each finger."
"I declare, you make me quite curious to see him," the young man remarked from out of a cloud of smoke which hid his blushes.
"Ye are too late for that, sir. He started a couple of weeks ago for his country place, Fossevang, which he bought from the Reimert estate."
"Too bad, too bad," murmured Ewald. He pulled Baedeker from his pocket and fell to studying the steam boat routes. After a brief tour of inspection through the town, and refreshing of ancient memories, he boarded the boat, which took him northward to Fossevang
II.
Sombre green, light green, and silvery green alternated in patches, some large and some small, on the southern slope of the valley. The sombre shade belonged to the pine forest which crept up the mountain-sides, interspersed at its lower edge with the fresher tints of birch and alder. In the middle of the slope lay a large two-story, white-painted mansion, whose red-tiled roof and tall chimneys loomed out of a dense orchard. That was Fossevang. Beyond the garden stretched broad fields of rye and barley. Through the depth of the valley shot a river with brawling rapids and eddies and yellow foam. Out toward the west there was a glimpse of the fjord and a vista of colossal mountain-peaks, which in fine weather swam in a blue ethereal mist, and with delicate susceptibility reflected every mood of the sky.
Ewald Nordahl's heart beat uneasily as he rode up from the steamboat-landing to the River Inn. He matured rapidly his plans, and hearing that there was good salmon-fishing in the river, determined to hire it, whatever the price might be, for the season. Syvert Girnse, the owner of the best rapids, was sent for, and a bargain was struck which made Syvert give a whoop, as soon as he was out-of-doors, and turn a somersault in the air from excess of happiness. He had got the American to board, too, and meant to turn a pretty penny before he was done with him. He said nothing to him about the dispute which had existed for years between himself and Captain Nordahl of Fossevang, who claimed right of ownership in the rapids. The pugnacious captain, he reckoned, knew well enough that every American was a peripatetic arsenal, and he would think twice before molesting him. People stood staring in dazed envy and amazement as Syvert carried off his prize in a rickety red-and-green painted cart which threatened every moment to throw its occupants forward on the loins of the pony. They crossed the river and reached Gimse without accident, however, and Ewald was installed in a large, low-ceiled room, containing a canopied bed with flowered chintz curtains, some clumsy furniture, and a couple of dozen fat and boozy flies, which bumped against the window-panes in their surprise at being disturbed. To air out the mouldy smell which pervaded the atmosphere, Ewald engaged in a struggle with the windows, which, after having vindicated their power of resistance, yielded to the inevitable and let in a fresh current of oxygen. The prospect up and down the valley was so beautiful that it made his heart swell. And opposite, in full view, lay the objective point of his campaign, the stately Fossevang.
How to get acquainted with the family over there, that was the next thing to consider. To get acquainted with your own father—it was really an odd situation! Ewald had not come to a decision the next morning when he started with his fishing gear for the river. He looked quite sportsman-like as he strode with long steps across the fields, carrying a new-fangled rod and a fish-basket, and wearing on his head a helmet-hat, the rim of which was fringed with red and blue and yellow flies, There was a certain fling in his bearing which was of the prairies, not of the drawing-room. His clothes fitted neither very well nor very badly, but looked in keeping with the out-of-door style of the man. A good, manly, open-air countenance, well bronzed by sun and rain, carried out the same impression. That was, at all events, Miss Olga Reimert's opinion as she kept the above-described figure in the focus of Captain Nordahl's telescope, which she had borrowed to inspect the stranger, The rumor had promptly reached Fossevang that an American named Graham had rented the rapids of Syvert Gimse, and they were having a council of war to determine upon hostile measures.
"He has blue eyes," said Olga, gazing through the telescope.
"Blue fiddlesticks," said the captain, gruffly. He was sitting at her side on the balcony, sullenly smoking his morning cigar.
"He is good-looking," reported Olga, "but his mustache is bleached, and too long."
"I'll have him in jail before night if he doesn't clear out," growled the captain.
"Will you allow me to arrest him, uncle?" asked the girl, still with her eye at the telescope. "It would be such a lark."
"I'll allow you to give him warning that he is trespassing. Then, if he doesn't mind, we'll talk about the arrest."
"Englishmen are awfully headstrong, uncle."
"And Yankees are still worse. They'll shoot you just as soon as wink."
"This one won't shoot, uncle; at least, he won't hurt me, unless he should take aim at my heart."
As the object of their colloquy was by this time hid by the trees at the river-brink, Olga screwed the telescope together and handed it back to her uncle. He flung the stump of his cigar over the balustrade, muttered an oath, and walked into the house. The girl sent after him a look of deep filial concern. He was in one of his sombre moods to-day; she knew by his worn and haggard face that he had had a bad night. That which afflicted him was but as a dim legend to her—the story of the wayward boy, his only son, whom he had loved so dearly, and who had cruelly disappointed him. She had once, in her girlish devotion, thought of starting out in the world disguised as a man and making it the object of her life to bring back this lost son and reconcile him to his father. But then it had occurred to her that the prodigal might be such that his presence would prove a greater affliction than his loss. So, being of an ardent temperament, with a hunger for self-sacrifice, she had resolved to stay with her uncle, and compensate him, as far as possible, for the loss of his son. It was by no means an easy vocation she had chosen; for the old man, since his retirement from the sea, had become a prey to melancholy which sometimes was not distinguishable from despair. It was said that it was his unequal temper and sudden outbursts of wrath which had induced his daughters to seize the earliest opportunity to get away from home; and when the last of them was married, the captain would have been alone with his ghosts if his niece had not taken pity on him. If it had been a matter of convenience with her, little credit would have been due to her; but her father had left a large estate, and she was rich enough to do what she liked. Preliminarily she had chosen the eccentric course to refuse some of the best offers in town and to devote herself to a stern and irascible old man who, as some thought, was more than half-demented. It was common report in the town that it was a debt of gratitude she was paying off: that her father upon his death-bed had told her how Captain Nordahl, during the great commercial crisis, had saved him from ruin, at the risk of losing all that he had accumulated during a long life of toil.
Ewald Nordahl was standing on a boulder in the middle of the rapids, making his fly dance on the smooth current, when a human voice seemed suddenly to break through the roar of the waters. He looked about him, and presently saw a tall young girl bending aside the alder boughs for an old man who was following close behind her. She wore a tight-fitting blue walking dress, and on her head a wide-brimmed straw hat. The face that showed in half-shadow under its drooping curves was fair and young, yet gently accented with hints of character. The upper half of it was aspiring, imaginative; the lower half keenly perceptive, worldly, commercial. The bold arched brow, rather full over the eyes, gave a glimpse of noble ambition; the dark-brown eyes spoke of passion and enthusiasm, but the fine, slightly curved, diplomatic nose contradicted the former, and the exquisite chin and mouth held the latter in restraint. On first meeting her, you would have said: "What a charmingly frank and natural girl!" But at the second meeting you would have added: "She is critical: with all her engaging frankness, she studies you." If you were anything of a connoisseur of women, and there is no branch of study in which connoisseurship brings acuter delights, the reflection would perhaps occur to you that her appearance suggested generations of wealth: not on account of any pride or display (for that would have been an indication of recent acquisition), but by a certain refinement of feature and suavity of demeanor which is only the result of inherited prosperity.
The old man who walked behind the girl would have been six feet tall if he had carried himself as erect as his companion. But he stooped heavily. His great grizzly head, with the fierce blue eyes, the glance of which was like a sting, and the bushy brows, had a look of defiant suffering—of fallen greatness. He walked without a stick, though he well might have needed one; but he regarded such an artificial support as unbecoming to a sailor. He wore a blue pea-jacket which measured an enormous width across the shoulders, wide blue trousers, and on his head a slouched felt hat.
The girl, having bent the branches aside, turned half toward him and offered him her hand; but he waved it impatiently away. The sun which shone upon the glossy leaves threw trembling glints of light upon their faces. Upon the humid ground the ferns grew out of last year's dead leaves and wound their tufts of rusty green filigree about the old man's knees. Bound about, the sound of falling, swirling, brawling water, with a vague rhythm in it, filled the air. It seemed even to blow away in visible gusts through the tree-tops. Ewald Nordahl's heart shot up into his throat. He had a sensation as if both his legs were asleep. He shifted his weight from one to the other, and slowly reeled in his line. His fingers seemed numb, and a sudden sense of the unreality of all things took possession of him. It was his father who stood there before him! That gray, venerable head awakened again the boyish admiration which he had so long smothered. It was well the rapids were between them, or he would have betrayed himself.
"My father, my father!" he murmured, while unseen tears suffused his eyes. It seemed good to pronounce the name. An overwhelming tenderness for the old man filled his soul. The weight of years and sorrow had bent, but not broken, him. Like Jacob, of old, he had wrestled with the Lord; and though ravaged by the conflict, he stood yet upon his legs. The son thought, with humility, of his own vain and flimsy woes, which were but boyish resentment and wounded pride; and his cherished plans of revenge vanished like smoke. They seemed too contemptible to merit a formal missal.
He kept his eye steadily fixed upon the old man, and saw him step close down to the river-brink, straighten himself with difficulty, and wave his hand imperiously over the water. Then there came a sound like the roar of a hoarse lion, distinctly audible above the boom of the rapids.
"I forbid you, in the name of the law, to fish in this river."
He spoke English, and Ewald, quickly collecting himself, shouted back in the same language:
"I have rented the rapids of Syvert Gimse."
"He has no right to rent them. They are mine."
"That is a question between you and him. I shall fish here until the law has decided between you."
The captain gave a growl of impotent wrath, and glowered with the eyes of a beast of prey across the water.
"You will hear from me," he roared; "I'll have you in jail before night.
Ewald, for an answer, calmly dropped his fly upon the river; and it had no sooner touched the water than it was gobbled up, and the line flew with a hum off the reel. In the same instant a mighty splash sent the spray hissing toward the underbrush, and the speckled, silvery sides of a splendid salmon flashed through the current, bounded into the air, and struck the water again with tremendous vigor.
Ewald, though he had no desire to irritate his father, "played" it, slowly reeled it in, was obliged again to give it line, tried to beguile it in upon the shallows, where he could reach it with his landing net, but was every time checkmated by some unforeseen stratagem on the part of the fish. When finally, after half an hour's fight, he got it safely ashore, he glanced anxiously toward the alder-bushes. His father and Miss Reimert were gone.
So far, the Fates were propitious, This fight about the river furnished the coveted opportunity for personal contact. It saved no end of ingenious manœuvring. As he learned from Syvert Gimse, the ownership of the rapids had been a source of difficulty between the proprietors of Fossevang and those of Gimse for generations. He naturally maintained that his own right was as clear as the day. If there was any doubt about it, it could only be decided by litigation. No sheriff or judge, he maintained, would dare to grant an order of arrest for trespassing before the courts had rendered a decision. The captain would no doubt apply for one; but he might with equal likelihood of success apply for an order to have him beheaded. In these conjectures, as it turned out, Syvert was right. The captain threatened the magistrates in vain: they could not be induced to molest the American.
III.
Ewald was walking up the hills to Fossevang. He had resolved to seek a personal interview in regard to the fishery question. He had no fear of being recognized, and yet his heart beat tumultuously at the thought of standing face to face with his father. He thought for a moment of giving up the whole plot; of saying, as Joseph did, with the proper modification: "I am your son, Ewald." But then the boy in him, with the adventurous spirit, made him cling to the dramatic complication, even though it no longer subserved any special purpose.
It was about six or seven o'clock in the evening. The sun, which at this season of the year keeps a wellnigh perpetual vigil, hung, large and red, a few degrees above the horizon. There was a tremendous blaze of color behind the western mountain-peaks, while those of the east stood cool and bluish-black, cutting their sharp silhouettes against the faintly flushed sky. Something of the strange, glad impressions which in his boyhood had been associated with "the long light nights"—vague glimpses of an eternal, unchangeable fairy-world—returned to Ewald as he strolled along the path between the tall rye and the luxuriant, top-heavy barley. Poppies—mere bright splashes of color—and blue cornflowers gleamed among the yellowing stalks of the grain, and the corn-crake's rasping scream broke like a policeman's rattle through the summer stillness. As he approached the Fossevang mansion Ewald stopped and looked about him. A curious hallucination took possession of him. Olga Reimert, clad in some light summery stuff, and with a parasol over her head, seemed to be floating toward him over the tops of the rye. He rubbed his eyes and looked again. There could be no doubt about it. It was the girl he had seen with his father in the morning! Only she was not moving, but resting quietly on the rye-field; or rather, on the border-line between the rye and the barley. She was looking with a trance-like stare out over the nodding heads of the grain. The late sunshine filtered through her pink parasol and gave a rosy flush to her face. Ewald Nordahl, in all his prairie and gold-mine experience, had never seen anything so beautiful. He stood still and drank in the sight in long, thirsty draughts. He discovered by accident that there ran a low fence between the fields, and that she was sitting on an invisible stile. That removed something of the miraculous in the sight, but did not interfere with the enjoyment. There she sat, raised up above the billowing, silvery-green surface, like a mermaid rocking upon the sea. He found himself presently within the field of her vision, and felt her eyes resting upon him. With the promptness of a frontiersman he shook off his dreamy mood, and lifting his hat, walked up to the stile.
"I came to see Captain Nordahl," he said; "perhaps you could kindly tell me where to find him."
She returned his greeting distantly, and with eyes that expressed neither pleasure nor surprise.
"Captain Nordahl is not at home," she said; "you will find him somewhere in the orchard or in the fields."
"Thanks!"
He lifted his hat once more, and finding no pretext for lingering, betook himself away. He glanced back and saw her beautiful profile against the sunset with a fiery halo around it.
After a quarter of an hour's walk, during which the girl had half displaced the captain in his thoughts, he discovered in a sandpit, at the outskirts of the estate, a bent and lonely figure, in which he recognized his father. The old man sat boring his heels into the sand, as if to give vent to a desperate energy. Now he half rose up, then sank down again, muttering to himself, and pressing one clinched hand into the hollow of the other. Once or twice he groaned aloud, clasped his head between his palms, and pressed it as if he would squeeze it to pieces. Then he sat for a long while motionless, resting his elbows on his knees, and staring down into the brown sand. At last he arose with a sigh and stalked up the hill-side. Ewald, half stunned and half awe-struck by what he had seen, hastened away in the opposite direction.
The next evening ho repeated his visit, and found tho captain and his niece seated on the balcony, overlooking the wide valley. He introduced himself, apologized for the intrusion, and was received with cool politeness. The captain looked worn and exhausted, but yet defiant; and the young lady made no effort to mitigate, by an extra cordiality on her part, his unconciliatory demeanor.
"I come," said Ewald, after having seated himself in the proffered chair, to settle the question of dispute between us."
"It can't be settled," growled the captain.
"What's then to be done about it?"
"Law."
"But before your suit can be reached I shall have caught all the fish I want and be back on the other side of the Atlantic."
The old man sent his interlocutor one of his stinging glances, rose, and walked into the house. In a moment he came back and said, with enforced calm:
"If I had been twenty years younger, Mr. Yankee, I should have found the means to stop you without the help of any law."
"Pardon me, I have no right to the title of Yankee," replied Ewald, ignoring the taunt; "in the first place, I am a Westerner, and in the second place, I am of Norse descent. I can speak Norwegian with you quite as well as English."
"I haven't asked you to talk with me at all," retorted the captain, in a somewhat milder tone; "but since you have come you may as well unload our cargo and be done with it."
"I wish to be fair to both parties," began Ewald; "I will rent, at your own price, the lower rapids, which, I understand, belong to you without dispute; and you may, if you like, charge me enough to compensate you for your claim in the upper rapids, in which I am now fishing."
The old man sat pondering awhile with his head resting in his hands; then ho glanced up suddenly and looked the American square in the face. The magnanimity of his offer made it seem almost incredible; yet he could not afford to make peace on too easy terms. His self-respect demanded a little mock quarrelling. "So you think it is the pennies I am after," he said, gruffly; "I had just as lief make you a present of the money; but I won't sell my right."
He took again a turn on the floor, and his loudly creaking boots made even his silence defiant. Ewald followed him admiringly with his eyes, and his heart was filled with love and pity. How should he now manage to throw off his disguise? Every hour that passed spun a net of duplicity about him which became harder and harder to break through. He began to talk about commonplace things with Olga, upon whom he felt that he had made a favorable impression. She asked him about America, which she had boon accustomed to view through Bret Harte's haze of oaths, whiskey fumes, and pistol smoke. She was frankly astonished at everything he told her, and particularly at his patriotism. She had never imagined that anybody could have any sentiment for a mere geographical definition, she said.
"What is America," she ejaculated, "but the rag-bag of the Old World, into which Europe stuffs all the pieces that are worn out or won't fit in her own social fabric; or, I should rather say, a lumber-room, where all sorts of human trumpery which the Old World would not know what to do with is loosely scattered over an enormous tract of land, where each can be as insane as he chooses without troubling the others."
He took up the gauntlet, of course, for the country of his adoption, and an animated dispute followed. He touched incidentally upon his varied experience as a cow-boy, a cattle-owner, a miner, and a land speculator, and filled her fancy with pictures which fascinated by their very strangeness. Here was a man who spoke of his experience in the lowliest positions without a shadow either of shame or of ostentation; who by the labor of his hands and his brain had accumulated a fortune and gained an insight into life in its most varied phases. There was a healthy, out-of-door atmosphere about his whole personality—his energetic, sunburnt face, his straightforward manners, and his unstudied talk. She had never met such a man before, and being a girl, could not well avoid making this one a hero. But what was of much more consequence to him, he perceived in his father's demeanor a slight relenting—a growling consent, at least, to cease hostilities. Olga, too, made the same discovery, and was emboldened, when the American rose to take his leave, to invite him to stay to tea. There was nothing unusual in this in a country where a man is scarcely ever permitted to leave a house, even if he has come only on business, without having partaken of something to eat or drink. By a little manœuvring the captain was induced to relate, at table, one of his own American adventures, the moral of which was that Americans, as a rule, were a rascally lot. Here he was promptly taken up by his guest, who insisted that there was not a large seaport in the world where similar experiences were not to be had by anybody who went in search of them. The captain stood by his guns bravely, and the American did the same; and when the bombardment came to an end, over the coffee and pipes, each imagined that there was nothing left of the other except his admirable pugnacity. Olga had the wisdom to remain neutral, though her sympathies were plainly with the guest. What interested her, however, far more than the question at issue, was her uncle's animation. She concluded that what he needed was contact with men rather than the care of women; and she welcomed the American as an ally in restoring him to cheerfulness and equanimity.
And yet, as the evening progressed she noticed something feverish and untamable in his outbursts of mirth which caused her anxiety. He shook his great hirsute head and laughed until the house shook; but there was no mirthful ring in his laughter. Sometimes he fixed a helpless, devouring stare upon the American's face, then sought shelter behind a great cloud of smoke which he blew out like a spouting whale. Ewald began to feel uneasy. There was a struggling recognition in that glance, or rather a dawning doubt—a hungry desire, a hope against hope.
"There is something in your face which remotely recalls my son Ewald," that glance seemed to say; "but of course it is an accident—my uneasy conscience conjures up his image to me in every strange face I see."
The scene of the night before returned to Ewald with terrible vividness. Could it be possible that his father, after the lapse of fifteen years, mourned him with so acute and overwhelming a sorrow? Was it not rather the wrong he had done him that tormented him? Was it not the still, small voice of conscience whispering through the vigils of the night? Whatever it was, he meant to come to his rescue—and to do it soon.
PART II.
IV.
Ewald returned from his visit to Fossevang in a very confused state of mind. He appeared to himself like a bad actor who has assumed a rôle that is too big for him. He felt that he ought to skip all the intervening acts and make a dash for the dénoûement, and he would promptly have done so if a new character had not unexpectedly entered and complicated his innocent plot until it was beyond his power to unravel it. Odd as it may seem, it had become an object of prime importance to him to appear admirable in the eyes of Olga Reimert, and as a preliminary step to this end, he telegraphed to an American friend in London, begging him to buy, for his account, two fine saddle horses, two carriage horses, and a light victoria. Scarcely a week had passed before a solemn English groom arrived with the horses in his charge. The irruption of these marvellous animals upon a peaceful and unsuspecting community caused a sensation which carried their owner to the pinnacle of local fame; and when he invited Captain Nordahl's niece to mount his superb roan and make a dash at his side up the valley, she felt herself aglow with an exultant joy in living. She, who had rather prided herself on her contempt for vain show, basked in the reflected rays of his magnificence. Frequently he took the captain for a jaunt in his carriage, and, it is vain to deny, began to relish the mystification as custom blunted the edge of his scruples. He seemed to himself the hero of an absorbing romance, and a kind of boyish delight in the merely unusual made him postpone from day to day the concluding chapter. A consideration which also had some weight with him was Olga's feelings toward the departed prodigal: he had every reason to believe that they were hostile, and that he might forfeit her regard by identifying himself too soon with a person of such ill repute.
After a fortnight's acquaintance, during which they had associated freely with the American, Olga and Captain Nordahl accepted an invitation from him to go salmon-fishing. The young lady, who was no novice in the art, swung a line as well as any man, and did not scream when she caught anything. She had extraordinary luck, landing an eight and a ten pounder before the others had had a bite. But then, Ewald neglected his fly, letting it dip when it ought to dance, and the captain could not, by reason of his defective eyesight, cut much of a figure as a sportsman. His fly was time and again sucked down into eddies and whirlpools, while he stood patiently watching some real insect, ascribing to his own skill its bobbing motion upon the current. He lost his temper with the dragon-flies, which hovered persistently about his head, and struck after them with his rod, entangling his line in the alder branches. Then he swore that fishing was an occupation fit only for imbeciles, broke a split bamboo rod which had been warranted not to break, and flinging the pieces into the river, wrathfully strode away into the underbrush. Ewald, noting the path he took, hastily reeled up his line, and explaining his intention to Olga, followed him. He found him, after a brief search, seated upon a log, in an attitude of deep dejection.
"You are not well, I fear, Captain Nordahl," he said, stopping in front of the old mariner.
The captain rubbed his forehead hard, as if endeavoring to drive away some troublesome thought.
"No, young man, I am not well," he said, with fierce earnestness, "and I never shall be until the bell rings for the last watch and I am permanently relieved from duty."
"I wouldn't be talking of the last watch yet, captain. You are a strong man, in spite of your years: you will be making many knots before you turn into your final port."
"I am a-drifting like a rudderless craft, that is all. That craft sprung a leak some fifteen years ago, and no patching or coppering will ever get her afloat again."
Ewald grasped hold of the tree at which he was standing. A sudden mist blinded his eyes. His revenge, if revenge he had sought, was now fulfilled. If only out of pity, now was his time to speak. But Ewald could not speak. There was a lump in his throat, and his tongue seemed thick and unwieldy. The old man was watching his face, but saw it only indistinctly. The dragon-flies, with their luminous green eyes, began again their circling dance about his head; but he did not heed them.
"I have thought of asking you, Mr. Graham," he began, huskily, "if you ever happened to meet in America a lad named Ewald Nordahl. He was my boy—he was the only one—I had."
At the last words his emotion overcame him; he shook his head with leonine impatience, and without awaiting any reply, arose and strode away through the forest. Ewald scarcely knew whether he ought again to follow him. While he was debating the question, he heard Olga's voice calling him from the river. She had caught her third salmon.
"I can't land this monster," she cried, as she saw Ewald's figure among the the trees; "he is determined to pull me overboard."
"Hold on a minute," he called back; "I'll help you."
"I can't! My arms are numb!"
He saw the strained line and the rod, which was bent double, sway hither and thither as the salmon darted into the deep pools, leaped in the eddies, and zigzagged among the rocks in its efforts to escape.
"Give her line," he shouted, jumping out into the current, which broke in gurgling swirls about his knees.
"I have given her all there is!"
She was holding on by main strength, as a sailor holds a rope; but just as he was within twenty feet of her the rod slid from her benumbed grasp, and standing for a moment on end, bounded gayly down the river. It would perhaps have been prudent to count it as a loss, but prudence is not apt to be the uppermost emotion in the heart of a man in the presence of a woman whom he admires. With the same instinct that makes the male bird sing, and the male savage slay, for the gratification of his beloved, he plunged into the seething rapids; managed, with some difficulty, to keep right side up; caught the rod as it was making a gyration in an eddy; turned an involuntary somersault, in which the salmon at the end of the line, by its unforeseen pulls, assisted him, but gained the shore with salmon and rod in better form than might have been expected. He made light of his bumps, of which he had several quite painful ones, and presented, with true Californian sang froid, his prize to its rightful possessor.
"I didn't think Americans ever did such foolish things," she said, with admiring reproach.
"Americans do whatever the occasion calls for," he answered.
"But the occasion did not call for anything so foolhardy."
"That depends upon how you view it. I mean, of course, if you view it rationally. A sportsman's conscience, you know, is something peculiar. The loss of that salmon would have haunted my dying hour."
There was a dash of Bret Harte in the situation which, in spite of her better judgment, pleased and agitated her. In his blue flannel shirt, out of which rose the strong, sunburnt throat, and with his leathern girdle about his waist, and the broad-brimmed slouched hat, he might well have passed for one of those picturesque pioneers whom the California author has introduced to the favor of womankind. It was this very phase of him which attracted the adventurous side of her nature while it frightened the rational and matter-of-fact side. How was she to judge this enigmatical stranger who had come like a whirlwind into her quiet life—who did the most extraordinary things with a coolness as if he were handing her a cup of coffee?
Olga was so agitated that for the moment she had quite forgotten her uncle. She heard the continuous tramp of Mr. Graham's horses coming nearer and nearer (there were no other horses in the parish that tramped like that), and she presently saw the black hat of the severe English groom gleam among the alder leaves.
"What has become of our captain?" asked Ewald, shaking the beads of water from his beard.
"You saw him last," she replied, taking his hand and jumping to the next boulder. As they reached the highway, they found the captain already seated in the carriage, gazing with a vacuous stare into space. The afternoon sun struck athwart the valley, broke translucent tracks through the birch-leaves, and flashed here and there upon the tossing current. It struck the three silvery salmon, too, which gleamed upon their couch of green leaves and by their superb size filled Olga's heart with pride. They reached Fossevang in time to have one prepared for dinner.
V.
Two months after Ewald's arrival, when Syvert Gimse had made what he regarded as a snug fortune out of him; when half the population from "seven parishes round" had been to inspect his horses; when the foliage of the birches had grown dark and dusty—when, in fine, August was about to be gathered to its fathers, and September was preparing to mount his autumnal throne—two strangers arrived in the valley whose beards announced them to be Americans. No other people, however barbarous, ever wore a chin-beard with a shaven upper lip. The two men had coarse, commonplace features, and called themselves Beagle and Turner; but they might just as well have called themselves Higgins and Johnson, for there was something in their bearing which seemed to indicate that almost any other name would have fitted them quite as well. It was not only their names which seemed accidental, but their clothes, their occupations, their conversation, had an indefinable air of fortuity—of being not wholly their own. They took lodgings at Yik, the farm north of Gimse, but did, to all appearances, nothing except smoking and telegraphing. They called twice upon Ewald; and although avoiding all appearance of importunity, managed to make him feel extremely uncomfortable. His assumed name put him at a disadvantage, and made him feel ill at ease. The talk of the two men, their appearance, their chin-beards—in fact, everything connected with them—irritated him. He longed to pick a quarrel with them; he would have given years of his life for the privilege of flinging them downstairs. They were a blot upon Nature's perfect visage; they spoiled the valley by their presence. He wondered how God could ever have created anything so unqualifiedly obnoxious.
The little drama which he had plotted, and over each scene of which he had lingered with pleasure, seemed suddenly trite and absurd. He was now only in haste to make an end of it. He mounted his roan saddle horse, and like the rash knight in the ballad, hastening to the rendezvous, outrode not only his squire, but Fear and Prudence and Virtue, and all the other commendable abstractions that attempted to follow him. By inquiring of the servants, he found Miss Olga standing on a step-ladder in the orchard, with her head up among the branches of a plum-tree, Her hat was lying on the ground; her cheeks were healthily flushed, and her hair was a trifle in disorder. She had a large canvas pocket attached to the front of her dress, and an apron, with a delightfully domestic look, covered the bust, and was attached somewhere about the shoulders. Hearing Ewald's voice, she turned, with charming confusion, drew her dress about her ankles, and seated herself on the top of the ladder, A fleck of sunlight, glinting through the foliage, trembled in her disordered hair, and brought out a tawny tint which in ordinary light was hidden. Her face wore an air of half-amused defiance, as if she had been caught in a situation which was really beneath her dignity.
"Want a plum?" she cried, with half-boyish recklessness. "Here goes! Catch it!"
He caught the plum easily enough, but was not in a mood, just then, to enter into juvenile sport
"Can I see you one moment, Miss Reimert?" he asked, lifting his hat with a seriousness that seemed a rebuke to her levity.
"Certainly," she answered; then, as if to furnish a transition from her own gayety to his solemn mood, she added: "You do wrong, however, to spurn my plums. My father imported this tree from Holland, and always set great store by it. The fruit has a flavor that can't be matched outside of Paradise."
"I have no doubt of it," he replied; "but I prefer the pleasure of your society to that of eating plums."
"Then you shall be doubly blessed," she ejaculated, laughing. "You shall have both."
"Thanks. I shall be content with one at a time."
She descended the stairs, handed her apron and the pocketful of fruit to a servant, smoothed her hair, and placed her hat at the proper angle upon her head. They sauntered slowly away over the white gravel-walks, in the dense shade of chestnut, maple, and linden trees.
"I thought I should like to have a little talk with you before leaving," he began, glancing admiringly at her fine, animated face.
"Before leaving! But you are not going away!" she cried, with quick alarm. "That is to say," she added, blushing at her impetuosity, "not so very soon?"
"Yes, quite soon! You did not expect me to spend my life salmon-fishing, did you?"
"No; but I am heartily sorry that you are going—on my uncle's account."
"Why so?"
"He has grown so fond of you. He sings your praises early and late. Since you came here he has scarcely had any of his bad turns."
It seemed difficult, after this digression, to find a transition to the subject of his errand; and he allowed some minutes to elapse before speaking. But the crunching of the gravel under their feet, and the humming and buzzing and whirring of the insects in the grass, the trees, and the air, filled the silence, and made it unnoticeable. And this summer mood of joy and love and fulness of life stole gently into Ewald's soul, and made his whole being throb with an in definable tenderness and yearning. The sense of his own unworthiness, which had often painfully oppressed him in the presence of Olga. gave way to a serene enjoyment of her beauty, her voice, and the sweet privilege of companionship. He was not aware that it was his deferential attitude toward her, inspired by his complete unconsciousness of his own merits, which first aroused the impulse in her to exaggerate rather than to underestimate his claims to heroism.
"Miss Olga," he began, with an awkwardness which revealed depths of beautiful inexperience, "I am not much of a fellow for sentiment—that is, I mean, for putting things in fine words. But there are two things I have got to tell you before I go, even if I perish in the attempt."
He paused and gazed at her with an uncertain smile.
"They must be dreadfully hard things—those things you want to tell me," she exclaimed, with a nervous gaiety which imperfectly cloaked her excitement.
"They seem very hard to say to you."
"Then you ought to say them to somebody else."
"But don't you see, I shouldn't want to say them to anybody else."
They had reached an arbor at the end of the gravel-walk, and sat down on an old stone bench, dappled with patches of brown and yellow lichen. Above them grew two huge walnut-trees, whose big leaves cut off the sun from the thin, pale-green grass, which grew in scant scattered tufts out of the black mould. There was a humid, earthy smell in the arbor, and little chattering noises were heard overhead, where a couple of squirrels were chasing each other, and two solitary-looking brown birds, dismally hopping from bough to bough.
"Miss Olga," said Ewald, leaning forward and scratching the gravel with the handle of his riding-whip, "what would you say to me it you found that I had been deceiving you?"
"That depends upon what you mean by deceiving."
He caught a little green worm which was about to descend upon her shoulder by its shining thread and flung it into the road.
"It means this," he said, looking her full in the face—"that I am Ewald Nordahl, and that I love you."
Her surprise stunned her. She had expected the last declaration, but the first was so overwhelming that it set all her senses a-whirl. The world seemed a mist that swam in green, billowing lines before her eyes. She stooped down, covered her face with her hands, and strove hard to think. But the power of thought seemed dead within her. He was Ewald Nordahl—the prodigal son, to find whom she had once intended to devote her life! A revelation so startling, so fraught with consequences, put a new face upon everything. There seemed nothing to do for the moment but to give her agitation full sway. Then, when her feelings had grown clearer, she might trust herself to speak.
She raised her head, after a while, and saw two strange men standing at the entrance to the arbor. She saw her companion jump up and hasten toward them. His features expressed deep disgust.
"Mr. Graham," said one of the men, "I hold here in my hands the papers for your extradition."
"Extradition!" exclaimed Ewald, excitedly. "Is it a practical joke you are playing, or are you mad?"
"Your name is William A. Graham, is it not, formerly cashier of the Grand Consolidated Workingman's Bank of Chicago?"
The young man stared at the detectives (for such he now recognized them to be) with stupefied amazement. He felt as if he were struggling with some frightful nightmare, and that after a while he would wake up and find it all a dream.
"Are you, or are you not, William A. Graham of Chicago?" repeated Mr. Beagle, imperturbably.
"Oh, good gracious!" cried Ewald, seeing in a flash the labyrinth in which he had involved himself.
"I thought so," said Beagle.
"We've got to hurry," observed Turner; "we sail from Bergen to-morrow night."
That was a pleasant prospect indeed—to return home in charge of two detectives!
"I suppose it is of no use, gentlemen, for me to tell you that I am not William Graham," he remarked, with a severity matching that of the detectives.
"Tell that to the marines," said Beagle.
"Tell me one thing, however. What has Mr. Graham done, and why is he to be extradited?"
Instead of answer the detective pulled a paper from his pocket and murmured half aloud:
"Five feet and ten inches high—that fits to a T; thirty-three years old—that is about right too; blonde curly hair, straight nose, light mustache—reckon you raised the beard on the voyage; of slender growth—guess you've filled out some since you took to horseback riding."
He fumbled again in his pocket, and unfolded a sheet of paper in which Ewald recognized the leaf of the hotel register in the town upon which he had inscribed the unfortunate name.
"Is that your signature?" asked Beagle.
"It is my handwriting."
"Then I reckon we hain't got no call to tarry. Two hundred and fifty thousand dollars is a big defalcation; and with forgeries and crooked accounts, it ought to send you to jail for the rest of your natural life, unless the guv'nor pardons you out to vote for him at election time."
Ewald made no reply to this; and for a moment the three men stood staring at one another in silence. Olga had listened with a wild, pained intentness to every word they had spoken; and from somewhere in her soul a sudden conviction had sprung up that the man she loved was Ewald, her uncle's son. There was a frankness and open honesty in his face which could never deceive. The heroic element in her nature rose turbulently and swept away all petty calculation. All aglow with noble resolution, she stepped forward, put both her hands upon the young man's shoulders, and into his eyes, said:
"Are you, indeed, Ewald Nordahl?"
"I am."
"Then wait one moment, and I'll clear this misunderstanding."
She was about to hasten away, hut he seized her by the arm and detained her. "Promise me not to speak to my father," he said, earnestly. "I left him with a blot upon my name, and I do not wish to return to him under similar circumstances. Far rather I would never have him know me. I am going with these gentlemen to America; and there the mistake will soon be cleared up. Within two or three months I shall be back again. I will not even ask you for an answer, Miss Olga, to the question I have put to you, because it would be unfair to ask you to trust me, when appearances are so strongly against me."
"But I do trust you," she cried, clasping her hands passionately, as if arresting an impulse to throw herself into his arms.
"Thank you," he said, with a look of deep gratitude; "I have now no fear of going—or of returning."
The detectives, being connoisseurs of human nature, needed no knowledge of the language to interpret to them this scene. They looked at Ewald with a sly appreciation and half-envious admiration of his wickedness.
Yet, in his capacity as a representative of the law, Mr. Beagle felt called upon to interfere.
"Madam," he said to Olga, stepping forward and putting his hand on her arm, "he has a wife and four children in Chicago."
"Kone-fire Barn," said Turner, who in the meanwhile had been examining his pocket dictionary.
"I reckon he is playin' it on you, bein' a long-lost brother, or sweetheart—somethin' o' that sort," Beagle continued; "that is a common trick of criminals, ma'am, to put justice off the track."
Upborne by her defiant conviction, Olga turned her back on the detective, deigning him no reply.
"If you must go, Mr. Nordahl," she said to Ewald. "will you not first say good-by to uncle?
"I am unfortunately in the hands of my friends, as the politicians say," ejaculated the young man, pointing with a lugubrious smile to the officers of the law.
"But they will surely not prevent you from saying good-by?"
After a brief consultation the detectives gave their consent to the interview with the captain, on condition that they might be present. They found the captain pacing like a caged lion up and down in his library—a large room which was filled with globes, maps, compasses, and models of ships.
"Captain," said Ewald, as he entered, "permit me to introduce to you Mr. Beagle and Mr. Turner—both Americans."
The old man shook hands half wonderingly with the detectives and begged them to be seated. He scented at once something unusual, and sent Ewald a questioning glance from under his shaggy brow.
"Well, friend Graham," he began, "foul weather ahead, eh?"
Ewald explained that he was a victim of mistaken identity: that a man of the same name had embezzled a large sum of money—that he was obliged to return with the detectives in order to establish his innocence. "Would Captain Nordahl, for any compensation that he chose to name, take charge of his horses during his absence, as he did not feel that Syvert Gimse was competent to care for them?
The captain listened with a problematic air to his story, and when Ewald had finished, seated himself at his desk and drew a heavy sigh. He opened a couple of drawers, took out some papers, and put them in the breast-pocket of his coat. Then he rose, walked across the floor to where Ewald was sitting, seized his hand, and shook it warmly.
"Mr. Graham." he said. "I have grown fond of you. You have come closer to me than any man ever did—since one—whom I lost. Now him—the one I lost—I drove away from me—I did him a great wrong—it was a money affair, like this and I may have driven him to destruction—by believing ill of him. Keelhaul a man, or give him the cat-o'-nine-tails, when he don't deserve it, and next time he will make haste to deserve it. That's as sure as a change in the weather. Now, if you have done wrong, Mr. Graham—it is natural you should want to keep it from a friend—but tell me, can I help you? You are a young man, and have a long voyage before you;—I am old, and I've got more than I need. I have here some ten thousand dollars—would that do you any good?"
Ewald had risen. He struggled with his tears, but could not keep them back. He blessed even the wrong and the suffering it had brought, since it had afforded him so deep a gaze into his father's noble heart. The old man, who misunderstood his emotion, taking it for a confession of guilt, put his hand on his shoulder, and went on:
"It is a favor I ask, not one I confer. If I have plunged one into misery, since I cannot save him, let me save you. Let me rescue you from the misery of losing your self-respect. Let me make amends to you for what I sinned against him."
It was more than the son could bear. "Father!" he cried—"father!"
The old man fell back a step, with raised hands, and eyes full of joyous doubt and amazement.
"Ewald!" he shouted, with a tremor in his deep voice—"my son!"
He opened his arms and clasped his son to his breast.
A moment later, when Olga entered the room, they were standing, holding each other's hands and gazing with affectionate scrutiny into each other's faces.
"Is there a place for me, too, in this group?" she asked, smiling; whereupon each reached out a hand to her and drew her in between them.
"Father, she is to be my wife," said Ewald, radiant with tears and happiness.
"God bless you," said the captain, with a deep and solemn joy.
The old Dutch clock in the corner ticked off the time with demure regularity, but nobody except the detectives paid any heed to it. Then old Father Time came out himself and made six resonant sweeps with his scythe, making each time a sensation.
The captain turned around to the detectives and said:
"Gentlemen, we'll all go to America with you to clear up this difficulty. But I beg of you to remain my guests until to-morrow."
On the morrow a telegram was received from Cadiz, Spain, conveying the intelligence that Mr. William A. Graham, of Chicago, had been apprehended in that city and would within two days be on his way back to his defrauded creditors. And this was the reason why Messrs. Beagle and Turner crossed the Atlantic empty-handed, and in bad spirits.
This work was published before January 1, 1929, and is in the public domain worldwide because the author died at least 100 years ago.
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