22 The world enlarges

The winter dragged along, with little or nothing to break the monotony. An occasional visit from Stina was the highlight of endless days that seemed to me just an eternal round of stupefying washings. To begin with, you washed yourself, or were washed. Then your little sister was washed. Then the breakfast dishes. Then the baby, the baby’s bottles, and the baby’s clothes, including a million diapers to be hung in the sun, or the air, at least. The lamp chimneys had to be washed and polished. Then the kitchen floor. By which time the dishpan was full again, thanks to the noonday porridge, flatbread, or pancakes. Well, now one might breathe a little in dryness and comfort, you would think. Oh no! This was a fine time to wash out the new stockings that mamma had knitted, or to turn out the cupboard, or launder papa’s shirts. After which, of course, one had coffee to sustain the spirit, and provide a bit more work for idle hands. Which left an interlude for taking in the diapers, to be folded corner-wise, and for scorching flour for the baby’s buttocks. Well! well! now it was high time to wash the potatoes for supper. Just barely time, in fact, before the baby had to be washed again for the night, together with his bottles.

The only exceptions to these cleansing festivals were my half-hearted visits to Aunt Haldora. I had really no wish to go, because of shyness and a deep sense of my inferiority. But my parents seemed to consider it a sort of duty, and, doubtless to make it a sanctified gesture, the visits were generally made on Sunday. This sharpened the ordeal, for aunt always insisted I should join the family at dinner, which I consumed in thorough discomfort, convinced as I was that every one present must know me for a nitwit with a bobinjay heart.

At this time my aunt had not as yet converted her house into the cottage hospital, although the plan was formulating in her energetic mind. But, being eminently practical, she had let the two best rooms on the upper floor to the Baptist minister, who was considered one of the handsomest and most eligible bachelors in the town. Naturally, I stood in fearful awe of this paragon, and could scarcely attend to my dinner for watching his every gesture.

He certainly was handsome, and quite gay, but apt to be brusque in speech, and even caustic, for he was something of an intellectual, and doubtless chafed a good bit under the narrow restrictions peculiar to the prevailing order of piety. He had dark eyes of exceptional brilliance, that seemed to snap and crackle at odd moments. Consequently, if he so much as turned in my direction, if only to ask for the vinegar cruet, I shivered in my boots, and sprouted gooseflesh all over my shrinking carcass. That he was an exceptional person I concluded more especially from a strange little habit he followed. At the close of each meal he ate a glass of bread and milk—not out of need or preference for such food, but because he had established the habit as a kind of ritual, by which he honoured the memory of his parents, who had been devout Quakers, and whose fare had always been poor and meagre. This peculiar gesture amused many people, but to me, always eager to seize upon the unusual, the strange rite seemed exceedingly poetic and impressive.

In time, I am sorry to say, the awesomeness of the young minister somewhat faded. I had joined the Sunday school of his church, and there, much to my amazement, heard him discussed with reckless familiarity. It was said that his looks, not his sermons, of which many ancient worthies disapproved, filled the pews; that maidens young and not so young, who tripped up the aisles arranged in their Sabbath best, thirsted less for salvation than for the sight of his flashing eyes. The most persistent worshippers were two spinsters, who had, of course, to be tolerated, for their papa was a substantial citizen, and the younger daughter played the church organ. This gave her a tremendous advantage over lesser damsels, who could only teach in Sunday school, or sew aprons for the occasional bazaars.

That the boiling devotion of these two devout virgins was something of an odious pest I came fully to realize, for not infrequently, when the persistent ladies swarmed up the front steps of the house, the poor young minister would flee down the back stairs, to escape by way of the kitchen.

Once, grinning like a gamin, he said to the cook: ‘I’m out, Lena—that is, I shall be out by the time you deliver the message, so neither of us need suffer a twinge of conscience!’

‘He’s the nicest young man. Too nice for the cloth!’ Lena confided to me, happening to be there on some errand. ‘Puts him at the mercy of every old scarecrow as pretends she has a sin to confess, or a soul to save,’ said she, hotly, pulling off her checkered apron to answer the snarling doorbell. ‘Blooming shame, the way those old maids chase after him.’

On this occasion it was the organist, who had come to discuss the Sabbath hymns with her pastor, only to find her way barred by a resolute and far-seeing cook.

‘No use asking you in, Miss,’ Lena’s voice soared triumphantly, ‘his reverence has gone for the day. Called away sudden, he was—fearful sudden. Like as not, one of them deathbed miseries. Leastwise, we ain’t expecting him back for supper. I’ll tell him you called, Miss, and thank you kindly.’

Returning to the kitchen, Lena beamed delightedly. ‘That’s once she didn’t get her hooks into him, the minx!’ said she. ‘Now, mind, don’t be misunderstanding me. I ain’t saying that I’d set myself against nature. But it ain’t nature for an old girl who’s clean forgot the year of her dipping to fasten herself on a young man, even if he is a minister. The poor thing ain’t all gospel! He’s soft-hearted, he is. Why, when your uncle drowned that litter of kittens last week, the Reverend lost his taste for dinner, he was that upset about old Puss. ‘Tain’t Christian, says he, to be taking the poor thing’s babies from her. That’s what I call a soft heart. And more like it will be his undoing, the world being what it is, all pitfall and trouble here below!’

Naturally, this bit of touching information increased my admiration no end, and also my concern for the handsome pastor. In fact I began to watch the organist with a coldly critical eye. At first glance there was nothing formidable about the lady. She was small and mousy, and wore a brown poplin skirt that hugged her narrow hips and flared out below the knees, making me think of a tea-cosy marching up the aisle. Above the cosy, rose a pink shirt-waist adorned with a frilled neckpiece, stiffly starched, and so immaculate that, in contrast with her face, the latter, piously unpowdered and sabbatically grave, had the look of a discoloured mushroom.

It was, at best, an inoffensive, pointed face, trained to a righteous smile that never varied, except when her mild brown eyes were fixed upon her shepherd in glowing worship. Which I, of course, interpreted as the outward sign of a desperate mind hatching fresh and feverish plots for the poor man’s undoing!

Fortunately for my own peace of mind, I was soon back in school, where, to my everlasting surprise, I found myself promoted to the fourth standard, and so, at last, among children of my own age. The wonder of it warmed me through and through. For, think of it, I was no longer the big lout among babies, but just another kid in the class, with nothing to mark me out for special torment except my yard-long pigtails and my peculiar nationality. And even that would only have to be admitted when teacher recorded our names.

When the midday bell sounded I found myself marching out of the building with two other girls, bursting with protestations of friendship. In one voice they offered to walk home with me. That was very nice, very gratifying, and I tried to say so, but, out of the tail of my eye, I could see the dark figure of Katie, hovering in the foreground, a deep frown on her stormy brow.

‘I can’t—I’ve got to go with—with Katie,’ I stuttered. ‘I—I guess she’s waiting.’

‘But you’re not a Pollack!’ exclaimed the small wisp at my right, whose face was guileless as an angel’s.

‘Well, I’m just as queer,’ said I, resolved to face the music and be done with it. ‘I’m an Icelander. Any way, she’s nice—she picked a million raspberries to buy a confirmation veil!’

‘Gosh, that’s funny! I mean, it’s the cat’s whiskers, everybody thinking everybody else is queer!’ whooped the other, a sallow girl with stringy hair but the liveliest grey eyes. ‘What’s the difference anyhow? If Katie wants to come along too—it’s all right, isn’t it, Tilly?’

An innocent question, yet the words implied a challenge bordering on a threat, so it seemed. The little wisp grinned sheepishly. ‘I don’t care. Did I say she wasn’t nice? You’re always jumping at me, Laura J.!’

‘Rats!’ snapped the grey-eyed one, and shot away to intercept Katie, now slowly moving down the hill. Thereafter, for a period of almost a year, we made a solid foursome, against which the battery of even the fiercest derision was as chaff. For, if Katie was a firebrand, Laura Johnson was a comet of destruction. Even in class it was risky business for the toughest boy to pull a face in her direction, let alone lodge a spitball in her ash-blonde hair. A new boy tried it, to his burning sorrow, one lazy afternoon, only to find a hellcat on his neck, a howling fury, who not only scratched, but bore him to the floor in an undignified, tangled mass.

‘Laura! Laura! LAURA! bawled the stoutish teacher who ruled our destinies. ‘What in the world!’

‘The dirty rat spit in my hair!’ shouted the Amazon, letting go of the scarlet culprit, and smoothing down her frock, the while she fearlessly glared back at the astonished teacher.

‘Dear me! Dear me! I am ashamed of you!’ cried the lady, helplessly. ‘Willie, is that true? Were you blowing spitballs?’

‘I said he was, didn’t I!’ Unabashed, Laura answered for him angrily. ‘Do you think I’d bash him up for nothing?’

Any one else guilty of such an outburst would have been soundly strapped for the insolence, but, as always, there was something so engagingly honest in Laura’s violent exhibition that all the punishment she received was a piece of memory work after four, and the unbounded respect of the young roughneck she had pummelled.

Tilly Rhinertson, on the other hand, was such a mild little soul that she invited criticism. Even the teacher was not above caustic remarks, and on more than one occasion almost drew tears by her cruel fault-finding. Why didn’t Tilly straighten up? Was she put together on a shoe string? What made her so inattentive? If she hadn’t slept, why didn’t she stay in bed—school was no place to slump about half asleep!

Tilly shrank into herself, smiling. But, to me, who, as time passed, had come to understand the why and wherefore of Tilly’s stoop and tiredness, these jibes were hateful. So hateful that I grew to detest the fussy, fuming instigator of them, and it inspired my first resentment against all self-appointed critics of outspoken opinions.

How Tilly came to attach herself to Laura was no mystery, although they had so little in common, for, with all her tartness and temper, Laura Johnson had a kind, generous nature. When she ranted and raved Tilly stood by, smiling, no doubt unconsciously enheartened by an exercise of talent denied to herself. Not that Tilly was either a coward or stupid. Far from it. But by nature she was of a temperament that preferred any compromise to outright battle, and if her speeches sometimes lent themselves to hurtful connotation it was because timidity, rather than harsh intention, made her blurt out what happened to come into her head. In time she was to shake off all these weaknesses and more than justify the affection she inspired in those who really knew her.

We became extremely fond of each other—formed one of those lasting, unalterable friendships which are rare among womenkind. For neither distance nor altered circumstances had the least effect upon our little threesome. We quarrelled like cats among ourselves, but stood back-to-back against all others. Yet not until death removed one of us were we really made aware of how deep and true this childish alliance was, how much it had meant in affection, and how impossible to replace.

The Rhinertsons lived in a ramshackle house, built under the brow of the hill, upon which the Halson houses stood like hungry cormorants staring bleakly into unfriendly space. To the critically minded, they must have seemed a shiftless lot. The house ran itself. Certainly, there was no evidence of human interference. Except on Sunday, when things were ‘redded up,’ and Mrs. Rhinertson concocted a very good cake and a huge batch of waffles against the coming of visitors, I doubt if any one ever knew where a single object, garment, or staple of food was logically to be found. Ordinarily, some sort of meal was cooked, somewhere near the customary hours, and was eaten by those members of the family who happened to be on hand. If they were not on hand, or the meal had disappeared, the unfortunate ones rustled up a bite as best they could. Even the chickens, upon whose largess these delinquents usually depended, led the same, disorganized life, scattering eggs where fancy dictated, and thus provided a thrilling hunt for the hungry children.

In this clutter the family lived with supreme good nature and contentment. Exhibitions of temper were almost unheard of, as no one in the family even thought of seriously criticizing any one else. Mr. Rhinertson, a tall, gaunt Norwegian, years older than his wife, was a master-carpenter, an occupation which at that time was both well paid and in constant demand. So far as I know, he was always employed, yet the net result was only a string of children and the old house, which kept sprouting editions to accommodate the growing brood. In her youth Mrs. Rhinertson must have been an extremely pretty woman, of the delicate blonde type, which, unfortunately, too often fades into pale insignificance. At this time she was still comparatively young and slender, but reminded me of a weedy willow, precariously braced upon a crumbling river bank. She looked, in fact, as though the least wind could whisk her away, and that, upon the slightest effort, she would fall apart. Even her clothes hung upon her in a loose, disheartened manner, as if not at all certain that this was their rightful peg. Her hair, of very fine texture, had lost its former sheen, and straggled in cobwebs from under the knot at the base of her neck, and her voice, equally colourless, was faintly quarrelsome, though not ill-natured.

Yet, for all this seeming listlessness, Mrs. Rhinertson was tremendously tenacious, and fulfilled her specific functions with marvellous ease. Dressmaking was her love and passion, and she much preferred to run up a new frock to laundering an old one. So, too, she seemed to bear new babies with less effort than was involved in keeping track of her former creations. Once born, the babies became Tilly’ s concern, and Tilly grew stoop-shouldered, bent as a little old woman, under these ever-present burdens.

These and many other quirks and peccadilloes peculiar to the Rhinertson ménage, I was not fully to understand, however, until we had moved into their neighbourhood and our association became more intimate.

That we did make such a move, and to that particular locality, came about through a combination of circumstances that require a somewhat lengthy explanation. We had no thought of moving at this time, for papa was desperately bent upon saving a few dollars out of each wage-packet, towards building some sort of cottage on the edge of town, and, of course, it seemed a very remote possibility. Then, in rapid succession, occurred two tragic events which, in aftermath, decided our course and fixed us in the hills for years to come.

To begin with, John Halson’s house burned down. As aunt had predicted, the fire broke out in the good man’s cluttered study, which, on the instant, was transformed into a roaring furnace. The family barely escaped with their lives. The children slept in a loft, which was reached by a trap door and a ladder that descended into the kitchen. This way of escape was cut off by the leaping flames and clouds of coiling smoke from below. Except for the energy of Julie, who somehow managed to bundle the half-smothered younger children through a tiny window, it is certain they must quickly have perished. As, indeed, they might all have perished in their beds if Johnnie’s little terrier had not roused them with his furious barking. His last loving service. How we wept to see his tiny, blackened form among the ruins! How bitterly poor Julie berated herself because the blinding smoke had forced her to jump before she could reach and save the little creature.

However, the dire needs of the destitute family quickly eclipsed everything else. Not a scrap, except the night-clothes in which they fled, remained to them. Of course, they found shelter Einar’s house, but three rooms could not for long shelter so many souls. My aunt was called upon, and rushed to the rescue.

She found a house, and paid the first month’s rent, and then, with customary firmness, she approached the ladies of the Presbyterian Church, of which she was an adherent, and not so much asked as demanded that every one who had a stick of odd furniture, extra bedding, cooking utensils, and clothes, should do her Christian duty. She made the same appeal to her grocer, and to the coal company—and heaven only knows who else. Consequently, the Halsons became a sort of holy crusade, for whose deliverance the whole town was shortly rallied. In less than a week they were far richer in goods than ever before, and infinitely better fed. Nor was that enough. Recognizing that now was their day of destiny, my aunt so worked upon the emotions of the head of the business college that Emma found herself enrolled without cost. Aunt, of course, furnished her with the necessary books.

‘So far so good,’ said she to papa, who had been doing his bit in the rehabilitation scheme. ‘The poor creatures are safe for a few weeks, but you know what public sympathy is. It never lasts. Something new pops up to claim attention. Nor am I such a fool as to expect that virtuous windbag, John Halson, to change his habits. He’ll never work where he has found such easy bread. I tell you, Lars, we must ship the whole lot to the coast. It might be the making of them.’

‘Bless my soul!’ exclaimed papa. ‘Where will you find the money to send six people to the coast?’

‘Tch! Tch! Would it be cheaper to feed the whole tribe for years to come? Besides, there are plenty of people in this town who can well afford to give a few dollars towards helping to make something of those very decent youngsters.’

Which point she speedily proved, for I imagine it would have been as difficult to withhold a contribution when my aunt marched in upon a simple business-man as to evade a Government levy. She was not the kind of woman to whom one offered excuses. The glance of her penetrating grey eyes, and the slightly scornful curl of her firm mouth, was much too disquieting. Moreover, even silly people recognized the absolute justice of her impersonal attitude. If she asked for anything it was because the thing had to be done, and the doing of it somehow acquired honour.

It was not my aunt’s intention that the Halsons should be shunted into unknown waters, as it were, without the best possible preparation. Papa wrote to acquaintances he had made at the coast through his journalistic articles, sounding these men for information as to working conditions in general and the fortunes of the Icelandic immigrants in particular. A stone might have wept at his description of the Halson calamity, the inference being that John was another Job, supporting in holy patience the afflictions of the Almighty, confident that, in due season, a righteous recompense would be meted unto him. To have any part whatsoever in helping such a good man to realize the fruits of his faith must, as a matter of course, be a profitable undertaking, bringing dividends of personal satisfaction and well-being. After this philosophic preamble, papa was naturally inspired to interpret the glorious possibilities inherent in the Halson children, every one of whom became creatures of the highest genius and unsullied character, waiting the guiding hand of some good Samaritan.

In the meantime, Julie found a job in a restaurant, Johnnie ran errands, Emma struggled with shorthand, and their saintly father, having borrowed what books he could, enheartened his wife with high, unworldly thoughts as she scrubbed at the washboard. For the present, the family had settled, so much as might be, into the old family rut: the children bringing home the loaves and fishes; mamma cheerfully performing the labours of Martha so that dearest papa might be free to interpret the tortuous ways of the spirit. With this difference, however, that an eager, adventurous sparkle was to be marked in the young faces as the girls speculated upon the forthcoming wonders of the coast, and, as for Johnnie, he had already fixed his mind upon the sea. He meant to be a sailor and visit every sinful port of which he had ever read, ending up a captain of a great ocean liner. All of which (to anticipate the future) shabbly little Johnnie accomplished, to the complete vindication of seemingly idle dreams.

There were other and tragic results of the fire. Whether from the shock of witnessing the terrifying spectacle, or from the exhaustion of rendering help beyond her feeble strength, Jorun Halson fell ill, and took to her bed. At first her general weakness and the heavy cold on her chest were not taken seriously. It was by no means an uncommon experience for the frail invalid to suffer these bouts with bronchitis and fever. Helga flew about with poultices, delicate broths, and, by night and day, saw that there were hot flat-irons at the patient’s feet. These ministrations had never failed before, but now, as the slow days filed away, a depressing doubt began to torture her. Dear Jorun was not making any sort of recovery. The doctor was called, but even his energetic, conscientious efforts brought no improvement. The little lady whose shining spirit had been such an inspiration to the two plain souls who worshipped her had reached the end of her weary pilgrimage. There was nothing to be done but watch with her through this last dark stretch of the journey.

Papa undertook to relieve the husband and Helga in their nightly vigils. It was the sort of duty for which his gentle, sympathetic nature was eminently fitted. He, who had so often been perilously close to the borderland, understood what sort of comfort the dying woman needed. Hour upon hour, her small, cold hand in his, he sat beside her; silent when her need was peace; or telling, one by one, as on a rosary the everlasting verities upon which her heart must fix.

To have known and recognized the permanence of beauty; to have understood, however dimly, the everlasting quality of love, which motivates and sustains the living universe; and to have supported sorrow with unembittered patience: these three simple concepts of the true nature of life and man’s power to rule his own spirit were a sufficient augury of an irrefutable immortality. Whatever was good or beautiful was eternal, and to have shared in either was to have projected oneself into an everlasting medium.

Toward the end, Jorun’s mind, as so often happens, sharpened, becoming lucid as a quiet pool which reflects with silvered radiance each glancing light ray. In her little whispering voice she recounted bits of loveliness from the long-lost past. How sweetly the shrike had sung on the green hills of Iceland! How liquid and full of song were the rushing waterfalls—living lace let down by an angel’s hand to soften the hard shoulders of the old grey promontories—how she had laughed to see the small Iambs frisking in the flower-strewn meadows.

‘You remember our mountains, when the sun beat down on their mottled flanks, picking out all the glowing colours of their Joseph’s coat? I could never climb to the top like my happier friends, who had no infirmities. Perhaps that is why they have remained for me, “The everlasting hills, whence cometh our strength.” I could never catch a sight of the sea from their snowy peaks—but I think I saw God in their quiet shadow. Oh, I thought of many things—not the kind of things that my poor Helga would credit, for, you see, I would like to have done something in the world—it was not easy to accept the part of a useless, broken thing.’

No doubt a sensible soul would have stopped this flood of melancholy confidences, but papa was not a sensible soul, thank God! He had the tender heart of an unsuccessful poet, whose sensibilities have not congealed into sterile ink. He knew, with the wisdom of the dreamer, that drops of pain bear witness to the growing life of the soul. He knew that this tragic murmur was not so much a futile grief for those unrealized opportunities as it was a tender pleading for assurance that what she had forged for herself out of her own inner resources was imperishable and true. He let her talk, and only hoped that Helga and Einar, whose comfort lay in the belief that their faithful care had brought her happiness, would not waken to be wounded by useless regret. Good, practical souls, it would not be given to them to understand how this unburdening would release the spirit unto its own immortal joys.

‘I don’t know why I tell you these things,’ she whispered on. ‘I don’t even know why I should think of it now—except that it surprises me to find that all of it is so clear. For, you see, I had tried so hard to bury my dead. It had been so long since I resigned myself to the dullness of an existence devoid of hope. Determined to hide from every one my consternation that you could go on living, knowing so well that the future held no surprises—that even death, which touched me so early, would neither ease my hurt nor end my secret questioning.’

‘Dear Jorun, why not grasp that thought more firmly. Isn’t there something wonderful in the realization that, no matter how hard we try to accept defeat, it comes to this: that, in the end, every smallest broken hope returns as full of vital yearning as ever it was? Is not that the greatest surprise of all, and reason to believe in the everlasting realm of thought? Death touched you, you said. Are you then so sure it was not Life—the only true life, which is the essence of all ideas—that chose you out of the stream of everyday toilers, to search out its mysteries in quietness and resignation?’

The dying woman’s eyes shone with unearthly brightness. ‘I do not know if I rightly understand you. I am such a simple, unlettered woman, but it is true that I have thought more than I might have under better circumstances. Not deeply, but earnestly, and still the thread of what you might say seems indistinct. Yet, how sorely I long to know!’

Papa grasped her hand with gentle firmness. ‘My dear friend, what is there to know beyond what you yourself have discovered? That God reveals himself in every circumstance and experience. Yes, in the doubts of our hearts, no less than in our highest aspirations! Wasn’t it all said, with moving simplicity, by a stubborn little man who had to be stricken blind before he could see the truth of anything:

‘”For I am persuaded that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God.'”

That, in essence, is the story of Jorun’s passing. That I should remember it more clearly than many a personal experience is not strange. Aside from the gift father had of recounting even the smallest events, so that they became as real as concrete pictures, this particular incident was rendered memorable by a peculiar phenomenon. I don’t know what wakened me, but wake I did this night, and, sitting up suddenly, I saw that mamma was also awake, and staring intently, her face white and strained in the dim light, at something I could not see.

‘Mamma!’ I shouted, my skin prickling queerly, for no reason. ‘Mamma!’

‘Be still,’ said my mother, sinking back upon her huge pillow. ‘Go to sleep, child. I thought perhaps your father might be coming home.’

Well, that sounded reasonable enough, yet I could not stop shivering, or keep from searching the shadows with expectant eyes, and the dawn was creeping in at the window before I drowsed again. We were at breakfast when father came back; very grave and tired; he slipped in and hung up his coat and hat without a word. Mamma set out another coffee cup.

‘So she is gone,’ said she. ‘You need not tell me. She died at three. I know. I saw her, God rest her sweet soul.’

‘Yes, at three,’ papa answered, without surprise, and began to sip his coffee. ‘It was a happy death, my dear.’ And so, the tale unfolded.

That mother should have seen Jorun gliding into the room, to stand for the moment, smiling, at the foot of my bed, occasioned no astonishment to either parent. Mamma saw such things, and took them for granted. She always knew when any one near or dear was seriously ill, and was always warned of a close death. It was just as commonplace as the clouds in the sky, or the white summer rain washing the street. Something so ordinary that to surround it with mystery and make of it a topic of dissention would have seemed to her the height of foolishness. In all her life mamma never revealed the slightest interest in any phase of an after-life. If it existed, well and good, said she. If not, also well and good. In either case, her speculation about it would have no appreciable effect. Death was as arbitrary as birth and what followed was equally beyond human control.

For so-called spiritualism, and for the quibbling spiritualists whose little societies were creeping up everywhere, she had an amused contempt—the same sort of contempt she had for the egotist who laboured so diligently at saving his soul from a problematic purgatory. She was a practical little woman, impatient of speculative theories, and would as soon have entered a cage of wild animals as a spiritualist meeting, or an orgy of holy revival.

She believed in God, for not to believe in a Divine Intelligence seemed to her a little silly. Surely human wisdom, faulty and feeble though it was, implied some source of fountain-head other than matter. But she had no bent for metaphysics, and, like her ancient forebears, dismissed the thought by saying that whatever the Power that had sustained her through the trials and tribulations of this world, it would do at least as good a job in the next. It concerned her no more than the manifestation of sunlight. You lived, you did the best you could with such talent and strength as heredity and circumstance provided, and you died. That was the sum and substance of existence.

For me, however, cursed with the same sort of imagination that plagued my father, this vision of Jorun Halson, smiling at the foot of my bed, was not so easily dismissed. Who could say that the little lady might not come again! And if I should see her, would I be so calm and unperturbed as mamma? Diving into my bed at nights, and pulling the sheets up over my head, I doubted it sorely. For what, I wanted to know, was it exactly that mamma did see? She glided in, mamma had said—what, then, of all that business of angels with wings? If you weren’t an angel when you began gliding about visiting your friends, well, then, when did you become an angel? From which thought sprang a dozen others.

The Last Judgement, for instance. How did that fit into a scheme of things where the disembodied spirit was already flitting about hither and yon, as it listed? Really, it struck me as a decidedly silly parable, without much point, and a complete disregard of common sense. Even I would not bother to drag people back from heaven and hell to judge them, when the judgement merely sent them back to their respective habitations. The more sleep I lost about it, the more certain I grew that papa must be right—and mamma, too, up to a point. The sensible thing was to believe in the immortality of right effort, and to believe what one’s senses revealed as credible.

Confiding these thoughts to Tilly was not a very fruitful effort. Goodness gracious! Whoever heard of nice people seeing ghosts, or questioning what was written in the Bible! It was a sin. The minister said so. The minister had as little use for spirit phenomena as he had for the doctrines of the Scarlet Woman. Which doctrines, I inferred, were the abhorrent centre of faiths not his own.

‘But, Tilly,’ I said, ‘what’s the sense of teaching people they have souls that don’t die, and then telling them they are crazy if they see a ghost?’

‘But a ghost!’ cried Tilly. ‘Goodness gracious, I wish you wouldn’t talk like that. I wish you wouldn’t—it can’t be right. You don’t want to go to hell, do you?’

‘How do you know there is a hell?’ said I, now firmly set on riding logic to the bitter end. ‘How do you know any of those things are true, any way? Just because somebody said so doesn’t make it so. You don’t believe that devils give people fits do you? Now, do you?’

‘N—no—’said Tilly, vaguely, but suspicious.

‘There you are!’ I crowed, with more villainy than wisdom. ‘That’s in your Bible! It’s full of people full of devils. So there! Now, what do you say to that?’

‘Oh dear—I wish you wouldn’t talk like that, I really do.’ Poor Tilly was distressed. ‘It’s safer not to think such things.’

Which maddening remark I had the witlessness to repeat to papa, and got for my pains a cynical retort.

‘She is perfectly right,’ said he, calmly helping himself to snuff. ‘Matter of fact, not to think at all is a still safer plan. You will find, my dear, that all sensible people like to have everything nicely arranged for them: their little heavens; their little hells; their saints and saviours; all done up in neat compartments, for which pleasures to share they drop a coin in the collection plate.’

‘Lars! That’s enough,’ said mamma, trying to look severe, though there was a twinkle in her eye. ‘You are talking to a child, remember. Do you want to make her more muddle-headed than she is?’

‘Well, fish or fowl—’ papa replied. ‘According to your excellent logic, isn’t it better to be completely one thing or another? A perfect dunderhead, for instance, is a joy to behold.’

‘Oh, go back to your scribbling,’ mamma retorted. ‘And you, Miss, since you’re too lazy to do anything, sit down with a book. That will give you something better to think about.’

Well, thought I, perhaps it would, if I had not already consumed everything readable about the place. Everything, that is, except a dull and disheartening volume of religious homilies, dedicated to God, and designed, it would seem, to give the reader dyspepsia after his Sabbath meal.

I was, like every other sentimental soul, to take my plunge into religion by way of salving my wounded ego, but that was still in the future. Just now, I was wanting to be put right on ghosts. The happiest solution was to revert to the Pjodsogur og Munnmaeli, a compilation of folk-tales peppered with all manner of tasty superstitions. Ghosts reared and ramped in that cheerful volume. They dropped down chimneys piece by piece, and stood forth, none the worse for wear. They bounded and haunted sinner and saint alike, and, not seldom, some foresighted minister of the Word made use of a really forceful aftur ganga to plague his enemies. With a spirited command, he sent the lost wraith to poke about bedrooms, rifle butter butts, and bang around the cookhouse, sending kitchen maids into fits. It was all very hair-raising, but not particularly enlightening. I was just as much at sea as before, on the relative status of ghosts, spirits, angels, or whatever thing it was men called their souls, once they had quitted the crooked lanes of life.