Ragna Part 9

"I hope to goodness she won't try to dress me in her own style!" thought Ragna.

As they neared the house it was evident that something had happened; there was a confusion of people rus.h.i.+ng to and fro and a servant was officiously closing the shutters of the upper rooms.

Ingeborg, standing in the doorway flew to meet them as they reached the gate.

"Oh, Aunt Gitta! Oh, Ragna!" she exclaimed in a loud hoa.r.s.e whisper, looking at the same time frightened and important. "I've been looking for you everywhere! It happened an hour ago, and where you've ever been--"

Fru Boyesen took the girl by the shoulders and shook her.

"What is it? Can't you speak out? Don't beat about the bush like a fool!"

"Grandmother's dead" said the child, boldly, and burst into tears.

Fru Boyesen pushed her aside and ran into the house and up to her mother's room. It was as Ingeborg had said, the old woman had quietly pa.s.sed away. Her daughter-in-law, sitting in the room, had not seen when it happened,--she only noticed after a time that the place seemed unusually silent, as when a clock in a living-room stops its ticking, and going over to the bed, she saw that the old woman was no longer breathing. She felt for a pulse in vain, and a mirror held to the mouth remained unclouded, so she had drawn the sheet up over the still, white face and called the family.

Ragna and Ingeborg followed their Aunt up the stairs and into the room.

Lars Andersen stood by the bed, holding the dead woman's hand; his sister had thrown herself upon her knees beside him; at the foot of the bed stood Lotte and her mother, and by them Ragna took her place.

Ingeborg stopped in the doorway, sobbing loudly with hysterical excitement, and also with honest grief, for she sincerely loved her grandmother. Lars Andersen turned in his place and in a low, stern voice reprimanded her.

"Stop that boisterous sobbing, Ingeborg! I am ashamed of you! Go to your room until you can control yourself!"

Ragna quietly slipped out and led the weeping child away--none of the others had even turned a head.

"Oh, Ragna," sobbed Ingeborg, as they reached the little room with its dormer window, "isn't it dreadful? Only this morning I was sitting with her and she said the knitting hurt her eyes, and she would finish it to-morrow--and it was for me--and now she is de-e-ad--" her voice rose in a wail.

Ragna took her into her arms, and sitting down, drew her on her knees.

"Oh, Ingeborg," she said, "you mustn't cry so, indeed you mustn't! We ought to be glad she died peacefully like that. Of course it would have been awful if it had happened when you were alone with her this morning."

"It isn't that, it isn't that at all," said Ingeborg, in an awed voice.

"It's just dreadful that she should have been alive like you or me only an hour ago,--and now she is dead like a light when it is blown out. She was here and now she is gone--she's nowhere!"

"Oh, Ingeborg, you shouldn't talk like that!" cried Ragna, shocked. "Her soul has gone to G.o.d in Heaven!"

"Do you really believe that, Ragna?" asked the child. "I don't,--I don't care what they say. When Balke, my dog, died, I wanted to bury him and put up a tombstone, but the Pastor wouldn't let me; he said animals have no souls and Christian burial is only for people. Balke knew lots more than ever so many people; he had a great deal more soul than a baby. When do babies get their souls? I know they don't have them when they are born, they're too stupid,--and so when do they get them? I said if Balke wouldn't go to Heaven I didn't believe there was one at all, so there!"

She sat up with flushed face and looked at her sister defiantly.

Ragna did not know what to answer; she had never seriously questioned any religious doctrine that had been taught her and Ingeborg's revolt both shocked her and found her unprepared.

"Aren't you ashamed to talk like that, Ingeborg Andersen?" she said indignantly. "Of course there is a Heaven and a h.e.l.l, and perhaps good dogs have a Heaven of their own--I don't know! If there is one, I'm sure Balke went there," she ended lamely.

Ingeborg was watching her with curious unchildlike eyes.

"You don't believe in Heaven any more than I do," she a.s.serted. "If you did you'd talk about it differently. People have told you things and you have just gone on believing them to save yourself the trouble of thinking."

She slipped from Ragna's knees and crossed to the window, where she stood looking out; she left her sister thunderstruck. The child had spoken the truth--but how had she known, by what intuition had she understood? Ragna went over to her, and putting an arm about her, stood some minutes in silence before she asked:

"What made you say that, Ingeborg?"

"I don't know, but it is so and you can't deny it. Oh, I often know what people think about when they don't know themselves, and I often know, too, what is going to happen to people. Grandmother told me I was fey; you see I'm the youngest and I'm the seventh daughter and so was mother, and those people always are, Grandmother said so."

"How can you know? What do you do?"

"Oh, nothing, I just look into people's eyes, and sometimes I see things, and sometimes I don't."

"Can you tell me what will happen to me?" asked Ragna in a low voice.

Ingeborg turned and looked long into her sister's eyes. The sun had sunk below the mountains and a cool grey light pervaded the place. She stood motionless a long time, then she pa.s.sed her hand over her forehead and half turned away.

"I don't want to tell you, Ragna," she said.

But Ragna insisted, she would know, she was not superst.i.tious; she only wanted to see if it would come true.

"It will come true--it always does," said Ingeborg sadly.

"Then tell me, I'm not afraid."

Ingeborg hesitated, then seeing that Ragna was in earnest:

"I will tell some of it, but I do not see very clearly. You are going away, to begin with, I see you with Aunt Gitta and there are many people but their faces are shadows. Then you go away farther still, where the sun is hot--it dazzles you, and there is a man--or is it a greyhound?"

Ragna started. "Yes, it is a man, but there is a greyhound and a hare and some stone arches, and you are very sad after that, Ragna. But the man goes away and there is another man with eyes like coals, and he hates you--he puts chains on you, and you can't break them, and you never come home any more--" Her voice died away.

Ragna stood spellbound: a greyhound and a hare--her dream! And the rest, the chains, the man with the burning eyes! She s.h.i.+vered; it was as though the shadow of a dark wing had pa.s.sed over her, her flesh crept.

Neither spoke for some time; it grew darker.

A maidservant entered the room with a light. Ragna shook herself to throw off the incubus. The maid began to speak of the Grandmother, of how good she had been, and the girls looked at one another ashamed--they had quite forgotten it all for the moment.

"Come, Ingeborg," said Ragna, "let us go down again." Hand in hand they descended the stair.

CHAPTER VII

The funeral was set for the day week and the intervening time seemed interminable, at least to the younger members of the family. Fru Boyesen was invaluable; her practical good sense which not even grief could impair, employed itself in arranging the thousand and one details incident to a death.

Ragna took her turn with her elders in watching at night in the death-chamber. She had begged to do it and had obtained permission, but when the night came and she was left alone in the terrible silent room, a single candle burning on the table beside her, casting grotesque and fitful shadows over the motionless form on the bed, and over the walls, a kind of panic seized her. She wished she had not persisted in obtaining the vigil. It was horribly lonely, more so than she could have imagined by day. She could hear the ticking of the tall clock on the landing outside the door; no other sound came from the sleeping house--it was like sitting in a funeral vault she thought. An owl was hooting dismally in a tree far off and the mournful noise had an uncanny sound in the pervading stillness. The window was partly open and occasionally a puff of air would make the candle gutter, and then the shadows moved and took on unearthly shapes.

Ragna tried to keep her mind on the book her mother had left with her, but without avail; her mind would wander, and her eyes turned continually to the bed in the corner--it was as though the dead woman called her, requiring insistently her whole attention. She was a healthy girl, not in the least morbid, but the stillness, the tension wore on her nerves until the strain became unbearable. She looked uneasily to right and left and over her shoulder as though she expected to see strange and grisly shapes emerging from the shadows. A kind of panic seized her; she felt as if she must scream. A terrible unreasoning fear overcame her, the horror of the presence of the dead body submerged her spirit, a curious stiffness possessed her limbs and seemed to bind her to her chair; she felt the roots of her hair crawl, and her fingers worked convulsively. The book she had been reading dropped to the floor with a bang. The noise broke the spell and she gave a long shuddering sigh; she raised her hand to her forehead and was surprised to find it wet.

"This will never do," she said to herself resolutely, and rising, she went to the window. There was no moon, but everything showed clearly in the light northern night. The trees near the house rose in a dark stippled ma.s.s against the sky. Everything was peaceful and quiet, only the drowsy twittering of birds broke the silence from time to time; the owl had gone. Ragna stood at the window breathing the chill night air and let the peace of the night sink into her soul. When she was quite calm she closed the window and taking the candle walked resolutely over to the bed and stood there, looking. The face of the dead woman wore an expression of ineffable peace--a repose almost inhuman in its detachment. Her white hair was brushed in smooth bandeaux over her brow, her features, ashy grey with violet shadows, appeared almost unreal, as though carved in some strange alabaster. Her hands, waxen and stiff with bluish nails lay folded on her bosom. The flickering light of the candle lent no semblance of life. Ingeborg's words came to Ragna's mind.

Where indeed was the spirit that had animated this clay? And to the question she found no answer. In the actual presence of death the formally taught maxims regarding a future life--a life of reward and punishment--fell to the ground; the flimsiness of all speculation on the Life hereafter appeared naked to the girl's eyes.

"No one can know, no one can tell," she thought, "it is a mystery, but at least one may find peace--she has found peace!" She stooped and reverently kissed her grandmother's cold hands, then she returned to her seat.

The moment had been a crucial one, for in that instant of putting her conventional belief to the touchstone of reality, it had failed and she recognized the fact; the bed-rock on which her childish faith had been built fell from beneath her feet, for, if she lost her belief in part, disbelief in all must follow. A chain is no stronger than its weakest link, but the weak link in her chain was not, as she thought, the insufficient grounds for belief, rather the formality of her teaching; to her the "letter which killeth" had indeed become dead, and of the "Spirit which giveth light" she knew as yet nothing. This one thing she knew, that never again should she be afraid of the dead or of death. "It is peace," she said to herself softly, "it is like sleep when one is very, very tired."