The Visionary: Pictures From Nordland

med. As I was not entered until some time after the confirmation course had begun, it was arranged

rivate speech, in which he expressed a hope th

ful face, and massive silver spectacles, generally pushed up on to his forehead above the heavy eyebrows, sat on the sofa with his b

f attempts to reason away doubts that might possibly arise in matters of belief, especially about miracles, which he generally wanted to explain in a natural way. He could be exceedingly clever in his comparisons, and I used then to think in this, as in much of the strong-willed expression of his face when he talked, that I recognised Susanna's nature. The small, well-shaped hands an

ad a way of furtively looking down that I must try to get rid of. He doubtless thought that I was excessively

o myself what he would think of me one day, when he came to know all, and that during his instruction on the subject of my eternal happiness I could have sat before him so false and bold. I became more and more convinced during the lessons on the Expl

ame a real martyrdom to me. All sin, said the Explanati

was beyond the limits of pardon and could not be forgiven, the higher rose the torturing anxiety in

ry person that would give it to me. I tried in vain to dismiss these thoughts, or at any rate to put them off, until the very last day before confirmation. My mind became every d

h myself, I would bear my burden alone. To reveal the whole thing at the last moment to the stern minister would, of course, disclose our engagement, would be an unbearable scandal for us both, and,

mined us, I often looked earnestly over at Susanna. She stood there, brig

in which I saw myself kneeling at the altar with Susanna beside me-she looking so unsuspecting, so supernaturally beautiful, while the minister stood with a face of thunder, as if he knew that a soul would now be destroyed, and that, in the Communion, he was carrying out God's vengeance. Another night I aw

onfirmat

ed during the many years she was ill. I could see, through the small-paned windows, boat after boat full of nicely-dressed confirmation candidates, with

at once that in my sad, spiritually dark home, I had always, from childhood upwards, really had a feeling in my inmost heart that happiness and blessedness were not meant for me, and that all the happiness and joy I hitherto had was really only borrowed sunsh

inst the wa

in tranquillity, that my gaze fell on the old vision of my childhood, the lady with the rose whom I saw s

-day Anne Kv?n and all the house servants were also among the churchgoers. Father

in church had been decided the Monday before. I was to sta

lady in a black silk dress, with gauze on her neck and arms, and a locket on her breast. S

Susanna, who stood there with folded hands, looking down, tearful and rather pale with excitement before her question came. While her father put it, she looked up at him with her sweet blue eyes so innocently and trustfully that it was more than clear

r dressed in grown-up fashion. Now and then she looked across at me, but I avoided meeting her eye. Her glance now seemed t

anxiety, I thought that perhaps this was already the beginning of the curse. I dared not look at Susanna any more for fear of throwing the black spot on her, and at last I could not forbear looking at the floor where I stood to see if there wer

r only dimly that another discourse wa

e thing was that Susanna, who I suppose discovered that I was ill, had towards the end of the service looked at me with just the same e

little to the fact that I kept up to the last; for I fainted as soon as we got home and was put to bed, wh

s. It seemed to me that dreadful forms danced and nodded round the bed, and among them one with a long letter of condemnation, with a seal under it, and that Anne

ng which Anne Kv?n, who probably had her own thoughts on the subject, thought it necessary to inform him, he quite changed his opinion. He had atten

long nervous paroxysms. The whole millstone weight of sin was, as it were

at. When her mother went out of the room to fetch red-currant wine and cakes, I, at a sign from her, had hastily to look at her precious work-table with all the drawers, both those above and those that appeared below when she pushed the upper drawers away. In one of

ly an interview in which Susanna's true feeling had been revealed

lly changed. For instance, he made me a present of a double-barrelled gun in a sealskin case, and a watch, and he proposed that during

doctor one day made his appearance, an

nds of weather. You always saw him in the best of spirits when he had just been out in stormy weather. He was a decided and clear-headed man, whose manner involuntarily inspired confidence, a

, while he himself, as usual, made out a route on the floor, where,

several generations back. That this outbreak had now taken place in me was certainly due to the fact that I had given myself up to all kinds of imaginary influences, in conjunction with the idle life which he knew I had always led at home. The only certain means for stopping the development of this disposition was work with a fixed, determined end in view-for instance, study-which he thought I showed a

t me, I remained sitting in my

had solved my own riddle, was an extraordinary r

mind-although dissipated in the brighter summer-time of my companionship with Susanna-was therefore no sin, no burden of crime, no dark mysterious exception

he was mad, or at any rate that there was danger of his becomin

nd trustfully to God, to whom I stood in the same relation as every one else, or

nt of this new condition of security I went on to pray first for every single person at home, then for those at the parsonage, then for the cler