Strife and Peace | Page 7

watched incessantly beside her, and felt herself happy in being able to
watch over her and to serve her. Susanna had conceived an almost
passionate devotion for Mrs. Astrid; such as young girls often feel for
elderly, distinguished women, to whom they look up as to the ideal of
their sex. And when Mrs. Astrid returned to Norway, Susanna kissed
with tears her little Hulda, but yet felt herself happy to follow such a
mistress, and to serve her in the rural solitude to which she betook
herself. Susanna journeyed to the foreign country, but retained deep in

her heart her little Hulda and her life's plan.

MRS. ASTRID.
Did ye but feel, O stars! who see The whole earth's silent misery, Then
never would your glances rest With such calm radiance on her breast.
HENR WERGELAND.
As Susanna withdrew from Harald, and from the water of discord, she
was quite in an excited and bad temper; but as soon however as she
approached the wing of the house which Mrs. Astrid inhabited, she
became calmer. She looked up to her window, and saw there her noble
but gloomy profile. It was bent down, and her head seemed as it were
depressed by dark thoughts. At this sight, Susanna forgot all her own ill
humour. "Oh!" sighed she, "if I could only make her happier!"
This was Susanna's daily subject of thought, but it became to her every
day a darker riddle. Mrs. Astrid appeared to be indifferent to everything
around her here. Never did she give an order about anything in the
house, but let Susanna scold there and govern just as she would.
Susanna took all the trouble she could to provide the table of her
mistress with everything good and delicious which lay in her power;
but to her despair the lady ate next to nothing, and never appeared to
notice whether it was prepared well or ill.
Now before Susanna went into the house, she gathered several of the
most beautiful flowers which the autumn frost had spared, made a
nosegay of them, and with these in her hand stept softly into Mrs.
Astrid's room.
"Bowed with grief," is the expression which describes Mrs. Astrid's
whole being. The sickly paleness of her noble countenance, the
depressed seldom-raised eyelids, the inanimate languor of her
movements, the gloomy indifference in which her soul seemed to be
wrapped,--like her body in its black mourning habiliments, when she
sate for hours in her easy-chair, often without occupation, the head

bowed down upon the breast; all this indicated a soul which was
severely fettered by long suffering.
Suffering in the north has its own peculiar character. In the south it
burns and consumes. In the north it kills slowly; it freezes, it petrifies
by degrees. This has been acknowledged for untold ages, when our
forefathers sought for images of that which they felt to be the most
terrible in life; thus originated the fable of the subterranean dwelling of
Hela, of the terrors of the shore of corpses--in one word, the "Hell of
the North, with its infinite, treeless wildernesses; with cold, darkness,
mist, clammy rivers, chill, distilling poison, cities resembling clouds
filled with rain, feetless hobgoblins," and so on.
In the Grecian Tartarian dance of the Furies there is life and wild
strength, there is in its madness a certain intoxication which deprives it
of its feeling of deep misery. The heart revolts not so much from these
pictures of terror, as from the cold, clammy, dripping ones which the
chill north exhibits--ah! not alone in poetry.
As Susanna entered the apartment of Mrs. Astrid, she found her sitting,
as usual, sunk in deep melancholy. Upon a table before her lay paper
and pens, and a book, in which she appeared to have been reading. It
was the Bible; it lay open at the book of Job, and the following
passages were underlined:
My soul is weary of my life, for my days are vanity. Man is born to
trouble as the sparks fly upwards.
Mrs. Astrid's eyes were riveted upon these last words, as Susanna softly,
and with a warm heart, approached her, and with a cordial "Ah! be so
good," presented to her the nosegay.
The lady looked up at the flowers, and an expression of pain passed
over her countenance as she turned away her head and said, "They are
beautiful, but keep them, Susanna, they are painful to my eyes."
She resumed her former position, and Susanna, much troubled, drew
back; after a short silence, however, she again ventured to raise her

voice, and said, "We have got to-day a beautiful salmon-trout, will you
not, Mrs. Astrid, have it for dinner? Perhaps with egg-sauce, and
perhaps I might roast a duck, or a chicken----"
"Do whatever you like,