Niels

“ On the last afternoon, Niels and Erik were sitting in their room, Niels looking at the pictures in a penny magazine, Erik deep in Spengler’s critical catalogue of the art collection at Christiansborg. How often he had turned the leaves of this book and tried to form a conception of the pictures from its naïve description! Sometimes he would get almost [67] sick with longing to behold all this art and beauty with his own eyes, to grasp it in very truth and make that glory of line and color his own by the mere strength of his enthusiasm. ”

“ She felt herself growing pale with rapture. Softly she laid both hands on her son’s head, but he drew them gently to his lips and kissed them.
“You have made me so happy, Niels! Then my life has not been one long, useless sigh, if I have helped to lead you on as I hoped and dreamed so ardently—good heavens! how often I have dreamed it!—And yet there is so much sadness mixed in my joy, Niels! To think that my fondest wish should be fulfilled, the thing I have longed for so many years.... Such things happen only when life is almost done.” ”

“ Whatever stamped itself on Niels’s mind, what he saw, what he understood and what he misunderstood, what he admired and what he knew he ought to admire—all was woven into the story. As running water is colored by every passing picture, sometimes holding the image with perfect clearness, sometimes distorting it or throwing it back in wavering, uncertain lines, then again drowning it completely in the color and play of its own ripples, so the lad’s story reflected feelings and thoughts, his own and those of other people, mirrored human beings and events, life and books, as well as it could. ”

“ For that reason Niels and Frithjof were afraid of him. They formed themselves after him, denied much and concealed more. Niels was especially quick to suppress in himself anything that was not of Erik’s world, and with the burning zeal of the renegade, he scoffed at Frithjof, whose slower, more faithful nature could not instantly throw over the old for the new. His unkind mockery really sprang from jealousy, for he had fallen in love with Erik on the very first day, while the latter, in shy aloofness, half reluctant, half supercilious, just barely and grudgingly allowed himself to be loved. ”

“ Toward morning Erik came home, and when Fennimore saw him by the cold, truthful light of dawn, preparing to go to bed, heavy and unsteady with drink, his eyes glazed from gambling and his face dirty-pale after the sleepless night, then all the fair words Niels had spoken seemed to her [221] quite visionary. The bright promises she had made to her own heart fainted and paled before the oncoming day—vapory dreams and fumes of fancy: a fairy flock of lies! ”

“ Niels was made an earl by that time, and looked as handsome as any of them when dressed in all his robes. Before long the old king died, and Niels reigned after him; but whether his father and mother stayed with him, or went back to the moor in Jutland, or were sent to Rome in a carriage and four, is something that all the historians of his reign have forgotten to mention.
Shepherd Paul
Once upon a time a shepherd was taking his flock out to pasture, when he found a little baby lying in a meadow, left there by some wicked person, who thought it was too much trouble to look after it. ”

“ Every one spoke or screamed at once. Niels had already collared the jailer. Then, at this highly critical moment, the sense of duty of the women of the old days awoke in Stine. She placed herself by the side of her chosen lord and master and announced that “she would sail to Jutland with him rather than have a fight on her wedding day.” That settled the matter. The joiner was carried into the next room and put to bed, the guests shook hands cordially and drank one another’s health. Niels and Björn became most amiable at once, and [Pg 561] Niels ordered more punch. ”

“ They take out all their store of pretty secrets, all the exquisite useless trifles people accumulate like bric-à-brac of the soul, pass them from hand to hand, turn them round and hold them up, seeking the most artistic light-effect, comparing and analyzing.
It is, of course, only when life passes in a leisurely way that such Sunday friendships are possible, and here by the quiet lake these two had plenty of time. Niels had made a beginning by draping Madame Odéro in a becoming robe of melancholy. ”

“ We do not know where our fathers came from, but we know where we were born ourselves—”
“What nonsense is this?” whispered Niels, who grasped the situation and was ready to fight.
“Who is that man?” asked the joiner, trying to fix his bleary gaze on Niels and holding fast to his neighbor’s shoulder. “Is that a man who will not drink to his native country? If he is, then I say: 'Fie, for shame,’ say I.”
Niels looked meaningly at Björn.
“Shall we clear the place and take Stine with us?”
Björn motioned to him. But one of the guests who supported the joiner heard what Niels said. ”

“ It is just like a candle, Niels, that is being carried away from you into the darkness, into the darkness, and it seems to you fainter and fainter and fainter, and you can’t see it, but still it is shining over there where it is—far away. I always thought I should live to be such an old, old woman, and that I should stay here with you all, and now they won’t let me, they are taking me away from house and home and making me go all alone. ”

“ He was Aladdin, and there was not a thing he had been storming the clouds for but it had fallen right down into his turban.
Now came a happy time for Niels, the glorious time when the mighty impulse of growth sweeps us jubilantly past the dead points in our own nature; when we are filled to bursting with a strength that makes us eager to put our shoulders to mountains if need be, while we build away bravely on the Tower of Babel, which is meant to pierce the sky, but ends in being just a squatty structure that we go on all our lives adding to—now a timid spire, now a freakish bay window. ”

“ Niels was quite a lad now, twelve years old, nearing thirteen, and he no longer needed to hack thistles and burdocks in order to feed his knightly fancies, any more than he had to launch his explorer’s dreams in a mussel-shell. A book and a corner of the sofa were enough for him now, and if the book refused to bear him to the coast of his desires, he would hunt up Frithjof and tell him the tale which the book would not yield. Arm in arm, they would saunter down the road, one telling, both listening ”

“ Ah! those were lonely days for Niels and little Hansa. The Lapp women were kind, taking good care of the little ones in Haakon's absence, and would have coaxed them away to their tents to play with the other children; but Niels remembered his gentle-voiced mother, and would not go with those women who spoke so harshly, though their words were kind. Hansa and he were happy alone together. Each season brought its own joys to their simple, childish hearts ”

“ Niels noticed it with a little start. “Not at all,” he answered; “it is really rare that people become artists with the whole of their nature. And such strong fellows overflowing with vitality like Erik often have an unutterable longing for what is fine-grained and delicate: for an exquisite virginal coldness, a lofty sweetness—I hardly know how to express it. ”

“ Three were company, variety, change; two were boredom and nothing at all.
What in the world could two find to do?
Could two shoot at a target or two play ball? They could play Friday and Robinson Crusoe, to be sure, but then who would be the savages?
Such Sundays! Niels was so weary of existence that he began first to review and afterwards, with the aid of Mr. Bigum’s large atlas, to extend his geographical knowledge far beyond the prescribed bounds. Finally, he started to read the whole Bible through and to keep a diary. ”

“ I am afraid, Niels, that where I am going it is God who rules, and He cares nothing for our cleverness here on earth. He wants His own way and nothing else, but somehow everything of His is so far away from me. I have not done anything very wicked, have I? But it isn’t that.... Go and get the pastor, I want him so much.“
Niels rose and went for the pastor at once; he was grateful that this had not come at the very last moment.
The pastor came and was left alone with Gerda. ”

“ First the despair, the bootless despair, and then the merciful stupor—that must be the explanation. It seemed to Niels that he understood everything: the hardness in her, the dreary humility, and her coarseness, which was the bitterest drop in the whole goblet. By degrees he came to see also that his delicacy and deferential homage must oppress and irritate her, because a woman who has been hurled from the purple couch of her dreams to the pavement below will quickly resent any attempt to spread carpets over the stones which she longs to feel in all their hardness. ”

“ He can do nothing by himself.” It was Nilen’s brother.
“It wouldn’t sound right if I stopped you from going, my son,” said “the Mormon.” “But can two of you do more than one?”
“Niels and I were at school together and have always been friends,” answered the young man, looking into his father’s face. Then he moved away, and a little farther off began to run to catch up Niels.
The fishermen looked after them in silence. “Youth and madness!” one of them then said. “One blessing is that they’ll never be able to get the boat out of the harbor.” ”

“ I talked to Niels, but he would scarcely answer me. I fear he has a stubborn and evil nature. My sweet betrothed also entreats her father to send the fellow away, but the rector will not listen to reason. I do not know what the old man will do when his daughter leaves his home for mine. She saves him much worry and knows how to make all things smooth and easy. She will be a sweet wife for me.
As I thought, it turned out badly. But there is one good thing about it, Niels has now run off of himself. The rector is greatly angered, but I rejoice in secret that he is rid of that dangerous man. ”

“ Niels was silent a long time, for he felt a shyness about what he wanted to say. “Mother,” he said, “we are not so poor as you think. Some day the ship will come in.—If you would only believe that and believe in me.... Mother—I am a poet—really—through my whole soul. Don’t imagine this is childish dreams or dreams fed by vanity. ”

“ From this beginning, their intimacy developed quickly and definitely until they had become quite indispensable to each other. Each led only a half-hearted existence without the other.
Then it happened one morning, as Niels was starting out for a sail, that he heard Madame Odéro singing in the garden. His first impulse was to turn back and scold her, but before he could make up his mind, the boat had carried him out of hearing; the wind tempted him to a trip to Limone, and he meant to be back by midday. So he sailed on. ”

“ As time passed, many things that had not dared to show themselves while Erik was there began to raise their heads. Imagination strewed its bright flowers through the humdrum calm of an eventless life. A dream atmosphere enveloped Niels’s mind, bringing with it the provocative fragrance of life, and, hidden in the fragrance, the insidious poison of life-thirsting fancies.
So Niels grows up, and all the influences of his childhood work on the plastic clay. Everything helps to shape it ”

“ He who can make the most perfect one shall be my master-smith; but he who loses shall forfeit his life."
Niels was well satisfied with this agreement. He went home, packed up all his things, and bade his master farewell. The smith would gladly have made all good again, but Neils appeared not to understand him, and went his way. He engaged with another master, and began cheerfully to work on the sword.
When the appointed day arrived, both Niels and his former master met at the palace, and the master produced a sword of the most beautiful workmanship that anyone could wish to see. ”

“ Niels had travelled two hundred miles to bring aid, and here he sat feeling his impulse put to shame, while the colder side of his nature looked on. For what could he do, when it came to the point? What if he tried to talk picturesquely to Erik, in many words of purple and [207] ultramarine, dripping with light and wading in shadow! There had been a dream of something like that in his brain when he started out. How utterly absurd! To bring aid! You might perhaps drive away the goddess with the closed hands from an artist’s door, but that was certainly the utmost ”

“ That was all, but it was enough, for in a flash like lightning, the past and present and future were transformed for Niels Lyhne by the consciousness that he loved the woman standing by his side, not as anything bright and sweet and happy and beautiful that would lift him to ecstasy or rapture—such was not the nature of his love—but he loved her as something he could no more do without than the breath of life itself, and he reached out, as a drowning man clutches, and pressed her hand to his heart. ”

“ No one can tell where Niels Breakpeace is; and the algrev is constantly cruising on our coasts; to say nothing of the marsk, at Möllerup."
"He is a knight, and not a highwayman; and Niels Breakpeace is no general. A prudent robber will never rub against the king's arm; and no pirate will venture within the coast-guard. So long as Sir John and I are not afraid of highwaymen or rebels, you may make yourself quite easy, my good Skirmen." ”

“ This they finally agreed to, and thus Niels was enabled to come to Utah with a company of Saints which left Copenhagen May 17, 1866.
Before mentioning the details of the journey or his life in Utah it may be appropriate to revert to some things that tend to illustrate the character of Niels. He is possessed of a strong and independent mind, fixed convictions and marvelous will power for one whose body is so frail. His spirituality is highly developed; but one would not know it from his manner. He is never exuberant, enthusiastic or talkative, but sedate, reserved and self-possessed. ”