FICTION.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 1212, 24 May 1895, Page 8

FICTION.

OLE LARDAV’S SON-IN-LAW.

\ByC. J. CUTCIiIFFE Hyne, in the Pall Mall Magazine. I. Carnegie threw back tne breach-block of his Remington and blew softly down the barrel. A puff of blue smoke crawled out into the moist air and floated upwards between a spruce and a mountain ash. Then he slipped in a new cartridge, and broke his way through a dead tauyle of fallemmines to a clearing in front. The open space Was green and level as a tennis-lawn; but that the smooth grassy surface served merely as a cloak to abominations below was being demonstrated then with clearness. The great e p£—the meget stor buk —had skimmed tar and wide the rotten surface crust and was wallow-j-Qcr jxi a dish of weak blacK soup, daubing it with scarlet streaks in its ponderous deathstruggle. The heavy cloven feet battled witn the morass, churning up a horrid compost ot blood and peat sludge ; and the brown Homan nose drooped and sent forth twin grey clouds of fog, whereof each pair was less tuan the Pr Kismet°and the bullet were working their SP Then that elk, with' a mighty, quivering effort, rose to its feet and lay back the heavy branching antlers on to its flanks for one more look at the . leaden heavensi above So standing, and gazing with its small eyes aloit, it died, and fell with a great splash on to the swamp, and the little brown water-] ots fountained up for a dozen yards around and the whole clearing swung in undulating waves. The great ten-tined 1 buck was dead to a poacher’s shot, and Carnegie sighed in pain because he was. being born into a new phase of existence. It was the nearest approach he bad ever, made- to earning an honest livelik°Time was when Carnegie had owned covers in Cheshire, and stocked them with handreared pheasants ; those being the days when he belonged to the Four-m-hand Club, and always built a new forty-tonner every year, owned the Villa Cecile at Cannes ; and then, of course, he. saw absolutely no difference between stealing meat alive and lifting it from a butcher’s counter.. But when he got utterly and entirely stone-broke, and, by way of doing an original thing, chose neither The States,°nor Australia, nor the Continent in which to hide his discredited features, but vanished by preference into Northern h orwav then his. ideas naturally toox a radical change in this matter. Ho told himself that the elk were for the mso ei all men, as much as was Earth’s envelope of air; and when, after a few days, lie settled down steadily to -poaching as a profession, he enlarged these theories of common stock by adding salmon to the list, and salmon-trout, and lake-trout, and river-trout, and red char together with rime and other fowl, in all abundance. He knew perfectly well that tho law ol the land appointed dose - time for the great deer throughout all the year, except on the days between September Ist and October 16th, and also that each farmer looked upon the legal -laying of an elk as an integral portion of his veMly revenue ; and, further, that the lord ol soil laid claim to the other ferae 7iaturce, sealed, furred and feathered alike ; but Carnegie saw fit to jump these claims, and took his abode in a deserted sailer hut, iully purposing to live the life which the Parcm aeemed to order, ...... , . The summer farm round the little log cabin had long been deserted and overgrown, and the forest shouldered it from sight. The Knot lay in a high mountain valley, with steep flanks of grey stones, up which no man could pass; and the lower end was coated by a fjord lake, and the upper end abutted on the bare wilderness on the jjeld. The Arctic Circle sliced that YtUey somewhere in the middle ; and, although the mark did not obtrude unduly during the bright summer months, in winter it was coldly apparent. Occasionally Carnegie humped a pack of drv and crackling skins on bis back and tramped across into Strommen, where he exchanged his peltries for coffee and gunpower bv truly barbaric barter; and i| he bad brought in the trophies of a bear, lie drew forty krone head-money, and got drunk on aqulvlt, by way of variety. But, for the most part, he remained within his own selfappointed marches, and lived on fish and •venison dry and fresh, ptarmigan from the upper ground, and, when they were not too deadly with turpentine, the capercailzie, which hustled about like clumsy turkeys amongst the upper branches of the pines. The amber and scarlet cloudberry, and the acid bjorn-matte, and the few other wild fruits of the North, were the only and rare variations to his animal diet; and, as,the moans succeeded one another, so did Carnegie climb down the social grades. Every day ho became, less like the conventional English gentleman, and more similar in his habits to the Lapland folk, who were his only neighnot be supposed that whilst living in the saler hut .he saw these nomads at all -ftreauently. It is one thing to be on calling Sms with a family of laps and Quite Another to find them. They may be always at -home to yon, and grateful tor a visit and a Shat - but since their life is one long circular tour, made up of spasmodic stages, individuals Ire by no means easy to come across. Imthe wilderness of bare, rounded mountains, where they tend their flecks, tho Lapland folk seldom leave spor which any but a Lap can read.

11. In a more exclusive neighbourhood, Carnegie’s introduction to the lady who afterwards became his wife might have, seemed to lack formality. It was she who made the first advances ; but his bashfulness was not without its reasons. He was out on high ground that day after game, and m the early morning had sighted elk way off on the next hill flank. He moistened a finger and held it What there was of a breeze blew towards him—he would have to make a long Circuit to get to windward. A two-tkousand-vard ravine lay in the bee-line, the crossing cf which was a matter of time and muscle; as the country beyond was for the most mart bare, he had to follow a baelc course, which led him widely. But he had a trained hunter’s patience, and plodded on for the hest Sti'll, the stalk was long, and when it -came to an end, he was minded not to miss his shot. 5 The oik had lain down amongst eome fern on a low ridge, and he could only .*ee the round of the back; but a bullet ’tbrou (y ti tie spin© is a safe shot, if an unusual one, and Carnegie debated carefully as to whether the range was a hundred and twenty yards or a hundred and fifty.

At last he settled the detail, and drove his elbows into the ground and cuddled the stock of the Remington with his chin. The barrel lay as steady as an iron paling, and lie had the sights on one another, fine to a hair. He did not fire immediately; he raised his head once and peered at the mark again. The second look seemed to satisfy him, and once more he aligned the sights and began slowly to press home the seven-pound trigger. Then the elk began lazily to move ; and although the air was keen with frost, perspiration hopped out upon Carnegie’s face as he had known it to do outside Shepherds’ on a hot afternoon in Cairo. The elk rose to its hind legs, took in the situation, and laughed. Carnegie, who had net put eyes on a fellow human being for three months, felt inclined to bolt. The elk strolled up and started chaffing him on the ill-success of his stalk; and because the month was April, and he was of necessity poaching, she felt a kindliness towards him, coming of an old poaching stock herself. Taking Carnegie for a Namsdalen native, she mentioned, in local Norsk, that she was ‘ Finnef

She was a queer, muscular little creature, barely four feet high, wearing- tight trousers of reindeer skin, a short woollen frock, cut low at tho neck to show a striped undershirt, and carried on her yellow hair a mitre cap of pink and brown. She said her name was dost Lardav.

Now, Jost —Yost —is, in English, Joceline, and the Lardavs are a fine old Lappish family. They were also a fine family, and, comparatively speaking, just as old when the Caesars ruled in Rome and London dandies wore blue paint for evening dress. In fact, they were one of the oldest families in the world, and ti-adition says that they came through Noah’s flood on a private iceberg of their own. That night Jost shared the hospitality of Carnegie’s sailer hut, and the next day took him to make a formal call on her people. The tribe was small, as, indeed, it always had been. Ole, the chief, was a shrivelled old gentleman with amber-coloured skin, who spent most of his time cowering in the smoke of a small fire of birch and heather sticks, but who was still equal to casting a spell over some valley farmer’s cattle for a suitable consideration. Time was when he had carried fame in Namsdalen as a warlock of repute ; hut the market for modern literature and scepticism has increased in these latter years, and the demand for practical sorcery has grown sluggish. There was also Egni, his wife, a tiny old mummy, who was never dissociated from a short tobacco pipe and a strong odour of personal uncleanliness. And there were three small girls. These, with Jost, made up the tribe, and looked after the herd of rensdyr, which numbered three hundred and forty head. Once there had been men in the tribe, but they had died ; and now, under Ole, and the great comprehensive Devil who constituted their religion, Jost was in supreme command. Of what immediately followed this first introduction I am not minded to speak in detail, except to mention that Carnegie deserted his sceter hut and camped with the tribe, not invading their conical tepee , hut sleeping o’ nights in the open. By some critics his wooing might have been styled anticipatory; but it is hard to judge him by our canon. When the drawing-room where a man and a woman meet is God’s open mountain crest, with rock for carpet and seats, and living, moving deer for the pictures, and the winds of heaven for the rustle of curtains and drapery, then there must of necessity crop in passages which would fall unseemly on tho ears of smug and orderly householders. But, bo this as it may, tho result arrived at was the result which women crave for all the Christian world over.

Carnegie entered into the compact with his eyes open. He was fully aware that he was mating himself with one of an inferior race ; ( that he ought to be thoroughly ashamed of himself for so doing ; yet he felt no sense of shame at all, but, on the contrary, one of complacency and even elation. He went into the quaint little Lutheran church, which they had tramped so far to reach, and saw Jost in all her. bravery of new leather breeches fastened over heavy laupavsko, and now grey frock and brilliant shirt, and brilliant mitre-cap, with massive silver jewellery on her stumpy fingers, and her weatherbeaten little face all aglow with pride—and ho felt only an easeful satisfaction. And afterwards, with the other tribesfolk from the fjeld, at the weird dance they had in that big log-walled room hired for the occasion, where the stove was red-hot and the tin paraffin lamp stunk from the centre beam, and Norsk farm hands poerei, ourious and contemptuous, through tho doorways, he capered to the squeaks of the fiddle, and still felt no shamo. The Laps did not dance as do the higher race who live in the lowland valleys, and are the best peasant dancers on earth. The antics of the dwarfish nomads were uncouth beyond words; but though Carnegie saw the grotesqueness of it all, and the way even the country boors despised him, he did not mind. He had left the world behind. Upon only one point had he the slightest mental worry. ‘ Jost,’ he said, after they had regained thew vagabond camp, and the ceaseless herding of the deer had recommenced, ‘ Jost, that

shindig down yonder cost sixteen lcroner (17s 2d). Where on earth did you raise tlio money? I’ve never seen so much as a copper atpongst you here.. Or was it that the other Pinne who came to see the show handed round the hat for our benefit ?’ _ All this, of course, being put in the Norsk idiom. .Tost repudiated the idea of charity with great scorn. ‘ The money,’ she said, ‘ came from our store. It is my father’s now, but when he dies it will come to you—through mo.’ f Oh !’ said Carnegie, ‘ I see. A small skin purse lie carries in that frowsy old knapsack, I suppose ?’ dost laughed. ‘ Old Lardav is on in years now,’ she said, ‘ and feeble. But he was strong once, almost as strong as thou ; yet even then he could have carried but little of his wealth upon his own shoulders.’

Carnegie iiilgcl ms eyeurows. ‘lt is true,’ said Jost. ‘With five others to help him, he could not have carried it away. Some day you will Eee for yourself.’ ‘ Why not now ?’ Jost considered; but Carnegie drew her to him and kissed her upon the mouth. ‘ If my father wills,’ said Jost.

111. The way was long, and they had spent four nights on the road, sleeping under the lee of biishes which grew some fifteen hundred feet above tree-line. Always on the fjeld, a Lap cares little for the lower ground. And they came to a narrow glacier, trickling its frozen stream down a black pass in tbe mountain. ‘ Here is the place,’ said Jost. She pointed to a spot where a spur had canted away the moraine stones into the centre of the stream,

P and a little bay of rock was filled, as it were, with a backwater of clear green ice. Carnegie looked down stupidly. ‘ How can it be there ? You must be wrong. You have forgotten. There is no cleft or cave here.’ Jost laughed in triumph. . ‘ That is why no man has robbed us in ail these thousands of years. You hear of the store ; you see smooth rock walls, with never a crack and scarce a stain of lichen; you think you must have missed the place ; you go away. Now come down with me. They made a circuit and clambered down on to the ice, and then, going to the backwater in the rocky bay, knelt and stabbed at it with their sheath-knives. An evening sun shone down the gully, and the splinters gleamed like cascades of diamonds; and as tho pit deepened round their feet they heard muffled groans which poured from out the heart of the glacier. These were the ghosts in the ice, Jost said —clammy, resistless ghosts, who strangled thieves ; as they had done through thousands ot years. And wnen at last the knives had slashed their way to the lip of the cave, Carnegie almost believed her. , , .. ‘ The opening is large enough now, said Jost. ‘Go in, and you will see what we have. Every year, when the time comes, my people drive their rensdyr to the big towns, to Trondhjem, to Namsos,_to Tromso, j and slaughter them, and sell their meat for money. Somo little we spend on coffee and sugar and the like ; the most we lay aside here, and have done, through countless time. Some is in the krone of to-day ; some in the coin of the older Norskmen. But there is other wealth, which I do not understand things fashioned from gold and. silver, and weapons, and shining stones. Theso, so my folk tell, were bartered in the old days from wild men who sailed the seas in rowing ships and raided other people’s land. And there is yet other ’ Carnegie missed the rest. He had clambered down into the cave, and, by the pale light which came through the ice, was looking at a hoard the like of which _ no Englishman has ever seen before. Tlio coined wealth was great, but there was sufficiently little of the miser about him to gloat but slightly over that—then. It was the. precious metals in other form which held his eye—candlesticks, ladles, swordhilts, bowls, crucifixes, chains—the spoil of viking foray, if ever such a thing had been. So this was the way those old Norsk pirates had victualled their galleys ! This was the way those petty, huckLtering nomads hoarded their useless wealth ! And behind him the ghosts moaned through the green ice ; and Jost was whimpering because she feared them. ‘Oh, come away, dear,’ cried Jost. And Carnegie came, and puckered his forehead whilst he helped shovel bank the ice-splinters into the pit. ‘lt will always be safe there,’ said Jost, when they had finished. * Yes,’ said Carnegie ; ‘ I don’t think strangers will break that cache.' Jost did not know what ‘ cache ’ meant, hut she forbore to ask. Carnegie’s face was clouded, and from that day he was a changed man. When, in the months that followed, Jost went out with him at night and they lit their fires at the edge of some dark lake and took the fish that came, she often feared that ho w»s going mad. ~ ... The summer wore through, and m the tall Ole Lardav died. ‘ Now,’ said Jost to her husband, ‘ you are chief.’ But Carnegie only nodded. His gloominess had increased upon him ; and during the next winter, when they gave np their tent and lived in a sod house, ho scarcely ever uttered a word. His wife vaguely felt her racial inferiority, and puckered her grimy brow in search of a remedy. When spring broke the snows again, and Carnegie said he needed change, Jost was almost pleased to let him go ; she trusted ho would return in better mind. But though she took a bright farewell of him, her great love made her pray that his return would be soon. ~ . . Jost watched her husband s .figure tade into the mists of the mountain with but little misgiving; and, turning- away, sot out to catch a lemming for the midday meal. It is tho custom of the Laps to give little thought to either Past or Future ; and custom rode Jost heavily. But had she seen the man one morning-, some fortnight afterwards, she > would have been less at her ease. Ho was on a small wooden coaster, just then steamingaway from Namsos town, and he was sittingat the table in her saloon, luxuriating over seven kinds of cheese for breakfast, together with tbin rod sauSages, which swam about in a slop of yellow oil. ‘My faith !’ said Carnegie, ‘ civilisation does taste good again. Steward, bring mo Bayersk (1)1.

IY. The Smartest Man in London chose another cigarette from his friend's case, bade him * ta-ta,’ and sauntered leisurely off down Pall Mall. Except that he frowned once when a passing hansom threw a tiny spec of giey on his patent-leather boot, he was looking blissfully at peace with all the world —especially that integral portion existing under his own sleek hat; and as he turned in at the door of the Smartest Club in London, another friend commented on his beatific appearance. ‘ I wish you could tell a fellow liow you do it/ said tiie friend. Carnegie nodded and smiled, and walked up the steps, but stopped beside the hall porter, who said, ‘ Parcel for you, sir.’ ‘ Norwegian stamp,’ was Carnegie’s comment, as he took the dirty packet gingerly against his gloves ; and then he noted the postmark, and said no more. He went upstairs to a room which he guessed would be empty, found it so, and shut the door. Then he cut the string, and stripped the paper wrapping from the parcel. Beneath was a covering of green skin, made fast with a thong; and when this, too, was removed, there dropped out with a iaint thud on to the Persian carpet the strangest letter which the Smartest Club in London had ever held within its exclusive walls. It began with no conventional phrase, it ended in no conventional signature ; it was without date, without address; it _ was just such another communication as might have passed from hand to hand in the early days of Tyre —except for the wrapping, which boro paper stamps and the caligraphy of a fin-de-siecle postmaster. It was a picture-letter, rudely scrawled on stone. Yet ten written pages couid not have said more —every crude jag of the stylus went straight to the reader’s heart; The dewdrops were leaping out on his face again now, as they had done that day when lie had so nearly shot Jost for an elk. She had been little to him then, but wbat was she now? Jost still —and —the mother of his child : a son —the picture-writing said so. He thrust the stone and its wrapping from him, and sinking his forehead into his hands, , tried to think j then got up and strode about

the room ; then ordered drink, and threw it, untasted, into the fireplace, glass and all. Then he mounted a chair, and, putting the stone and its odorous skin wrapping on the top of a bookcase, left the Club, and sought the clatter of London streets, going East by the Strand. At Ludgate he turned and strode back again, savagely jostling the passers-by. His scowling face made the gamins of the streets turn and jeer ; his warring shoulders made the women step aside to avoid him. Again he reached the Club, and, again mounting to the little room upstairs, rang the bell violently. A waiter came —to receive a furious curse for loitering and a demand for Bradshaw. The man brought the book, and Carnegie snatched it from the tray. He turned to the ‘steamer sailings’ at the end, first from Hull, and then Newcastle. Then he looked at his watch, started, and rushed off again downstairs. ‘ Yes,’ he muttered to himself, ‘ I can just catch the boat, and I will —I must. Great God ! To think of my going back to all that foul squalor again—I, who have got back my old life ! I have all this money—this huckster’s hoard which has come down through the centuries. It has bought me back the old place, helped me once more to take my station as a civilised gentleman, redeemed me from living as a loathly savage. I suppose anyone but a fool would cleave to the goods the gods have given.’ He laughed, and slashed at a mirror with his cane. ‘But I always was a fool. I can’t leave Jost. And ’ —here he shuddered till the hall porter could scarcely preserve his sphinx-like immobility —‘ and I can’t bring her out of that cold hell—that is the ghastliness of it all. It would be death to try it—to me, at any rate.’ Then Carnegie got into a hansom, and was driven away from this paper.