When does the morning dawn?
When the strength that glows through
Sorrow and storm, awakens
The sun in thy soul, so thy bosom
Warmly
Embraces the world in this cause:
To be truly good to each and all!
Then it is morning,
Bright, clear morning.
The greatest strength thou knowest,
And the most dangerous too--
Is it that thou would'st have?
Yes.
Both voice and accompaniment were peculiar. Ragni exclaimed: "Oh, how
it all floats away!"
Kallem asked whose words they were--evidently a woman's? Tilla answered
that it was taken from a newspaper; it was doubtless a translation. But
when the others had left them, Ragni confided to Kallem that the
"woman's words" was one of her translations! His cousin had got it into
a Norwegian-American paper; and from that it had gone further still.
This coincidence was sufficient to make Kallem go the very next day to
Karl Meek--and three days later the latter, with his piano, books, and
clothes, was established up in a large attic in Kallem's house, the one
that looked out to the park. Kallem had overcome Ragni's strongest
opposition.
V.
From that time there sat at their table a tall, long-haired individual,
with legs twisted round those of the chair, with long red fingers
always covered with chilblains, and so clammy that Ragni could not
touch them. Nor could she bring herself to speak to him after what
Kallem had told her about him; all the good and prepossessing qualities
that she had seen in him at their first meeting had been effaced by
what she had heard. He entered the room quickly, as if he had practised
it, and then his coat or his sleeve caught in the door handle, or he
did not shut the door the first time he tried, or his legs tripped him
up, or he dragged a chair along with him, or knocked up against the
servant who had just put down something on the table and was leaving
the room. He never looked anyone in the face, his really fine eyes were
sleepy and dull, his cheeks were ashen-gray; he studied the patterns on
the plate, on the Chinese bread-basket which stood in front of him. He
never uttered a word; if anyone spoke to him he was so startled that he
answered "yes" or "no" as if he had hot cinders in his mouth. But he
ate--according to Ragni's way of reckoning--like a carpenter's horse.
And then, when he wiped his clammy hands on his trousers or up in his
thick greasy hair, he was worse than Kristen Larssen.
This disgusting youth at her table every blessed day, and in the
evenings Kristen Larssen! To say nothing of all the old women Kallem
brought in to her so that she might supply them with warm woollen
things; children, too, who sometimes were to be clothed from top to
toe--his tuberculous friends!
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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