The pair darted forward along the narrow paths traced back and forth upon the mountain, skimming from terrace to terrace, from line to line, with the rapidity of a barb, that bird of the desert.Presently they reached an open space, carpeted with turf and moss and flowers, where no foot had ever trod.
"Oh, the pretty saeter!" cried Minna, giving to the upland meadow its Norwegian name."But how comes it here, at such a height?""Vegetation ceases here, it is true," said Seraphitus."These few plants and flowers are due to that sheltering rock which protects the meadow from the polar winds.Put that tuft in your bosom, Minna," he added, gathering a flower,--"that balmy creation which no eye has ever seen; keep the solitary matchless flower in memory of this one matchless morning of your life.You will find no other guide to lead you again to this saeter."So saying, he gave her the hybrid plant his falcon eye had seen amid the tufts of gentian acaulis and saxifrages,--a marvel, brought to bloom by the breath of angels.With girlish eagerness Minna seized the tufted plant of transparent green, vivid as emerald, which was formed of little leaves rolled trumpet-wise, brown at the smaller end but changing tint by tint to their delicately notched edges, which were green.These leaves were so tightly pressed together that they seemed to blend and form a mat or cluster of rosettes.Here and there from this green ground rose pure white stars edged with a line of gold, and from their throats came crimson anthers but no pistils.A fragrance, blended of roses and of orange blossoms, yet ethereal and fugitive, gave something as it were celestial to that mysterious flower, which Seraphitus sadly contemplated, as though it uttered plaintive thoughts which he alone could understand.But to Minna this mysterious phenomenon seemed a mere caprice of nature giving to stone the freshness, softness, and perfume of plants.
"Why do you call it matchless? can it not reproduce itself?" she asked, looking at Seraphitus, who colored and turned away.
"Let us sit down," he said presently; "look below you, Minna.See! At this height you will have no fear.The abyss is so far beneath us that we no longer have a sense of its depths; it acquires the perspective uniformity of ocean, the vagueness of clouds, the soft coloring of the sky.See, the ice of the fiord is a turquoise, the dark pine forests are mere threads of brown; for us all abysses should be thus adorned."Seraphitus said the words with that fervor of tone and gesture seen and known only by those who have ascended the highest mountains of the globe,--a fervor so involuntarily acquired that the haughtiest of men is forced to regard his guide as a brother, forgetting his own superior station till he descends to the valleys and the abodes of his kind.Seraphitus unfastened the skees from Minna's feet, kneeling before her.The girl did not notice him, so absorbed was she in the marvellous view now offered of her native land, whose rocky outlines could here be seen at a glance.She felt, with deep emotion, the solemn permanence of those frozen summits, to which words could give no adequate utterance.
"We have not come here by human power alone," she said, clasping her hands."But perhaps I dream.""You think that facts the causes of which you cannot perceive are supernatural," replied her companion.
"Your replies," she said, "always bear the stamp of some deep thought.
When I am near you I understand all things without an effort.Ah, I am free!""If so, you will not need your skees," he answered.
"Oh!" she said; "I who would fain unfasten yours and kiss your feet!""Keep such words for Wilfrid," said Seraphitus, gently.
"Wilfrid!" cried Minna angrily; then, softening as she glanced at her companion's face and trying, but in vain, to take his hand, she added, "You are never angry, never; you are so hopelessly perfect in all things.""From which you conclude that I am unfeeling."Minna was startled at this lucid interpretation of her thought.
"You prove to me, at any rate, that we understand each other," she said, with the grace of a loving woman.
Seraphitus softly shook his head and looked sadly and gently at her.
"You, who know all things," said Minna, "tell me why it is that the timidity I felt below is over now that I have mounted higher.Why do Idare to look at you for the first time face to face, while lower down I scarcely dared to give a furtive glance?""Perhaps because we are withdrawn from the pettiness of earth," he answered, unfastening his pelisse.
"Never, never have I seen you so beautiful!" cried Minna, sitting down on a mossy rock and losing herself in contemplation of the being who had now guided her to a part of the peak hitherto supposed to be inaccessible.
Never, in truth, had Seraphitus shone with so bright a radiance,--the only word which can render the illumination of his face and the aspect of his whole person.Was this splendor due to the lustre which the pure air of mountains and the reflections of the snow give to the complexion? Was it produced by the inward impulse which excites the body at the instant when exertion is arrested? Did it come from the sudden contrast between the glory of the sun and the darkness of the clouds, from whose shadow the charming couple had just emerged?