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RAGNA
A NOVEL
By MADAME ANNA COSTANTINI
New York
STURGIS & WALTON
COMPANY
1910
All rights reserved
Copyright 1910
By STURGIS & WALTON COMPANY
Set up and electrotyped. Published April, 1910
RAGNA
BOOK I
CHAPTER I
We see her first, a tall child with wind-blown hair standing on therocky point of a barren promontory where fjord and ocean meet, wild asthe sea-birds that circle about her head—indeed at this time wildnesswas the keynote of her nature. The household tasks and lessons disposedof, she spent the rest of the day in rambles over the rugged countryside, or in exploits that kept the older members of the family inbreathless suspense. It was she who mounted bareback the unbroken horsesin the pasture, she who sailed her boat down the foaming fjord in theteeth of the storm. Danger heightened her enjoyment, and true descendantof the vikings of old, she looked her best, lithe and straight,breasting the gale, the joy of the struggle gleaming in her sea-blueeyes, flushing her cheeks, her long golden hair flung out on the windlike a triumphal banner.
Her home was a long, low, timber house, sheltering amid pines and firs,under the lee of a high rocky hill, a home built for the long northernwinters, the long months when the country lay snow-bound. The winterafternoons and evenings were spent in sewing or embroidery, when thefather or the mother read aloud, or grandmother told tales of the OldTimes, and of the family. The favourite was that of brave young UncleOlaf, who had sailed to the frozen North in his whaler, never to return.Grandmother always wept at the end of this tale, and father would wipehis spectacles and gaze intently into the fire, but to the children itwas a splendid myth, and on clear days they would climb to the bareheadland to the north of the house, and stand looking out to sea,watching for Uncle Olaf with his ship, bringing home treasure untold.
To Ragna especially, Uncle Olaf was an embodiment of the spirit ofadventure and of the sea; he became in her imagination a sort of "FlyingDutchman," doomed to sail forever and ever the Northern Seas, passingthe fjord and his old home in the whirling storm, doomed never to bringhis ship into port, never to rest in the haven where he fain would be.She loved him, the tall, beautiful young sailor, with the waving fairhair and deep-set blue eyes, and she imagined him amongst hisgrey-bearded seamen,—they would grow old, but he, never. Some days whenshe took her boat out in the open water, beyond the sheltering fjord,she would imagine that far away against the dark horizon, against thegathering storm-clouds, she saw the phantom vessel, flying before thewind, all sails set, half veiled in the blowing scud. Her two sisterswould talk of when Uncle Olaf should come home, of the riches he wouldbring, and the wonderful tales of adventure in far countries he wouldtell, but only Ragna knew that he would never come, that his mysteriousdoom was to sail on and on till the Judgment Day, longing for peace andhome, family and joy, but never to find them; seeing his comrades growold and grey, and die—but himself, always young, always stretchinglonging arms toward the happiness and rest he might never attain to—andso on and on for eve