Full resolution (JPEG) - On this page / på denna sida - Part one - VIII
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speak to her own father, with a passionate longing to keep him
alive, but she felt she could not do it alone; she knew him only
through her mother. By and by Jens Winge became dead to
her too, and since he had been the centre of her conception of
God, and heaven, and eternal life, all these faded away with
his picture. She remembered quite distinctly how, at thirteen,
she had listened to the Scriptures at school without believing
anything, and because the others in her form believed in God
and were afraid of the devil, and yet were cowardly and cruel,
and mean and common — in her opinion at least — religion
became to her something despicable, cowardly, something
associated with them.
She got to like Nils Berner against her will; she preferred
him almost to her mother in the first period of their married
life. He claimed no authority over his step-daughter, but by
his wise and kind, frank ways he won her over. She was the
child of the woman he loved — that was reason enough for him
to be fond of Jenny.
She had much to thank her stepfather for; how much, she
had not understood till now. He had fought and conquered
much that was distorted and morbid in her. When she lived
alone with her mother in the hothouse air of tenderness, care,
and dreams, she had been a nervous child, afraid of dogs, of
trams, of matches — afraid of everything — and she was
sensitive to bodily pain. Her mother dared scarcely let her go
alone to school.
The first thing Berner did was to take the girl with him to
the woods; Sunday after Sunday they went to Nordmarken, in
broiling sunshine or pouring rain, in the thaws of spring, and
in winter on ski. Jenny, who was used to conceal her feelings,
tried not to show how tired and nervous she was, and
after a time she did not feel it.
Berner taught her to use map and compass, he talked to her
as to a friend, and he taught her to observe the signs of wind
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