Winter's Tales (25 page)

I did not mind going away, but I wondered what the people in the parsonage were thinking of me. The parson would be sadly disappointed, for all his life he had preached against the licentiousness of his parish, and since I had been his pupil for such a long time, he had come to look on me as his own work. Gertrud might forgive me, for she was a country girl, and used to country ways, but she would take pains to keep the matter from Mene, and might also try to hold the girl herself away from me.

One afternoon when my father had gone to Vejle, I was in the library taking out some books, when the door was opened and Alkmene stood in the doorway. Our library turns north; she had the sun behind her, and her hair shone like a flame. She asked me: “Is it true what they are telling about you and Sidsel?” I was surprised to see her, for she had never before come to the manor alone. But she asked so forcibly that I had to answer. “Yes,” I said. She cried out: “How dare you, Vilhelm!” Now it was a queer thing that I had for some time felt a grudge against the girl, as if, in what happened to me, she were at fault. As now she began to speak in
the very words of the grown-up people, with a heavy heart I asked her to leave me alone. But she did not listen; she came into the room, her face all aflame with agitation. “How dare you?” she cried once more. I then remembered that with her you could generally take the words to mean just what they said. I realized that she was asking me a question, to be enlightened, such as she often did. I could not help laughing. “Perhaps,” I said, “it does not take as much courage as it will seem to a girl.” She looked at me, gravely and proudly. “You will be going to hell now, do you not think so?” she said. “They all tell me to go there,” I said. “My father has turned me out of the house; your people will not speak to me. You and I, Alkmene, might remain friends for the time we have got left.” “Has your father turned you out?” she asked. “Have you no home now? Then I shall come with you. We can go on the high roads together. And then,” she added, and drew her breath deeply, “I shall do something, so that we shall not have to beg. I shall learn to dance.” “Nay,” I said, “I am going to my uncle at Rugaard.” At that she grew very pale. “Are you going to your uncle?” she said. “I thought that they had chased you out in the wide world. I thought that nobody had ever done such a bad thing as you have done.” All the time I was getting happier about things. “Why,” I said, “you, who have read about the Greek gods, will know that such things have happened before in the world.” “No,” she said, “they will not let me read those books any more. They will not tell me anything. What am I to do now?” At that moment I saw clearly that she and I belonged to one another and I came near to ask her: “Will you wait for me until I come back, Alkmene? Then nobody shall part us again.” But I thought of how young she was, and it seemed to me that the moment was not well chosen. She stood before me and wrung her hands. “Will you,” she asked, “write to me? No,” she interrupted herself, “it is only in books
that people ever get a letter. But if you do a terrible thing once more, will you write of it to me?” “I shall come back in six months,” I said. “Do not forget me, Alkmene.” “No,” she said, “I cannot forget you. You are my only friend. Do not forget Alkmene, Vilhelm.” At that she was gone, as suddenly as she had come. A few days later I went to Rugaard.

Of my life at Rugaard I shall not write, since this is a story about Alkmene. The country seats in Djursland lie close to one another. I met many young people of my own age, and did not often think of people or things at home. But here also I dreamed about Alkmene.

When I had been at Rugaard for three months I had a letter from my father, who complained about his gout, and told me to come back. I did not give it much attention until I got another letter of the same kind; then I went home.

The first question that my father asked me was whether I had been making love to my cousin at Rugaard. He seemed pleased when I told him: “No,” and rubbed his hands. “There are things going on here in your old district,” he said; “there are great changes at the parsonage.” I asked him what he meant, and he answered: “You had better go down and find out for yourself. These people were always such friends of yours.” The next day I walked down to the parsonage.

The parson was alone in the house; his wife and daughter had gone on a sick-visit. He had changed, even as my father had said. He was grave, much occupied with his own thoughts, and I reflected that this was how he would have looked in those young days of his that he had told me of. He had forgotten all about the sad matter of Sidsel and greeted me kindly. After we had talked of other things for some time he said: “You ought to know, Vilhelm,
what has come to us here, at your old parsonage,” and went on to recount the happenings to me.

The old professor, his friend, had written him, shortly after my departure, to let him know that his adopted daughter had—by what ways, as usual, he could not or would not tell—come into an inheritance, just as if she had entered, he wrote, the wonder-cave of our immortal Oehlenschlager’s
Aladdin
. In loyalty, he wrote on—the professor was always great on loyalty—to the first bargain between them he would endeavour no persuasion, but would leave to his friend to decide whether, on behalf of the girl, he would accept or refuse the fortune.

The parson said that he had thought the question over before he had taken his decision. “And it is a queer thing,” he remarked, “that in what concerns our girl, my wife and I never seem to see eye to eye. Gertrud would not take the money. Now if it had been a smaller amount, it is possible that the arguing would have been all the other way round; she might then have been happy to see the girl secured in life, while I should have preferred to leave her as she was, of our own circumstances, a village parson’s daughter. As it is, the greatness of the heritage frightens my poor wife.” The parson here gave me the figure very precisely; it was over three hundred thousand rixdollars. “Gertrud cannot but feel that such a pile of gold must needs spring from a demonic source. To me, too, it has become a different thing.”

He sat for some time in thought. “I have never,” he said, “eagerly desired money. It did not even enter into the dreams of my youth. Other things I have craved and prayed for, but gold held no temptation to me. But in this case it takes on a new aspect; it becomes a symbol. I have seen it,” he went on. “I went to Copenhagen, and there, in the bank, the gold was shown to me. I touched it. It lies dormant there, awaiting the hand which is to turn it into reality.
How much good can one not do, with a fortune like that, in this world? Mark, Vilhelm,” he said, “I ignore not the power of Mammon. As I touched it, I recognized the danger which is in gold. But if it is to be, here, a trial of strength between God and Mammon, should I decline to take on the championship of the Lord?”

I asked the parson if Alkmene knew of her good luck. Yes, he answered, she had been told. She was a child still; it made but little impression on her; from her manner she might have known of it all her life. The work then was the more sacred to him, as he was undertaking it on behalf of a child. Indeed, he added, he had known from the first that through Alkmene some great task might come to him. “And when I am dead,” he said, “I shall live on in her good works, for there is great strength in the lass, Vilhelm.”

His speech gave me much to think about. It made me laugh to myself. I reflected that I did, perhaps, know Alkmene better than her father did.

My father, when I came home, questioned me eagerly on my visit, and I told him most of what the parson had told me. “And did you,” he asked, “demand the girl in marriage?” “No,” I said. “You are a fool,” said my father. “A fortune like this compensates for the obscurity of her birth; it does, in some way, throw a new light upon it. You may well, in return, give her your name.” As I did not answer him, he began to hold forth on the merits of the girl, like a horsedealer with a horse, and I was surprised to learn how well he had observed her, the while I believed him never to have given the parson’s child a thought. In the end, although I rarely spoke my mind to him, I told him that I should think it highly inelegant in me to come and propose to Alkmene, on the news of her inheritance, when I had never before given her people reason to believe that I would do so. My father repeated that I was
a fool, and in our discussion got very heated. At last he declared that if I were imbecile enough to refuse my chance, he himself would ask the girl to marry him.

I am ashamed to tell he really did so, and in a very silly manner. He had the team of four, which was seldom used, harnessed, and drove down to the parsonage to ask for Alkmene’s hand. What happened in the interview I do not know. I doubt if my father did ever succeed in making clear to the parson and his wife the errand on which he came. But even after his failure my father kept on going through those improvements and embellishments of the estate, which might be worked with the girl’s money. By all this he so much tired and annoyed me that I went away again without having seen Gertrud or Alkmene.

The next piece of news which I received from my home was that the parson had died. For many years his health had been weak; the journey to Copenhagen in the middle of winter had much exhausted him. There he caught a cold that developed into pneumonia. At his funeral I was struck by the deep grief of all his parish over their shepherd. Gertrud, in her great sorrow and distress, told me of his patience during the illness, and of how, on his deathbed, he had seemed to have a sudden and splendid revelation, and cried out that now he understood the ways of the Lord. She showed me a newspaper that had been sent her from Copenhagen. It contained an obituary of her husband, and was so strong in its praise of his character, on the role which, had he had ambition, he might have played on the stage of the world, and on his talents as a young man that it surprised even me, who held so high an opinion of him. The article was unsigned, but both she and I took it to have been written by his old friend, the professor.

After some months, during her year of grace at the parsonage, Gertrud went away to stay with a sister of hers, who was ill. My
father, at the same time, had gone to Pyrmont for his gout. Alkmene was alone at the parsonage, as I at the manor. She then sent me a message and asked me to come down to see her.

She was now fifteen years old, tall for her age, but slight, and much like herself when she had first come to the parsonage. She said to me: “Do you remember, Vilhelm, that you once promised me that if ever I asked you to do me a great service, you would do it?” I recalled the occasion, and asked her what it was she wanted of me. “I want to go to Copenhagen,” said she, “and you must take me. It shall be done now, while my mother is away. But I only want to stay there for a day.” Now this was not easy to carry out. With the journey there and back, we should have to be away for a week, and nobody must find out. But Alkmene was determined to go, and, as I had once promised, I could not now refuse to help her. I also thought of what a sweet adventure it would make. So I did as she asked. She first went to friends in Vejle, and there, one early morning, I joined her at the stopping place of the coach. Luckily, neither in Vejle nor later did we meet, amongst the passengers, anybody we knew.

It was the month of May. The country through which we drove was freshly unfolded and green; the woods gave gentle, delicate shade. In the early mornings it was cool and dewy, but the larks were already in the sky. When we stopped at Sorø, in the spring evening we heard the nightingale. As now I look back upon the journey, I believe that I must by then have made up my mind to make Alkmene my wife, if she would have me, for I was most careful of her good name. Wherever we went I gave out that the pretty girl was my sister, and there was nothing in our manner to make people doubt my words. But my heart was filled with more pleasure and excitement than a brother’s. I reflected that I had never been happy till now. I pictured to myself how in the future
we would often travel together. The girl took in the swiftly changing scenery as eagerly as a child. The sea in particular, as on the second day in sunshine and a light breeze we crossed the Great Belt, set her beside herself with wonder and exultation. The mysteriousness of our destination only, and at times something in her face, caused me a vague uneasiness.

I had been to Copenhagen more than once. I had, before we arrived, fixed on the hotel where we would stay. It was a quiet place. We came to the town in the afternoon. The girl looked at the people in the streets and at the women’s dresses, but she did not say much.

When we had had our evening meal at the hotel, I asked her to let me know why she had come to Copenhagen. She then took from her bag the newspaper which, after the parson’s death, Gertrud had shown me, and said: “That is what I have come for.” Upon the last page there was a paragraph about a notorious murderer named Ole Sjælsmark, who was to have his head cut off on the common north of Copenhagen. The paper told that the public would be given access to the execution. It also gave the date and the hour of the execution, and it was the next morning.

As I read this a great fear took hold of me. I saw and understood clearly that the forces amongst which I had been moving were mightier and more formidable than I had guessed, and that my own whole world might be about to sink under me. I said to the girl: “Such a thing would be terrible to watch. Many people hold that it is a barbaric custom to let the crowd make an entertainment for themselves out of a man’s suffering and death, however horrible are the things he has done.” “No,” said she, “it is not an entertainment. It is a warning to the people who may be near to doing the same thing themselves, and who will be warned by nothing else. Now the sight of this man’s death will hold them from becoming
like him. My father,” she went on, “once read to me a poem about a girl who had her head cut off. I remember what she said. It goes like this:

“Now over each head has quivered
  
The blade that is quivering over mine
.