Last Tales (26 page)

But she, who had been the dedicated victim of his picture, today sat in the wood, ever white-clad, and talked of their disaster as if it had been the tragedy of a hero and a heroine in a book. For a long time he remained silent, with the ring of her voice in his ear.

“And what was now,” she asked, “the story of your father and the peasant? I do not quite remember it. You might tell it to me.”

“I have never told it to anyone,” he answered.

“Who, then, told it to you yourself?” she asked again.

He searched his mind and was surprised to find that he could not answer her question.

“I do not remember,” he said, “that it was ever told to me. I must have heard it when I was a very young child.”

“But it has been in your thoughts all your life,” said she. “It is time that I should hear it, here in the wood.”

It took him some time to fetch up a recollection which was stored so deep down in his being. When at last he spoke, his words came slowly, and more than once in the course of his tale he had to stop to collect his thoughts.

“There was,” he began, “on my father’s land a peasant named Linnert. He came of a very old peasant family, which had always belonged to us, and it is believed that many hundred years ago the farmstead of his people had stood where our house does today stand, and that the foundations of it were still existing deep down in the ground. Through the ages these peasants had all been handsome, ingenious and deep, and many tales were told about their extraordinary physical strength. For these reasons my own people had been proud of them—such as you said just now that the old lords of the land would be proud of their peasants—yet none of them had ever been in service in our house. This Linnert was born the same year as my father, and since my father had no brothers or sisters, the peasant boy was taken on as a playfellow to him.

“Now,” he went on slowly, “in telling you this tale of mine I can give you no explanation why things in it happened the way they did. I have tried to find an explanation. I have been wondering if there might be found, deep down, some reason for the happenings. I have imagined that there might be a woman at the bottom of them. For the maidens of that old peasant stock were cow-eyed and red-lipped, as its young men were hardy and chaste, and my father was a lusty youth, and might well have cast his eye upon a pretty girl on his own estate. But I have found nothing of the kind, nothing at all. I can only, in going through my story, state that things happened in this way—that it was so.

“There was at that time,” he took up his account, “south of
the manor house and overlooked by its windows, a stretch of grassland on which the peasants’ cattle were wont to graze together with my father’s. Later on the peasants ceased to bring their cattle there, and my father had the land included into the park.

“Now one summer the rain failed, the grazing dried up, and the peasants suffered much loss. My father himself had to take home his young stock to feed it in the byre, and upon this occasion his cowmen by mistake took with them a small black bull-calf that belonged to Linnert. Linnert on the next day walked up to the manor and claimed his calf back. My father, when it was reported to him, laughed. Linnert, he declared, was a clever fellow, to charge his master’s cowmen with theft, and so increase his stock. He would have to be rewarded for his inventiveness. So my father had a fine big calf brought from his own byre and handed over to Linnert. Here, he made his people tell him, he had his calf back. But the peasant refused to take it, declaring that it was not his, and remained standing by the byre all day waiting for his own calf.

“Next morning my father had a fine young bullock led down to Linnert’s lot and once more made his cowmen tell the peasant that here he had his calf back. But it fell out as the first time. Linnert came back with the bullock on a rope. ‘This fat young bullock is not mine,’ he said. ‘There shall be justice on earth. My small calf was not half so big, nor half so handsome. Give me back the small black bull-calf of mine.’ And just as the day before, he remained standing in the farmyard till late in the evening, waiting for his calf.

“My father by that time had a very magnificent full-grown bull, which he had bought at a high price in Holstein, but the animal was vicious and had gored a cowman to death. His neighbors had warned him that he would have to part with it, but he had answered them that he did still have people on his land who could manage a bull. Now he bid three men—for a lesser number dared not take on the job—
to lead the bull down to Linnert’s byre, and sent a message with them. ‘If this,’ he had the peasant told, ‘is your own animal, which I have unlawfully taken from you, it is hereby returned to you with my apology. But if it is not yours, and if you yourself are such a great man as to know that there shall be justice on earth, surely you will be great enough to bring it back to me on Sunday evening.’ For Sunday was my father’s birthday, and as was his custom he was giving a dinner party to ladies and gentlemen of the neighborhood. And he thought it not impossible that Linnert might indeed bring home the bull before the eyes of his guests.

“All these things happened in the month of August, and for a week the weather had been exceptionally hot and sultry.

“Already on Saturday morning, while my father was being powdered, the people in the farmyard cried out loudly: ‘Here comes Linnert riding on the Holstein bull!’ My father ran to the window to see a sight, the like of which he had never seen, for Linnert came through the farmyard gate and up the courtyard, astride the bull as if he had been a hack. The bull was covered with dust and froth, his sides went in and out like a pair of bellows, and blood ran from his nose. But Linnert sat up straight on his back, his head high. He reined up his mount in front of the tall stone stairs, just as my father came out of the front door, his head only half powdered.

“ ‘You are the bonny horseman,’ my father cried, ‘and I shall have you rechristened, for a peasant’s name no longer befits you, but you will have to be named after him who brought the wild bull of Crete alive to Peloponnesus!’ He took a step down the stairs and added: ‘But why do you come today? I bade you come tomorrow, when I should have had all the fine people of the isle here to see you.’ ‘I thought,’ Linnert answered, ‘that when your bull and I had got you to look at us, we needed no more people.’ My father went down the last steps. ‘Then this is like one of our earliest games,’ he said, ‘and I shall drink a cup of wine with you, Linnert,
and have you take home the silver cup filled with rigsdalers.’ ‘And one of our last games, I think,’ said Linnert. And with that he did indeed turn the bull and make him walk down the courtyard to the byre door. My father had his powdering finished.

“But one hour later the cowherd came up from the byre and reported that the bull had died. As the herd had set him in his stall, the blood had run thicker from his nose, he had sunk on his knees, and a little later he had laid his head on the floor. And then he had died.

“ ‘And what is Linnert doing,’ my father asked, ‘for whom I have been waiting here to drink with him?’ The cowman answered that Linnert, just like the other day, was waiting in the farmyard.

“My father had Linnert brought before him.

“ ‘You have ridden a bull to death,’ he said. ‘It is a deed of which people will be talking for a hundred years to come. If now he is your own bull, it is all your own affair, and the meat and the hide will be yours. But if the bull was mine, you will have to pay me for him. To whom of us, now, did the bull belong?’ ‘It was not my bull,’ Linnert answered, ‘and I did not come up here to get a bull, but to have justice.’ ‘You shame me, Linnert,’ said my father, ‘for I thought that in you I had not only a strong man, but a shrewd one. But here you tell me that I have given you more than your due, and yet you go on asking me for what I cannot give you, seeing that it is not to be found on earth. Now I ask you again, for the last time: To whom of us did the bull belong?’ Linnert answered: ‘That big bull was yours, and it is the small black bull-calf that is mine.’ ‘Have it your own way,’ said my father. ‘You have then killed my best bull on me, and you will have to pay for it. And since you are so keen on riding, you shall ride once more today.’

“The timber-mare, which had not been used for many years, was still standing in front of the barn. My father had Linnert lifted onto it. It was a hot day, and in the course of
the afternoon it grew still hotter. When the shadow of the barn reached the timber-mare, my father had it dragged out into the sun.”

Eitel for a moment stopped in his tale. “My father,” he repeated, “had it dragged out of the shadow into the sun.

“It was the habit of my father,” he again took up the story, “in the afternoon to go for a ride in the fields. As this afternoon he passed the timber-mare and the man upon it, he pulled up his horse. ‘Say the word, Linnert,’ he said. ‘When you call to mind that the bull was yours, my men will take you down.’ Linnert answered not a word, and my father lifted his hat to him and rode out of the yard.

“Once more, as my father came back from his ride, he stopped by the timber-mare. ‘Have you had enough, Linnert?’ he asked. ‘Yes, I believe that I have had enough,’ the peasant answered. At that my father had him lifted off the timber-mare.

“ ‘Are you then,’ he asked him, ‘going down on your knees to kiss my hand and thank me for my mercy?’ ‘Nay, not that,’ answered Linnert. ‘My small black calf I could touch and smell, but I smell no mercy on your hand.’ At that same moment the clock on the stable struck six strokes. ‘Then set him up again,’ said my father, ‘and let him sit until he splits in two.’

“As now the dusk fell,” Eitel continued, “my father looked out of the window and saw that the peasant had fallen upon his face on the plank. ‘Go, Per,’ he said to his valet, ‘and have Linnert taken down.’ The valet returned. ‘They have taken down Linnert,’ he said. ‘He is dead.’

“It was found that the bull had gored Linnert and broken two of his ribs. There was blood standing under the timber-mare.

“This matter became known and talked about, and it caused my father some trouble. For things were no longer, in his days, what they had been in the days of my grandfather or my great-grandfather, when the masters could do as it
pleased them with their servants. A complaint was put before the King himself. But my father had not known that the man had been gored by the bull. And so in the end no more was done about it.

“That is how it happened,” said Eitel. “I have told you the story you wished to hear.”

Both the young people were silent for a while. “But that story,” said Ulrikke, “happened many years before you were born.”

“Yes,” said Eitel. “It happened ten years before I was born.”

“How is it then,” she asked, “that you come to think of it today?”

“I can tell you that too,” said he. “I have come to think of it today because this morning I was told that the grandson of the peasant Linnert had been sentenced to death for the double murder of a keeper and his boy, and is to have his head cut off in Maribo tomorrow, at noon.”

She shuddered slightly at the gruesome news. “Alas, poor creature,” said she. “But what,” she asked after a moment, “has that got to do with your father and the peasant?”

“I shall go on with my story,” said Eitel, “and tell you what it has got to do with my father and the peasant.

“As you know,” he said, “my mother was gentle and kind to everyone. She had, I believe, been grieving over this matter, although it happened ten years before she was married to my father. It came to pass about the time when I was born that Linnert’s daughter was left a widow with a babe at her breast, for the peasants, as you know, marry young, and Linnert by the time of his death had been married for ten years. My mother then may have bethought herself of the old story. For she sent for the peasant woman who like herself, was nineteen years old, and took her on as a nurse to her own child. I have been told that my mother’s lady friends did warn her, fearing that Lone might have kept her own
father’s death in mind, and now might be hard to my father’s child. But my mother answered them that she thought too well of human nature to fear any such thing. If that was finely spoken, it was a fine thing as well that her trust was never betrayed. I told you, just now, that in my life I had loved one human being besides you. It was of this woman, of Lone that I was thinking.”

“Is she still alive?” Ulrikke asked. “And is it for her sake—poor woman—that you grieve today?”

“Yes,” he answered, “as far as I know she is still alive. She stayed with us until I was seven years old, and they took on a tutor for me. Then she married our parish clerk, and later on she went with him to Funen. Yes, it is for her sake too that I grieve today.

“For in telling you of Lone,” he went on, “I am, as I said just now, only going on with my story. Lone was well treated in our house, she had fine clothes and a pretty room next to the housekeeper, and among all the servants she was my mother’s favorite. And Lone repaid my mother’s kindness according to her means. Those two young widows, the mistress and the servant-woman, were, I believe, truly devoted to each other. When my mother died, Lone, they say, did not speak a word for a week, so deep was her sorrow. My mother’s friends by that time had had to take back their words of misgiving about the peasant woman: when I grew up so strong, they now said, it was Lone’s milk that I had got to thank for it, it was Linnert’s strength that she was passing on to the child she nursed, and I, too, might come to ride home a bull some day! I have not thought of Lone for a long time; today I have thought of her. She was always with me, since my mother was too delicate to have me about her, and I have seen her in my mind like a big hen covering me with her warm wings, sitting by my bedside when I was ill and concocting strange sweet and bitter medicines for me, and I have remembered the songs that she sang and the fairy tales that she told me. For in her family they all had a gift for
poetry, and the young men made up ballads, as the old women preserved the myths and legends of the isle.”