Seven Gothic Tales (55 page)

“Mr. Anders,” she said, “in those weeks after Easter, when we were much together in the Councilor’s house, at that picnic in Rungsted—do you remember?—you told me that it would be your happiness to remain here, as my friend, all your life.” He did not speak. Those weeks after Easter hurt when you thought of them, and they might kill if you spoke about them. “Are you such a faithless friend?” she asked.

“Listen, Madame Fransine,” he said, “I dreamed of you two nights ago.” At this she smiled, but was much interested. “I dreamed,” he said, “that you and I were walking to a great seashore, where a strong wind was blowing. You said to me: ‘This is to go on forever.’ But I said that we were only dreaming. ‘Oh, no, you must not think that,’ you said. ‘Now, if I take off my new bonnet and throw it into the sea, will you believe that it is no dream?” So you untied your bonnet and threw it from you, and the waves carried it far away. Still I thought that it was a dream. ‘Oh, how ignorant you are,’ you said, ‘but if I take off my silk shawl and throw it away, you must see that all this is real.’ You threw back your silk shawl, and from the sand the wind lifted it and carried it off. But I could not help thinking that it was a
dream. ‘If I cut off my left hand,’ you said, ‘will you be convinced?’ You had a pair of scissors in the pocket of your frock. You held up your left hand, just as if it had been a rose, and cut it off. And with that—” He stopped, very pale. “With that I woke up,” he said.

She stood quite still. She had much faith in dreams, and had felt herself walking with him on the seashore of which he had just told her. But now she was collecting all her arsenal to keep him, for she really thought that if she were to lose him she would die. She would cut off her left hand for him, if he wanted it, but it were better that it should be under his head. In the clear and sweet evening air she felt her own body strong and light as a young birch tree, her slim waist pliant as a branch, her young breasts resting lightly, like a pair of smooth, round eggs, in the nest of warm and fresh lawn. Her flaming gaze was so deeply sunk in his, and his in hers, that it would take a powerful crane to lift them apart again.

She lifted the Venus’s lower hand just a little and held it toward him, slowly, as if it had been a heavy weight. He stretched out his hand and touched her finger tip. It was exactly the gesture of the Creator of Michelangelo transmitting divine life to young Adam. Such various reproductions of high classic art were moving about, in the evening, in the kitchen garden of La Liberté.

They heard the Councilor stirring in his seat, laying away his book and gazing up into the crown of the tree. Slowly, without a word, Fransine turned and walked along the terrace toward him, and Anders followed her with the basket of lettuce and peas.

The Councilor still had a finger in the book, at the page where he had last been reading. “Ah, Fransine,” he said, “here I have been smuggling into the academy of refinement of La Liberté a little
sans-culotte
of literature. The young author has been put into prison for it in Germany. That is right. Punish the flesh and let the spirit fly. Since the professors of universities have confiscated the poet, we may enjoy his poetry. I am speaking frivolously,
my dear,” he went on, “but upon an evening like this, the moralist cuts a poor figure. And what really captivated me was a curious incident, a very minor matter. For it seems to me that Gutzkow gives, in the meeting place of the rash young lovers, an accurate description of your own little temple of friendship, at La Liberté, down in the beech wood.”

With these words he got up, and went to have tea with his bride, leaving the book on the seat under the linden.

Upon the last day before his wedding the Councilor paid no visit to La Liberté. This is considered the correct thing in Denmark. The bride is given the last day to meditate in peace upon the past and the future, and the bridal couple meet again only in church. The Councilor also had much to do, and spent his day going through papers and making arrangements with his subordinates, so as not to have the first days of his honeymoon disturbed by prosaic matters. But he sent over young Anders with a large bouquet of roses. It was a fine summer day.

In the evening, after sunset, Anders took his gun and went out to shoot duck. The Councilor, also, found no rest in his rooms, and started for a long walk, as may a bridegroom, filled with sentiments. He took the road across the fields to La Liberté, to roam, unnoticed by the world and by her, in the nearness of his bride.

The sky of that summer night was a clear candid blue, like the petal of a periwinkle. Large silvery clouds were towered up all around the horizon; the big trees were holding up their severe dark crowns against them. The long wet grass was of a luminous green. All the colors of the day were within the landscape, no less bright than in daytime, but changed, as if revealing a new side of their being, as if the whole world of color had been transposed from a major to a minor key. The stillness and silence of the night was filled with a deep life, as if within a moment the universe would give up its secret. As the old Councilor looked up, he was surprised to see the full summer moon standing in the
middle of the sky. Its shining disc threw a narrow bridge of gold across the iron-gray plane of the sea, as if a shoal of many hundred little fishes were playing in the surface; and still it did not seem to spread much light, as if no more light were needed.

Now that he knew them to be there, however, he began to distinguish the transparent pools of shadow under the trees, which the moon was making, and the narrow little puddles along the road, just at the edge of the long, wet, and fragrant grass.

The Councilor found that he had been standing for some time, looking at the moon. She was a long way off, he knew, but there was nothing between her and him but the diaphanous air, thinner, he had been told, the higher you got up. How was it that he had never been able to write a poem to the moon? He had much to say to her. She was so white and round, and the white and round things he had always loved.

Suddenly it seemed to him that the moon had as much to say to him as he to her. More, or at least she expressed it with more power. Old, yes, he was old; so was she, older than he. It is not a bad thing to be old, he thought; you see and enjoy things better than when you are young. It is not only in the old wine that the bouquet lies; it wants an old palate as well.

But was this powerful communication from the moon a warning? He remembered the nursery tale of the thief who has stolen a fat sheep and is eating it in the moonlight. Mockingly he holds up a bit of fat mutton to the moon, crying:

And the moon replies:

Whereupon a red-hot key comes flying through the air and brands the face of the thief. That story must have been told him by his old nurse fifty years ago. Everything was in the night. Life, yes, and death, a
memento mori
somewhere. “Take care, death is here!” the moon said. Must he let himself be warned?

Or was it a promise? Was his old self to be lifted now, like to Endymion, to be rewarded for the trouble of life by an everlasting sleep, sweet as this night? Would the world then have a statue erected to him, here in the hayfield of La Liberté, in memory of his apotheosis?

What strange fancies were these? The dripping-wet, heavy-headed, honey-sweet clover brushed against his shins. He had a curious sensation of walking a little above the ground. There were cows lying or walking in it somewhere; he could not distinguish them in the moonlight, but their deep sweet fragrance was in the air.

Suddenly he remembered something that had happened more than forty years before. Young Peter Mathiesen, a reserved, speculative boy then, had been staying with his uncle, the parson at Mols, and in the same house a little girl, a farmer’s daughter, was being prepared for her confirmation. His uncle had been a well-read man who talked about everything—God, love, life everlasting—and who was an enthusiast about the new romantic literature. They used to read poetry in the evening at the parsonage, and one night, because the little girl’s name was Nanna, it had amused the pastor to make the children take part in the recital of the tragedy
Death of Baldur
, and to address to each other the burning, passion-sick verses of Baldur and Nanna. With his glasses pushed back the old parson had listened, transported, with that kind of shamelessness which also makes old maids grow hyacinths in tall glasses so that they may watch the roots, and had not known that the country children were burning and turning pale under the sound of their own voices. When bed time came the boy had not been able to go to bed. Hot and bewildered, he had wandered
about the farm buildings, seeking for something which might wash off this touch, and he had come down to the stables. It was a moonlight, misty night in early spring. Leaning against the wall, he had felt terribly lonely, and not only lonely, but betrayed, as if something were lying in wait for him. Then he had come to think of the cows inside, and of their imperturbability in the darkness. There was one big white cow, by the name of Rosa, which had been a favorite with the children. He had felt that she might give him comfort. Within her stall, his chest against the side of the reposing, gently chewing animal, a sweetly penetrating calm and balance had come upon him, and he had made up his mind to sleep with her all night. But hardly had he lain down in the straw when the stable door was opened gently, and a soft step approached. As he peeped over Rosa’s back he saw the little girl come in, dim and light in the dim moonlight. She had been unhappy like him, he thought, and had felt that only a cud-chewing animal would have power to give her back her peace of heart. The moon shone in through the little stable window—that same moon—turning the white-washed wall milk white where it struck it. The girl’s fair hair glittered under its touch, but he was in the dark, and he kept very still, like a fugitive in danger of discovery. He watched her kneeling down in the straw, so close to him, breathing so hard. He was not sure that she was not sobbing a little to herself. They had lain there for several hours of the short spring night, sometimes sleeping, sometimes awake, with the tranquil, sweet-smelling Rosa between them like the two-edged sword in the poem of chivalry. Many thoughts, many pretty and strong pictures had run through the boy’s head When he had slept he had dreamed of Nanna, and when he had woke up and had raised himself to look at her, she was still there, unaware of his presence. Very early in the morning she got up, brushed the straw from her skirt, and was gone, and he had never told her that he had been there with her.

The Councilor walked on, pleased. He thought of Count
Schimmelmann’s quotation: “He is the fool who knows not the half to be more than the whole.” This long-forgotten incident was a little flower in his life, in the garland of his life, a field flower, a wild forget-me-not. There were not a few flowers, violets, pansies, in his life. Would this night put a rose into the garland?

A little way from the garden of La Liberté, in the hayfield, there was a beech grove. In the corner of it, upon a mound, a lady of the manor who had, a hundred years before, been partial to the quiet and sweet solemnity of the spot, had had a little summer house erected, a temple to friendship. There were five wooden pillars which carried a domed roof. Two steps led up to it, and a seat ran along the inner side of the columns, in a half circle. From here you could see the sea. Later on, since the climate of Denmark is not always in harmony with Greek architecture, the one side of the building had been thatched to give shelter to the meditator. The whole place was now dilapidated, and in the daytime a little tristful, but below the full moon it looked romantic.

He turned his steps toward the little temple as a harmonious spot for the dreams of a bridegroom, but he walked slowly and with prudence, for his young bride might have had the same fancy, and if so he would not frighten or disturb her. As he came nearer, however, voices coming from the mound made him first stand stock-still, then move along quietly, following the sound. For the second time a lurker in the grounds of La Liberté, he took care to approach without a sound, behind the thatched wall.

Anders and Fransine were together in the temple, speaking softly. The young man sat on the seat, immobile. The young woman stood up opposite him, her back against a pillar. The moon was shining on them; the whole world around them was light, like a landscape under snow. But the old Councilor was in the deep shade of his hiding place. Indeed, he was like that statue of himself about which he had recently been dreaming. Statues also, sometimes, see a lot.

The young woman had on an outlandish garment, a sort of
black domino or opera cloak, which he had never seen in her possession, and which she was holding closely together about her. Her dark hair hung down, a live, odorous mantle, and her face within it was like a white rose, dew-cool, in the night air. He had never seen her look so lovely. He had indeed never seen any human being look so lovely before. It was as if the whole summer night had brought forth one flower, the epitome of its beauty. She seemed to sway a little, like a flexible branch, too heavy with the weight of its white roses.

There was a long silence. Then Fransine gave a low laugh of happiness, as soft and sweet as a dove’s cooing.

“They are all lying down,” she said, “like dead people in a churchyard. Only you and I are afoot. Is it not stupid to lie down?” She twisted a little in her cloak. “Oh, I am tired of them,” she exclaimed, passionately, “talking, talking always. I wish to God they would lie forever, so that we could be left alone in the world a little.” The sweetness of the thought seemed to overwhelm her. She drew in her breath. She stood still, waiting for him to move or answer her. After a while she asked him, her voice still filled with laughter and tenderness: “Anders, what is the matter?”