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.
“For God alone knows all,” she said. “And who can say of himself: of this deed I could never have been guilty?”
In the early morning Alkmene and I drove out to the North Common, a long way. By the scaffold a great crowd was already gathered, mostly rough and common people, but there were many women amongst them, and some had even brought their children. As we worked our way through the throng, they stared at the graceful, deadly pale girl on my arm. But then again they turned their eyes to where, in their midst, the dreadful structure was raised above the ground, with the executioner and his assistant already waiting.
When the cart, with the doomed man and the prison chaplain in it, came along, slowly, over the heads of the people, Alkmene trembled so heavily that I put my arm round her, and, although I was myself terrified and sad, it gave me a sweet content. The murderer sat with his face towards us. For a moment I thought that his eyes were seeking the face of the girl. The chaplain mounted the scaffold with him, and there took his hand and spoke to him, before he made him kneel in front of the block, and himself stood back to let the executioner take his place. A moment later the axe fell.
I thought that Alkmene would sink to the ground, but she kept upon her feet. The crowd now thronged round the scaffold, many of them dipping bits of cloth in the blood, which is held by the common people to cure the falling sickness, but we went away.
I had not slept that night, and the awful sight had made my hair rise on my head. I supported the girl, but I did not find a
word to say to her. On our way back, while the day became clearer, I remembered the plans which, on our journey, I had made to show Alkmene the town, and I laughed at myself for being such a pitiful figure, a dunce. Still I said to her that before we went away—for I had promised to take her back that same evening—we ought to see the King’s palace. So when we had left our cab at the hackney stable, we went there on foot. I could not help seeing how well she walked in the street, how graceful and grandly she carried herself in her little village dress and bonnet. And when we stood before the palace, and she gravely gazed up at it, I reflected that she had been born to live in a place like that.
While we stood there, an old man came along with a big bouquet in his hand, gazed at the girl as he passed, and, when he had walked on a bit, turned and came back to pass her and gaze at her again. I recognized him, although he was very old and crooked, and was also now dyed and painted, for it was the professor. I saw him following us at some distance, through the streets, and as we entered the hotel he kept standing before it, looking at the windows. I thought: “He is now going to deliver his bouquet, to whomever it is meant for, and then he will come back. But then, according to my promise to her, we shall have gone.”
It happened that at the hotel I met a man I knew, who told me of a ship leaving for Vejle that same evening. I thought that it would be the easier to travel by sea, and I also was loath to pass, backwards, the very road by which we had come to Copenhagen. So when we left the hotel we took the way to the harbour.
It was a fine spring evening with a gentle southern wind as we sailed up the Sound. We sat on the deck and watched the coast; we saw a few lights spring up both on the Danish and the Swedish coast, and we kept sitting there most of the clear night. Alkmene had taken off her bonnet and tied a shawl round her head. When we had sailed past Elsinore and the castle of Kronborg, the moon came up.
I said to her: “I thought that you and I might have kept together all our lives, Alkmene.” “Did you think that?” said she. “It is late to speak of these things now.” “There was never really anything to make me doubt,” said I, “that it might be so.” “Nay,” said she, “I have learned now that there are so many ways of looking at things. You, you speak about my life now. But before, when it was time, you did not try to save it.” “But I want to ask you a question,” I said. “Have you not known that I loved you all the time?” “Love?” she said. “They all loved Alkmene. You did not help her. Did you not know, now, all the time, that they were all against her, all?” I thought her words over for a while. “To me it was a joke,” I said, “a thing of fun. Nay, I think that I did even feel sorry for them. It never occurred to me but that you were the stronger.” “Yes, but it was not so,” said she. “They were the strongest. It could not be otherwise when they were so good, when they were always right. Alkmene was alone. And when they died, and made her watch it, she could stand up against them no longer. She could see no way out, but she must die, too.” She sat very still, and she looked small upon the ship’s deck. “And can you not,” she asked me “not even now say: ‘Poor Alkmene’?” I tried to, but it would not come to me. “Will you remember,” I at last asked her, “that I am your friend?” “Yes,” said she, “I shall always remember that you took me to Copenhagen, Vilhelm. That was good of you.”
I brought her back two days later, and nobody in the parsonage guessed but that she had been with her friends in Vejle all the time.
A short time afterwards, my father wrote to me to join him in Pyrmont, as he was ill and dared not undertake the journey home alone. It seemed to me that I had nothing to do at Nørholm; so I went. At Pyrmont my father and I each had a letter from Gertrud, who communicated to us her decision to leave the parsonage before the end of her year of grace. For her daughter had bought land in the west country, with a small farmhouse to it, to keep sheep there. Gertrud was no great letter writer. To my father she wrote humbly and gratefully. But in my letter I read, between the lines, an appeal for enlightenment: why had things gone the way they had? There was also, there, a dumb anguish, as if she were, in her heart, frightened at leaving her home, and at going out in the world, alone with her daughter. I did not see that I could set her at rest. I wrote back, thanked her for many years’ kindness to me, and said good-bye.
I have not much more to tell in this story about Alkmene.
Sixteen years after our journey to Copenhagen, it happened that a matter of business took me out westwards, to the district where Alkmene’s farm lay. My road ran close to it. I thought that I might call in, and turned off by the narrow, rough road to the house.
I drove through a wide, lonely landscape, with moors, bogs and long hills. It was a day in late August; the clouds hung low; it had rained, but towards evening a wind rose, and the sunset was fine. On my way I met a bullock-cart, loaded high with sacks, and reflected that it would be Alkmene’s wool. The farm, when I came there, had a big barn and some stables, with a number of tall stacks round it. The house itself was a long, low, thatched building. All was neatly kept, but very poor. An old man and some children stared at me, as if it was a rare thing to see a visitor here. As I drove up before the door, a peasant woman, in bare feet, with a small shawl round her head, came out through the stable door, and it was Gertrud herself.
Gertrud had aged. She no longer had her slim waist or rounded bosom, but was square like a stack of firewood. Her bony face was tanned, as if all her small freckles had run into one, and she had lost a tooth or two. But she was still light-footed and clear-eyed, an upright, genial old farm wife.
In the lonely house any visitor might have been welcome, but Gertrud was as pleased to see me as if I had been her son. She was alone on the farm, she told me. Alkmene had driven to Ringkøbing with wool, and to put money into the savings bank—indeed, I ought to have met her on the road. She took me into the best room, which was obviously never used, and went to make coffee, the which she did solemnly fetch from a secret small box behind the chest. While I was alone I looked round. Everything here was clean, but very poor. I thought of the past, and of the girl I had then known, and a kind of dread came upon me.
Over our coffee Gertrud and I talked of old days. She had a keen memory for people and places, but the events had become blurred to her. She confused their succession, as if she had not talked or thought of them for a long time. She asked me if I had married. I told her that I had been engaged to my cousin at Rugaard, but that after my father’s death we had agreed to break off the engagement.
Afterwards we got on to the farm and the sheep. She asked my advice on a sick lamb, recalling how I had doctored the cow in the parsonage. She and her daughter were doing well, she said, after the first few years in which they had made mistakes and had been cheated. They had increased their stock, and every month Alkmene went to Ringkøbing and put money into the savings bank. But they were still working hard, from sunrise to night, and allowing no waste at all. They had but poor help from the old man who was their only farm hand. Gertrud became animated as she talked about the sheep; she had two roses in her cheeks, and she made use of a bold, straight language, which I had not heard from her before. I reflected that the sheep and the landscape here would have taken back Gertrud to her childhood and early youth, and that I was, in reality, speaking to the young country lass, whom my old tutor had fallen in love with. In this way, too, her daughter with her had taken the place of her mother, so much that she might even, when her back was turned, play a small trick on her with the secret box and the coffee.
I had heard much of Alkmene’s parsimony. During these sixteen years the rich woman on the lonely farm had become a kind of myth to the country, and people were a little afraid of her; they held her to be mad. Everything round me here went to confirm the rumours. I saw, then, how old we had all grown; the world seemed to me an infinitely sad place, and I fell to wonder both bitterly and amusedly whether Gertrud might not, in the innocence and activity of her nature, find good meaning, and something to do, in hell as we
ll.
I asked Gertrud what they were going to do with all the money that they were collecting from month to month. Gertrud swept off my question indulgently as if I had been a child. “It would have been a good thing to my poor father, had he had that money in the savings bank, would it not?” she asked. When after a while I came back to it, she took upon herself to preach a little to me: “The world, surely, is a dangerous place, Vilhelm,” she said, “and what better thing will we find in it than that hard, honest work which the Lord has set us here to do? We should not question.”
Still my remark had touched a theme to which she had perhaps herself, without speaking, given consideration. She became thoughtful and after a time she confided to me that Mene was too sparing on her own behalf. She was kind to her mother; I must not but think so, but she was so hard on herself.
Gertrud looked up at me, the net of fine wrinkles in her face contracted. Her eyes for a moment shone the brighter with two small tears. She took my hand and pressed it. “Vilhelm,” she said. “Do you know? She has got no shift on!”
THE FISH
IN THE WINDOW within the fathom-thick wall a small star stood, shining, in the pale sky of the summer night. The restfulness of this star made the King’s mind restless; he could not sleep.
The nightingales, which all evening had filled the woods with their exuberant, rapturous singing, were silent for a few hours round midnight. There was no sound anywhere. But from the groves round the castle came, through the open window, the scent of fresh, wet foliage; it bore all the woodland-world into the King’s alcove. His mind wandered, unhindered and aimless, within that silvery land: he saw the deer and the fallow-deer lying peacefully amongst the big trees, and in his thoughts, without bow or arrow, and without any wish to kill, he walked up quite close to them. Here, maybe, the white hind was now grazing, which was no real hind, but a maiden in hind’s slough, with hoofs of gold. Farther on, in the depths of the forest, the dragon was asleep in a valley, his terrible, scaly neck under his wing, his mighty tail stirring faintly in the wet grass.