by Isak Dinesen
Lone thought the matter over and again began.
“I laid, then,” she said, “my own child, my son, in the basket, and I walked up to the house, and I had to stop from time to time, for my own child was heavier than the other. There was a full moon, so that the road was clear and light all the way. The next morning I told the maids in the house that the child was not well, and that nobody must come into our room, and in this way I was alone with him for a week. Her sweet ladyship had me called before her bed every day, so that I might tell her how things were with the child, and I told her that it was well with the child. She asked me if I wished to go home to see my own child, but I answered her that I had already sent it away from my house, to the house of people of mine.
“The week after,” she went on, “the christening was to be held. On that day a lot of great people came to the house, and the old Countess of Krenkerup bore the child to the font. I drove to the church in the same coach as her, with four horses. I held the child on my lap, and only in the porch did I give it over to her. And as now I heard my son christened Eitel after the master’s father, and Johan August after the master himself, in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost, I said to myself: ‘Now that is done which cannot be undone.’ ”
At these last words the woman colored faintly as in pride or triumph.
“And why should you have wished it done,” Eitel asked.
Lone laid her right hand upon the table. “For this reason,” she said. “When her ladyship first sent for me, to give suck to the child, and I walked up through the farmyard, I passed the timber-mare.”
“The timber-mare?” said Eitel.
“Yes,” said Lone. “It was still standing there, in front of the barn. Her sweet ladyship had wanted it taken away, but the master had said no. I had never till that day been up to the house, but as I walked past it, by the side of her ladyship’s lackey who had been sent to fetch me, I remembered how, when I myself was ten years old, they had brought back my father from it. And on the evening of the day when my child had been christened in church, when all the fine guests were gone and the house was dark, I once more walked down to it. I laid my right hand upon that hard wood, as now I have laid it on your table, and spoke to my dead father and said to him: ‘Now your death has been paid for, Linnert.’
“And do you believe me now?” she asked.
“No, I do not believe you,” he answered. “I could not believe you if I wanted to.”
Lone drew her breath deeply, looked round the room and again looked at him.
“This is the one thing that I had never thought of,” she said slowly and dully, “that when I told you my tale you were not to believe it. I had thought that you yourself would remember how I carried you from our own house to the house of the master.”
She stood sunk in her own thoughts. “That house of the clerk’s in Funen,” she went on, “I was never really in it. It seemed to me that all the time I was over here, with you. But it was not in this great house of the master’s that we lived together. It was in that old farmhouse of ours, the old people’s house, which is standing deep down below. Down there I held you in my arms, and we spoke together sweetly. Is that what you tell me now, that you have never been down there?”
“You know yourself,” he answered her, “that I have never been down there.”
Once more she was silent. “There was one more, though,” she said, “who at the time guessed something of this, and who might bear out my tale. That was the woman who took over the master’s child and kept him with her. It was Maren in the marshes.”
“Maren in the marshes?” Eitel repeated. “I have heard of her. I have seen her once. She was a gypsy, all black to look at, and it was said that she had killed her husband.”
“Yes,” said Lone, “she was a bad woman. But she could hold her tongue.”
“Where is she now?” he asked.
“She is dead,” Lone answered.
Eitel rose from his chair. “And if all other things within your tale had been possible,” he said, “would it be possible, Lone, that a good woman like you could have behaved so to a friend who trusted you, to my mother?”
Lone took a step toward him, and although she still looked straight at him, she seemed somehow to be groping her way. “Do you call her gracious ladyship your mother even now?” she asked. As she came nearer, he drew back a little, and she followed him slowly in the same half-blind way. “Do you flee me now?” she asked.
He stood still, realizing that he had indeed meant to flee from the woman before him.
“Lone,” he said, “once you were dearer to me than any other human being. At this hour it seems to me that you may still be so, aye, as dear as if you were indeed my own mother. Or that I should hold you in horror, like one of the witches in whom old people believe, gloating over a crime against nature, as one mad with wickedness, wishing to drive me mad with her.”
So he and the woman remained standing face to face.
“And shall there be no justice on earth?” she at last asked.
“Yes, there shall be justice on earth,” he answered.
“But justice,” Lone went on in a low wailing voice, “justice, with you and me, cannot mean that when I did carry you up to the house, in danger of my life, so as to give it all to you, it was the house and the people up here who took you over and made me one of theirs! Justice,” she wailed on lowly, her body doubling up as in great pain, “cannot mean that I am never once to call you my son, and never once to hear you call me mother!”
Eitel stood gazing into the woman’s pain-quivering face.
“I have been off my mind,” he thought. “I have spoken hard to an old sorrowful peasant woman, who has taken refuge in my house. I have said that I must loathe and fear an old parish clerk’s wife from Funen.” He went up to Lone and took her hand.
“Yes, my poor Lone,” he said, “you are to call me your son, and to hear me call you my mother. We did so many times, years ago. And nothing has changed between you and me since then.”
Lone very slowly with her right hand fumbled along his arm from wrist to shoulder and back again, then let the hand sink. “I have come a long way to see you tonight,” she said.
“And I have not looked after you, Lone,” he said. “You should have had something to eat and drink. Now I shall have it brought for you. You shall sleep tonight in your own room. And tomorrow,” he added after a pause, “as I said before, I shall drive with you to Maribo. You shall come back with me from there, to stay in my house as long as you choose.”
He stood with her hand in his. Wonderingly he felt, deep down in his mind, a reluctance to put an end to a talk which had been filled with such ugly confusion, and heard, there, a voice cry out sadly: “Never more, never more.” He put off the parting for a moment.
“At this time of night, Lone,” he said, “it happened that I would wake up from a bad dream. Then you would sing to me till I fell asleep again. I remember now, too, that one of the horses which you made for me was sewn of crimson silk, with a name of gold fringe from one of my father’s court coats, and that his name was Guldfaxe.”
“Yes, that was his name,” said Lone.
Her eyes still met his, but they were now without expression, the eyes of a blind woman.
After a long silence she whispered: “May you sleep well.”
“And you, Lone, little mother,” he said.
He listened to her steps down the long corridor.
When the sound had died away, he took the heavy candlestick from the table, walked up to his father’s portrait on the wall, and lifted the candlestick up high, so that the smiling face was fully illuminated. “Hullo, my father,” he said, “did you hear that? You were a handsome, gallant, gay gentleman. What now, if the nursery tale that the clerk’s old wife has told us had been true? You would then have seen the grandson of the servant whom you wronged and killed giving up his life and his thoughts and his happiness even, in your service, to cle
ar your name and wipe out your guilt. Would that seem to you the crowning joke of the whole affair—a fine extravaganza? Would it be at that that you are now laughing?”
He was still standing so, the candlestick in his raised hand, when the door behind him opened once more, and his old housekeeper came in noiselessly.
Mamzell Paaske had been in his father’s house before he had married, and it was a privilege of hers to enter the son’s room unannounced, when she had matters of importance to communicate or discuss.
In her young days she had been a beauty and had had offers of marriage from all parts of the isle, but she had refused to give up her spinsterhood. Now in her old age she had become extremely pious. There was still a pathetic loveliness in the very small, delicate figure, and she was light and graceful like a lady of high birth. At the moment she was deeply moved, and was wiping her eyes with a small folded handkerchief.
“Another old woman,” Eitel thought as he set down the candlestick. “This one may be twice the age of the first. Can it be that she will bring me twice as strange a message?”
He told her to take a seat, and she sat down on the edge of a chair, her old head nodding and shaking a little all the time.
“Dear me, how sad, how very sad,” she began.
“What is it that you want of me?” he asked.
“Oh, me, it is of Lone that I am thinking,” said Mamzell Paaske. “So Lone came back to the house once more, after all. The way up here has been heavy for her to walk this time. She was so proud here in the old days, in the fine clothes that her ladyship gave her. Dear master, will you, now, be able to obtain mercy for that poor unhappy son of hers?”
“Mercy,” Eitel repeated, in his own thoughts. “No, Mamzell Paaske, I fear that it cannot be done.”
“Nay, I understand, I see,” said the old housekeeper. “Justice must have its way. And he was caught in the act, I am told, and has been sentenced to death by the learned, venerable judges themselves.
“In other ways Lone is well preserved, I am bound to say,” she continued. “She has had easy days with the parish clerk. I remember him well, he was a peaceful man, if a little stingy. You will know, dear Master, that he is somehow related to the Paaskes. It is hard on him that his stepson should fare so ill.”
“What is it you want of me?” he again asked.
“Take it not in bad part, dear Master,” she said. “I wished to hear a little more about this great misfortune and about poor Lone.”
“You might have spoken to her yourself,” he said.
She wiped her small mouth with her handkerchief.
“I dared not do that,” she said. “You will know yourself that at times Lone is not right in her head.”
“I never heard of that,” he said.
“But it is so all the same,” said Mamzell Paaske and again nodded her head. “We were well aware, all of us up here in the house, that she was not like other people. All her folks were queer. In the village they will tell you that in old days there were witches among them. Lone was a good, faithful servant all her time, to her ladyship and to you yourself, Master. But by a full moon she was not herself.”
“By a full moon?” Eitel repeated.
“Yes, by a full moon, like tonight,” said she. “She would say many strange things then, and make people believe them.
“I knew Linnert too,” she added after a moment.
“Did you know him?” he asked. “How did he look?”
“Oh, they were all fair folks,” she answered. “But they were all of them queer. They would not fall in with the world such as it is.”
“Still my mother will have thought well of them,” he said, “since she took Lone into her house when I was born.”
“No, no, not at the time when you were born, dear Master,” said she. “It was not till after you had been christened, and when it was found that the first nurse here had too little milk, that her ladyship sent for Lone.”
“Not till after I had been christened?” he repeated. “Do you remember that for certain?”
“Oh, dear Master,” said she, “how would I not remember for certain everything from that good old time? Those were the happy days, when all in the house was put into my hand. The fine linen, the plate, the china and glass, the things even that had been given to the lords and ladies of the house by the King. And as to the servants of the house, too, it was I who took them on or sent them away. Aye, this your first nurse, Mette Marie, it was I who engaged her, and later on—since her ladyship was not well enough to look after things—it was I who found that she had too little milk, and sent her away. Then Lone came up here to be your nurse.”
“Were you here, too,” Eitel asked after a while, “at the time when Linnert brought back the bull and died?”
“Yes, said Mamzell Paaske, “I was here then, too. And in my humble way I warned my dear master to let him off. ‘My dear noble Lord,’ I said to him, ‘do not go on with this. There may be blood in it.’ ”
They were both still for a minute.
“You were here,” Eitel then said, “when my father was my own age. Was he a hard man even then?”
“Nay, nay,” said she. “My lord was a handsome, gay gentleman; he was never hard. But he was bored. Great lords are bored, that is their grief, just as the peasants have got their cares and worries in life. I myself, by the grace of God, have been lucky. I have never been bored, nor have I had cares or worries.”
“Look after Lone well tonight,” Eitel said after another silence. “Let her be short of nothing, now that in her misfortune she has come to my house.”
Mamzell Paaske had been looking away, thinking about the time of which she had spoken. Now she turned her face round toward him in a little birdlike movement. “I cannot do that, dear Master,” she said. “Lone has gone.”
“Gone?” he repeated.
“Aye, indeed she has gone,” said the old woman.
“When did she leave?” he asked.
“Just after she had come from you,” she answered. “I met her on the stairs, but she would hardly speak a word to me. And then she walked away.”
“Where did she go?” he again asked.
“Oh, I did not ask her,” she answered. “I thought that she would be trying to get to Maribo this very night, and that it would be too pitiful to question her.”
“She had come a long way,” said Eitel. “Did she not want to take a rest?”
“She did so,” said Mamzell Paaske. “When she took leave of me she said: ‘Now there is nothing more for me to do. Now I shall take my rest.’ ”
“You ought not to have let her go away tonight,” he said.
“I thought so myself, dear Master,” said she. “But Lone always wanted to have things her own way. One did not like to go against her.”
She saw that her news had made an impression on her young master, and sat on a little enjoying her own importance. But as he did not speak again she got up. “Well, good night then, my dear Master,” she said. “The grace of God be with all of us. May you sleep well.”
“And you yourself,” said he. “It is late, too late for you.”
She nodded her head in a kind of friendly assent. “Yes,” she said, “it is late. Too late.”
But when she had got up, she lingered. She fixed her clear eyes on his face, stretched out her small hand and touched the hem of his coat.
“My good noble Lord,” she said. “My dear Master Johann August. Do not go on with this thing. There may be blood in it.”
She turned the door handle without a sound.
Eitel for a second time took the candlestick from the table, went up to his father’s portrait and stood still before it. He remained there till the candlestick weighed down his arm, then set it back. For a long time the two faces, the painted and the live, looked at each other.
“We heard it all, you and I,” he at length said, “and it makes no difference. A good, faithful woman set her heart on avenging an injustice in a way more hideous t
han the injustice itself. In that hour the revenge was taken. I was your son, but she made me hers. We ourselves, my father, and these people of ours have got the roots too tightly intertwined, deep down in the ground, ever to be able to free ourselves of one another.”
He went to the window and looked out. The night was clear and cold, such as nights will become at the end of summer. The full moon standing behind the house laid the shadow of the building on the broad moat below, which here in front of the windows widened into a lake, and was patterned, as in a mosaic, with broad, flat water-lily leaves. As far as the shadow reached, the water was brown as dark amber, but farther out in the moonlight its sheet was misty with delicate silver. On the other side of it, the grass of the park was silvery too with the heavy dew; the small darker spots on it were wild ducks, asleep. A feeling of deep satisfaction ran through him as he called to mind that the harvest was in.
The still moonlit landscape called up the idea of a perfect harmony to be found somewhere in the world. His thoughts went to Ulrikke, and dwelt with her for a long time. A few hours ago he had held her in his arms. Soon he might hold her so again; all the same things were over between her and him. For of what had happened tonight, of his two talks with a couple of old women, each of them in her own way somewhat off her mind, he could not speak to her. He thought of his small daughter, who in her short life he had seen but a few times. It was fortunate, he reflected, that the child was a girl. She would grow up to be like Ulrikke. “Women,” he told himself, “have got another kind of happiness than we, and another kind of truth.” The picture of Ulrikke as a little girl, and of her and the prisoner at Maribo in the wood, once more passed before him. It brought no pain with it; it was as if he had been an old man, content to leave the two at play in the green shades, while he himself was advancing upon another long lonesome road.
As he turned away from the window his eyes fell upon the books on the table, which a short time ago he had taken down and had meant to consult. He set them back on their shelves, one by one, and looked the shelves over, walking from one bookcase to another. Much human knowledge and wisdom were stored here in the tall, heavily bound books. Did any of them have anything to tell him tonight?