XIII

For about a year, Niels Lyhne had lived at Lønborggård, managing the farm as well as he knew how and as much as his old steward would let him. He had taken down his shield, blotted out his ’scutcheon, and resigned. Humanity would have to get along without him; he had learned to know the joy found in purely physical labor, in seeing the pile growing under his hand, in being able to get through with what he was doing so that he really was through, in knowing that when he went away tired the strength that he had used up lay behind him in his work, and the work would stand and not be eaten up by doubt in the night or dispersed by the breath of criticism on the morning after. There were no Sisyphus stones in agriculture.

What a joy it was, too, when he had worked till he was tired, to go to bed and gather strength in sleep and to spend it again, as regularly as day and night follow one upon the other, never hindered by the caprices of his brain, never having to handle himself gingerly like a tuned guitar with loose pegs.

He was really happy in a quiet way, and often he would sit, as his father had sat, on a stile or a boundary stone, staring out over the golden wheat or the top-heavy oats, in a strange, vegetative trance.

As yet he had not begun to seek the society of the neighboring families, except Councillor Skinnerup’s in Varde, whom he visited quite frequently.

The Skinnerups had come to town while his father was still living, and as the Councillor was an old university friend of Lyhne’s, the two families had seen much of each other. Skinnerup, a mild, bald-headed man with sharp features and kind eyes, was now a widower, but his house was more than filled by his four daughters, the eldest seventeen, the youngest twelve years old.

The Councillor had read much, and Niels enjoyed a chat with him on various esthetic subjects, for though he had learned to use his hands, that, of course, did not turn him into a country bumpkin all at once. He was rather amused sometimes at the almost absurd care he had to exercise whenever the conversation turned to a comparison between Danish and foreign literature and, in fact, whenever Denmark was measured against something not Danish. Caution was absolutely necessary, however, for the mild-mannered Councillor was one of the fierce patriots, occasionally met with in those days, who might grudgingly admit that Denmark was not the greatest of the world powers, but when so much was said would not subscribe to a jot or a tittle more that might place his country or anything pertaining to it anywhere but in the lead.

These conversations had another charm, which Niels felt at first vaguely and without consciously thinking of it, in the look of delighted admiration with which seventeen-year-old Gerda’s eyes followed him as he spoke. She always managed to be present when he came, and would listen so eagerly that he often saw her flushing with rapture when he said something that seemed to her especially beautiful.

The truth was, he had unwittingly become this young lady’s ideal, at first chiefly because he often rode into town wearing a gray mantle of a very foreign and romantic cut, then because he always said Milano instead of Milan, and finally because he was alone in the world and had rather a sad countenance. There were certainly a great many ways in which he differed from the rest of the people in Varde and in Ringkøbing too.

On a hot summer day, Niels came through the narrow street behind the Councillor’s garden. The sun was pouring down over the brick-red little houses, and the ships lying out on the sound had mats hung over their sides to prevent the tar from melting and oozing out of the seams. Round about him everything was open to admit a coolness which did not exist. Within the open doors, the children were reading their lessons aloud, and the hum of their voices mingled with that of the bees in the garden, while a flock of sparrows hopped silently from tree to tree, all flying up together and coming down together.

Niels entered a little house right behind the garden, and while the woman went to bring her husband from the neighbor’s, he was left alone in a spotless little room smelling of gillyflowers and freshly ironed linen.

When he had examined the pictures on the walls, the two dogs on the dresser, and the seashells on the lid of the work-box, he stepped over to the open window, whence he heard the sound of Gerda’s voice, and there were the four Skinnerup girls on the Councillor’s bleaching-green only a few steps away.

The balsamines and other flowers in the window hid him, and he prepared himself both to listen and to look.

It was clear that a quarrel was going on, and the three younger sisters were making common cause against Gerda. All carried whips of lemon-yellow withes. The youngest had formed three or four of them into rings wound about with red bark, and had put them on her head like a turban.

It was she who was speaking.

“She says he looks like Themistocles on the stove in the study,” she remarked to her fellow conspirators, and turned up her eyes with a rapt expression.

“Oh, pshaw,” said the middle one, a saucy little lady who had just been confirmed that spring; “do you suppose Themistocles was round-shouldered?” She imitated Niels Lyhne’s slight stoop. “Themistocles! Not much!”

“There is something so manly in his look; he is a real man!” quoted the twelve-year-old.

“He!” came the voice of the middle one again. “Why, he goes and pours eau de cologne on himself. The other day his gloves were lying there and just simply reeking with millefleur.”

“Every perfection!” breathed the twelve-year-old in ecstasy, and staggered back as though overcome with emotion.

They addressed all these remarks to each other and pretended not to notice Gerda, who stood at a little distance, blushing furiously, as she poked the ground with her yellow stick. Suddenly she lifted her head.

“You’re a pair of naughty hussies,” she said, “to talk like that about someone who is too good to look at you.”

“And yet you know he is only a mortal,” remonstrated the eldest of the three mildly, as if to make peace.

“No, he is nothing of the kind.”

“And surely he has his faults,” continued the sister, pretending not to hear what Gerda said.

“No!”

“But, my dear Gerda, you know he never goes to church.”

“What should he go there for? He knows ever so much more than the pastor.”

“Yes, but unfortunately he doesn’t believe in any God at all, Gerda.”

“Well, you can be mighty sure, my dear, that if he doesn’t, he has excellent reasons for it.”

“Why, Gerda, how can you say such a thing!”

“You’d almost think⁠—” broke in the middle one.

“What would you almost think?” snapped Gerda.

“Nothing, nothing at all. Please don’t bite me!” replied the sister with a sudden air of great meekness.

“Now will you tell me this minute what you meant!”

“No, no, no, no, no; I guess I’ve a right to hold my tongue if I want to.”

She walked off together with the twelve-year-old, each with her arm around the other’s shoulder in sisterly concord. The eldest followed them, strutting with indignation.

Gerda, left alone, stood looking defiantly straight ahead, while she cut the air with her yellow stick.

There was a moment of silence, and then the thin voice of the twelve-year-old floated up from the other end of the garden, singing:

“You ask me, my lad,
What I want with the withered flower⁠—”

Niels understood their teasing perfectly, for he had recently made Gerda a present of a book with a dried vine leaf from the garden in Verona which contains Juliet’s grave. He could hardly keep from laughing; but just then the woman returned with her husband, whom she had at last found, and Niels had to give the order for the carpenter work he had come to see about.

From that day Niels observed Gerda more closely, and every time he saw her he felt more keenly how sweet and fine she was. As time went on, his thoughts turned more and more frequently to this confiding little girl.

She was very lovely, with the tender, appealing beauty that almost brings tears to the eyes. Her figure, in its early ripening, retained something of the child’s roundness, which gave an air of innocence to her luxuriant womanhood. The small, softly-moulded hands were losing the rosy color of adolescence, and were without any of the restless, nervous curiosity often seen at that age. She had a strong little neck, cheeks that were rounded with a large, full line, and a low, dreamy little woman’s forehead, where great thoughts were strangers and almost seemed to hurt when they came, bringing a frown to the thick brows. And her eye⁠—how deep and blue it lay there, but deep only as a lake where one can see the bottom; and in the soft corners the smile brooded happily under lids that were lifted in slow surprise. This was the way she looked, little Gerda, white and pink and blonde, with all her short, bright hair demurely gathered into a knot.

They had many a talk, Niels and Gerda, and he fell more and more in love with her. Open and frank and chivalrous was his regard, until a certain day there came a change in the air about them, a gleam of that which is too imponderable to be called sensuousness and yet is of the senses, that which impels the hand and mouth and eyes to reach out for what the heart cannot get close enough to its own heart. And another day, not long after, Niels went to Gerda’s father, because Gerda was so young, and because he was so sure of her love. And her father said yes, and Gerda said yes.

In the spring they were married.

It seemed to Niels Lyhne that existence had grown wonderfully clear and uncomplicated, that life was simple to live and happiness as near and easy to win as the air he drew in with his breath.

He loved her, the young wife he had won, with all the delicacy of thought and feeling, with all the large, deep tenderness of a man who knows the tendency of love to sink and believes in the power of love to rise. How he guarded this young soul which bent toward him with infinite trust and pressed up against him in caressing faith, in implicit reliance that he would do her nothing but good, as the ewe lamb in the parable must have felt toward its shepherd when it ate from his hand and drank of his cup! He had no heart to take her God away from her or to banish all those white hosts of angels that fly singing through the heavens all day and come to earth at eventide and spread their wings from bed to bed, watching faithfully and filling the darkness of night with a protecting wall of invisible light. He shrank from allowing his own heavier, imageless view of life to come between her and the soft blue of the heavens and make her feel uneasy and forsaken.

But she would have it otherwise. She wanted to share everything with him; there must be no place in heaven or on earth where their ways were parted. Say what he would to hold her back, she met it all, if not with the words of the Moabite woman, yet with the same obstinate thought that lay in the words⁠—thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God.

Then he began to teach her in earnest. He explained to her that all gods were the work of men and, like everything else made by men, could not endure eternally, but must pass away, generation after generation of gods⁠—because humanity is everlastingly developing and growing beyond its own ideals. A god on whom the noblest and greatest of men could not lavish the richest gifts of their spirit, a god that did not take his light from men, but had to give light by virtue of his own being, a god that was not developing but stiffened in the historic plaster of dogmas, was no longer a god, but an idol. Therefore Judaism was right against Baal and Astarte, and Christianity was right against Judaism, for an idol is nothing in the world. Humanity had gone on from god to god, and therefore Christ could say, on the one hand, looking toward the old God, that He had not come to destroy the law, but to fulfil it, while on the other hand He could point beyond Himself to a yet higher ideal with those mystical words about the sin that shall not be forgiven, the sin against the Holy Ghost.

He went on to teach her how the belief in a personal God who guides everything for the best and who punishes and rewards beyond the grave is a running away from the harsh realities of life, an impotent attempt to take the sting from its arbitrariness. He showed her that it must blunt compassion and make people less ready to exert all their powers in relieving misery, since they could soothe themselves with the thought that suffering in this brief earthly life paved the way for the sufferer to an eternity of glory and joy.

He laid stress on the strength and self-reliance mankind would gain when men had learned faith in themselves, and when the individual strove to bring his life into harmony with what seemed to him, in his best moments, the highest that dwelt in him, instead of seeking it outside of himself in a controlling deity. He made his faith as beautiful and blessed as he could, but he did not conceal from her how crushingly sad and comfortless the truth of atheism would seem in the hour of sorrow compared to the old fair, happy dream of a Heavenly Father who guides and rules. Yet she was brave. It is true, many of his doctrines, and often those he had least expected to affect her, would shake her to the innermost depths of her soul, but her faith knew no bounds; her love carried her with him away from all heavens, and she believed because she loved. Then, after a while, when the new ideas had grown familiar and homelike, she became intolerant in the highest degree and fanatical, as young disciples always are who love their master intensely. Niels often reproached her for it, but that was the one thing she could never understand⁠—that when their belief was true, that of others should not be horrible and reprehensible.

For three years they lived happily together, and much of this happiness shone from a baby face, the face of a little boy who had been born to them in the second year of their marriage.

Happiness usually makes people good, and Niels strove earnestly to make their lives so beautiful, noble, and useful that there should never be any pause in the growth of their souls toward the human ideal in which they both believed. But he no longer thought of carrying the standard of his ideal out into the world; he was content to follow it. Once in a while, he would take out some of his old attempts, and then he would always wonder if it was really he who had written these pretty, artistic things. His own verses invariably brought tears to his eyes, but he would not for anything in the world have changed places with the poor fellow who wrote them.

Suddenly, in the spring, Gerda fell ill and could not recover.

Early one morning⁠—it was the last⁠—Niels was sitting up with her. The sun was about to rise and cast a red glow on the white shade curtains, although the light coming in on either side was still blue, making blue shadows in the folds of the white bedspread and under Gerda’s pale, thin hands, which lay clasped before her on the sheet. Her cap had slipped off, and, as her head lay far back on the pillow, her features, sharpened and refined by suffering, had an unfamiliar and strangely distinguished air. She moved her lips as if to moisten them, and Niels reached for a glass holding a dark red liquid, but she shook her head faintly. Then suddenly she turned her face to him and gazed anxiously into his mournful countenance. As she looked at the deep sorrow his face revealed and the despair it could not hide, her uneasy foreboding gradually changed to a terrible certainty.

She struggled to rise, but could not.

Niels bent over her quickly, and she caught his hand.

“Is it death?” she asked, lowering her weak voice as if she could not bear to speak the words.

He could only look at her, while his breath came in a deep, moaning sigh.

Gerda clutched his hand and threw herself over to him in her fear. “I don’t dare to,” she said.

He slid down on his knees by the bed and put his arm under the pillow so that he almost held her to his breast. He could hardly see her for the tears that blinded him as they coursed down his cheeks one after another, and he lifted her hand with a corner of the sheet to his eyes. Then he mastered his voice. “Tell me everything, Gerda dear; never mind me. Is it the pastor?” He could hardly believe it was that, and there was a note of doubt in his voice.

She did not answer, but closed her eyes and drew her head back a little as if to be alone with her thoughts.

A few minutes passed. The soft, long-drawn whistle of a blackbird sounded underneath the windows; then another whistled and another; a whole series of flute-like notes shot through the silence of the room.

Then she looked up again. “If you were with me,” she said, and she leaned more heavily on the pillow that he supported. There was a caress in her movement, and he felt it. “If you were with me! But alone!”

She drew his hand toward her feebly and dropped it again. “I don’t dare to.” Her eyes were full of fear. “You must fetch him, Niels, I don’t dare to come up there alone like this. We had never thought that I should die first; it was always you who went before. Yes, I know⁠—but suppose, after all, we have been mistaken; we might have been mistaken, Niels, mightn’t we? You don’t think so, but it would be strange if everybody should be wrong, and if there wasn’t anything at all⁠—those big churches and the bells when they bury people⁠—I have always been so fond of the bells.” She lay quite still as if she were listening for them and could hear them.

“It is impossible, Niels, that it should all be over when we die. You don’t feel it, you who are well, you think it must kill us quite, because we are so weak, and everything seems to pass away, but it is only the world outside, within us there is as much soul as before. It is there, Niels; I have it all within me, everything that has been given me, the same infinite world, but more quiet, more alone with myself, as when you close your eyes. It is just like a candle, Niels, that is being carried away from you into the darkness, into the darkness, and it seems to you fainter and fainter and fainter, and you can’t see it, but still it is shining over there where it is⁠—far away. I always thought I should live to be such an old, old woman, and that I should stay here with you all, and now they won’t let me, they are taking me away from house and home and making me go all alone. I am afraid, Niels, that where I am going it is God who rules, and He cares nothing for our cleverness here on earth. He wants His own way and nothing else, but somehow everything of His is so far away from me. I have not done anything very wicked, have I? But it isn’t that.⁠ ⁠… Go and get the pastor, I want him so much.”

Niels rose and went for the pastor at once; he was grateful that this had not come at the very last moment.

The pastor came and was left alone with Gerda.

He was a handsome, middle-aged man with finely cut, regular features and large brown eyes. He knew, of course, Niels Lyhne’s attitude to the church, and now and then some expressions of hostility that sprang from the young wife’s fanaticism had been reported to him; but he never for a moment thought of speaking to her as to a heathen or an apostate, for he understood perfectly that it was only her love that had led her astray, and he also understood the feeling that impelled her, now that love could no longer follow her, to seek reconciliation with the God she had once known. Therefore he tried in his talk with her to wake her dormant memories by reading to her the passages from the Gospels and the hymns that he thought would be most familiar to her.

He was not mistaken.

The words woke intimate and solemn echoes in her soul like the pealing of bells on Christmas morning. Instantly there was spread before her eyes the land where our fancy is first of all at home, where Joseph dreamed and David sang, and where the ladder stands that reaches from earth to heaven. It lay there with figs and mulberries, and the Jordan gleamed like clearest silver in the morning mist; Jerusalem stood red and sombre under the setting sun; but over Bethlehem there was always glorious night with great stars in the deep blue vault. How her childhood faith welled up once more! She was again the little girl who went to church clinging to her mother’s hand and sat there shivering with cold and wondering why people sinned so much. Then she grew to full stature again under the lofty words of the Sermon on the Mount, and she lay there like a prostrate sinner while the pastor spoke of the sacred mysteries of baptism and of holy communion. At last the true longing arose in her heart, the meek kneeling before the omnipotent and judging God, the bitter tears of remorse before the betrayed and reviled and tortured God, and the humbly audacious desire for the new covenant of wine and bread with the hidden God.

The pastor left her. Toward noon he came back and gave her the sacrament.

Her strength waned in a fitful flicker; yet at dusk, when Niels took her in his arms for the last time to say farewell before the shadows of death approached too near, she was fully conscious. But the love that had been the purest joy of his life had died out of her eyes; she was no longer his; even now her wings were growing, and she yearned only for her God.

At midnight she died.

They were dreary months that followed. Time seemed to swell up into something enormous and hostile; every day was an unending desert of emptiness, every night a hell of memories. The summer was almost over before the rushing, frothing torrent of his grief had hollowed out a riverbed in his soul where it could flow in a turgid, murmuring stream of sadness and longing.

Then it happened one day that he came home from the fields and found his little boy very ill. The child had been ailing for the last few days and had been restless in the night, but no one had believed it to be anything serious; now he lay in his little bed hot and cold with fever and moaning with pain.

The carriage was instantly sent to Varde for a physician, but none of the doctors were at home, and it had to wait for hours. At bedtime it had not yet returned.

Niels sat by the child’s cot. Every half hour or oftener he would send someone out to listen and look for the carriage. A mounted messenger was also despatched to meet it, but he failed to see any carriage and rode all the way to Varde.

This waiting for help that did not come made it all the more agonizing to watch the suffering of the sick child. The malady made rapid progress. Toward eleven the first attack of convulsions set in, and after that they came again and again at shorter and shorter intervals.

A little after one, the mounted messenger returned, saying that the carriage could not be expected for some hours yet, as none of the doctors had been at home when he rode out of town.

Then Niels broke down. He had fought against his despair as long as there was any hope, but now he could fight no more. He went into the dark parlor adjoining the sickroom and stared out through the dusky panes, while his nails dug into the wood of the casement. His eyes seemed to burrow into the darkness for some hope; his brain crouched for a spring up toward a miracle; then suddenly all was still and clear for an instant, and in the clearness he turned away from the window to a table standing there, threw himself over it, and sobbed without tears.

When he came into the sickroom again, the child was in convulsions. He looked at it as if he would stab himself to death with the sight: the tiny hands, clenched and white, with bluish nails, the staring eyes turning in their sockets, the distorted mouth, and the teeth grinding with a sound like iron on stone⁠—it was terrible, and yet that was not the worst. No, but when the convulsions ceased and the body grew soft again, relaxing with the happy relief of lessened pain, then to see the terror that came into the child’s eyes when it felt the first faint approach of the convulsions returning, the growing prayer for help when the pain came nearer and yet nearer⁠—to see this and not be able to help, not with his heart’s blood, not with all he possessed! He lifted his clenched hands threateningly to heaven, he caught up his child in a mad impulse of flight, and then he threw himself down on the floor on his knees, praying to the Lord Who is in heaven, Who keeps the earth in fear through trials and chastisements, Who sends want and sickness, suffering and death, Who demands that every knee shall bend to Him in trembling, from Whom no flight is possible⁠—either at the uttermost ends of the ocean or in the depths of the earth⁠—He, the God Who, if it pleases Him, will tread the one you love best under His foot, torture him back into the dust from which He himself created him.

With such thoughts, Niels Lyhne sent prayers up to the God; he threw himself down in utter abandonment before the heavenly throne, confessing that His was the power and His alone.

Still the child suffered.

Toward morning, when the old family physician drove in through the gate, Niels was alone.