by Isak Dinesen
It was a hot day in midsummer; there was a quivering air and great mirages over the moors. Twice I believed that I saw the girl in the vast landscape, when it was but a stack of peat. At last I caught sight of her small figure far away. She walked on quickly; after a while she began to run. It made me laugh, on my horse, as I was so sure that she could not escape me. Still there was something sad in the picture as well. As I came up to her I did not stop her, but for a while rode on side by side with her. She kept on hastening forth. She was bareheaded, very white, her face was wet with sweat. She could not keep pace with the horse. As a black-cock ran out of the heather in front of her and took to the wing with much noise, she stumbled and stood dead still. I felt sorry for her. I thought she was going to cry. “Give me your horse, Vilhelm,” said she, “then I shall still catch up with them.” “No,” I said, “you are to come back. But I shall let you ride, and I will walk.” Not a word said she. So I lifted her into the saddle.
It was a still day. I began to sing, and in a little while Alkmene joined in in her clear voice. We sang many songs, and in the end an old folk-song of a mother lamenting her dead child. I said: “You frighten your people, you fool, when you run away.” She said: “Why will they not let me go?” I sang another verse and then said: “People are different. Look at my father now; nothing that I do will be right to him, and I am ever in his way. But your folks love you, and think you just a glorious girl, if you will only agree to stay with them.” Alkmene was now silent for a long time; then she asked: “What about the children, Vilhelm, who do not want to be loved?”
We got back late. The summer moon rose, although the sky was still quite light. As we came to my father’s land we crossed a barley field. The corn grew but sparsely in the sandy soil, but all over the field there was such a multitude of yellow marigolds that it seemed to reflect the moon in it, like a lake.
Gertrud, before I went, had made her husband promise to beat the child this time, but it was all forgotten when they got her back. Yet the mother, still very white with fear, could not becalm herself. She said: “You love these wicked people better than us, you would rather be with them than with your father and me. Do you not know that they would have killed you and eaten you?” Alkmene looked at her, her light eyes wide open. “Would they have eaten me?” she asked. Gertrud believed that she was mocking her. “Oh, you hard child!” she cried.
By the time when Mene was to be confirmed, two problems rose to the people of the parsonage. First, the parson found that he had never seen the child’s certificate of baptism, and could not be sure that she had ever really been baptized. He wrote to the professor, but had to wait for the reply, for the old man had left Copenhagen, and had got a high office in a German court. When at last the letter came, the professor would do no more than give his word of honour that the girl was baptized. The parson, now, did not know whether to confirm the girl without more ado, or to baptize her himself, privately, first, to make sure. His wife told me that the dilemma caused him many sleepless nights. He said to me: “Some theologians hold baptism to be but a symbol. God help us all, symbols are mighty things. I myself may have handled great symbols too lightly.” It was from this time that he gave up teaching the girl Greek. In the end, however, he took his wife’s advice, and confirmed Mene together with the other children of the parish.
But at the confirmation class Mene met with other girls, and listened to their talk. And here, now, the parson and his wife found reason to believe that she heard rumours of how she was not their own child. Alkmene herself did not speak of it; somebody had overheard the girls’ conversation. The parson weighed the matter in his mind, and one day, in my presence—really, I believe, because he feared to open the subject when he was alone with his wife—he told her that he meant to deal openly with the girl, and to tell her the truth. Gertrud at once turned upon him. I had not seen her so hard with him since the time before Mene came. It was as if she had forgotten that she was not really the girl’s mother, and now held him to be wilfully bereaving her of her own child. “Nay,” said the parson, “but I am to lay my hand on the child’s head in the name of the Lord. What if, at that moment, in her heart she knows me to be deceiving her?” Gertrud stood up. “And do you want to take her from me altogether?” she cried. “Have you not seen, then, that she already hates and fears me? If now she is to be taught that I am not her mother, I shall have no means to hold her; she will wholly despise me and turn her back on me!” The parson sat dumb before her accusation. Still, as she spoke, I believe that we both realized that she was right. During these two last years Alkmene had altered and hardened towards her mother; at times she showed her a strange distrust, revolt and hostility. At last the parson said: “Dear wife, it might have been better if we had never taken on this task, but had sat here in our parsonage peacefully, an aging, childless couple.” Gertrud stared at him, quite bewildered. “But we have laid our hand on the plough,” he went on. “We must now carry through the work, according to our light.” Gertrud began to cry. “Do as you think best,” she said, and left the room.
But as I was going away she lay in wait for me. She took my hand, looked me in the face and said: “Vilhelm, you are my child’s friend. Will you do something for me? Watch her, good Vilhelm. When her father will have spoken to her, note how it affects the poor child, and tell me what she says to you about it. For God help us, she will say nothing to me.” It seemed to me a sad and affecting thing that Gertrud should thus turn to me for help, for she had till now held that no one but herself knew or understood her daughter. So I promised to do as she asked me.
Still a fortnight or so later on she said to me: “God is merciful, Vilhelm, or Jens is a wise man. Behold, since he has spoken to the child she is changed. She has come back to me, and keeps to me as sweetly as when she was a small girl. I myself feel young with it. I happened to look into the mirror today. You may laugh, but it was the face of a young woman that I saw there. I do not know why, but I feel, now, that this good and kindly conformity between us is going to last as long as we live.” She quite forgot to question me on the matter, as she had said she would. “But is it not strange,” she added after a while, “that she has not asked a single question about her real father and mother? She does not know that we could not have answered her.”
To me Alkmene never spoke of her enlightenment. But I think that the parson, in the course of their talk, may have mentioned the professor’s name, for one day she asked me if I knew him. I told her that I had seen him. “I should like,” she said, “to see him, too, some time.”
Gertrud complained to me that Mene was heedless about her clothes, and would take no more care of her Sunday gown, which she herself had made for her, than of her little faded week-day frocks. But one day the girl happened to hear our old housekeeper speak of my mother’s fine gowns that were all locked up in a big chest in the attic, because my father would not see them, nor let anybody else wear them. She then gave me no peace until, on a day when my father was out, I broke open the chest for her and took out the clothes. She spread them out one by one and sat for a long time gazing at them; in the end she asked me to give her one. This was a dress of thick green silk with a yellow pattern to it. When I see it now it looks to me somewhat like a lime-tree in bloom. I laughed at her and asked her whether she meant to put it on to go to church. “No,” she said, but she would wear it some time.
A little later, on a June evening, Gertrud had been baking fresh bread, and Alkmene begged leave of her to go with me—for I was then home for the summer holidays—and bring some to old Madame Ravn, the widow of our late parson, who lived on the other side of the village. But when we came out on the road, she told me that she did not mean to go to Madame Ravn at all; she would put on her silk gown, and we would go for a walk in the wood and the fields. She kept the gown in a cottage near by, with a woman who had before been working at the parsonage, but had been sent away because she drank. She went in there and soon came out again in the green and yell
ow frock. She had not put up her hair or washed her hands, yet I do not think that I have ever seen anyone more royal or at ease than she was then.
We walked in the woods, and she did not speak much. Her frock was a little too long for her, and she let it trail on the ground. I told her of my new horse that I had then just bought, and of a quarrel I had had with my father. If we had met people there they must have wondered and laughed at encountering a girl so magnificently dressed upon a forest path. All the same it somehow seemed natural that she should walk here like that. The wood was fresh. Where the low sun fell into it the foliage was all green and yellow like her gown, and as she walked the silk made a small chirping noise, like a late bird in a tree. We came upon a fox on the path, but we met no human beings.
When the sun was just above the horizon we came out in the fields. Here there was an exceeding high hill. We walked to the top of it, and from there had a great view to all sides over the golden plains and moors, and the glory of them. Alkmene stood quite still and gazed at it all. Her face was as clear and radiant as the air. After a while she drew a deep sigh of joy, and I reflected what ludicrous creatures girls are, who will be made happy by standing on the top of a hill in a silk gown. Later we sat down and ate the bread that Gertrud had meant for the old widow. It was still warm from the oven. Ever since, when I taste fresh bread, I am reminded of that evening and the hill.
As we came home to the parsonage, after Alkmene had again changed her clothes in the cottage, we found Gertrud by a tallow-candle with her glasses on, before a high pile of the girl’s white stockings that were to be darned. She had done a good many already, but I thought that if she were to finish them all she must sit up late into the night. She smiled at us and wanted us to tell her of Madame Ravn. Alkmene stood behind her and looked at her and at the stockings, and it seemed to me that she was growing very white. “Let me help you to darn the stockings, Mother,” she said. “No, my puss,” said Gertrud, and snuffed the candle. “You have been a long way and ought to go to bed.”
In the autumn of that same year a thing happened to me that came to have some influence on my life. A girl in the village, whose name was Sidsel and who was, by the way, daughter to the woman in whose cottage Alkmene had fetched her silk frock, had a baby that died and fathered me with the child. I did not believe her to be right, for she was no model of virtue. Still people would talk about it. My father said to me: “The child is dead, and Sidsel is to marry the keeper. But you shall not play the fool in your own village, while you wait for the wench in the parsonage to be big enough for you. Go up now to your uncle at Rugaard, in Djursland, for six months. His daughter is two years older than you, and will some day be a rich girl. In any case, you can there learn something about farming; it is time that you get that into your head.” This last part of the lecture was unfair to me, for till now my father had but laughed, and called me a peasant, whenever I took any interest in the farm-work on the estate, which was then in a bad way.
I did not mind going away, but I wondered what the people in the parsonage were thinking of me. The parson would be sadly disappointed, for all his life he had preached against the licentiousness of his parish, and since I had been his pupil for such a long time, he had come to look on me as his own work. Gertrud might forgive me, for she was a country girl, and used to country ways, but she would take pains to keep the matter from Mene, and might also try to hold the girl herself away from me.
One afternoon when my father had gone to Vejle, I was in the library taking out some books, when the door was opened and Alkmene stood in the doorway. Our library turns north; she had the sun behind her, and her hair shone like a flame. She asked me: “Is it true what they are telling about you and Sidsel?” I was surprised to see her, for she had never before come to the manor alone. But she asked so forcibly that I had to answer. “Yes,” I said. She cried out: “How dare you, Vilhelm!” Now it was a queer thing that I had for some time felt a grudge against the girl, as if, in what happened to me, she were at fault. As now she began to speak in the very words of the grown-up people, with a heavy heart I asked her to leave me alone. But she did not listen; she came into the room, her face all aflame with agitation. “How dare you?” she cried once more. I then remembered that with her you could generally take the words to mean just what they said. I realized that she was asking me a question, to be enlightened, such as she often did. I could not help laughing. “Perhaps,” I said, “it does not take as much courage as it will seem to a girl.” She looked at me, gravely and proudly. “You will be going to hell now, do you not think so?” she said. “They all tell me to go there,” I said. “My father has turned me out of the house; your people will not speak to me. You and I, Alkmene, might remain friends for the time we have got left.” “Has your father turned you out?” she asked. “Have you no home now? Then I shall come with you. We can go on the high roads together. And then,” she added, and drew her breath deeply, “I shall do something, so that we shall not have to beg. I shall learn to dance.” “Nay,” I said, “I am going to my uncle at Rugaard.” At that she grew very pale. “Are you going to your uncle?” she said. “I thought that they had chased you out in the wide world. I thought that nobody had ever done such a bad thing as you have done.” All the time I was getting happier about things. “Why,” I said, “you, who have read about the Greek gods, will know that such things have happened before in the world.” “No,” she said, “they will not let me read those books any more. They will not tell me anything. What am I to do now?” At that moment I saw clearly that she and I belonged to one another and I came near to ask her: “Will you wait for me until I come back, Alkmene? Then nobody shall part us again.” But I thought of how young she was, and it seemed to me that the moment was not well chosen. She stood before me and wrung her hands. “Will you,” she asked, “write to me? No,” she interrupted herself, “it is only in books that people ever get a letter. But if you do a terrible thing once more, will you write of it to me?” “I shall come back in six months,” I said. “Do not forget me, Alkmene.” “No,” she said, “I cannot forget you. You are my only friend. Do not forget Alkmene, Vilhelm.” At that she was gone, as suddenly as she had come. A few days later I went to Rugaard.
Of my life at Rugaard I shall not write, since this is a story about Alkmene. The country seats in Djursland lie close to one another. I met many young people of my own age, and did not often think of people or things at home. But here also I dreamed about Alkmene.
When I had been at Rugaard for three months I had a letter from my father, who complained about his gout, and told me to come back. I did not give it much attention until I got another letter of the same kind; then I went home.
The first question that my father asked me was whether I had been making love to my cousin at Rugaard. He seemed pleased when I told him: “No,” and rubbed his hands. “There are things going on here in your old district,” he said; “there are great changes at the parsonage.” I asked him what he meant, and he answered: “You had better go down and find out for yourself. These people were always such friends of yours.” The next day I walked down to the parsonage.
The parson was alone in the house; his wife and daughter had gone on a sick-visit. He had changed, even as my father had said. He was grave, much occupied with his own thoughts, and I reflected that this was how he would have looked in those young days of his that he had told me of. He had forgotten all about the sad matter of Sidsel and greeted me kindly. After we had talked of other things for some time he said: “You ought to know, Vilhelm, what has come to us here, at your old parsonage,” and went on to recount the happenings to me.
The old professor, his friend, had written him, shortly after my departure, to let him know that his adopted daughter had—by what ways, as usual, he could not or would not tell—come into an inheritance, just as if she had entered, he wrote, the wonder-cave of our immortal Oehlenschlager’s Aladdin. In loyalty, he wrote on—the professor was always great on loyalty—to t
he first bargain between them he would endeavour no persuasion, but would leave to his friend to decide whether, on behalf of the girl, he would accept or refuse the fortune.
The parson said that he had thought the question over before he had taken his decision. “And it is a queer thing,” he remarked, “that in what concerns our girl, my wife and I never seem to see eye to eye. Gertrud would not take the money. Now if it had been a smaller amount, it is possible that the arguing would have been all the other way round; she might then have been happy to see the girl secured in life, while I should have preferred to leave her as she was, of our own circumstances, a village parson’s daughter. As it is, the greatness of the heritage frightens my poor wife.” The parson here gave me the figure very precisely; it was over three hundred thousand rixdollars. “Gertrud cannot but feel that such a pile of gold must needs spring from a demonic source. To me, too, it has become a different thing.”
He sat for some time in thought. “I have never,” he said, “eagerly desired money. It did not even enter into the dreams of my youth. Other things I have craved and prayed for, but gold held no temptation to me. But in this case it takes on a new aspect; it becomes a symbol. I have seen it,” he went on. “I went to Copenhagen, and there, in the bank, the gold was shown to me. I touched it. It lies dormant there, awaiting the hand which is to turn it into reality. How much good can one not do, with a fortune like that, in this world? Mark, Vilhelm,” he said, “I ignore not the power of Mammon. As I touched it, I recognized the danger which is in gold. But if it is to be, here, a trial of strength between God and Mammon, should I decline to take on the championship of the Lord?”
I asked the parson if Alkmene knew of her good luck. Yes, he answered, she had been told. She was a child still; it made but little impression on her; from her manner she might have known of it all her life. The work then was the more sacred to him, as he was undertaking it on behalf of a child. Indeed, he added, he had known from the first that through Alkmene some great task might come to him. “And when I am dead,” he said, “I shall live on in her good works, for there is great strength in the lass, Vilhelm.”
