by Frank Wynne
A sudden, keen itching under her knee took her out of her reveries and awoke in her the hunting instincts of her breed. She wetted a finger on her tongue, slowly brought it down and quickly slapped it to the spot. She felt the diminutive sharp body of the insect against the silky skin, pressed the thumb to it, and triumphantly lifted up the small prisoner between her fingertips. She stood quite still, as if meditating upon the fact that a flea was the only creature risking its life for her smoothness and sweet blood.
Her maid opened the door and came in, loaded with the attire of the day, – shift, stays, hoop and petticoats. She remembered that she had a guest in the house, the new nephew arrived from England. Her husband had instructed her to be kind to their young kinsman, – disinherited, so to say, by her presence in the place. They would ride out on the land together.
In the afternoon the sky was no longer blue as in the morning. Large clouds slowly towered up on it, and the great vault itself was colourless, as if diffused into vapours round the white-hot sun in zenith. A low thunder ran along the western horizon, once or twice the dust of the roads rose in tall spirals. But the fields, the hills and the woods were as still as a painted landscape.
Adam walked down the avenue to the pavilion, and found his uncle there, fully dressed, his hands upon his walking-stick and his eyes on the rye-field. The book that Adam had given him lay by his side. The field now seemed alive with people. Small groups stood here and there in it, and a long row of men and women were slowly advancing towards the garden in the line of the swath.
The old lord nodded to his nephew, but did not speak or change his position. Adam stood by him as still as himself.
The day to him had been strangely disquieting. At the meeting again with old places, the sweet melodies of the past had filled his senses and his mind, and had mingled with new bewitching tunes of the present. He was back in Denmark, no longer a child but a youth, with a keener sense of the beautiful, with tales of other countries to tell, and still a true son of his own land and enchanted by its loveliness as he had never been before.
But through all these harmonies the tragic and cruel tale which the old lord had told him in the morning, and the sad contest which he knew to be going on so near by, in the cornfield, had re-echoed, like the recurrent, hollow throbbing of a muffled drum, a redoubtable sound. It came back time after time, so that he had felt himself to change colour and to answer absently. It brought with it a deeper sense of pity with all that lived than he had ever known. When he had been riding with his young aunt, and their road ran along the scene of the drama, he had taken care to ride between her and the field, so that she should not see what was going on there, or question him about it. He had chosen the way home through the deep, green wood for the same reason.
More dominantly even than the figure of the woman struggling with her sickle for her son’s life, the old man’s figure, as he had seen it at sunrise, kept him company through the day. He came to ponder on the part which that lonely, determinate form had played in his own life. From the time when his father died it had impersonated to the boy law and order, wisdom of life and kind guardianship. What was he to do, he thought, if after eighteen years these filial feelings must change, and his second father’s figure to him take on a horrible aspect, as a symbol of the tyranny and oppression of the world? – what was he to do if ever the two should come to stand in opposition to one another, as adversaries?
At the same time an unaccountable, a sinister alarm and dread on behalf of the old man himself took hold of him. For surely here the goddess Nemesis could not be far away. This man had ruled the world round him for a longer period than Adam’s own lifetime and had never been gainsaid by anyone. During the years when he had wandered through Europe with a sick boy of his own blood as his sole companion he had learnt to set himself apart from his surroundings, and to close himself up to all outer life, and he had become insusceptible to the ideas and feelings of other human beings. Strange fancies might there have run in his mind, so that in the end he had seen himself as the only person really existing, and the world as a poor and vain shadow-play, which had no substance to it.
Now, in senile wilfulness, he would take in his hand the life of those simpler and weaker than himself, of a woman, using it to his own ends, and he feared no retributive justice. Did he not know, the young man thought, that there were powers in the world, different from the short-lived might of a despot, and more formidable?
With the sultry heat of the day this foreboding of impending disaster grew upon him, until he felt ruin to threaten not the old lord only, but the house, the name and himself, with him. It seemed to him that he must cry out a warning to the man he had loved, before it was too late.
But as now he was once more in his uncle’s company, the green calm of the garden was so deep that he did not find the voice to cry out. Instead a little French air, that his aunt had sung to him up in the house, kept running in his mind. – ‘C’est un trop doux effort …’ He had himself good knowledge of music, he had heard the air before, in Paris, but not so sweetly sung.
After a time he asked: ‘Will the woman fulfil her bargain?’
His uncle unfolded his hands. ‘It is an extraordinary thing’, he said animatedly, ‘that it looks as if she might fulfil it. If you count the hours from sunrise till now, and from now till sunset, you will find the time left her to be half of that already gone. And see! – she has now mowed two thirds of the field. But then we will naturally have to reckon with her strength declining as she works on. All in all it is an idle pursuit in you or me to bet on the issue of the matter, we must wait and see. Sit down, and keep me company in my watch.’
In two minds Adam sat down.
‘And here,’ said his uncle and took up the book from the seat, ‘is your book, which has passed me the time finely. It is great poetry, ambrosia to the ear and the heart. And it has, with our discourse on divinity this morning, given me stuff for thought. I have been reflecting upon the law of retributive justice.’ He took a pinch of snuff, and went on. ‘A new age’, he said, ‘has made to itself a god in its own image, an emotional god. And now you are already writing a tragedy on your God.’
Adam had no wish to begin a debate on poetry with his uncle, but he also somehow dreaded a silence, and said: ‘It may be, then, that we hold tragedy to be, in the scheme of life, a noble, a divine phenomenon.’
‘Aye,’ said his uncle solemnly, ‘a noble phenomenon, the noblest on earth. But of the earth only, and never divine. Tragedy is the privilege of man, his highest privilege. The God of the Christian Church himself, when he wished to experience tragedy, had to assume human form. And even at that,’ he added thoughtfully, ‘the tragedy was not wholly valid, as it would have become had the hero of it been, in very truth, a man. The divinity of Christ conveyed to it a divine note, the moment of comedy. The real tragic part, by the nature of things there, fell to the executioners, not to the victim. Nay, my nephew, we should not adulterate the pure elements of the cosmos. Tragedy should remain the right of human beings, subject, in their conditions or in their own nature, to the dire law of necessity. To them it is salvation and beatification. But the gods, whom we must believe to be unacquainted with, and incomprehensive of, necessity, can have no knowledge of the tragic. When they are brought face to face with it they will, according to my experience, have the good taste and decorum to keep still, and not interfere.
‘No,’ he said after a pause, ‘the true art of the gods is the comic. The comic is a condescension of the divine to the world of man, it is the sublime vision, which cannot be studied, but must ever be celestially granted. In the comic the gods see their own being reflected as in a mirror, and while the tragic poet is bound by strict laws, they will allow the comic artist a freedom as unlimited as their own. They do not even withhold their own existence from his sports: Jove may favour Lucianos of Samosata. As long as your mockery is in true godly taste you may mock at the gods, and still remain a sound devotee. But in pitying, or
condoling with your God, you deny and annihilate him, and such is the most horrible of atheisms.
‘And here on earth, too,’ he went on, ‘we, who stand in lieu of the gods and have emancipated ourselves from the tyranny of necessity, should leave to our vassals their monopoly of tragedy, and for ourselves accept the comic with grace. Only a boorish and cruel master – a parvenu, in fact – will make a jest of his servants’ necessity, or force the comic upon them. Only a timid and pedantic ruler, a petit-maître, will fear the ludicrous on his own behalf. Indeed,’ he finished his long speech, ‘the very same fatality which, in striking the burgher or peasant will become tragedy, with the aristocrat is exalted to the comic. By the grace and wit of our acceptance hereof our aristocracy is known.’
Adam could not help smiling a little as he heard the apotheosis of the comic on the lips of the erect, ceremonious prophet. In this ironic smile he was, for the first time, estranging himself from the head of his house.
A shadow fell across the landscape. A cloud had crept over the sun, the country changed colour beneath it, faded and bleached, and even all sounds for a minute seemed to die out of it.
‘Ah now,’ said the old lord, ‘if it is going to rain, and the rye gets wet, Anne-Marie will not be able to finish in time. – And who comes there?’ he added, and turned his head a little.
Preceded by a lackey, a man in riding-boots and a striped waistcoat with silver buttons, and with his hat in his hand, came down the avenue. He bowed deeply, first to the old lord and then to Adam.
‘My bailiff!’ said the old lord.
‘Good afternoon, bailiff. What news have you to bring?’
The bailiff made a sad gesture, ‘Poor news only, mylord,’ he said.
‘And how, poor news?’ asked his master.
‘There is’, said the bailiff with weight, ‘not a soul at work on the land, and not a sickle going except that of Anne-Marie in this rye-field. The mowing has stopped, they are all at her heels. It is a poor day for a first day of the harvest.’
‘Yes, I see,’ said the old lord.
The bailiff went on. ‘I have spoken kindly to them,’ he said, ‘and I have sworn at them, it is all one. They might as well all be deaf.’
‘Good bailiff,’ said the old lord, ‘leave them in peace, let them do as they like. This day may, all the same, do them more good than many others. Where is Goske, the boy, Anne-Marie’s son?’
‘We have set him in the small room by the barn,’ said the bailiff.
‘Nay, let him be brought down,’ said the old lord, ‘let him see his mother at work. But what do you say, – will she get the field mowed in time?’
‘If you ask me, mylord,’ said the bailiff, ‘1 believe that she will. Who would have thought so? – she is only a small woman. It is as hot a day today, as well, as I do ever remember. I myself, – you yourself, mylord, – could not have done what Anne-Marie has done today.’
‘Nay, nay we could not, bailiff,’ said the old lord.
The bailiff pulled out a red handkerchief and wiped his brow, somewhat calmed by venting his wrath. ‘If’, he remarked with bitterness, ‘they would all work as the widow works now, we would make a profit on the land.’
‘Yes,’ said the old lord, and fell into thought, as if calculating the profit it might make. ‘Still,’ he said, ‘as to the question of profit and loss that is more intricate than it looks. I will tell you something that you may not know: the most famous tissue ever woven was ravelled out again every night. But come,’ he added, ‘she is close by now. We will go and have a look at her work ourselves.’ With these words he rose and put his hat on.
The cloud had drawn away again, the rays of the sun once more burned the wide landscape, and as the small party walked out from under the shade of the trees the dead still heat was heavy as lead, the sweat sprang out on their faces and their eyelids smarted. On the narrow path they had to go one by one, the old lord stepping along first, all black, and the footman, in his bright livery, bringing up the rear.
The field was indeed filled with people like a marketplace, there was probably a hundred or more men and women in it. To Adam the scene recalled pictures from his Bible – the meeting between Esau and Jacob in Edom, or the reapers of Boaz in his barley-field near Bethlehem. Some were standing by the side of the field, others pressed in small groups close to the mowing woman, and a few followed in her wake, binding up sheaves where she had cut the corn, as if thereby they thought to help her, or as if at all events they meant to have part in her work. A younger woman with a pail on her head kept close at her side, and with her a number of half-grown children. One of these first caught sight of the lord of the estate and his suite, and pointed to him. The binders let their sheaves drop and, as the old man stood still, many of the onlookers drew close round him.
The woman on whom till now the eyes of the whole field had rested, – a small figure on the large stage, – was advancing slowly and unevenly, bent double as if she were walking on her knees, and stumbling as she walked. Her blue headcloth had slipped back from her head, the grey hair was plastered to the skull, with sweat, dusty and stuck with straw. She was obviously totally unaware of the multitude round her, neither did she now once turn her head or her gaze towards the new arrivals.
Absorbed in her work she again and again stretched out her left hand to grasp a handful of corn, and her right hand with the sickle in it to cut it off close to the soil, in wavering, groping pulls, like a tired swimmer’s strokes. Her course took her so close to the feet of the old lord that his shadow fell on her. Just then she staggered and swayed sideways, and the woman who followed her lifted the pail from her head and held it to her lips. Anne-Marie drank without leaving hold of her sickle, and the water ran from the corners of her mouth. A boy, close to her, quickly bent one knee, seized her hands in his own and, steadying and guiding them, cut off a grip of rye.
‘No, no,’ said the old lord, ‘you must not do that, boy. Leave Anne-Marie in peace to her work.’
At the sound of his voice the woman, falteringly, lifted her face in his direction.
The bony and tanned face was streaked with sweat and dust, the eyes were dimmed. But there was not in its expression the slightest trace of fear or pain. Indeed amongst all the grave and concerned faces of the field hers was the only one perfectly calm, peaceful and mild. The mouth was drawn together in a thin line, an eager prim, patient little smile, such as will be seen in the face of an old woman at her spinning-wheel or her knitting, eager on her work, and happy in it. And as the younger woman lifted back the pail, she immediately again fell to her mowing, with an ardent, tender craving like that of a mother who lays a baby to the nipple. Like an insect that bustles along in high grass, or like a small vessel in heavy sea, she butted her way on, her quiet face once more bent upon her task.
The whole throng of onlookers, and with them the small group from the pavilion, advanced as she advanced, slowly and as if drawn by a string. The bailiff, who felt the intense silence of the field heavy on him, said to the old lord: ‘The rye will yield better this year than last,’ and got no reply. He repeated his remark to Adam, and at last to the footman, who felt himself above a discussion on agriculture, and only cleared his throat in answer.
In a while the bailiff again broke the silence. ‘There is the boy,’ he said and pointed with his thumb. ‘They have brought him down.’
At that moment the woman fell forward on her face, and was lifted up by those nearest to her.
Adam suddenly stopped on the path, and covered his eyes with his hand. The old lord without turning asked him if he felt incommoded by the heat.
‘No,’ said Adam, ‘but stay. Let me speak to you.’
His uncle stopped, with his hand on the stick and looking ahead as if regretful of being held back.
‘In the name of God,’ cried the young man in French, ‘force not this woman to continue.’
There was a short pause. – ‘But I force her not, my friend,’ said his uncle in t
he same language, ‘and I have never been forcing her. If, three days ago, here within the field, she had rejected my proposition, what harm would have befallen her? None whatever, only her son’s case would have proceeded, in accordance with the laws of the country, like any other case of that kind. And she is still free to give up her task at any moment she chooses.’
‘Yes,’ cried Adam, ‘at the cost of her child’s life! Do you not see that she is dying? You know not what you are doing, or what it may bring upon you.’
The old lord, perplexed by this unexpected animadversion, after a second turned all round, and his pale, clear eyes sought his nephew’s face with stately surprise. His long, waxen face, with two symmetrical curls at the sides, had something of an idealized and ennobled old sheep or ram. He made sign to the bailiff to go on, the footman also withdrew a little, and the uncle and nephew were, so to say, alone on the path. For a minute neither of them spoke.
‘In this very place where we now stand,’ said the old lord, then, with hauteur, ‘I gave Anne-Marie my word.’
‘My uncle!’ said Adam. ‘A life is a greater thing even than a word. Recall that word, I beseech you, which was given in caprice, as a whim. I am praying you more for your sake than for my own, yet I shall be grateful to you all my life if you will grant me my prayer.’
‘You will have learnt in school,’ said his uncle, ‘that in the beginning was the Word. It may have been pronounced in caprice, as a whim, the Scripture tells us nothing about it. It is still the principle of our world, its law of gravitation. My own humble word has been the principle of the land on which we stand, for an age of man. My father’s word was the same, before my day.’
