Stories by Foreign Authors: Scandinavian Part 6

"Yes: how do you think a young girl would like it, when there came from Heaven a billet, in which one pledged himself to her for time and eternity?"

"That isn't easy to say; but I don't believe the occurrence quite so uncommon. A friend of mine once had such a billet blown to her, and she presented me with it."

"Does one give such things away? Have you the billet?"

"I will look for it," answered Miss Hjelm; and surely enough, after longer search in the sewing-table, in drawers, and small boxes, than was really necessary, she found it. Miss Brandt read it, taking care not to remark that it very much appeared to her as if it resembled the one the counsellor had mentioned.

"And such a billet one gives away!" she said after a pause.

"Yes: will you have it?" asked Miss Hjelm, as though after a sudden resolution.

Miss Brandt's first impulse was an eager acceptance; but she checked herself almost as quickly, and answered:

"Oh, yes, thank you, as a curiosity." Then slowly put it between her glove and hand.

As Miss Brandt and her company rode away, said Miss Hjelm's cousin, a handsome, middle-aged widow, to her:

"How is it, Ingeborg? It appears to me you laugh with one eye and weep with the other."

"Yes: a soap-bubble has burst for me, and glitters, maybe, for another."

"You know I seldom understand the sentimental enigmas: can you not interpret your words?"

"Yes: to-day an illusion has vanished, that had lasted for six years."

"For six years?" said her cousin, with an inquiring or sympathizing look. "So it began when you were hardly sixteen years."

"Now do you believe, that when I was in my sixteenth year I saw an ideal of a man, and was enamoured of him, and to-day I hear that he is married."

"No, I don't know as I believe just that," answered the cousin, dropping her eyes; "but I suppose that then you had a pretty vision, and have carried it along with you in silence--and with faith."

"But it was something more than a vision; it was a letter--a love-letter."

The cousin looked upon Ingeborg so inquiringly, so anxiously, that words were unnecessary. Beside this the cousin knew, that when Ingeborg was inclined to talk, she did so without being asked, and if she wished to be silent, she was silent.

Ingeborg continued: "One time, I drove to town with sainted father.

Father was to go no further than to Noerrebro, and I had an errand at Vestervold. So I stepped out and went through the Love-path. As I came to the corner of the path, and the Ladegaardsway, the wind blew so violently against me, that I could hardly breathe; and something blew against my veil, fluttering with wings like a humming-bird. I tried to drive it away, for it blinded one of my eyes; but it blew back again.

So I caught it and was going to let it fly away over my head, but that moment I saw it was written upon, and read it. It was a love-letter! A man wrote that he sent this as in old times the Norwegian emigrants let their high-seat pillars be carried by the sea, and where it came he would one time come, and bring his faith to his destined--Geb.'"

"'Geb'? What is that?" asked the cousin. "That is Ingeborg," answered Miss Hjelm, with a plain simplicity, showing how deeply she had believed in the earnestness of the message.

"It was really remarkable!" said the cousin, and added with a smile which perhaps was somewhat ironical: "And did you then resolve to remain unmarried, until the unknown letter-writer should come and redeem his vow?"

"I will not say that," answered Ingeborg, who quickly became more guarded; "but the letter perhaps contained some stronger requirements than under the circ.u.mstances could be fulfilled."

"So! and now?"

"Now I have presented the letter to Miss Brandt."

"You gave it away? Why?"

"Because I learned that the man, who perhaps or probably wrote it in his youth, has spoken about it publicly, and is counsellor in one of the courts."

"Oh, I understand," said the cousin, half audibly: "when the ideal is found out to be a counsellor, then--"

"Then it is not an ideal any longer? No. The whole had been spoiled by being fumbled in public. I would get away from the temptation to think of him. Do court to him, announce myself to him as the happy finder,--I could not."

"That I understand very well," said the cousin, putting her arm affectionately around Ingeborg's waist; "but why did you just give Miss Brandt the letter?"

"Because she is acquainted with the counsellor, and indeed, as far as I could understand, feels somewhat for him. They two can get each other; and what a wonderful consecration it will be when she on the marriage-day gives him the letter!"

The cousin said musingly: "And such secrets can live in one whole year, without another surmising it!" Suddenly she added: "But how will Miss Brandt on that occasion interpret the word 'Geb'?"

"Oh! I suppose a single syllable is of no consequence; and, besides, Miss Brandt is a judicious girl," answered Ingeborg, with an inexpressible flash in the dark eyes.

IV.

Good fortune seldom comes singly. One morning Criminal and Court Counsellor Bagger got, at his residence at Noerre Street, official intelligence that from the first of next month he was transferred to the King's Court, and in grace was promoted to be veritable counsellor of justice there; rank, fourth-cla.s.s, number three. As, gratified by this friendly smile from above, he went out to repair to the court-house, he met in the porch a postman, who delivered him a letter.

With thoughts yet busy with new t.i.tle and court, Counsellor Bagger broke the letter, but remained as if fixed to the ground. In it he read:

"The high-seat pillars have come on sh.o.r.e.

"--'GEB.'--"

One says well, that a man's love or season of courtship lasts till his thirtieth year, and after that time he is ambitious; but it is not always so, and with Counsellor Bagger it was in all respects the contrary. His ambition was already, if not fully reached, yet in some degree satisfied. The faculty of love had not been at all employed, and the letter came like a spark in a powder-cask; it ran glowing through every nerve. The youthful half of his soul, which had slept within him, wakened with such sudden, revolutionary strength, that the other half soul, which until now had borne rule, became completely subject; yes, so wholly, that Counsellor Bagger went past the court-house and came down in Court-house Street without noticing it. Suddenly he missed the big building with the pillars and inscription: "With law shall Lands be built;" looked around confused, and turned back.

So much was he still at this moment Criminal Examiner, that among the first thoughts or feelings which the mysterious letter excited in him was this: It can be a trick, a foolery. But in the next moment it occurred to him, that never to any living soul had he mentioned his bold figure of the high-seat pillars, and still less revealed the mysterious, to him so valued, syllable--geb--. No doubt could exist: the fine, perfumed paper, the delicate lady handwriting, and the few significant words testified, that the billet which once in youthful, sanguine longing he had entrusted to the winds of heaven, had come to a lady, and that in one way or another she had found him out. He remembered very well, that a single time, five or six weeks before, he had in a numerous company mentioned that incident, and he did not doubt that the story had extended itself as ripples do, when one throws a stone into the water; but where in the whole town, or indeed the land, had the ripple hit the exact point? He looked again at the envelope. It bore the stamp of the Copenhagen city mail: that was all. But that showed with some probability that the writer lived in Copenhagen, and maybe at this moment she looked down upon him from one of the many windows; for now he stood by the fountain. There was something in the paper, the handwriting, or more properly perhaps in the secrecy, that made her seem young, spirited, beautiful, piquant. There was something fairy-like, exalted, intoxicating, in the feeling that the object of the longing and hope of his youth had been under the protection of a good spirit, and that the great unknown had taken care of and prepared for him a companion, a wife, just at the moment when he had become Counsellor of Justice of the Superior Court. But who was she? This was the only thing painful in the affair; but this intriguing annoyance was not to be avoided, if the lady was to remain within her sphere, surrounded by respect and esteem.

"What would I have thought of a lady, a woman, who came straight forward and handed out the billet, saying: 'Here I am'?" he asked himself, at the moment when at last he had found the court-house stairs and was ascending.

How it fared that day with the examinations is recorded in criminal and police court doc.u.ments; but a veil is thrown over it in consideration of the fact, that a man only once in his life is made Counsellor of Justice in the King's Court. The day following it went better; although it is pretty sure that a horse thief went free from further reproof, because the counsellor was busy rolling that stone up the mountain: Where shall I seek her if she does not write again? Will she write again? If she would do that, why did she not write a little more at first?

A couple of weeks after the receipt of the letter, one evening about seven o'clock, the counsellor sat at home, not as before by his writing-table busy with acts, but on a corner of the sofa, with drooping arms, deeply absorbed in a mixture of anxious doubts and dreaming expectations. Hope built air-castles, and doubt then puffed them over like card-houses. One of his fancies was, that she summoned him--he would not even in thought use the expression: gave him an interview--at a masquerade. It was consequently no common masquerade, but a grand, elegant masked ball, to which a true lady could repair.

The clock was at eleven, the appointed hour: he waited anxiously the pressing five minutes; then she came and extended him the fine hand in the finest straw-colored glove--

"Letter to the Counsellor of Justice," said Jens, with strong Funen accent, and short, soldierly p.r.o.nunciation.

It is so uncommon that what one longs for comes just at the moment of most earnest desire; but notwithstanding the letter was from her, the Counsellor of Justice knew the superscription, would have known it among a hundred thousand. The letter read thus:

"I ought to be open towards you; and, as we shall never meet, I can be so."

Here the Counsellor of Justice stopped a moment and caught for breath.

A good many of our twenty-year-old beaux, who have never been admitted to the bar, far less have been Court Counsellors, would, under similar circ.u.mstances, have said to themselves: "She writes that she will be open; that is to say, now she will fool me: we will never meet; that is to say, now I shall soon see her." But Counsellor Bagger believed every word as gospel, and his knees trembled. He read further:

"I am ashamed of the few words I last wrote you; but my apology is, that it is only two days since I learned that you are married. I have been mistaken, but more in what may be imputed to me than in what I have thought. My only comfort is, that I shall never be known by you or anybody, and that I shall be forgotten, as I shall forget."

"Never! But who can have spread the infamous slander! What dreadful treachery of some wretch or gossiping wench, who knows nothing about me! And how can she believe it! How in such a town as Copenhagen can it be a matter of doubt for five minutes, if a Superior Court Counsellor is married or not! Or maybe there is some other Counsellor Bagger married,--a Chamber Counsellor or the like? Or maybe she lives at a distance, in a quiet world, so that the truth of it does not easily reach her? So there is no sunshine more!