The Sand-Hills of Jutland Part 19

Scarcely a fathom beneath the surface it stood; yet the two human beings who had been on board were lost--lost--forgotten! Only the gla.s.s with the blue-painted wooden foot did not sink; the wooden foot floated it. But the gla.s.s was broken when it was washed far up on the beach. How and when? That is of no consequence. It had served its time, and it had been liked; that Anne Lisbeth's child had never been.

But in the kingdom of heaven no soul can say again, "Never loved!"

Anne Lisbeth resided in the large market town, and had done so for some years. She was called "Madam," and held her head very high, especially when she spoke of old reminiscences of the time she had pa.s.sed at the count's lordly mansion, when she used to drive out in a carriage, and used to converse with countesses and baronesses. Her sweet nursling, the little count, was a lovely angel, a darling creature. She was so fond of him, and he had been so fond of her. How she used to pet him, and how he used to kiss her! He was her delight--was as dear to her as herself. He was now quite a big boy; he was fourteen years of age, and had plenty of learning and accomplishments. She had not seen him since she carried him in her arms. It was many years since she had been at the count's castle, for it was such a long way off.

"But I must go over and see them again," said Anne Lisbeth. "I must go to my n.o.ble friends, to my darling child, the young count--yes, yes, for he is surely longing to see me. He thinks of me, he loves me as he did when he used to throw his little cherub arms round my neck and lisp, 'An Lis!' Oh, it was like a violin! Yes, I must go over and see him again."

She went part of the way in the carrier's wagon, part of the way on foot. She arrived at the castle. It looked as grand and imposing as ever. The gardens were not at all changed; but the servants were all strangers. Not one of them knew anything about Anne Lisbeth. They did not know what an important person she had been in the house formerly; but surely the countess would tell them who she was, so would her own boy. How she longed to see them both!

Well, Anne Lisbeth was there; but she had to wait a long time, and waiting is always so tedious. Before the family and their guests went to dinner she was called in to the countess, and very kindly spoken to. She was told she should see her dear boy after dinner, and after dinner she was sent for again.

How much he had grown! How tall and thin! But he had the same charming eyes, and the same angelic mouth. He looked at her, but he did not say a word. It was evident that he did not remember her. He turned away, and was going, but she caught his hand and carried it to her lips.

"Ah! well, that will do!" he said, and hastily left the room--he, the darling of her soul--he on whom her thoughts had centred for so many years--he whom she had loved the best--her greatest earthly pride!

Anne Lisbeth left the castle, and turned into the open high road. She was very sad--he had been so cold and distant to her. He had not a word, not a thought for her who, by day and by night, had so cherished _him_ in her heart.

At that moment a large black raven flew across the road before her, screeching harshly.

"Oh!" she exclaimed, "what do you want, bird of ill omen that you are?"

She pa.s.sed by the grave-digger's house; his wife was standing in the doorway, and they spoke to each other.

"You are looking very well," said the grave-digger's wife. "You are stout and hearty. The world goes well with you apparently."

"Pretty well," replied Anne Lisbeth.

"The little vessel has been lost," said the grave-digger's wife. "Lars the skipper, and the boy, are both drowned; so there is an end of that matter. I had hoped, though, that the boy might by and by have helped me with a shilling now and then. He never cost you anything, Anne Lisbeth."

"Drowned are they?" exclaimed Anne Lisbeth; and she did not say another word on the subject--she was so distressed that her nursling, the young count, did not care to speak to her--she who loved him so much, and had taken such a long journey to see him--a journey that had cost her some money too. The pleasure she had received was not great, but she was not going to admit this. She would not say one word to the grave-digger's wife to lead her to think that she was no longer a person of consequence at the count's. The raven screeched again just over her head.

"That horrid noise!" said Anne Lisbeth; "it has quite startled me to-day."

She had brought some coffee-beans and chicory with her; it would be a kindness to the grave-digger's wife to make her a present of these; and, when she did so, it was agreed that they should take a cup of coffee together. The mistress of the house went to prepare it, and Anne Lisbeth sat down to wait for it. While waiting she fell asleep, and she dreamed of one of whom she had never before dreamt: that was very strange. She dreamed of her own child, who in that very house had starved and squalled, and never tasted anything better than cold water, and who now lay in the deep sea, our Lord only knew where. She dreamed that she was sitting just where she really was seated, and that the grave-digger's wife had gone to make some coffee, but had first to grind the coffee-beans, and that a beautiful boy stood in the doorway--a boy as charming as the little count had been; and the child said,--

"The world is now pa.s.sing away. Hold fast to me, for thou art my mother. Thy child is an angel in the kingdom of heaven. Hold fast to me!"

And he seized her. But there was a frightful uproar around, as if worlds were breaking asunder; and the angel raised her up, and held her fast by the sleeves of her dress--so fast, it seemed to her, that she was lifted from the ground; but something hung so heavily about her feet, something lay so heavily on her back: it was as if hundreds of women were clinging fast to her, and crying, "If thou canst be saved, so may we. We will hold on--hold on!" and they all appeared to be holding on by her. Then the sleeves of her garments gave way, and she fell, overcome with terror.

The sensation of fear awoke her, and she found herself on the point of falling off her chair. Her head was so confused that at first she could not remember what she had dreamt, though she knew it had been something disagreeable. The coffee was drunk, and Anne Lisbeth took her departure to the nearest village, where she might meet the carrier, and get him to convey her that evening to the town where she lived. But the carrier said he was not going until the following evening; and, on calculating what it would cost her to remain till then, she determined to walk home. She would not go by the high road, but by the beach: that was at least eight or nine miles shorter. The weather was fine, and it was full moon. She would be at home the next morning.

The sun had set; the evening bells that had been chiming were hushed.

All was still; not a bird was to be heard twittering among the leaves--they had all gone to rest: the owls were away. All was silence in the wood; and on the beach, where she was walking, she could hear her own foot fall on the sand. The very sea seemed slumbering; the waves rolled lazily and noiselessly on the sh.o.r.e, and away on the open deep there seemed to be a dead calm: not a line of foam, not a ripple was visible on the water. All were quiet beneath, the living and the dead.

Anne Lisbeth walked on, and her thoughts were not engrossed by anything in particular. She was not at all lost in thought, but thoughts were not lost to her. They are never lost to us; they lie only in a state of torpor, as it were, both the lately active thoughts that have lulled themselves to rest, and those which have not yet awoke. But thoughts come often undesired; they can touch the heart, they can distract the head, they can at times overpower us.

"Good actions have their reward," it is written.

"The wages of sin is death," it is also written. Much is written--much is said. But many give no heed to the words of truth--they remember them not; and so it was with Anne Lisbeth; but they can force themselves upon the mind.

All sins and all virtues lie in our hearts--in thine, in mine. They lie like small invisible seeds. From without fall upon them a sunbeam, or the contact of an evil hand--they take their bent in their hidden nook, to the right or to the left. Yes, there it is decided, and the little grain of seed quivers, swells, springs up, and pours its juice into your blood, and there you are, fairly launched. These are thoughts fraught with anxiety; they do not haunt one when one is in a state of mental slumber, but they are fermenting. Anne Lisbeth was slumbering--hidden thoughts were fermenting. From Candlemas to Candlemas the heart has much on its tablets--it has the year's account. Much is forgotten--sins in word and deed against G.o.d, against our neighbour, and against our own consciences. We reflect little upon all this; neither did Anne Lisbeth. She had not broken the laws of her country, she kept up good appearances, she did not run in debt, she wronged no one; and so, well satisfied with herself, she walked on by the seash.o.r.e. What was that lying in her path? She stopped. What was that washed up from the sea? A man's old hat lay there. It might have fallen overboard. She approached closer to it, stood still, and looked at it. Heavens! what was lying there? She was almost frightened; but there was nothing to be frightened at; it was only a ma.s.s of seaweed that lay twined over a large, oblong, flat rock, that was shaped something like a human being--it was nothing but seaweed. Still she felt frightened, and hastened on; and as she hurried on, many things she had heard in her childhood recurred to her thoughts, especially all the superst.i.tious tales about "_the apparition of the beach_"--the spectre of the unburied that lay washed up on the lonely, deserted sh.o.r.e. The body thrown up from the deep, the dead body itself, she thought nothing of; but its ghost followed the solitary wanderer, attached itself closely to him or her, and demanded to be carried to the churchyard, to receive Christian burial.

"Hold on--hold on!" it was wont to say; and, as Anne Lisbeth repeated these words inwardly to herself, she suddenly remembered her strange dream, in which the women had clung to her, shrieking, "Hold on--hold on!" how the world had sunk; how her sleeves had given way, and she had fallen from the grasp of her child, who wished, in the hour of doom, to save her. Her child--her own flesh and blood--the little one she had never loved, never spared a thought to--that child was now at the bottom of the sea, and it might come like "the apparition of the beach," and cry, "Hold on--hold on! Give me Christian burial!" And as these thoughts crowded on her mind, terror gave wings to her feet, and she hurried faster and faster on; but fear came like a cold, clammy hand, and laid itself on her beating heart, so that she felt quite faint; and as she glanced towards the sea, she saw it looked dark and threatening; a thick mist arose, and soon spread around, lying heavily over the very trees and bushes, which a.s.sumed strange appearances through it.

She turned round to look for the moon, which was behind her: it was like a pale disc, without any rays. Something seemed to hang heavily about her limbs as she attempted to hurry on. She thought of the apparition; and, turning again, she beheld the white moon as if close to her, while the mist seemed to hang like a mantle over her shoulders. "Hold on--hold on! Give me Christian burial!" she expected every moment to hear; and she did hear a hollow, terrific sound, which seemed to cry hoa.r.s.ely, "Bury me--bury me!" Yes, it must be the spectre of her child--her child who was lying at the bottom of the sea, and who would not rest quietly until the corpse was carried to the churchyard, and placed like a Christian in consecrated ground. She would go there--she would dig his grave herself; and she went in the direction in which the church lay, and as she proceeded she felt her invisible burden become lighter--it left her; and again she returned to the sh.o.r.e to reach her home as speedily as possible. But no sooner did her foot tread the sands than the wild sound seemed to moan around her, and it seemed ever to repeat, "Bury me--bury me!"

The fog was cold and damp; her hands and her face were cold and damp.

She shivered in her fright. Without, s.p.a.ce seemed to close up around her; within her there seemed to be endless room for thoughts that had never before entered her mind.

During one spring night here in the north the beech groves can sprout, and the next day's early sun can shine on them in all their fresh young beauty. In one single second within us can the germ of sin bud forth, swelling by degrees into thoughts, words, and deeds, though all remorse for them lies dormant. _It_ is quickened and unfolds itself in one single second, when conscience awakens; and our Lord awakens _that_ when we least expect it. Then there is nothing to be excused; deeds stand forth and bear witness, thoughts find words, and words ring out over the world. We are shocked at what we have permitted to dwell within us, and not stifled; shocked at what, in our thoughtlessness or our presumption, we have scattered abroad. The heart is the depository of all virtues, but also of all vices; and these can thrive in the most barren ground.

Anne Lisbeth reviewed in thought what we have expressed in words. She was overwhelmed with it all. She sank to the ground, and crawled a little way over it. "Bury me--bury me!" she still seemed to hear. She would rather have buried herself, if the grave could be an eternal forgetfulness of everything. It was the awakening hour of serious thought, of terrible thoughts, that made her shudder. Superst.i.tion came, too, by turns heating and chilling her blood; and things she would scarcely have ventured to mention rushed on her mind. Noiseless as the clouds that crossed the sky in the clear moonlight floated past her a vision she had heard of. Immediately before her sped four foaming horses, flames flashing from their eyes and from their distended nostrils; they drew a fiery chariot, in which sat the evil lord of the manor, who, more than a hundred years before, had dwelt in that neighbourhood. Every night, it is said, he drives to his former home, and then instantly turns back again. He was not white, as the dead are said to be: no, he was as black as a coal--a burnt-out coal.

He nodded to Anne Lisbeth, and beckoned to her: "Hold on--hold on! So mayst thou again drive in a n.o.bleman's carriage, and forget thine own child!"

In still greater terror, and with still greater precipitation than before, she fled in the direction of the church. She reached the churchyard; but the dark crosses above the graves, and the dark ravens, seemed to mingle together before her eyes. The ravens screeched as they had screeched in the daytime; but she now understood what they said, and each cried, "I am a raven-mother; I am a raven-mother!" And Anne Lisbeth thought that they were taunting her.

She fancied that she might, perhaps, be changed into such a dark bird, and might have to screech like them, if she could not get the grave demanded of her dug.

And she threw herself down upon the ground, and she dug a grave with her hands in the hard earth, so that blood sprang from her fingers.

"Bury me--bury me!" resounded still about her. She dreaded the crowing of the c.o.c.k, and the first red streak in the east, because, if they came before her labours were ended, she would be lost. And the c.o.c.k crowed, and in the east it began to be light. The grave was but half dug. An ice-cold hand glided over her head and her face, down to where her heart was. "Only half a grave!" sighed a voice near her; and something seemed to vanish away--vanish into the deep sea. It was "the apparition of the beach." Anne Lisbeth sank, terror-stricken and benumbed, on the ground. She had lost feeling and consciousness.

It was broad daylight when she came to herself. Two young men lifted her up. She was lying, not in the churchyard, but down on the sh.o.r.e; and she had dug there a deep hole in the sand, and cut her fingers till they bled with a broken gla.s.s, the stem of which was stuck into a piece of wood painted blue. Anne Lisbeth was ill. Conscience had mingled in Superst.i.tion's game, and had imbued her with the idea that she had only half a soul--that her child had taken the other half away with him down to the bottom of the sea. Never could she ascend upwards towards the mercy-seat, until she had again the half soul that was imprisoned in the depths of the ocean. Anne Lisbeth was taken to her home, but she never was the same as she had formerly been. Her thoughts were disordered like tangled yarn; one thread alone was straight--that was to let "the apparition of the beach" see that a grave was dug for him in the churchyard, and thus to win back her entire soul.

Many a night she was missed from her home, and she was always found on the seash.o.r.e, where she waited for the spectre of the dead. Thus pa.s.sed a whole year. Then she disappeared one night, and was not to be found. The whole of the next day they searched for her in vain.

Towards the evening, when the bell-ringer entered the church to ring the evening chimes, he saw Anne Lisbeth lying before the altar. She had been there from a very early hour in the morning; her strength was almost exhausted, but her eyes sparkled, her face glowed with a sort of rosy tint. The departing rays of the sun shone in on her, and streamed over the altar-piece, and on the silver clasps of the Bible, that lay open at the words of the prophet Joel: "Rend your heart, and not your garments, and turn unto the Lord your G.o.d." "It was a strange occurrence," people said--as if everything were chance.

On Anne Lisbeth's countenance, when lighted up by the sun, were to be read peace and comfort. "She felt so well," she said. "She had won back her soul." During the night "the apparition of the beach"--her own child--had been with her, and it had said,--

"Thou hast only dug half a grave for me; but now for a year and a day thou hast entombed me in thy heart, and there a mother best inters her child." And he had restored to her her lost half soul, and had led her into the church.

"Now I am in G.o.d's house," said she, "and in it one is blessed."

When the sun had sunk entirely Anne Lisbeth's spirit had soared far away up yonder, where there is no more fear when one's sins are blotted out; and hers, it might be hoped, had been blotted out by the Saviour of the world.

_Children's Prattle_.

At the merchant's house there was a large party of children--rich people's children and great people's children. The merchant was a man of good standing in society, and a learned man. He had taken, in his youth, a college examination. He had been kept to his studies by his worthy father, who had not gone very deep into learning himself, but was honest and active. He had made money, and the merchant had increased the fortune left to him. He had intellect, and heart too; but less was said of these good qualities than of his money.

There visited at his house several distinguished persons, both people of birth, as it is called, and people of talents, as it is called--people who came under both of these heads, and people who came under neither of these heads. The meeting now in question was a children's party, where there was childish talk; and children generally speak like parrots.

There was one little girl so excessively proud. She had been flattered into her foolish pride by the servants, not by her parents--they were too sensible to have done that. Her father was _Kammerjunker_[6] and she thought this was monstrously grand.

[Footnote 6: A t.i.tle at court.]