Part 33

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. Superstition 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 nobleman'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 cock, and the first red streak in the east, because, if they came before her labours were ended, she would be lost. And the cock 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 shore; and she had dug there a deep hole in the sand, and cut her fingers till they bled with a broken glass, the stem of which was stuck into a piece of wood painted blue. Anne Lisbeth was ill. Conscience had mingled in Superstition'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 seashore, where she waited for the spectre of the dead. Thus passed 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 God." "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 God'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 and she thought this was monstrously grand.

"I am a court child," she said.

She might as well have been a cellar child, as far as she was herself concerned; and she informed the other children that she was "born" (well born, she meant); that when people were not "born," they could never be anybody; and that, however much they might read, however clever and industrious they might be, if they were not "born" they could never become great.

"And those whose names end in 'sen,'" she continued, "are all low people, and can never be of any consequence in the world. Ladies and gentlemen would put their hands on their sides, and keep them at a distance, these 'sen--sens!'" And she threw herself into the attitude she had described, and stuck her pretty little arms akimbo, to show how people of her grade would carry themselves in the presence of such common creatures. She really looked very pretty.

But the merchant's little daughter became extremely angry. Her father was called "Madsen," and that name, she knew, ended in "sen;" so she said, as proudly as she could,--

"But my father can buy hundreds of rix dollars' worth of sugar-plums, and think nothing of it. Can your father do that?"

"That's all very well," said the little daughter of a popular journalist; "but my father can put both of your fathers and all 'fathers' into the newspaper. Every one is afraid of him, my mother says; for it is my father who rules everything through the newspaper." And the little girl tossed her head and strutted about as if she thought herself a princess.

But on the outside of the half-open door stood a poor little boy peeping in. It was, of course, out of the question that so poor a child should enter the drawing-room; but he had been turning the spit for the cook, and he had obtained permission to look in behind the door at the splendidly dressed children who were amusing themselves, and that was a treat to him.

He would have liked to have been one of them, he thought; but at that moment he heard what had been said, and it was enough to make him very sad. Not one shilling had his parents at home to spare. They were not able to set up a newspaper, to say nothing of writing for one. And the worse was yet to come; for his father's name, and of course also his own name, certainly ended in "sen." He, therefore, could never become anybody in this world. This was very disheartening. Though he felt assured that he was born, it was impossible to think otherwise.

This was what passed that evening.

* * * * *

Several years had elapsed, and during their course the children had grown up to be men and women.

There stood in the town a handsome house, which was filled with magnificent objects of art. Every one went to see it. Even people who lived at a distance came to town to see it. Which prodigy, among the children we have spoken of, could call that edifice his or hers? It is easy to tell that. No; it is not so easy, after all. That house belonged to the poor little boy, who became somebody, although his name did end in "sen."--THORWALDSEN!