Irretrievable (9 page)

When Christine was left alone with her brother, she said: “You ought not to have said such things, Alfred, while Helmut was there. You know that in any case he has a tendency to take things lightly, and if you lead the way, you only encourage him in his pretence of being frivolous.”

Arne smiled.

“You are smiling but you are quite wrong. I didn't say ‘being frivolous,' I said ‘pretending to be frivolous.' He is not able to be a real free-thinker because he is not fitted for it either by character or intelligence. And that is what is so wrong. I could live with an atheist or at least I think I could, yes, I think it might even stimulate me to have serious discussions with him. But that would be impossible with Helmut. Serious discussions! He doesn't know what it means. You may say what you like to me, but with him, all you are doing is confusing him and encouraging him in his weakness and vanity.”

Arne said nothing and merely threw a few crumbs to some finches which had appeared while they were talking.

“Why don't you say something? Do you think I'm being too ‘churchy' again? I have not
once
mentioned the word church. Or am I being too strict for your liking?”

Arne nodded.

“Too strict? Amazing. You seem to have become quite incapable of understanding me any more, Alfred, and if that is a reproach and you mean it as such, then you must allow me to return the compliment. I
cannot
understand you any more. You know how fond I am of you, how grateful I have always been to you since I was a child and how grateful I still am. But I still cannot help pointing out that it is you who have changed your opinions and principles, not I. One day you find me too strict in my morals, the next you find me too inflexible in my religion, the third day too Prussian and the fourth not Danish enough. I'm never right. And yet, Alfred, it is you who made me everything I am, or most of what I am. It was you who showed me the way. You were already thirty when I was left an orphan and I was brought up according to your ideas, not our parents'. It was you who found the Herrnhut school for me, you introduced me to the Reckes and the Reusses and all those pious families, and now that I have become what you intended, you find it wrong. And why is it wrong? Because in the meanwhile you have changed sides. I don't reproach
you
because when you were thirty your ideas were hide-bound and aristocratic and now you are sixty you suddenly see the world through liberal spectacles. But have you the right to blame me if I have remained what you used to be and what you yourself made me?”

Arne gently took his sister's hand. “Dear Christine, you may be whatever you like. I no longer have the heart to despise anyone's views. That is the one thing that I have learnt in my second thirty years. It is not the opinion that matters but the
way
you defend it. And there, I feel compelled to say that you are holding the rein too taut, you're making too much of a good thing.”

“Can you make too much of a good thing?”

“Of course you can. Any excess is wrong. Ever since I learned it, I have always been most impressed by the idea that in antiquity they valued nothing so highly as moderation in all things.”

At this point Holk and Julie came back from their walk and Asta came up from the beach on the other side and immediately hurried towards Arne, whose favourite she was and who was always ready to listen to her. With her mother she was reserved but when Uncle Alfred was there, she always had to pour out everything that was on her mind.

“This morning I was sitting at Pastor Petersen's desk and on the right-hand side was the Bible and on the left his box of antiquities and there was really not an inch of space left to show me what was in all the boxes. It was mainly stones. But finally, after he had pushed the Bible out of the way …”

“Then you had room,” laughed the countess. “Dear old Petersen is always pushing the Bible out of the way and is forever busy with his old stones and he even has a tendency to give stones instead of bread …”

Arne was tempted to contradict but, remembering the conversation he had just had, quickly changed his mind and was glad when Asta went on: “And then I went with Elizabeth outside into the churchyard beside her mother's grave and I saw that Elizabeth is really Elizabeth Kruse and only her mother was a Petersen and that we really ought not to call her Petersen. But she told me that she had never known her father and her mother had always been known as old Petersen's daughter when people talked of her down in the village, and so she was called Elizabeth Petersen as well, and that it was really all right. And then we went further along the cemetery up to the church and climbed up on a tombstone that had half fallen over and tried to look through the iron bars of the window into the vault and a brick fell in with a crash and I almost had the feeling that I had killed someone. Oh, I can't tell you how scared I was. I don't ever want to go in there now and if I die you must all promise me that my grave will be in the open.”

The countess's eye fell on her husband who was plainly moved as he nodded in a friendly fashion to his wife: “We must see to all that, Christine. I have already spoken to Alfred and also to Julie a moment ago. We shall turn it into an open courtyard with Gothic arches to enclose the burial ground, and anything else that needs doing you can arrange for yourself.”

The count and countess discussed this matter for a few more minutes while Arne talked with Asta and then, when the conversation became general again, the latter led it on to other matters; this was not difficult as the gardener Ohlsen had just come back with the news that the King was arriving the next day and Countess Danner as well, and he intended to stay four weeks excavating a barrow on Brarup moor; and the ticket had been bought and the steamer would arrive at the pier below tomorrow morning at ten o'clock or thereabouts. It was the best ship of the line, the
King Christian
, with Brödstedt as skipper.

Before Ohlsen had finished making his report, Axel came in with his tutor and pulled out of his bag the partridges that he had shot.

“Many thanks, Axel,” said Holk, “that will give me some lunch on the way. You'll be a decent shot yet, like all our family, and frankly that is what I should like best. Learning is for others.”

As he said this, Holk's glance fell briefly and quite unintentionally on poor Strehlke who, while his pupil had been shooting partridge, had been content to take a dozen fieldfare out of the snares.

The
king Christian
was as good as its word; punctually at ten o'clock it came in sight and ten minutes later moored at the landing-stage. The count was already there, his cases beside him, on which Axel and Asta were sitting, with shot-guns over their shoulders. He said good-bye to his children and climbed on board behind two of the crew carrying his luggage. Captain Brödstedt called down to the engine-room, the quartermaster let the wheel run through his fingers, and with heavy thuds, for it was still a paddle-steamer, the ship left the jetty and headed east towards the open sea. Meanwhile Holk had climbed up to the captain on the bridge and was watching the pier where the two children were still eagerly waving while Axel even fired a farewell shot from his gun. The countess and Fräulein Dobschütz were standing on the top step of the terrace and then moved up to the tall colonnaded gallery to follow the ship more easily. At the same time they were able to look down on to the pier where the two children were now coming back in lively conversation. When they reached the beach they parted, and while Axel turned off into the dunes, bent on some gull-shooting, Asta climbed up to the terrace.

When she arrived, she pushed a footstool close to her mother's chair, took her hand and tried to joke: “It was the handsome Captain Brödstedt on the boat who, according to Philip, has a very pretty wife whom he is supposed to have taken from the Bornholm lighthouse. It really is a shame that just because of prejudice one can't marry a man like Captain Brödstedt.”

“But Asta, how can you say such a thing?”

“It's quite simple, Mama. After all, everybody has eyes in their head and hears all sorts of things and makes comparisons. Now just take Dr. Schwarzkoppen who married into the aristocracy; it's true he's a widower now. But you must admit, Mama, that the Principal is not half as good-looking as Brödstedt. And Schwarzkoppen might be a possibility, but Herr Strehlke …”

They both laughed, and as her mother said nothing, Fraülein Dobschütz said: “Asta, you are behaving just like a young filly and I see to my horror that you need some schooling. And what were you saying exactly, as if there was a difference socially speaking between a man like Brödstedt and a man like Strehlke.”

“Certainly there is a difference. That is to say, not for me, quite definitely not for me, I assure you. But for others there is a difference. Just look around us. And I have never heard of a marriage between a ship's captain and the daughter of a count; but if I were to add up all the tutors and curates around here who …”

“Please let us try to avoid comparisons, Asta.”

“All right,” she laughed, “but to be a lighthouse-keeper's daughter and then be taken from a lighthouse by Captain Brödstedt is very charming and really a sort of real-life fairy story. And I adore anything to do with fairy stories, I have a passion for them and I like Andersen's tale about the brave tin soldier much, much better than the whole of the Seven Years' War!” And with these words she jumped up from her footstool and went off to play the piano, leaving the two women alone. Immediately afterwards, one of Chopin's
Études
could be heard, played rather unevenly and with many mistakes.

“How did Asta come to make such a remark? Is it just high spirits or what? What put such strange ideas into her head?”

“Nothing that you need to be afraid of,” said Fräulein Dobschütz. “If that were so, then she would keep quiet about it. I spend more time with her than you and I can guarantee her commonsense. Asta has a lively mind and a lively imagination.”

“Which is always a danger …”

“Yes. But often a blessing as well. A lively imagination can often turn ugliness into something else and then it is a shield and protection.”

The countess stared straight ahead without replying and when, a little later, she looked out again over the sea, there was nothing to be seen of the ship except a thin wisp of smoke along the horizon, growing paler and paler. She seemed very pensive and when Fräulein Dobschütz gave her a furtive glance, she saw that her eyes were full of tears.

“What is it, Christine?” she asked.

“Nothing.”

“And yet you seem so moved …”

“Nothing,” repeated the countess, “or at least nothing definite. But I have a vague fear and if I didn't dislike fortune-telling and interpreting dreams as being something godless and a source of trouble, I would tell you of a dream that I had last night. And it wasn't even a particularly horrifying dream, merely sad and melancholy. It was a funeral procession, just you and I and Helmut in the distance. And then all at once it was a wedding procession and I was in it and then it was a funeral procession again. I cannot put it out of my thoughts. The strange thing about it was that I was not frightened by it during the dream, but only when I woke up. It was for that reason that I was so disturbed by what Asta said. Yesterday I should merely have been amused at it, for I know the children and know that she is exactly as you said …. And then, frankly, this journey makes me afraid. Look, the smoke has disappeared now …”

“But Christine, you will get over it; it's like being afraid of falling off a chair or of the ceiling falling in. Ceilings do fall in and houses as well, and ships founder too, between Glücksburg and Copenhagen but, thank God, only once every hundred years …”

“And when it does happen, someone suffers and who can say who that someone will be? But it is not that, Julie. I'm not afraid of an accident on the way. What is worrying me is quite different. As you know, I was looking forward to this period of quiet that was going to be such a busy time as well, yet ever since this morning I'm not looking forward to it at all.”

“Have you changed your mind about the children?”

“No, I shall do what we decided long ago between us and my only uncertainty is where to send Axel. But it will not be difficult to settle that either. No, Julie, what has been preying on my mind since this morning is simply this: I ought not to have let Helmut go or, at least, not alone. I have always been uneasy and unhappy about this strange situation and even although he was compelled to go this time, otherwise it would have seemed an insult not to appear, then all the same I should have gone with him …”

Julie had difficulty in suppressing a smile.

“Jealous?” And as she asked, she took the countess's hand and felt it trembling. “You don't reply. So I have guessed right and you really are jealous, otherwise you would have said something and laughed at me. One never stops learning, even about one's best friend.”

A silence followed, painful for them both but especially for Julie who had aroused all these emotions quite unwittingly and unwillingly; but the embarrassment on both sides could now only be removed by continuing the conversation that had caused it.

“May I say something?”

Christine nodded.

“Well then, Christine, I have been in many homes and seen many things that I would rather not have seen. Ancient families often leave much to be desired. But on the other hand, if I have ever found a secure home, it is yours. Like all beautiful women who are good as well as beautiful, you are an angel, which is something truly rare and I know that, personally, I have never met anyone better than you. But your husband is a really good man, too, and in the matter that we are discussing, he is a paragon. If I had to show a stranger what a German home and German morals can be, I should take his hand and lead him to Holkenäs.”