Winter's Tales (30 page)

It was to her as if she had been betrayed by this boy whom she had treated kindly when he was a child. His figure began to bar her outlook and to deprive her of air within her own house, to which he had really no right. From the talk of the grown-up people Rosa had guessed Peter to be an illegitimate child. This fact, if he had been a girl, would have filled her with compassion; she would have seen her playmate in the light of romance and tragedy. Now, as a boy, he came in for his part of the perfidy of that unknown seducer, his father. During the months of the long winter she had sometimes found herself wishing that he might go to sea, and there meet with sudden death before, through him, worse things should happen to her. Peter was a wild, foolhardy boy, she was free to hope.

Of all these strong emotions within the girl’s bosom Peter knew nothing at all. In his own way he had loved Rosa from the time when he first came into the parson’s house; amongst the people there she was the only one in whom he had confidence. He had
suffered by her capriciousness, and yet he somehow liked it well, as he liked everything about her. Of late he was sometimes disappointed when he found it impossible to rouse her sympathy in such things as mattered to him; he then even deemed her a little shallow and silly. But on the whole, human beings, their nature and their behaviour to him, played but a small part in Peter’s sphere of thought, and there ranged only just above books. The weather, birds and ships, fish and the stars, to him were phenomena of far greater moment. On a shelf in his room he kept a barque that he had carved and rigged with much preciseness and patience. It meant more to him than the good-will or displeasure of anybody in the house. From the beginning, it is true, the barque had been named
Rosa
, but it would be difficult to decide whether this was meant to be a compliment to the ship or to the girl.

The girl Rosa did not weave, but looked out through the window. The garden was still winterly bare and bleak, but there was a faint silvery light in the sky; water dripped from the roof and from the boughs of every tree; and the black earth showed in the garden-paths where the snow had melted away. Rosa beheld it all, as grave and wistful as a Sibyl, but in reality she thought about nothing.

The parson’s wife, Eline, came into the room with her small son by the hand. The parson’s wife had been his housekeeper till he married her, four years ago, and the gossips of the parish thought that she had been more. She was only half her husband’s age, but she had worked hard all her life and looked older than her years. She had a brown, bony, patient face and was light of foot and movement, with a soft voice. Her life with the parson was often burdensome to her, for he had soon again repented of his infidelity to the memory of his first wife, who was his own cousin, a dean’s daughter and a virgin when he married her. In his heart he did not, either, recognize the peasant woman’s son as equal to his daughters.
But Eline was a simple creature, anchored in the resigned philosophy of the peasant; she aspired to no higher position in the house than that which she had held there from the beginning. She left her husband in peace when he did not call her, and was a handmaid to her pretty stepdaughter.

Rosa in all divergencies in the household sided with the wife. She was fond of her little brother, and had instated him in the parsonage as the one person besides herself entitled to have his own ways in everything—in manner of a monarch who acclaims another: “Brother, Your Majesty.” But the child did not lend itself to be spoilt. In this house, overhung by the shadow of the grave, the other young people strove to keep alive; only the youngest inhabitant, the small, pretty child, seemed to fall in quietly with its doom, to withhold himself from life and to welcome extinction, as if he had only reluctantly consented to come into the world at all.

The parson’s wife sat down demurely on the edge of a chair, and let her industrious hands rest in her lap upon her blue apron.

“No, your father will not buy the cow,” she said and sighed a little. “They would sell that brindled cow at Christiansminde for thirty rixdollars. She is a fine cow, to calve in six weeks. But your father was angry with me when I asked him for it. For how do I know, he says, but that the day of judgment and the return of Christ may be nearer than anybody suspects? We should not hoard up treasures in this world, he says. Still,” she added and sighed again, “we could do with the cow over the summer, in any case.”

Rosa frowned, but she could not collect her thoughts sufficiently to be really angry with her father. “He will have to buy her in the end,” she said coldly.

A butterfly that had kept alive through the winter and had wakened with the first rays of spring was fluttering towards the light, beating its wings on the window-pane as in a succession of
little, gentle fingertaps. The child had kept his eyes on it for some time; now, in a great, steady glance he imparted his discovery to Rosa.

“My brother,” said Eline, “went to have a look at the cow. She is a good cow, and gentle. I could milk her myself.”

“Yes, that is a butterfly,” said Rosa to the child. “It is pretty. I will catch it for you.”

As she tried to take hold of it, the butterfly suddenly flew up to the top of the window. Rosa pushed off her shoes and climbed onto the window-sill. But up there, above the world, she realized that the prisoner wanted to get out, and to fly. She remembered the white butterflies of last summer, flitting over the lavender borders in the garden; her heart became light and great, and she felt sorry for the captive. “Look, we will let her out,” she said to the boy. “Then she will fly away,” She pushed the window open and wafted off the butterfly. The air outside was as fresh as a bath; she drew it in deeply.

At that moment Peter came up the garden-path from the stable. At the sight of Rosa in the window he stood dead still.

Since on the night of the rain he had resolved to run away to sea his heart had been filled with ships: schooners, barques, frigates. Now Rosa, in her stockinged feet, with the skirt of her blue frock caught back by the cross-bar of the window, was so like the figure-head of a big, fine ship that for an instant he did, so to say, see his own soul face to face. Life and death, the adventures of the seafarer, destiny herself, here stood straight up in a girl’s form. It dawned upon him that long ago, when he was a child, something similar had happened to him, and that the world did then hold much sweetness. It is often the adolescent, the being just out of childhood, who most deeply and sadly feels the loss of that simple and mystic world. He did not speak; he was uncertain of how to address a
figure-head, but as he stared at her she looked back at him, candidly and kindly, her thoughts with the butterfly. It seemed to him then as if she were promising him something, a great happiness; and within a sudden, mighty motion he decided to confide in her, and to tell her all.

Rosa stepped down from the window and into her shoes, at ease with the world. She had made a butterfly happy; she had made a child happy and a boy—were it only the silly boy Peter—all in a movement, and with a glance. They knew now that she was good, a benefactress to all living creatures. She wished that she could have stayed up there. But as this could not be, and as she saw Peter remaining immovable in the same place before her window, she went out and stood at the garden door.

The boy flushed as he saw her so close to him. He came up to her and took hold of her wrist, beneath the scanty sleeve. “Rosa,” he said, “I have got a great secret which nobody in the world must know. I will tell it to you.” “What is it?” asked Rosa. “No, I cannot tell it here,” said he. “Others might overhear us. All my life depends upon it.” They looked at each other gravely. “I shall come up to you tonight,” said Peter, “when they are all asleep.” “Nay, they will hear you, then,” said she, for her room was upstairs, in the gable of the house, and Peter’s below. “No. Listen,” he said, “I shall set the garden-ladder up to your window. Leave it open to me. I shall get in that way.” “I do not know if I will do that,” said Rosa. “Oh, do not be a fool, Rosa,” cried the boy. “Let me come in. You are the only one in the world whom I can trust.” When they were children, and had been planning some great enterprise, Peter sometimes came to Rosa’s room at night. She bethought herself of it, and for a moment there was in her heart, as in his, a longing for the lost world of childhood. “Maybe I will do it,” she said, as she freed her arm of his grip.

The night was misty, but this was the first night after the equinox in which one felt the sweet lengthening of daylight. Peter sat still till he had seen the lamp put out in the parson’s room; then he went out. He rocked the ladder to the gable wall, raised it to Rosa’s window, and scratched his hand in the effort. When he tried the window, it was unfastened, and his heart began to beat. He swung himself into the room, and slowly and noiselessly crossed the floor. In the dark he ran his hand over the bed to make sure that the girl was in it, for she neither stirred nor said a word. Then he sat down on the bed, and for a while he was as silent as she.

The prospect of opening his mind to a friend, who would not interrupt him or laugh at him, rendered him as pensive and grateful as when he had listened to the trekking birds. He remembered that it was a long time, years perhaps, since he had talked like this to Rosa. He did not know whether the fault lay with her or with him; in either case it seemed a sad thing. Now, he reflected, it would be difficult to him to express himself. When in the end he spoke the words came tardily, one by one.

“Rosa,” he said, “you must try to understand me, even if I speak badly.” He drew in his breath deeply.

“I have been wrong all my life, Rosa,” he said, “but it has not been made clear to me till now. You know that there are people in the world called atheists, terrible blasphemers, who deny the existence of God? But I have been worse than they. I have injured God and have done Him harm; I have annihilated God.”

He spoke in a low, stifled voice, with long pauses between the phrases, hampered by his own strong emotion, and by his fear of waking up the people in the house.

“For you see, Rosa,” he said, “a man is no more than the things he makes—whether he builds ships, or makes clocks or guns or even books, I dare say. You cannot call a man fine, or great, unless what
he makes is great. It is so with God as well, Rosa. If the work of God does not glorify him, how can God be glorious?—And I, I am the work of God.

“I have looked at the stars,” he went on, “at the sea and the trees, and at the beasts and birds, too. I have seen how well they come in with the ideas of God, and become what he means them to be. The sight of them must be satisfactory and encouraging to God. Just as when a boat-maker builds a boat, and she turns out a smart, seaworthy boat. I have thought, then, that the sight of me will make God sad.”

As he paused to collect his thoughts he heard Rosa draw her breath gently. He was thankful to her because she did not speak.

“I saw a fox the other day,” he took up his theme, after a long silence, “by the brook in the birch-wood. He looked at me, and moved his tail a little. I reflected, as I looked back at him, that he does excellently well at being a fox, such as God meant him to be. All that he makes or thinks is just foxlike; there is nothing in him, from his ears to his brush, which God did not wish to be there, and he will not interfere with the plan of God. If a fox were not so, a beautiful and perfect thing, God would not be beautiful and perfect cither.

“But here am I, Peter Købke,” he said. “God has made me, and may have taken some trouble about it, and I ought to do him honour, as the fox does. But I have crossed his plans instead; I have worked against him, just because the people by me, such people as are called your neighbours, have wished me to do so. I have sat in a room for years and years, and have read books, because your old father wishes me to become a clergyman. If God had wished me to be a clergyman, surely He would have made me like one; it would even have been a small matter to him, who is almighty. He can do it when He wants, you know; He has made many clergymen.
But me He has not made that way. I am a slow learner; you know yourself that I am dull. I have become so stale and hard that I feel it in my own bones, an ugly thing to have in the world, in reading these Fathers of the Church. And in that way I have made God stale and ugly as well.

“Why must we try to please our neighbour?” he went on thoughtfully, after a pause. “He does not know what is great; he cannot invent the fine things of the world any more than we can ourselves. If the fox had asked people what they wanted him to be, if he had even asked the King, a poor thing he would have become. If the sea had asked people what they wanted her to be, they would have made but a muddle of her, I tell you. And what good can one do to one’s neighbour, after all, even if one tries? It is God to whom we must serve and please, Rosa. Yes, even if we could only make God glad for a moment that would be a great thing.

“If I speak badly,” he said after a silence, “you must believe me all the same. For I have thought about these things for a very long time, and I know that I am right. If I am no good, God is no good.”

Rosa agreed with most of what he said. To her the surest proof of the magnificence of Providence was the fact that she was there, Rosa, by the grace of God lovely and perfect. As to his view of her neighbour, she was not certain. She held that she might do a great deal to her neighbour. Neither do men light a candle—Rosa—and put it under a bushel, but on a candlestick, and she giveth light unto all that are in the house. Still, if Peter could speak in this way, he was a companion in the house, and might, surprisingly, be of use to her some time. She smiled a little on her pillow.

“And yet,” said Peter, in such a great outburst of passion that against his own will his voice rose and broke, “I love God beyond everything. I think of the glory of God before anything else.”

He became afraid that he had spoken too loud and kept perfectly still for a few minutes.

“Move in a little, can you,” he said to the girl, “so that I can lie there too? There is room enough for both of us.”