Emanuel, or Children of the Soil/Book 3, Chapter 11

by Henrik Pontoppidan

CHAPTER XI

Hansine had not closed her eyes all night either. She had come home in the evening in a half desperate state; her parents were fortunately in bed, so she was able to creep into her room and undress without being seen by anybody. Here she lay hour after hour, huddled up in bed with the corner of the sheet stuffed into her mouth, so that her despairing sobs should not be heard.

Although the idea that a young priest or a popular leader would sometime—like the prince in a fairy tale—cross her path, fall in love with her, and raise her, as his wife, far above the earthbound life of a peasant, to the summit of a higher intellectual life, was, as a matter of fact, no stranger to her, for it had been part of her dream-life ever since she as a school-girl had attended one of the big "Friends' Meetings" over at Sandinge; and although it was indeed true, as her friends insisted, that this hero of her dreams had in the course of the winter more and more assumed the shape of the curate—yet she had not for a moment, in the meeting with Emanuel, thought that his words meant more than an expression of sympathy, an attempt, in his position as priest, to comfort her and to reason with her. Therefore she now wished that she might die. All night she lay and trembled with apprehension at the coming day, because she could not imagine how she should ever have courage to look people in the face again, after having so ignominiously betrayed her secret.

All the same, when day dawned, and the sleepy chirping of the birds in the garden began to be heard outside her window, she grew calmer. She set herself more collectedly to go through what the curate had said, and how everything had happened.

The more vividly she recalled to her remembrance the occurrences of the evening, so much the more she was obliged to put constraint upon herself to drive away the thought that the curate had really asked her to be his wife. She remembered the tender tone in which he told her he loved her; she remembered how he had dried her wet cheeks and eyes with his handkerchief and begged her not to cry. And then he had also told her that he would come to-day to see her parents and ask for their consent.

She began to sob again. It was more and more impossible for her to explain away his wooing.

Whatever should she do? Oh! if only she had never walked home with Ane along the shore, this misfortune would perhaps never have happened!

At last she made up her mind to confide in her mother. As soon as she heard voices on the other side of the wall, where her parents had their room, she got up and dressed; carefully trying with the sponge to obliterate all trace of the night's struggles. In this she could not, however, have been very successful, for when she entered the kitchen where her mother was already busy lighting the stove, the latter immediately broke out with, "Good heavens, child! whatever is the matter?"

At first Hansine would not say anything, and busied herself with taking down milk pans from the rack. But when her mother saw that her daughter's silence on this occasion had nothing to do with her usual taciturnity, she continued to press her, and ended by becoming almost angry, and took hold of her arm to force her to speak; then Hansine began with a dogged expression to tell her that the night before she had met the curate down by the shore, and that he—that he——

She could not get any further.

"Well, what then? do tell me, dear child!" said her mother.

"He—he asked me to marry him!" she at last burst out, and threw herself against the back of a chair, sobbing bitterly.

Her mother clasped her hands in dismay, and for a long time could not speak.

"That can never be true, Hansine," she said at last, almost in a whisper, as if it had been the confession of a crime.

As her daughter did not answer, but went on sobbing mutely, she continued—pale, and almost ready to cry herself: "Who ever heard tell of such an affair, Hansine!—If I could on'y make out how it had come about! Whoever would ha' thought that we should have such a bad job as that!—What will folks say about it! It's just fearful, Hansine!"

Just then Anders Jörgen clattered in from the yard with two tin pails, to fetch milk for the calves.

"What's up here, good folks?" he called out in his hearty morning voice, holding his pails away from him with stiffened arms.

When at last he made out, from Else's stammering tale, what was the matter, he pulled a long face, too. The fact was, that he had once for all got into the habit of adopting his wife's views, but at bottom he was not quite clear what there was to cry about here. He would sooner have been inclined to look upon the affair as a happy dispensation of Providence, but he took good care not to express any opinion which had not first been approved by Else, because he had no particular faith in his own powers of judgment.

 

 

Now he stood there with his curious dead-looking eyes, with the bluish-white pupils, staring irresolutely backwards and forwards from mother to daughter. When neither of them said anything, he at last let fall:

"Well, but—well—however in all the world has this here come about, Hansine?"

"I don't know," Hansine answered at last half-angry.

She still rested her head on her arm, but she had left off crying. The combined lamentations of her parents began to wound her.

But now her mother went up to her, and cautiously laying her hand on her shoulder, said: "Well, but tell me, Hansine, d'ye care for him too?"

At first she did not answer, but when her mother repeated the question, at the same time letting her hand rest caressingly—as it were, forgivingly—on her head, she muttered:

"I suppose I do."

"Because that's the root o' the matter, my child, that you both think it'll be for your happiness. For although it's very hard for anyone else to understand, yet—now it's come to this—there's nothing more to be said than to pray that the Lord may send a blessing."

"Send a blessing," echoed her father eagerly, his face lighting up with a smile.

"Now, if on'y folks won't be ill natured about it, that's what I mind most," said Else, as she wiped away a tear with her apron. "There'll be enough spiteful gossip, never fear, and may be some will be ready to say right out, that we took up all this business about the curate on'y to entice him here. But we mustn't bother our heads about that."

"Oh, they can't have so much to gossip about," Anders ventured carefully. "I should think folks knew the curate well enough by now."

Else was never in the habit of listening to what he said, nor did she now pay much attention to his speech, but silently looked at her daughter in thoughtful perplexity.

After a time she said, half shyly, "Well, then, may be he—your—I mean the curate, will come here to-day."

"He said he would come this morning," muttered Hansine as before, without lifting her head.

"Well, then, we must get to work, we must tidy up the place against his coming. We wouldn't want him to think he wasn't welcome. You, Anders, must smarten yourself up a bit—when you've fed the beasts."

"Me!" said he astonished, as he looked down at his patched, grey homespun garments, where bits of straw and chaff were sticking into the rough nap.

It was a busy morning. As it was Monday, they had much of the unperformed work of the previous day of rest on hand. There was the cream ready for churning, a pan of whey to curdle for cheese, and half a pig to salt down. Besides that, there were the clothes to put out to bleach, and a sick cow in the byre to be milked every alternate hour.

Else, who knew she could not expect much help from Hansine to-day, and could not find it in her heart to make any demands on her thoughts, sent a message to a farm labourer's wife to come and help her. She soon obeyed the summons, but when it came to the point, Else could not bring herself to impart the news to her, although the woman several times tried to ferret it out, and at last asked openly if they expected company at the house.

"Yes, perhaps some one's coming," said Else evasively, and went down to the salting cellar.

In the meantime Hansine had hunted up her brother Ole from the stable and asked him, as soon as he had a chance, to run to the wood to Ane and tell her that she must come over at once; Hansine wanted to talk to her that very morning. Ole, who was quite in the dark as to the morning's hurry scurry, promised none the less to carry his sister's message to the right quarter, and a minute later she saw him speeding over the hills.

While she waited restlessly for her friend, she sat down by her chamber window to be undisturbed. She gazed out with her tear-stained eyes at the shady little garden where the egg-shaped spots of sunlight glided slowly over the grassplot and paths in their snail-like passage from west to east—and she could not understand how the world could go on in its usual way as if nothing had happened. There were the hens walking about quietly, and scratching up the earth under the gooseberry bushes; and the magpies were flying about from tree-top to tree-top, chattering with all their might, just the same as yesterday. Behind the dyke she could see the back of the old brown mare shining in the sun, as it stood immoveable, letting itself be baked through; and she thought how well off was an animal like that. It had no sorrows, no fears, it knew nothing of this terrible oppression which made the heart beat till the whole body ached.

At last her friend came. With much shy beating about the bush, and many struggles with her tears, Hansine, sitting on the edge of the bed, confided to her all that had happened in the evening, at the same time taking a solemn promise from her that she would never divulge to any of her friends how it had come about.

 

 

Ane was not nearly so much astonished as Hansine had expected. She embraced her in an outburst of rapture and pride, but declared intrepidly that it was no more than she had long expected. The fact was, that she had had a dream one night in which she saw Hansine in wedding clothes dancing with a man who was exactly like the curate. For the rest, she added, it would not be such an unheard-of thing in the future, now that equality and fraternity were preached everywhere; so, for that matter, Hansine need not trouble herself. But it was not so easy to set Hansine's scruples to rest. Even when her friend, to cheer her, encircled her waist with her arms, and set herself to call up pictures of the brilliant future which awaited her, she continued abstracted and restless; the time was moreover approaching when the curate might be expected.

"I think I must go into the parlour now," she said at last, and got up.—"But you must go with me," she added, putting out her hand with such a dejected countenance that Ane burst into fits of laughter. "Upon my soul, I think that curate has half scared the heart out of you, my chick-a-biddy! I don't know you again. Are you the same girl who never winced when one used to stick darning needles into you?"

"It's easy enough for you to talk," said Hansine with a sigh.

For nearly an hour after that, the friends sat in the parlour, both on one chair, with their arms round each other's waists.

Ane continued to paint glowing pictures of the future. Hansine tried to smile now and then, when her friend's fancy took the wildest flights; but she mostly sat buried in thought, and started nervously at every sound in the yard.

"I suppose we shall have to call you 'Miss' now," bantered Ane—"Miss Hansine Andersen—it sounds ever so grand!"

"Oh, be quiet, do!"

"It's all very well for you to talk like that, now you are going to be a clergyman's wife, but what is to become of us other poor creatures? I don't suppose I shall have a curate coming to court me, I shall have to put up with some old parish clerk, or shoemaker, or——"

Suddenly they both started up. They heard the sound of boots on the stone steps, and then in the outer room. In an instant they were off the chair.