THE REST STONE
A few days after the great upstir, Maia Lisa was out at the usual time
walking with Little-Maid along the road. This evening she was not
walking along with dragging footsteps, depressed in mind and weak in
body, for instead of only one there were two to call out to echo, two
to dig for mica in the sand-pit, two to dam up the brook, and two to
gather anemones in the copse. She had not quite heart enough yet to
tease the owl though, so she left Little-Maid at the big birch tree
and went on alone up the Rest Stone hill. The bird must have been more
sociable than usual that day, for Little-Maid did not join her again at
the haunted wall, nor afterwards either.
When Maia Lisa had come far enough to see the Rest Stone she suddenly
stopped, for there sat a man, not in the narrow hollowed-out seat, but
right on the top of the stone itself. His back was bent and his chin
propped in his hands; his eyes, however, were not fixed on the ground,
but were looking away up into the tree-tops. He was busy whistling to a
thrush perched on a tall pine across the road, and he answered it and
gave it back note for note until it sang as though its throat would
burst. So intent were they on their game, both man and bird, that they
never heard her coming. She stood still for a moment listening and
looking at him with amazement. When she had met him before, he must
most certainly have been weighed down with sorrow. Never until that
evening had she thought that he could not be more than twenty-five
years old. Now he looked like a very boy. She was so astonished at this
that she could not refrain from a merry laugh.
He turned his head to one side to listen, and looked at the same time
towards another tree-top, as if he thought the sound was coming from
there. Then Maia Lisa laughed again and now he heard what it was. Down
he jumped from the stone, and with eager steps came to meet her. He had
just been waiting for her, he said. He had been to her friend Britta
in Lobyn to ask her how he could manage to see Mamsell Maia Lisa by
herself, and Britta had told him that she was in the habit of coming
here to the Rest Stone every evening.
Her heart began to beat very fast as if it expected some great
happiness. Dear, dear! how could it be so foolish? It might have known
by now that he had come on no pleasant business. No doubt he was
going to speak about his brother; probably repeat his sister-in-law’s
proposal under more favourable circumstances. And it was as she
thought. He led her with some ceremony to the Rest Stone and helped her
up where he had been sitting, whilst he himself remained standing on
the path. Then he began to ask her very seriously if it was really a
fact that she did not care for his brother.
And here again, as in Svanskog, she did not know why she felt at once
both touched and angry, nor why her anger won the day so that she
answered very sharply that she did not understand why he troubled to
ask. Surely he did not imagine that she could not be in his brother’s
company a couple of hours without falling in love with him! He did not
seem in the least put out by her annoyance. It was incredible that just
before he had been sitting there whistling to a thrush, for now he
seemed as serious as if he had some important business on hand and had
thought beforehand of every word he meant to say. No doubt he looked
like that when he was selling iron or striking a bargain with the
coal-drivers.
He begged her not to think him impertinent, but he had asked because
he must know if her heart was free before he went any further. She was
seized with an irresistible desire to tease him and break down his air
of certainty. “It isn’t a foregone conclusion,” she interrupted, “that
my heart is free because I do not care for Pastor Liliecrona. There may
be others....”
He bowed a little scornfully. “That is all right,” he said; “and if
there is the least prospect that the one whom Mamsell Maia Lisa is
thinking of is likely to come and claim her hand, I will not go on.”
The hot blood rushed to her cheeks, but she looked straight into his
sorrowful eyes as she answered: “No, there is not the least prospect.”
“In that case I would like to ask Mamsell Maia Lisa for advice,” he
said as he took from his note-book a sealed and folded letter which he
held so that she could not see the address. “Would Mamsell Maia Lisa
advise me to post this or to tear it up?”
Maia Lisa made no answer. She could not help thinking of the morning
when he jumped down into the fox-pit. Then it was a blow here, a blow
there, and all done in the twinkling of an eye. “Why can’t he jump
quickly and strike his blow so that I may know what he means? What is
the reason of all this ceremony?”
“This letter, Mamsell Maia Lisa,” he continued, and his voice grew, if
possible, still colder and more business-like than before, “is written
by a young man who a few years back stood at the grave of his heart’s
love and vowed to go through life alone for her dear sake. Since then
the young man has never thought for a moment of breaking his vow,
indeed he has never even felt the slightest temptation to do so. He has
left his heart in the loved one’s grave and it cannot live again. But,
Mamsell Maia Lisa, a few months ago, this young man found a poor child
sitting lonely and desolate. In her eyes he read the mingled gentleness
and humility of her heart, and was even more astounded by her strange
likeness to his lost love. He felt at once the greatest sympathy and
seemed to hear the voice of her whom he had lost whispering that he
must help in her loneliness the young girl who was her very image.
The young man tried to bring her into union with the noblest man he
knew--his own brother. He saw them meet, saw them sit together on the
same hearth, saw visions of the greatest happiness for them both, when
these visions were destroyed by the most unhappy circumstances. His
brother was first thrown into the most terrible misery, and, in the
attempt that was made to save him, the young girl was brought without
any fault of hers into a position of the greatest difficulty. Every day
now the young man seemed to hear the voice of his lost love calling
to him from the grave at least to offer the maid a share in his home,
where he would try with the tenderest care to secure her happiness,
and where she would be safely guarded from the cruel hand that now
oppressed her. Under these circumstances, dearest Mamsell Maia Lisa,
the young man wrote this letter. He meant to send it off this morning,
but then he hesitated. He felt, Mamsell Maia Lisa, he must first hear
your opinion.” He stopped and with his last word laid the letter down
upon her lap, so that she could read the address: “To the Learned and
Reverend Assistant Pastor, Herr Erik Lyselius.”
Never, no never in all her life had Maia Lisa felt so humiliated. When
he had done what she never expected, when he had asked for her hand,
to think he had done it in this fashion! Simply because he was sorry
for her!
Her first impulse was to jump up, tear the letter into fragments and
throw them in his face. She was more angry with him than she had been
with her father when he married Raklitz. And the thought flashed
through her mind: “I am evidently made so that I cannot be really angry
except with those I love.” But Maia Lisa had gone through much since
the day when she had flared up at her father and his wife and could now
restrain herself in quite another way. She only slipped down from the
stone, let the letter fall to the ground, and began to go down the hill
without a word.
And she walked on a good way, right up to the stone wall, without
anyone following her. And as she walked she noticed what a beautiful
evening it was. The birds were singing in the trees, the midges dancing
in the breeze, the sunbeams playing on the fresh young leaves, the
streams rippling and murmuring beside the path, whilst plants and grass
were sprouting on every hand, so gay and green that she almost thought
she could hear them growing. But all this only seemed to increase her
wrath. Surely he might have understood that on such an evening he
ought to come in the right way if he was coming at all. If only he had
had the sense to let it alone. She would have been less unhappy just
walking and thinking of him.
He might have had the sense, too, to find out how things were with
her before he put this shame upon her. If he had known that she was
reconciled with her father and that her stepmother had run away the
very day that he and Fru Beata Liliecrona had come to Lövdala, run away
without a word and never come back again, perhaps he might have spared
his pity. But in any case it would have made no difference. If she had
been in the greatest distress she would have been just as angry with
him for asking her to marry out of pity only. She would not have been
so angry with anyone else, not even with his brother, if he had done
the same.
Suddenly she stopped. Why was she so angry with him? The answer came
like a revelation. Surely because she loved him!
Yes, oh yes! This then was love. She had read of it in her books, sung
of it in her songs, but never before had she felt it in her own heart.
No doubt it had lain smouldering, a tiny spark within her soul, all
the spring, but she had not recognised it. Now love shot through her
like a consuming fire until she almost wondered that its brightness
did not shine through and around her. She turned round. Everything was
so changed in a moment. Love burnt in her heart and since that miracle
had happened she was no longer the same. She could not keep her anger
against the man who had taught her what love was.
He had followed her and was close behind, so that as she turned quickly
she found herself face to face with him.
Surely such a fire as that within her must be infectious. Its
reflection flamed in his eyes, or was that perhaps not reflection
only? It almost seemed too bright. She was still so inexperienced, but
the vehemence with which he pressed her to his bosom seemed to her of
the same nature as the longing that drove her there.
Her astonishment was so great that she scarcely knew if she dared to
trust her senses. But the words that he uttered in broken sentences,
these eager questions if she loved him, this breathless confession
that he had loved her from the very first but had been ashamed of his
weakness, this angry remorse that he had tried to deceive himself and
run away from his love, this defiant speech that he troubled neither
about the living nor the dead if only she loved him--could these come
from a heart not burning for her with the same fire that for his sake
was consuming her own?