also written that sin is death. Much has been written and much has
been said which one does not know or think of in general; and thus it
was with Anne Lisbeth. But it may happen that a light arises within
one, and that the forgotten things may approach.
All virtues and all vices lie in our hearts. They are in mine and in
thine; they lie there like little grains of seed; and then from
without comes a ray of sunshine or the touch of an evil hand, or maybe
you turn the corner and go to the right or to the left, and that may
be decisive; for the little seed-corn perhaps is stirred, and it
swells and shoots up, and it bursts, and pours its sap into all your
blood, and then your career has commenced. There are tormenting
thoughts, which one does not feel when one walks on with slumbering
senses, but they are there, fermenting in the heart. Anne Lisbeth
walked on thus with her senses half in slumber, but the thoughts were
fermenting within her. From one Shrove Tuesday to the next there comes
much that weighs upon the heart--the reckoning of a whole year: much
is forgotten, sins against Heaven in word and in thought, against our
neighbour, and against our own conscience. We don't think of these
things, and Anne Lisbeth did not think of them. She had committed no
crime against the law of the land, she was very respectable, an
honoured and well-placed person, that she knew. And as she walked
along by the margin of the sea, what was it she saw lying there? An
old hat, a man's hat. Now, where might that have been washed
overboard? She came nearer, and stopped to look at the hat. Ha! what
was lying yonder? She shuddered; but it was nothing save a heap of sea
grass and tangle flung across a long stone; but it looked just like a
corpse: it was only sea grass and tangle, and yet she was frightened
at it, and as she turned away to walk on much came into her mind that
she had heard in her childhood; old superstitions of spectres by the
sea shore, of the ghosts of drowned but unburied people whose corpses
have been washed up on to the desert shore. The body, she had heard,
could do harm to none, but the spirit could pursue the lonely
wanderer, and attach itself to him, and demand to be carried to the
churchyard that it might rest in consecrated ground. "Hold fast! hold
fast!" the spectre would then cry; and while Anne Lisbeth murmured the
words to herself, her whole dream suddenly stood before her just as
she had dreamed it, when the mothers clung to her and had repeated
this word, amid the crash of the world, when her sleeve was torn and
she slipped out of the grasp of her child, who wanted to hold her up
in that terrible hour. Her child, her own child, which she had never
loved, lay now buried in the sea, and might rise up like a spectre
from the waters, and cry "Hold fast! carry me to consecrated earth."
And as these thoughts passed through her mind, fear gave speed to her
feet, so that she walked on faster and faster; fear came upon her like
the touch of a cold wet hand that was laid upon her heart, so that she
almost fainted; and as she looked out across the sea, all there grew
darker and darker; a heavy mist came rolling onward, and clung round
bush and tree, twisting them into fantastic shapes. She turned round,
and glanced up at the moon, which had risen behind her. It looked like
a pale, rayless surface; and a deadly weight appeared to cling to her
limbs. "Hold fast!" thought she; and when she turned round a second
time and looked at the moon, its white face seemed quite close to her,
and the mist hung like a pale garment from her shoulders. "Hold fast!
carry me to consecrated earth!" sounded in her ears in strange hollow
tones. The sound did not come from frogs or ravens; she saw no sign of
any such creatures. "A grave, dig me a grave!" was repeated quite
loud. Yes, it was the spectre of her child, the child that lay in the
ocean, and whose spirit could have no rest until it was carried to the
churchyard, and until a grave had been dug for it in consecrated
ground. Thither she would go, and there she would dig; and she went on
in the direction of the church, and the weight on her heart seemed to
grow lighter, and even to vanish altogether; but when she turned to go
home by the shortest way, it returned. "Hold fast! hold fast!" and the
words came quite clear, though they were like the croak of a frog or
the wail of a bird, "A grave! dig me a grave!"
The mist was cold and damp; her hands and face were cold and damp with
horror; a heavy weight again seized her and clung to her, and in her
mind a great space opened for thoughts that had never before been
there.
Here in the North the beech wood often buds in a single night, and in
the morning sunlight it appears in its full glory of youthful green;
and thus in a single instant can the consciousness unfold itself of
the sin that has been contained in the thoughts, words, and works of
our past life. It springs up and unfolds itself in a single second
when once the conscience is awakened; and God wakens it when we least
expect it. Then we find no excuse for ourselves--the deed is there,
and bears witness against us; the thoughts seem to become words, and
to sound far out into the world. We are horrified at the thought of
what we have carried within us, and have not stifled over what we have
sown in our thoughtlessness and pride. The heart hides within itself
all the virtues and likewise all the vices, and they grow even in the
shallowest ground.
Anne Lisbeth now experienced all the thoughts we have clothed in
words. She was overpowered by them, and sank down, and crept along for
some distance on the ground. "A grave! dig me a grave!" it sounded
again in her ears; and she would gladly have buried herself if in the
grave there had been forgetfulness of every deed. It was the first
hour of her awakening; full of anguish and horror. Superstition
alternately made her shudder with cold and made her blood burn with
the heat of fever. Many things of which she had never liked to speak
came into her mind. Silent as the cloud shadows in the bright
moonshine, a spectral apparition flitted by her: she had heard of it
before. Close by her gallopped four snorting steeds, with fire
spurting from their eyes and nostrils; they dragged a red-hot coach,
and within it sat the wicked proprietor who had ruled here a hundred
years ago. The legend said that every night at twelve o'clock he drove
into his castle yard and out again. There! there! He was not pale as
dead men are said to be, but black as a coal. He nodded at Anne
Lisbeth and beckoned to her. "Hold fast! hold fast! then you may ride
again in a nobleman's carriage, and forget your child!"
She gathered herself up, and hastened to the churchyard; but the black
crosses and the black ravens danced before her eyes, and she could not
distinguish one from the other. The ravens croaked, as the raven had
done that she saw in the daytime, but now she understood what they
said. "I am the raven-mother! I am the raven-mother!" each raven
croaked, and Anne Lisbeth now understood that the name also applied
to her; and she fancied she should be transformed into a black bird,
and be obliged to cry what they cried if she did not dig the grave.
[Illustration: ANNE LISBETH FOUND ON THE SEA SHORE.]
And she threw herself on the earth, and with her hands dug a grave in
the hard ground, so that the blood ran from her fingers.
"A grave! dig me a grave!" it still sounded; she was fearful that the
cock might crow, and the first red streak appear in the east, before
she had finished her work, and then she would be lost.
And the cock crowed, and day dawned in the east, and the grave was
only half dug. An icy hand passed over her head and face, and down
towards her heart. "Only half a grave!" a voice wailed, and fled away.
Yes, it fled away over the sea--it was the ocean spectre; and
exhausted and overpowered, Anne Lisbeth sunk to the ground, and her
senses forsook her.
It was bright day when she came to herself, and two men were raising
her up; but she was not lying in the churchyard, but on the sea shore,
where she had dug a deep hole in the sand, and cut her hand against a
broken glass, whose sharp stem was stuck in a little painted block of
wood. Anne Lisbeth was in a fever. Conscience had shuffled the cards
of superstition, and had laid out these cards, and she fancied she had
only half a soul, and that her child had taken the other half down
into the sea. Never would she be able to swing herself aloft to the
mercy of Heaven, till she had recovered this other half, which was now
held fast in the deep water. Anne Lisbeth got back to her former home,
but was no longer the woman she had been: her thoughts were confused
like a tangled skein; only one thread, only one thought she had
disentangled, namely, that she must carry the spectre of the sea shore
to the churchyard, and dig a grave for him, that thus she might win
back her soul.
Many a night she was missed from her home; and she was always found on
the sea shore, waiting for the spectre. In this way a whole year
passed by; and then one night she vanished again, and was not to be
found; the whole of the next day was wasted in fruitless search.
Towards evening, when the clerk came into the church to toll the
vesper bell, he saw by the altar Anne Lisbeth, who had spent the whole
day there. Her physical forces were almost exhausted, but her eyes
gleamed brightly, and her cheeks had a rosy flush. The last rays of
the sun shone upon her, and gleamed over the altar on the bright
buckles of the Bible which lay there, opened at the words of the
prophet Joel: "Bend your hearts, and not your garments, and turn unto
the Lord!" That was just a chance, the people said; as many things
happen by chance.
In the face of Anne Lisbeth, illumined by the sun, peace and rest were
to be seen. She said she was happy, for now she had conquered. Last
night the spectre of the shore, her own child, had come to her, and
had said to her, "Thou hast dug me only half a grave, but thou hast
now, for a year and a day, buried me altogether in thy heart, and it
is there that a mother can best hide her child!" And then he gave her
her lost soul back again, and brought her here into the church.
"Now I am in the house of God," she said, "and in that house we are
happy."
And when the sun had set, Anne Lisbeth's soul had risen to that region
where there is no more anguish, and Anne Lisbeth's troubles were over.
CHARMING.
Alfred the sculptor--you know him? We all know him: he won the great
gold medal, and got a travelling scholarship, went to Italy, and then
came back to his native land. He was young in those days, and indeed
he is young yet, though he is ten years older than he was then.
After his return he visited one of the little provincial towns on the
island of Seeland. The whole town knew who the stranger was, and one
of the richest persons gave a party in honour of him, and all who were
of any consequence, or possessed any property, were invited. It was
quite an event, and all the town knew of it without its being
announced by beat of drum. Apprentice boys, and children of poor
people, and even some of the poor people themselves, stood in front of
the house, and looked at the lighted curtain; and the watchman could
fancy that _he_ was giving a party, so many people were in the
streets. There was quite an air of festivity about, and in the house
was festivity also, for Mr. Alfred the sculptor was there.
He talked, and told anecdotes, and all listened to him with pleasure
and a certain kind of awe; but none felt such respect for him as did
the elderly widow of an official: she seemed, so far as Mr. Alfred was
concerned, like a fresh piece of blotting paper, that absorbed all
that was spoken, and asked for more. She was very appreciative, and
incredibly ignorant--a kind of female Caspar Hauser.
"I should like to see Rome," she said. "It must be a lovely city, with
all the strangers who are continually arriving there. Now, do give us
a description of Rome. How does the city look when you come in by the
gate?"
"I cannot very well describe it," replied the sculptor. "A great open
place, and in the midst of it an obelisk, which is a thousand years
old."
"An organist!" exclaimed the lady, who had never met with the word
_obelisk_. A few of the guests could hardly keep from laughing, nor
could the sculptor quite keep his countenance; but the smile that rose
to his lips faded away, for he saw, close by the inquisitive dame, a
pair of dark blue eyes--they belonged to the daughter of the speaker,
and any one who has such a daughter cannot be silly! The mother was
like a fountain of questions, and the daughter, who listened, but
never spoke, might pass for the beautiful Naiad of the fountain. How
charming she was! She was a study for the sculptor to contemplate, but
not to converse with; and, indeed, she did not speak, or only very
seldom.
"Has the Pope a large family?" asked the lady.
And the young man considerately answered, as if the question had been
better put, "No, he does not come of a great family."
"That's not what I mean," the widow persisted. "I mean, has he a wife
and children?"
"The Pope is not allowed to marry," said the gentleman.
"I don't like that," was the lady's comment.
She certainly might have put more sensible questions; but if she had
not spoken in just the manner she used, would her daughter have leant
so gracefully on her shoulder, looking straight out with the almost
mournful smile upon her face?
Then Mr. Alfred spoke again, and told of the glory of colour in Italy,
of the purple hills, the blue Mediterranean, the azure sky of the
South, whose brightness and glory was only surpassed in the North by a
maiden's deep blue eyes. And this he said with a peculiar application;
but she who should have understood his meaning, looked as if she were
quite unconscious of it, and that again was charming!
"Italy!" sighed a few of the guests. "Oh, to travel!" sighed others.
"Charming, charming!" chorused they all.
"Yes, if I win a hundred thousand dollars in the lottery," said the
head tax-collector's lady, "then we will travel. I and my daughter,
and you, Mr. Alfred; you must be our guide. We'll all three travel
together, and one or two good friends more." And she nodded in such a
friendly way at the company, that each one might imagine he or she was
the person who was to be taken to Italy. "Yes, we will go to Italy!
but not to those parts where there are robbers--we'll keep to Rome,
and to the great high roads where one is safe."
And the daughter sighed very quietly. And how much may lie in one
little sigh, or be placed in it! The young man placed a great deal in
it. The two blue eyes, lit up that evening in honour of him, must
conceal treasures--treasures of the heart and mind--richer than all
the glories of Rome; and when he left the party that night he had lost
_his_ heart--lost it completely, to the young lady.
The house of the head tax-collector's widow was the one which Mr.
Alfred the sculptor most assiduously frequented; and it was understood
that his visits were not intended for that lady, though he and she
were the people who kept up the conversation; he came for the
daughter's sake. They called her Kala. Her name was really Calen
Malena, and these two names had been contracted into the one name,
Kala. She was beautiful; but a few said she was rather dull, and
probably slept late of a morning.
"She has been always accustomed to that," her mother said. "She's a
beauty, and they always are easily tired. She sleeps rather late, but
that makes her eyes so clear."
What a power lay in the depths of these dark blue eyes! "Still waters
run deep." The young man felt the truth of this proverb; and his heart
had sunk into the depths. He spoke and told his adventures, and the
mamma was as simple and eager in her questioning as on the first
evening of their meeting.
It was a pleasure to hear Alfred describe anything. He spoke of
Naples, of excursions to Mount Vesuvius, and showed coloured prints of
several of the eruptions. And the head tax-collector's widow had never
heard of them before, or taken time to consider the question.
"Good heavens!" she exclaimed. "So that is a burning mountain! But is
it not dangerous to the people round about?"
"Whole cities have been destroyed," he answered; "for instance,
Pompeii and Herculaneum."
"But the poor people!--And you saw all that with your own eyes?"
"No, I did not see any of the eruptions represented in these pictures,
but I will show you a picture of my own, of an eruption I saw."
He laid a pencil sketch upon the table, and mamma, who had been
absorbed in the contemplation of the highly coloured prints, threw a
glance at the pale drawing, and cried in astonishment,
"Did you see it throw up white fire?"
For a moment Alfred's respect for Kala's mamma suffered a sudden
diminution; but, dazzled by the light that illumined Kala, he soon
found it quite natural that the old lady should have no eye for
colour. After all, it was of no consequence, for Kala's mamma had the
best of all things--namely, Kala herself.
And Alfred and Kala were betrothed, which was natural enough, and the
betrothal was announced in the little newspaper of the town. Mamma
purchased thirty copies of the paper, that she might cut out the
paragraph and send it to friends and acquaintances. And the betrothed
pair were happy, and the mother-in-law elect was happy too; for it
seemed like connecting herself with Thorwaldsen.
"For you are a continuation of Thorwaldsen," she said to Alfred. And
it seemed to Alfred that mamma had in this instance said a clever
thing. Kala said nothing; but her eyes shone, her lips smiled, her
every movement was graceful: yes, she was beautiful; that cannot be
too often repeated.
Alfred undertook to take a bust of Kala and of his mother-in-law. They
sat to him accordingly, and saw how he moulded and smoothed the soft
clay with his fingers.
"I suppose it's only on our account," said mamma-in-law, "that you
undertake this commonplace work, and don't leave your servant to do
all that sticking together."
"It is highly necessary that I should mould the clay myself," he
replied.
"Ah, yes, you are so very polite," retorted mamma; and Kala silently
pressed his hand, still soiled by the clay.
And he unfolded to both of them the loveliness of nature in creation,
pointing out how the living stood higher in the scale than the dead
creature, how the plant was developed beyond the mineral, the animal
beyond the plant, and man beyond the animal. He strove to show them
how mind and beauty become manifest in outward form, and how it was
the sculptor's task to seize that beauty and to manifest it in his
works.
Kala stood silent, and nodded approbation of the expressed thought,
while mamma-in-law made the following confession:
"It's difficult to follow all that. But I manage to hobble after you
with my thoughts, though they whirl round and round, but I contrive to
hold them fast."
And Kala's beauty held Alfred fast, filled his soul, and seized and
mastered him. Beauty gleamed forth from Kala's every feature--gleamed
from her eyes, lurked in the corners of her mouth, and in every
movement of her fingers. Alfred the sculptor saw this: he spoke only
of her, thought only of her, and the two became one; and thus it may
be said that she spoke much, for he and she were one, and he was
always talking of her.
Such was the betrothal; and now came the wedding, with bridesmaids and
wedding presents, all duly mentioned in the wedding speech.
Mamma-in-law had set up Thorwaldsen's bust at the end of the table,
attired in a dressing-gown, for he was to be a guest; such was her
whim. Songs were sung and cheers were given, for it was a gay wedding,
and they were a handsome pair. "Pygmalion received his Galatea," so
one of the songs said.
[Illustration: KALA'S BUST.]
"Ah, that's your mythologies," said mamma-in-law.
Next day the youthful pair started for Copenhagen, where they were to
live. Mamma-in-law accompanied them, "to take care of the
commonplace," as she said, meaning the domestic economy. Kala was
like a doll in a doll's house, all was so bright, so new, and so fine.
There they sat, all three; and as for Alfred, to use a proverb that
will describe his position, we may say that he sat like the friar in
the goose-yard.
The magic of form had enchanted him. He had looked at the case, and
cared not to inquire what the case contained, and that omission brings
unhappiness, much unhappiness, into married life; for the case may be
broken, and the gilt may come off; and then the purchaser may repent
his bargain. In a large party it is very disagreeable to observe that
one's buttons are giving way, and that there are no buckles to fall
back upon; but it is worse still in a great company to become aware
that wife and mother-in-law are talking nonsense, and that one cannot
depend upon oneself for a happy piece of wit to carry off the
stupidity of the thing.
The young married pair often sat hand in hand, he speaking and she
letting fall a word here and there--the same melody, the same clear,
bell-like sounds. It was a mental relief when Sophy, one of her
friends, came to pay a visit.
Sophy was not pretty. She was certainly free from bodily deformity,
though Kala always asserted she was a little crooked; but no eye save
a friend's would have remarked it. She was a very sensible girl, and
it never occurred to her that she might become at all dangerous here.
Her appearance was like a pleasant breath of air in the doll's house;
and air was certainly required here, as they all acknowledged. They
felt they wanted airing, and consequently they came out into the air,
and mamma-in-law and the young couple travelled to Italy.
* * * * *
"Thank Heaven that we are in our own four walls again," was the
exclamation of mother and daughter when they came home, a year after.
"There's no pleasure in travelling," said mamma-in-law. "To tell the
truth, it's very wearisome--I beg pardon for saying so. I found the
time hang heavy, though I had my children with me; and it's expensive
work, travelling, very expensive! And all those galleries one has to
see, and the quantity of things you are obliged to run after! You must
do it for decency's sake, for you're sure to be asked when you come
back; and then you're sure to be told that you've omitted to see what
was best worth seeing. I got tired at last of those endless Madonnas;
one seemed to be turning a Madonna oneself!"
"And what bad living you get!" said Kala.
"Yes," replied mamma, "no such thing as an honest meat soup. It's
miserable trash, their cookery."
And the travelling fatigued Kala: she was always fatigued, that was
the worst of it. Sophy was taken into the house, where her presence
was a real advantage.
Mamma-in-law acknowledged that Sophy understood both housewifery and
art, though a knowledge of the latter could not be expected from a
person of her limited means; and she was, moreover, an honest,
faithful girl; she showed that thoroughly while Kala lay sick--fading
away.
Where the case is everything, the case should be strong, or else all
is over. And all _was_ over with the case--Kala died.
"She was beautiful," said mamma, "she was quite different from the
antiques, for they are so damaged. A beauty ought to be perfect, and
Kala was a perfect beauty."
Alfred wept, and mamma wept, and both of them wore mourning. The black
dress suited mamma very well, and she wore mourning the longest.
Moreover, she had to experience another grief in seeing Alfred marry
again--marry Sophy, who had no appearance at all.
"He's gone to the very extreme," cried mamma-in-law; "he has gone from
the most beautiful to the ugliest, and he has forgotten his first
wife. Men have no endurance. My husband was of a different stamp, and
he died before me."