XIII
For about a year, Niels Lyhne had lived at Lønborggård, managing the farm as well as he knew how and as much as his old steward would let him. He had taken down his shield, blotted out his ’scutcheon, and resigned. Humanity would have to get along without him; he had learned to know the joy found in purely physical labor, in seeing the pile growing under his hand, in being able to get through with what he was doing so that he really was through, in knowing that when he went away tired the strength that he had used up lay behind him in his work, and the work would stand and not be eaten up by doubt in the night or dispersed by the breath of criticism on the morning after. There were no Sisyphus stones in agriculture.
What a joy it was, too, when he had worked till he was tired, to go to bed and gather strength in sleep and to spend it again, as regularly as day and night follow one upon the other, never hindered by the caprices of his brain, never having to handle himself gingerly like a tuned guitar with loose pegs.
He was really happy in a quiet way, and often he would sit, as his father had sat, on a stile or a boundary stone, staring out over the golden wheat or the top-heavy oats, in a strange, vegetative trance.
As yet he had not begun to seek the society of the neighboring families, except Councillor Skinnerup’s in Varde, whom he visited quite frequently.
The Skinnerups had come to town while his father was still living, and as the Councillor was an old university friend of Lyhne’s, the two families had seen much of each other. Skinnerup, a mild, bald-headed man with sharp features and kind eyes, was now a widower, but his house was more than filled by his four daughters, the eldest seventeen, the youngest twelve years old.
The Councillor had read much, and Niels enjoyed a chat with him on various esthetic subjects, for though he had learned to use his hands, that, of course, did not turn him into a country bumpkin all at once. He was rather amused sometimes at the almost absurd care he had to exercise whenever the conversation turned to a comparison between Danish and foreign literature and, in fact, whenever Denmark was measured against something not Danish. Caution was absolutely necessary, however, for the mild-mannered Councillor was one of the fierce patriots, occasionally met with in those days, who might grudgingly admit that Denmark was not the greatest of the world powers, but when so much was said would not subscribe to a jot or a tittle more that might place his country or anything pertaining to it anywhere but in the lead.
These conversations had another charm, which Niels felt at first vaguely and without consciously thinking of it, in the look of delighted admiration with which seventeen-year-old Gerda’s eyes followed him as he spoke. She always managed to be present when he came, and would listen so eagerly that he often saw her flushing with rapture when he said something that seemed to her especially beautiful.
The truth was, he had unwittingly become this young lady’s ideal, at first chiefly because he often rode into town wearing a gray mantle of a very foreign and romantic cut, then because he always said Milano instead of Milan, and finally because he was alone in the world and had rather a sad countenance. There were certainly a great many ways in which he differed from the rest of the people in Varde and in Ringkøbing too.
On a hot summer day, Niels came through the narrow street behind the Councillor’s garden. The sun was pouring down over the brick-red little houses, and the ships lying out on the sound had mats hung over their sides to prevent the tar from melting and oozing out of the seams. Round about him everything was open to admit a coolness which did not exist. Within the open doors, the children were reading their lessons aloud, and the hum of their voices mingled with that of the bees in the garden, while a flock of sparrows hopped silently from tree to tree, all flying up together and coming down together.
Niels entered a little house right behind the garden, and while the woman went to bring her husband from the neighbor’s, he was left alone in a spotless little room smelling of gillyflowers and freshly ironed linen.
When he had examined the pictures on the walls, the two dogs on the dresser, and the seashells on the lid of the work-box, he stepped over to the open window, whence he heard the sound of Gerda’s voice, and there were the four Skinnerup girls on the Councillor’s bleaching-green only a few steps away.
The balsamines and other flowers in the window hid him, and he prepared himself both to listen and to look.
It was clear that a quarrel was going on, and the three younger sisters were making common cause against Gerda. All carried whips of lemon-yellow withes. The youngest had formed three or four of them into rings wound about with
