It was she who was speaking.
“She says he looks like Themistocles on the stove in the study,” she remarked to her fellow conspirators, and turned up her eyes with a rapt expression.
“Oh, pshaw,” said the middle one, a saucy little lady who had just been confirmed that spring; “do you suppose Themistocles was round-shouldered?” She imitated Niels Lyhne’s slight stoop. “Themistocles! Not much!”
“There is something so manly in his look; he is a real man!” quoted the twelve-year-old.
“He!” came the voice of the middle one again. “Why, he goes and pours eau de cologne on himself. The other day his gloves were lying there and just simply reeking with millefleur.”
“Every perfection!” breathed the twelve-year-old in ecstasy, and staggered back as though overcome with emotion.
They addressed all these remarks to each other and pretended not to notice Gerda, who stood at a little distance, blushing furiously, as she poked the ground with her yellow stick. Suddenly she lifted her head.
“You’re a pair of naughty hussies,” she said, “to talk like that about someone who is too good to look at you.”
“And yet you know he is only a mortal,” remonstrated the eldest of the three mildly, as if to make peace.
“No, he is nothing of the kind.”
“And surely he has his faults,” continued the sister, pretending not to hear what Gerda said.
“No!”
“But, my dear Gerda, you know he never goes to church.”
“What should he go there for? He knows ever so much more than the pastor.”
“Yes, but unfortunately he doesn’t believe in any God at all, Gerda.”
“Well, you can be mighty sure, my dear, that if he doesn’t, he has excellent reasons for it.”
“Why, Gerda, how can you say such a thing!”
“You’d almost think—” broke in the middle one.
“What would you almost think?” snapped Gerda.
“Nothing, nothing at all. Please don’t bite me!” replied the sister with a sudden air of great meekness.
“Now will you tell me this minute what you meant!”
“No, no, no, no, no; I guess I’ve a right to hold my tongue if I want to.”
She walked off together with the twelve-year-old, each with her arm around the other’s shoulder in sisterly concord. The eldest followed them, strutting with indignation.
Gerda, left alone, stood looking defiantly straight ahead, while she cut the air with her yellow stick.
There was a moment of silence, and then the thin voice of the twelve-year-old floated up from the other end of the garden, singing:
“You ask me, my lad,
What I want with the withered flower—”
Niels understood their teasing perfectly, for he had recently made Gerda a present of a book with a dried vine leaf from the garden in Verona which contains Juliet’s grave. He could hardly keep from laughing; but just then the woman returned with her husband, whom she had at last found, and Niels had to give the order for the carpenter work he had come to see about.
From that day Niels observed Gerda more closely, and every time he saw her he felt more keenly how sweet and fine she was. As time went on, his thoughts turned more and more frequently to this confiding little girl.
She was very lovely, with the tender, appealing beauty that almost brings tears to the eyes. Her figure, in its early ripening, retained something of the child’s roundness, which gave an air of innocence to her luxuriant womanhood. The small, softly-moulded hands were losing the rosy color of adolescence, and were without any of the restless, nervous curiosity often seen at that age. She had a strong little neck, cheeks that were rounded with a large, full line, and a low, dreamy little woman’s forehead, where great thoughts were strangers and almost seemed to hurt when they came, bringing a frown to the thick brows. And her eye—how deep and blue it lay there, but deep only as a lake where one can see the bottom; and in the soft corners the smile brooded happily under lids that were lifted in slow surprise. This was the way she looked, little Gerda, white and pink and blonde, with all her short, bright hair demurely gathered into a knot.
They had many a talk, Niels and Gerda, and he fell more and more in love with her. Open and frank and chivalrous was his regard, until a certain day there came a change in the air about them, a gleam of that which is too imponderable to be called sensuousness and yet is of the senses, that which impels the hand and mouth and eyes to reach out for what the heart cannot get close enough to its own heart. And another day, not long after, Niels went to Gerda’s father, because Gerda was so young, and because he was so sure of her love. And her father said yes, and Gerda said yes.
In the spring they were married.
It seemed to Niels Lyhne that existence had grown wonderfully clear and uncomplicated, that life was simple to live and happiness as near and easy to win as the air he drew in with his breath.
He loved her, the young wife he had won, with all the delicacy of thought and feeling, with all the large, deep tenderness of a man who knows the tendency of love to sink and believes in the power of love to rise. How he guarded this young soul which bent toward him with infinite trust and pressed up against him in caressing faith, in implicit reliance that he would do her nothing but good, as the ewe lamb in the parable must have felt toward its shepherd when it ate from his hand and drank of his cup! He had no heart to take her God away from her or to banish all those white hosts of angels that fly singing through the heavens all day and come to earth at eventide and spread their wings from bed to bed, watching faithfully and filling the darkness of night with a protecting wall
