Nevertheless it was in this hunting ground that Tord Selamb at last met his fate. It was one dark, rainy, icy cold evening in March. Hot and cold, heedless and obstinate he followed a woman. But it did not end as usual. The dark shadow would not allow itself to be caught; it did not suddenly vanish in a doorway. The figure in front of him only walked on and on, against the wind, restlessly, without goal or purpose, it seemed, but sharply dismissing all who accosted it. Now and then it dived into a dark back street or crept into a gateway, but more from caprice than to escape its pursuers. The purposelessness of its roving movements fascinated Tord in quite a peculiar way. It was like a beast of the forest, he thought. He had not yet seen its face but its step was young and springy. This was really no idle loitering. It walked with the conscious energy of one who is angry and mumbles disjointed phrases to himself. Then it walked towards the southern heights of the town. Then steps and a square with melancholy sighing trees, and then a cobbled back street with a few yellow flickering lamps on posts at the corners of the ramshackle old houses. It was a cul-de-sac, terminating in a big wooden barrier. Below glimmered the rough wet sides of the hill, lit up by the lights along a flight of steps on the other side of a deep, dark, shaft-like yard. The woman did not appear to notice Tord. She took something out of her pocket and hurled it down into the depths. It struck the stone with a faint metallic sound. Tord was now standing beside her. What had she thrown down? The question burnt his lips but he remained mute in spite of himself. She turned round and was about to resume her progress, when a sound was heard from the black bag she carried in her hand. She suddenly pulled out a little grey kitten and kissed it:
“Kirre,” she mumbled, “darling little Kirre. …”
The kitten was Tord’s fate, it broke for a moment the spell of his dumbness:
“What did you throw down?” he asked suddenly.
She carefully put the kitten back again and answered without looking at him, straight into the chilly darkness, but in a tone of triumph and determination:
“It was the key.”
“What key?”
“To the studio, of course. Beastly, disgusting creature! Now that’s done with at last!”
And then came her story, disingenuous, straightforward, unblushing, and with a strong appeal. She had been living with a sculptor who had recently returned from Paris. She had been with him the whole winter. Oh, how she had spoilt the beast! Cooked his food and been his model all the day. She was posing as the young witch. “And everybody said I was a splendid witch,” she exclaimed, whilst an angry little smile flashed beneath the dripping brim of her hat. But what had this beast of a sculptor done when his lump of clay was ready? He had gone to an uncle in Kalmar to get some money. He would be back in a few days, he said. But no, not a sign of life for a fortnight. She had been sitting there cold and starving in company with the witch under her damp cover. But now that was over. Now she had stuck a knife and fork into the witch’s hands and an empty breadbasket on her head and the sculptor’s old pipe in her mouth. And now she had left and only taken Kirre with her. And down there lay the key and it was impossible to find it again.
“So now you will have to get food for me and the cat and a roof over our heads,” she said quickly to Tord.
Tord asked for nothing better. For once he did not feel anxious or suspicious. She seemed to him like a hunted animal. She was like the fox he had freed from the trap and taken home.
He took her home to The Rookery. Not until the following morning did he think of asking her name. She was called Dagmar Bru and was the daughter of a Norwegian musician in Copenhagen, she said. Probably some dissolute fiddler who scraped in some low-class restaurant. Her mother she could not remember. She had worked at a lace curtain factory before she came to the sculptor. Tord could get no more out of her and he did not press her. He loved hearing how she had hated the mill. There was style about her. Something wild and free. A beautiful witch! She had fair hair, plentiful, luxuriant, rough hair. A real mane. It was rather uneven, for she had simply cut it off where it was entangled. Any jewellery she could find she put on just like a savage.
Dagmar stayed at The Rookery. Tord would not let her go. He loved her with a love that consisted largely of scolding and sulking, and which was therefore sincere. He needed her. At whom otherwise could he hurl his bitter reflections on Woman. Once when he had been worse than usual she threatened to go back to her father, the musician. Then he felt how terribly empty it would be not to have her as a butt for his reproaches. He became frightened, frightened to the bottom of his heart lest she should throw away the key of The Rookery as she had done that of the studio. And then he suddenly did something that he had never dreamed of before. He asked her to become his wife.
Dagmar said that marriage would be something quite new—one might always try it.
So they had the banns read and drove to church on the same day as the great family council met at Selambshof.
Laura was warming her toes on
