Twenty Years Later

== TWENTY YEARS LATER ==
=== By Steen Steensen Blicher ===
Translated from the Danish by Hanna Astrup Larsen and Published in Twelve stories as Ak, hvor forandret, 1828
 At the end of my story I must refer to the beginning, in which I said that after my trip to Copenhagen I made an excursion to Vendsyssel. I shall now describe the results of it.
On my yellow Norwegian pony I rode from Sundbye toward the scene of the youthful adventures I have related. My legs are no shorter than they were, and as the horse walked in the deep wheel ruts, I could easily brush the dew from the grass with the toes of my boots, and occasionally support the wobbly gait of my horse. Half riding, half walking, I reached old Tyreholm, the lovely Maren Lammestrup's birthplace, about noon. I rode over the hayfield where once that famous battle was fought. The haycocks were there yet, as then, but the lovely Amazons were gone. _"Die hübschen Mädchen die bleiben fern_--_Traum der Jugend, o goldener Stern!"_ I asked a man who was working there whether Mr. Lammestrup still lived in the house.
"No," he said, "he's dead many years ago. Peer Madsen is living here now."
I wanted to have asked about my old Maren, but although one-and-twenty maidens' pictures--if I remember right--had somewhat overlaid her image since that golden time, nevertheless I didn't want to hear that perhaps she too was dead and gone. I rode on, and in passing cast a thoughtful glance at the house to which her presence once lent glamour.
I approached Svirumgaard. The lake with its wreath of rushes spread out before me. My eyes looked for the brook, that pestiferous brook which swallowed up one of my fairest hopes. See! my curse had worked! The footbridge was no longer there; no doubt it had been consumed by fire--an altogether too light punishment! The meadow had been changed into a cultivated field, and the brook had become a dry ditch.
"Does Counsellor Svirum live here?" I asked a man whom I met.
"He's dead many years ago," was the answer.
Then rejoice, ye ducks!--I thought--and swim with lifted heads around on your peaceful lake! No Argus will nose out your hidden nests, and my heavy body will not disturb your clear element!--I rode on rapidly.
By the government office list I knew that the friend of my youth, Hans Mikkel, had succeeded his father; from himself I hadn't heard a word since he left the city. _"Aus den Augen, aus dem Herzen_!"--Whether the old Ruricolus had moved to another parish or had retired, or whether he too perhaps was dead, I knew nothing about.
When for a fifth of a century one hasn't seen a former friend, when so many years--rich in happenings, fruitful of experiences, sad as well as joyous--have passed since that gay companionship of youth, then the heart beats with a strange, happy uneasiness as the hour of reunion draws near. But we very seldom find what we expect, because we have not prepared ourselves for the powerful effect of time. We want our friend to be what he was, and forget that nothing remains as it was. I still thought of my dear Ruricolus, the handsome, fashionable, well-groomed student, the favorite of the ladies, the amiable, pleasant companion, always ready to help a friend, enjoying life but temperate and free from vices, an able divinity student, but a connoisseur also of polite literature--it was our sharing this taste that had made us inseparable. Therefore I was longing to leap from my horse and throw myself in his arms with the exclamation, _"Es waren schöne Zeiten, Carlos"_ etc. But it fell out quite differently.
The first person that met my eye as I rode into the parsonage yard was a fat, red-faced man in a threadbare grey coat, wooden shoes on his feet, and an old low-crowned hat on his head. This person--I should have taken him for the parson's coachman or head servant if an enormous meerschaum pipe-head in his hand had not suggested a tenant farmer--this person was standing on top of the dunghill, surrounded by chickens, ducks, geese, and turkeys, which he seemed to be counting with forefinger stretched out.
"Is the pastor at home?" I asked, lifting my hat slightly.
"Eighty-seven, eighty-eight, eighty-nine, ninety. I'm the pastor," was the answer.
I opened both my eyes wide and--recognized the friend of my youth.
"But, pastor!" I exclaimed, "do you really not know me?"
He descended from the dunghill and came toward me, but slowly and carefully in order not to step on any of the blessed little ducklings.
"Hm!" he grunted with a staid smile, "yes, it seems to me--"
"So you have quite forgotten your old Pietro?" I cried.
"Ah, is it you?" he replied and held out his hand to me. "Well, I must say! Come nearer, my dear old friend!--Morten, take the stranger's horse.--Is it used to standing in the stable, or would you rather have it in the pasture? You'll stay overnight, of course?"
"I mean to stay in the house," I said, "and my horse prefers to be outdoors."
"It's a nice little kitten," he said, walking around the horse as I dismounted, "but a little weak in the forelegs.--Oh, Morten, the dun cow is rutting, don't forget to take her to the bull.--Well, you certainly are welcome.--Put a tether on this little nag and put him out in the pig-pasture. And don't forget to put a ring in the snout of the big sow, she's rooting the potato patch.--Please go in now"--I did so--"and rest yourself. What'll you have? Some tea-punch?  And how have you been since we saw each other? You've aged. Maren, let us have some tea!" The last words he called out through the kitchen door.
This reception drove any kind of poetic outburst back into my somewhat chilled bosom, and the embrace failed to come off. Meanwhile one child after another stuck its head in from the kitchen door to see the strange man, and I also saw some faces at the windows which disappeared as soon as I looked in that direction.
"Are they all your children?" I asked. "How many have you?"
"One for each finger," he replied with a dark and sullen look. "I don't know what I am going to do with them. I hardly know how to keep them in clothes. To send any of them to the University is impossible. What's to become of them?"
Now his wife came with the tea. I greeted her.
"Do you know him?" Ruricolus asked her. "He's the man who dipped you in the brook at Svirumgaard."
Yes, indeed! It was she, but alas, how changed she too was, in face, figure, and manner!
"Ah, yes," she said with a forced smile, as she arranged the tea-table. "I am glad to see you again--it's a long time since we have had the honor. Will you have cream or rum?"
But why weary the reader with descriptions of a scene that had an effect on my warm blood like cream of tartar! So time can blot out, smother, destroy beauty, wit, gaiety; and what time might perhaps leave, will surely succumb to financial worries, the faithful ally of time.
In a bad humor I left my poor rusticated friend early the next morning, chewing the cud of the unedifying and well-worn theme: _Tempora mutantur et nos mutamur in illis--_Time is changeful and changes us, too.
Category:Blicher
Category:Published