An Only Child

== AN ONLY CHILD ==
=== By Steen Steensen Blicher ===
Translated from the Danish by Hanna Astrup Larsen and Published in Twelve stories as Eneste Barn, 1842
 WHEN in the year 1815 I was in Copenhagen, I happened one day to be visiting the friend whom I have mentioned in my story "Eva." The doorbell rang, the door was opened, and in came, with a deep and elegant curtsy, a woman who, judging from her appearance, was a little more than middle-aged. Her entire costume was shabby genteel. There were holes in her hat and also in her dress, though they were small and had been carelessly drawn together. On the third finger of her left hand she wore a cheap ring which looked more like brass than gold. In her right hand she carried a parasol which had long since passed its days of beauty, as had its owner, whose long, thin, pale face matched her costume.
When you come across an acquaintance you instinctively seek to have eye meet eye. But of hers even the lower half evaded you; the immovable lids closed the windows of the soul--I mean the eyeballs, those round peepholes. She had been fairly tall, but had now shrunk a little; she was round-shouldered. When she spoke, she straightened up for a moment, but soon sank down again. She was begging; one could hear that she used a formula which she repeated by rote. A certain haughtiness that life had not yet beaten down was revealed in her speech and posture.
"I have not the honor to know you personally, sir," she said, "and you probably don't know me, but you can believe me when I say that I have seen better days than these"--a slight shrug of the shoulder accented this remark. "I have been told that you are a man of generous mind, and I venture to ask you for a contribution--in any amount you please--toward my rent."
He took two or three steps in the direction of his desk, but turned abruptly toward her with the question, "Your name, madam?"
She shuddered, bent her head, and lowered her lids till they hid the eyes completely, as she answered slowly and in a ghastly tone, "My name? I lost that long ago, and now I have almost forgotten it--as the rest of the world has forgotten me. I have received another, but it belongs to a large family--it is Care-and-Want." Here she wiped her dry eyes.
Without further questioning, Smith gave her a few bills. She curtsied, straightened up again, and left.
During this scene I had been looking at the genteel beggar woman with a strange feeling. It seemed to me that I knew--or had known--this face, this voice. But I could not fix the vague, dim memory either in time or place. Though I was awake, she seemed to me a dream picture, as when the imagination projects forms that we think we know, but when we try to grasp them, they change or vanish.
"Hm!--strange," said Smith. "She didn't want her name to be known. You looked so fixedly at her--do you know anything?"
"Hm!" I replied. "I have seen her before, but I can't think when or where. Did she go out?"
"I can see her out in the street," he said. "She's walking down toward the Church of Our Lady. If you want to find out anything about her, you'd better skurry."
I did so, caught up with her, and followed her, but at some little distance.
As she turned the corner of the bishop's residence, she took a paper from her pocket and, still walking, looked alternately at the paper and the numbers on the houses. When she had passed Crystal Street, she stopped for a few minutes, and then turned in at a doorway. I continued in the wake of the old sailer--up to the second floor. While she rang the bell, I went up another flight and peeped down between the balusters.
The door down there was opened. A servant maid came out and said pertly, "Oh, it's you. You call on us rather often, but my master and mistress have ordered me to tell you it's no use that you come before Saturday week--the first of the month, you understand--good-bye!" With that she slammed the door and bolted it.
The woman who was thus shut out tapped the floor with her parasol, stiffened her back, opened her eyes fully, stood there a few moments as if she were turning over important matters in her mind, and then walked--or rather tripped--rapidly down the stairs. I followed. She went back by way of North Street, turned into Crystal Street, and then into Peter Hvitfeld's Lane, where she entered a humble-looking house. I surmised that she lodged there, and found it to be so.
In the basement there lived a cheesemonger, whom I took to be the owner, or at least the person who by virtue of his business must be posted on the people in the house. He was not at home, but there was a woman who in answer to my question told me she was his wife. I made a purchase and asked her if such and such a person lodged there and who she was.
"Yes, she rooms here," was the answer, "but I can't remember what her name is. My husband knows, for he comes from the same place over in Jutland. I know only that he was born on the estate her father owned. He was a chamberlain or something like that, and a rich man, and she was an only child; but they say she behaved badly, married against her father's wish, and then ran away from her husband--serving strange gods, as the saying is. And now things are pretty bad with her; she always has a bill here, and the rent is never paid on time, but my husband is kind of easy on her, because they come from the same place.--There he is. Now he can tell you all about it."
"About what?" he asked.
"The gentleman," said the wife as she was about to go, "wants to know the name of the woman on the third floor to the left."
He looked hard at me, and said, "May I ask who you are?"
I told him my name and where I was born. At that he became very friendly, struck the counter with the palm of his hand, and gave me the information I wanted. This, together with the story of the beggar woman's youth, on which I was much better posted than the cheesemonger, I retailed to Smith about as follows.
* * *
As far back as my memory serves me, I remember Miss S------, and though I was a madcap when I could have my fling, it seemed to me that she was even more mad than I. She would take me on her lap, rock me, and kiss me, and then she said that when I got older I would understand such things. I didn't know what she meant, nor did I bother my head about it; but whenever I could I would escape to the room of her mother, who suffered a great deal from rheumatism and--as I have since thought--also from heartsickness; she always caressed me and always had sweets that she would put into my little mouth. I never saw her outside of her chamber until she was carried out in the well-known little black _forte-chaise._ Her husband, the chamberlain, did not stand nearly so high in my regard. When he turned his small green eyes on me, I felt a vague antipathy, although he never said a harsh word to me, but only played some little harmless tricks with me--and those not always of the most delicate kind, but I understood them as little as those of his daughter.
This old-fashioned nobleman was a veritable aristocrat: any peasant girl on the estate to whom he threw the handkerchief had to yield to him, and any peasant with whom he got angry would have it taken out on his back. Sometimes he would strike too hard, for he was strong, and once he got a lawsuit on his hands, because he had beaten a man so that he died of it. The case went all the way to the High Court. The chamberlain was acquitted, of course, and that was the end of that story. But I am going to tell another story, which also ended in death and destruction, but which was nevertheless very amusing.
At H. there was a herdsboy who could run and jump as if he had learned it in Nachtigall's Institute. It happened one summer that the functioning bull all of a sudden went mad, broke his tether, and chased the other cattle and the horses, till they all ran amok in the squire's rye. He called together the men on the estate and promised a crown to anyone who could bring him the runagate dead or alive. The herdsboy said, "I'll try, but then the rest of you'll have to shut the gate when I get him in."
All the men armed with pitchforks, axes, and scythes and posted themselves to wait for the bull, while my good Thomas had already run him down in the rye field. He stuck out his tongue and boo'ed at the brute, which immediately went for him. Thomas's two feet were quicker than the bull's four, and several times he had to stop in order to lead it on. He succeeded; Thomas dashed triumphantly into the yard--the bull after him--and out on the dunghill, where it found a dirty death.
Thomas not only got his crown, but also a blue coat with silver braid and an even more dazzling cap. In other words, he became a running footman, and in this capacity conferred great credit on the chamberlain. The squire liked to drive fast, but Thomas could run still faster, and no matter how hard the coachman would drive, the running footman was always far ahead and sometimes would make circles around the carriage, cracking his whip as if he wanted to challenge both coachman and horses. In spite of his brilliant gifts, however, Thomas Runner would not have figured in this story if he had not done any other running than that in front of the chamberlain's carriage.
The time had come when our young lady was to be married. Papa had picked out a handsome young baron for her, who was a lieutenant to boot, and there was nothing to hinder the marriage except this: that the daughter had picked out someone else. It had happened so secretly that the squire knew nothing about it, and therefore could not understand why she objected to such a suitable match, for she hid the reason carefully.
Her secret choice was unfortunately nothing but a minister's son, but his uniform was blue and his beard was black, whereas the baron had only a few yellow wisps on his chin.
Our racer, Thomas, became the carrier pigeon of the lovers, and the office was the back of Niels Bugge's portrait in the vestibule.
But the correspondence was discovered--not the mail-carrier, however, for he ran between H. and W. when everybody else was sleeping. One day a learned historian and antiquarian arrived from Copenhagen, because he had heard of the above-mentioned picture. The chamberlain himself showed it to him. The stranger looked for the painter's signature, and failing to find it on the right side, turned the picture around, and what should he find there but a little three-cornered billet-doux which didn't look in the least antiquarian. The chamberlain silently took possession of it. When the stranger had departed, the squire opened the letter, and thereby got full light on the state of his daughter's affection.
The coachman was instantly ordered to harness the horses to the carriage, and the young lady was told to get ready for a journey, and soon the four light bays were conveying the squire and his daughter to A. It was a polite prison in which the young lady was placed; the master and the mistress--her father's sister--were the keepers. But there was a slip: before the prisoner was out of the carriage, the running footman had been informed of the new post office which she had established on the way--the mouth of one of the wild men that stood as guards at the head of the front steps.
The baron arrived the very same day. Everything was very loving; she kissed him and caressed him, and no one could believe but that she was over head and ears in love. And so she was, but not with the poor baron.
The prisoner was confined to a chamber on the second floor, and the servants took turns keeping watch in the passage that led to the only exit and entrance door of the manor.
One morning when the master and mistress and my small person were seated at breakfast, one of the servants entered with a handkerchief which he had found beneath the young lady's window.
"Take it up to her," said the master.
But the mistress, who had a finer scent, took the handkerchief from him and examined all the corners, while she allowed the servant to go. "Halloo!" she said, "That's not Lotte's handkerchief--see, there's a B. I'll wager that this Mr. B------has been with her last night. You go out, dear heart, and look carefully in the garden and on the wall to see if there should be other signs of a secret assignation."
"Indeed I will, so help me," he said, and went out.
His search led to the following results: the dew had been brushed off, the grass trampled under foot; in a walk leading to the north wicket there were footprints in the sand pointing both ways; outside the wicket a horse had been tied and had trampled and scraped the ground with its hoofs.
"So help me!" he ended his account, "I'd rather watch a hundred goats than one young girl if she gets notions in her head. If you agree with me, mamma, we'll send her back this blessed day. Then your brother will have to look after her as best he can."
"Yes, dear heart, let us do that," she said. "But," she added, "would it not be safest that we accompany her? For if we send her away alone, who knows what she might do? And as for the coachman and the servants, we can't trust them."
"You're right, mamma!" he replied. "The worst is, how are we going to get her away from here decently?--for I'm certainly not going to use force. It's the first time I've undertaken to act as guard, and so help me, it'll surely be the last."
"Let Steen go up to her," said the mistress, "and ask if she would like to take a ride to H." I went, and yes, she would like to go, and she came down dressed for the trip before the old people were ready. Nothing was said about the suspected window-climbing, and we drove off, the four of us.
About midway between A. and H. there is a little town, the name of which I don't care to give. In the town lived a clergyman whose garden stretched down to the road that we had to travel. As we approached, we saw the pastor's gardener--who seemed a very courteous man, a Copenhagener. He was picking flowers and tying them together in bouquets. He seemed not to notice us till we had come just opposite him. Then he greeted us, jumped over the ditch, and came close to the carriage, while he asked the coachman to stop.
"May I have the honor," he exclaimed, "to offer your ladyships some of my ten weeks' stock? I believe you will hardly find as perfect ones anywhere else in Jutland." They thanked him and accepted the gift of flowers. "When you come to the town," he added, "where you will perhaps spend the night, it would be well if the bouquets were loosened and the flowers separately put into wet sand; in that way they keep much longer. Perhaps her young ladyship would undertake to do that--it is well worth the trouble."
He said this with a rather serious face and with a look at the young lady which I did not then understand, but of a kind that I am now old enough to have seen quite a few. I am usually able to detect in a pair of eyes if there is an important secret within them.
Our young lady was much pleased with her nosegay; she smelled it every few minutes, fingered the flowers and praised them, as we drove along. Once when she pulled a little more at them, I saw something white in the middle of the posy, but she covered it up again at once,
"Why!" said I in my childish innocence, "I think there's a white carnation in the middle of it."
"Carnation--nonsense!" she said smiling, and hid the bouquet on her bosom. But it seemed to me that her stays were not strong enough to hold the flowers, for they rose and fell--and that I couldn't understand.
Nor did I bother my head long with the matter. There were other things to occupy my attention: the picturesque and varied landscape, which I will not describe here, but which anyone can allow his imagination to paint in green, yellow, light blue, and brown colors, and to mould in high hills and deep dales.
The chamberlain was surprised and displeased when he saw us; he murmured something that I didn't understand. "You can go into your room for a while--and take the child with you," he said to his daughter.
We went. In there, she whispered quickly and, I might say, confidentially, "Take that glass and fill it half full of the white sand, you know, and bring me."
I took the glass and ran. As I turned at the door to shut it, I saw that when she cut the string that held the flowers together, a little piece of folded paper fell out; but she caught it in mid-air with one hand, while with the other she threw the flowers pell-mell on the window sill.
I fetched the sand she asked for and came in again. As I opened the door, I saw that she pressed a piece of paper--the same, no doubt--to her lips and when she saw me, dropped it in her bosom.
"Did you see anything, you little scamp?" she asked, as she fluttered over to me and bent her face down to mine.
"I saw you kissing a strip of paper, nothing else," I replied.
"Not at all," she said, "I was only smelling it, because it smelt so nicely of the flowers--and besides you're not to tell any human being what you happen to see in here; for--see, here are two macaroons, and you shall have more if the little mouth doesn't tattle."
(I promised--and have kept my promise till now, that is a little over half a century. My listeners must not therefore mind if I speak freely of an incident which is many thousand years old and yet will be new as long as the world stands. The bag has been opened and the contents will out.)
"Listen," she went on. "I am not well, and I am going to bed now. In a little while you can come back and read to me from _Siegvart_ as you used to; the part where Kronhelm carries off Therese--it's so sweet. And now go down to father and talk with him about the bays."
I went down and talked about the bays, both that day and the next. And the baron joined in--for he was a cavalry officer. Sometimes he and the chamberlain went to see the sick young lady, but when they came she was always sleeping. (It was funny, when I came alone she was always awake.)
When I was about to go, she would say, "Try to get hold of Thomas Runner, and ask him if he hasn't got anything for me." I did so, but he didn't have anything before the evening of the second day after the young lady got sick. Then he gave me such a queer letter; it was not folded in the usual way, but in the shape of a bowknot. It must have been a remarkable letter, for as soon as she had read it, she was well again, jumped out of bed, and dressed herself. I asked if I shouldn't read from _Siegvart,_ but she said, "Never mind him! I have another Siegvart--he'll be coming soon. Wait--stay here with me! Here's the whole box of macaroons."
I tackled the macaroons. She packed dresses and clothes and ornaments into a valise, while she looked out of the window every minute. When I had finished the macaroons, I looked out of the window, too, in order to see what it was. And there came a carriage with four bays--but they were not the chamberlain's, nor was the coachman his.
The young lady slammed the valise shut, took the key, and grasped my hand. "Come with me," she cried, "and help to receive the visitors." She ordered her maid, who was standing in the passage, to carry down the valise and put it in the entry.
Just as we arrived there, the carriage drove up to the front door, and the chamberlain came out to us. He started when he saw his daughter, and in travelling dress. "What does this mean, Lotte? Are you so well now?"
"Yes, papa, now I have quite recovered," she cried with an arch smile.
In the same moment the visitors--a man with a yellow key on his right coat tail just like our chamberlain, and two others without keys--stepped in through the door.
The strange chamberlain greeted ours with an ironic smile, and began, "In accordance with His Majesty's royal order, and by virtue of the authority vested in me--"
"I don't care a straw for the authority vested in you!" Chamberlain S------ interrupted him angrily. "But where is His Majesty's order? And what is the import of it?"
"The order is here," replied the other, as he took out a big document through the first page of which shone the red seal of His Majesty.
Our chamberlain reached after it, and bellowed out, "Let's see!"
"Your worshipful honor," said the other with a malicious smile, "is hardly in such a state of mind that I venture to entrust His Majesty's letter directly into your hands. But if you will allow the young lady your daughter--whom the order especially concerns--to step this way, I will read it aloud in her presence and yours, and will furthermore allow these witnesses to examine it."
"Call the young lady!" he thundered at a servant standing at some distance, and she herself came from the opposite direction, dressed for the journey and carrying a small bundle in one hand. Her father looked her over from head to foot once or twice, and said gruffly, "Whither away, mademoiselle?"
The stranger took upon himself to answer for her, and said with affected solemnity, "Inasmuch as the two parties concerned are now both present, I will read His Majesty's communication which has been entrusted to me and which is as follows: 'Upon the humble supplication of Lieutenant B------of our Royal Navy, alleging that he, being engaged to Miss Ch. S------, has learned that the father of said young lady Ch. S------ keeps her in dire captivity in order to force her against her will to marry another, you are to investigate and find out the true foundation of this complaint, and furthermore you are to confront the father with the daughter and from her obtain a statement regarding the alleged captivity, and particularly to learn which of the two rivals she chooses. If it should be the supplicant, Lieutenant B------, and if it should be her firm resolve to be united in marriage with him, then in case the father does not willingly allow her to go, you are to remove her with the aid of the civil and military power, which we graciously put at your disposal.'"
While this document was being read, our chamberlain clenched first one hand, then the other, and then held both stiff arms slantwise along his hips, exactly in the posture assumed by an old-fashioned prizefighter. When the stranger, having finished reading, was about to hand the document to him, he gave it a fillip with his right forefinger, and began to stamp with one foot and then with the other--his fat little body looking not unlike a statue trembling in an earthquake.
"Well!" said the other with unchanged sunny expression, "and you, Miss, what do you want to do? You are free to choose."
"You're not going to run away from your father?" shouted the father to the daughter.
"She won't have to run," the strange chamberlain said, "for she can ride with me--if she wants to. Are you going to stay here, or may I offer you my arm?" She accepted it and bowed to her father.
"Then go, you trollop, go to the end of the world with your ruffian sailor! But don't dare ever to set your foot within the limits of your paternal estate. It's lost to you. You're disinherited."
With that, father and daughter parted. They had seen each other for the last time.
The chamberlain did not go to bed till morning. Sometimes he would write, sometimes he would walk up and down in his bedroom, now with firm, quick steps, now slowly like one who is brooding or who has just risen from an illness. Though he had not eaten anything since the day before, he at last threw himself down on the bed without undressing, rang for his servant, and asked to be wakened in two hours. At the appointed time the servant went in, but was unable to waken him; for he was dead. A sudden stroke had ended his wicked life and choked his plans for vengeance in their birth. The hated son-in-law became his heir.
The latter never established residence at H., but would visit it every summer to look after the management of the farm and the estate and to go through the accounts. His wife never accompanied him; she preferred to remain in the capital, where of course she could amuse herself better. Perhaps the disinclination of Mrs. B------ to revisit her birthplace and native country moved her husband after a few years to sell the entire property. This transaction and the many details that had to be settled on the estate kept him there longer than usual.
When he returned, he found his house, his children, and his servants, but his wife he didn't find. It was lightly come and lightly go.
Whether time had hung heavy on her hands while her husband was away, or whether she had gotten tired of him--which I think most likely--however that might be, she had acquired another lieutenant to pass the time. But a few days before she expected the right lieutenant to come home, the two had absconded with all the precious metal they could find in the house--people thought they had gone to Sweden. At least, a friend of mine told me the following tale:
"In the summer of 1805 I was in Christianstad on business for our house. There I met one day the lieutenant who had absconded with Mrs. B------ a few weeks earlier. I had known him well in Copenhagen, and had lent him money now and then--which I never got back. 'Is that you, R------?' he exclaimed. 'What are you doing here? Come home with me and see how I live!' I went with him and saw that he lived in a small way, but fairly well. He went over to a door and called out through the crack, 'Madam, may I ask you to bring breakfast for two?'--I expected to see Mrs. B------, but this was quite another person, and when she brought the breakfast, I heard her speaking Swedish. When she had gone out and closed the door after her, L------ made a wanton grimace, and said, 'She's neither among the youngest nor the handsomest, but she's a dependable friend--you understand?'--'I understand you well enough,' I replied, 'but I thought you had an older friend.'--'Ah,' he said, 'have had--yes. You knew Mrs. B------,--there was no getting along with her. She'd run away from her father and from her husband, and so she ran away from me, too, the devil.'--'Whom did she run with this time?' I asked, 'and where is she now?'--'She ran back to Denmark with a counterjumper, who had filched some cash from his employer, but what happened to her after that--I don't know anything about. Have a drink!'"
* * *
About ten years later I had occasion to visit H. Alas, what a change!
The old aristocratic manor with its solid foundation was gone, and a half-timbered house with thatched roof was now the modest dwelling of the middle class owner. Within the house one was constantly reminded of the mutations of everything human. "Now" is never the same as "before." "New" is joined to--or rather apart from--"old." Here it was like grandparents in the company of grandchildren: a ponderous oak press in the fashion of bygone days confronting a little mahogany bureau; an ottoman with gilding--mostly worn off--on its wooden frame and leather seat opposite a sofa with veneered woodwork and home-woven cushions; and some large paintings of unknown, long since forgotten gentlemen and ladies interlarded with and abutted by copperplates representing the battle of April Second or Napoleon's victories.
I went out into the garden--there was none! All the old fruit trees had disappeared, flowers and herbs had given way to rye, barley, oats, cows, and sheep. I ran down to the lake, where in my boyhood I had angled from a balcony overhanging the water--there was no balcony, there was no boat--there was nothing but water and the woods on the other side. I thought I could still hear faint echoes of the salutes that used to introduce the festivities I had so often attended in my boyhood years. All was still.  I paid my childhood memories the tribute of a long, dreary sigh, and thought: There will come a time when you too are still.
Category:Blicher
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