Free Seven Gothic Tales by Isak Dinesen Page A

drove us together, to be, in the end, like yourself, Mr. Timon, cured by salt water.”
    “And to shine above them,” the Cardinal said, as gently as he had all the time been listening to the tale of the old woman, “a Stella Maris in the darkness of our loft.”
    “Madame, indeed,” said Jonathan, “I do not know if you will think it strange, but I have never in my life, until you told meso now, thought that fair women could suffer. I held them to be precious flowers, which must be looked after carefully.”
    “And what do you feel now that I have told you so?” Miss Malin asked him.
    “Madame,” said the young man after having thought it over, “I feel how edifying is the thought that toward women we are always in the wrong.”
    “You are an honest young man,” said Miss Malin. “Your side hurts you now, where your rib was once taken out of you.”
    “If I had been in the castle of Angelshorn,” he went on, in high agitation, “I should not have minded dying to serve this lady.”
    “Come, Jonathan and Calypso,” said Miss Malin, “it would be sinful and blasphemous were you two to die unmarried. You have been brought here from Angelshorn and Assens, into each other’s arms. You are hers, and she is yours, and the Cardinal and I, who stand you in parents’ stead, will give you our blessing.” The two young people stared at each other. “If anybody will say,” said Miss Malin, “that you are not her equal in birth, I shall answer him that you belong to the order of knighthood of the hayloft of Norderney, outside of which no member of it can marry.” The girl, in great excitement, rose half up and stood on her knees. “Did you not see, Calypso,” Miss Malin addressed herself kindly to her, “how he followed you here, and how, the moment he heard that you were staying here with me, nothing in the world could induce him to go with the boat? Many waters cannot quench love, neither can the floods drown it.”
    “Is that true?” asked the girl, turning her eyes upon the boy with such an intense and frantic look as if life and death for her depended upon his answer.
    “Yes, that is true,” said Jonathan. It was not in the least true. He had not even, at the time, been aware of the girl’s existence. But the power of imagination of the old woman was enough to sway anybody off his feet. The girl’s face, at his words, suddenly paled into a rare pearly white. Her eyes grew bigger and darker.They shone at him like stars with a moisture deeper than tears, and at the sight of her changed face Jonathan sank upon his knees before her in the hay.
    “Oh, Jonathan,” said Miss Malin, “are you going to thank the Baron, upon your knees, that he took the trouble about you?”
    “Yes, Madame,” said the young man.
    “And you, Calypso,” she asked the girl, “do you want him to look at you forever and ever?”
    “Yes,” said the girl.
    Miss Malin looked at them triumphantly. “Then, My Lord,” she said to the Cardinal, “will you consent to marry these two people, who stand in great need of it?”
    The Cardinal’s eyes gravely sought their faces, which had now colored as strongly as if they had been in front of a high fire. “Yes,” he said. “Lift me up.” The bridegroom-to-be helped him to rise.
    “You will,” said Miss Malin, “have a Cardinal to marry you, and a Nat-og-Dag for a bridesmaid, which no one will have hereafter. Your marriage must be in every way a more intense affair than the lukewarm unions generally celebrated around us, for you must see her, listen to her, feel her, know her with the energy which you meant to use for jumping into the sea from Langebro. One kiss will make it out for the birth of twins, and at dawn you shall celebrate your golden wedding.”
    “My Lord,” she said to the Cardinal, “the circumstances being so unusual—for we have no need of procreation, seeing that the boat can hold no more than we are, and we run but little risk of fornication, I feel;