Free Seven Gothic Tales by Isak Dinesen Page B

and as to the company of one another, we cannot escape it if we would—I think that you will have to make us out a new marriage rite.”
    “I am aware of that,” said the Cardinal.
    To make a clear space in the middle of the circle, Miss Malin lifted up the little lamp in her clawlike hand, and Calypso moved the bread and the keg away. The dog, at this rearrangement of thegroup, got up and walked around them uneasily. In the end it settled down close to the young bride.
    “Kneel down, my children,” said the old priest.
    He stood up, his huge and heavy figure looming over them in the large, half-dark room. At this moment, as the wind had risen a little, they heard the sighing of the waters all around and beneath them.
    “I cannot,” said the Cardinal very slowly, “here tonight call upon the magnificence of the cathedral, or the presence of a congregation, to sanction this covenant. I have no time to teach or prepare you. You must, therefore, accept my profession to you solely on my authority. You two, I have seen,” he went on after a pause, “have had your faith in the cohesion and justice of life shaken. Have faith in me now; I will help you. Have you a ring?”
    The young people had no ring, and were much put out by the lack of it, but Miss Malin took off a very magnificent diamond, which she handed to the old man.
    “Jonathan,” said he, “place this ring on this girl’s finger.” The boy did so, and the Cardinal placed a hand on the head of each of the kneeling people. “Jonathan,” said the Cardinal again, “do you now believe that you are married?”
    “Yes,” said Jonathan.
    “And you, Calypso?” the Cardinal asked the girl.
    “Yes,” she whispered.
    “And that you will,” said the Cardinal, “from now, love and honor each other until the end of your lives, and even in death and eternity?”
    “Yes,” they said.
    “Then,” said the Cardinal, “you are married.”
    Miss Malin stood by, erect, holding the lamp like a sibyl.
    The hours of rest in the hayloft had not strengthened the Cardinal, who was probably past all his strength. He was less steady in his movements than when he had come out of the boat.His figure seemed to sway, strangely, in time to the sound of the water.
    “As to the state of marriage,” he said, “and the matter of love I suppose that neither of you knows anything at all about these things?” The two young people shook their heads. “I cannot,” said the Cardinal again, “here make the Scripture and the Fathers of the Church bear witness to my words to you. I cannot even, for I am very tired, call up the texts and examples wherewith to enlighten and instruct you. You will, again, accept my profession on my authority as a very old man who has been throughout a long and strange life a student of divine matters. These matters, I tell you, are divine. Do you, Jonathan, expect and hold them to be so?”
    “Yes,” said Jonathan.
    “And you, Calypso?” he asked the bride.
    “Yes,” she said.
    “Then that is all,” said the Cardinal.
    As he did not appear to be going to say any more, the married young people, after a moment, got up, but they were too strongly moved to be able to get away. Standing there, they looked at each other for the first time since they had been called out to be married, and this one look took away all self-consciousness from both of them. They went back to their places in the hay.
    “As to you and me, Madame,” said the Cardinal, speaking over their heads to Miss Malin, but apparently forgetting that he was no longer in the pulpit, for he went on talking as solemnly as he had done when performing the marriage ceremony, “who are only onlookers upon this occasion, and who know more about the matters of love and marriage, we will consider the lesson which they, above and before all other things, teach us about the tremendous courage of the Creator of this world. Every human being has, I believe, at times given room to the idea of