“Then, in the morning,” said the pastor, “I will ride over and fetch him.”
“Oh, fetch him tonight!” cried the old woman.
“What need?” said Pastor Juste. “The man can sleep here, no matter who he is, and in the morning I can fetch Thorwaldsen. Or we can go together, all of us, to Rosmos.”
“Tonight, tonight!” cried the old Vibeke, catching at his arm with both her hands. The hands dug into his arm as if to steady themselves, but the pastor could feel how they trembled, and turning to look into her face, he saw that the blue eyes were almost black, the pupils distended in a great fear. He smiled to reassure her, laying his hand over hers.
“He will not vanish like an apparition,” he said.
“Ah, but he might,” she whispered. “You do not understand, you were not here when it happened.”
“But he has much to gain by staying,” said the pastor.
“Do you think I will run away, mistress?” said the beggar. “Oh no, oh no. Who would run away from a fortune like that of my brother Morten?”
“God might strike you dead before morning,” retorted the old woman. “Or the devil might put out a hand for you. Then we should never know.” But to the pastor she said, pleading, her heart in her voice, “Those of us who loved him have a right to know how it happened. Tryg has a right to know.”
The beggar interrupted harshly, “I have already told you how it happened. God’s wounds, the trouble is you don’t believe me.”
“That is true,” said the old woman. “With one breath I believe you are Niels. With the next, you are only a beggar of the roads has picked up part of an old story. How can I sleep in peace until someone else tells me, ‘Yes, it is Niels,’ or ‘No, it is not Niels; Niels is in Vejlby churchyard’?”
“It is indeed an old story,” said Pastor Juste.
“For you it is,” said Vibeke. “For me it is as if it had happened yesterday, and my heart aches, as it did then, and I am afraid, as I was then. I beg of you, go for Tryg tonight. Or, faith, I will go myself.”
The parson gave a half groan.
“It shall never be said of me I sent you on an errand at this hour of the night. I will go myself,” he said.
Three
Judge Tryg Thorwaldsen was entertaining guests, but he left his place at the table to greet the pastor from Aalsö. From the door at the head of the stairs, for the dining room was on the first floor, the pastor surveyed the company seated about the long oak table. The room was narrow, paneled with oak. On the one side a row of narrow casement windows overlooked the street. This night their leaded panes shone like black water, or, where the glass was set unevenly, caught the candlelight like small mirrors. The center of the table was a blaze of candles, the faces of the company bright in the glow, all the backs in silhouette. The light shone upon the silver tankards and crystal glasses, the ruddy cheeks, the well-combed hair, the fine white linen collars, upon a few starched and fluted ruffs, on good broadcloth and velvet, and, where there was velvet, upon some broad gold chains.
Thorwaldsen himself was in velvet, with a single gold chain; he wore a collar of white linen with the new square lappets. A man in his late forties, his hair was more gray than flaxen, and he wore it cut very short for the times. He had an extraordinarily long and bony face, with a wide, pleasant mouth and a long, bony chin; his eyes were honest and intelligent, and of a blue so steady and bright that they redeemed the general homeliness of his other features.
“I have guests of some importance,” he said courteously, “but if the matter is urgent, I can come with you.”
“It is not that I place great credence in the story of this beggar,” explained the pastor, “but that my housekeeper is distressed beyond reason.”
“I have an old regard for Vibeke Andersdaughter,” said Thorwaldsen. “I will come at once. Unless we can persuade you to stop for a glass of burgundy.”
“I thank you,” said the pastor, “but I am truly uneasy at leaving her. I should like to return at once.”
He waited for Thorwaldsen in the close darkness at the foot of the stairs, and when the magistrate had joined him they stepped together out of doors, still waiting for their horses to be brought. The outer darkness was less intense than that within doors. A pallor overhung the housetops, and from this pallor a few stars emerged, like snow that did not fall. The night was very cold. The pastor protested at the delay.
“You need not be so uneasy about Vibeke,” said Thorwaldsen. “She is still hale, and I warrant her a match for any one-armed man.”
“It is not that,” the pastor answered. “She is afraid of something unnatural. I too have the feeling that something evil is encamped by my hearth. It is hard to explain.
“I am not sure this beggar is malevolent. Rather, he seems to me stupid, only. I am reminded of what I was once taught concerning the nature of demons, that they are demons by virtue of their very incompleteness. The evil of this man lies in what he lacks.
“Do you think he could actually be Niels Bruus?”
“I have been convinced for twenty-one years,” said Thorwaldsen, “that I saw Niels buried in Vejlby churchyard.”
“He has a very strong look of Morten Bruus,” said the old pastor.
“That might well be,” said the other. “Bruus was not an outlander. Although he had no close living kindred, he had any number of forty-second cousins.”
The horses were brought then, and they mounted. For a time they rode together. Thorwaldsen said:
“Twenty-one years is a long time, and yet tonight it looks not half so long to me as it seemed when I was twenty-one and looked forward into it.”
“It is a great pity,” said the pastor, jogging by his side, “to have to dig up and bring to light, as it were, this tragedy so long buried and, in some part, forgotten. It must be painful to you, and I am sorry that I have to recall it to you.”
Thorwaldsen said, simply, “It is the one real sorrow of my life.”
The pastor sighed and said, “You must have loved your wife very much.”
“She was not my wife,” answered Thorwaldsen. “We were betrothed.”
“It is all the same thing,” said the pastor, in the innocence of his heart.
“It is not the same at all,” answered the other, “because if she had been my wife, she would not have left me. At least, I think that she would not have done so.”
“You must pardon me,” said the pastor, “if I am not well informed. I was not in Jutland at the time. As you may remember, I came only in ’twenty-nine.”
“I am not very good at remembering dates,” said Tryg Thorwaldsen, “but I do remember that you came after the peace. Well, you must have heard plenty of it, even then.”
“Very much,” said the pastor, “and sometimes things contradictory. It was even then taking on the shape of a legend. As was most natural. But it was so much spoken of that when I heard this beggar call for Sören Qvist as a witness, I concluded that he must know nothing whatever about the true story. In short, I took him to be a fraud.”
“Could he not,” said the magistrate, “have pretended to know nothing of the fate of Sören Qvist in order to assume an innocence? He would hardly care to put his neck into a noose even for Morten’s fortune.”
“You think it hazardous, then, to be Niels Bruus?” asked the pastor.
“There is that possibility,” said Tryg.
“I