of the horses showed mist within mist. The air stung and clung to the face. Perhaps it was clearing overhead in preparation for a more intense cold. The pastor, still thinking of Vibeke, wished they might travel faster.
As for Tryg Thorwaldsen, he pushed forward through the darkness and mist as if he were pushing through time, but backward, year by year, slowly back to his young manhood and the vehemence and vigor of his youth. Through the darkness faces appeared to him, touched with spring sunlight, touched with tears, and an old sorrow and longing that he thought he had put aside resumed its old power. He thought, “The past is never dead. Within ourselves it becomes a part of ourselves, and lives as we do, and beyond us it becomes a part of the popular speech. When the story is forgotten, the phrase survives. ‘As kind as Sören Qvist.’ I heard the saying only this morning in Vejlby market.” It was usual. He had heard it so often that he had not paused to remark it, or to consider it as a herald of any return of the past. Then, might the past return? he asked himself.
He drew rein suddenly and, turning in his saddle, waited for the pastor to overtake him.
“I was abrupt, Pastor Juste,” he said. “Pardon me. It is incredible to me that your beggar should be Niels, yet, if it is so, I shall have a search to make through every village and farm, yes, and every city in Skaane, though it should take me the rest of my life.”
“And for whom would you search?” inquired the old pastor hesitantly, hearing the passion in the quiet voice.
“Why, for Anna Sörensdaughter.” Thorwaldsen spoke very low. The name drifted to the old man, through the darkness, through the chill air, like some petal loosened from a flowering bough remote in spring.
“Through every village, every farm,” said Thorwaldsen again.
Four
After Vibeke had seen the pastor cloaked and mounted and upon his way to Vejlby, she brought fresh wood to the fire and then, latching the door against a slight wind that seemed to be rising from the west, returned to her seat behind the fire. The beggar had not stirred from his place on the other side of the hearth.
Vibeke was learning afresh that doubt is a dreadful torment. And twenty-one years is a long time over which to recall a face of which you never took especial note. The excitement which had possessed the beggar a short time before had died away, and a greater fatigue had taken its place. He stared into the fire with eyes grown dull. Vibeke, watching him, thought again that the narrow forehead and the long nose with the remarkably long and narrow nostrils were very like the features of Niels Bruus. But the lines of the face were all cut much deeper than in the face she remembered, and the black stubble of the unshaved beard darkened them about the mouth and chin in an unremembered way. The lank black hair was like that of Niels. But, on the other hand, now that so much depended upon it, the likeness seemed not so great. And he had been one of Wallenstein’s men, Wallenstein who had been for two years and a half the scourge and terror of Jutland. He had said that he had no knife, but you could never trust a man who had been with Wallenstein. Perhaps this story of his was just a trick to get money, as the parson had suggested, or even, since he was so near starved and had been turned from the inn, a device to get a meal and a lodging for the night. She watched him carefully, lest he slip his hand into his pocket, or into his breast, and come forth with a knife, and the more she watched him, the more certain she became that he was only an impostor, and she wished that she were not alone in the house with him. She wished that she could send him out to the byre and lock the door upon him. But he would not stir; she knew that. He was waiting for the return of Parson Juste and the magistrate, and he was there by her own demand. He was calm enough about it now for anyone who knew himself to be a fraud. You would think he might be frightened at the thought of being questioned by so great a man as Judge Thorwaldsen. Indeed, he had not seemed pleased at the idea. Perhaps he would yet be frightened, and slip out before they came. Or perhaps he meant to strike her down and rob the house and escape. She watched him very carefully, and she reckoned that, even if he drew a knife, she could seize the parson’s stool and strike him with it.
And then, the more she watched him, the more the face again began to resemble that of Niels, and the beggar became a man who had been dug from the ground before her very eyes. She remembered again how awfully the corpse had stunk, and the odor of filth which surrounded the beggar became to her nostrils the odor of corruption. A deep unholy terror possessed her. This was not Niels returned to explain the corpse, but the corpse of Niels returned to harry the soul of old Vibeke. She sat very still for fear that her fear would cross the small intervening space to the living corpse and that he would know his power over her. Little by little she forced her fear of him back, but only by the power of a greater fear, that he should know she feared him. She thought that if he talked, he would have less time to think of what harm he might do. She felt also that she would be less frightened if she spoke. So she began:
“That must have been a dreadful battle when you lost your arm.”
“Aye,” he said.
“And a long time ago. Fourteen years you have been doing without that arm.”
“So long?” he said. “I hadn’t counted.”
“I cannot write but I can reckon,” said Vibeke.
“Fourteen years of begging. And all that time you never once came near Jutland?”
“As I told you,” he said.
“Nor met a Jutlander?”
“Mistress Vibeke,” said the beggar, “you ask me questions. Parson asks me questions. Master Thorwaldsen will ask more questions. I can wait until Parson and Magistrate come back, and answer them all at once.”
Vibeke gave a short laugh.
“No doubt but you are a Jutlander, whatever else,” she said.
The beggar lifted his shoulders, let them drop in a slow shrug.
“I answer questions. You do not believe me. Why do I waste my breath?”
There was justice in the remark, so that Vibeke did not reply. They sat, one on each side of the fire, in silence, while Vibeke’s fear grew larger and pressed against her heart, as she said to herself, like an indigestion. Presently the beggar said:
“As you know something about it, how would you reckon Morten’s wealth?”
“In money, I would not know,” said the old woman. “In land, he had more than when he was born.”
“You are a Jutlander also,” said the beggar.
“But I know this,” said she. “The one that inherits the wealth will inherit no good will with it.”
Again the beggar lifted his shoulders in that sluggish gesture of unconcern.
“Who has wealth needs no good will,” he said.
“Never believe that,” said the old woman.
The beggar made no answer, and they waited, Vibeke never taking her eyes from the figure across from her, the beggar now and again stealing a covert glance at the old woman from beneath his heavy slanting brows. The time went slowly. Only once again did the beggar open his lips.
“Yet how should Master Thorwaldsen know Niels?” he said. “How many times did he meet Niels on the road, or at the market, and stop to speak with him? I shall ask for Anna Sörensdaughter, I shall.”
Vibeke
