and play a contra-dance.
Shortly afterward, the dance-hungry youths came bounding up the stairs. Ah, now there was dancing! It was a ball such as rarely was seen in Karlstad. All who had been waiting and longing for this moment tried to make up for time lost. They glided and whirled, pirouetted and kicked. No one felt tired or indisposed. The plainest and least interesting girl there did not lack a partner.
Nor did the older people merely sit looking on. The joke of it was that the Baroness herself, who had given up dancing and card-playing and had relegated all her worldly books to the attic—even she was on the floor, gliding forward with ease and abandon and looking as young, aye, younger, than the daughter who had stood a bride that day.
The Karlstaders were glad to have back their merry, their charming, their adorable Baroness. The delight was extreme. The night had become enchantingly lovely. In fine, all was as it should be.
But the crowning proof of how contagious was the joy that swept through the rooms was that Karl Arthur himself caught it. All at once it struck him that there was nothing evil or sinful in moving about in time to the music with other young, light-hearted folk. It appeared only natural to him now that youth and health and happiness should take this form of expression. Had he felt as before, that to dance was a sin, he would not have danced. But to-night it all seemed such childish, such harmless amusement.
Just as Karl Arthur was doing his neatest steps in a reel, he happened to glance toward the open salon door.
There appeared a pale face, framed with black hair and black whiskers. And the large mild eyes stared at him in pained amazement.
He stopped in the middle of the dance, thinking, at first, it was an apparition. Then, in a moment, he recognized his friend Pontus Friman, who had promised to pay him a call when passing through Karlstad on his way home.
Karl Arthur instantly quit the dance and hastened to greet the unexpected guest, who without a word led him down the stairs and out of the house.
CHAPTER II
THE PROPOSAL
Schagerström had proposed!—Rich Schagerström of Stora Sjötorp!
No, but was it possible that Schagerström had proposed?
Oh, yes, it was very certain that Schagerström had proposed.
But how in the world came Schagerström to propose?
Well, it was like this: At Korskyrka Deanery there was a young girl named Charlotte Löwensköld, a distant relation of the Dean who acted as lady’s-companion to his wife, and who was betrothed to his curate.
Then what had she to do with Schagerström?
Charlotte Löwensköld, you see, was vital, blithe, and outspoken. The moment she set foot inside the deanery, it was as if a freshening breeze had swept through the old house. The Dean and his wife were elderly folk who had moved about the place as mere shadows of themselves, until she came and put new life into them.
The Curate was thin as a rail, and so pious he hardly dared eat or drink. The whole long day he attended to his clerical tasks, and all night he knelt beside his bed, and wept for his sins. He was about ready to give up the ghost, when Charlotte appeared and stopped him from destroying himself altogether.
But what has all this got to do with Scha——
You must know that when the Curate first came to the deanery, some five years back, he had but just been ordained and was unfamiliar with the duties pertaining to his office. It was Charlotte Löwensköld who initiated him. She had lived all her life at a parsonage, and knew pretty well everything that went with it. She not only taught him how to baptize children, but even how to preside at a vestry meeting. It was then they fell in love; and now they had been engaged fully five years.
But we are getting away entirely from Schagerström!
—Charlotte Löwensköld, you see, was exceedingly clever at planning and managing for others. They had not been long engaged before she learned that her fiancé’s parents did not like his being a cleric. They had wanted him to continue at the University until he had taken his master’s degree and then study for the doctorate. He had spent five years at Upsala, and in the following year would have become a magister, when he suddenly decided to take, instead, the examination for Holy Orders.
His parents were rich and a bit covetous of honours. It was a great disappointment to them that their son had chosen so modest a career. Even after he had entered the Church, they implored him to return to the University; but he gave them a positive No. Now, Charlotte knew that his prospects for promotion would be better if he obtained a higher degree; so she sent him back to Upsala.
As he was the worst old grind imaginable, she had him finished in four years. By that time, he had not only taken his licentiate, but was a full-fledged Doctor of Philosophy.
But what of Schagerström?
—Charlotte Löwensköld had figured out that her fiancé, after his graduation, would seek an appointment as headmaster at a gymnasium, where the remuneration would be sufficient to enable them to marry. If he needs must be a cleric, then in a few years’ time he could have a large benefice, as had been the case with Dean Forsius and others. But it did not turn out as Charlotte had expected. Her fiancé wished to enter the ministry at once and go the way of the ordinary cleric; so he came back to Korskyrka as stipendiary curate. Doctor of Philosophy though he was, his compensation was less than that of a stableman.
Yes, but Schagerström——
—You understand, of course, that Charlotte, who had already waited five years, could not be content with this. But she was glad her affianced had been sent to Korskyrka and was now living at the deanery, where she could see him every day.
But we are not hearing anything about Schagerström!
Neither Charlotte Löwensköld nor her fiancé had any affiliation with Schagerström, who moved in a different world from theirs. The son of a high official in Stockholm, he was himself a man of means. He had married the daughter of a Värmland ironmaster—heiress to so many foundries and ore fields that her dowry alone amounted to some two or three millions. The Schagerströms had resided in Stockholm and had spent only the summer months in Värmland. They had been married but three years when the wife died in childbirth and the widower removed to Stora Sjötorp, in Korskyrka. He mourned her loss so deeply he could not bear to stay at a place where she had lived. Schagerström was now rarely seen in society; but passed his time supervising the administration of his various estates and remodelling and beautifying Stora Sjötorp, so that it became the most magnificent place in Korskyrka. Alone as he was, he kept many servants and lived like a grand seigneur. Charlotte would as soon have thought she could take down the Seven Stars to set in her bridal crown as to marry Schagerström.
Charlotte Löwensköld, you see, was the sort who would say anything that came into her head. One day, when they had a coffee party at the deanery and there were many guests, it happened that Schagerström went driving by in his big open landau, drawn by four black horses, a liveried footman on the box beside the coachman. Naturally, they all rushed to the windows and stood gazing after him as far as their eyes could follow. When he was well out of sight, Charlotte turned to her betrothed, who was standing
