The Best Continental Short Stories of 1923-1924/The Maiden

by Johannes V. Jensen

THE MAIDEN

By JOHANNES V. JENSEN

In Vesterude, in Himmerland, on the northeastern coast of Denmark, along the fjord, lie four large farms. A couple of hundred years ago a free manor lay here. It was called Strandholm. It is a desolate and sparsely populated region. For generations the squires of Strandholm went in for cattle raising and most of the estate consisted in mile-long meadows billowing down by the fjord. The land that lay higher up was rather barren and sandy and not much was done with it.

The people who occupied Strandholm were always more or less unsociable. This was because they lived in such a lonely spot and had to go so far to meet others. In looks and habits they were not very different from the peasants in the district; they were perhaps a trifle more abrupt because they were free born and prosperous, but on the whole they followed the ways of the district and kept their feet on the ground like most plain folks. They were tall, phlegmatic people whom one usually met in the open with huge boots on and surrounded by a pack of dogs. The last one to own the manor whole and undivided was Jorgen Dam. He read and wrote a great deal and traveled abroad. When he grew old he divided the estate between two sons so that the property was divided into two equal parts, Northern and Southern Strandholm. The brothers got on pretty well together. They went in more for farming, and as the enterprise was cut into half, on each estate, the brothers as a matter of course adopted an even plainer way of living than that of their ancestors. And gradually the fact that the family was noble was almost forgotten. The hard times which followed in the wake of the Swedish wars hit the brothers badly and each had all he could do to keep things together.

Meanwhile both had children. And from the time when the children were quite tiny both brothers became fired with the holy idea of uniting the two estates into one, by marriage. And it looked as though they would succeed; as the children grew older two of them seemed to form a couple, quite naturally. The other children on the estates have nothing to do with this story, their lives unfolded beyond the borders of Strandholm. But the son Matthew on North Strandholm, Squire Matthew, as they called him, and little Bertha on the other estate, became each other’s fate. Matthew soon grew to be his father’s favourite, and Bertha likewise, and the two cousins seemed also from the time they were very small to have a predilection for each other. The first time they saw each other, in their infancy, when as babies they were placed together on a large table, they both clasped each other passionately with their small arms. During their childhood they were always allowed to be together, and they were petted and humoured in every way. They grew up and began to resemble each other. They became very handsome, took much more pride in their appearance than their sisters and brothers, and were much more restless. Their childhood was long and carefree, an eternity of freshness and sweetness spent in the hot sunny moors or among the heaping sand dunes, in the fields with the deep furrows, or on the silent, deserted beach. What no one else saw, the two children were familiar with. The sharp, barren sand drifts became in their hands precious treasures of tiny, tiny gems in myriads of evanescent and almost unreal hues; the moors and the fields were to them worlds teeming full of creatures with which they were on the best of terms, beetles, lizards, toads, swallows and minnows; every year they would pick out, here or there, a nest they called their own which they would visit, in the twilight, to pick up the warm eggs and hold them in their hands, for a few moments while the mother bird, a lark or a grouse, would hover on the ground near by and eye them complacently. They were almost always in the open, above them always stretched the great, endless sky.

If one were to say that one sound, above all others, stamped their youth and for all time revealed them to themselves, then it was the cry of the sea swallow which rang almost unceasingly over the low land bordering on the beach and the moor, and which always came from a much greater height and a much greater distance than that of any other birds.

One sea swallow or another would always soar, alone, high up into the sky and cry so restlessly and so bitterly, so familiarly and yet so mysteriously. Geerah! The slender, snow white bird that soared in the long but not assured wing strokes, the bird which seemed to have nothing to say but which never seemed able to remain silent in its flight from the deserted fjord to the lonely moor, and back again, crossed the sky of their happy childhood.

The two children were almost fully grown when they became orphans. Their parents died at almost the same time, convinced that the two estates would be united again so the family would rise to power. Within a short time the young people would marry, everything had been arranged and planned so well for them.

But then it happened that Bertha did not want Matthew.

It came as one of these sudden, inexplicable outbreaks in nature which spring from deep, hidden forces. Everything had been planned so carefully, and everything had turned out as it should. The other sisters and brothers had received their share of the inheritance and were provided for each in his way; Matthew and Bertha were of marriageable age, everything was ordered and in readiness through years of forethought—even the most ticklish problem of all had been settled: the two young people had great affection for each other—and yet Bertha broke everything off. Why? Had something grown up in her with the same growth as the decision? Had a secret dislike or a perverted desire to triumph borne fruit just as her happiness, according to all rules, was ripe? Did she in her inexplicable maiden heart have a feeling that she did not want to marry Matthew just because she loved him? Did she resist merely because of the tendency, common to all women, of contradicting just at the time when it is most unreasonable and may entail the most fatal consequences? Who knows what a young and beautiful woman can think of? Bertha did not want to get married.

Squire Matthew roared with laughter, at first. Then he grew afraid and implored, sometimes raging and then again humble, sometimes dumb with amazement and then raving mad. He threatened and he wept. But Bertha dressed her fascinating person in black, as for a funeral, with large costly feathers and beautiful velvets and remained silent, silent. She thrived in her successful obstinacy and began to long for more sorrows and triumphs, she enveloped herself sensually with coldness and spiritual mysticism which found no outlet in words, she played at “being stranger”—but it was all frightfully serious. Squire Matthew could not understand her in spite of all laudable efforts, and as he loved her, and nothing else, it always ended by his losing his temper and giving himself up to a storm of wildness which made Bertha shudder and which she loved. When Matthew performed one of his terrible scenes she would stand there deathly pale and sweet and pretend she did not know what it was all about while all the squire’s passionate feelings passed like scarcely noticeable reflections over her delicate, desirous features. Her eyes would seem to die sometimes, when the huge man threw himself on the floor in front of her, steaming with misery, but she maintained the greatest calm, simply stood there and moved her lips ever so slightly as if smiling wickedly or murmuring to herself, “I love him, I love him!” Eventually she called forth his frightful obstinacy; he left her in a rage, one day, wounded and impossible to tame again. In his spite he gave himself to the devil, did not come back, never came back.

And so they were not married.

And then began a strange life on the twin estates. Lady Bertha took the reins of the enterprise into her own hands, on her property, took them in such a way that everyone could see she intended driving into the ditch at once. In her childish wilfulness she managed the affairs of the estate in the most fantastic manner, just in order to have her own way, and things grew much worse when any of the family tried to help her. Finally a distant relative turned up who with authoritative hand (Bertha gnashed her teeth but obeyed) got things into order. After that Bertha became subdued and behaved like a human being; she was able to manage the estate alone, fairly well. She was provided for, in this respect.

It was worse with Matthew, but not to begin with. At first he took good care of his property. But soon in his longing and his rage he began to carouse around on the neighbouring farms and at the village fêtes and markets, where he gambled and drank. In the beginning he carried on and fought more than he drank. But little by little he began to tope.

Some years passed, and both parties had put all ideas of marriage out of their heads. The two cousins never saw each other; they merely lived to gloat each day in the consciousness of never giving in, each one hoping in his heart that the other suffered bitterly, each one more and more resolved never to reveal his own misery and suffering. The situation, judging by outward appearances, was that Bertha managed her farm very successfully: she led a more and more retired life, directing the work on the estate. Squire Matthew, on the other hand, was scarcely ever home and his farm was shamefully mismanaged. The buildings began to crumble; one year the harvest was left to rot on the ground and the next year the land was not ploughed. As there was no fodder the cattle diminished, and when the Squire was unable to raise any more money he grew ashamed to meet people and began to stay at home on the farm, but without doing anything. He would go hunting or take a boat out on the fjord. The servants left him little by little; there was no one to cultivate the fields. And then at last Northern Strandholm began to lie entirely fallow; there were no people, no cattle. The whole district was barren and sparsely populated, but such a condition as that in Northern Strandholm no one had seen the like of. People couldn’t get over it, and later on, when the Squire’s story was told, this was always commented on, first. It was a crime, for aren’t there enough poor people in the world who haven’t a plot of land they can call their own? While here were hundreds of acres of land never touched by the plough. It was strange to see how quickly a cultivated spot can grow wild again. The heather crept into the fields which had not already become a wilderness of thistles and brambles, of self-sowed wheat and weeds, all mixed up together. The roads leading up to the house sank in and grew so covered with greens that they passed through a thicket of grass and wild plants like in a churchyard. People used to talk a lot about the sinfulness of it all, but as there were not many people in the district, and as they did not meet very often, Squire Matthew was relatively soon forgotten. He sat as the only remaining creature on the abandoned domain. Gradually he was left all alone, without animals, even. He lived on hunting and fishing, if one could call it living.

One day some people who were driving a herd of cattle down the road saw a strange creature approach them from out the thistle fields of Northern Strandholm. He looked like a savage in a forest of beard and hair and old, tattered clothes. It was Squire Matthew. He did not want to speak to anyone; he calmly shot an ox in the herd and stood beside it, while the other cattle passed by. The drivers tried to protest but the Squire didn’t answer, he merely pointed his gun at them until they went away. Squire Matthew cut a piece of meat out of the ox and brought it home. A couple of days afterward the sheriff and his men came to the desolate farm and found the Squire at home; he was lying in bed in the only room that was still livable. The floor beneath him was mire of soil he had brought in with his boots, for years, of dampness and mouldy viscousness. From the cracks in the roof hung the long roots of plants which were growing above. The windows were darkened by ivy and shrubbery in the garden outside. When the Squire, or the unrecognisable hairy creature supposed to be he, saw the men and heard what they had come for, he got up and dressed himself. He made an attempt to say something, but they could not understand him. He did not know how to talk. But when they tried to arrest him he seized his gun and explained with it what he meant. In the end the men had to go. When they came back again, armed and reënforced, Squire Matthew had vanished. He was traced to Viborg a few weeks later where a robbery took place on the open road. Soon afterward he killed and plundered a pedlar on the Kolding road. This was the last anyone heard of him. He had left Denmark.

Northern Strandholm was then divided into two farms, and the neglected and abandoned fields were tilled and ploughed. But all connection between the estates which had been one, was over. The new owners of Northern Strandholm never saw Lady Bertha. She lived alone. And the years passed over her. As long as she was young a suitor would come along, now and then, but she turned them all away with scorn and disgust. Later on she was left in peace. She became rather peculiar. People called her, as the years went by, the “Maiden.” Stories were told of her strange ways of living and of her fear of meeting people. She was not kindhearted; she never gave her servants a bit more than she could help while she was very particular about having every bit of work done. She lived in a large room on the ground floor and in the course of time surrounded herself with various animals: pug dogs, so round with food and old age that they would lie stretched out on the cushions without giving any sign of life; bald canary birds and cockatoos perched on swings and in brass cages; a collection of inexpressibly lazy cats and as her very best friend an old sheep that walked about the room and bleated whenever there was a change in the weather. Once upon a time it had been a little lamb, white as a summer cloud and so playful that it would jump right up into the air, with all its four small legs, but now it was blind and looked like a ragpicker’s bag stuffed with wool and old bones. At last it toppled over and had to be fed from a bottle; it grew so old that a horn began to crop out in its forehead like a ram and it bleated with almost human voice when it was hungry. No one would have thought it was a sheep. Many people used to draw their own conclusion because the “Maiden” insisted on keeping the sad-looking animal; who knew with whom she had sealed a pact? But when the tame and faithful sheep finally died altogether, Lady Bertha repeated the experiment and adopted a new little lamb, in the spring, which also died of old age.

In the cemetery at Strandholm stands Lady Bertha Dam’s large and handsomely chiseled tomb. It is strange to come across such a pompous monument in this barren region. As far as eye can reach the sand dunes stretch out, desolate, strewed with chalk-white flint pebbles which shine like small knuckles, and the church itself is white like a bone and lies so abandoned, now, that it seems to turn its wretched spire out toward the fjord, which is low and has no light or colour. And poverty stares out of the sad cemetery, there are so many nameless graves, oblong mounds covered with a whitish grass. The wind passes by like a stranger who breathes for himself, thinks of his long mission and travels on. A sea swallow circles in the sky, high up, soars stretched out, in its flight, as if it were too light for the air, and too helpless and disconsolate to fly. Geerah, Geerah! It is so bleak, here, so dreary. But right in the middle of the open churchyard stands Bertha Dam’s fine monument. It is a high pillar of granite, polished like a mirror, and adorned with bronze ornaments of extravagant French style. It is crowned on top with four handsome bronze horns, like a double lyre. These refined outlines are silhouetted against the pale sky of Jutland. Almost brutally they call forth visions of milder conditions in some spot far South, where the most miserably conceived possibilities can spring to life, and where metal is moulded into happy forms.

Here rests Bertha Dam who for a generation and more went to church every Sunday and who went no other place. Every Sunday the congregation saw her bloodless, faded face back of the edge of the pew where her family had had its seat since the days of Arild. Here the Dam’s coat of arms hung carved in wood and painted in azure blue, brick red and sulphur yellow. Here hangs an old portrait of the “Maiden” of Southern Strandholm. You can see her sit in her straight laced bodice, pointed like a cornucopia, with her ravaged nun’s face imprisoned in a row of piped frills. Under her left arm is painted a sheep’s head with yellow faunish eyes and a long, virtuous nose, in memory of the only creature Lady Bertha loved.

But it happened one Sunday that the congregation, to its fear and astonishment, failed to see the “Maiden” in the pew. The service was disorganised, the minister wandered absent-mindedly because the dry old head with the obstinate expression was not as usual in its place.

Lady Bertha was certainly to be excused, that day. She, meanwhile, was pacing, wild and weeping, about her room. In the morning as she was driving to church as usual, and had reached the valley and crossed the river, she saw a rider rushing down the road from the country, headed for the Strandholm farms. She did not think anything of it until she saw another rider appear at the top of the hill in a mad gallop after the first one. Then she had told her coachman to stop. And as she soon realised that the first rider was a fugitive from justice, who had to be stopped, quick-minded and active as she was, she told her coachman to go down and tear up some of the planks of the bridge they had just crossed. The coachman obeyed and in a few moments had thrown aside a couple of boards so that the wretched bridge could not be crossed. Lady Bertha remained calmly by the roadside watching the rider make toward the river. He whizzed past the carriage—it was a man with long grey hair—and in the next moment she saw him turn his horse sharply to the side, when he realised the bridge was broken. He was not dressed suitably for the season, and he had a faded hat on his grey hair. When he couldn’t cross the bridge he forced his horse out in the river beside it, but the animal stuck in the heavy mire and sank, kicking before it disappeared. The rider worked his way back to land over the animal’s body. In the meantime the other rider had stopped his horse and dismounted. There were scarcely fifty feet between him and the fugitive. And the rider who could not escape and whose horse had sunk stood straight up, uncertain as to what to do, or ready to accept his fate. The pursuer unloosened his rifle calmly from the saddle, took careful aim and fired. The smoke rose from the gun as the bullet crashed, and then the man hung the rifle over his neck, took his horse by the bridle and went down to the river, where the outlaw had fallen face downwards.

Bertha Dam in the meantime left her carriage and went down to the fallen man. She lifted his head and saw that it was Matthew. She was not surprised to find that it was he, nor was she crushed because he was dead. He was old and grey and almost unrecognisable, but she recognised him, and the same years that had ruined him had made her heart cold. He died just as he came home, such was his fate. And she had waited for him a thousand years, and now he had come, he had a lead bullet in his heart, now that she found him again. Geerah!

The man who had fired stood there and waited. She was a distinguished lady, she who sat holding the outlaw’s head, he had better be polite to her. Lady Bertha turned her tearless face to the stranger and said softly, a tone of supplication in her voice:

“Let him rest a moment! His blood is still flowing.”

She was afraid she would not be able to keep Matthew, she kept sitting and holding his head, while his blood ran out. She put his head in her lap and caressed it with her hands as she used to do when they were small and he cried about his boyish troubles. They always hid somewhere under the open sky, where no one could see them, when they were children. It did not seem so long since then. Now she had him again, and what did the time that had passed, in between, matter? How quietly he lay! He trembled just a little, ever so little, more and more feebly, just as when his tears used to cease, in the olden days, when they were small. Geerah!

The stranger talked to the coachman. He was an armed policeman from Hambourg who could speak only broken Danish. He had pursued the prisoner, who had escaped from jail, for four days. He had orders to get him dead or alive, and, as fortunately there were witnesses, he had thought it best to fire. Would the coachman please act as witness? Yes, indeed, that the coachman would do. The stranger took his hat off for Lady Bertha, whom he called Madame, and explained the matter to her. The man whom he had shot ex tempore in accordance with the state-law of Hambourg, was a highway robber and a murderer. Would Madame be witness to the fact that he was now dead?

Bertha Dam nodded gravely, absent-mindedly. Yes, she would.

Well, in that case the man had finished his job. The corpse did not concern him. It seemed as if Madame were interested in it; so much the better. . . .

The little morning incident ended by Lady Bertha driving back with the body in her carriage, while the stranger rode away the same way he had come, a signed death certificate in his pocket.

But when Bertha Dam at last had her dead cousin brought into the living room and laid out there, her rigid heart broke and she raved, distracted and weeping like a young girl, in the midst of her grotesque cats and pugs. And they looked at her, all her overfed, pampered old animals, they bleated, mewed, and barked at her, the dogs that lay there, the cats that couldn’t get to their feet, and the sheep that was blind and half-witted.

A few years later the “Maiden” died and was buried. And then Southern Strandholm was divided into two estates.

There stands a stone in the Strandholm moor, a high, narrow block of granite, which in olden times was probably raised over a chieftain. It is like a huge hinge, on which a vast door could have swung. Around it the landscape is absolutely bleak. And the solitary, fantastic, gigantic hinge may be seen from miles around. It looks like the last remains of a colossal building, or part of an abandoned beginning to a colossal building. The atmosphere in this part of the country is so quiet, that it is like a cry of desolation when a sea swallow soars across the sky and flies high up. The sea swallow always flies alone. It is said to be the soul of a cursed maiden.