CHAPTER XVI

THE REST STONE

A few days after the great upstir, Maia Lisa was out at the usual time walking with Little-Maid along the road. This evening she was not walking along with dragging footsteps, depressed in mind and weak in body, for instead of only one there were two to call out to echo, two to dig for mica in the sand-pit, two to dam up the brook, and two to gather anemones in the copse. She had not quite heart enough yet to tease the owl though, so she left Little-Maid at the big birch tree and went on alone up the Rest Stone hill. The bird must have been more sociable than usual that day, for Little-Maid did not join her again at the haunted wall, nor afterwards either.

When Maia Lisa had come far enough to see the Rest Stone she suddenly stopped, for there sat a man, not in the narrow hollowed-out seat, but right on the top of the stone itself. His back was bent and his chin propped in his hands; his eyes, however, were not fixed on the ground, but were looking away up into the tree-tops. He was busy whistling to a thrush perched on a tall pine across the road, and he answered it and gave it back note for note until it sang as though its throat would burst. So intent were they on their game, both man and bird, that they never heard her coming. She stood still for a moment listening and looking at him with amazement. When she had met him before, he must most certainly have been weighed down with sorrow. Never until that evening had she thought that he could not be more than twenty-five years old. Now he looked like a very boy. She was so astonished at this that she could not refrain from a merry laugh.

He turned his head to one side to listen, and looked at the same time towards another tree-top, as if he thought the sound was coming from there. Then Maia Lisa laughed again and now he heard what it was. Down he jumped from the stone, and with eager steps came to meet her. He had just been waiting for her, he said. He had been to her friend Britta in Lobyn to ask her how he could manage to see Mamsell Maia Lisa by herself, and Britta had told him that she was in the habit of coming here to the Rest Stone every evening.

Her heart began to beat very fast as if it expected some great happiness. Dear, dear! how could it be so foolish? It might have known by now that he had come on no pleasant business. No doubt he was going to speak about his brother; probably repeat his sister-in-law’s proposal under more favourable circumstances. And it was as she thought. He led her with some ceremony to the Rest Stone and helped her up where he had been sitting, whilst he himself remained standing on the path. Then he began to ask her very seriously if it was really a fact that she did not care for his brother.

And here again, as in Svanskog, she did not know why she felt at once both touched and angry, nor why her anger won the day so that she answered very sharply that she did not understand why he troubled to ask. Surely he did not imagine that she could not be in his brother’s company a couple of hours without falling in love with him! He did not seem in the least put out by her annoyance. It was incredible that just before he had been sitting there whistling to a thrush, for now he seemed as serious as if he had some important business on hand and had thought beforehand of every word he meant to say. No doubt he looked like that when he was selling iron or striking a bargain with the coal-drivers.

He begged her not to think him impertinent, but he had asked because he must know if her heart was free before he went any further. She was seized with an irresistible desire to tease him and break down his air of certainty. “It isn’t a foregone conclusion,” she interrupted, “that my heart is free because I do not care for Pastor Liliecrona. There may be others....”

He bowed a little scornfully. “That is all right,” he said; “and if there is the least prospect that the one whom Mamsell Maia Lisa is thinking of is likely to come and claim her hand, I will not go on.”

The hot blood rushed to her cheeks, but she looked straight into his sorrowful eyes as she answered: “No, there is not the least prospect.”

“In that case I would like to ask Mamsell Maia Lisa for advice,” he said as he took from his note-book a sealed and folded letter which he held so that she could not see the address. “Would Mamsell Maia Lisa advise me to post this or to tear it up?”

Maia Lisa made no answer. She could not help thinking of the morning when he jumped down into the fox-pit. Then it was a blow here, a blow there, and all done in the twinkling of an eye. “Why can’t he jump quickly and strike his blow so that I may know what he means? What is the reason of all this ceremony?”

“This letter, Mamsell Maia Lisa,” he continued, and his voice grew, if possible, still colder and more business-like than before, “is written by a young man who a few years back stood at the grave of his heart’s love and vowed to go through life alone for her dear sake. Since then the young man has never thought for a moment of breaking his vow, indeed he has never even felt the slightest temptation to do so. He has left his heart in the loved one’s grave and it cannot live again. But, Mamsell Maia Lisa, a few months ago, this young man found a poor child sitting lonely and desolate. In her eyes he read the mingled gentleness and humility of her heart, and was even more astounded by her strange likeness to his lost love. He felt at once the greatest sympathy and seemed to hear the voice of her whom he had lost whispering that he must help in her loneliness the young girl who was her very image. The young man tried to bring her into union with the noblest man he knew--his own brother. He saw them meet, saw them sit together on the same hearth, saw visions of the greatest happiness for them both, when these visions were destroyed by the most unhappy circumstances. His brother was first thrown into the most terrible misery, and, in the attempt that was made to save him, the young girl was brought without any fault of hers into a position of the greatest difficulty. Every day now the young man seemed to hear the voice of his lost love calling to him from the grave at least to offer the maid a share in his home, where he would try with the tenderest care to secure her happiness, and where she would be safely guarded from the cruel hand that now oppressed her. Under these circumstances, dearest Mamsell Maia Lisa, the young man wrote this letter. He meant to send it off this morning, but then he hesitated. He felt, Mamsell Maia Lisa, he must first hear your opinion.” He stopped and with his last word laid the letter down upon her lap, so that she could read the address: “To the Learned and Reverend Assistant Pastor, Herr Erik Lyselius.”

Never, no never in all her life had Maia Lisa felt so humiliated. When he had done what she never expected, when he had asked for her hand, to think he had done it in this fashion! Simply because he was sorry for her!

Her first impulse was to jump up, tear the letter into fragments and throw them in his face. She was more angry with him than she had been with her father when he married Raklitz. And the thought flashed through her mind: “I am evidently made so that I cannot be really angry except with those I love.” But Maia Lisa had gone through much since the day when she had flared up at her father and his wife and could now restrain herself in quite another way. She only slipped down from the stone, let the letter fall to the ground, and began to go down the hill without a word.

And she walked on a good way, right up to the stone wall, without anyone following her. And as she walked she noticed what a beautiful evening it was. The birds were singing in the trees, the midges dancing in the breeze, the sunbeams playing on the fresh young leaves, the streams rippling and murmuring beside the path, whilst plants and grass were sprouting on every hand, so gay and green that she almost thought she could hear them growing. But all this only seemed to increase her wrath. Surely he might have understood that on such an evening he ought to come in the right way if he was coming at all. If only he had had the sense to let it alone. She would have been less unhappy just walking and thinking of him.

He might have had the sense, too, to find out how things were with her before he put this shame upon her. If he had known that she was reconciled with her father and that her stepmother had run away the very day that he and Fru Beata Liliecrona had come to Lövdala, run away without a word and never come back again, perhaps he might have spared his pity. But in any case it would have made no difference. If she had been in the greatest distress she would have been just as angry with him for asking her to marry out of pity only. She would not have been so angry with anyone else, not even with his brother, if he had done the same.

Suddenly she stopped. Why was she so angry with him? The answer came like a revelation. Surely because she loved him!

Yes, oh yes! This then was love. She had read of it in her books, sung of it in her songs, but never before had she felt it in her own heart. No doubt it had lain smouldering, a tiny spark within her soul, all the spring, but she had not recognised it. Now love shot through her like a consuming fire until she almost wondered that its brightness did not shine through and around her. She turned round. Everything was so changed in a moment. Love burnt in her heart and since that miracle had happened she was no longer the same. She could not keep her anger against the man who had taught her what love was.

He had followed her and was close behind, so that as she turned quickly she found herself face to face with him.

Surely such a fire as that within her must be infectious. Its reflection flamed in his eyes, or was that perhaps not reflection only? It almost seemed too bright. She was still so inexperienced, but the vehemence with which he pressed her to his bosom seemed to her of the same nature as the longing that drove her there.

Her astonishment was so great that she scarcely knew if she dared to trust her senses. But the words that he uttered in broken sentences, these eager questions if she loved him, this breathless confession that he had loved her from the very first but had been ashamed of his weakness, this angry remorse that he had tried to deceive himself and run away from his love, this defiant speech that he troubled neither about the living nor the dead if only she loved him--could these come from a heart not burning for her with the same fire that for his sake was consuming her own?