After Holk had left Asta by the cricket pitch, he went to the nearest greenhouse in front of which his gardener was hard at work. Holk greeted him and then, tearing two leaves out of his memorandum pad, he wrote a couple of telegrams to Pentz and Frau Hansen, announcing to both his arrival in Copenhagen the following evening. “Ohlsen, these telegrams must be sent from Glücksburg or from Arnewieck, if you like. You may take the brake.”
The gardener, a lout like most of his kind, was plainly annoyed, so Holk added: “I’m sorry to have to interrupt your work, but I need Philip to help me pack, and your wife’s brother, who seems quite promising, doesn’t know his way about yet, and anyway I’m not sure that he is reliable enough.”
At this the gardener quite recovered his good humour and said that if the count did not mind, he would prefer to go to Glücksburg: his wife had such an itch all over her body, which certainly must come from her spleen, because she lost her temper so easily, and so he would like to go to the doctor’s for a prescription.
“All right,” said Holk. “And while you are there, will you at the same time make sure that the ship definitely calls here tomorrow morning, as once or twice it has failed to put in here. And also ask whether the King has already arrived in Glücksburg and how long he is expected to stay.”
The count then returned to the castle, where Philip had not only got out all the trunks but had also started packing.
“Excellent, Philip. I see that your mistress has already told you that I have to leave. Well, you know what I need; but not too much because the more you take the more you need. If you take a full trunk, in the end you expect to have everything that you have at home. Don’t forget one thing—my fur boots and galoshes. You lumber about in them like an elephant but they warm the cockles of the heart and that is the main thing. Don’t you agree?”
Philip did agree, whereupon the count, visibly pleased, sat down at his desk and wrote a few letters, including one to Arne, while the old servant continued packing his bags.
“What books does the count require?”
“No books. The ones we have aren’t suitable for Copenhagen; but put in a couple of Walter Scott’s; one never knows and he is always suitable.”
At noon, while Asta was still down in the village, Baron Arne came over from Arnewieck and as they were chatting with the ladies in the hall, Holk handed him with a laugh the letter he had written him that morning. “There, Alfred; but read it when you’re at home. There is no hurry about it and I think you probably know what is in it. It is the old, old story: I’m handing over Holkenäs castle and all its arrangements to you, as I have already done so often, and I appoint you major-domo for the period of my absence. Advise your sister, discuss with her” (he added in an undertone) “the building of a new chapel with a vault or anything else she wants, and have plans drawn up for the cow-sheds. Do the one for the shorthorns first. Ask the advice of the homoeopath of whom you were telling me such extraordinary things the other day and send the drawings over to Copenhagen. Pentz also knows something about it and the much-travelled Bille even more; after all, his measles cannot” (he turned back to the ladies) “go on for ever. When he has peeled—it’s funny to think of him in an isolation hospital—I shall go and see him and show him the plans. Invalids are always glad to hear something more than the tinkle of a medicine spoon or the sound of a doctor’s stick.”
Holk continued to speak in this tone, leaving no doubt as to his very great pleasure at being able to go away from Holkenäs for three months. It was, indeed, somewhat offensive for the countess and she would certainly not have failed to mention the subject had she not detected a rather similar feeling in herself. The Holks were like many other married couples. When they were not together, they felt closer to each other, for then not only did all their differences of opinion and bickering disappear from their memories but they also found themselves recovering their former feelings of affection for each other and even used to write each other loving letters. As no one knew this better than the brother-in-law, he now began to pass a few jocular remarks on this subject, which were not well received; apt though they were, his sister had no desire to hear any reference, however slight, to such matters at this moment. Observing his wife’s hauteur, Holk invited Julie to come for a walk in the park, as “he had one or two things still to discuss with her.”
When Christine was left alone with her brother, she said: “You ought not to have said such things, Alfred, while Helmut was there. You know that in any case he has a tendency to take things lightly, and if you lead the way, you only encourage him in his pretence of being frivolous.”
Arne smiled.
“You are smiling but you are quite wrong. I didn’t say ‘being frivolous,’ I said ‘pretending to be frivolous.’ He is not able to be a real free-thinker because he is not fitted for it either by character or intelligence. And that is what is so wrong. I could live with an atheist or at least I think I could, yes, I think it might even stimulate me to have serious discussions with him. But that would be impossible with Helmut. Serious discussions! He doesn’t know what it means. You may say what you like to me, but with him, all you are doing is confusing him and encouraging him in his weakness and vanity.”
Arne said nothing and merely threw a few crumbs to some finches which had appeared while they were talking.
“Why don’t you say something? Do you think I’m being too ‘churchy’ again? I have not once mentioned the word church. Or am I being too strict for your liking?”
Arne nodded.
“Too strict? Amazing. You seem to have become quite incapable of understanding me any more, Alfred, and if that is a reproach and you mean it as such, then you must allow me to return the compliment. I cannot understand you any more. You know how fond I am of you, how grateful I have always been to you since I was a child and how grateful I still am. But I still cannot help pointing out that it is you who have changed your opinions and principles, not I. One day you find me too strict in my morals, the next you find me too inflexible in my religion, the third day too Prussian and the fourth not Danish enough. I’m never right. And yet, Alfred, it is you who made me everything I am, or most of what I am. It was you who showed me the way. You were already thirty when I was left an orphan and I was brought up according to your ideas, not our parents’. It was you who found the Herrnhut school for me, you introduced me to the Reckes and the Reusses and all those pious families, and now that I have become what you intended, you find it wrong. And why is it wrong? Because in the meanwhile you have changed sides. I don’t reproach you because when you were thirty your ideas were hide-bound and aristocratic and now you are sixty you suddenly see the world through liberal spectacles. But have you the right to blame me if I have remained what you used to be and what you yourself made me?”
Arne gently took his sister’s hand. “Dear Christine, you may be whatever you like. I no longer have the heart to despise anyone’s views. That is the one thing that I have learnt in my second thirty years. It is not the opinion that matters but the way you defend it. And there, I feel compelled to say that you are holding the rein too taut, you’re making too much of a good thing.”
“Can you make too much of a good thing?”
“Of course you can. Any excess is wrong. Ever since I learned it, I have always been most impressed by the idea that in antiquity they valued nothing so highly as moderation in all things.”
At this point Holk and Julie came back from their walk and Asta came up from the beach on the other side and immediately hurried towards Arne, whose favourite she was and who was always ready to listen to her. With her mother she was reserved but when Uncle Alfred was there, she always had to pour out everything that was on her mind.
“This morning I was sitting at Pastor Petersen’s desk and on the right-hand side was the Bible and on the left his box of antiquities and there was really not an inch of space left to show me what was in all the boxes. It was mainly stones. But finally, after he had pushed the Bible out of the way …”
“Then you had room,” laughed the countess. “Dear old Petersen is always pushing the Bible out of the way and is forever busy with his old stones and he even has a tendency to give stones instead of bread …”
Arne was tempted to contradict but, remembering the conversation he had just had, quickly changed his mind and was glad when Asta went on: “And then I went with Elizabeth outside into the churchyard beside her mother’s grave and I saw that Elizabeth is really Elizabeth Kruse and only her mother was a Petersen and that we really ought not to call her Petersen. But she told me that she had never known her father and her mother had always been known as old Petersen’s daughter when people talked of her down in the village, and so she was called Elizabeth Petersen as well, and that it was really all right. And then we went further along the cemetery up to the church and climbed up on a tombstone that had half fallen over and tried to look through the iron bars of the window into the vault and a brick fell in with a crash and I almost had the feeling that I had killed someone. Oh, I can’t tell you how scared I was. I don’t ever want to go in there now and if I die you must all promise me that my grave will be in the open.”
The countess’s eye fell on her husband who was plainly moved as he nodded in a friendly fashion to his wife: “We must see to all that, Christine. I have already spoken to Alfred and also to Julie a moment ago. We shall turn it into an open courtyard with Gothic arches to enclose the burial ground, and anything else that needs doing you can arrange for yourself.”
The count and countess discussed this matter for a few more minutes while Arne talked with Asta and then, when the conversation became general again, the latter led it on to other matters; this was not difficult as the gardener Ohlsen had just come back with the news that the King was arriving the next day and Countess Danner as well, and he intended to stay four weeks excavating a barrow on Brarup moor; and the ticket had been bought and the steamer would arrive at the pier below tomorrow morning at ten o’clock or thereabouts. It was the best ship of the line, the King Christian, with Brödstedt as skipper.
Before Ohlsen had finished making his report, Axel came in with his tutor and pulled out of his bag the partridges that he had shot.
“Many thanks, Axel,” said Holk, “that will give me some lunch on the way. You’ll be a decent shot yet, like all our family, and frankly that is what I should like best. Learning is for others.”
As he said this, Holk’s glance fell briefly and quite unintentionally on poor Strehlke who, while his pupil had been shooting partridge, had been content to take a dozen fieldfare out of the snares.