Seven Gothic Tales by Isak Dinesen Page B

and looked, on the dark ground, like a lovely marble figure of the angel of death. The dog, which had stayed near her for the last hour, at once followed her, and, curling itself up, pressed close to her, its head on her knees.
    Her young husband sat for some time watching her sleep, but after a little while he could no longer keep awake himself, and lay down at a little distance from her, but close enough so that he could still hold her hand. For a while he did not sleep, but looked sometimes at her, and sometimes at the erect figures of Miss Malin and the Cardinal. When he did at last fall asleep, in his sleep he made a sudden movement, thrusting himself forward, so that his head nearly touched the head of the girl, and their hair, upon the pillow of the hay, was mingled together. A moment later he sank into the same slumber as had his wife.
    The two old people sat silent before the light of the new candle, which, to begin with, burned only feebly. Miss Malin, who now looked as if she were not going to sleep for all eternity, regarded the sleepers with the benevolence of a successful creator. TheCardinal looked at her for a moment and then he evaded her eyes. After a while he began to undo the bandages around his head, and in doing so he kept his eyes fixed upon the face of the old lady in a strange stare.
    “I had better get rid of these,” he said, “now that morning is almost here.”
    “But will it not hurt you?” Miss Malin asked anxiously.
    “No,” he said, and went on with his occupation. After a moment he added: “It is not even my blood. You, Miss Nat-og-Dag, who have such an eye for the true noble blood, you ought to recognize the blue blood of Cardinal Hamilcar.”
    Miss Malin did not move, but her white face changed a little.
    “The blood of Cardinal Hamilcar?” she asked in a slightly less steady voice. “Yes,” he said, “the blood of that noble old man. On my head. And on my hands as well. For I struck him on the head with a beam which had fallen down, before the boat arrived to rescue us early this morning.”
    For quite two or three minutes there was a deep silence in the hayloft. Only the dog stirred, whining a little in its sleep as it poked its head further into the clothes of the young girl. The bandaged man and the old woman did not let go the hold of each other’s eyes. He slowly finished taking off the long, red-stained linen strips, and laid them down. Freed of these, he had a broad, red, puffed face, and dark hair.
    “God rest the soul of that noble man,” said Miss Malin at last. “And who are you?”
    The man’s face changed a little at her words. “Is that what you ask me?” he said. “Is it of me that you are thinking, and not of him?”
    “Oh, we need not think of him, you and I,” she said. “Who are you?”
    “My name,” said the man, “is Kasparson. I am the Cardinal’s valet.”
    “You must tell me more,” said Miss Malin with firmness. “I still want to know with whom I have passed the night.”
    “I will tell you much more, if it amuses you,” Kaparson said, “for I have been to many continents, and I myself like to dwell in the past.
    “I am an actor, Madame, as you are a Nat-og-Dag; that is, we remain so whatever else we take on, and fall back upon this one thing when the others fail us.
    “But when I was a child I danced in ballet, and when I was thirteen years old I was taken up—because of being so extraordinarily graceful, and particularly because I had to an unusual extent what in the technique of the ballet is termed
ballon
, which means the capacity for soaring, for rising above the ground and the laws of gravitation—by the great elderly noblemen of Berlin. My stepfather, the famous tenor, Herr Eunicke, introduced me to them, and believed that I was to be a gold mine to him. For five years I have known what it is to be a lovely woman, fed upon dainties, dressed in silks and a golden turban, whose caprices are law to everyone. But Herr