“But still,” said Christian, who saw with regret the end of his romantic adventure rapidly approaching, “you came to say something to him. Perhaps he ought to know it.”
“I came to ask him,” said Margaret, with a little hesitation, “to tell me plainly what my aunt’s intentions were in case of an open revolt upon my part. But that again was an act of cowardice, I do not require to know. Let her banish me, isolate me, imprison me, strike me—what does it matter? I will not yield, I promise you. I swear to you, I will never marry any man whom I cannot—esteem.”
Margaret dared not say love, and Christian was just as powerless to utter that word, but their eyes said it, and their cheeks glowed with a sympathetic blush. After conversing confidentially for an hour, their souls, in that brief glance, spoke to each other, and acknowledged their inward emotion, and yet neither of them was conscious of the fact; Margaret, because she did not know that she loved, and Christian, because he felt certain that he did not. And yet, when Margaret had stepped into her sleigh again, and when Christian could see her no longer, they were both conscious of a sudden pain, as if their hearts had been rent asunder. Tears, that she did not feel, coursed slowly down the young girl’s cheeks; while Christian, buried in confused reveries, sighed as deeply as if he had awakened from a dream of sunshine to find himself once more in the frigid winter. In order to watch the sleigh the longer, he went back to the bear-room, and stepped between the two sashes of the window, when a rustling behind him made him turn round, and he beheld a sight that filled him with amazement.
An old man, thin and pale, but with noble features, and carefully dressed in a gray suit of ancient fashion, was standing erect in the midst of the chamber, with a green branch in his hand. Christian had not heard him enter, and the figure, illumined by the declining sun, which, as it neared the west, was sending a red and dusty beam of light through the one long window of the sombre room, seemed a fantastic vision. His expression, moreover, was as singular as his unexpected presence. He seemed undecided; astonished, as it were, to find himself in that place; and his small, glassy eyes inspected with amazement the changes which the new guests had made in the previous melancholy arrangements of the room. A moment’s reflection satisfied Christian that this strange apparition, instead of being a spectre, was probably old Stenson, come to wait upon M. Goefle and surprised at not finding him. But what was the meaning of that green branch, and why that timid and disappointed look?
It was, in fact, old Stenson; and his sight being as good as his hearing was poor, he had quickly noticed that the fire was burning, the table set, and the clock going. He did not move quickly, however, and Christian had time to draw back behind the folds of an old curtain, nibbled almost to a fringe by the mice, before the old man’s eye had reached the open window. From this hiding-place he could watch him without being seen. Stenson’s idea was that his nephew, of whose drunken habits he was aware, had, without notifying him, invited some of his boon companions to a Christmas revel in the bear-room. The height of his indignation no one but himself could have expressed. His first care was to put out of sight the traces of such scandalous disorder. He began by scattering all the live coals in the stove, so that the fire should go out of itself; and then, before either clearing off the table, or going to send the delinquent to do it, he stopped the pendulum of the clock, and put the hands back to four o’clock, where it had stood before the profane hand of Christian had set it going. Next, he turned and looked up, as if to count the candles in the chandelier, but the sun shone in his eyes, and he stepped forward to the window, probably to shut it.
At this moment, Christian, seeing that he was about to be discovered, came forward. But at this apparition, standing in a nimbus of the rays of the setting sun, Stenson, who was probably not the least superstitious member of his family, recoiled to the middle of the floor under the chandelier, with a countenance of such anguish, that Christian, forgetting the old man’s deafness, spoke to him kindly and respectfully, with the intention of reassuring him. But his voice was lost without awakening an echo, in the large and fast chilling room. Stenson fell on his knees before him, stretching out his arms as if to implore his protection or to bless him, and holding out, with a tremulousness that was almost convulsive, the cypress-bough, as one offers a votive palm-bough to some divinity.
“Why, my good man,” said Christian, raising his voice, and coming nearer, “I am not God, nor even the Christmas angel that comes in at the window or down the chimney. Get up! I am—”
But he stopped short, for a livid pallor overspread the old man’s face, which was already so wan. He perceived that his appearance had thrown Stenson into mortal terror, and drew back to allow him to recover himself. This the old man did in a measure, but only sufficiently to think of escaping. He dragged himself along for a few instants, and then rising up with difficulty, fled through the sleeping chamber, murmuring, as he went, disconnected words, without any distinguishable meaning. Christian, who supposed that he was suffering from some attack of mental disorder, brought on by old age or excessive religious devotion, refrained from following him, for fear of making him worse. There was a small slip of parchment fastened to the branch which the old man had let fall at his feet, and picking it up, he read the following three verses of the Bible, written upon it in a reasonably firm hand:
“Destruction and death say, We have heard the fame thereof with our ears.”
“Did I not weep for him who was in trouble? Was not my soul grieved for the poor?”