Think not I reproach you. Rather I honour you for it, as never before have I honoured woman. But for this I reproach my fate—and the thought is a gnawing pain to me—that you and I were not sooner brought face to face.——Elina Gyldenlöve! Your mother has told me of you. While far from Östråt life ran its restless course, you went your lonely way in silence, living in your dreams and histories. Therefore you will understand what I have to tell you.—Know, then, that once I too lived even such a life as yours. Methought that when I stepped forth into the great world, a noble and stately woman would come to meet me, and would beckon to me and point out the path towards a glorious goal.—I was deceived, Elina Gyldenlöve! Women came to meet me; but she was not among them. Ere yet I had come to full manhood, I had learnt to despise them all.
Was it my fault? Why were not the others even as you?—I know the fate of your fatherland lies heavy on your soul; and you know the part I have in these affairs——. ’Tis said of me that I am false as the sea-foam. Mayhap I am; but if I be, it is women who have made me so. Had I sooner found what I sought,—had I met a woman proud and noble and high-souled even as you, then had my path been different indeed. At this moment, maybe, I had been standing at your side as the champion of all that suffer wrong in Norway’s land. For this I believe: a woman is the mightiest power in the world, and in her hand it lies to guide a man whither God Almighty would have him go.
Elina.
[To herself.] Can it be as he says? Nay, nay; there is falsehood in his eyes and deceit on his lips. And yet—no song is sweeter than his words.
Nils Lykke.
[Coming closer, speaks low and more intimately.] As you have dwelt here at Östråt, alone with your changeful thoughts, how often have you felt your bosom stifling; how often have the roof and walls seemed to shrink together till they crushed your very soul. Then have your longings taken wing with you; then have you yearned to fly far from here, you knew not whither.—How often have you not wandered alone by the fiord; far out a ship has sailed by in fair array, with knights and ladies on her deck, with song and music of stringed instruments;—a faint, far-off rumour of great events has reached your ears;—and you have felt a longing in your breast, an unconquerable craving to know all that lies beyond the sea. But you have not understood what ailed you. At times you have thought it was the fate of your fatherland that filled you with all these restless broodings. You deceived yourself;—a maiden so young as you has other food for musing.——Elina Gyldenlöve! Have you never had visions of an unknown power—a strong mysterious might, that binds together the destinies of mortals? When you dreamed of the many-coloured life far out in the wide world—when you dreamed of knightly jousts and joyous festivals—saw you never in your dreams a knight, who stood in the midst of the gayest rout, with a smile on his lips and with bitterness in his heart,—a knight that had once dreamed a dream as fair as yours, of a woman noble and stately, for whom he went ever a-seeking, and ever in vain?
Elina.
Who are you, that have power to clothe my most secret thoughts in words? How can you tell me what I have borne in my inmost soul—yet knew it not myself? How know you——?
Nils Lykke.
All that I have told you, I have read in your eyes.