The count laid his hand on his narrow chest.
“I am known to be a just man,” he cried. “I can pass sentence on my servants. Why should I not be able to pass sentence on my wife? The pensioners have no right to judge her. The punishment they have given her, I wipe out. It has never been, do you understand, gentlemen. It has never existed.”
The count screamed out the words in a high falsetto. Beerencreutz cast a swift glance about the assembly. There was not one of those present—Sintram and Daniel Bendix and Dahlberg and all the others who had followed in—who did not stand and smile at the way he outwitted stupid Henrik Dohna.
The young countess did not understand at first. What was it which should not be considered? Her anguish, the pensioner’s hard grip on her tender body, the wild song, the wild words, the wild kisses, did they not exist? Had that evening never been, over which the goddess of the gray twilight had reigned?
“But, Henrik—”
“Silence!” he said. And he drew himself up to chide her. “Woe to you, that you, who are a woman, have wished to set yourself up as a judge of men,” he says. “Woe to you, that you, who are my wife, dare to insult one whose hand I gladly press. What is it to you if the pensioners have put the major’s wife in prison? Were they not right? You can never know how angry a man is to the bottom of his soul when he hears of a woman’s infidelity. Do you also mean to go that evil way, that you take such a woman’s part?”
“But, Henrik—”
She wailed like a child, and stretched out her arms to ward off the angry words. She had never before heard such hard words addressed to her. She was so helpless among these hard men, and now her only defender turned against her. Never again would her heart have power to light up the world.
“But, Henrik, it is you who ought to protect me.”
Gösta Berling was observant now, when it was too late. He did not know what to do. He wished her so well. But he did not dare to thrust himself between man and wife.