She placed them round about the high, narrow house, the upper story of which was the pensioners’ far-famed home,—the great room with the whitewashed walls, the red-painted chests, and the great folding-table, where playing-cards swim in the spilled brandy, where the broad beds are hidden by yellow striped curtains where the pensioners sleep.
And in the stable before full mangers the pensioners’ horses sleep and dream of the journeys of their youth. It is sweet to dream when they know that they never again shall leave the filled cribs, the warm stalls of Ekeby.
In a musty old carriage-house, where all the broken-down coaches and worn-out sledges were stored, was a wonderful collection of old vehicles.
Many are the pensioners who have lived and died at Ekeby. Their names are forgotten on the earth, and they have no longer a place in men’s hearts; but the major’s wife has kept the vehicles in which they came to Ekeby, she has collected them all in the old carriage-house.
And there they stand and sleep, and dust falls thick, thick over them.
But now in this February night the major’s wife has the door opened to the carriage-house, and with lanterns and torches she seeks out the vehicles which belong to Ekeby’s present pensioners,—Beerencreutz’s old gig, and Örneclou’s coach, painted with coat of arms, and the narrow cutter which had brought Cousin Christopher.
She does not care if the vehicles are for summer or winter, she only sees that each one gets his own.
And in the stable they are now awake, all the pensioners’ old horses, who had so lately been dreaming before full mangers. The dream shall be true.
You shall again try the steep hills, and the musty hay in the sheds of wayside inns, and drunken horse-dealers’ sharp whips, and the mad races on ice so slippery that you tremble only to walk on it.
The old beasts mouth and snort when the bit is put into their toothless jaws; the old vehicles creak and crack. Pitiful infirmity, which should have been allowed to sleep in peace till the end of the world, was now dragged out before all eyes; stiff joints, halting forelegs, spavin, and broken-wind are shown up.