which dips down to one side as she gets in.
Then he takes his bicycle out of the grass and starts on his way home. He has not learned her name.
In the evening it is he who has great things to tell in front of the sheepfold. His brothers listen to him, glancing at him furtively, and even Amadeus’ lips smile awkwardly. “They have started the haymaking too late,” says Aegidius, lost in thought while he looks at a green blade of grass which he has brought home. “And the bailiff is not worth anything. It was quite simple, but he could do nothing but swear. One ought not to swear at harvesttime.”
But Aegidius avoids cycling the same road again. He is worried that he mentioned his name, for he does not like to be invited from the ditch side to a cup of coffee. He is fully aware that he has got to learn and to unlearn a few things, but he does not wish to do it just there.
Time passes; the young birds of prey now wail at the edge of the moors, and the cuckoo no longer calls so many times that one could live to be a hundred years old.
Time passes over the moors and the sheepfold and over the three brothers, one of whom wishes to forget the anguished voices, and the other the scent of the meadows which are being mown, and the third the fear of men and of their smiles. Time takes much away: the yellow orchid in the damp wood and the wildflower for which Amadeus stoops and which he holds long in his hand, while his eyes gaze deep into the little white bells. But time does not take away those memories which the brothers wish to forget. It has enclosed and carefully preserved them and directly a thought touches them they open their eyes wide and stare at their victim. They are there and cannot be avoided.
Nothing happens up here until midsummer. The forester has not come back yet, and his wife with the impassive face looks after the brothers as if they were two princes whom the marshes held in their spell. The girl sits for many hours at the edge of the rocks gazing down upon the road like Erasmus. Her face is gloomy, she looks much older than she is, and when she is alone, her face becomes careworn and hopeless. She, too, is waiting, evidently not for her father, but for the secret armies which will arise somewhere, perhaps in the Alps, and march up here to bury under their tanks the so-called victors and their laughter and their noise.
Jakob comes, and Kelley, but they go again, and it seems as if the summit of the mountain were above the world of humans; no trace is left on it by strange feet.
Only at midsummer something happens. A visitor comes to Amadeus in the evening. He hears an unknown step at the door, a slow, hesitant step, and like a wolf from his lair he is on the threshold. It is only a strange woman, big and heavy, with a straw hat hanging on her arm and a stick in her hand. She looks like one of the giants’ daughters whose fathers once played here with the rocks, when fire still broke through the earth. Amadeus stares at her in silence.
It is good that she does not smile. She only scrutinizes him, knitting her brows a little as if she were thinking of engaging him for some work, and then she asks in her gentle, low voice whether Baron von Liljecrona lives here. She would like to talk to him about something, and as there is no post, no telephone yet, she has come herself.
From what Aegidius had told him, he knows who she is, and with rather a forced politeness offers to show her the way to the forester’s house.
She thanks him, but asks to be allowed to rest a little here. The way up has been rather tiring for her. She sits down on the trunk of the alder tree, and as Amadeus cannot prevent it, he remains standing at the door of the shepherd’s hut, leaning his back against the doorpost with his arms folded over his breast. Seven locks seem to close his face, and it does not make it any better that he notices that the woman considers him, without curiosity, only with a quiet, friendly attention.
“I am sorry,” she says at length, as she had said once before. He, too, is struck by her soft voice, but he only shrugs his shoulders and goes on looking over the moorland on which the shadows grow deeper and deeper.
“I have come,” she says after a while, “to ask your brother to help me. The bailiff has made off with a lot of money, and within a week the rye must be mown. I cannot manage that alone anymore.”
“Who should be able to do it, if not you?” thinks Amadeus.
“Do you think that he would be willing to come?” she asks, and her voice sounds almost shy.
Amadeus shrugs his shoulders once more. “I don’t know,” he replies, “but I think he would be willing to go to any harvest, even if it were on the moon.”
“Thank you,” says the woman, smiling. But after that her face becomes serious again, and like Amadeus she gazes over the moors. “If I could help you at any time,” she says after a while, “I would like to do so. The winters are severe up here and not good for the heart. There will always be room in my house for you.”
“Thank you,” replies Amadeus, “but I have room enough here.”
“Perhaps it is not quite right,” says the woman modestly, “to blame everybody. Everybody is a poetical conception, but not a conception of daily life. Nor is it a kind of conception . . .”
“Neither poetry nor life have obliged me to be kind,” replied Amadeus.
“We can only oblige ourselves to be kind,” says the woman gently. “Anyone who looks rather out of the ordinary, as I do, knows something about that.”
The first shadows of night fall over the earth. Above the western part of the moors the sky is burnished in the setting sun. It looks as if there were a conflagration beyond the earth.
“I have no children,” said the woman gently, “and sometimes I feel happy about it.”
When she is about to get up, Erasmus and Aegidius come out of the wood to the sheepfold.
Erasmus is so bewildered that the woman cannot help smiling, and before she says what she wants she gazes for a little while at the three brothers, at one face after another. They are standing side by side against the wall of the sheepfold; the light of the setting sun reflected in their eyes shows up the almost touching likeness of their features and impresses the stamp of deep, almost painful loneliness upon the three figures.
With some anxiety the woman feels that perhaps none of the three might be able to face life alone. That if she were to take one of them into her house, she would have to take all three. But the next minute she begins to doubt the idea, when her eyes return to Amadeus. He has stood the test alone, and more than blindly has given her to understand that he does not wish to grasp her hand. She sighs a little and then she says what she has come for.
Aegidius does not hesitate for a moment. He even thanks her for having thought of him.
“Of whom else should I have thought?” she asks with her friendly smile. He promises to come quite early the next morning, and now he will accompany her down to where her trap is waiting. It is not too safe for a woman to be alone on the road at this time of the day.
She shakes hands with the two others, and Erasmus kisses her hand according to the old custom. She blushes a little, but she looks at Amadeus. “The victors cannot always make the peace,” she says as she takes leave.
He only bows in silence.
They remain sitting at the door of the sheepfold and wait for Aegidius.
“I feel as if he is going to Queen Semiramis,” says Erasmus after a time, and follows with his eyes the smoke from his cigarette.
“He will go into her field,” replies Amadeus, “not into her hanging gardens.”
“A mighty woman,” says Erasmus, lost in thought.
When Aegidius comes back and sits down between them, they can no longer distinguish each other’s faces. The stars sparkle in all their splendor, and the owls hoot above the moor.
“I was so happy,” says Aegidius at last, “but now I feel how hard it is to leave you. It will only last over the harvest.”
“It will last much longer,” replies Amadeus without