A Danish Parsonage Part 11

Helga blushed and said nothing, and Pastor Lindal determined to tell Hardy what Kirstin had imputed to him.

As Garth brought round the horses and a man led out Buffalo, Karl was struck with a great wish to ride the English horse. He asked Hardy hesitatingly. Hardy told him to ask his father, who looked at Hardy.

"The horse is likely to give him a fall," he said, "and he might get an awkward fall; but boys should learn to ride, and I have no objections if you have not."

The Pastor a.s.sented, the stirrups were shortened, and Karl mounted.

"Don't pull at his mouth," said Hardy; "he does not like a stranger interfering with his mouth."

"And might I jump him over a ditch on the way home?" begged Karl.

"You may; but I think you had better leave that alone," said Hardy.

Garth drove, and Hardy chatted with the Pastor, but kept his eye fixed on Karl. Buffalo went along at a smooth trot after the carriage--so far, so well; but when they came to the meadow running down to the Gudenaa, Karl rode into the meadow and galloped at a water ditch in the same manner as he had often seen Hardy do. Buffalo stretched out and took the ditch like a bird, making a longer jump than was at all necessary. There was a loud splash and a scream from Frken Helga, and Buffalo, with an empty saddle, was galloping away.

Hardy took the reins from Garth, as he said coolly, "Pick the lad out of the ditch, and catch the horse. There is nothing to fear, Herr Pastor."

Garth called the horse, which stopped. He then a.s.sisted Karl out of the ditch, who was covered with peaty slime, wiped the mud from his face and mouth, and pointed to the carriage. Garth then crossed the ditch on a plank bridge and caught Buffalo, and rode him over the ditch, coming to the side of the carriage. Karl looked foolish.

"There, is nothing to be ashamed of, Karl," said Hardy. "I had many a fall before I learnt how to stick on. It is what we all have to go through. Come up by the side of me, little man; you would make your father and sister in a mess."

The Pastor and his daughter were, for the moment, much frightened by the incident; but Hardy's manner of treating it as a matter of course rea.s.sured them.

"There was no cause for alarm, Herr Pastor," said Hardy. "Karl can, if he will, a.s.sure you that the mud at the bottom of the ditch was as soft as eider down. Garth, ride on; I will drive up to the parsonage, and thence to the stables."

"Thank you for a pleasant day, Hardy," said the Pastor, as he went into his house.

"Stop, Herr Pastor! here are the pike that were caught in the lake.

Take what you like, and I will send the rest to Widow Rasmussen."

The pike cooked that day for dinner was, Hardy thought, a fish with as strong a flavour of mud as any fish could possibly possess. The horse-radish sauce, and the sage and bread with which it was stuffed, availed nothing, and Hardy formed a resolution with regard to the lake that afterwards had the result of its being stocked with trout instead of pike.

CHAPTER XI.

"_Piscator._--I love such mirth as does not make friends ashamed to look upon one another the next morning."--_The Complete Angler._

When the tobacco parliament began the evening after the excursion to Rosendal, Pastor Lindal said, "I have told Herr Hardy the nature of Kirstin's imputations against him, and what he said to-day to you, Helga, was in ignorance of that. I am quite sure that he would never have referred to Kirstin in the way he did had he known everything.

His only thought was that Kirstin was generally suspicious and that was all. He had no idea that when you criticized his treatment of Rosendal that he was comparing your conduct with what was bad."

Helga looked puzzled; but after a while she rose up from her seat, and extended her hand to Hardy. "I hope you will forgive me, Herr Hardy, if I have not understood you."

"Thank you," said Hardy. "I had hoped that my character was so simple that it left nothing to the imagination or to construction. It appears to me to be a work of time to acquire the approving confidence of any one in Jutland."

"I begin to think you are true," said Helga. "You have said no single word which has not been borne out; but your opinions differ from ours, and that widely."

"There is, of course," said Hardy, "the difference of nationality, but in the wide world what is best is best, and if anything I do or say differs from your national feeling, yet if it be right and best it is best."

"Good, very good," said the Pastor. "We are all in the hands of a Higher Power, and we have to obey it. It is not for us to criticize and doubt, but to obey."

"But it is not a question of religion," said Helga, "if we Danes differ in opinion from the English or if our customs are different."

"Just so," said the Pastor; "but G.o.d is over all. Nation may call to nation and generation to generation; but, as Herr Hardy suggests, nationalities may differ, but what is best in thought and deed will come to the front."

"But why should he despise us?" asked Helga.

"Herr Hardy despises nothing," replied her father. "He sees and appreciates what is good in us, and sympathizes with the stability of the Danish character, but he naturally values the broader thought in everyday life of the English people."

"That is because he is an Englishman," retorted Helga.

"You forget, Helga, that Herr Hardy is present," said her father, "and what you have said would pain him. If he be an Englishman he cannot help it, and if he should be English in thought and character it is not what you should condemn. He is only true to himself. Since he has been with us, what has his conduct been?"

Helga knitted in silence; she felt the justice of her father's reproof and her injustice to Hardy.

Hardy, to change the conversation, said to Karl, "Well, Karl, you have not told us how soft you found the ditch that you went to the bottom of."

"I do not know how I fell off," said Karl. "I was suddenly under water in the ditch."

"You fell off as Buffalo was about to jump. He checked his stride before he jumped, and then you tumbled off," said Hardy.

"What should I have done?" asked Karl.

"Stuck on," replied Hardy. "You have to learn the motion of the horse when jumping, which only practise gives."

"It was like the Damhest," said the Pastor, "which is a legendary horse that comes out of mill-dams, ponds, or lakes, at night, and entices people to ride it, when it jumps into the water. The best story of it is from Thisted, a little to the north-west of this. Three tipsy Bnder (farmers) were going home, when one of them wished for a horse, that they might ride home, when, lo! there appeared a long-backed black horse, on whose back they all clambered, and there appeared room for many more. As the last man got up he exclaimed--

'Herre, Jesu Kors Aldrig saae jeg saadan Hors.'

'By the Lord Jesu's cross, Never saw I such a horse.'

Instantly at that holy name the horse disappeared from under them, and the three Bnder were lying on the ground. The Danish word for horse is 'hest,' but the Jutland people use the word 'hors,' in their dialect."

"There is a similar legend in the Shetland Islands; but, then, it is a little horse that jumps into the sea, with the unfortunate person it has enticed to mount it," said Hardy.

"There is also a similar legend in France," said the Pastor. "The horse is called 'Le Lutin.' We have another legendary horse, that is said to abide in churchyards, and has three legs. The legend has arisen from the practice in old times of burying a living horse at the funeral of a man of distinction. This horse's ghost is called the 'Helhest.' If any one meets it, it is a sign to him of an early death.

It is a tradition of the cathedral at Aarhus, that such a horse is occasionally seen there. A man whose window looked out to the cathedral exclaimed one day to a neighbour, 'What horse is that?'

There is none,' said his neighbour. 'Then it must be the Helhest,'

said the other, who shortly after died. It is said that in the cathedral at Roeskilde, there is a narrow stone on which, in old times, people used to spit, because a Helhest was buried there. The word 'hel' is from 'hael,' a heel, because the horse lacked one hoof or heel. The legend appears to have existed in the Roman times, as they called it Unipes, or the one-footed."

"The p.r.o.nunciation of 'hel' in Danish is as if it were spelt in English as 'hael'" said Hardy. "I certainly never heard that legend before."

"There are other legends of animals," said Pastor Lindal. "There is the Kirkelam, or the church lamb. This arose from the practice, when a church was founded, to bury under the altar a living lamb, to prevent, it was said, the church from sinking. This lamb's ghost was called the Kirkelam, and, if at any time a child was about to die, the church lamb was supposed to appear at the threshold of the door. In Carlslunde church tower there is a bas-relief of a lamb, to show that a living lamb was buried there when the church was built. It is related that a woman was sent for to nurse another woman who was very ill; as she went through the churchyard, she was aware of something like a dog or a cat rubbing itself against her clothes. She stooped down to look at it, in the half light of the evening, when, lo! it was the church lamb. The sick woman died at the very same instant, so runs the legend."

"The legend of the Kirkelam," said Hardy, "is distinctive, insomuch as it appears symbolical, and not based, as most legends are, on the fancies and wild imaginations of the people."