Last Tales by Isak Dinesen

Author:Isak Dinesen [Dinesen, Isak]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Classics
ISBN: 9780307790743
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 1957-01-01T05:00:00+00:00

New Winter’s Tales

COUNTRY TALE

There was a wood path running along the stone fence at the western edge of a wood. Outside the fence the open landscape lay calm and golden, already marked by the hand of autumn. The large fields were empty, the harvest was gathered in and only the rakings were left, set up here and there in low stacks. Some way off, on a field road, a last cartload was rolling toward the barn in a cloud of golden dust. The distant woods to the north and south were brownish-green, gently and gravely gilt or rusted by the sun of long summer days. The woods to the west were deep blue; from time to time a faint blue tinged the fields as well, where a flight of wood-pigeons rose from the stubble. Along the fence the last honeysuckle, upon limp stalks, was giving out its farewell fragrance, and the bramble already had scarlet leaves and black, ripe berries. But the depth of the forest was still green, a summer vault, and where the beams of the afternoon sun fell through the verdure it became luminous and filled with promise, like May foliage. The path wound in and out, and up and down, the forest slopes. It swerved toward the fence, as if it meant to unite the wood world with the open country, then shrank back again as if in fear of giving away a secret.

A young man, bareheaded, in a riding coat, and a young lady in a white summer frock came walking along the path. Her frock, Greek in drapery like that of a dryad, with the belt just below the breasts, trailed lightly on the ground and, as she walked on, rolled a dry beechnut of last year along, as a wavelet plays with a pebble on the beach. She let her dark eyes under long lashes glide lovingly and happily over the forest scenery, like a young housewife going through her house and finding everything in good order.

They walked along slowly and easily; they were at home in the wood and belonged to it. Their clothes and carriage told that they were a young squire and squire’s lady of the fair, rich green isle.

Where the path took off and ran over the fence toward the fields she stood still and gazed out into the distance. To her companion, who stopped with her, it was as if he did not himself see the landscape before them, but only through her knew that it existed, and what it meant. It became infinitely lovely within her eyes and mind, lovelier than itself, a silent poem. She did not turn toward him; she rarely did so, and very rarely on her own offered a caress. Her form and color, the fall of her rich dark hair and the lines of her shoulders, her long hands and slim knees, in themselves were caresses; her entire being and nature was to enchant, and she craved for nothing else in life.

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