The Angelic Avengers by Isak Dinesen

Author:Isak Dinesen
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780141961477
Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
Published: 2010-01-29T00:00:00+00:00

13. The Defense

IN the silence that followed, the people in the room and the girls listening by the door, all heard the measured, creaking tick of the old clock on the wall, imperturbably dividing up time in minutes and seconds. There was no other sound or movement. Monsieur Belabres’ handsome face changed its expression a couple of times. At last he spoke, stressing each word, as if he sat in a judgment seat.

“It is you, Mr. Pennhallow,” he said, “who are to speak. I have asked for your evidence concerning three points in what you yourself call my tale of an unknown criminal.”

“If that is so,” said Mr. Pennhallow, “I beg you to name these three points to me once more.”

“As you wish it,” the judge said. “Then first of all answer my first question: Where are the young women who were living in your house?”

“Indeed, that was the first question,” said Mr. Pennhallow, and for a while remained sunk in his own thoughts.

“The people of the neighborhood,” said Mr. Pennhallow, “are mistaken when they believe that a series of young women have been staying at Sainte-Barbe. We have sheltered three young English maidens in our home. To be sure, they have at times traveled to England and have come back here again. To be sure, again, one of them, in the unreasonableness of youth, had had her hair dyed, so that only here, where we could not allow such folly, it regained its natural color. These circumstances may have misled the people of Peyriac. But for these three of whom I speak we have tried to create a home at Sainte-Barbe.

“The first of them,” he said, “was my wife’s niece. She was engaged to be married in England, but the family of her future husband opposed the marriage. To comfort her in her grief, we took her into our house, and it did indeed happen that the proud family gave up its prejudice. She is now married.

“But of the two others,” he went on after a long silence, “I can only speak with bitter distress. The one was the daughter of an actor and juggler, whom I had tried to drag from a degraded and poverty-stricken home, but who, by her own choice, turned back to it, and to the stage. The last of the three,” he said, suddenly looking the judge in the face with his clear and quiet eyes, “fled from our roof in the night, with the help of a poor, imbecile boy, who is in our service. For a time we tried hard to find her, but it was all in vain. We never saw her again.

“I have thought this matter over many times,” he said, and looked down, “I have reflected that I may have known too little about the nature and inclinations of young women. Life at Sainte-Barbe is lonely and monotonous. What I have been able to offer them has not made up for the allurements of the great world. It is

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