Uncles Oscar From Enköping

BY ALTHAEA URN

UNCLE OSCAR from Enköping was embalmed for one hundred and ninety-nine years. Mama said he could have been embalmed for only thirtyfive, which was more usual and much cheaper, but he was rich and esteemed, our father’s older brother, and that somehow gave him the privilege of sustained preservation into the future years.

When he was alive, we children, my brother and my younger sister, regarded him with a mixture of reverence and excited interest, like a huge burlap bag that held explosive fireworks but also enchanted secrets — flaxen-haired dolls, pinwheels, shotguns, velour animals sitting down and velour animals standing up, and marzipan. He was a constant source of speculation and delight to us on his weekly visits to our house in Stockholm.

He was a bachelor, and at our father’s death he had become our legal guardian, an inheritance bestowed upon him by close ties of brotherly affection. We were his wards, a hazard he never questioned but met with considerable buoyancy.

My brother, whom my mother had nicknamed Mjuk, because his skin had always seemed to her as smooth and soft as a silkworm, was at that time seven, my little sister three, and I a year younger than my brother.

“Your Uncle Oscar from Enköping is coming today,” my mother would say. “You may put your party dresses on. And Mjuk, you may push my chair in at luncheon.” Then she would laugh at our expectant faces and kiss us a little too fervently, and we would be hurried up to the nursery by Natta, our stalwart ruddy nurse, for an additional bath in the round zinc tub.

His voice would come in a burst of sparkling banter: “Who am I? Who am I? Gustavus Erikson at the battle of Brännkyrka? Great Claus? Or Little Claus driving his sea cattle before him? Svenson Svinson, the Emperor Svada’s nightingale?” And his voice would pitch into a flutelike whistle, trilling and lifting to the domed ceiling of the hall.

We were static with ecstasy. Usually the names of the characters changed with each visit, taking on a curiously complex challenge, for many of the names were invented on the spur of the moment with colorful zest, thrown in with a sly imaginative purpose, to leave an indelible impression upon us.

“Who — who am I?” he would roar, even before we could see him. “A nightingale? A general? A plowman driving his milk cattle before him?”

And suddenly we would find our tongues, and cry out wildly, joyfully: “No, no — none of these, none of these, but Uncle Oscar from Enköping!”

Uncle Oscar’s visits were varied and always stimulating. He believed in variety. Sometimes in the winter his towering sable hat, almost as high as an English busby, would inch across the hall floor toward us, guided by his hand, his extended arm the only visible part of him, the rest of him crouched behind the half-opened vestibule doors. “Good day, good day. A good day for snow rabbits and surprises, and no day to have your tonsils out! The old women from the paper mills are sitting in black ink—”

And we would laugh uproariously, though we never knew exactly what it meant, or he meant. But we thought it hilariously funny, and we knew that the bushy fur object jerkily creeping across the carpet would be followed by a rich hive of flowing honeyed gifts.

It was always Mjuk whom he addressed first, his wide merry gray eyes catching him up and holding him fast with a steady dove-gray beam, like a hand-played searchlight concentrated on a tossing ship at sea within the range of immediate rescue.

“Ho-hoo, Mjuk! Oh-hoo!" he would call in his low rushing voice, looking down at the slender figure of Mjuk and his small chiseled features, his thoughts in pursuit of some Viking image all his own. “Two inches taller than last week. Soon you’ll be ready for Uppsala, and then, the Baltic seas! And a strong pair of oak oars, eh?”

“Ye ye — yes, sir,” Mjuk would stammer, picturing the churning Baltic seas and his possible fate in their formidable grasp. “Yes, sir,” Mjuk would whisper back quietly.

“And now,”Uncle Oscar would announce as we crowded around him, “what a good bouncing day it is! And where is your lovely Mama?”

“In the drawing room, in the drawing room!” we would cry, and surge through the hall in triumphant unison.

Mama would be sitting before the burning logs waiting for Uncle Oscar. But if it were early spring, she would often be standing at the long windows looking out on the street, half shrouded in the heavy white lace curtains — the curtains Cousin Ingeborg had designed the summer she had spent at Eskilsäter — sometimes a single flower in her hand.

“Anna, Anna,” Uncle Oscar would call across to her. “You have rosy children, Anna. Strong, and with bright eyes. And Mjuk, just look at Mjuk, what a man he’s going to make! What a protector!” And we would all stare at Mjuk.

“Ah, yes” — Mama would smile — “my little Mjuk.” And her glance would fall on Mjuk’s frail shoulders and delicate hands, and her eyes would meet Uncle Oscar’s for a fleeting second. “A protector,” she would murmur, “a real protector.”

On days of Uncle Oscar’s visits, Mjuk would often slip away after luncheon to his room, to pore over a book Mama had given him the year our father had died and we had become Uncle Oscar’s legacy, hoping to identify some of the characters Uncle Oscar had mentioned at his lusty greeting. The title page of the book read, “Pinpoint. A Book of Personages, 1630-1910. Sveaborg & Luglund, 1912. Stockholm. Sweden.” If he did pinpoint one, he would come to find me and solemnly whisper, “Yes, not a trick!” And we would giggle together delightedly.

UNCLE OSCAR seldom called me by my name, Ava, but usually älskling-på-vågen. He always looked at Mama when he did, not at me. Cousin Ingeborg said it was because I looked so much like her, the tilt of my chin, the color of my eyes. She insisted that though his words were addressed to me, he really spoke to her. That sort of secret communication existed between them; I was a sounding board in which they both found emotional equanimity.

“Älskling-på-vågen, what sort of week did you have last week? Many visitors to the house?” Uncle Oscar would ask me. Not questions one asks a child.

Mama would flush vividly and bend above the flowers on the table and pretend to rearrange them, or pick up some sheets of music on the piano and scrutinize the score avidly, trying to ignore the vibrancy of his voice and the tender endearment surreptitiously channeled to her.

Älskling-på-vågen. It meant “darling of the waves.” Perhaps it evoked Botticelli’s Venus standing in her shell rising from the sea. Mama’s features were not unlike those of Simonetta Vespucci’s. A subtle tribute to Mama, though I was not aware of its full significance at that time, only the charming oddity of the words — a special caress, while he was speaking to me.

All Stockholm — that is to say, the circle Mama moved in — pretended not to know that Uncle Oscar was in love with Mama. Our first knowledge of it came through Cousin Ingeborg’s loquacious lips, and later through the little dribblings of the servants speculating on why Mama would not marry Uncle Oscar now that the period of mourning was over and so many years had passed.

Cousin Ingeborg was always present in the drawing room on Uncle Oscar’s visits. She sat in the southeast corner of the room in a straightbacked chair below a white bisque figure of King Gustaf V with a tennis racket. She always chose the darkest corner of the room to execute her intricate and fanciful needlework. It seemed to give her a fiercer sense of endeavor to pursue her talents in the shadows. Her designs were beautiful and imaginative, often ingenious, and their accomplishment unparalleled.

Mama’s handkerchiefs were all edged with Cousin Ingeborg’s Alençon efforts. Mama used to say Cousin Ingeborg’s whimsical concentration with lace was the only thing which set her spirit free, that her very soul was made of lace. And we children nursed the image of her spirit flitting from room to room after midnight, an elusive lacy substance escaping from the mundane pressures of daylight.

“We might go with her some night,” Mjuk had suggested. “After everyone’s asleep, to see what it’s like holding onto her lace hands.” And his pale lips had reddened with excitement.

Lolly had protested. “Oh, no, I’d be afraid. We could see right through her! It would be too scary in the dark.”

It was some time after that before Lolly would remain in a room alone with Cousin Ingeborg.

“How are you, Ingeborg?” Uncle Oscar would rap out in his merriest and most seductive voice when he greeted Cousin Ingeborg in her corner, “How is la fabricante de dentelle? How go the lace and the lacemaker?”

She would look down shyly and peer meditatively at her fingers. “I try to keep abreast, Oscar, my head in the world —”

“Such passionate application must reap overwhelming rewards.” He would finger the garland of his gold watch chain, dipping from vest pocket to vest pocket, and stare at her speculatively.

“Ah,” she would sigh, “I try to keep my head out of water. Not easy these days. I see, Oscar, you’re in the best of health, and as handsome as ever.”

Uncle Oscar would acknowledge her first observation and protest the second briskly.

“And how is Elsa Örne these days?" she would ask innocently, with a tight compressed smile, and her thin arms would gather up her laces quickly. “I suppose in the best of health too,”she would add, and vanish from the room.

Mama would look suddenly very white, and Uncle Oscar very red.

“Anna,” he would plead as he gazed at her. “These spinsters, there’s no way to account for their imagination.”

One day, when Cousin Ingeborg had hurriedly scuttled out of the room after some cryptic reference to Elsa Örne, Uncle Oscar startled us all by saying complacently: “How I should like to sit her in a pan of hot mustard!”

Mama looked at him in utter dismay, and all our mouths dropped open. Then she burst into a scale of laughter. “What a thing to say about poor Cousin Ingeborg!”

We were too much amazed to make a sound, and looked from one to the other, and back again from Uncle Oscar to Mama. Then Lolly began to giggle.

“I won’t laugh at her,” Mjuk said, frowning stubbornly, “just because her soul’s made of lace.”

Mama was still laughing as she looked at Mjuk. “I was laughing at your uncle, my Mjuk, not at Cousin Ingeborg.”

“These disintegrating apple-cheeked spinsters, they’re the worst kind,” exploded Uncle Oscar, “with their monstrous thoughts!”

“Why, Oscar, she adores you, simply adores you!” cried Mama. “But then, who does not?”

“Can’t a man have a housekeeper these days? Who is to look after his house? If you’re referring to Elsa Örne, Anna, I must beg you, she means nothing, absolutely nothing,” stammered Uncle Oscar.

Mama walked over to him and handed him the single rose she held in her hand, laughing up at him.

AT THE first snowfall of the year Uncle Oscar would drive his sparkling pair of black Arabian mares from Enköping into Stockholm. They were perfectly matched and lifted their slender well-bred legs with fine elegant precision. A dazzling design of small squares, comparable to a checkerboard, was spread across their sleek rumps — the ultimate fastidious touch in Swedish grooming. A bear rug with silver claws was thrown carelessly over Uncle Oscar’s knees as he sat behind his prancing mares.

He came to take Mama driving in his swift narrow sled at the first fall of snow. It was a yearly ritual with him which he looked forward to with a sort of aloof pride. And Mama with her enveloping furs and sparkling face, which she delightedly held up to the biting stillness and soft falling flakes, seemed as much of a child as any of us in her pleasure.

It was amazingly daring of Uncle Oscar to drive a pair of mares. It caused a lift of the eyebrow or a surreptitious smile, for men in Sweden at that time did not drive or ride mares. Men twirled and snapped their long graceful whips above geldings and occasionally stallions, but never mares. This seemed to establish their masculinity more forcibly.

Mama, a feminist at heart, thought it extremely meritorious of Uncle Oscar to defy public opinion and lift the status of a mare to the level of a gelding, and she admired his defiance and the tenderness he exhibited toward his pair, the lofty height to which he had publicly elevated the feminine gender and resisted current sentiment.

Perhaps he was not consciously troubled by any lack of his own virility and could therefore ignore it, for a more masculine specimen could not be found in all of Scandinavia than Uncle Oscar from Enköping.

Often during the winter months we would rapturously tumble in the sled, babbling our excitement, and snuggle as close to Uncle Oscar as possible, tuck the bear rug about us up to our chins, the silver claws catching the golden light of the bright winter sun. turning them, too, into a sort of crystallized gold. Uncle Oscar would snap his whip and give a low cry to his impatient mares. “Now, darlings!" he would urge, and off we would go through the snowbound streets, past the small icy inlets and over the bridges, to the open country and toward Enköping.

The bear rug was our special monopoly. We regarded it with grave awe and covetous envy. It was a skin of thick long glistening hairs that swirled in ripples of silky massive waves, and was of a deep red-brown in color. It had obviously been a splendid and tremendous animal. But Lolly was always frightened of the silver claws and never quite trusted them. She was always the first to spring from the sleigh and from under the happy warmth of the bear rug when we drew up at the Yellow House at Enköping, or at our own door in Stockholm after a brisk drive.

USUALLY the Christmas holidays found us all, including Cousin Ingeborg and three of our servants, well established in Uncle Oscar’s Yellow House at Enköping for two weeks. It was actually an ancient fortress of the fifteenth century which had from time to time been renovated during certain periods by those in residence over the last two centuries. Fashion triumphed during these occasions with lavish incongruity, from the elimination of rush-strewn floors to porcelain bathing tubs, Victorian plush and tassels to the brightly patterned chintz of our time.

It was a concise castle which boasted ancient parapets and heavy buttresses and stout walls. It had been named the Yellow House centuries ago by our modest ancestors, who were modest men. At sunset, as they rode home from the Protestant wars, the yellow glow of the sun had transformed its old gray walls into a soft golden edifice of glimmering splendor that could be seen for miles as it stood on its little rise above the crowns of the trees to the east of the town.

On our arrival we would race through the drafty gallery in delirious freedom, indifferent to the somber or gallant portraits which looked down on us, and accompanied by seven yelping bounding dogs of various breeds, hurling themselves at us, lavishly licking our shoes, our fingertips, our faces, if they could reach them. These were all Uncle Oscar’s house pets and were permitted the run of the castle. We favored a winsome elkhound and a rangy Dalmatian whose deportment was faultless between the wheels of Uncle Oscar’s gig in summer, and who now would leap on before us, then turn back to run beside us as if he had not outdistanced us but merely had sped on to inspect the end of the gallery for lurking cats or some other formidable menace. These dogs, all amusing in their own way. and all favorites with Uncle Oscar, were delighted by our presence and accepted us with obvious relish. All but Fjäril Fet, a small tan terrier whom Uncle Oscar had found half starved in the Österlanggatan district of Stockholm and who was now grossly overweight. Fat Butterfly always gave away our hiding places by tranquilly sitting before the door we had disappeared through and whining, refusing to follow, or before the closet we had all piled into with the other dogs, who seemed to sense the urgency for silence in escaping Natta, our nurse, and were as quiet as needles. Fjäril Fet was a distressing element in our games, but we endured her in compliment to Uncle Oscar. She found solace in Lolly and would waddle along grudgingly at her heels, as she always wanted to be in things. They were both short-legged and plump, and became friends if for no other reason than that. They could never quite keep up with our romps.

Those were wondrous Christmases. The great halls were hung with huge sprays of balsam and giant pine cones embellished with white winterberries and Apollo wreaths. All over the house it smelled of freshly cut spruce. Flares burned at night, and the daylight took care of itself out beyond the walls, perpetually masquerading as twilight through the winter months under the hidden sun. The snow-crested treetops on their stiff brown stilts, like exclamation marks across a blank sheet of white paper, clustering or separated, formed a gregarious pleading, and the mute oblong patches of the gardens in their frozen ecstacy were all part of the glittering snowscape we looked out on from the narrow windows of the turrets or the broader casements.

There were songs and gifts and dancing, and children and dogs — children from the farms, the tenant houses — and great fires burning. Vows uttered in laughter, and laughter held in custody. Hands clasped and unclasped, and passion meeting passion. We were kin to all: the stillness of the snow, the crackling of the birch logs, the cheer of wine and feasting — lutfisk and raisin glögg with walnuts, spettekaka and pastry swans. And Uncle Oscar’s lusty voice chanting, “Salunda” — “thus, in this way" — as he lifted his glass to Mama.

Elsa Örne, Uncle Oscar’s housekeeper, was never there during our stay at Christmas. She had already left for Ostfora to be with her old parents and her many brothers and sisters, who lived on a farm on the outskirts of their village.

The doors of her sitting room and bedroom at the Yellow House were locked, and no mention of her name was ever heard. Only Cousin Ingeborg spoke of her, and not within Mama’s presence, to say she knew because she had tried them all.

Elsa Örne was a plump brunette with dark faded hair which she piled high on her head and rounded excessive hips flaring from her savagely corseted waist, looking as if she were cut in two parts by a compressed O. Her breasts were immense and rose and fell with each step, throwing them into alarming prominence under her white pleated shirtwaist as she moved. Diamond dots glittered at her earlobes, a point Uncle Oscar had conceded, or perhaps overlooked.

A few days before we were to leave, she would sometimes appear, and a curious atmosphere would creep through the Yellow House. She would present herself to Mama, bending low from her knee in a mocking sweep, as if she were at the ancient court of Gustavus Adolphus, her gray flannel skirt forming a semicircle about her on the floor. “Is there anything, Madonnabild, you would care to have me do for you? Just say. Some little service?" And her curiously petulant mouth would smile invitingly as her sullen eyes looked down humbly at her circling skirt.

Mama would be somewhat baffled by this odd encounter and would try to skim over it lightly, acknowledging her appreciation prettily, while she closed her door gently but firmly, leaving Elsa Örne on the other side of it. And we would leave a day earlier than had been planned, much to the insistent and earnest protests of Uncle Oscar.

“All that gray flannel and those stones in her ears, like a Turko-Tatar!” Cousin Ingeborg would rasp scornfully, until Mama silenced her with a severe glance. “But, Anna, surely Oscar must realize when we are in residence at the Yellow House, it can’t also contain Elsa Örne.”

“And why not? A man must have a housekeeper if he has no wife. We are Oscar’s guests,”Mama would remind her a little too persuasively as she brushed vigorously at her long blond hair.

“But someday Mjuk will live here,” Cousin Ingeborg would insist.

“Ah,” Mama would sigh, “yes, little Mjuk.” And Mama’s mouth would tremble. “But who wants to think of that?”

And she would rapidly ring for our servants to pack.

THE summers at the Yellow House were quite different from the winters, more extended, less hearty and communal, less impassioned and intimate, more compelling and capricious.

The Yellow House, idyllic in its sultry pastoral beauty in summer, offered a greater variety of interests to absorb us: the stables, the barns, the horses, the sheep in the lowland pastures, the herd of red deer in the pines. The miniature lake to the east, which Uncle Oscar called Little Hjälmaren to amuse us and where we went gliding on its cobalt surface in a swan-carved paddleboat with wooden pedals — the foot contrivance somewhat like an old-fashioned sewing machine, which Mjuk and I took turns pedaling — threw us into blissful anticipation. To the west the river Salunda, named after an old Christmas song, abounded in fish and leaping frogs and wound its erratic way through the bright fields.

In Stockholm, spring slips into summer almost unnoticed. Suddenly the trees have spread their shade without heralding of robin or warning from bursting bud, and we are well into June with violets only a memory. Foliage and blooms are settled, and the miracle of Midnatts-solen is near. Of a morning we would open our eyes to find the waterways crowded with small craft of every description, where only yesterday, it seemed, diminutive steamers with passengers darted among the little islands held in the haze of neutral shadows, now dazzling in their sudden green. Summer had come overnight!

On the fifteenth of June we usually left for Enköping and the Yellow House to spend the lovely festival of the Midnight Sun with Uncle Oscar. Our spirits were high, and we were filled with childish exuberance. The packing had been going on for weeks, for the Stockholm house was to be closed for the summer months until the fall. After our visit with Uncle Oscar, we were all going directly to Mama’s villa at Saltsjöbaden, where we were to spend July and August, and had to attend a dancing class and have English lessons.

The thought of the life and freedom at Enköping was exhilarating, and we spoke of nothing else for days before we left.

The trunks were brought from the storerooms, long straw carryalls for frilled skirts and elaborate bodices and ruffled petticoats, which Mama adored. Heavy hampers, too, were in the upper hall and rooms, all our summer clothes pressed between scented muslin, and square slipper boxes with metal handles. Then there were the pencil boxes to be tucked in corners, and slates and colored chalk, a few copybooks and bonbons, Lolly’s battered doll, and Mjuk’s history book and painted kite, and my jackstones and red ball, the umbrellas and parasols, the knee throws, the footrests, and the cushions. And a tin box of Turkish delights for Uncle Oscar. And a tin can of special tobacco, also for Uncle Oscar, and a gold scarf pin of a setter’s head. Cousin Ingeborg’s lace patterns and twelve rolls of white thread and five pairs of scissors, all waiting to be shipped on before us, and Mama’s harp.

FROM Stockholm to Enköping the little rivers and lakes were laden with boats. People rowing, fishing, sailing slowly under their little sails in the faint breezes. Motorboats clipped by, dancing through the open blue spaces of water, trailing their fleecy streamers of white foam. And the sun was high in the sky as we neared Enköping, though it was well past twilight. Wherever one looked Sweden was joyous, meeting the sunlit nights with a special frivolity and laughter, living under the magic intoxication of the Midnattssolen, as if the illusion of forever were to continue forever and the myth of darkness were never to return.

When we drove up to the Yellow House, Uncle Oscar was on the stone steps to greet us, with two porters and the housemaids standing in a row behind him. His welcome, as usual, was warm and affectionate, mixing livelily with our kisses and chatter and excitement. His strong arms were thrown about each of us in turn, answering our fountain of questions with his bubbling humor and patience.

“Did the tan terrier have any new puppies?”

“Was the axle fixed on the pony cart?”

“How many China geese survived the winter?”

“Did Enoch, the stable boy, get the wooden whistle we sent him?”

“Was the platform laid on the grass under the trees for the Midsummer’s Eve dance?”

“Not so fast, not so fast.” Uncle Oscar laughed. “Oh-hoo, Biger Jarl,” he cried, catching Mjuk up and swinging him around. “Did you bring your swords and spears and shields?”

“I brought my paper kite!” squealed Mjuk.

“Ah, that will make a good shield! And fly your colors high in the air. Splendid, splendid. Paper is the noblest commodity of all. Good for you, Biger Jarl.” For the next two days we all called Mjuk “Biger Jarl.”

Then he looked down at Mama, standing a few steps below him. “Anna,” he said, suddenly grave, “you look like Midsummer’s Eve itself. Continuous sun — golden !”

In a room upstairs someone was playing a violin. The plaintive notes of “Solveig’s Song” from Peer Gynt drifted down from above. No one seemed to hear it except Cousin Ingeborg. Her eyes met mine in a sagacious squint, and I looked away from her, not quite knowing why, feeling perturbed. No one else noticed the wistful melody above the chatter.

Later, just before dinner, when we had all been well ensconced in our rooms, Cousin Ingeborg asked me to find her purse in the living room downstairs, where she thought she might have left it on her arrival.

I was about to enter the room when I heard Uncle Oscar speaking. His voice was so solemn that I hesitated on tiptoe in the wide hall.

“Why don’t you stop all this, Anna? Why won’t you marry me?” Uncle Oscar was saying.

“There’s your dead brother — and Elsa Örne,” Mama said softly.

“Elsa Örne!” exclaimed Uncle Oscar impatiently. “Elsa Örne, what a reason!”

“There’s Magnus.”

“But he would want it. Haven’t I done everything I could for his children?”

“Everything,” Mama replied.

“They’re like my own. I love you, Anna.”

“Married to two brothers. How could I?”

“He’s dead, Anna, and we’re living. He would want it, believe me, Anna.”

“Like pagans — married to brothers,” Mama sobbed.

“It’s not Magnus that holds you back. What is it? I know you love me.”

“Can’t you see? Don’t you know?” Mama whispered tearfully.

“I can’t see you cry like this, that I know. I want to take you in my arms and —”

“Not now, with that woman in this house.”

“So it is Elsa örne! Am I to live like a hermit, a monk, because you won’t have me? Anna, be reasonable, be fair.”

The next morning I was on the west terrace overlooking the river waiting for Mjuk when Cousin Ingeborg found me. She carried two fine steel knitting needles in her hands and a ball of coarse thread. A few inches of lace edging hung from the needles.

“Why, Ava, I thought you had gone fishing with Mjuk and your Uncle Oscar,” she said, sitting in a chair near the terrace wall.

“No, I didn’t feel like it, Cousin Ingeborg. I went driving in the pony cart with Lolly. I looked all over for your purse last evening, but I couldn’t find it,” I lied.

“Oh, child, thank you. It was under the pillows on the chaise longue in my room. Thank you, dear. Didn’t they take a lunch hamper down to the river?” she asked.

“I don’t know. I was with Lolly.”

“I think your mother went along too, didn’t she?”

“I — I don’t know,” I hesitated. though I knew she had.

Slowly the notes of “Solveig’s Song" floated down to the terrace, the violin even more plaintive this time, and lingering.

I stared at Cousin Ingeborg. “Do you hear it?” I asked boldly.

“Hear what, child?”

“Someone’s playing a violin.”

“No,” said Cousin Ingeborg. cocking her head to the side and listening. “I don’t hear a violin.”

“I do,” I said bluntly. “Peer Gynt. Like yesterday.”

“I don’t hear it,”she said crisply.

“Is Uncle Oscar a hermit?”

“A hermit? Your Uncle Oscar? Of course not. Don’t ask such foolish things,” she admonished. “Your Uncle Oscar doesn’t live alone. He always has dozens of people around him. A hermit lives in a cave.”

“Oh.”

“All alone in a cave. A hermit is a person who doesn’t like people. Sometimes they live alone to be with God.”

“Elsa Örne is locked in her room,” I said. “I saw her in the window looking down at Mama when we were in the garden yesterday.”

“Hush,” murmured Cousin Ingeborg.

“But Mjuk saw her too.”

Cousin Ingeborg made a grimace. “And Lolly?”

“She wasn’t there.”

“Say nothing of this to your mother.”Cousin Ingeborg looked about her cautiously, to see if anyone might have overheard.

“Why is Elsa Örne not supposed to be here when we come?” I asked.

“She goes on vacations.”

“She’s not on one now. She’s locked in her room. Has she the measles?”

“I believe she has,” coughed Cousin Ingeborg, clicking her small pointed needles together fiercely, lengthening her white edging by an inch.

The melody of the evening before started again, with variations and whimsy. It clung to the morning air, lifting and sprinkling like golden pollen.

“Do you hear it?” I whispered. “The violin?”

Cousin Ingeborg lifted her head and dropped her hands in her lap. “A violin? No, I hear nothing.”

“I think I’ll go and see the pony in the stables,” I said.

“Yes, do,” said Cousin Ingeborg.

THE following morning we overslept, as we had been permitted to remain up the night before way past our bedtime while the sun was still high overhead. It was part of the joys of Midnatts-solen.

In the afternoon Lolly and I wandered indolently down beyond the English gardens to inspect the Midsummer’s Eve platform in the birch grove. Mjuk was on the miniature lake in the swan boat with his kite and Uncle Oscar, coaxing it into higher winds, unhampered by shrubbery or trees.

The boards in the birch grove had been sanded and polished to the color of amber corn and looked as inviting as honey and as slippery as a snake. Suddenly the melody from Peer Gynt floated down the breeze to us in the birch grove, clear and distinct, each note holding its complete round.

I looked at Lolly wide-eyed.

“What’s the matter?” she asked in a frightened voice.

“Nothing. Someone’s playing a violin.”

“Who?”

“I don’t know. Do you hear it?”

“Yes,” cried Lolly, enchanted, the fright in her little face fading. “Let’s dance! Let’s dance on it.” She bent down and patted the waxed platform with her chubby hand.

“We’re not supposed to until Midsummer’s Eve. It’s bad luck.”

“Oh, no one will know. Do let’s.” she begged, clapping her hands.

“They’re going to put canvas over it soon, so the leaves and twigs won’t fall on it and make it dirty.”

“Let’s dance before they do.”

“We’d better not. It’s just been finished today.”

“But it’s four days until Midsummer’s Eve,” Lolly pouted.

“Only four days? That’s not long,” I pretended.

“Yes it is. You know it is. Why can’t we?” And she skipped away across the amber platform, dancing, out of my reach, and I in pursuit, our tracks forming a gay beige design on the smooth surface.

The music of the violin had stopped.

As I caught her, we heard a wild shout of anguish. We stood transfixed with fear. Again and again the shouting echoed through the grove. I started to run, holding on to Lolly’s hand. We heard a high piercing shriek of terror that dragged into ominous silence. Then the yells of men and the running of heavy feet.

When we reached the lake, the shore around it was swarming with workmen and stable hands, and Elsa Örne was coming out of the water, naked, with Mjuk in her arms.

Mama was running from the house in a dimity dress, holding a wavering parasol above her head, and Natta and the servants close behind her.

“What is it?” cried Mama as she reached the water. “I heard Oscar shouting. Where is he? What’s happened?” Then she saw Elsa Örne with Mjuk’s dripping figure in her arms. “My little Mjuk! What’s happened? Is he dead? Is he drowned? Oh, God! Why are you holding him?”

One of the porters lifted Mjuk from Elsa Örne’s arms and blew down his throat. “No, min fru,” he said, “he’s all right. He’s breathing. See, his eyes are open.” He took his coat and wrapped it carefully around Mjuk.

“Thank God,” wept Mama. “Oh, God, thank you!”

“I’ll carry him to the house, min fru, with Natta. He’ll be better there.” The man left with several of the servants. Some of the men were already in the water rowing toward the swan boat.

Then Mama seemed to see for the first time that Elsa Örne was naked.

“Cover her,” she sobbed. “Somebody cover her.” And she inadvertently gave someone her parasol to hold over Elsa Örne. A stable boy threw a horse blanket over Elsa Örne’s shoulders. He had been attending a sick horse when he heard the shouts.

Mamma looked into the lake-wet eyes of Elsa Örne. Her dripping colorless hair was still held high on her head by her innumerable combs and hairpins.

“Where is Oscar Lewenhaup?” Mama cried, her tears falling. “Speak — what has happened? Where is he? It’s a very shallow lake. It’s no lake at all, just a plaything! Speak, Elsa Örne!”

“I saw it happen from my window, Madonnabild,” said Elsa Örne calmly. “I was playing my violin. The little Mjuk tried to reach for the string of his kite. It had slipped through his fingers. And he fell in. The master plunged after him. I ran down to help. I took off my clothes and swam out to them. That’s all.”

“Oscar Lewenhaup was a strong swimmer, Elsa Örne. A strong man,” Mama said sternly.

“Yes, he was. The bottom of the lake has always been questionable. Full of mysteries. And I am a strong swimmer.”

Mama looked up at the sky helplessly, beside herself. “No winds, no rains, a clear summer’s day.” And she broke into violent sobbing.

“Yes, Madonnabild — on a clear summer’s day.”

Mama looked into Elsa Örne’s wet face again. “Why did you save Mjuk, Elsa Örne, and not Oscar Lewenhaup, your lover?”

Elsa Örne was shivering now, under the horse blanket. “Oscar Lewenhaup couldn’t free himself, something at the bottom. There was a choice to make. This way I think is better, Madonnabild.”

Two hours later they found him, his right foot held fast in the rotting root of a gnarled tree.

On Midsummer’s Eve the swan boat floated peacefully through the sunlight night.