But he lies in the sledge, holding the young countess fast. He has forgotten all grief, and mad with adventure’s intoxicating joy, he sings at the top of his voice a song of love and roses.
Close to him he presses her; but she makes no attempt to escape. Her face lies, white and stiffened, against his breast.
Ah, what shall a man do when he has a pale, helpless face so near his own, when he sees the fair hair which usually shades the white, gleaming forehead, pushed to one side, and when the eyelids have closed heavily over the gray eyes’ roguish glance?
What shall a man do when red lips grow pale beneath his eyes?
Kiss, of course, kiss the fading lips, the closed eyes, the white forehead.
But then the young woman awakes. She throws herself back. She is like a bent spring. And he has to struggle with her with his whole strength to keep her from throwing herself from the sledge, until finally he forces her, subdued and trembling, down in the corner of the sledge.
“See,” says Gösta quite calmly to Beerencreutz, “the countess is the third whom Don Juan and I have carried off this winter. But the others hung about my neck with kisses, and she will neither be kissed by me nor dance with me. Can you understand these women, Beerencreutz?”
But when Gösta drove away from the house, when the women screamed and the men swore, when the sleigh-bells rang and the whips cracked, and there was nothing but cries and confusion, the men who guarded the major’s wife were wondering.
“What is going on?” they thought. “Why are they screaming?”
Suddenly the door is thrown open, and a voice calls to them.
“She is gone. He is driving away with her.”
They rush out, running like mad, without waiting to see if it was the major’s wife or who it was who was gone. Luck was with them, and they came up with a hurrying sledge, and they drove both far and fast, before they discovered whom they were pursuing.
But Berg and Cousin Christopher went quietly to the door, burst the lock, and opened it for the major’s wife.
She came out. They stood straight as ramrods on either side of the door and did not look at her.
She went out, placed herself in the sledge, and drove away. No one followed her. No one knew whither she went.