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Page 22
"Hand me the pen. We must have the letter sent to the mail before
two o'clock."
"Two o'clock. How queer! The last letter reads: 'Take notice of
the striking two.'"
"That we will," said Ingeborg.
She wrote: "Dear Miss Brandt, I, too, ask you to send the
Counsellor his billet, and I pray you to write upon it: 'Given me
by Miss Hjelm.' It is best for all parties that the fun does not
come out in gossip. You shall, by return of mail, receive back
your letters."
VI.
It is allowed to charitable minds to remain in doubt about what
had really been Miss Brandt's design. Perhaps she only wished to
make roguish psychological experiments, to convince herself to how
many forenoon congratulatory visits a Counsellor of Justice of the
Superior Court could be brought to appear. The emotion she almost
exposed, when at Mrs. Canuteson's she saw Bagger by Miss Hjelm's
side, may have been pure surprise at the working of the affair.
Every one of the rest of us who have been conversant with the
whirlwind, the letter, and Ingeborg's relinquishment of the same,
would also have been surprised at seeing her and the letter-writer
brought together notwithstanding, and would not, perhaps, have
been able with as much ease and success to hide our surprise. The
letter to Bagger, in which Miss Brandt, contrary to her better
knowledge, spoke of him as married, may have been a sincere
attempt to end the whole in a way which repentance and anxiety
quickly seized upon to put an insurmountable hindrance before
herself; but it may surely enough have had also the aim to see how
far Bagger had gone and how much spirit and fancy he had to carry
the intrigue out. The more one thinks upon it, the less one feels
able to give either of the two interpretations absolute
preference. Yet one will have remarked, that Ingeborg herself in
her little note mentioned the matter as "fun." On the other side,
if it was earnestness, if she had felt "somewhat" for Counsellor
Bagger, then let us take comfort in the fact that Miss Brandt was
a well-cultivated girl, and that her intellect held dominion over
her heart. She could with one eye see that the campaign had ended,
and further, that she, by receiving peace pure and simple, had
certainly not gained any conquest, but obtained the status quo
ante bellum, which often between antagonists has been considered
so respectable, that both parties officially have sung Te Deum,
although surely only one could sing it from the heart. Now it is
and may remain undecided what the real state of the case was: from
either point of view there was a plain and even line drawn for
her, and she followed it. Next day the letter came in an envelope
directed to the counsellor.
As Bagger in the presence of Ingeborg opened the letter and again
saw the long-lost epistle of his early days, he trembled like a
man before whom the spirit-world apparently passes. But as he
perceived the added words, he exclaimed in utter perplexity: "Am I
awake? Do I dream? How is this possible?"
"Why should it not be possible?" asked Ingeborg. "To whom else
should the letter originally have come, than to--geb--?"
"--Geb--?--geb--? Yes, who is--geb--?" asked Bagger with
bewildered look.
"Who other than Ingeborg? is it not the third fourth, and fifth
letters of my name?"
"Oh!" exclaimed Bagger, pressing his hand upon his forehead, and,
as he at the next moment seized Ingeborg's hand, added with an eye
which had become dim with joy, "Truly, I have had more fortune
than sense."
Ingeborg answered, smiling:
"That ought he to expect who entrusts his fate to the wind's
flying mail."
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