He draws her hands to him and lifts them to his face.
“If you only knew,” he says, “what it means to be an outcast. One does not stop to think what one does. No, one does not.”
At the same moment he notices that she has nothing on her hands. He draws a pair of great fur gloves from his pocket and puts them on her.
And he has become all at once quite quiet. He places himself in the sledge, as far from the young countess as possible.
“You need not be afraid,” he says. “Do you not see where we are driving? You must understand that we do not dare to do you any harm.”
She, who has been almost out of her mind with fright, sees that they have driven across the lake and that Don Juan is struggling up the steep hill to Borg.
They stop the horse before the steps of the castle, and let the young countess get out of the sledge at the door of her own home.
When she is surrounded by attentive servants, she regains her courage and presence of mind.
“Take care of the horse, Andersson!” she says to the coachman. “These gentlemen who have driven me home will be kind enough to come in for a while. The count will soon be here.”
“As you wish, countess,” says Gösta, and instantly gets out of the sledge. Beerencreutz throws the reins to the groom without a moment’s hesitation. And the young countess goes before them and ushers them into the hall with ill-concealed malicious joy.
The countess had expected that the pensioners would hesitate at the proposition to await her husband.
They did not know perhaps what a stern and upright man he was. They were not afraid of the inquiry he should make of them, who had seized her by force and compelled her to drive with them. She longed to hear him forbid them ever again to set their foot in her house.
She wished to see him call in the servants to point out the pensioners to them as men who thereafter never should be admitted within the doors of Borg. She wished to hear him express his scorn not only of what they had done to her, but also of their conduct toward the old major’s wife, their benefactress.
He, who showed her only tenderness and consideration, would rise in just wrath against her persecutors. Love would give fire to his speech. He, who guarded and looked after her as a creature of finer stuff than any other, would not bear that rough men had fallen upon her like birds of prey upon a sparrow. She glowed with thirst of revenge.