Part 13

“Tell me, Niels—it’s only to you I can talk of such absurd things; I don’t know how it is, but you’re so queer. Tell me—is there anything in your glass? All right!—Have you ever thought of death?”

“Have I? Why, yes. Have you?“

“I don’t mean at funerals or when a man is sick, but sometimes when I’m just sitting here comfortably it comes over me like—like a despair simply. When I sit here and mope and don’t do anything and _can’t_ do anything, then I actually feel the time slipping away from me. Hours and weeks and months rush past with nothing in them, and I can’t nail them to the spot with a piece of work. I don’t know if you understand what I mean, but I want to get hold of it with something achieved. When I paint a picture, the time I use for it remains mine forever; it isn’t lost, even though it’s past. I am sick when I think of the days as they go—incessantly. And I _have_ nothing, or I can’t get at it. It’s torture! I sometimes get into such a rage that I have to get up and walk the floor and sing some idiotic thing to keep myself from crying, and then when I stop I am almost mad to think that the time has gone meanwhile, and is going while I think, and going and going. There is nothing more wretched than to be an artist. Here I am, strong and healthy; I have eyes to see; my blood is warm and red; my heart beats, and there is nothing the matter with my head, and I _want_ to work, but I can’t. I am struggling and groping for something that eludes me, something that I can’t grasp even if I toil and moil till I sweat blood. What can a man do for inspiration or to get an idea? It is all one whether I concentrate or whether I go out and pretend I am not looking for anything, never, never anything except the sense that now Time is standing up to the waist in eternity and hauling in the hours, and they rush past, twelve white and twelve black, never stopping, never stopping. What shall I do? What do people do when they feel like that? Surely, I can’t be the first. Have you nothing to suggest?”

“Travel.”

“No, anything but that. What made you think of that? You don’t believe I’m done for, do you?”

“Done for! No, but I thought the new impressions—”

“The new impressions! Exactly. Have you never heard about people who had plenty of talent in their first youth while they were fresh and full of hope and plans, but when youth had passed their talent was gone too—and never came back?”

They were silent for a long time.

“_They_ travelled, Niels, to get new impressions, that was their fixed idea. The south, the Orient—it was all in vain; it slid off from them as from a looking-glass. I have seen their graves in Rome—two of them, but there are many, many others. One of them went mad.”

“I have never heard that about painters before.”

“It’s true. What can it be, do you think? A hidden nerve that’s given way? Or something we have failed in or sinned against in ourselves, perhaps—who knows? A soul is such a fragile thing, and no one knows how far the soul extends in a human being. We ought to be good to ourselves—Niels!” His voice had grown low and soft. “I have often longed to travel, because I felt so empty. You have no idea how I have longed for it, but I simply don’t dare to, for suppose it didn’t help, and that I was one of those people I was telling you of. What then! Think of standing face to face with the certainty that I was done for, didn’t possess anything, couldn’t do anything—think of it—couldn’t do anything! A paltry wretch, a cursed dog of a cripple, a miserable eunuch! What do you think would become of me? And after all it is not impossible. My first youth is past, and as for illusions and that sort of thing, I can assure you I haven’t many left. It’s terrible how we go through them, and yet I was never one of those who’re anxious to get rid of them. I was not like you and the rest of the people who used to foregather at Mrs. Boye’s—you were always so busy plucking the fine feathers from one another, and the balder you got, the more you crowed. Still what’s the difference—sooner or later we all start molting.”

They were silent again. The air was bitter with cigar smoke and heavy with cognac, and they sighed drearily, oppressed by the stuffiness of the room and by their own very sad hearts.

Niels had travelled two hundred miles to bring aid, and here he sat feeling his impulse put to shame, while the colder side of his nature looked on. For what could he do, when it came to the point? What if he tried to talk picturesquely to Erik, in many words of purple and ultramarine, dripping with light and wading in shadow! There had been a dream of something like that in his brain when he started out. How utterly absurd! To bring aid! You might perhaps drive away the goddess with the closed hands from an artist’s door, but that was certainly the utmost; you could no more help him to create than you could help him, if he were paralyzed, to lift his little finger by his own strength. No, not though your heart overflowed with affection and sympathy and devotion and everything else that was generous.... What you ought to do was to mind your own affairs; that was useful and healthy, but of course it was easier to let your heart run amuck in a large and generous way. The only trouble was that it was so lamentably impracticable and so utterly ineffective. Minding your own affairs and doing it well did not insure you paradise, but at least you did not have to cast down your eyes before either God or man.

Opportunity was abundant for Niels to make melancholy reflections on the impotence of a kind heart, for all that he accomplished was to keep Erik at home a little more than usual for a month or so. Nevertheless, he did not care to return to Copenhagen during the hot season, and as he did not wish to remain a guest indefinitely, he engaged a room with a family a little above the peasant class, on the opposite shore of the fjord, so near that he could row over to Marianelund in fifteen minutes. Now that he was accustomed to the neighborhood, he would just as lief stay there as any other place, for he was one of the susceptible people over whom outward surroundings easily acquire a hold. Besides, his friend and his cousin Fennimore were there, and that was reason enough, especially as there was not a human being anywhere else expecting him.

During the trip from Copenhagen, he had carefully thought out his behavior to Fennimore and how he would show her that he had forgotten so completely that he did not remember there was anything to forget; above all, no coldness, but a friendly indifference, a superficial cordiality, a polite sympathy; that was the proper attitude.

But it was all thrown away.

The Fennimore he met was a different person from the one he had left. She was still lovely; her form was luxuriant and beautiful as before, and she had the same slow, languid movements that charmed him in former days, but there was a dreary thoughtlessness in the expression of her mouth as of one who had thought too much, and a pitiful, tortured cruelty in her gentle eyes. He did not understand it at all, but one fact was at least clear, and that was that she had had other things to think of than remembering him, and that she was quite callous to any memories he could awaken. She looked like one who had made her choice and done the worst she could do with it.

Little by little, he began to spell and put things together, and one day, when they were walking along the shore, he began to understand.

Erik was cleaning up his studio, and as they were strolling by the water, the maid came out with an apronful of refuse which she threw on the beach. There was a litter of old brushes, fragments of casts, broken palette knives, bits of oil bottles, and empty paint tubes. Niels poked the heap with his foot, and Fennimore looked on with the vague curiosity people often feel in turning over old rubbish. Suddenly Niels drew his foot away as if something had burned it, but caught himself as quickly, and gave the pile another kick.

“Oh, let me see it,” begged Fennimore, and put her hand on his arm as if to stop him. He bent down and pulled out a plaster cast of a hand holding an egg.

“It must be a mistake,” he said.

“Why no, it is broken,” she replied quietly, as she took it from him. “See, the forefinger is gone,” she added, pointing, but when she suddenly became aware that the egg had been cut in two and a yolk painted inside it with chrome yellow, she blushed, and, bending down, she slowly and deliberately knocked the hand against a stone, until it was broken into little bits.

“Do you remember the time it was cast?” Niels asked, in order to say something.

“I remember that my hand was smeared with green soap so the plaster should not stick to it. Is that what you were thinking of?”

“No, I mean the time when Erik passed the cast around at the tea-table. Don’t you remember, when it came to your old aunt, how her eyes filled with tears, and she embraced you with the deepest compassion and kissed you on the brow, as if some harm had been done to you?”

“Yes, people are so sensitive.”

“No, we all laughed at her, but there was a delicacy in it nevertheless, although it was so nonsensical.”

“Yes, there is much of that nonsensical delicacy in the world.”

“I believe you want to quarrel with me to-day.”

“No, I don’t, but there is something I want to say to you. You won’t take offence at a little frankness?—Well, then—suppose a man tells a story that is not very nice in his wife’s presence and perhaps otherwise shows what appears to you a lack of consideration for her; don’t you think it is unnecessary for you then to express your protest by your emphatic fastidiousness and your exceeding great chivalry? It is fair to assume that the man knows his own wife best, and knows that it won’t offend or wound her; otherwise he would not do it. Is not that true?”

“No, it is not true, generally speaking, but in this case, and on your authority, I don’t mind saying yes.”

“That’s right. You may be sure that women are not the ethereal creatures many a good youth fancies; they are really no more delicate than men, and not very different from them. Take my word for it, there has been some filthy clay used in the shaping of them both.”

“Dearest Fennimore! Thank God you don’t know what you are saying, but you are very unjust to women and to yourself. _I_ believe in woman’s purity.”

“Woman’s purity! What do you mean by woman’s purity?”

“I mean—that is—”

“You mean—I will tell you; you mean nothing, for that is another piece of nonsensical delicacy. A woman can’t be pure, and isn’t supposed to be—how could she? It is against nature! And do you think God made her to be pure? Answer me!—No, and ten thousand times no. Then why this lunacy! Why fling us up to the stars with one hand, when you have to pull us down with the other! Can’t you let us walk the earth by your side, one human being with another, and nothing more at all? It is impossible for us to step firmly on the prose of life when you blind us with your poetic will-o’-the-wisps. Let us alone! For God’s sake, let us alone!”

She sat down and wept.

Niels understood much. Fennimore would have been miserable had she known how much. Was it not partly the old story of love’s holiday fare which refuses to turn into daily bread, but goes on being holiday fare, only more tasteless, more insipid, and less nourishing, day by day? One can’t perform a miracle, and the other can’t perform it, and there they sit in their banqueting clothes, careful to smile and to use festive words, but underneath they feel the agony of hunger and thirst, while their eyes shrink from each other, and hatred begins to grow in their hearts. Was not that the first chapter, and was not the other the equally dreary tale of a woman’s despair at not being able to recover herself after finding out that the demigod, whose bride she became so joyously, was only an ordinary mortal? First the despair, the bootless despair, and then the merciful stupor—that must be the explanation. It seemed to Niels that he understood everything: the hardness in her, the dreary humility, and her coarseness, which was the bitterest drop in the whole goblet. By degrees he came to see also that his delicacy and deferential homage must oppress and irritate her, because a woman who has been hurled from the purple couch of her dreams to the pavement below will quickly resent any attempt to spread carpets over the stones which she longs to feel in all their hardness. In her first despair she is not satisfied to tread the path with her feet: she is determined to crawl it on her knees, choosing the way that is steepest and roughest. She desires no helping hand and will not lift her head—let it sink down with its own heaviness, so that she may put her face to the ground and taste the dust with her tongue!

Niels pitied her with all his heart, but he left her alone as she desired.

It was hard to look on and not help, to sit apart and dream her happy, in stupid dreams, or to wait and calculate, with the cold knowledge of the physician, how long she had to suffer. He told himself, in this dreary wisdom, that there could be no relief until her old hope in the fair, gleaming treasures of life had bled to death and a more sluggish stream had entered her veins, making her dull enough to forget, blunt enough to accept, and, at last, at last, coarse enough to rejoice in the thick atmosphere of a bliss many heavens lower than that which she had meekly hoped and humbly prayed for wings to reach.—He was full of disgust with all the world when he thought that she, to whom he had once knelt in adoration, had come to such a pass that she had been forced to a slave’s estate, and stood at the gate shivering with cold, while he rode past on his high horse with the large coins of life jingling in his pocket.

One Sunday afternoon, in the latter part of August, Niels rowed across the fjord. Fennimore was at home alone when he came; he found her lying on a sofa in the corner room, and very miserable. Her breath came with that low, monotonous moaning which seems to afford relief from pain, and she said that she had a frightful headache. There was no one to help her, for she had given the maid leave to go home to Hadssund, and soon afterward some one had come and carried off Erik; she could not understand where they had gone in the rain. Now she had been lying there for two hours trying to sleep, but it was impossible, the pain was so bad. She had never had it before, and it had come on so suddenly—at dinner-time there had been nothing the matter. First it was in the temples, and then it seemed to dig deeper and deeper and deeper in; now it seemed to be behind her eyes—if it only was not anything dangerous. She was not used to being ill, and was very frightened and unhappy.

Niels comforted her as well as he could, telling her to lie still, close her eyes, and not speak. He found a heavy shawl, which he wrapped around her feet, fetched vinegar from the buffet, and made a cold compress, which he laid on her brow. Then he sat down quietly by the window, and looked out at the rain.

From time to time, he stole over to her on tiptoe and changed the compress without speaking, merely nodding to her, as she looked up at him gratefully between his hands. Sometimes she wanted to speak, but he hushed her with a look, shaking his head, and returned to his seat again.

At last she fell asleep.

One hour passed and another, and she was still sleeping. Slowly one quarter slipped into the other, while the melancholy daylight faded, and the shadows in the room waxed larger, as if they were growing out of the furniture and the walls. Outside the rain fell, evenly and steadily, blotting out every other sound in its low, incessant patter.

She was still sleeping.

The fumes of the vinegar and the vanilla scent of the heliotrope, mingling in a pungent odor like wine, filled the room. Warmed by their breath, the air covered the gray window-panes with a dewy film, which grew denser with the increasing coolness of the evening.

By this time, he was far away in memories and dreams, though a part of his consciousness still watched over the sleeper and followed her sleep. Gradually, as the darkness pressed in, his fancy wearied of feeding these dreams that flickered up and died down, just as the soil gets tired of bringing forth the same crop again and again; and the dreams grew feebler, more sterile, and stiffer, losing the luxuriant details that had entwined them like long shoots of clinging vines. His thoughts left the distance and came homing back.—How quiet everything was! Was it not as if they were together, he and she, on an island of silence rising above the monotonous sea of sound made by the soft patter of the rain? And their souls were still, calm and safe, while the future seemed to slumber in a cradle of peace.

Would that it might never awaken, and that all might remain as now—no more happiness than that of peace, but neither any misery nor irking unrest! Would that the present might close as a bud closes around itself, and that no spring would follow!

Fennimore called. She had been lying awake for some time, too happy in being free from pain to think of speaking. Now she wanted to get up and light the lamp, but Niels continued to act as physician, and compelled her to lie still. It was not good for her to get up yet; he had matches and could easily find the lamp.

When he had lit it, he put it on the flower stand in the corner, where its milky white globe shone softly veiled by the delicate, slumbering leaves of an acacia. The room was just light enough so that they could see each other’s face.

He sat down in front of her, and they spoke about the rain and said how lucky it was that Erik had taken his rain-coat, and how wet poor Trine would be. Then their conversation came to a standstill.

Fennimore’s thoughts were not quite awake yet, and in her weakness it seemed pleasant to lie thus musing without speaking. Nor was Niels inclined to talk, for he was still under the spell of the afternoon’s long silence.

“Do you like this house?” Fennimore asked at last.

“Why yes, fairly well.”

“Really? Do you remember the furniture at home?”

“At Fjordby? Yes indeed, perfectly.”

“You don’t know how I love it, and how I long for it sometimes. The things we have here don’t belong to us—they are only rented—and have no association with anything, and we are not going to live with them any longer than we stay in this place. You may think it queer, but I assure you, I often feel lonely here among all these strange pieces of furniture that stand around here so indifferent and stupid and take me for what I am without caring the least bit about me. And as I know they are not going with me—that they will just stay here and be rented by other people—I can’t get fond of them or interested in them as I should if I knew that my home would always be theirs, and that whatever came to me of good or ill would come in the midst of them. Do you think it childish? Perhaps it is, but I can’t help it.”

“I don’t know what it is, but I have felt it too. When I was left alone abroad, my watch stopped, and when it came back from the watchmaker and was going as before, it was—just what you mean. I liked the feeling; there was something peculiar about it, something genuinely good.”

“Yes indeed! Oh, I should have kissed it, if I had been you.”

“Would you?”

“Do you know,” she said suddenly, “you have never told me anything about Erik as a boy? What was he like?”

“Everything that is good and fine, Fennimore. Splendid, brave—a boy’s ideal of a boy, not exactly a mother’s or a teacher’s ideal, but the other, which is so much better.”

“How did you get along together? Were you very fond of each other?”

“Yes, I was in love with him, and he didn’t mind—that is about how it was. We were very different. I always wanted to be a poet and become famous, but what do you suppose he said he wanted to be, one day when I asked him?—An Indian, a real red Indian with war paint and all the rest! I remember that I couldn’t understand it at all. It was incomprehensible to me how any one could want to be a savage—civilized creature that I was!”

“But was it not strange, then, that he should become an artist?” said Fennimore, and there was something cold and hostile in her tone, as she asked.

Niels noticed it with a little start. “Not at all,” he answered; “it is really rare that people become artists with the whole of their nature. And such strong fellows overflowing with vitality like Erik often have an unutterable longing for what is fine-grained and delicate: for an exquisite virginal coldness, a lofty sweetness—I hardly know how to express it. Outwardly they may be robust and full-blooded enough, even coarse, and no one suspects what strange, romantic, sentimental secrets they carry about with them, because they are so bashful—spiritually bashful, I mean—that no pale little maiden can be more shy about her soul than are these big, hard-stepping menfolks. Don’t you understand, Fennimore, that such a secret, which can’t be told in plain words right out in common every-day air, may dispose a man to be an artist? And they can’t express it in words, they simply can’t; we have to believe that it is there and lives its quiet life within them, as the bulb lives in the earth; for once in a while they do send fragrant, delicately tinted flowers up to the light. Do you understand?—Don’t demand anything for yourself of this blossoming strength, believe in it, be glad to nourish it and to know that it is there.—Forgive me, Fennimore, but it seems to me that you and Erik are not really good to each other. Can’t you make a change? Don’t think of who is right or how great the wrong is, and don’t treat him according to his deserts—how would even the best of us fare if we got our deserts! No, think of him as he was in the hour when you loved him most; believe me, he is worthy of it. You must not measure and weigh. There are moments in love, I know, full of bright, solemn ecstasy, when we would give our lives for the beloved if need be. Is not that true? Remember it now, Fennimore, for his sake and your own.”

He was silent.

She said nothing either, but lay very still with a melancholy smile on her lips, pale as a flower.

Then she half rose and stretched out her hand to Niels. “Will you be my friend?” she asked.

“I am your friend, Fennimore,” and he took her hand.

“Will you, Niels?”

“Always,” he replied, lifting the hand to his lips reverently.

When he rose, it seemed to Fennimore that he held himself more erect than she had ever seen him before.

A little later Trine came in to announce her return, and then there was tea, and at last the rowing back through the dreary rain.

Toward morning Erik came home, and when Fennimore saw him by the cold, truthful light of dawn, preparing to go to bed, heavy and unsteady with drink, his eyes glazed from gambling and his face dirty-pale after the sleepless night, then all the fair words Niels had spoken seemed to her quite visionary. The bright promises she had made to her own heart fainted and paled before the oncoming day—vapory dreams and fumes of fancy: a fairy flock of lies!