Part 15

It was a letter, Trine said when she came in to her mistress. Fennimore took it. It was a telegram. Quietly she gave the maid the receipt and dismissed her; she was not in the least alarmed, for Erik of late had often telegraphed that he would bring one or two guests home with him the following day.

Then she read.

Suddenly she turned white and darted wildly from her seat out into the middle of the room, staring at the door with expectant terror.

She would not let it come into the house, did not dare to, and with one bound she threw herself against the door, pressing her shoulder against it, and turned the key till it cut her hand. But it would not turn, no matter how hard she tried. Her hand dropped. Then she remembered that the thing was not here at all—it was far away from her in a strange house.

She began to shake, her knees would no longer support her, and she slid along the door to the floor.

Erik was dead. The horses had run away, had overturned the carriage at a street corner, and hurled Erik with his head against the wall. His skull had been fractured, and now he lay dead at Aalborg. That was the way it had happened, and most of this story was told in the telegram. No one had been with him in the carriage except the white-necked tutor known as the Arab. It was he who had telegraphed.

She crouched on the floor moaning feebly, both palms spread out on the carpet, her eyes staring with a fixed, empty look, as she swayed helplessly to and fro.

Only a moment ago everything had been light and fragrance around her, and, however much she tried, she could not instantly put all this out of her consciousness to admit the inky black night of grief and remorse. It was not her fault that her mind was still haunted by fitful, dazzling gleams of love’s happiness and love’s pleasure; that intense, foolish desires would force their way out of the whirl, seeking the bliss of forgetfulness, or trying to stop with a frenzied wrench the revolving wheel of fortune.

But it soon passed.

In black swarms, from everywhere, dark thoughts came flying like ravens, lured by the corpse of her happiness, and hacked it beak by beak, even while the warmth of life still lingered in it. They tore and slashed and made it hideous and unrecognizable, until the whole thing was nothing but a carrion of loathing and horror.

She rose and walked about, supporting herself by chairs and tables like one who is ill. Desperately she looked around for some cobweb of help, if it were only a comforting glance, a sympathetic pat of the hand, but her eyes met nothing but the glaring family portraits, all the strangers who had been witnesses of her fall and her crime—sleepy old gentlemen, prim-mouthed matrons, and their ever-present gnome child, the girl with the great round eyes and bulging forehead. It had acquired memories enough at last, this strange furniture, the table over there, and that chair, the footstool with the black poodle-dog, and the portière like a dressing-gown,—she had saturated them all with memories, adulterous memories, which they now spewed out and flung after her. Oh, it was terrible to be locked in with all these spectres of crime and with herself. She shuddered at herself; she pointed accusing fingers at herself, at this dishonored Fennimore who crouched at her feet; she pulled her dress away from between her imploring hands. Mercy? No, there was no mercy! How could there be mercy before those dead eyes in the strange town, those eyes which had become seeing, now that they were glazed in death, and saw how she had thrown his honor in the mud, lied at his lips, been faithless at his heart.

She could feel those dead eyes riveted on her; she did not know whence they came, but they followed her, gliding down her body like two ice-cold rays. As she looked down, while every thread of the carpet, every stitch in the footstools, seemed unnaturally clear in the strong, sharp light, she felt something walking about her with the footsteps of dead men, felt it brushing against her dress so distinctly that she screamed with terror, and darted to one side. But it came in front of her like hands and yet not like hands, something that clutched at her slowly, clutched derisively and triumphantly at her heart, that marvel of treachery, that yellow pearl of deceit! And she retreated till she backed up against the table, but it was still there, and her bosom gave no protection against it; it clutched through her skin and flesh.... She almost died of terror, as she stood there, helplessly bending back over the table, while every nerve contracted with fear, and her eyes stared as if they were being murdered in their sockets.

Then that passed.

She looked around with a haunted look, then sank down on her knees and prayed a long time. She repented and confessed, wildly and unrestrainedly, in growing passion, with the same fanatic self-loathing that drives the nun to scourge her naked body. She sought fervently after the most grovelling expressions, intoxicating herself with self-abasement and with a humility that thirsted for degradation.

At last she rose. Her bosom heaved violently, and there was a faint light in the pale cheeks, which seemed to have grown fuller during her prayer.

She looked around the room as if she were taking a silent vow. Then she went into the adjoining room, closed the door after her, stood still a moment as though to accustom herself to the darkness, groped her way to the door which opened on the glass-enclosed veranda, and went out.

It was lighter there. The moon had risen, and shone through the close-packed frozen crystals on the glass; the light came yellowish through the panes, blue and red through the squares of colored glass that framed them.

She melted a hole in the ice with her hand and carefully wiped away the moisture with her handkerchief.

As yet there was no one in sight out on the fjord.

She began to walk up and down in her glass cage. There was no furniture out there except a settee of cane and bent wood, covered with withered ivy leaves from the vines overhead. Every time she passed it, the leaves rustled faintly with the stirring of the air, and now and then her dress caught a leaf on the floor, drawing it along with a scratching sound over the boards.

Back and forth she walked on her dreary watch, her arms folded over her breast, hardening herself against the cold.

He came.

She opened the door with a quick wrench, and stepped out into the frozen snow in her thin shoes. She had no pity on herself, she could have gone bare-footed to that meeting.

Niels had slowed up at the sight of the black figure against the snow and was skating toward land with hesitating, tentative strokes.

That stealthy figure seemed to burn into her eyes. Every familiar movement and feature struck her as a shameless insult, as a boast of degrading secrets. She shook with hatred; her heart swelled with curses, and she could scarcely control her anger.

“It is I!” she cried out to him jeeringly, “the harlot, Fennimore!”

“But for God’s sake, sweetheart?” he asked, astonished, as he came within a few feet of her.

“Erik is dead.”

“Dead! When?” He had to step out into the snow with his skates to keep from falling. “Oh, but tell me!” Eagerly he took a step nearer.

They were now standing close together, and she had to restrain herself from striking that pale, distorted face with her clenched fist.

“I will tell you, never fear,” she cried. “He is dead, as I said. He had a runaway in Aalborg and got his head crushed, while we were deceiving him here.”

“It is terrible!” Niels moaned, pressing his hands to his temples. “Who could have dreamed—Oh, I wish we had been faithful to him, Fennimore! Erik, poor Erik!—I wish I were in his place!“ He sobbed aloud, writhing with pain.

“I hate you, Niels Lyhne!”

“Oh, what does it matter about us?” Niels groaned; “if we could only get him back! Poor Fennimore!” he said with a change of feeling. “Never mind me. You hate me, you say? You may well hate me.” He rose suddenly. “Let us go in,” he said. “I don’t know what I am saying. Who was it that telegraphed, did you say?”

“In!” Fennimore screamed, infuriated by his failure to notice her hostility. “In there! Never shall you set your craven, despicable foot inside that house again. How dare you think of it, you wretch, you false dog, who came sneaking in here and stole your friend’s honor, because it was too poorly hidden! What, did you not steal it under his very eyes, because he thought you were honest, you house-thief!”

“Hush, hush, are you mad? What is the matter with you! What sort of language are you using?” He had caught her arm firmly, drawing her to him, and looked straight into her face in amazement. “You must try to come to your senses, child,” he said in a gentler tone. “You can’t mend matters by slinging ugly words.”

She wrenched her arm away with such force that he staggered and almost lost his uncertain foothold.

“Can’t you hear that I hate you!” she screamed shrilly. “And isn’t there so much of a decent man’s brain left in you that you can understand it! How blind I must have been when I loved you, you patched together with lies, when I had him at my side, who was ten thousand times better than you. I shall hate and despise you to the end of my life. Before you came, I was honest, I had never done anything wicked; but then you came with your poetry and your rubbish and dragged me down with your lies, into the mud with you. What have I done to you that you could not leave me alone—I who should have been sacred to you above all others! Now I have to live day after day with this shameful blot on my soul, and I shall never meet any one so base but that I know myself to be baser. All the memories of my girlhood you have poisoned. What have I to look back on that is clean and good now! You have tainted everything. It is not only he that is dead, everything bright and good that has been between us is dead, too, and rotten. Oh, God help me, is it fair that I can’t get any revenge on you after all you have done? Make me honest again, Niels Lyhne, make me pure and good again! No, no—but it ought to be possible to torture you into undoing the wrong you have done. Can you undo it with lies? Don’t stand there and crouch under your own helplessness. I want to see you suffer, here before my eyes, and writhe in pain and despair and be miserable. Let him be miserable, God, do not let him steal my revenge too! Go, you wretch, go! I cast you off, but be sure that I drag you with me through all the agonies my hate can call down over you.”

She had stretched out her arms menacingly. Now she turned and went in, and the veranda door rattled softly, as she closed it.

Niels stood looking after her in amazement, almost with disbelief. That pale, vengeful face seemed to be still there before him, so strangely base-souled and coarse, all its delicate beauty of contour gone, as if a rough, barbarous hand had ploughed up all its lines.

He stumbled cautiously down to the ice and began to skate slowly toward the mouth of the fjord, with the moonlight in front of him and the wind in his back. Gradually he increased his speed, as his thoughts took his attention from the surroundings, till the ice splinters flew from the runners of his skates and rattled on the smooth surface, blown along with him by the rising frost wind.

So that was the end! So that was the way he had saved this woman soul and lifted it and given it happiness! It was certainly beautiful, his relation to the dead friend, his childhood friend, for whom he would have sacrificed his future, his life, his all! He with his sacrificing and his saving! Let heaven and earth behold in him a man who preserved his life on the heights of honor without spot or blemish in order not to cast a shadow over the Idea he served and was called to promulgate.

No doubt that was another of his boastful fancies that his paltry little life could put spots on the sun of the Idea. Good God, he was always taking these high and mighty views of himself, it was bred in his bone. If he could not be anything better, he must at least be a Judas and call himself Iscariot in grandiose gloom. That sounded like something. Was he forever going to put on airs as if he were a responsible minister to the Idea, a member of its privy council, getting everything concerning humanity at first hand! Would he never learn to do his duty in barrack service for the Idea with all simplicity as a private of a very subordinate class?

There were red fires out on the ice, and he skated so near them that a gigantic shadow shot out for a moment from his feet, turned forward, and disappeared again.

He thought of Erik and of what kind of a friend he had been to Erik. He! His childhood memories wrung their hands over him; his youthful dreams covered their heads and wept over him; his whole past stared after him with a long look full of reproach. He had betrayed it all for a love as small and mean as himself. There _had_ been exaltation in this love, but he had betrayed that too.

Whither could he flee to escape these attempts that always ended in the ditch? All his life had been nothing else, and it would never be anything else in the future; he knew that and felt it with such certainty that he sickened at the thought of all this futile endeavor, and he wished with all his soul that he could run away and escape this meaningless fate. If only the ice would break under him now as he skated, and all would be over with a gasp and a spasm in the cold water!

He stopped, exhausted, and looked back. The moon had gone down, and the fjord stretched long and dark between the white hills on either side. Then he turned and worked his way back against the wind. It was very strong now, and he was tired. He skated closer to the shore to get the shelter of the hills, but, as he struggled thus, he came on a hole in the ice made by the winds sweeping down from the hills, and he felt the thin, elastic crust give way under him with a crackling sound.

Ah, he breathed more easily, in spite of all, when he set foot on the firm ice again! Under the stimulus of fear, his exhaustion had almost left him, and he skated on vigorously.

* * * * *

While he was struggling out there, Fennimore sat in the lighted room, baffled and miserable. She felt herself cheated out of her revenge. She hardly knew what she had expected, but it was something entirely different; she had had a vision of something mighty and majestic, something of swords and red flames, or—not that, but something that would sweep her along and lift her to a throne, but instead it had all turned out so small and paltry, and she had felt more like a common scold than like one who utters curses....

After all, she had learned something from Niels.

* * * * *

Early in the morning of the following day, while Niels, overcome with exhaustion, was still asleep, she left the house.

_Chapter XII_

For the better part of two years Niels Lyhne had roamed about on the Continent.

He was very lonely, without kith or kin or any close friend of his heart. Yet there was another and greater loneliness that encompassed him; for however desolate and forsaken a man may feel when he has no single spot on all this vast earth to which his affections can cling, which he can bless when the heart _will_ overflow and yearn for when longing _will_ spread its wings, there is no existence so lonely that he is utterly alone if he can only see the fixed bright star of a life goal shining overhead. But Niels Lyhne had no star. He did not know what to do with himself and his gifts. It was all very well to have talent if he could only have used it, but he went about like a painter without hands. How he envied the people, great and small, who always, whenever they reached out into life, found a handle to lay hold of; for he could never find any handle. It seemed as though he could do nothing but sing over again the old romantic songs, and in truth he had so far done nothing else. His talent was like something apart in him, a quiet Pompeii, or a harp that had to be taken out of its corner. It was not all-pervading, did not run down the street with him or tingle in his finger-tips—not in the least. His talent had no grip on him. Sometimes it seemed to him that he had been born half a century too late, sometimes that he had come altogether too early. His talent was rooted in something of the past; it could not draw nourishment from his opinions, his convictions, and his sympathies, could not absorb them and give them form. The two elements seemed always to be gliding apart like water and oil, which can be shaken together, but can never mix, never become one.

Gradually, as he began to realize this, he sank into a boundless dejection and grew inclined to take an ironic, suspicious view of himself and his whole past. There must be something wrong with him, he told himself, something incurably wrong in the very marrow of his being; for surely a man could fuse the varying elements in his own nature—that he firmly believed.

This was the state of his mind when he settled down, in the month of September, toward the end of the second year of his exile, on the shores of Lake Garda, in the little town of Riva.

Not long afterward, the region was hedged about by difficulties that put a stop to travelling and kept all strangers away. Cholera had broken out round about Venice and down south in Descensano and in the north by the Trentino. Under these circumstances, Riva was not lively, for the hotels had been emptied at the first rumor, and tourists bound for Italy took another route.

Naturally, the few people who remained drew all the more closely together.

The most remarkable person among them was a famous opera singer, whose real name was Madame Odéro. Her stage name was far more celebrated. She and her companion, Niels, and a deaf doctor from Vienna were the only guests at the Golden Sun, the leading hotel in town.

Niels felt very much attracted to her, and she yielded to that warmth of manner in him which is often a characteristic of people who are at strife with themselves and therefore feel the need of establishing their relations with others on a safe basis.

Madame Odéro had lived there for nearly seven months, trying to recover, by complete rest, from the after effects of a throat trouble that had threatened her voice. Her physician had told her to abstain for a year from singing and, in order to avoid temptation, from all music. Not until the year was over would he allow her to attempt to sing, and then, if no weariness followed, she might consider herself cured.

Niels acquired a kind of civilizing influence over Madame Odéro, who was a fiery, passionate nature with no fine shades. It had been a terrible sentence to her when she was condemned to live a whole year without applause and adoration, and at first she had been in despair, gazing horror-stricken at the twelve months stretching before her as upon a deep, black grave into which she was being thrust; but everybody seemed to think it was unavoidable, and one fine morning she suddenly fled to Riva. It would have been quite possible for her to have lived in a livelier and more frequented place, but that was the very thing she sought to avoid. She felt ashamed, as though she had been marked with an outward visible blemish, imagining that people pitied her because of this infirmity, and that they discussed her among themselves. Therefore she had shunned all society in her new abode and had lived almost entirely in her rooms, where she sometimes took revenge on the doors when her voluntary confinement became unbearable. Now that everybody had left, she appeared again and learned to know Niels Lyhne, for she was not at all afraid of people individually.

No one needed to be long in Madame Odéro’s presence before finding out whether she liked him or not, for she showed it with sufficient plainness. What she gave Niels Lyhne to see was very encouraging, and they had not been alone for many days in the magnificent hotel garden with its pomegranates and myrtles, with its arbors of blossoming nerias and its marvellous view, before they were on very friendly terms.

They were not at all in love with each other, or if they were, it was not very serious. It was one of the vague, pleasant intimacies that will sometimes grow up between men and women who are past the time of early youth when nature flames up and yearns toward an unknown bliss. It is a kind of waning summer, in which people promenade decorously side by side, gather themselves into graceful nosegays, each caressing himself with the other’s hand and admiring himself with the other’s eyes. They take out all their store of pretty secrets, all the exquisite useless trifles people accumulate like bric-à-brac of the soul, pass them from hand to hand, turn them round and hold them up, seeking the most artistic light-effect, comparing and analyzing.

It is, of course, only when life passes in a leisurely way that such Sunday friendships are possible, and here by the quiet lake these two had plenty of time. Niels had made a beginning by draping Madame Odéro in a becoming robe of melancholy. At first, she was several times on the point of tearing the whole thing off and revealing herself as the barbarian she was, but when she found that she could wear the drapery with patrician effect, she took her melancholy as a rôle, and not only stopped slamming the doors, but sought out the moods and emotions in herself that might suit her new pose. It was astonishing how she came to realize that she had actually known herself very little in the past. Her life had, in fact, been too eventful and exciting to give her time for exploring herself, and besides she was only now approaching the age when women who have lived much in the world and seen much commence to collect their memories, to look back at themselves and assemble a past.

From this beginning, their intimacy developed quickly and definitely until they had become quite indispensable to each other. Each led only a half-hearted existence without the other.

Then it happened one morning, as Niels was starting out for a sail, that he heard Madame Odéro singing in the garden. His first impulse was to turn back and scold her, but before he could make up his mind, the boat had carried him out of hearing; the wind tempted him to a trip to Limone, and he meant to be back by midday. So he sailed on.

Madame Odéro had descended into the garden earlier than usual. The fresh fragrance that filled the air, the round waves rising and sinking clear and bright as glass beneath the garden wall, and all this glory of color everywhere—blue lake and sun-scorched mountains, white sails flitting across the lake and red flowers arching over her head—all this and with it a dream she could not forget, which went on throbbing against her heart.... She could not be silent, she had to be a part of all this life.

Therefore she sang.

Fuller and fuller rose the exultant notes of her voice. She was intoxicated with its beauty, she trembled in a voluptuous sense of its power; and she went on, she could not stop, for she was borne blissfully along on wonderful dreams of coming triumphs.

No weariness followed. She could leave, leave at once, shake off the nothingness of the past months, come out of her hiding and live!

By midday everything was ready for her departure.

Then, just as the carriages drove up to the door, she remembered Niels Lyhne. She dived down into her pocket for a paltry little note-book, and scribbled it full of farewells to Niels, for the pages were so small that each could hold only three or four words. This she enclosed in an envelope for him and departed.