“Meetings?—I saw the view and knew I could make a good picture of it—and so I have.”
“Yes, yes, you have. The fault, no doubt, is mostly father’s. Oh, the way he speaks of her.” Helge fumed. “You heard what he had said to Aagot—and what he said to you tonight. ‘She’”—imitating his father—“does not say anything to you! Remember it is our mother he speaks of like that.”
“I think your father is much more considerate and courteous to your mother than she is to him.”
“That consideration of father’s—I know it. Do you call it considerate the way he has won you over to his side? And his politeness—if you knew how I have suffered under it as a child, and since. He used to stand and listen very politely without saying a word, and if he spoke, it was in an icy cold, extremely civil manner. I almost prefer mother’s loud anger and scoldings. Oh, Jenny, it is all so miserable.”
“My poor, darling boy.”
“It is not all mother’s fault. Everybody prefers father. You do—quite naturally—I do myself, but I understand her being as she is. She wants to be first with everybody, and she never is. Poor mother.”
“I am sorry for her,” said Jenny, but her heart remained cold to Mrs. Gram. The air was heavy with scent from leaf and blossom as they went through the square. On the seats under the trees there was whispering and murmuring in the clear summer night.
Their solitary steps echoed on the pavement of the deserted business quarter where the tall buildings slept—the pale blue sky was reflected in the shop windows.
“May I come up?” he whispered as they stood at her entrance.
“I am tired,” said Jenny softly.
“I should like to stay a while with you—don’t you think it would be nice to be by ourselves a little?”
She said nothing, but began to walk up the stairs, and he followed.
Jenny lighted the seven-armed candlestick on her writing-table, took a cigarette, and held it to the flame: “Will you smoke?”
“Thanks.” He took the cigarette from her lips.
“The thing is, you see,” he said suddenly, “that there was once some story about father and another woman. I was twelve then, and I don’t know exactly how much truth there was in it. But mother!... it was a dreadful time. It was only because of us that they remained together—father told me so himself. God knows, I don’t thank him for it! Mother is honest at least, and admits that she means to hold on to him by hook or by crook and not let go.”
He sat down on the sofa. Jenny went and sat beside him, kissing his eyes. He sank on his knees and laid his head in her lap.
“Do you remember the last evening in Rome, when I said good-night? Do you still love me as you did then?”
She did not answer.
“Jenny?”
“We have not been happy together today—it’s the first time.”
He lifted his head: “Are you vexed with me?” he said in a low voice.
“No, not vexed.”
“What, then?”
“Nothing—only....”
“Only what?”
“Tonight”—she hesitated—“when we walked here, you said we would go somewhere alone—some other day. It was not as it was in Rome; now it is you who decide what I must do and not do.”
“Oh no, Jenny.”
“Yes—but I don’t mind; I like it so. I only think that, if such is the case, you ought to help me out of all this trouble.”
“You don’t think I did help you today?” he asked slowly.
“Ye—s. Well, I suppose there was nothing you could do.”
“Shall I go now?” he whispered after a pause, drawing her close to him.
“Do as you wish,” she said quietly.
“You know what I wish. What do you wish—most?”
“I don’t know what I want.” She burst into tears.
“Oh, Jenny darling.” He kissed her softly time after time. When she recovered herself he took her hand: “I am going now. Sleep well, dear; you are tired. You must not be cross with me.”
“Say good-night nicely to me,” she said, clinging to him.
“Good-night, my sweet, beloved Jenny.” He left, and she fell to crying again.
VI
“These are the things I wanted you to see,” said Gert Gram, rising. He had been on his knees, looking for something on the lower shelf of his safe.
Jenny pushed the sketch-books aside and pulled the electric lamp nearer. He wiped the dust from the big portfolio and placed it before her.
“I have not shown these to anybody for a great many years, or looked at them myself, but I have been wanting you to see them for some time—in fact, from the day I called on you at your studio. When you came here to look at Helge’s picture I meant to ask you if you cared to see them, and all the time you were working close by here I had it in my mind.
“It is strange to think, Jenny, that here in this little office I have buried all my dreams of youth. There in the safe they lie like corpses in their tomb, and I myself go about a dead and forgotten artist.”
Jenny said nothing. Gram sometimes used expressions that were rather too sentimental, she thought, although she knew that the bitter feelings which dictated them were real enough. In a sudden impulse she bent forward and stroked his grey hair.
Gram bowed his head as if to prolong the slight caress—and without looking at her, untied the portfolio with trembling hands.
She realized in surprise that her own hands shook as she took the first sheet from him, and she felt a strange fear and oppression at heart, as of a danger threatening. She was suddenly afraid when she realized that she did not want anybody to know of her visit and that she dared not tell Helge about it. At the mere thought of her lover she became depressed; she had long since consciously stopped analysing her real feelings for him. She did not want to heed the foreboding that crossed her mind at this moment, not to let herself be disturbed by inquiring into Gert Gram’s feelings for her.
She turned over the sheets of the portfolio with the dreams of his youth; it was a melancholy business. He had told her about this work often when they were alone, and she understood that he thought he had been born an artist for the sake of this and nothing else. The pictures hanging in his home he called the amateur work of a conscientious and diligent pupil, but these—they were his own. They were illustrations to Landstad’s Folksongs.
At first sight these big sheets with frames of Roman foliage and ornate black-letter writing were good enough. The colouring was pure and effective in most of them, in some really fine, but the figures in the vignettes and borders were without style and life, although the miniature drawings were correct in every detail. Some of them were naturalistic, others approaching Italian mediaeval art to such an extent that Jenny recognized certain Annunciation angels and madonnas in the cloaks of knights and maidens, and the leaves in gold and purple she remembered having seen, in a book of mass in the San Marco library. The words of the songs looked very strange, hand-printed in elegant monastic Latin types. In some of the larger full-page illustrations the composition was baroque, a direct copy of Roman altar pictures. It was an echo of all he had seen and lived among and loved—an echo of the melody of Gert Gram’s youth; not a single note was his own, but this melody of many notes was resounded in a particularly soft, melancholy tone.
“You don’t quite like them,” he said. “I can see you don’t.”
“Yes, I like them. There is much that is pretty and delicate about them, but, you know”—she searched for the right expression—“the effect is a little strange on us, who have seen the same subjects treated differently and so perfectly, that we cannot conceive them treated in another way.”
He sat opposite her, resting his chin in his hand. By and by he looked up, and she was sad at heart to meet his eyes.
“I seem to remember them as being much better than they are,” he said quietly, trying to smile. “I have not opened this portfolio for many a year, as I told you.”
“I have never quite understood that you were so attracted by the later renaissance and the baroque,” she said, to divert the conversation.
“I am not surprised, Jenny dear, that you don’t understand it.” He looked into her face with a melancholy smile. “There was a time when I believed in myself as an artist, but not so completely that I did not have a slight doubt sometimes, not of succeeding to express what I wanted, but as to what I really wanted to express. I saw that romantic art had had its day and was on the decline—there was decadence and falsehood all along—and yet in my heart I was devoted to romance, not in painting alone, but in real life. I wanted the Sunday-peasants of romance, although I had lived long enough in the country as a boy to know they did not exist, and when I went abroad it was to the Italy of romance I turned my steps. I know that you and your contemporaries seek beauty in things as they are, tangible and real. To me there was beauty only in the transformation of reality, which had already been done by others. In the eighties there came a new art-creed. I tried to adopt it, but the result was lip-service only, for my heart rebelled against it.”
“But reality, Gert, is not a fixed conception. It appears different to every one who sees it. An English painter once said to me: ‘There is beauty in everything; only your eyes see it or do not see it.’”
“I was not made to conceive reality, only the reflection of it in the dreams of others. I lacked entirely the capacity to form a beauty for myself out of the complexity of realities; I knew my own ineffectiveness. When I came to Italy the baroque took my heart and fancy. Can you not understand the agony of my soul on realizing my inefficiency? To have nothing new or personal wherewith to fill up form, only develop the technique in soaring fancies, break-neck foreshortenings, powerful effects of light and shade, and cunningly thought-out compositions. The emptiness of it all is to be hidden under the ecstasy—contorted faces, twisted limbs, saints, whose only true passion is the dread of their own engulfing doubt, which they try to drown in sickly exaltation. It is the despair of the good, the work of an epigon school wishing to fascinate—mostly themselves.”
Jenny nodded. “What you say, Gert, is at least your own subjective view. I am not so sure that the painters you speak of were not highly pleased with themselves.”
He laughed and said: “Perhaps they were—and perhaps this is my hobby-horse because for once I had—as you say—a subjective view.”
“But the picture of your wife in red is impressionistic, excellent. The more I look at it, the more I like it.”
“Yes, but that is a solitary instance.” After a pause “When I painted it, she was all the world to me. I was very much in love with her—and I hated her intensely already.”
“Was it because of her you gave up painting?” asked Jenny.
“No. All our misfortunes are of our own making. I know you have not what they call faith, neither have I—but I believe in a God, if you like, or a spiritual power which punishes justly.
“She was cashier in a shop in the High Street; I happened to see her there. She was remarkably pretty, as you can see still. One evening when she went home I waited for her and spoke to her. We made friends—and I seduced her,” he said in a low and harsh voice.
“And you married her because she was going to have a child?—I thought so. For twenty-seven years she has tormented you in return. Do you know what I think of the deity you believe in?—that it is rather relentless.”
He smiled wearily. “I am not quite so old-fashioned as you may think. I don’t consider it a sin if two young people, who love and believe in one another, join their lives in a lawful or unlawful way. But in my case I was the abductor. She was innocent when I met her—innocent in every way. I understood her better than she did herself. I saw that she was passionate, and would be jealous and tyrannical in her love, but I did not care. I was flattered that her passion was for me, that this beautiful girl was all mine, but I never meant to be hers alone, the way I knew she wanted it. I did not exactly mean to leave her, but I thought I should be able to arrange our life in such a way as not to share with her my interests, my work, my real life in fact, as I knew she would want to do. It was stupid of me, knowing that I was weak and she strong and ruthless. I thought that her great passion would give me, who was comparatively cold, a hold on her.
“Beyond her great faculty of loving there was nothing in her. She was vain and uneducated, envious and crude. There could be no mental fellowship between us, but I did not miss it; to possess her beauty and her passionate love was all I cared for.”
He rose and went over to the side where Jenny was sitting. He took both her hands and pressed them against his eyes.
“What else but misery could I expect from a marriage with her? But we reap as we sow, and I had to marry her. I had a dreadful time of it. At first, when she came to my studio, she was proud to be my mistress, arrogant in her denunciation of old prejudices, declaring that the only life worth living was that of free love. The moment things went wrong she changed her tone. Then it was all about her respectable family in Frederikshald, her unstained virtue, and her good reputation. Many men had wanted her, but she had not listened to anybody, and I was a scoundrel and a wretch if I did not marry her at once. I had nothing to marry on; I had neglected my studies and had learnt nothing but painting. Some months went by—at last I had to apply to my father. My people helped me through. We got married, and two months later Helge arrived.
“I had had hopes of a great artistic work—my folklore illustrations—but I had to give up my dreams for the reality of making bread and butter. Once I had to come to an agreement with my creditors. She took her share of the struggle and poverty loyally and without complaint—she would willingly have starved for me and the children. Feeling as I did towards her, it was hard to accept what she gave in working, suffering, and renouncing for my sake.
“I had to sacrifice everything I loved; she forced me to give it up inch by inch. From the very first she and my father were mortal enemies. He could not bear his daughter-in-law, and that was a blow to her vanity, so she set about to make trouble between him and me. My father was an official of the old school—a bit narrow and stiff maybe, but right-minded and loyal, noble and good at heart. You would have liked him, I am sure. We had been so much to one another, but our intimacy was put a stop to.
“As for my painting, I understood that I had not the talent I once had imagined, and I lacked energy to make continued efforts when I did not believe in myself—dead tired as I was of the struggle and of my life at her side, which became more and more of a caricature. She reproached me, but secretly she triumphed.
“She was jealous of the children too, if I was fond of them or they were fond of me. She would not share them with me nor me with them.
“Her jealousy has grown into a kind of madness as the years have gone by. You have seen it for yourself. She can scarcely bear to see me in the same room with you even when Helge is there.”
Jenny went to him and laid her hands on his shoulders:
“I cannot understand,” she said—“I really cannot—that you have been able to stand such a life.”
Gert Gram bent forward, resting his head on her shoulder:
“I don’t understand it myself.”
When he raised his head and their eyes met, she put her hand to his neck and, overwhelmed by a tender compassion, kissed him on the cheek and forehead.
She felt a sudden fear when she looked down at his face resting on her shoulder, with eyes closed, but the next moment he lifted his head and rose, saying:
“Thank you, Jenny dear.”
Gram put the drawings back in their cover and straightened the table.
“I hope you will be very, very happy. You are so bright and courageous, so energetic and gifted. Dear child, you are everything I wanted to be, but never was.” He spoke in a low, absent-minded voice.
“I think,” he said a moment later, “that when relations between two people are new, before their life is perfectly accorded, there are many small difficulties to overcome. I wish you could live elsewhere, not in this town. You should be alone, far from your own people—at first at least.”
“Helge has applied for a post in Bergen, as you know,” said Jenny, and the feeling of despair and anguish again seized her when she thought of him.
“Do you never speak to your mother about it? Why don’t you? Are you not fond of your mother?”
“Of course I am fond of her.”
“I should think it would be a good thing to talk to her about it—get her advice.”
“It is no good asking anybody’s advice—I don’t like to speak to any one about these things,” she said, wishing to dismiss the subject.
“No, you are perhaps....” He had been standing half-way turned to the window. Suddenly his face changed, and he whispered in a state of excitement:
“Jenny, she is down there in the street!”
“Who?”
“She—Rebecca!”
Jenny rose. She felt she could have screamed with exasperation and disgust. She trembled; every fibre of her body was quivering with revolt. She would not be involved in all this—these wicked, odious suspicions, quarrels, spiteful words, and scenes—no, she would not.
“Jenny, my child, you are shivering—don’t be afraid. I won’t let her hurt you.”
“Afraid? Far from it.” She steeled herself at once. “I have been here to fetch you; we have looked at your drawings, and we are now going to your house to supper.”
“She may not have noticed anything.”
“Heavens! we have nothing to hide. If she had not seen that I am here she will soon get to know it. I am going with you; we must do it for your sake as well as for mine—do you hear?”
Gram looked at her: “Yes, let us go, then.”
When they got down in the street Mrs. Gram was gone.
“Let us take the tram, Gert; it is late,” she said, adding in a sudden temper: “Oh, we must stop all this—if only for Helge’s sake.”
Mrs. Gram opened the door. Gert Gram ventured an explanation; Jenny looked frankly into the angry eyes of his wife: “I am sorry Helge is out for the evening. Do you think he will be home early?”
“I am surprised you did not remember it,” Mrs. Gram said to her husband. “It is no pleasure to Miss Winge to sit here with us two old people.”
“Oh, that is all right,” said Jenny.
“I don’t remember hearing that Helge was going out this evening,” said Gram.
“Fancy your coming without any needlework,” said Mrs. Gram, when they were sitting in the drawing-room after supper. “You are always so industrious.”
“I left the studio so late, I had no time to go home in between. Perhaps you could find me something?”
Jenny conversed with Mrs. Gram about the price of embroidery patterns at home and in Paris, and about books she had lent her. Gram was reading. Now and again she felt his eyes on her. Helge returned about eleven.
“What is the matter?” he asked, when they walked down the stairs. “Has there been a scene again?”
“No, not at all,” she replied, in a short, irritated voice. “I suppose your mother did not like my coming home with your father.”
“It seems to me, too, that you need not have done it,” said Helge humbly.
“I am going home by tram.” Overwrought, and unable to control herself, she pulled her arm out of his. “I cannot stand any more tonight, and I will not have these scenes with you every time I have been to your home. Good-night.”
“Jenny! Wait! Jenny!...” He hurried after her, but she was already at the stop when the tram came, and got in, leaving him without a word.
VII
Jenny walked listlessly about in her studio next morning and could not settle down to anything. The pouring rain was beating against the big window. She stopped to look at the wet tiles of the roofs, the black chimneys, and the telephone wires, along which the small raindrops were rolling down like pearls until they gathered into one large one and fell off, to be replaced immediately by others.
She might go to her mother and the children in the country for a few days. She must go away from all this. Or she might go to an hotel in some other town and write for Helge to come and talk things over with her quietly. If they could only be together again—they two alone! She tried to think of their spring in Rome, of the silvery haze over the mountains, and of her own happiness in it all. But she could not reconstruct the picture of Helge from that time—as he had appeared to her enamoured eyes.
Those days seemed already so far away; they were an isolated episode in her life, and although she knew they were a reality she could not connect them with her present existence.
Helge—her Helge was lost to her in the home at Welhavensgaten, and she herself could not fit in there. It seemed unthinkable that she should have anything to do with those people now and in all the time to come. Yes—Gram was right—they must go away.
And she would go at once—before Helge came, asking for an explanation of her behaviour yesterday. She packed a bag, and as she was putting on her mackintosh somebody knocked at the door—again and again—she knew it was Helge. She stood absolutely still and waited till he had gone. After a while she took her bag, locked the studio, and went. Half-way down the stairs she saw a man sitting in one of the windows. It was Helge. He had seen her too, so she went down to him. They looked at each other in silence.
“Why did you not open just now?” he asked.
Jenny did not answer.
“Did you not hear me knocking?” He looked at her bag: “Are you going to your mother?”
She hesitated a little, then said: “No; I thought of going to Holmestrand for a few days and writing to you from there to come down, so that we could be together for a time without undue interference and scenes. I should like to talk matters over with you in peace and quiet.”
“I am anxious to speak to you too. Can we not go up to your place?”
She did not answer directly.
“Is there anybody there?” he asked.
Jenny looked at him: “Anybody in my studio when I have left?”
“There might be somebody you do not wish to be seen with.”
She turned purple in the face: “Why? How could I know that you were sitting there spying on me?”
“My dear Jenny, I don’t mean to say that there was any harm in it, not on your part at least.”
Jenny said nothing, but went up the stairs again. In the studio she placed her bag on the floor, and without taking off her things stood looking at Helge while he hung up his coat and put his umbrella in the corner.
“Father told me this morning that you had been to the office and that mother had been below in the street.”
“Yes. It is a peculiar manner you people have—of spying, I mean. I must say, I find it hard to get accustomed to it.”
Helge turned very red.
“Forgive me, Jenny—I had to speak to you, and the porter said he was sure you were in. You know very well that I don’t suspect you.”
“Really, I hardly know anything,” she said, overcome with it all. “I cannot bear it any longer. All this suspicion and secrecy and discord. Good heavens, Helge!—can’t you protect me from all this?”
“My poor Jenny.” He rose and went to the window, where he remained standing with his back to her. “I have suffered more than you know. It is all so hopeless. Can you not see for yourself that mother’s jealousy is not without foundation?”
Jenny began to shiver. He turned round and saw it.
“I don’t believe father is aware of it himself. If he were, he would not give in like that to his desire to be with you. But he told me himself that we ought to go away from here, both of us. I am not so sure that your going away now is not his idea too.”
“No; I decided myself to go to Holmestrand, but he spoke to me yesterday about leaving town, when—when we got married.”
She went to him and put her hands on his shoulders.
“Dearest—if it is as you say, I will have to go away. Helge, Helge! What shall we do?”
“I am going,” he said abruptly, lifting her hands from his shoulders and pressing them against his face.
They stood a moment in silence.
“But I must go too. Can you not understand? As long as I thought your mother absurd, even common, I could keep my countenance, but now it is different. You should not have said it, Helge—even if you are mistaken. I cannot go there any more with that on my mind. Whether she is justified or not, I cannot meet her eyes. I shall not be myself, and I shall look guilty.”
“Come,” said Helge, leading her to the sofa and sitting down beside her.
“I am going to ask you a question. Do you love me, Jenny?”
“You know I do,” she said quickly, as if frightened.
He took her cold hand between both of his: “I know you did once—though, God knows, I never understood why. But I knew it was true when you said so. You were loving and kind to me, and I was happy, but I was always afraid of a time coming when you would not love me any longer.”
She looked up in his face, saying: “I am very, very fond of you, Helge.”
“I know,” he answered, with a shadow of a smile. “I don’t think you turn cold all at once to somebody you have loved—you are not that kind. I know that you don’t wish to make me suffer, and that you will suffer yourself the moment you understand that you don’t love me any longer. I love you above everything.”
He bent his head in tears. She put her arms round him.
“Helge—my own darling boy.”
He raised his head and pushed her gently away from him: “Jenny, that time in Rome I could have made you mine—you wanted it yourself, for you believed that we could only find happiness in a life together. I was not so sure, I suppose, as I did not risk it. But here at home I have been wanting you more than ever. I wanted you to be mine entirely, for I was afraid of losing you, but I saw you were frightened every time you understood that I was longing for you.”
She looked at him in awe. Yes, he was right—she had not wished to admit it, but it was so.
“If I asked you now—this moment—would you consent?”
Jenny moved her lips; then came a quick and firm “Yes.”
Helge smiled sadly, kissing her hand: “Gladly, because you wish to be mine? Because you cannot conceive of any happiness unless you are mine and I am yours? Not only because you want to be kind to me or don’t want to break your word—tell me the truth.”
She threw herself down on his knee and sobbed: “Let me go away for a time. I want to go up in the mountains. I must recover myself. I want to be your Jenny, as I was in Rome. I do want it, Helge, but I am so confused now. When I am myself again I will write you to come, and I will be your own Jenny again—yours only.”
“I am my mother’s son,” said Helge quietly. “We have got estranged from one another. Will you not convince me that I am everything in the world to you, the only man, more than anything else?—more than your work and your friends, to whom I felt you belonged more than to me—just as you feel a stranger among the people I belong to.”
“I did not feel a stranger towards your father.”
“No, but my father and I are strangers to one another. There is one interest—your work—which I cannot share with you completely, and I know now that I should be jealous of it. You see, I am her son. If I am not convinced that I am everything in the world to you, I cannot help being jealous—anxiously fearing that some day there might come another whom you could love more, who could understand you better. I am jealous by nature.”
“You must not be jealous, or everything will go to pieces. I cannot bear to be distrusted. I would rather you deceived me than doubted me—I could better forgive you that.”
“I could not”—with a bitter smile.
Jenny stroked the hair from his forehead and dried his eyes.
“We love one another, don’t we, Helge? When we get away from all this and we both wish everything to be well and right, don’t you think we can make one another happy?”
“I have seen too much. I dare not trust my good intentions or yours. Others have built their hopes on this and failed—I have seen what a hell two people can make life for each other. You will have to give me an answer to what I asked you. Do you love me? Do you wish to be mine—as you did in Rome? Do you wish it more than anything else in the world?”
“I love you very dearly, Helge,” she said, crying piteously.
“Thank you,” he said, kissing her hand. “I know you cannot help it, poor darling, that you don’t love me.”
“Helge,” she said imploringly.
“You cannot say that you wish me to stay because you would not be able to live without me. Dare you take the responsibility for everything that may happen if you say you love me—only so as not to send me away in sadness?”
Jenny sat looking down.
Helge put on his overcoat.
“Good-bye, Jenny.” He clasped her hand.
“Are you going away from me, Helge?”
“Yes. I am going.”
“And you will not come back?”
“Not unless you can say what I asked you to say.”
“I cannot say it now,” she whispered in agony.
Helge touched her hair lightly, and left.
Jenny remained on the sofa crying long and bitterly—her mind a perfect blank. Tired with crying, and worn out after all these months of petty, racking humiliation and quarrels, she felt her heart empty and cold. Helge was probably right.
After a while she began to feel hungry, and, looking at her watch, saw it was six. She had been sitting like this for four hours. When she rose to put on her coat she noticed that she had had it on all the time.
By the door she perceived a small pool of water running on to some of her pictures standing against the wall. She went for a duster to wipe it up, and, realizing suddenly that the pool was left from Helge’s umbrella, she leaned her forehead against the door and cried again.
VIII
Her dinner did not take long. She tried to read a paper to divert her mind for a moment, but it was no good. She might just as well go home and sit there.
On the upper landing a man stood waiting. He was tall and thin. She took the last steps running, calling out Helge’s name.
“It is not Helge,” came the answer. It was his father.
Jenny stood breathless before him, stretching out her hands: “Gert—what is it?—has anything happened?”
“Hush, hush!” He took her hand. “Helge has gone—he went to Kongsberg on a visit to a friend—a schoolfellow of his who lives there. Were you afraid, child, that something else had happened?”
“Oh, I don’t know.”
“My dear Jenny—you are quite beside yourself.”
She went past him in the passage and opened her door. There was still daylight in the studio and Gert Gram looked at her. He was pale himself.
“Do you feel it so much? Helge said—at least that is what I understood him to say—that you have agreed to—that you both think you are not suited to each other.”
Jenny was silent. Hearing somebody else say it, she wanted to protest. Up to now she had not quite realized that it was all over, but here was this man saying that they had agreed to part, and Helge had gone and her love for him was gone—she could not find it in her any more. It was all over, but, heavens! how was it possible, when she had not wanted it to end?
“Does it hurt so much?” he asked again. “Do you still love him?”
“Of course I love him.” Her voice shook. “One does not cease all at once loving somebody one has been very fond of, and one cannot be indifferent to having caused suffering.”
Gram did not speak at once; he sat down on the sofa, twisting his hat between his fingers: “I understand that it is very painful to both of you, but don’t you believe, Jenny, when you think it over, that it is for the best?”
She did not reply.
“I cannot tell you how pleased I was when I met you and saw what kind of a woman my son had won. It looked to me as if my boy had got everything that I have had to renounce in life. You were so pretty and refined, I had an impression that you were as good as you were clever, strong, and independent. And you were a talented artist as well, with no hesitation as to your aim and means. You spoke of your work with joy and tenderness and of your lover in the same way.
“Then Helge came home. You seemed to change then—in a remarkably short time. The disagreeable things which are the order of the day in our home impressed you too much; it seemed impossible that an unsympathetic future mother-in-law could completely spoil the happiness of a young loving woman. I began to fear that there was some other deeper cause that you would see for yourself later on, and that perhaps you realized your love for Helge was not so strong as you had imagined. Or that you understood you were not really suited to each other, and that it was more a temporary emotion which had brought you together. In Rome you were both alone, young and free, happy in your work; in strange circumstances, without the pressure of everyday ties, and both with the youthful longing for love in your hearts. Was that not enough to awaken a mutual sympathy and understanding even if they did not penetrate to the very inmost of your being?”
Jenny stood by the window looking at him. While he was speaking she felt an intense indignation at his words—although he might be right. Yet he did not understand, as he sat there plucking it all asunder, what it was that really hurt her:
“It does not make it easier even if there is some sense in what you say. Perhaps you are right.”
“Is it not better anyhow that you have realized it now than if it had happened later, when the bonds would be stronger, and the suffering much greater in breaking them?”
“It is not that—it is not that.” She interrupted herself suddenly: “It is that I—yes—I despise myself. I have given way to an emotional impulse—lied to myself; I ought to have known if I could keep my word before I said: I love. I have always hated that kind of levity more than anything in the world. Now—to my shame—I find I have done that very thing.”
Gram looked at her. Suddenly he turned pale—and then crimson. After a while he said, speaking with effort:
“I said it was better for two people who were not in perfect understanding to realize it before their relations had made such a change in their lives that neither of them—especially she—could ever obliterate the traces. If such be the case, they should try with some resignation and goodwill on either side to bring about harmony. Should this not be possible, then there is still the other way out. I don’t know, of course, if you and Helge—how far you are affected....”
Jenny laughed scornfully:
“I understand what you mean. To me it is just as binding that I have wanted to be his—promised it and cannot keep my promise—and just as humiliating as if I had really given myself to him—perhaps even more so.”
“You will not speak like that when once you meet the man you can love with true, deep feeling.”
Jenny shrugged her shoulders:
“Do you really believe in true and great love as you say?”
“Yes, I do. I know that you young people find the expression ludicrous, but I believe in it—for a good reason.”
“I believe that every one loves according to his individuality; those who have a greater mind and are true to themselves do not fritter themselves away in little love affairs. I thought that I myself.... But I was twenty-eight when I met Helge, and I had never yet been in love. I was tired of waiting and wanted to try it. He was in love, young, warm-blooded, and sincere—and it tempted me. I lied to myself—exactly as all other women do. His intensity warmed me, and I was ready enough to imagine that I shared it, although I knew such an illusion can only be kept alive as long as there is no claim on one to prove one’s love.
“Other women live under this illusion quite innocently, because they do not know the difference between good and bad, and go on lying to themselves, but I can plead nothing of that kind in my defence. I am really just as small and selfish and false as other women, and you may depend upon it, Gert, I shall never know what that great and true love of yours is.”
“Well, Jenny,” said Gert, with his same melancholy smile—“God knows, I am neither great nor strong, and I’ve lived in lies and abominations for twelve years. But I was ten years older than you are now when I met a woman who taught me to believe in the feeling you speak of with such scorn, and my faith in it has never been shaken.”
They were silent for a moment.
“And you remained with her?” said Jenny at last.
“We had the children. I did not understand then that I should never have any influence on my own children, when another woman than their mother possessed my whole heart and soul.
“She was married too—very unhappily. Her husband was a drunkard. She had a little girl whom she could have brought with her. But we both stayed.
“It was part of the punishment, you see, for my relations with her who only gratified my senses, but was nothing to my soul. Our love was too beautiful to live on a lie; we had to conceal it like a crime.
“Believe me, Jenny, there is no other happiness than a great love.”
She went up to him and he rose; they stood an instant close to one another without speaking.
“I must go now,” he said abruptly, in a strained voice. “I must be back in time, or she will suspect something.”
Jenny nodded, and followed him to the door.
“You must not believe that your heart is beyond love,” he said; “it is a proud heart—and a warm one. Will you still count me among your friends, little girl?”
“Yes, thank you,” said Jenny, giving him her hand.
He bent over it and held it long to his lips—longer than ever before.
IX
Gunnar Heggen and Jenny Winge were to have an exhibition together in November. He came to town for that purpose. He had been in the country that summer, painting red granite, green pines, and blue sky, and had lately been to Stockholm, where he had sold a picture.
“How is Cesca?” asked Jenny, when Heggen was in her studio one morning having a drink.
“Cesca is all right.” Gunnar took a gulp from his glass, smoked, and looked at Jenny, and she looked at him.
It was so nice to be together again and talk about people and things she had got so far away from. It seemed almost as if it had been in a remote country beyond all oceans that she had known him and Cesca, lived and worked with them, and been happy with them.
She looked at his open sunburnt face and crooked nose; it had been broken when he was a child. Cesca once said that the blow had saved Gunnar’s face from being the most perfect fashion-plate type.
There was some truth in it. Looking at his features separately, they were exactly those of a rustic Adonis. His brown hair curled over a low, broad forehead and big steely blue eyes; the mouth was red, with full lips and beautiful white teeth. His face and his strong neck were tanned by the sun, and his broad, somewhat short body with well-knit muscles was almost brutally well shaped. But the sensual mouth and heavy eyelids had a peculiarly innocent and unaffected expression, and his smile could be most refined. The hands were regular working hands, with short fingers and strong joints, but the way he moved them was particularly graceful.
He had grown thinner, but looked very well and contented, while she herself felt tired and dissatisfied. He had been working the whole summer, reading Greek tragedies and Keats and Shelley when he was not painting.
“I should like to read the tragedies in the original,” said Gunnar, “and I am going to learn Greek and Latin.”
“Dear me!” exclaimed Jenny. “I am afraid there are so many things you will want to study before you get any peace in your mind that you will end by not painting at all—except in your holidays.”
“I have to learn those two languages because I am going to write some articles.”
“You!” cried Jenny, laughing. “Are you going to write articles too?”
“Yes; a long series of them about many different things. Amongst others, that we must introduce Latin and Greek into our schools again; we must see that we get some culture up here. We cannot go on like this any longer. Our national emblem will be a wooden porringer with painted roses on it and some carving, which is supposed to be a clumsy imitation of the poorest of all European styles, the rococo. That is how we are national up here in Norway. You know that the best praise they can give anybody in this country—artist or other decent fellow—is that he has broken away—broken away from school, tradition, customary manners, and ordinary civilized people’s conception of seemly behaviour and decency.
“I should like to point out for once that, considering our circumstances, it would be much more meritorious if somebody tried to get into touch with, appropriate, exchange, and bring home to this hole of ours some of the heaped-up treasures in Europe that are called culture.
“What we do is to detach a small part from a connective whole—a single ornament of a style, literally speaking—and carve and chip such an ugly and clumsy copy of it that it becomes unrecognizable. Then we boast that it is original or nationally Norwegian. And it is the same with spiritual movements.”
“Yes, but those sins were committed even when classical education was the official foundation of all education.”
“Quite so. But it was only a small part of the classics—a detached piece. A little Latin grammar and so on. We have never had a complete picture among the stories of our valued ancestors of what you might call the classical spirit. As long as we cannot have that, we are outside Europe. If we do not consider Greek and Roman history as the oldest history of our own culture, we have not got European culture. It does not matter what that history was in reality, but the version of it matters. The war between Sparta and Messene, for instance, was in fact only the fights between some half-savage tribes a very long time ago, but in the delivery of it, as we know it, it is the classic expression for an impulse which makes a sound people let themselves be killed to the last man rather than lose their individuality or the right to live their own life.
“Bless you, for many a hundred years we have not fought for our honour; we have lived merely to nurse our insides. The Persian wars were really trifles, but for a vigorous people Salamis, Thermopylæ, and the Acropolis mean the bloom of all the noblest and soundest instincts, and as long as these instincts are valued, and a people believes that it has certain qualities to uphold, and a past, a present, and a future to be proud of, these names will be surrounded by a certain glamour. And a poet can write a poem on Thermopylæ and imprint it with the feelings of his own time, as Leopardi has done in his ‘Ode to Italy.’ Do you remember I read it to you in Rome?”
Jenny nodded.
“It is a bit rhetorical, but beautiful, is it not? Do you remember the part about Italia, the fairest of women, who sits in the dust chained and with loosened hair, her tears dropping into her lap? And how he wishes to be one of the young Greeks who go to meet death at Thermopylæ, fearless and merry as if going to dance? Their names are sacred, and Simonides in dying sings songs of praise from the top of Antelos.
“And all the old beautiful tales, symbols, and parables that will never grow old. Think of Orpheus and Eurydice—so simple; the faith of love conquers death even; a single instant of doubt and everything is lost. But in this country they know only that it is the book of an opera.
“The English and the French have used the old symbols in making new and living art. Abroad, in certain good periods, there were people born with instincts and feelings so highly cultivated that they could be developed into an ability to make the fate of the Atrides understood and moving as a reality. The Swedes, too, have living connections with the classics—but we have never had them. What kind of books do we read here—and write?—feminine novels about sexless fancy-figures in empire dress, and dirty Danish books, which do not interest any man above sixteen, unless he is obliged to wear an electric belt. Or about some green youth, prattling of the mysterious eternal feminine to a little chorus girl who is impertinent to him and deceives him, because he has not sense enough to understand that the riddle can be solved by means of a good caning.”
Jenny laughed. Gunnar was walking up and down the door.
“Hjerrild, I think, is working at a book on the ‘Sphinx’ at present. As it happens, I also knew the lady once. It never went so far that I soiled my hands by giving her a thrashing, but I had been fond enough of her to feel it rather badly when I discovered her deceit. I have worked it off, you see. I don’t think there is anything you cannot get over in time by your own effort.”
Jenny sat silent for a second, then said: “Tell me about Cesca.”
“Well, I don’t think Cesca has touched a paint-brush since she married. When I went to see them she opened the door; they have no servant. She wore a big apron and had a broom in her hand. They have a studio and two small rooms; they cannot both work in the studio, of course, and her whole time is taken up with the house, she said. The first morning I was there she sprawled on the floor the whole time. Ahlin was out. First she swept, then she crept round and poked under the furniture with a brush for those little tufts of dust, you know, that stick in the corners. Then she scrubbed the floor and dusted the room, and you should have seen how awkwardly she did it all. We went out to buy food together; I was to lunch with them. When Ahlin came home she retired to the kitchen, and when the lunch was ready at last, all her little curls were damp—but the food was not bad. She washed up in the most unpractical way, going to the sink with every article to rinse it under the tap. Ahlin and I helped her, and I gave her some good advice, you know.
“I asked them to dine with me, and Cesca, poor thing, was very pleased at not having to cook and wash up.
“If there are going to be children—as I suppose there are—you may depend upon it that Cesca has done with painting, and it would be a great pity. I cannot help thinking it’s sad.”
“I don’t know. Husband and children always hold the first place with a woman; sooner or later she will long to have them.”
Gunnar looked at her—then sighed:
“If they are fond of one another, that is to say.”
“Do you think Cesca is happy with Ahlin?”
“I don’t really know. I think she is very fond of him. Anyhow it was ‘Lennart thinks’ and ‘Will you?’ and ‘Shall I?’ and ‘Do you think the sauce is all right, Lennart?’ and so on the whole time. She has taken to speaking a shocking mixture of Swedish and Norwegian. I must say that I don’t quite understand their relations. He was very much in love with her, you remember, and he is not despotic or brutal—quite the contrary—but she has become so cowed and humble, our little Cesca. It cannot be housekeeping worries only, although they seemed to weigh heavily on her. She has no talent in that direction, but she is a conscientious little thing in her way, and they are rather badly off, I understand.
“Perhaps she has made some great mistake, profited by the wedding night, for instance, to tell him about Hans Hermann, Norman Douglas, and Hjerrild, and all the rest of her achievements from one end to the other. It might have been just a little overwhelming.”
“Cesca has never concealed anything about her doings. I am sure he knew all her story before.”
“H’m,” said Gunnar, mixing himself a fresh drink. “There might have been one or two points she has kept quiet so far, and thought she ought to tell her husband.”
“For shame, Gunnar,” said Jenny.
“Well—you never really know what to think about Cesca. Her version of the Hans Hermann business is very peculiar, though I am sure Cesca has not done anything that I would call wrong. I cannot—on the whole—see what difference it makes to a man if his wife has had a liaison—or several—before, provided she had been true and loyal while it lasted. This claim of physical innocence is crude. If a woman has been really fond of a man and has accepted his love, it is rather mean of her to leave him without spending a gift on him.
“Naturally I should prefer my wife never to have loved anybody else before, so, perhaps, when it is your own wife you may think differently. Old prejudices and selfish vanity may count for something.”
Jenny sipped at her drink, and was on the point of saying something when she checked herself. Gunnar had stopped by the window, standing with his back to her, his hands in his trouser pockets:
“Oh, I think it is sad, Jenny—I mean when once in a while you meet a woman who is really gifted in one way or another and takes a pleasure in developing her gift by energetic work—feels that she is an individual who can decide for herself what is right or wrong, and has the will to cultivate faculties and instincts that are good and valuable and eradicate others which are bad and unworthy of her; and then one fine day she throws herself away on a man, gives up everything, work, development—herself for the sake of a wretched male. Don’t you think it sad, Jenny?”
“It is. But that is how we are made—all of us.”
“I don’t understand it. We men never do understand you, and I think it is because we cannot get it into our heads that individuals who are supposed to be reasonable beings are so completely devoid of self-esteem, for that is what you are. Woman has no soul—that is a true word. You admit more or less openly that love affairs are the only things that really interest you.”
“There are men who do the same—at least in their behaviour.”
“Yes, but a decent man has no respect for those effeminates. Officially at least we do not wish it to be considered anything but a natural diversion beside our work. Or a capable man wishes to have a family because he knows he can provide for more than himself, and wants somebody to continue his work.”
“But surely woman has other missions in life.”
“That is mere talk—unless she wants to be a reasonable being and work, and not content herself with being a female only. What is the good of producing a lot of children if they are not meant to grow up for any other purpose than continued production—if the raw material is not to be used?”
“It may be true to a certain extent,” Jenny said, smiling.
“I know it is. I have seen enough of women to know, ever since I was a youngster and went to the workers’ academy. I remember a girl at one of the English classes; she wanted to learn the language to be able to talk to the sailors on the foreign men-of-war. The only aim of the girls that counted for anything was to get a situation in England or America. We boys studied because we wanted to learn something for the sake of mental gymnastics and to complete as much as possible what we had learnt at school. The girls read novels.
“Take socialism, for instance. Do you think any woman has an idea what it really means, unless she has a husband who has taught her to see? Try to explain to a woman why the community must arrive at such a stage that every child born must have the opportunity to cultivate its faculties, if it has any, and to live its life in liberty and beauty—if it can bear liberty and has a sense of beauty. Women believe that liberty means no work and no restrictions as to their behaviour. Sense of beauty they have none; they only want to dress up in the ugliest and most expensive things, because they are the fashion. Look at the homes they arrange. The richer, the uglier. Is there any fashion, be it ever so ugly or indecent, that they don’t adopt if they can afford it? You cannot deny it.
“I won’t mention their morals, because they haven’t any. Let alone your treatment of us men, the way you treat one another is disgusting.”
Jenny smiled. She thought he was right in some things and wrong in others, but she was not inclined to discuss them. Yet she felt she ought to say something:
“Aren’t you rather hard on us?” she ventured.
“You shall see it all in print one day,” he said complacently.
“There is something in it, but all women are not alike; there is a difference even if it be only a difference in degree.”
“Certainly, but what I have said applies to a certain extent to all of you, and do you know why? Because the principal thing to all of you is a man—one you have or one you miss. The only thing in life which is serious and worth anything—I mean work—is never a serious thing to you. To the best of you it is so for a short time, and I believe it is because you are sure when you are young and pretty that ‘he’ will come along. But as time goes and he does not turn up, and you get on in years, you get slack and weary and dissatisfied.”
Jenny nodded.
“Look here, Jenny. I have always placed you on the same level as a first-class man. You will soon be twenty-nine, and that is about the right age to begin independent work. You don’t mean to say that now, when you should begin your individual life in earnest, you wish to encumber yourself with husband, children, housekeeping, and all those things which would only be so many ties and a hindrance in your work?”
Jenny laughed softly.
“If you had all those things and were going to die, surrounded by husband and kiddies and all that, and you felt you had not attained what you knew you might have done, don’t you think you would repent and regret? I am sure you would.”
“Yes, but if I had reached the farthest goal of my abilities and I knew, when dying, that my life and my work would live a long time after I had gone—and I were alone, with no living soul belonging to me, don’t you think I should regret and repent then too?”
Heggen was silent a moment.
“Yes. Celibacy, of course, is not the same to women as to men. It often means that they are kept outside all those things in life which people make the most fuss about—simply that whole groups of organs, mental as well as physical, are wasting away unused. Ugh! Sometimes I almost wish you would be a little frivolous for once and have done with it all, so that you could work in peace and quiet afterwards.”
“Women who have been a little frivolous, as you say, are not done with it. If they were disappointed the first time, they hope for better luck the next. One does not settle down disappointed, and before you know it you have had many a try.”
“Not you,” he said quickly.
“Thanks. It is quite new to hear you speak like that. You have always said that when women begin such a life they invariably end by being dragged down completely.”
“Most of them do. But there must be some exceptions. It applies to those who have no other instincts in life than a man—not to those who are something by themselves and not only of female sex. Why should you, for instance, not be true and loyal to a man even if you both saw that you could not give up everything to tie yourself down as his wife for the rest of your life? Love always dies sooner or later. Don’t let yourself be deceived on that point.”
“Yes; we know it—but still we won’t believe it.” She laughed. “No, my friend—either we love and believe it is the only thing worth living for, or we do not love—and are unhappy because we don’t.”
“Jenny, I don’t like to hear you speak like that. No; to feel oneself in full vigour, with all faculties alert, ready to adopt and appropriate, to adapt and produce, make the utmost possible of oneself—work—that is the only thing worth living for, believe me.”
X
Jenny bent over Gert Gram’s chrysanthemums: “I am so glad you like my pictures.”
“Yes, I like them very much, especially the one of the young girl with the corals—as I told you already.”
Jenny shook her head.
“I think the colouring is so lovely,” said Gram.
“It is not well finished. The scarf and the dress should have been more thoroughly worked up, but when I was painting it both Cesca and I were distracted by other things.”
After a while she asked:
“Do you hear from Helge? How is he?”
“He does not write much. He is working at the essay for his doctor of science degree—you know he prepared himself for it in Rome. He says he is all right. He does not write to his mother at all, and she, of course, is very vexed about it. She has not improved as a companion, I am sorry to say, but she is not happy, poor thing, at present.”
Jenny moved the flowers to her writing-table and began to arrange them:
“I am glad Helge is working again. He did not get much done in the summer.”
“Neither did you, dear.”
“No, it is true, and the worst of it is that I have not been able to start yet. But I don’t feel the least inclined to, and I was going to begin etching this winter, but....”
“Don’t you think it quite natural that a disappointment like yours should take some time to get over? Your exhibition is a success, and has been well spoken of in the papers. Don’t you think that is enough to make you want to work again? You have got a bid for the Aventine picture already—are you going to accept it?”
She shrugged her shoulders:
“Of course. I am obliged to accept. They always need money at home, as you know. Besides, I must go abroad; it is not good for me to stay here long.”
“Do you want to go abroad?” said Gram gently, looking down. “Well, I suppose you are; it is only natural.”
“Oh, this exhibition,” said Jenny, sitting down in the rocking-chair—“all my pictures were painted such a long time ago, it seems to me, even the recent ones. The sketch of the Aventine was finished the day I met Helge, and I painted the picture while we were together—that of Cesca as well. And the one from Stenersgaten in your place, while I was waiting for him to come home. I have done nothing since. Ugh! So Helge is at work again?”
“It is only natural, my dear, that an experience like yours should leave deeper traces in a woman.”
“Oh yes, yes—a woman; that is the whole misery of it. It is just like a woman to become uninterested and utterly lazy because of a love that does not even exist.”
“My dear Jenny,” said Gram, “I think it quite natural that it should take some time for you to get over it—to get beyond it, as it were; one always does, and then one understands that the experience has not been in vain, but that one’s soul is the richer for it in some way or other.”
Jenny did not reply.
“I am sure there is much you would not like to have missed—all the happy, warm, sunny days with your friend in that beautiful country. Am I not right?”
“Will you tell me one thing, Gert?—is it your own personal experience that you have been able to enrich your soul, as you say, by the incidents of your life?”
He gave a start as if hurt and surprised at her brutality; it was a moment before he answered her:
“It is quite a different thing. The experiences which are the results of sin—I don’t mean sin in the orthodox sense, but the consequences of acting contrary to your understanding—are always far from sweet. I mean that my experiences have made my life in a way richer and deeper than a lesser misfortune might have done—since it was my fate not to attain the greatest happiness. I have a feeling that once it will be the case in a still higher degree, and will help me to understand the real meaning of life.
“In your case, I meant it in a different way. Even if your happiness proved to be of a passing nature, it was pure and guiltless while it lasted, because you believed in it implicitly and enjoyed it without any mental reservation. You deceived nobody but yourself.”
Jenny did not speak. She would have had a great deal to say in opposition, but she felt dimly that he would not understand her.
“Don’t you remember Ibsen’s words:
“‘Though I ram my ship aground, it was grand to sail the seas’?”
“I am surprised at you, Gert, for repeating those idiotic words. Nowadays we have too great a feeling of responsibility and too much self-esteem, most of us, to accept that kind of reasoning. If I am wrecked and sink, I will try not to wince, if I know that I have not run my ship aground myself. As far as I understand, the best sailors prefer to go down with their ship if the fault is theirs, rather than survive the disaster.”
“I am of the opinion that, as a rule, one can thank oneself for every misfortune,” said Gram, smiling, “but that one can nearly always draw some spiritual benefit out of it.”
“I agree with you on the first point—and on the second on the condition that the misfortune does not consist in the diminution of one’s self-esteem.”
“You should not take this so seriously. You are quite excited and bitter. I remember what you said on the day Helge left, but, my dear child, you cannot really mean that one should quench every affection at its birth unless one can guarantee the moment it comes into life that it will last until one’s death, endure all adversity, be ready for every sacrifice, and that it will understand the personality of its object as in a vision, show up its most sacred depths to prevent later change of opinion about him or her.”
“Yes,” said Jenny sharply.