Jenny: A Novel

“Lennart was very weak after his illness, and the doctor said he must go into the country—and I myself was tired and overworked, so I said I ought to go away for a change and a rest as I was going to have a baby. I got his permission to write to papa for money. We got it and went to Wärmland, having a lovely time. Lennart was getting well and strong, and I took up my painting again. When he understood I was not expecting a child really, he asked if I had not made a mistake, and I told him I had tricked him, not wanting to lie to him. But he is angry with me for it, and I can see that he does not quite believe me. If he understood my nature, don’t you think he would believe in me?”

“Yes, Cesca dear.”

“You see, I had told him the same thing once before—about the baby, I mean—in the autumn, when he was so sad and we were not happy. I wanted him to be pleased and to be kind to me, and he was. It was a lovely time. I had really lied, but I began to believe it myself at last, for I thought God would make it true, so that I need not disappoint him. But God did not do it.

“I am so unhappy because I can’t have one. Do you think it is true—some people say it is so,” she whispered emotionally—“that a woman cannot have a child if she cannot feel—passionate?”

“No,” said Jenny sharply. “I am sure it is only nonsense.”

“I am sure everything would come all right then, for Lennart wishes it so very much. And I—oh, I think I should be so good—an angel for joy at having a dear little child of my own. Can you imagine anything more wonderful?”

“No,” whispered Jenny, confused, “when you love each other. It would help you to get over many difficulties.”

“Yes, it would. If it were not so awkward I would go and see a doctor. Don’t you think I ought to? I think I will some day, but I am so stupid about it—I feel so shy. I suppose it really is my duty as I am married. I might go to a lady doctor—one who is married and has children of her own.

“Think of it! A tiny little creature all your own; Lennart would be so happy!”

Jenny set her teeth in the dark.

“Don’t you think I ought to go home tomorrow?”

“Yes.”

“I will tell Lennart everything. I don’t know if he will understand me—I don’t myself, but I am going to tell him the truth always. Should I not, Jenny?”

“When you think it is right you should do so. One must always do what one thinks right, and never do anything one is not absolutely sure about.”

“Good-night, Jenny dear.” She embraced her friend with sudden earnestness. “Thank you! It is so lovely to have you to talk to; you are so good, and you know how to take me. You and Gunnar always get me on to the right way. I don’t know what I should do if it weren’t for you.”

Then, standing by the bed, she said: “Won’t you come through Stockholm when you go abroad this autumn? Please, do! You could stay with us. I am getting a thousand kroner from father because he is going to give Borghild the same for her trip to Paris.”

“Thanks, I should like to, but I don’t know yet what I am going to do.”

“Do come if you can! Are you sleepy? Do you want me to go now?”

“I am a little tired,” and, pulling Cesca’s head down, she kissed her. “God bless you, darling.”

“Thank you.” Cesca went across the floor on her bare feet; at the door she turned, saying in a sad, childish voice: “I do wish Lennart and I could be happy!”

IV

Gert and Jenny were walking side by side down the windy path under ragged pines. He stopped to pick some little wild strawberries, ran after her, and put them in her mouth. She thanked him with a smile, and he took her hand as they walked towards the sea that showed glittering blue between the trees.

He looked bright and young in a light summer suit, the panama hiding his hair completely. Jenny sat down near the edge of the wood, Gert lying on the grass beside her in the shade of big drooping birches.

It was scorching hot and still; the grassy slope by the water was dried yellow. Over the point hung a blue metallic bar of haze with white and smoke-yellow clouds in front. The fjord was light blue, streaked with the currents, the sailing boats lay still and white, and the smoke from the steamers hung long in the air in grey strips. There was a slight swirl of water round the pebbles, and the twigs of the birches moved gently above their heads, dropping one or two leaves dried by the heat.

One of them fell on her fair curly hair—she had taken off her hat—and Gert removed it. Looking at it, he said:

“Queer how the rain keeps off this summer. You women are much better off than we are, wearing such thin dresses. It would look as if you were in half-mourning but for those pink beads. It is very becoming, though.”

The dress was a dead white, with small black blossoms, gathered all over and held at the waist by a black silk belt. The straw hat in her lap was black, trimmed with black velvet roses, and the pale pink crystal beads shone against the delicate skin of her neck.

He bent forward to kiss her foot above the rounding of the shoe, and, following with his fingers the delicate bend of her instep in the thin stocking, grasped her ankle. She loosened his hand gently and he seized hers, holding it, smiling, in a firm grip. She smiled back at him and turned away her head.

“You are so quiet, Jenny. Is it the heat?”

“Yes,” she said, and then was silent again.

At a short distance from them, where the garden of a villa reached down to the sea, some children were playing on a landing-stage; a gramophone was singing sleepily inside the house. Now and again the breeze brought the sound of music from the band at the bathing establishment.

“Gert”—Jenny took hold of his hand suddenly—“when I have been a short time with mamma and come back to town again, I shall go.”

“Where?” He raised himself on his elbow. “Where do you think of going?”

“To Berlin.” She felt her voice tremble as she spoke.

Gert looked into her face; neither of them spoke. At last he said:

“When did you make up your mind to go?”

“You know it has been my intention all along to go abroad again.”

“I know. But I mean how long have you been determined—when did you decide to go so soon?”

“At Tegneby.”

“I wish you had told me before,” said Gram, and his voice, low and calm as it was, cut her to the heart.

She was silent for a moment.

“I did not want to write it, Gert. I would rather tell you. When I wrote you yesterday to come and see me I meant to tell you, but I could not.”

His face turned livid.

“I see. My God, how you must have suffered, child!” he exclaimed.

“Yes, mostly for your sake, Gert. I will not ask you to forgive me.”

“I forgive you? Great heavens! Can you forgive me? I knew this day would come.”

“I suppose we both did.”

He threw himself suddenly face downwards on the ground. She bent and laid her hand on his neck.

“Oh, my dear Jenny—my little one—what have I done to you?”

“Dearest....”

“Little white bird, have I touched you with my ugly unclean hands—spotted your white wings?”

“Gert”—she took both his hands, speaking impetuously—“listen to me. You have done nothing but what was good and kind; it is I who have done wrong. I was tired and you gave me rest; I was cold and you warmed me. I needed rest and I needed warmth; I needed to feel that somebody loved me. I did not wish to deceive you, Gert, but you did not understand—I could not make you see that I loved you in a different way—with a very poor love. Can you not understand?”

“No, Jenny, I don’t believe that a young innocent girl gives herself to a man if she does not believe her love will last.”

“That is just what I ask you to forgive—I knew you did not understand, and yet I accepted all you gave me. It became more and more unendurable, and I realized that I could not go on. I am fond of you, Gert, but I cannot go on only taking when I can give you nothing that is real.”

“Is this what you wanted to tell me yesterday?” asked Gert after a pause.

She nodded.

“And instead....”

Jenny turned scarlet.

“I had not the courage. You were so happy to come, and I saw that you had been longing and waiting.”

He raised his head quickly: “You should not have done it. No, you should not have given me—alms.”

Her face was turned away; she remembered the painful hours of yesterday in her hot, stuffy studio, hurriedly dusting and tidying to receive him, her heart aching with sorrow; but she did not care to tell him:

“I did not quite know myself—when you came. I thought for an instant—I wanted to make sure.”

“Alms.” He moved his head as if in pain. “It was alms all the time, then—what you gave me.”

“But, Gert, don’t you understand that it is just what I have accepted from you—alms—always?”

“No,” he said abruptly, lying face downwards again. After a little he lifted his head:

“Jenny, is there any one else?”

“No,” she replied, vexed at the thought.

“Don’t think I would reproach you if there had been another—a young man—your equal; I could understand that easier.”

“You don’t seem able to realize—I don’t think there need be another.”

“Perhaps not. It seemed to me more likely, and, remembering what you wrote about Heggen being at Tegneby and going to Berlin....”

Jenny blushed deeply:

“How can you think that I would have—yesterday?”

Gert was silent. Then he said wearily:

“I cannot quite make you out.”

She was suddenly seized by a wish to hurt him.

“In a way it would not be wrong to say that there was another—a third person.”

He looked at her searchingly, then clutched her arm all of a sudden:

“Jenny—good God!—what do you mean?”

But she regretted her words already, and said hurriedly:

“Yes, my work—my art.”

Gert Gram had risen to his knees before her:

“Jenny—is there anything—particular—tell me the truth—don’t lie to me—is there anything the matter with you?”

She tried for a second to look him straight in the eyes, then bent her head. Gert Gram fell forward with his face in her lap.

“O God!—O God!...”

“Gert, dear, compose yourself. You irritated me with your talk about another. I ought not to have told you. I did not mean to let you know until afterwards.”

“I would never have forgiven you for not telling me,” said Gram. “You must have known this some time. Do you know how...?”

“Three months,” she answered shortly.

“Jenny”—he seized her hands in awe—“you cannot break with me now—not in this way. We cannot part now.”

“Oh yes.” She stroked his face caressingly. “If this had not happened I daresay we could still have been together some time, but now I must arrange my life accordingly, and make the best of it.”

He was silent a moment.

“Listen to me, little one. You know I was divorced last month. In two years’ time I shall be free, and then I will come to you to give you—and it—my name. I ask nothing from you, you understand—nothing—but I claim the right to give you the redress I owe you. God knows I shall suffer because it cannot be done before. Nothing else will I claim; you shall not be tied in the least to me—an old man.”

“Gert, I am glad that you are separated from her, but I will tell you once and for all that I am not going to marry you when I cannot be your wife in truth. It is not because of the difference in age. If I did not feel that I have never wholly been yours, as I should have been, I would stay with you—your wife as long as you were young, your friend when old age came—even your nurse—willingly and happily. But I know I cannot be what a wife ought to be, and I cannot promise a thing I could not keep just because of what other people might say—church or civil contract, it makes no difference.”

“It is madness, Jenny, to talk like that.”

“You cannot make me change on that point,” she replied quietly.

“What are you going to do, child? I cannot let you go now. What will happen to you?—you must let me help you.”

“Hush. You see I take it calmly. I suppose once you are in for it, it is not so bad as you imagine. Fortunately I have still some money left.”

“But, Jenny, think of the people who will be unkind to you—look down on you.”

“Nobody can do that. There is only one thing I am ashamed of, and it is that I allowed you to waste your love on me.”

“Such foolish talk! You don’t know how heartless people can be; they will treat you unkindly, insult and hurt you.”

“I don’t mind that very much, Gert.” She smiled vaguely. “Fortunately I am an artist; people expect a little scandal now and then from us.”

He shook his head. In a sudden desperate regret at having told him and given him so much pain she took him in her arms:

“My dear friend, you must not be so distressed—you see that I am not. On the contrary, I am sometimes quite happy about it. When I think that I am going to have a child—a sweet little child, my very own—I can scarcely believe it. I think it will be so great a happiness that I can hardly grasp it now. A little living being, to belong to me only, to love, to live and work for. I sometimes think that then only will my life and my work be of some purpose. Don’t you think I could make a name for myself good enough for the child too? It is only because I don’t know yet how to arrange it all that I am a little depressed sometimes, and also because you are so sad.

“Perhaps I am poor and dull and an egoist, but I am a woman, and as such I cannot but be happy at the prospect of being a mother.”

He kissed her hands:

“My poor, brave girl! It makes it almost worse for me to see you take it that way.”

Jenny smiled faintly:

“Would it not be worse still if I took it in another way?”

V

Ten days later Jenny left for Copenhagen. Her mother and Bodil Berner saw her off at the station in the early morning.

“You are a lucky one, Jenny!” said Bodil, smiling all over her little soft brown face. And she yawned till the tears came into her eyes.

“Yes, some must be the lucky ones, I suppose. But I don’t think you have anything to complain of either,” said Jenny, smiling too; but she was several times on the point of bursting into tears when she kissed her mother farewell. Standing at the compartment window looking at her, it seemed as if she had not really seen her mother for ever so long. She took in with her eyes the slightly stooping, slender figure, the fair hair that scarcely seemed grey at all, and the strangely unaffected girlish expression of her face, despite its wrinkles. Only the years, not life, had made the furrows, in spite of all she had gone through.

How would she take it if she knew? No, she would never have the courage to tell her and see her under the blow—she who knew nothing about it all and would not have understood. If it had been impossible to go away Jenny thought she would rather have taken her life. It was not love—it was cowardice. She would have to tell her sometime, of course, but it would be easier to do that later, from abroad.

As the train began to glide out from the station she saw Gert walking slowly down the platform behind her mother and sister, who were waving their handkerchiefs. He took off his hat, looking very pale.

It was the first of September. Jenny sat by the window looking out. It was a beautiful day, the air clear and cool, the sky dark blue, and the clouds pure white. The morning dew lay heavy on the rich green meadows where late daisies were in bloom. The birches at the edge of the forest were already turning yellow from the summer heat, and the bilberry shrub was copper coloured. The clusters of the rowan were deep red; where the trees stood on richer soil the leaves were still dark green. The colouring was splendid.

On the slopes stood old silver-grey farmhouses or new shining white or yellow ones with red-painted outhouses and crooked old apple trees with yellow or glassy green fruit showing among the foliage.

Time after time tears veiled her eyes; when she came back—if she ever did....

The fjord became visible near Moss, a town built along the canal, with factory walls and the small wooden houses in gay colours surrounded by gardens. Often when passing it in the train she had thought of going there some day to paint.

The train passed the junction where a branch line turns off to Tegneby. Jenny looked out of the window at the familiar places; there was the drive leading to the house, which lay behind the little fir grove, and there was the church. Dear little Cesca liked to go to church; she felt herself safe and protected there, borne away by a sentiment of supernatural strength. Cesca believed in something—she did not quite know what, but had created some kind of a God for herself.

Jenny was pleased to think that Cesca and her husband seemed to be getting on better. She had written that he had not quite understood her, but had, nevertheless, been so kind and dear and convinced that she would never do anything wrong—on purpose. Strange little Cesca! Everything must come right with her in the end. She was honest and good. But she herself was neither, not to any considerable degree. If only she need not see her mother’s tears; she could bear to hurt her—it only meant that she was afraid of scenes.

And Gert? Her heart shrank at the thought of him. A feeling of physical sickness rose in her, a despair and loathing so profound that she felt herself played out—on the point of becoming indifferent to everything.

Those awful last days in Christiania with him. She had given in at last.

He was coming to Copenhagen, and she had to promise to stay somewhere in the country so that he could come and see her. Would she ever be able to get quite free of him?

In the end she would perhaps have to leave the child with him and run away from it all—for it was a lie, all she had told him about being happy about it and the rest. Sometimes at Tegneby she had really felt so, because she only remembered it was her child—not his at all. But if it were to be a link between him and her humiliation she would have nothing to do with it. She would hate it—she hated it already at the memory of the last days before her departure. The morbid desire to cry and sob to her heart’s content was gone; she felt dry and hard as if she could never cry again.

A week later Gert Gram arrived. She was so worn out and apathetic that she could pretend to be almost in good spirits, and if he had proposed that she should move into the hotel where he was staying, she would have done so. She made him take her to the theatre, to supper at restaurants, and one day, when the weather was fine, for an excursion to Fredensborg, because she saw that it pleased him if she seemed well and happy. She gave up thinking—it was no sacrifice, for as a matter of fact her brain was tired out.

Jenny had taken rooms with a teacher’s widow in a country village. Gram accompanied her there and went back the same evening to Copenhagen. At last she was alone.

She had engaged the rooms without seeing them beforehand. When she had been studying in Copenhagen some years ago she had gone with her fellow-students into the country one day, lunching at an inn and bathing among the rocks, and she remembered it was pretty out there, so when a certain Mrs. Rasmussen, in answer to her advertisement, had offered to house the young lady who was expecting a child, she decided to go there.

The widow lived in a tiny yellow, sadly ugly brick cottage outside the village by the main road, which ran dusty and endless between open tilled fields, but Jenny was pleased on the whole. She liked her bedroom with the blue wall-paper, the etchings on the wall, and the white crochet-work d’oyleys all over the place, on the bed, on the back of the American rocking-chair, and on the chest, where Mrs. Rasmussen had placed a bunch of roses the day she arrived.

From her two little windows she could see the main road winding past the house and the small front garden, where roses, geraniums, and fuchsias grew, heedless of the dust. On the other side of the road was a bare hill at the back of the field. Stone fences, along which the vividly coloured autumn flowers grew between bramble bushes, divided the slope into squares of stubble, greeny-brown meadow, and blue-green turnip field; spriggy wind-blown willow bushes grew along the boundaries. When the evening sun had left Jenny’s window the sky was flaming red and golden above the ridge and the meagre twigs of the willows.

At the back of her room was a neat doll’s-house kitchen with red brick floor, opening into the back yard, where the widow’s chickens were cackling and the pigeons cooing. A small passage ran through the house; on the farther side Mrs. Rasmussen had her parlour, with flower-pots in the window and crochet work everywhere, daguerreotypes and photographs on the walls, and a book-case with religious books in black paper covers, bound volumes of periodicals, and a few novels. At the back was a small room where she slept, and where the air was always heavy with an indefinable odour, though everything in the room was spotlessly clean. She could not hear in there if her boarder on the other side of the passage spent a night now and again in tears.

Mrs. Rasmussen was not so bad, on the whole. Tall and lanky, she pattered about in some kind of felt slippers, always with a worried look on her long yellow face, which was rather like that of a horse and had straggling grey hair combed back from it, forming quaint little wings over the ears. She scarcely ever spoke, save for an anxious question as to whether the lady was pleased with the room or the food, and when Jenny went to sit in the parlour with her needlework they were both perfectly quiet. Jenny was specially grateful to the woman for not mentioning her condition; only once when she went out with her painting paraphernalia did Mrs. Rasmussen ask her anxiously if she did not think it unwise. She had worked hard at first, standing behind a stone fence with her field easel, which threatened to be upset every instant by the wind.

Below the stone fence the stubby rye field sloped towards a swamp where the bog bean round the bluish water pools was whitening, and velvety black peat stacks stood piled on the grass. Beyond the swamp were the chalk-white peasants’ huts set in rich dark green groves and surrounded by meadows, stubbed rye fields, and turnip land as far as the water’s edge. The beach was cut into tiny bays and points, the sand and the short dried grass making it look a whitish yellow. To the north a heather-brown hill with a windmill on top sloped down towards the bay. Light and shadow flitted alternately over the landscape as the clouds travelled across the wide, ever restless sky.

When Jenny got tired she lay down by the fence, looking up at the sky and out over the bay; she could not stand for long at a time, but it made her only more eager. Two small pictures painted from the fence were finished, and she was pleased with them; a third one she painted in the village, where the low whitewashed houses with thatched roofs almost covering the windows, and climbing roses and dahlias in the gardens, stood along a velvety green ditch, and a red brick church stretched its gabled tower above the foliage of the vicarage garden. But it made her nervous when people came to look at her, and flaxen-haired youngsters clustered round her when she was painting. When the picture was finished she moved with her easel again to the stone fence.

In October the rain came, pouring down for a week or two. Now and again the skies cleared a little, letting out a sickly yellow ray of light between the clouds over the hill with the pitiable willows, and the puddles in the road lay shining a little while before the rain troubled their surface again.

Jenny borrowed Mrs. Rasmussen’s books and learnt to knit the kind of lace that bordered her curtains, but neither reading nor knitting came to much. She sat in the rocking-chair by the window all day long, not even caring to dress properly, only wearing her old faded kimono. As her condition became more and more apparent she suffered agonies.

Gert Gram had written to say he was coming to see her, and two days later he arrived, driving up in the early morning in pouring rain. He stayed a week, putting up at the railway hotel two miles from the village, but spending all his time with her. When he left he promised to come again soon—possibly in six weeks.

Jenny lay awake all night with her lamp burning. She knew she could not bear it again; it had been too awful. Everything was unbearable from the moment he arrived—his first worried, compassionate glance when he saw her—dressed in a new navy blue straight frock made by the village dressmaker. “How lovely you are,” he said, and declared she was like a madonna. Madonna, indeed! His arm placed cautiously round her waist, his long, guarded kiss on her forehead, made her feel as if she could die of shame. And how he had worried her with his concern about her health and his advice about taking enough exercise. One day when the rain stopped he dragged her for a long walk, insisting that she should hang on his arm for support. One evening he had looked at her needlework—stealthily—expecting probably that she would be hemming baby linen. He meant it all so kindly, and there was no hope of a change for the better when he would come again—more likely the reverse; she simply could not endure it.

One day she had a letter from him in which, among other things, he said she ought to see a doctor, and the same night she wrote to Gunnar Heggen telling him that she was expecting a child in February, and would he let her have the address of a quiet place where she could stay until it was over. Heggen answered by return:

A few days later came a whole bundle of letters. Jenny waded through some of the writing, printed in an awful gothic scrawl, and then wrote to a Mrs. Schlessinger in the vicinity of Warnemünde, renting a room from the fifteenth of November. She gave Mrs. Rasmussen notice, and told Gunnar by letter of her decision.

On the eve of her departure she wrote to Gram:

So she moved from one widow to another, and into another small cottage—this time a red one with whitewashed windowsills and standing in a little garden with flagged paths and shells around the flower-beds, where the dahlias and chrysanthemums stood black and rotting. Twenty to thirty similar houses stood along a small street leading from the railway station to the fishing harbour, where the waves foamed against the long stone piers. On the beach, a little away from the village, stood a small hotel with the shutters up. Endless roads, with bare, straggling poplars bending in the wind, led out over interminable plains and swamps past small brick farms with a strip of garden front and a couple of haystacks at the back.

Jenny walked along the road as far as she could manage, returning home to sit in her little room, which this time was overloaded with precious knick-knacks, coloured plaster casts of castles, and merry scenes at country inns in brass frames. She had not the strength to change her wet shoes even, but Mrs. Schlessinger took off the boots and stockings, talking all the time, exhorting her to keep up her courage, telling her about all the other young ladies she had had in the house—how So-and-so had married and was well off and happy now.

When she had been there a month Mrs. Schlessinger came into her room one day, excited and beaming—a gentleman had come to see the young lady. Jenny was paralysed with fright, but managed at last to ask what he looked like. “Quite young,” said Mrs. Schlessinger, with a lurking smile—“and very nice looking.” It dawned upon her that it might be Gunnar, and she got up, but, suddenly changing her mind, wrapped herself up in a rug and sat down in the deepest of her armchairs.

Mrs. Schlessinger departed, pleased to announce a visitor. Showing Gunnar into the room, she remained an instant smiling by the door before closing it.

He squeezed her hand, almost hurting her, and greeted her with a beaming smile:

“I thought I had better come up here to see what kind of a place you had settled on. It is rather a dull part of the world you have chosen, but it is healthy anyway.” He shook the water from his hat as he spoke.

“You must have some tea and something to eat,” said Jenny, making a movement as if meaning to rise, but remained sitting, saying with a blush: “Do you mind ringing the bell?”

Heggen ate with excellent appetite, talking all the while. He was delighted with Berlin; he had lived in a workmen’s quarter—the Moabit—and spoke with equal enthusiasm about the social democrats and the military, for “there is something grand and manly about it, and the one stimulates the other.” He had been over some great factories and had studied night life, having met a Norwegian engineer who was on his honeymoon and a Norwegian couple with two lovely daughters, who were dying to see a little vice at close quarters. They had been to National, Riche, and to Amorsaale, and the ladies had enjoyed it all immensely.

“But I offended them, I’m afraid—asked Miss Paulsen to come home with me late one evening.”

“Gunnar, how could you!”

“Well, I was not quite sober, you understand; it was only a joke, you know. If by any chance she had consented, I should have been in an awful fix. Might have had to marry a little girl who amuses herself sniffing at such things—no, thank you. It was great fun to see her so virtuously offended. There was no danger really—little girls of that sort don’t give away their treasure without making sure of a fair return.”

He blushed suddenly. It struck him that Jenny might think it tactless of him to speak like that before her—now. But she only laughed:

“What mad things you do!”

As Heggen went on talking, the unnatural, painful shyness gradually left her. Once or twice, when she did not notice it, his eyes anxiously scanned her face—heavens! how thin and hollow-eyed she was, and furrowed about the mouth. The sinews of her neck were prominent, and there were a couple of ugly lines across the throat.

The rain had stopped, and she consented to go for a walk with him. They walked in the sea-mist along the deserted road with the scraggy poplars.

“Take my arm,” said Gunnar casually, and Jenny took it, feeling heavy and tired.

“It must be awfully dull for you here, Jenny—don’t you think it would be much better if you went to Berlin?”

Jenny shook her head.

“You would have the museums there to go to and other things besides—and somebody to be with at times. You don’t care to go to National anyway. Won’t you come, just for a bit of a change? You must be deadly dull here.”

“Oh no, Gunnar—I could not go now, you understand.”

“You look quite nice in that ulster,” said Gunnar cautiously, after a short pause.

Jenny bent her head.

“Oh, I am a fool,” said he suddenly. “Forgive me. You must tell me, Jenny, if I bother you.”

“Oh no, you don’t bother me. I am glad you came.”

“I realize that it must be awful for you, Jenny.” His voice had changed completely. “I quite realize it, but I am sure you are making it still worse by going about here all alone. I do think you ought to go somewhere else—somewhere a little less hopeless than this.” He was looking at the dark plain and the rows of poplars losing themselves in the distance.

“Mrs. Schlessinger is so very kind,” said Jenny evasively.

“Oh yes, good soul; I am sure she is.” He smiled. “I think she suspects me of being the culprit.”

“Probably,” said Jenny, smiling too.

They walked on in silence. After a while Gunnar asked:

“How are you going to arrange matters? Have you made any plans as to the future?”

“I don’t know yet. I suppose you mean about the child? I may leave it with Mrs. Schlessinger for a time; she would look after it all right, I dare say. Or I may get some one to adopt it; you know, such children are adopted sometimes. I might call myself Mrs. Winge and never mind what people think.”

“You are quite decided, then, to break completely with—er—the man concerned? You wrote me to that effect.”

“I am,” she said firmly. “It is not the man I was engaged to,” she added, after a pause.

“Thank God!” he burst out, so relieved that Jenny could not help smiling a little.

“Well, you know, Jenny, he was not worth reproducing—not by you anyway. I saw in the papers recently that he has got his doctor’s degree. Well, it might have been worse—I was afraid....”

“It is his father,” she said abruptly.

Heggen came to a dead stop. She fell to crying desperately, and he put his arm round her and laid his hand to her cheek while she went on sobbing with her head on his shoulder.

Standing so, she began to tell him all about it. Once she looked up at his face; it was pale and haggard; and she started crying again. When she stopped, he lifted her head, looking at her:

“My God, Jenny—what you must have suffered! I cannot realize it.”

They walked back to the village in silence.

“Come with me to Berlin,” he said suddenly. “I cannot bear to think of you here alone and brooding over this.”

“I have almost given up thinking,” she said, tired.

“Oh, it’s too awful!” he burst out, with such violence that she came to a sudden stop. “Always the best of you that get let in for this kind of thing, and we have no idea of what you have to go through. It is dreadful!”

Heggen stayed three days. Jenny could not explain why, but she felt much better after his visit. The unbearable feeling of humiliation was gone; she was able to face her confinement with more composure and confidence.

Mrs. Schlessinger went about smiling slyly in spite of Jenny’s declaration that the gentleman was her cousin.

He had offered to send her some of his books, and at Christmas a whole case arrived, besides flowers and chocolates. Every week he wrote her a long letter about all manner of trifles, enclosing cuttings from Norwegian papers. In January he came up for her birthday and stayed two days, leaving behind some of the latest Norwegian books. Shortly after his last visit she fell ill. She was poorly, worried, and sleepless during the remaining weeks. She had never busied her thoughts with the actual confinement or been anxious about it before, but, feeling always wretched now, she was seized by a sudden dread of what she had to go through, and when the time came she was quite worn out with insomnia and anxiety.

It was a nasty case. Jenny was more dead than alive when the doctor, who had been sent for from Warnemünde, at last held her son in his hands.

VI

Jenny’s son lived six weeks—exactly forty-four days and a half, she said bitterly to herself, thinking again and again of the short time she had felt really happy.

She did not cry for the first days after his death, but she could not leave the dead child, and sat moaning deep down in her throat and taking it in her arms to caress it:

“Darling little boy—mother’s pretty little boy, you must not go—I cannot let you go. Can’t you see I want you so?”

The child was tiny and feeble at birth, but Jenny and Mrs. Schlessinger had both thought he was thriving and making good progress. Then one morning he fell ill, and by midday it was all over.

After the funeral she started to cry, and could not stop; for weeks afterwards she sobbed unceasingly night and day. She fell ill herself too; inflammation of the breasts developed, and Mrs. Schlessinger had to send for the doctor, who performed an operation. The despair of her soul, together with the pains of her body, gave her many a dreadful, delirious night.

Mrs. Schlessinger slept in the adjoining room, and on hearing her cries of agony, rushed in and sat down by the bed, comforting her, stroking her thin, clammy hands with her own fat, warm ones, and coaxing and lecturing her a little. It was God’s will, and was probably much better for the boy and for her too—still so young as she was. Mrs. Schlessinger had lost two children herself—little Bertha when she was two years old, and Wilhelm at fourteen, such a dear boy too—yet they were born in wedlock and should have been the support and comfort of her old age. But this little one would only have been a chain round the feet of the Fräulein who was so young and pretty. He had been very dear and sweet, the little angel, and it was very hard....

Mrs. Schlessinger had lost her husband too, and many of the young ladies who had stayed in her house had seen their little ones die; some of them had been pleased, others had put their babies out to nurse at once so as to get rid of them. It was not nice, of course, but what could one do? Some had cried and wailed as Jenny did, but they got over it in time, and married and settled down happily afterwards. But a despair like Fräulein’s she had never yet witnessed.

Mrs. Schlessinger suspected in her heart that her patient’s despair was caused to a great extent by the departure of the cousin first to Dresden and then to Italy just about the time the boy died. But that is exactly what they always did—the men.

The memory of those maddening, agonizing nights was ever afterwards associated with the picture of Mrs. Schlessinger sitting on the stool by her bed while the light rays from the lamp were refracted in the tears dropping from her small, kind eyes on to her round red cheeks. And her mouth, which did not stop talking for a second, her little grey plait of hair, the white night-jacket trimmed with pointed lace, and her petticoat of grey and pink stripped flannel scalloped at the bottom. And the small room with plaster medallions in brass frames.

She had written to Heggen about her great joy, and he had replied saying he would have loved to come and have a look at the boy, but the journey was long and expensive and he was on the point of starting for Italy. He sent his best wishes to her and the little prince, hoping to welcome them both in Italy soon. At the time of the child’s death Heggen was in Dresden and sent her a long and sympathetic letter.

As soon as she was well enough to write she sent a few lines to Gert, giving him her address, but asking him not to come and see them until the spring, when baby would be big and pretty. Only his mother could see now that he was lovely. She wrote him a longer letter when she was up and about again.

On the day the child was buried she wrote telling Gram in a few words of her loss, informing him of her intention to go south the same evening, and asking him not to expect to hear from her until she was more like herself again. “Do not worry about me,” she wrote. “I am fairly composed now, but hopelessly miserable, of course.”

Her letter crossed one from Gert, who wrote: