“What was she laughing at? She is a flirt; but what was she laughing at?
What had I done to harm her?”
Eva answers:
“It was cruel of her to laugh at you.”
“No, it was not cruel of her,” I cry. “How dare you sit there speaking
ill of her? She never did an unkind thing; it was only right that she
should laugh at me. Be quiet, devil take you, and leave me in peace--do
you hear?”
And Eva, terrified, leaves me in peace. I look at her, and repent my
harsh words at once; I fall down before her; wringing my hands.
“Go home, Eva. It is you I love most; how could I love a dream? It was
only a jest; it is you I love. But go home now; I will come to you
to-morrow; remember, I am yours; yes, do not forget it. Good-night.”
And Eva goes home.
* * * * *
The third iron night, a night of extremes! tension. If only there were
a little frost! Instead, still heat after the sun of the day; the night
is like a lukewarm marsh. I light my fire...
“Eva, it can be a delight at times to be dragged by the hair. So
strangely can the mind of a man be warped. He can be dragged by the hair
over hill and dale, and if asked what is happening, can answer in
ecstasy: 'I am being dragged by the hair!' And if anyone asks: 'But
shall I not help you, release you?' he answers: 'No.' And if they ask:
'But how can you endure it?' he answers: 'I can endure it, for I love
the hand that drags me.' Eva, do you know what it is to hope?”
“Yes, I think so.”
“Look you, Eva, hope is a strange thing, a very strange thing. You can
go out one morning along the road, hoping to meet one whom you are fond
of. And do you? No. Why not? Because that one is busy that morning--is
somewhere else, perhaps... Once I got to know an old blind Lapp up in
the hills. For fifty-eight years he had seen nothing, and now he was
over seventy. It seemed to him that his sight was getting better little
by little; getting on gradually, he thought. If all went well he would
be able to make out the sun in a few years' time. His hair was still
black, but his eyes were quite white. When we sat in his hut, smoking,
he would tell of all the things he had seen before he went blind. He
was hardy and strong; without feeling, indestructible; and he kept his
hope. When I was going, he came out with me, and began pointing in
different ways. 'There's the south,' he said, 'and there's north. Now
you go that way first, and when you get a little way down, turn off that
way.' 'Quite right,' I said. And at that the Lapp laughed contentedly,
and said: 'There! I did not know that forty or fifty years back, so I
must see better now than I used to--yes, it is improving all the time.'
And then he crouched down and crept into his hut again--the same old
hut, his home on earth. And he sat down by the fire as before, full of
hope that in some few years he would be able to make out the sun...
Eva, 'tis strange about hope. Here am I, for instance, hoping all the
time that I may forget the one I did not meet on the road this
morning...”
“You talk so strangely.”
“It is the third of the iron nights. I promise you, Eva, to be a
different man to-morrow. Let me be alone now. You will not know me again
to-morrow, I shall laugh and kiss you, my own sweet girl. Just
think--only this one night more, a few hours--and then I shall be a
different man. _Godnat_, Eva.”
_“Godnat.”_
I lie down closer to the fire, and look at the flames. A pine cone falls
from the branch; a dry twig or so falls too. The night is like a
boundless depth. I close my eyes.
After an hour, my senses begin swinging in a certain rhythm. I am
ringing in tune with the great stillness--ringing with it. I look at the
half-moon; it stands in the sky like a white scale, and I have a feeling
of love for it; I can feel myself blushing. “It is the moon!” I say
softly and passionately; “it is the moon!” and my heart strikes toward
it in a soft throbbing. So for some minutes. It is blowing a little; a
stranger wind comes to me a mysterious current of air. What is it? I
look round, but see no one. The wind calls me, and my soul bows
acknowledging the call; and I feel myself lifted into the air, pressed
to an invisible breast; my eyes are dewed, I tremble--God is standing
near, watching me. Again several minutes pass. I turn my head round; the
stranger wind is gone, and I see something like the back of a spirit
wandering silently in through the woods...
I struggle a short while with a heavy melancholy; I was worn out with
emotions; I am deathly tired, and I sleep.
* * * * *
When I awoke the night was past. Alas, I had been going about for a long
time in a sad state, full of fever, on the verge of falling down
stricken with some sickness or other. Often things had seemed upside
down. I had been looking at everything through inflamed eyes. A deep
misery had possessed me.
It was over now.