The sequel shall be told in a letter written by Theresa Leaney to
Mansana's mother, and sent from the princess's Hungarian estate not
long after the events set forth in the last chapter:
"DEAREST MOTHER,
"At last you shall have a connected account of all that has
happened since we parted at Naples. Excuse me if at times I repeat
what I have told you already.
"Well, then, you must know that after our wedding Giuseppe's gloomy
reserve was replaced by a devoted and humble zeal to do me service
which made me anxious; it seemed so strange in him. His old
confidence and self-reliance did not return till after our visit to
the town in which he had last been quartered. He quite understood
why you wanted us to go there first of all; and how worthy of our
love he showed himself! Among his comrades he had, as it were, to
run the gauntlet; he faced the trial at once, and with a courage
which I think may well be called heroic. And I should also like to
tell you a little about a certain young bride who helped him then.
You must understand that never in her life had she seemed more
brilliant, more joyous, than at this time, when it was a question
of supporting this noble lover through his days of humiliation. Her
gestures, her words, her whole bearing seemed to challenge the
question: 'Who dare say anything against him when I say nothing?'
"I have, I am afraid, still so much coquetry left as to be half
inclined to give you particulars of my costumes on each of these
three days. (I had got my maid to come to me from Ancona with some
dresses.) But I will have the modesty to forbear.
"And so it came about that, after those three days of struggle in
the mountain town, this same young bride found herself loved as not
many women have ever been loved before; for there is power in that
deep temperament, which you, dear friend, have given him out of
your own perfect soul. But I must not forget to praise the man
Sardi; for a man he is indeed! He had done a most excellent service
in giving it to be understood that Mansana had been ill--as, in
fact, he was--and that you and I had nursed him back to health. It
was fortunate that Mansana, who had already gained fame among his
comrades, had now laid up a store of affection in their hearts on
which he could make many demands before it is exhausted. They were
determined to think well of Giuseppe Mansana. My dear husband felt
that himself, and it made him very humble, for he was oppressed by
the thought that he had not deserved all this affection.
"In Ancona all went easily enough. The main obstacles had been
overcome. And now--now at last--he is all mine, and I have for my
own the noblest character in the world, cleansed and purified, the
most considerate husband, the most devoted companion, the manliest
lover that any Italian girl ever won. Pardon the vehemence of my
expressions. I know you do not like them, but they _will_ out.
"In Bologna--you see I hasten on--as we were walking about, we
happened to pass the town hall. There two marble tablets hang,
inscribed with the names of those who fell in the fight for the
liberation of the city. I felt a thrill pass through Giuseppe's
arm; and to this circumstance I owe a conversation which laid,
deeper than ever, the foundations of our union.
"You know, dearest mother, how my eyes were opened to the wrong I
did Giuseppe by my odious, egotistical caprices; they almost cost
him his life and both of us our happiness. You know how my soul is
constantly vexed by that state of public feeling which breeds in us
resentment, hatred, unreasonable fanaticism, and a disgraceful
intolerance. An unnatural, unhealthy state of opinion like this
does more harm to society than the most disastrous war, for it is
impossible to estimate how much it destroys of spiritual power and
efficiency, how many hearts it leaves empty, how many families it
lays waste. Believe me, mother, that any nation which has achieved
an unrighteous conquest, and annexed what belongs to others, makes
all its citizens participators in its wrong-doing. Not only does it
relax the moral fibre of every individual and add to the mischiefs
done by private chicanery, violence, and robbery, and the harsh
tyranny of officialism, but it robs the heart of its due rights in
the family and society.
"Some silly verses were once written about me by an enamoured fool;
not a word of truth was there in them. But now, my beloved mother,
I feel that, if I had never met Giuseppe, what was said in those
verses would have come to be true enough some time, for heartless
and vain as I then was, heartless and vain I should have remained
to the end! And why? Because the unhappy condition of public
affairs had sown poison in my whole nature.
"And my confessions were met by Giuseppe's. His defiant,
egotistical will had so mastered him that the most casual
interference with his desires might have cost him his life, the
merest accident have changed its whole course. But that same
defiant will--in what atmosphere had it been fostered?
"We gave one another the fullest confidence that evening in
Bologna, and then for the first time all doubts vanished and the
future seemed absolutely secure.
"Here, on this estate of mine that I love, he has set to work. Here
all was chaos, so that he has something on which his energies can
be brought to bear. He intends to resign his commission--he does
not care any longer to play the soldier in peace time. He needs to
be busy on definite objects, that lie near at hand, and if I divine
rightly, the objects dearest to him are those most carefully hidden
from the world. So, at any rate, it stands for the present; what
events may develop I know not. But this I do know: let Italy be in
danger, and he will place himself in the front rank, whatever the
circumstances may be.
"God's blessing on you! Come here soon; you must see him in this
active life of his, you must see him with me. Has any woman ever
had so devoted a husband, so gallant a lover? Ah, I know you do not
give me leave to talk in this extravagant vein. But I cannot help
it, and I must tell you again that these are the words I feel I
_must_ use.
"I love you, and again and again I long to embrace you, to kiss
you, you dear mother, to whom I owe my happiness.
"Dearest, so hardly tried and proven, from whose eyes there streams
a hymn of praise, from whose lips the words of help and comfort
pour their waters of refreshment, we want you to bow your grey head
over our happiness, that it may be blessed. Yes, you must let us
learn from you, so that the evil days do not come too soon upon us.
"Your son's wife, your own, your loving
"THERESA."
MOTHER'S HANDS
PART I
A stirring clang of swords, echoing from the glass roof of the station;
the ring of steel sounding through the hissing of steam, noise of
laughter and talk, mingled with the dense dull sound of truck wheels,
of footsteps, of luggage loading.
Every time a fresh succession of officers thronged the glass doors,
the clang of swords rang sharply; many artillery officers pressed
through, and some infantry among them. All were making for the door
of the same railway carriage, where a tall lady in black, with large,
half-melancholy, half-imperious eyes, was standing and bowing. She bent
her head slowly, a measured inclination, never more. The officers
evidently came from manoeuvres or parade. The King was in the town, as
was indicated by the presence of some of his harbingers, that is to say
Swedish uniforms. Was he here in person? Was he expected? No, for in
that case there would have been others present besides the officers.
But was that lady who stood at the carriage-door the person to whom
they had come to bid farewell? Was she the wife of a cavalry officer
then? No, that lady could scarcely have become what she was in the
midst of a small military circle with horsey surroundings. Besides,
there was only respect in the greeting paid to her. The crowd was round
some one who was standing on the platform and who could with difficulty
be seen. At that moment a white veil was waved aloft by a lady's gloved
hand. Was all this parade in honour of a lady after all?
The long prognosticated war with Russia has not yet broken out. There
is probably time enough for that. Many of these officers wear
decorations in advance. The colonel's manly breast bears at least eight
of them. He has much to make up. Some of them--for instance, the two
stately Swedes with their bland courtier eyes--are looking rather pale;
perhaps they have been wounded as well as decorated in advance?
The throng presses close round the carriage-door. So it is really a
lady who is the object of all this bloodless fray, this pushing and
pressing, this restless motion to and fro, the endlessly shifting
phantasmagoria of necks and epaulettes, of features and bearded faces,
this unanimous laughter to order?
Perhaps it is a princess? Good heavens, no! In that case they would
have kept at a respectful distance; but here they are pressing closer
and closer, until the entrance doors of the station are again crowded
with uniforms and clanging swords, this time exclusively of cavalry,
and a little man, very old, beaming with friendliness, sheer
friendliness, nothing but friendliness, appears followed by a staff of
old and young officers. Discipline and Court obsequiousness (in a small
army in time of peace courtiers alone are advanced to the higher
grades) have made the expression of his countenance as irreproachably
correct as that of an old dial-plate. Only there are moustaches on the
dials which two concealed strings at the back seem to jerk now into a
smile, now back to gravity again.
Some one called out, "Make room for the general," and in an instant a
wide opening was made between two saluting semicircles, suddenly parted
from each other.
Then it became possible to see the centre, which was formed of a group
of ladies, foremost amongst them a tall girl in a light travelling
costume and a white straw hat with a long white veil floating loosely
over it. Her hands were full of flowers; she kept receiving more and
more, which she handed through the crowd of ladies to her mother at the
carriage-door, who laid them aside. Now it could be seen by every one
that the two were mother and daughter. They were about the same height,
the daughter, if anything, taller than her mother; they had the same
large grey eyes, but with very different expression, although both
proclaimed the wide range of their inward dominion. The mother's told
of a deep comprehension of the contradictions and sufferings of life,
the daughter's of an ardent nature, of restless aspiration, of warring
forces which as yet had not found expression; they sparkled with
triumph, through which there gleamed now and then a lightning flash of
impatience. She was tall, slender, supple; her movements seemed to
reflect the radiance from her eyes. It was not with their own eyes that
others saw her, but through the light of her own. The look of energy in
her face was a powerful auxiliary in the spell her eyes exercised over
mankind. The mother's face was oval--of pure outline and broad design;
the daughter's was longer, sharper, the forehead higher and framed by
abundant light brown hair. Her eyebrows were straight, her nose was
aquiline, her chin decided, her lips firmly cut. The beauty of a
Valkyrie, but not so defiant. Her magnetic attraction came from
enthusiasm, from impulsiveness; the flame in her eyes was light, not
heat. On the whole, the impression she made was that she was borne up
by invisible forces; all who came under the spell of that impression
seemed to be lifted up as well. She talked to those on each side of her
and in front of her, she exchanged greetings, she accepted flowers, and
laughed; those who followed all these movements and changes felt
dazzled and bewildered as though they had been watching waves in the
sunshine.
Here was coquetry, perhaps, but with scarcely a particle of the quality
which singles out first one and then another. Not the faintest hint of
allurement in the voice. There was no sort of enervating tenderness in
that uninterrupted outpouring of health, capacity and joyousness.
This was the reason of her success--be it said to the credit of those
who surrounded her. No one came first, no one was especially
distinguished. They all received their meed, each after his kind.
This unanimous admiration and homage had sprung into existence the
previous autumn, when the cavalry colonel, who had married her mother's
sister, brought her back from Paris. This persistent candidate for the
favour of men and women, who neglected no one except his own wife, had
since the previous autumn had no more pressing or more important duty
than to introduce his beautiful niece into society. He performed this
office on horseback at her side, at balls at her side, at theatres and
concerts at her side; he allowed no one else to take his place. He gave
riding-parties in her honour, and the whole body of cavalry succumbed;
he gave a ball in her honour at which half the assembly fell victims;
he took her to the officers' great banquet, and all the guests were
smitten. As an old courtier he knew every move of the game; she never
appeared under unfavourable circumstances or to no purpose--on this
occasion, every person present had been specially invited.
As to that, they all responded as willingly as possible; but otherwise
they would simply not have known of it, or the duty of the service
might not have allowed them to come, or many of them would have
considered it obtrusive. Now they were there by order; to an officer
the feeling that he is obeying an order adds sensibly to his enjoyment.
Just look at the little general's back, as he kisses her hand, brings
her greetings from his Majesty and gives her the bouquet which he
himself has gathered for her in the morning! Look at his back, I say;
it seems made to be patted and currycombed like a horse's. As he
straightens himself again, he looks as happy in the beams from her eyes
as a stiff-legged dog who sniffs meat under a napkin.
I have said that those present had the feeling, and to an officer it is
an agreeable one, of paying homage to order. That his Majesty himself
had approved of her was a higher consecration yet. In the winter, out
on the ice, he had deigned to fasten on her skates. It is true that she
was not alone in this great distinction, or in becoming a member of the
Royal Skating Club. The same honour was accorded to a great number of
young girls besides. But every cavalry and artillery officer
present--and there were many of them standing by when he knelt to
fasten on her skates--considered it a special distinction offered to
_their_ lady.
Supported by the infantry, they sped after her over the glittering ice,
without pause or stop--the Swedes as well. It needed but little stretch
of fancy to picture her leading a sortie, to see in imagination horses,
artillery, powder waggons, gliding over the mirror-like surface to the
sound of horns, tramping of hoofs, and neighing of horses.
But, if she had presented no other aspect than this, all her beauty,
exceptional as it was, would not have accomplished what we have just
seen.
No, there was more than that. She was not a woman to be seized, caught,
held fast--it was like trying to take burning fire in one's hand. "She
was neither for men nor women," some said of her, and the thought
spurred them on. She eluded those who were in her presence, to the
absent she seemed a meteor; if memory is itself luminous, its glow is
heightened by reflection from others.
This impression was strengthened by certain sayings of hers, some of
which went the rounds.
When the King fastened on her skates he said gallantly: "You have the
most charming little foot." "Yes, from to-day onwards," she replied.
A jovial colonel of artillery had dissipated a fortune on his comrades,
on women, and on himself. "I lay my heart at your feet," he said. "Why,
what would you have left to give away?" she laughed, and gave him her
hand for the polonaise.
She stopped in the polonaise before a young lieutenant, who turned
scarlet. "You are one of those one could die for," he whispered.
She took his arm in a friendly manner. "Well, to live for me would
probably be a bore for both of us."
She once went to the poet-in-ordinary of the regiment, a smart captain,
to offer him a philippine. "Do you wish it?" she asked. "There is one
thing we all wish in respect to you," he answered, "but we can never
manage to say it--what can the reason be?" "To say what?" she asked.
"'I love you.'" "Oh! of course, they know that I should laugh at it,"
she laughed; and offered him the half almond, and from that time they
remained as good friends as ever.
But there were other kinds of sayings of hers which aroused yet more
respect. A discussion was going on one day at the fireside about a
certain gate which was called the "gate of truth"; all who went through
it were _obliged_ to say what they thought, upon which she exclaimed:
"Ah, then I should get to know what I think myself!" One of those
present said that those were exactly the words which the Danish Bishop
Monrad had used when he heard of the gate. "And he was called a
sphinx," added the speaker.
She sat quietly for a little while, became paler and paler, and then
got up. Some time after she was found in an adjoining room weeping.
A learned man said at the dinner-table: "Those who are destined for
something great know it from childhood." "Yes, but they know not for
what!" she rejoined quickly. But then she became embarrassed. She tried
to make a better thing of it, and said: "Some know it, and others
don't," and then she became more abashed, and her embarrassment gave
her an irresistible charm. People like to be conscious of the presence
of lofty yearnings, even though they don't betray themselves.
In a confidential circle one evening people were talking of a young
widow. "She is rejuvenating herself in a new love," said one.
"No, she is rather taking up a mission, a self-sacrificing mission,"
said another, who maintained that he knew her better.
"Well, I don't care which it is, provided she is devoting herself to
something," said the first. "It is in devotion to something outside
oneself that salvation is found--call it rejuvenation or what you
will."
She had been listening to this. At first she was indifferent, then she
pricked up her ears, and finally her attention became riveted. Then she
broke out: "No, the point is _not_ to devote oneself." No one replied;
it made a strange impression. Had anything happened, or was it a
presentiment? Or was she thinking of something special, which no one
present knew anything about? Or of something great for the sake of
which it was worth waiting?
That which seems a little mysterious impresses people's minds. The
better principled, the higher natured among the officers conceived
respect for her. The feeling spread, and bore fruit. With disciplined
wills, nothing takes root more quickly than respect.
There were certainly some who saw in her "devil take me!" the finest
thoroughbred in Norway. Again there were those who would "by all the
powers!" have given their hope of salvation for--I dare not say for
what. But there were also those who thought of the times of chivalry
and saw in their mind's eye the token the lady fastened on her true
knight's breast as a consecration. A glance, a word from her, a dance
with her, was the token. Her glory fell upon them, there was something
nobler and more beautiful in them from that moment.
How many there were who tried to draw her from memory! for she would
not be photographed. It became a common pastime to draw her profile;
some attained the greatest proficiency in the art. With a broomhandle
in the snow, with a match in cigar ashes, with skates on the ice.
On the whole, it certainly was to the credit of the regiment that she
should be so universally and unprecedentedly admired. Her uncle
naturally believed that he was the cause of it, but the truth was that
the way he advertised her would have spoiled the whole thing for any
one else. She could endure the advertisement. And now he had been put
aside, without himself understanding how it had happened. He, who on
this day had organised the whole assembly, was standing quivering with
eagerness to be abreast of the situation; but he could not. It all went
on over his head, as though on the second storey. He spurred himself up
with exaggerated gaiety, with abnormal energy, but he fell back, became
superfluous, became actually in the way. His wife laughed openly at
him; he, who when he was abroad had hidden his wedding-ring in his
pocket, and was ready to do the same thing again, was left lying in a
pocket himself, like an empty cigar-case.
His wife was enchanted. From the beginning she had been alarmed when
his miracle of a niece was brought into the house. The ostentatious
partiality with which he introduced her into society produced results
which went beyond his previsions. The crowd of worshippers kept growing
greater and denser; after the episode with the King the enthusiasm rose
to a kind of frenzy for a time. The rate of speed grew with the number;
the colonel struggled to keep up like a broken-winded horse.
The bell rings a second time, there is a movement in the crowd, renewed
clanking of spurs and swords, waving of hands, vociferous greetings.
The heroine of the hour saluted, waved farewell for the thousandth
time, gay words were spoken, smiles and bows were rapidly dispensed
with cheerful grace. She was quite equal to the situation! The large,
checked travelling dress, the light hat with the veil now hanging down
from it, now floating in the wind, the haughty poise of the head, the
perfect figure, all this stood in the sunshine of the homage round her.
Surely it was into a golden carriage drawn by white doves that she was
stepping? For the moment, it was no farther than to her mother's side
at the open carriage-door, whence she smiled down to the colonel on one
side, the general on the other, the ladies round them. Farther back
still her eyes fell on all the uplifted moustaches, the light ones, the
brown, the black, the dyed, the thin moustaches, the thick, the curved,
and the inane, the drooping, the smartly curled. Among that melancholy
and shaggy crowd a few clean-shaven faces looked like those of Swedish
tenors.
"I hope you will have a pleasant journey," said the old general. The
gallant horseman was too discreet to try to say anything more marked.
"Thank you for the pleasure you have given us this winter, my girl!" It
was the colonel's shrill voice. The bystanders should see what a
fatherly comrade he could be. "Yes, I've often pitied you this winter,
uncle," was the answer he received. "Now you must have a thorough rest
in the summer!"
The colonel's wife laughed. It was the signal that all the rest must
laugh.
The faces turned up towards her--most of them honest, good-natured,
cheerful--almost every one of them reminded her of some amusing moment;
an autumn and winter of riding-parties, skating, snow-shoeing, drives,
balls, dinners, concerts; a wild dance over shining ice and drifting
snow, or through a sea of light and music mingled with the ring of
glasses, with laughter and animated talk. Not one of her recollections
had anything unpleasant about it. All stood out clear, brilliant as a
parade of cavalry. A few proposals, amongst others some initiated by
her worthy uncle, had vanished like a crowd of motes. She felt a
grateful happiness for what she had experienced, for every one's
goodness, till the very last moment. It overwhelmed her, it sparkled in
her eyes, it shone in her eager manner, it was communicated to all
those who stood beneath, and to the very flowers she held. But a
feeling of having received too much, far too much, was there the whole
time. Through it all a dread of future emptiness that gave her an
unendurable pang. If only it were over!
The tickets were looked at, the doors shut, she came forward again to
the open window. She held the flowers in one hand, her handkerchief in
the other; she was crying. The youthful figure stood in the window as
though in a frame, her head, with the light hat and veil, leaning out
of it. Why in all the world was such a picture not painted?
Discipline forbade that any one should press forward so long as the
general, the colonel, and the ladies formed a circle; each one remained
in his place. Since those near the window didn't speak, all were
silent. They saw her weeping, saw her bosom heave. _She_ saw them
as in a mist, and it all became painful to her. Could the whole thing
be real?
All of a sudden her tears were dried. A compassionate soul beneath, who
also felt the painfulness of the situation, asked whether they would
reach home to-day, to which she eagerly answered, "Yes." Then she
remembered her mother and made room for her at her side, but her mother
would not come forward. There was even something in the mother's eyes
which as she met them chilled and frightened her. She forgot it, for
the whistle took the train away from the crowd, the whole circle fell
back a step or two. Greetings were exchanged with increased cordiality,
her handkerchief waved, the warmth in her eyes came back. They flashed
again. All that could be seen of her called greetings to them, and they
to her, as they followed. Now the lieutenants and all the young men
were the foremost! Now feelings of a different sort found a different
expression. The clashing of swords and spurs, the colours of the
uniforms, the waving of arms, the tramping of feet made her dizzy. With
her body leaning far out she reached her arms to them as they did to
her; but the speed soon became too great, a few reckless enthusiasts
still ran along, the rest remained behind in a cloud of steam, and
lamented. Her handkerchief was still visible like a dove against a dark
sky.
As she drew back she felt an aching void, but she remembered her
mother's eyes; had they the same look in them? Yes.
So she tried to appear as though she were not excited or agitated. She
took her hat off and put it above her. But her mother's eyes had
awakened the reaction which was latent in herself, conflicting feelings
surged within her; she tried to conceal them, tried to recover herself,
then threw herself down, turned her face away, and lay full length on
the seat. A little while after, her mother heard her crying; she saw it
too, from the heaving of her back.
Presently the daughter felt the mother's gloveless hand under her head.
She was pushing a cushion underneath it. This did her good, merely to
feel that her mother wanted her to sleep. Yes, she longed terribly to
sleep. And in a few minutes she slept.
PART II
The river cut its way through the landscape in long curves. From the
south bow window in the hotel, the mother and daughter followed its
course through tangled underwood and birch forest; sometimes it
disappeared, and then shone out again, and at last became fully
visible. There was a great deal of traffic going on, the hum of it
reached their ears.
Down at the station, loaded trucks were being wheeled about. Behind the
hotel were the works, the sawmill; smothered thuds and blows were
heard, and more faintly the roar of the waterfall; over everything else
the shrill sound of the planks as the saw went through them. This was
one of the great timber districts; the pine-trees darkened the heights
as far as one could see, and that was very far, for the valley was
broad and straight.
"Dear, it is nearly seven o'clock. What has become of the horses?"
"I had thought of sleeping here to-night, and not starting till
to-morrow morning."
"Sleep here, mother?" She turned towards her mother with a look of
surprise.
"I want very much to talk to you this evening."
The daughter recognised in her mother's eyes the same expression she
had seen there at the station at Christiania: and she flushed. Then she
turned back again into the room.
"Yes, suppose we take a walk." The mother came and put her arm round
her neck.
Shortly after they were down by the river. It was between lights, and
the softened hues of plain and ridge gave one a feeling of uncertainty.
A perfumed air was wafted from wood and meadow, and the rush of the
river rose fiercely to their ears.
"It was of your father I wished to speak."
"My father?"
The daughter tried to stop her, but the mother went on.
"It was here I first saw him. Did you never hear his name mentioned in
Christiania?"
"No." A tolerably long silence followed the "No."
"If I have never spoken of him freely, I had my reasons, Magne. You
shall hear them now. For now I can tell you everything; I have not been
able to do so before."
She waited for the daughter to make some rejoinder; but she made none.
The mother turned half round and pointed up towards the station, that
is, towards the house which stood beside it.
"Can you see that broad roof there, to the right of the hotel? There
are the assembly rooms, the library, and the rest. Your father has the
credit of it; he gave all the timber. Well, it was there I first saw
him, or rather from there I first saw him. I sat among the people who
were going to hear him; the whole of the ground-floor is one single
room with broad sloping galleries, and it is built after the American
fashion; you know that your father went over there when he had finished
his studies. Come, now, let us go on farther; I love this path by the
riverside. I walked along it with your father just six weeks to the
hour and day after I had first seen him, and by that time we were
married."
"I know."
"You also know that I was maid of honour to the Queen when I came here.
She intended going farther out towards the fjord, but first we were to
spend a few days here among the mountains.
"We came here one Saturday afternoon (as you and I have to-day) and
remained over Sunday. There was a great crowd of people on Sunday to
see the Queen; they knew she was to go to church. In the afternoon
they all thronged to the assembly rooms to hear your father speak.
I had seen the announcement of it in the hotel. The Queen read it
too; I stood at her side and said, 'I do so terribly want to go.'
'Yes, go,' she answered, 'but you must be escorted by one of the
gentlemen-in-waiting.' 'Here among the peasants!' I asked, and I
took measures to go alone.
"I found a seat under the gallery, but near a large window, from which
I could see a long way down the road. And as Karl Mander didn't come at
the right time (he very seldom did) all necks were stretched to get a
glimpse of him on the road; so I saw that he was to come from that
direction. I looked, too, with the rest, and a long way off there were
three men visible, walking arm-in-arm, one tall and two smaller, the
tallest in the middle. I have very good sight, and thought at once that
he could not be one of those, for they had been having too festive a
time. They happened to stand still just at the moment, then they came
along wavering, first to the right, then to the left. People began to
whisper and titter. As the three drew nearer I felt instinctively that
the tall one was Karl Mander, and felt ashamed."
"Was he drunk?"
"Yes, he was, and the others as well; and very drunk too, both the
doctor and the lawyer; and the worst of it was, they were neither of
them his friends or partisans. It was a trick they had played on him,
for that was what people were in the habit of doing. They had
undertaken to make him drunk; but they had become still more drunk
themselves."
"How horrible, mother!" She wanted to stop; but the mother went on.
"Yes. I had read all kinds of things about Karl Mander--but it was a
different thing to see him."
"Were you not afraid?"
"Yes. It was disgusting. But when they came near enough for me to
distinguish their faces, and all the people in the crowd who could see
them laughed aloud, I shook off my fear; and when they came quite
close, Karl Mander appeared to me such a marvel that I absolutely
delighted in him. I admit it."
"How a marvel?"
"He was the embodiment of beaming joy! Picture a whole brigade of
cavalry in the maddest gallop, you would not get such a sense of
exuberant delight! The powerful figure with the mighty head held these
two little men, one under each arm, as though he were dragging along
two poachers. And as he did so he laughed and shouted like a boisterous
child. He looked as kindly and gladsome as the longest day in the year
up at the North Pole. As for the others who had set themselves to make
him tipsy--for, as I have told you, it was the fashionable amusement at
that time to make Karl Mander drunk--he brought them alongside in
triumph. He was tremendously proud of it. He was tall and
broad-shouldered, in his light checked woollen suit, which was very
thin and fine; for he could not endure heat, he was foremost among the
worshippers of cold water, and bathed in it, even when he had to break
the ice. He held his hat, which was a soft one and could be folded up,
in his left hand. That was how he was always seen; he never wore his
hat at home, and out of doors he carried it in his hand.
"A great bushy head of hair, extraordinarily thick and brown; which at
this moment was falling over the lofty brow--(yes, your brow is like
his)--and then the beard! I have never seen so beautiful a beard. It
was of a light colour and very thick, but the chief peculiarity of it
was its delicate curliness. It was positively beautiful in itself--as a
beard seldom is.
"And then those deep shining eyes--yours are _something_ like
them--and the clearly cut curve of the nose! He was a gentleman."
"Was he?"
"Heaven! haven't I managed to give you that impression?"
"Yes, yes--but others have----" She was silent, and the mother paused.
"Magne! I have not been able, I have not wished, to shield you from all
this. As long as you were a child, a young girl, I could not explain
everything to you exactly as it was. It would also have led you to try
to defend that which you had not yet the power to defend, and that
would have done you harm. And there was something else besides.
"But now you shall know it. Since your childhood I have never given you
any advice which did not come from your father. You never saw him, but
all the same I can say that you have never seen nor heard anything but
him. Through me, you understand!"
"How so, mother?"
"Well, we are coming to that. Now I must make you understand how I came
to marry him."
"Yes, dear!"
"He stood there on the platform and drank down water, glass after
glass. He drank the entire contents of the water-bottle and called for
more. The people laughed, and he laughed. He held the water-bottle and
glass in a drunken grasp, and he looked up and round him, as though he
was not properly conscious of himself or of us. And he laughed. But
through it all I saw the godlike in him.
"A free man's open, joyous spirit, dear; unruffled self-reliance in
reaching out for that which he needed. You should have seen his firm,
capable hands, hardened by toil. And his face--the face of a man who
overflows with all good gifts."
"What did people say?"
"They knew him, they were only amused. And he was amused. When he began
to speak he had his tongue completely under control. It seemed to me
that the voice was unnatural, it sounded as though it came from inward
depths. But it was his natural voice. He had hardly begun when
something happened. A crowd of ladies and gentlemen strolled by, among
them some of the Queen's suite. We could see them from our place near
the window, and he saw them too; we saw that they pointed in.
"He stopped short, turned quite pale, and drew a breath so deep that we
all heard it. Then he drank more water. It was long before he could go
on speaking. They all looked at him, some whispered among themselves.
Up to now he had spoken like a great machine which gives the first
irregular beats with pauses between. But now he rose, and when he began
to speak again he was sober. I tell you he was absolutely sober. Let me
tell you by degrees, or you won't understand.
"His speech--do you know to what it can be compared? A fugue of Bach's.
There was something fulminating but abundant, uninterruptedly abundant,
and often so gentle; but there was this great difference, that he often
groped for a word, changed it, altered it again, and yet it was
incessant, and reverberant in spite of it all--that was the wonderful
part of it. An irresistible reckless eagerness and haste. One wondered
if there could be more, and there was always more, and nearly always
something extraordinary.
"I had often heard people described as being possessed by some force
of nature, but I had never seen it. Least of all at the Court, where
marked personality is rare. I was at last face to face with one. The
man who stood there was _obliged_ to speak--in the same way, probably,
as at a generous table he was _obliged_ to drink. I knew that he
managed his two farms, and worked on them himself when he had time, and
I imagined that I could see the giant finding relaxation in the work;
but I saw clearly that his mind would work on as actively all the same,
and that head and hands would vie with each other which should weary
first.
"It was of work that he spoke. He led off by a reference to the Queen.
"'Who is she?' he asked; then he answered with some kindly feeling
words about her. Then he asked again: 'Who is she?' He replied with
another inquiry: 'Does she earn her own bread?'
"This he held was the first obligation of all grown-up human beings who
had the power to do it. That was the first standard we should apply to
one another.
"'Does she earn her own bread? Do those who are in her suite earn
theirs?'
"'No,' he answered, 'they don't earn it. They live on that which others
have earned, and are earning.
"'What do they do? Brain work? No, they live by the brain work of
others. How do they spend their days then?
"'In enjoyment, mental and bodily enjoyment of that which others have
done and are doing. In luxury, in idleness, in social formalities, in
king-worship, in travelling, in repose do they live.' At this point he
kept on substituting one word for another, but made no pause.
"Their greatest exertion, he said, was to try to enjoy an additional
party or an extra levee, their greatest danger was a cold or an
overtaxed digestion.
"And in order that the fruit of other people's labour should not be
taken from them, what did they do?
"They opposed everything which threatened them with a new order of
things. They opposed all needful changes. They opposed emancipation for
those who had nothing in the world. They behaved as though society had
from eternity been ordained for them, as though they could say 'Thus
far and no farther.'
"You will understand that I have learnt all these ideas from my
intercourse with him. I could after my own fashion make all his
speeches, and that more fluently; but I believe that this exchanging
one word for another, and his perpetually halting over it, made the
words that he finally did choose more significant. For my part, I have
written down everything that happened in our short life together."
"Everything?"
"I mean everything that mattered at all. Everything, everything. He
never wrote a line, he said he had no time, he despised it. And when
death took him from me and from us all, what had I better to do?
No--don't interrupt me--let me go on telling you! He repeated the same
thought from the religious point of view. It was his way to look at the
same idea from every side. He said that to-day he had been to see an
old woman who said that she couldn't go to church because she had no
shoes. There was no end of trouble to get her some, for the two
shoe-shops wouldn't sell any on Sunday, but she got them. He saw her
afterwards go to church, just at the same time as the Queen and her
suite.
"And he thought, there are so many who sit in church with wretched
shoes on, and so many at home, who dare not venture to church because
of their miserable shoes, or the rest of their miserable garments. Who
are they who have such wretched shoes and clothing? They who have
worked most, worked until they are broken with toil.
"But those who have not worked have ten pairs of shoes, they could have
a thousand; and clothes too, in the greatest superfluity. He had not
been to church, he said, but he knew that there they held forth as
though it were the most natural thing in the world that those who had
shoes should give them to those who had none. You would gather from the
preaching that Jesus Himself had taught it, Jesus had come to make all
men happy, and this was the best way! For it is written, 'He went about
doing good.'
"But they all went home from church just as they came; and no exchange
of shoes took place, nor exchange of clothing either. One went back to
his superfluity of leisure, the other to his poverty and want, and
those who had not been able to go at all, because they were too poor,
remained after the service as they had been before it.
"Such, you see, is our Christianity, he said. And _he_ had a right
to speak, I can tell you, because he shared his 'superfluity' with
others."
"But still you live in a certain comfort?"
"Yes, in his opinion every one had a right to do so. The man who
recognised that he was called on to sacrifice his comfort also should
do it; but for most educated people comfort was the indispensable
condition of work and help the foundation of happiness. And there was a
charm of beauty about it, too, which is a rare incentive.
"No, what he demanded was that all those who could should support
themselves--hear that, my daughter!--and that those who had superfluity
should employ it in work which should be fruitful for others. He called
that Church cowardly and shameless which did not make that demand
without respect of persons."
"Like Tolstoi, then?"
"No, they were very different. Tolstoi is a Slav by birth, Ivan the
Terrible and Tolstoi both of them; for these contradictions pre-suppose
each other. The one did everything by force, the other resists nothing.
The one had to crush all wills under his own in order to make room for
himself, the other will willingly yield, knowing that a desire, once
satisfied, dies. The Slav impulse towards tyranny, the Slav impulse
towards martyrdom, the same passionate excess in both. Born of the same
people, and under the same conditions.
"All the freedom _we_ in Western Europe enjoy we have attained by
keeping bounds, not for ourselves alone but for others. And also by
resisting. It is weakness that knows no limits: strength ordains limits
and observes them."
"But yet the Bible teaches----"
"Yes, yes, but the Bible is from the East too; the Westerns act _in
opposition to_ the Bible. What I am saying comes from your father."
"Did he know Tolstoi?"
"No, but what I have been saying is older than either the Bible or
Tolstoi."
"Then he was a great orator?"
"That I could hardly venture to call him; he could not be reckoned
among the prophets, but among the seers.
"Now don't interrupt me. He believed that in another hundred years to
live in idleness and superfluity would be looked upon by most people as
now we look upon a life of fraud and crime."
"Oh, mother, how did you feel about it?"
"His voice seemed to surge and vibrate in my ears both day and night. A
storm-cloud seemed to surround me. Not as though he thundered or
commanded. No, it was his personality, and something in the voice
itself. It was deep and restrained, as though from a cavern; it came
fitfully, but without cessation. I believe he spoke for over two hours.
Whomever he happened to look at looked at him, and if he looked away
the other continued to gaze--he couldn't help it, you understand. His
eyes blazed with inward fire, he stood bending forward like a tree on a
hillside. The image of the forest rose in my mind. Later, when I was
nearer to him, the breath of the forest seemed to hang round him. And
his skin was so clear! For instance, that part of his throat which was
not sunburnt, because he stooped. When he lifted his head, you can't
imagine how pure and fair it was.
"Ah, how have I drifted into this train of thought? But never mind, I
have drifted into it--and I will follow it out--it takes me to your
father's side again! O Magne, how I loved him! how I shall always love
him!" She burst into tears--the girl's heart beat against hers. The
softened colours of wood and plain in the uncertain light, the
strenuous roar of the river seemed to sunder them from each other; the
surroundings were at war with their mood; but the more closely did they
cling together, each supporting the other.
"Magne, you mustn't ask me to put what I have to say to you in any sort
of order. I only know the point I am aiming at.
"Yes, he was like the nature that surrounded him, fashioned on a
generous scale and rich with hidden treasures: so much I dimly grasped.
Everything I saw was new to me, the face of nature as well as the rest.
I had travelled, but not in Norway.
"It is said of us women that we are not able to analyse those whom we
love, but only worship them in the abstract. But he had a friend, his
best friend; he could analyse him; the poet. He was present at Karl
Mander's last meeting, and he came to me from it when your father was
dead. We talked together of everything as much as I then could. He
wrote about him the most beautiful things that have ever been written.
I know them by heart; I know everything by heart that has been worthily
written about your father."
"Do you know what it was he wrote?"
"'If the landscape I see around me could speak like a human being; if
the dark lofty ridge could find speech to answer the river, and those
two began to talk across the underwood, then you would know the
impression made when Karl Mander had spoken so long that the vibration
of his deep voice and the thoughts it uttered had melted into one.
"'Halting and with difficulty, as though from inward depths clumsily
fumbling for words, he always arrived at the same goal. The thought was
at last as clear and lucid as a birch leaf held against the sunlight.'"
"Was it then----"
"No, don't interrupt me! 'Karl Mander often seemed to me as unlike all
other people as though he belonged to a different order of things. He
was not like an individual, he represented a race. He swept by like a
mighty river: at the mercy of chance and natural obstacles, perhaps,
but ever rolling on. So was he, both in life and in speech. Neither was
his voice merely individual, it had in it the reverberation of a
torrent--a melancholy, captivating harmony, but monotonous,
unceasing.'"
"That surely is what the sea sounds like, mother?"
The mother was as much carried away by her memories as animated in her
movements, as eager in her glance as a young girl. Now she stopped.
"Like the sea, do you say? No, no, no, not like the sea. The sea is
only an eye. No, dear, not like the sea; there were warm depths and
hiding-places in his nature such as the sea has not. One had a sense of
intimate security and comfort with him. He was capable of the most
self-forgetting devotion. Listen further. 'Karl Mander was chosen,' he
wrote, 'chosen as a forerunner before the people's own time should
come--chosen because he was good and blameless; his message to futurity
was not soiled in his soul.'"
"That is beautiful."
"Child, can you imagine how I was carried away? I had had a vague
feeling that the surroundings of my life were unreal; here was
something that was real.
"And he himself! We women do not love that which is lofty merely
because it is lofty; no, there must be a certain weakness
too--something that appeals to our help; we must feel a mission. And
you cannot conceive how powerful and yet powerless he was."
"How powerless, mother?"
"Well, when he came--in that condition----"
"Yes, of course."
"And his way of expressing himself. He never found the right words
first, he stopped and changed them even as they poured out. And, in the
meantime, if he caught something up in his hand he stood there with it.
If it were the tumbler--and it generally was--he grasped it tightly,
and so, because of it, would keep his hand still for a quarter of an
hour at a time. His personality was so pathetically simple, or how
shall I express it? He was a seer, not a prophet--yes, I told you that
before. But seers are quite different, they don't know themselves so
well, they have absolutely no vanity. Heavens, how I longed to go and
take off his cuffs! One could see that he was not accustomed to wear
them: some one must have told him that it would not do to make a speech
from a platform without cuffs on. He had crumpled and tumbled them;
they had come unfastened, or perhaps never had been fastened; they got
in the way and slipped over his hands. He struggled with them. There
was something wrong about the waistcoat too; it was buttoned wrong, I
believe, and puckered up at one side, so that it showed one of his
braces--to me at any rate, where I sat looking at him sideways and with
the light full upon him. Ah, that mighty creature with the stooping
head! The tears rose in my eyes. Who would not have been willing to
follow him?
"I felt as deeply as it could be felt that _he must be helped_. I did
not know that I was to help him; I only knew that he must be helped and
sustained."
A rush of memory so overpowered her that she could not go on, she
turned away.
PART III
The daughter saw her mother in a new light. Surely this was not she who
ordered and managed her house, who sent wise letters to her, with
earnest, well-weighed words! How her passion had transfigured and
beautified her!
"But how did you feel, dearest mother?"
"I was not conscious of what I felt. We went away from there the day
after, and our next halting-place was close to his two farms. I had my
wits so far about me, however, that when some of us had to be quartered
out, I chose the house which was nearest his. And when the tempest
within me was no longer to be resisted I wrote to him, without signing
my name. I asked him for an interview. He was to meet me on the road
that went through his wood, between his house and ours. I dropped the
letter into his own letter-box on the road. You can imagine what a
state I was in when I tell you that I had appointed ten o'clock in the
evening, as I thought that then it would be dark! I had not noticed
that it was still light at that time, so far north had we come. The
result was that I did not dare to go out until eleven, and then I was
sure there would be no one to meet. But there he was! Mighty and
stooping, his hat pressed together in his hand, he came forward,
hesitatingly, shyly, and awkwardly, glad. 'I knew it was you,' he
said."
"Oh, mother! what did you do?"
"All at once I began to wonder where I had got the courage from! I did
not even know what I wanted with him! When I saw him I could have
turned and fled. But his wonderful gait, those long firm strides, his
hat in hand, his shaggy head.... I felt I must see it all. And the
wonderful thing he said: 'I knew it was you.' How could he have known
it? I don't remember whether I asked him, or if he saw my surprise, but
he explained that he had seen me as we came away from the lecture; he
had heard who I was. It was wonderful to hear the deep voice, which for
me meant something so absolutely exceptional, as though resounding from
the far future, making embarrassed excuses for having said anything
that might have wounded me. Before he succeeded in getting out 'wounded
_you_,' he stammered--'wounded the Queen--wounded the Queen and her
ladies--wounded _you_!' He had so many other subjects he might have
touched upon, and so many other themes he might have chosen. He could
have said so much that was good of the Queen, much that he knew to be
true; but he had forgotten it. So he went on, his eyes looking into
mine--trusting, but commanding eyes, whose attraction I felt. There
seemed to be an echo in the silent wood of his unfathomable honesty.
And his eyes went on repeating, 'Don't you believe it, too?' No one can
imagine how unconscious he was of the effect they produced. He spoke,
and I listened, and we drew nearer and nearer to each other. But the
joy I felt, and which could not find words--what should I have said? At
last it became uncontrollable--it burst all bounds. I suddenly heard
myself laugh! And you should have seen how, all of a sudden, he laughed
with me! Laughed, so that the woods re-echoed! The fishermen were just
rowing past to be at their post when the sun should rise. They rested
on their oars and listened. They all knew the sound of his laughter. I
recognised its sound from the time when I saw him coming between his
two satellites. There was a faun in him--a northern faun, of course, a
wild man of the woods, unrestrained, but innocent, leading two bears,
one under each arm! Yes, something of that kind. Not a troll, you
understand, for they are stupid and malignant."
"You say 'innocent,' mother? How do you mean that he was innocent,
since he was so wild?"
"Because nothing harmed him. Whatever he might have known or
experienced, he remained a great child all the same. Yes, I tell you,
refined and as aloof from evil. He had such a power of refinement in
himself that what did not appeal to his nature was annihilated by it.
It no longer existed for him."
"Oh, mother, how was it all? Oh, why have you been given this
experience, and not I!" She had hardly spoken the words when she turned
and ran swiftly away. The mother let her alone; she sat on a stone and
waited her return. It was good to rest with her thoughts. She sat a
long time alone, and would willingly have sat longer; but the clouds
began to gather. Then Magne came back with a nosegay of the most
beautiful wild flowers and delicate grasses arranged about a fir branch
covered with cones, grey-green young cones.
"Mother, he was like this nosegay, wasn't he? What, dear mother, are
you crying?"
"I am crying for joy, my child; for joy and regret both together. One
day you will come to understand that those are the most comforting
tears in the world."
But Magne had thrown herself down on the ground by her side. "Mother,
you don't know how happy you have made me to-day!"
"I see I have, dear child; I was right to wait; it was a struggle, but
I did right."
"Mother, dear mother, let us go back to the forest at home, to the road
through our forest! Let me hear more! It was there it happened, then!
Mother, tell me! What came next, sweetest mother! Ah, how lovely you
are! There is always something fresh to discover in you."
The mother stroked her hair in silence, soothingly.
"Mother, I know that woodland road on summer nights. Laura walked there
with me when she was engaged, and told me how it all happened, and the
fishers rode past that time too, just as we came to an opening. We hid
ourselves behind a great boulder; and the thrush began to sing, and
many other birds, but the thing that affected me most was the scented
air."
"Yes, doesn't it? And that is why I have always thought since that the
woodland scent hung around Karl. Ah, I must tell you how curiously
unconscious he was--what other word can I use? We stood still and
looked over the lake. 'Oh, what a longing that gives,' said I. 'Yes, a
longing to bathe, doesn't it?' said he."
Magne broke into hearty laughter; the mother smiled. "Now it no longer
seems so strange to me. The water was more to him than it is to us--he
used to plunge into a bath at the most unexpected times: when he was
not to be found in his farms or at his office, that was always where he
was. It was his strongest natural craving; he loved the cold embrace of
the elements, he said.
"And how he laughed to himself when he saw how I was laughing! We
laughed in unison."
"Then, mother, what happened? I can really wait no longer."
"I came home just as other people were getting up. And the next night
was like that one, and the next after that, and the next after that
again. One night it rained, and we both walked along under the same
umbrella, and that was what brought things to a climax."
"To a climax?--how?"
"After once being obliged to walk arm-in-arm, we always went arm-in-arm
afterwards."
"But other people, mother? Weren't you afraid of what they would say?"
"No; other people didn't exist for me. I can't remember how it all went
on--it happened that one night we had sat down."
"Ah! now we are coming to it!"
"I asked to be allowed to sit down; I felt I could walk no longer. The
night was glorious--silence and we two! He went on talking with his
eyes looking into mine; he didn't know himself how they shone with
happiness. I couldn't speak--I could hardly breathe--I was obliged to
rest. And a few minutes after I sat on his knee."
"Was it he who----"
"I cannot quite remember. I only remember the first time my arms were
about his neck and my face against his hair and beard. It was rapture,
something absolutely new--it was bliss. The feeling of those giant arms
round me transported me far, far away. But we were there on the boulder
all the same."
"Were you as though beside yourself----?"
"Yes, that is just it! that is what it is called--but it really means
being in possession of oneself, raised up to higher things. By his side
I was myself twice over. That is love; nothing else deserves the name."
"Mother, mother! it was you, then, who sprang into his arms! It was
you!"
"Yes, I am afraid it was I. I suppose he was too modest, too shy to
begin that sort of thing. Yes, I know in my heart it was I. For life
must be preserved. It was a question of nothing less. To be able to
help him, to follow him, and worship him, and give myself up to him,
that or nothing. I believe, too, that that was what I said to him, if I
did say a single word."
"Oh, you know that you said it!"
"I believe I did; but in looking back upon such moments as those one
does not know whether one was feeling or speaking." She looked out into
the long valley. She stood like one who is about to sing, with lifted
head and open mouth, listening for the music before it sounds. But it
was not so: it was the sound of bygone music that she heard.
A little while afterwards she said quite softly--the daughter was
obliged to draw nearer to her, for the sound of the river swallowed up
some of the words:
"Now you shall hear something, Magne; you have never heard it from me,
and others are not likely to have told you."
"What is it, mother? You almost frighten me."
"At the time I met your father I was already engaged."
"What do you say? You, mother?"
"Yes, I was engaged, and was to be married; and it was my last month
with the Queen. The engagement had taken place, and was to be carried
out with the highest sanction."
"But to whom?"
"Ah, that is it! Didn't I tell you before, that at the time I met your
father I was in absolute despair?"
"You, mother? No."
"I did not believe that life had anything to offer, or that I had
anything to wait for. Most girls who arrive at the age of twenty-eight
without anything having happened to them, anything that is worth
rousing themselves for, believe that nothing is worth caring about. The
age, or about that age, is the most perilous."
"How do you mean?"
"That is when most girls come to despair."
She took her daughter's arm, which she pressed, and so they walked on
together.
"I must confess it all to you"--but there she stopped.
"Who was it, mother?" She said it so softly that her mother didn't
hear, but she knew what it was.
"It was some one for whom you have but small respect, my child. And you
are right."
"My uncle?"
"How did that occur to you?"
"I don't know. But was it he?"
"Yes, it was. Yes, I see you don't understand it. I never understood it
myself, either. Think of your father, and of him! And just about the
same time, too. What do you think of me? But, oh! take care of
yourself, my child."
"Mother?"
"Well, well--_you_ have a mother, and I had none. And I was at Court,
and, as I told you, at the perilous age when nothing seems worth caring
about any longer. Of course I, too, had been playing the same game that
I have been looking on at to-day, but not with your aptitude. Yes, you
may turn away your face. I had come to feel a certain disgust with
life--for myself among the rest--and so I went on refusing people till
it was too late in the day."
"But--with my uncle!" Magne broke out again.
"We looked upon him differently at that time. But I don't want to go
into all that again now. I will only admit that it was horrible. So you
may think what you like about it--I mean as to how it came about."
The daughter took her arm away and looked at her mother.
"Yes, Magne, we don't always do as we mean to do, and I have told you I
was at the perilous age. And so you can understand how I felt when I
saw your father--there was something more than pettiness and frivolity
in me after all."
"But the others, mother! How could you put it in the proper light to
the others, to the Court, to our relations, to my uncle, and all his
people? Surely there must have been a fuss and a scandal that you had
to hold up your head against?"
"Wait, Magne, we will let all that alone till later. There were no
'others' at all! Some fishermen had seen us, and they had taken
measures to find out who I was. Before it was known I had gone away,
and within one month I was his wife. I had fallen into the hands of a
man who did things thoroughly and at once. He was too simple to
conceive any other way than to go straight forward. So it took place
without any obstacles."
"And what did people say? Was it a good thing for my father--I mean in
people's opinion--that he had married you?"
"You mean that he should marry a maid of honour?" she smiled. "Do you
know what people said of it? Why, Karl Mander had publicly maligned the
Queen--one of her maids of honour had heard him, and a month after she
had eloped with him. That was about it. She had chosen the roughest man
in the country. That was what people said."
"Naturally."
"A year after a tourist wrote in a newspaper that he had seen the
runaway maid of honour standing at the washing-tub. Ha, ha! It was true
enough for that matter. You had come, then, and it was harvest-time,
and I was obliged to lend a hand. We both did."
"Mother, mother, what was he like at home? When you were together, I
mean? Wasn't it perfect? It must have been the greatest and best thing
the world had to give? Mother, mother, all my life I must be grateful
to you for having treasured this up for me till now, for before I
should not have understood it."
"Yes, isn't it so? Such things cannot be told to a child, nor to a
half-grown girl. But I am not telling you, now, only for the sake of
telling you. You ask how things were when we were together. Picture him
to yourself first. An unselfish, devoted nature that was very little
understood, by some few perhaps, in a way, but even by them not
adequately. The result was that when he believed he had found sympathy,
he poured himself out so unrestrainedly that people laughed at him. If
he were in company he drank, or rather was made to drink, until he was
tipsy, and so let his untamable nature take the bit in its teeth. Do
you know--yes, I must tell you this. At a party a lady (she is now
married to the captain here) set to work to draw him out for the
amusement of the others. She was very bright and witty; she appeared to
be entirely carried away by him, so that she could not listen to him
enough, could not question him enough, and all the while poured more
and more wine into his glass. She drank with him; she made all the
others drink with him."
"Good heavens, mother!"
"Do you know where it all ended? In the cowhouse. They locked him into
the cowhouse by himself. His frenzy of rage brought on a nervous
attack. She it was whom he saw from the window as he stood on the
platform that day. It was then he became sober."
The mother and daughter walked on in silence.
"You knew nothing of all this at that time, did you, mother?--not until
later?"
"No; if I had known it, I believe I should have gone straight up to
him, taken him by the hand, and greeted him with all my heart."
"I should too, mother!"
"Since my life with him I have thought a great deal. Do you know, I
believe geniuses have this characteristic of confiding impulsiveness,
and therefore the people and conditions that surround them are of all
the greater importance. But most important of all is it that they
should have a woman's help. And, according to the nature of that help,
so things go with them. Karl Mander had got into the habit of speaking
in monologues. He got on best among peasants. They disturbed him least.
Books, meditations, farming, bathing, and now and then an orgie, a
speech, or, for preference, one on top of the other--that had been his
life up to then."
"But he didn't drink, mother? There was no need for him to drink, was
there?"
"No more need than for you or for me. It was simply an outburst of mere
high spirits, or repressed longing for happiness. So the last time----"
"Yes, that time! Oh, why were you not there?"
"You had come to us then, my child, and I could not; I was nursing you
at my breast. The whole thing would have gone off happily, if some one
at the banquet after the meeting had not been so imprudent as to
propose my health! Then he let himself go! There was the theme of
themes, and he had never unbosomed himself about it to any one! The
toast applied the match to his inward fire; his exultant joy blazed up.
He made a speech in praise of at least twenty of my characteristics, of
marriage, of fatherhood. He----"
She could not go on. She sat down, her daughter by her; they were both
in tears. The roar of the river swept pitilessly past them, and yet it
seemed to bring them a kind of comfort. All the tears we may shed avail
nothing. It goes on its way, and nothing arrests its determined course
to the sea.
Through the voice of nature the whispers of memory brought back his
tragic end. It came over them both again how, after the banquet, he
wanted to refresh himself with a bath. How every one tried to dissuade
him, but it was no use. How he sprang in from a great height, took
longer and longer strokes out, as though each one of them were taking
him home, was seized by cramp and sank.
"Mother, there is so much I still want to hear about your life
together." Then, after a moment: "Mother, you must give me that too!
Yes, you have told me so much, so very much about it. But not just the
thing I want to know now! The love, mother, the devotion between you
both! Mother, that must have been something too wonderful to realise."
"Beyond all comprehension, my child! Beyond all understanding! And, do
you know, the calumnies that were spread about us, especially the
miserable anonymous letters, all kinds of meanness, it all helped. For
each time we found in each other a perfect refuge. He was not so
thin-skinned in such matters as I. It was through me that he first came
to understand them--how to manage the petty incidents of social life.
The leaders of society in this little country are not of pure Norwegian
race, but of foreign descent. A man like him could never learn to keep
pace with them. But I was one of them, and, through the effect on me,
he understood! When he once was started on a line of thought you can't
imagine how fast he went. He was a discoverer, an investigator by
nature. But when he first rightly found out what I had exposed myself
to by choosing him, ah! how the thought of it spurred him on! If ever
any one has been rewarded here on the earth, he rewarded me. Night and
day, the whole summer, the whole autumn, the whole winter, the whole
spring, we were never apart. Our life was one continued flight from the
outer world, but it was a flight into Paradise. He refused all
invitations; he had hardly time to speak to the people who came to see
him; he would not have them in the house. He and I, and I and he, in
the big rooms, and the smaller ones, he in mine or I in his. And on the
country roads, in the fields, in the mountain pastures, on the lake, on
the ice, working, superintending together, together always, or if we
were away from each other it was but to meet again at the very earliest
moment. But the more we were together the more I came to understand the
wealth of his nature. What impressed me most about him was not the flow
of ideas, it was the man himself. To fathom his perfect uprightness,
clear to the very bottom, gave me the most glorious moments I have
known. His devotion to me--or what shall I call it?--was all summed up
in one image--his mighty head on my lap! There he often rested it, and
always said, 'How good it is to be here!'"
And the daughter laid her head in her mother's lap and sobbed.
It began to rain. They rose and went home again. The little assembly
house up by the station loomed more indistinct but more inviting
through the rain. And the landscape took on a greater harmony of tints
and greater friendliness; the scent from the birch-trees seemed
trebled.
"Yes, my child. I believe I have given you some of his aspirations.
Have I not?" She bent down towards her face.
Instead of answering, the daughter pressed closer to her.
They waited a moment before going on.
"You have a longing, yearning nature; you inherited it, and I have
stimulated it in you by what I learnt from him. I have put great
objects, noble men and women before you. So did he; I have plunged you
into lofty thoughts, as he plunged in nature to refresh his own. I knew
when I sent you away from me that I was acting in accordance with his
spirit. But I knew best with what armour you were equipped: it came to
you from him. And yet.... Magne!"
The daughter instinctively drew her arm from within the mother's and
stood still. She needed to rest on her own strength, as it were.
"Yes, I see it; that is the third time to-day. You feel that I am
taking hold upon you; and I _will_ take hold upon you. It was at the
party at your uncle's that you said to me, when I was going in to
supper, 'Mother, you might as well keep on your gloves.' You were
ashamed of my work-hardened hands."
"Mother, mother!" The daughter covered her face and turned away.
"I will tell you this, my child, that without these work-hardened hands
you would not be what you are now; if you have lived in a society where
it is considered shameful for a woman to have such hands, you have
lived in an evil society. And to-day you enjoyed that society, enjoyed
it as though you believed you yourself had attained a certain greatness
in it."
"No, mother; no, no!"
"Yes, you did! You may perhaps have felt a pang of conscience or of
fear; that may be, for I was there. But now the moment has come for you
to choose; I wanted your choice to be made before you should cross the
threshold of your father's house, my child. Work--or else the other
thing."
"Oh, mother, you wrong me! If only you knew!"
"If I can make you love your father--and I shall do all I can, and you
have capacity--if I can make you really, rightly love him, then I know
all that you will be able to do. We women must love in order to have
faith."
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