Then they came back to the firm, rhythmic accompaniment of a cane
striking against the cobble-stones, crossed over to the other side,
lingered long in the distance, sank to a murmur—died away.
And the silence again welled up around them, flamed up around them,
throbbing with heartbeats, heavy with breath, yielding. Speech had been
seared away between them, and lingering kisses fell from their lips
fraught with unspoken questions, but giving no solace nor any present
bliss. They held each other’s gaze and dared not take their eyes away,
but neither did they dare to put meaning into their look; they veiled
it rather; withdrew behind it, silently hiding, brooding over secret
dreams.
A quiver passed through his clasping arms and woke her. She thrust him
from her with both hands and set herself free.
“Go, Niels, go! You must not be here, you must not. Do you hear?”
He tried to draw her to him again, but she broke away, wild and pale.
She was trembling from head to foot and stood holding her arms out from
her body as if she were afraid to touch herself.
Niels would have knelt and caught her hand.
“Don’t touch me!” There was desperation in her look. “Why don’t you go
when I am begging you to? Good heavens, why can’t you go? No, no, don’t
speak to me, go away, you—Can’t you see I am shaking before you? Look,
look! Oh, it’s wicked the way you are treating me! And when I’m begging
you to go!”
It was impossible to say a word; she would not listen. She was quite
beside herself. Tears streamed from her eyes; her face was almost
distorted and seemed to give out light in its pallor.
“Oh, do go! Can’t you see that you are humiliating me by staying? You
are brutal to me, that’s what you are! What have I done to you that you
ill-treat me this way? Do go! Have you no pity?”
Pity? He was cold with rage. This was madness! Still he could do
nothing but go, and he went. He did not like the two rows of chairs,
but he walked slowly between them, looking at them with a fixed gaze of
defiance.
“Exit Niels Lyhne,” he said, when he heard the latch of the hall-door
click behind him.
He walked down the steps thoughtfully, his hat in his hand. On the
landing he stopped and gesticulated to himself: If he could understand
the least bit! Why _this_ and why, again, _that_? Then he walked on.
There were the open windows. He felt like tearing to pieces that sickly
sweet silence up there with a shrill cry. He felt like talking to some
one for hours—mercilessly—talking nonsense into that silence, washing
it cold in nonsense. He could not get it out of his blood; he could see
it, taste it; he walked in it. Suddenly he stopped and blushed fiery
red with angry shame. Had she used him to tempt herself with?
In the room above, Mrs. Boye still was weeping. She had gone over to
the pier-glass and stood resting both hands on the console, weeping
till the tears dripped from her cheeks down into the pink chamber of
a huge sea-shell lying there. She looked at her distorted face as it
appeared above the misty spot her breath had formed on the mirror, and
traced the course of her tears as they welled out over the rim of the
eyes and rolled down. Where did they all come from? She had never cried
like this before—yes, once, in Frascati, after a runaway.
Presently the tears began to come more sparingly, but a nervous
trembling still shook her spasmodically from neck to heel.
The sun now beat directly on the windows. The tremulous reflections
from the waves were drawn aslant under the ceiling, and on the sides
of the Venetian blinds the parallel rays fell in rows, forming perfect
shelves of yellowish light. The heat increased, and mingling with the
ripe smell of hot wood and sun-warmed dust, other scents floated out
from the bright flowers of the sofa-cushions, from the silken curves of
the chair-backs, from books and folded rugs, where the heat released a
hundred forgotten perfumes and wafted them through the air, light as
wraiths.
Very slowly her trembling subsided, leaving a curious dizziness, in
which fantastic emotions that were more than half sensations whirled
around on the tracks of her wondering thoughts. She closed her eyes,
but remained standing with her face turned to the mirror.
Strange how it had come over her, this piercing terror! Had she cried
out? There was the echo of a scream in her ears and a tired feeling
in her throat as if she had emitted a long, anguished cry. If he had
taken her! She allowed herself to be taken and pressed her arms against
her heart as if to ward him off. She struggled, but yet—now: she felt
as if she were sinking naked through the air, blushing, burning with
shame, impudently caressed by all the winds of heaven—He would not go,
and it would soon be too late; all her strength was leaving her like
bubbles that burst; bubble after bubble forced its way between her lips
and burst unceasingly; in another second it would be too late! Had she
begged him on her knees? Too late! She was lifted irresistibly to his
embrace, as a bubble that rises through the water—tremulous, so her
soul rose up naked before him, with every wish bared to his gaze, every
secret dream, every hidden surrender unveiled before his mastering eye.
Again in his arms, lingering, sweetly trembling. There was a statue
of alabaster surrounded by flames; it glowed transparent in the heat
of the fire; little by little its dark centre melted, until all was
luminous light.
Slowly she opened her eyes and looked at her image in the mirror with a
discreet smile as at a fellow conspirator before whom she did not wish
to commit herself too fully. Then she went around the room gathering
together her gloves, hat, and mantilla.
Her dizziness seemed blown away, leaving only a rather pleasant sense
of weakness in her knees. She walked about to feel it better. Secretly,
as if by accident, she gave the rocking-chair a confidential little
push with her elbow.
She rather liked scenes.
With one look she said farewell to some invisible thing. Then she
rolled up the blinds, and it seemed like another room.
* * * * *
Three weeks later Mrs. Boye was married, and Niels Lyhne was quite
alone with himself. He could not quite keep up his indignation over the
unworthy manner in which she had thrown herself into the arms of that
conventional society at which she had so often scoffed. True, it had
only opened the door and beckoned, and she had come. But it was hardly
for him to throw stones, for had he not himself felt the magnetic
attraction of honest bourgeoisie? If it had not been for that last
meeting! If that really was what he accused her of, if it had been
intended for a madcap farewell to the old life, one last wanton prank
before she withdrew behind “the quintessence of propriety”—could it
be possible? Such boundless self-scorn, such a cynical mockery of
herself and him and all that they had shared of memories and hopes, of
enthusiasm and sacred ideals! It made him blush and rage by turns.—But
was he fair to her? After all, what had she done but tell him frankly
and honestly: Such and such things draw me to the other side and draw
me powerfully, but I recognize your right even more fully than you
ask, and here I am. If you can take me, I am yours; if not, I go where
the power is greatest.—And if it were so, had she not been entirely
within her rights? He had not been able to take her. The final decision
_might_ depend on such a little thing, on the shadow of a thought, the
vibration of a mood.
If he only knew what she must have known for an instant and probably
did not know any longer! He hated to believe that of which he could not
help accusing her. Not only for her sake, but even more for his own,
because it seemed to put a blot on his ’scutcheon, not logically, of
course, and yet—
But, whatever the manner of her leaving him, one thing was certain: he
was now alone, and though he felt the emptiness at first, he was soon
conscious of a sense of relief. So many things were waiting for him. The
year at Lönborggaard and abroad, though absorbing his thoughts, had
been in a sense an involuntary rest, and the very fact that this period
had given him a clearer conception of his own powers and limitations
spurred him on to use his faculties in undisturbed work. He was not
anxious to create yet, but rather to collect; there was such an
infinite mass of material he wanted to make his own that he began
to think dejectedly of the brief span of mortal life. Though he had
never wasted his time, it is not easy to emancipate one’s self from
the paternal book-case, and it seems simplest to seek the goal along
the paths where others have attained it, and therefore he had not
set out to seek his own Vineland in the wide world of books, but had
followed where the fathers led. Loyally he had closed his eyes to much
that lured him, in order to see more clearly in the vast night of the
Eddas and sagas; and he had been deaf to many voices that called him,
in order to listen more closely to the mystic sounds of nature in the
folksongs.
But now he understood, at last, that it was not a law of nature to be
either Old Norse or Romantic, that it was simpler to express his own
doubts than to put them in the mouth of Gorm, Loki-worshipper, that it
was more rational to find words for the mystic stirrings of his own
being than to call to the cloister walls of the Middle Ages and hear
his own voice come back to him as a faint echo.
He had always had an open mind for the new ideas of his time, but he
had been occupied in finding how the New had been foreshadowed in
the Old, rather than in listening to what the New said clearly and
explicitly for itself. In this he was in no wise remarkable; for never
yet has any new gospel been preached but the whole world has become
busy with the old prophets.
Yet this did not suffice, and Niels threw himself enthusiastically into
his new labors. He was seized with that lust of conquest and thirst for
the power of knowledge which every worker in the realm of thought, no
matter how humble a drudge he may later become, has surely felt once
in his life, though for only one brief hour. Which one of us all, whom
a kind fate has given the opportunity to care for the development of
our own minds, has not gazed rapturously out over the boundless sea of
knowledge, and which of us has not gone down to its clear, cool waters
and begun, in the light-hearted arrogance of youth, to dip it out in
our hollow hand as the child in the legend? Do you remember how the
sun could laugh over the fair summer land, yet you saw neither flower
nor sky nor rippling brook? The feasts of life swept past and woke not
even a dream in your young blood; even your home seemed far away—do
you remember? And do you also remember how a structure rose in your
thoughts from the yellowing leaves of books, complete and whole,
reposing in itself as a work of art, and it was yours in every detail,
and your spirit dwelt in it? When the pillars rose slender and with
conscious strength in their bold curves, it was of you that brave
aspiring and of you the bold sustaining. And when the vaulted roof
seemed to be suspended in air, because it had gathered all its weight,
stone upon stone, in mighty drops, and let it down on the neck of
the pillars, it was of you that dream of weightless floating, that
confident bearing down of the arches; it was you planting your foot on
your own.
In this wise your personality grows with your knowledge and is
clarified and unified through it. To learn is as beautiful as to live.
Do not be afraid to lose yourself in minds greater than your own! Do
not sit brooding anxiously over your own individuality or shut yourself
out from influences that draw you powerfully for fear that they may
sweep you along and submerge your innermost pet peculiarities in their
mighty surge! Never fear! The individuality that can be lost in the
sifting and reshaping of a healthy development is only a flaw; it is
a branch grown in the dark, which is distinctive only so long as it
retains its sickly pallor. And it is by the sound growth in yourself
that you must live. Only the sound can grow great.
* * * * *
Christmas Eve came upon Niels Lyhne unawares. For the past six months,
he had not visited any one except now and then the Neergaards. They had
invited him to spend the evening with them, but last Christmas Eve had
been the memorable one at Clarens, and therefore he preferred to be
alone.
There was a high wind. A thin covering of snow not yet trodden into
slush spread over the streets and made them seem wider. The layer of
white on roofs and window-sills gave a touch of beauty to the houses at
the same time as it made them appear more isolated. The street-lamps,
flickering in the wind, would now and then, as if absent-mindedly,
send a patch of light up a wall and startle from its dreams a
merchants sign, making it stare out in large-lettered blankness. The
store-windows, too, half lighted as they were and still disarranged
from the Christmas shopping, wore an unusual aspect, a curiously
abstracted look.
He turned into the side streets, where the celebration seemed to be in
full swing. Music sounded from basements and low rooms; sometimes it
was a violin, but more often a hand organ, that droned out dance tunes,
and something in the hearty goodwill of the performers suggested rather
the pleasant toil of the dance than its festive glamor. It brought an
illusion of shuffling feet and steaming air—at least so it seemed to
him who stood outside and, in his solitude, became polemical against
all this sociability. He had much more sympathy for the workingman who
stood with his child outside a tiny shop, discussing one of the cheap
marvels in the dimly lighted window, evidently determined to have
their choice absolutely decided before they ventured into that den of
temptation. And he felt sympathy for the poorly clad old gentlewomen
who passed him, one by one, almost at every hundred steps—all with
the strangest coats and mantillas in the fashion of bygone days, and
all with diffident, timorous movements of their old throats, like
suspicious birds, walking in the uncertain, hesitating manner of those
long unused to the world, as if they had been sitting, day after day,
forgotten in the hidden corners of rear flats and attic rooms and only
that one evening in the year were included and remembered. It saddened
him. His heart shrank with a sick sensation, as he tried to picture to
himself the slowly trickling existence of such a lonely old spinster;
he seemed to hear sounding in his ears a mantel clock, painfully
rhythmic, ticking out its “once-again, once-again,” dropping the empty
seconds, one by one, in the chalice of day and filling it full.
Well, he would have to get this Christmas dinner over with. He retraced
his steps in a half conscious dread that if he chose other streets
they might reveal other kinds of lonely creatures and other forms of
forlornness than those he had encountered, which had already left a
bitter taste in his mouth.
Out there in the wider streets he breathed more freely. He quickened
his pace with a slight sense of defiance, holding himself apart as it
were from what he had just seen by telling himself that his loneliness
was self-chosen.
He entered one of the larger restaurants. While waiting for his dinner,
he observed, from the shelter of an old newspaper supplement, the
people who came in. Most of them were young men. Some had a challenging
air, as if they would forbid all present to appropriate them as fellow
sufferers, while others could not conceal their embarrassment at having
no place to go on such an evening, but all showed a marked preference
for distant corners and secluded tables. Many came in couples, and
most of these were plainly brothers; Niels had never seen so many
brothers all at once. Often they were very much unlike each other
in dress and manner, and their hands testified even more clearly to
their different positions in life. It was almost a rarity to see any
particular intimacy between them, either when they came or after they
had sat and talked for a while. Here, one was superior and the other
full of admiration; there, one was cordial, while the other repelled
advances. Others again betrayed a mutual watchfulness, or, worse yet,
an unexpressed condemnation of each other’s aims and ambitions and
methods. Most of them evidently needed the holiday and a certain amount
of loneliness to make them remember their common origin and bring them
together.
Niels sat thinking of this and marvelling at the patience all these
people exhibited, neither ringing nor calling for the waiters, as if
they had tacitly agreed to banish as much as possible of the restaurant
atmosphere from the place. While he was engrossed in this, he saw just
coming in a man whom he knew, and the sudden sight of a familiar face
among all these strangers startled him so that he rose and met him with
a pleased, though somewhat surprised, “Good evening.”
“Are you waiting for any one?” asked the other, looking for a place to
hang his overcoat.
“No, I am alone.”
“That’s lucky for me!”
The newcomer was a Dr. Hjerrild, a young man whom Niels had met at
the Neergaards, and whom he knew—not from anything he had said, but
from certain innuendos of Mrs. Neergaard’s—to be very liberal in his
religious views, though the political opinions he professed were quite
the reverse. People of that type did not often frequent the home of
the Neergaards, who were at once religious and liberal. The doctor,
however, belonged by inclination as well as through the influence
of his dead mother to one of the circles—rather numerous at that
time—where the new liberal ideas were looked on with sceptical or even
hostile eyes, while in religion their members were rather more than
rationalists and rather less than atheists, when they were not mystics
or indifferentists. These various circles had many shades of opinion,
but, in general, they were agreed in feeling that Holstein was at least
as near to their hearts as Slesvig, while the kinship with Sweden was
ignored, and Danism in its newest forms was not altogether approved.
Moreover, they knew their Molière better than their Holberg, Baggesen
better than Oehlenschläger, and in their artistic taste they tended,
perhaps, to the sentimental.
In such, or at least kindred influences, Hjerrild had developed. He
sat looking a little dubiously at Niels, as the latter recounted his
observations of the other diners and especially dwelt on their apparent
shame at not having part in any home or semblance of home on such an
evening.
“I understand that perfectly,” he said coldly, in a tone almost of
rebuff. “People don’t come here on Christmas Eve because they like it,
and necessarily they must have a sense of humiliation at being left
out, no matter whether it’s other people’s doing or their own. Do you
mind telling me why you are here? Don’t answer if you would rather not.”
Niels replied that it was only because he had spent last Christmas Eve
with his mother, who had since died.
“I beg your pardon,” said Hjerrild; “it was very good of you to answer
me, and you must forgive me for being so suspicious. Do you know, I
could very well imagine that you might come here in order to administer
a youthful kick to Christmas as an institution, but as for myself, I
am really here out of respect for other people’s Christmas. It is the
first Christmas Eve since I came here that I have not spent with a very
kind family from my native town. It occurred to me, somehow, that I was
in the way when they sang their Christmas carols, not that they were
ashamed—they have too much character for that—but it made them uneasy
to have any one there to whom these hymns were as sung into the empty
air. At least that is what I imagined.”
Almost silently they finished their dinner, lighted their cigars, and
agreed to go somewhere else for their toddy. Neither of them felt
inclined, that evening, to gaze upon the same gilded mirror frames and
red sofas that met their eyes on most of the other evenings of the
year, and so they sought refuge in a little café which they did not
usually frequent.
They soon realized that this was no place to stay in.
The host and the waiters, with a few friends, sat in the rear of the
room, playing loo with two trumps. The host’s wife and daughters looked
on and brought the refreshments, but not to the strangers; a waiter
filled their order. They drank hurriedly, for they noticed that their
entrance made an interruption; the conversation was hushed, and the
host, who had been sitting in his shirt-sleeves, seemed embarrassed and
put on his coat.
“We seem to be rather homeless to-night,” said Niels, as they walked
down the street.
“Well, that is as it should be,” was Hjerrild’s rather pathetic answer.
They began to talk about the Christian religion, for the topic was in
the air.
Niels argued vehemently, but in rather general terms, against
Christianity.
Hjerrild was tired of treading again the beaten track of discussions
that were old to him, and suddenly said, without any particular
connection with what had gone before: “Take care, Lyhne; Christianity
is in power. It is foolish to quarrel with the reigning truth by
agitating for a crown prince truth.”
“Foolish or not foolish—what does it matter?”
“Don’t say that so lightly. I did not mean to tell you such a
commonplace as that it is foolish in a material way; morally, too, it
is foolish and worse. Take care; don’t associate yourself too closely
with this particular movement in our time, unless it happens to be
absolutely necessary to your own personality. As a poet you must have
many other interests.”
“I don’t understand you. I can’t treat myself like a hurdy-gurdy
from which I can take out an unpopular piece and put in a tune that
everybody is whistling.”