engagement. As it contained everything they needed, and as he hoped
to go to Italy in a year or two, he had persuaded Consul Claudi to
postpone the purchase of household furnishings for a while. They had
moved into Marianelund very much as into a hotel, except that they
brought a few more trunks than travellers usually carry.
The house fronted the fjord, less than twenty feet from the water,
and was rather ordinary in appearance. It had a balcony above, a
veranda below, and at the back a young garden with trees no thicker
than walking-sticks, but from the garden one could step right into a
magnificent bit of beech woods with heathery glades and wide clefts
opening between banks of white clay, and that made up for many
shortcomings.
This was Fennimore’s new home, and for a while it was as bright as
happiness could make it, for they were both young and in love, strong
and healthy, and without a care for their means of subsistence, either
spiritual or material.
But every palace of joy that rises heavenward has sand mixed in the
earth on which it is founded, and the sand will collect and run away,
slowly perhaps, imperceptibly perhaps, but it runs and runs, grain by
grain.... And love? Even love is not a rock, however much we may wish
to believe it.
She loved him with her whole soul, with the hot, tremulous passion born
of fear. He was to her much more than a god, much nearer—he was an
idol, whom she worshipped without reason and without reserve.
His love was strong as hers, but it lacked the fine, manly tenderness
that protects the loved woman against herself and watches over her
dignity. Dimly he felt it as a duty, which called him sometimes in a
faint, low voice, but he would not hear. She was too alluring in her
blind love; her beauty, which had the provocative luxuriance and the
humble seductiveness of the female slave, incited him to a passion that
knew neither bounds nor mercy.
In the old myth about Amor, is it not told somewhere that he puts his
hand over Psyche’s eyes before they fly away, rapturously, into the
glowing night?
Poor Fennimore! if she could have been consumed by the fire of her own
heart, he who should have guarded her would have fanned the flames;
for he was like that drunken monarch who swung the incendiary torch,
shouting with joy to see his imperial city burn, intoxicating himself
with the sight of the leaping flames, until the ashes made him sober.
Poor Fennimore! She did not know that the hymn of joy can be sung so
often that both melody and words are lost, and nothing remains but a
twaddle of triviality. She did not know that the intoxication which
uplifts to-day takes its strength from the wings of to-morrow, and when
at length sobriety dawned, gray and heavy, she realized tremblingly
that they had loved themselves down to a sweet contempt for themselves
and each other—a sweet contempt which day by day lessened in sweetness
and became, at last, utterly bitter. They turned away from each other
as far as they could; he, to dream about his betrayed ideal of lofty
coldness and scornful grace; she, to gaze with longing despair at the
dim, quiet shores of her girlhood days, now so immeasurably far away.
With each day that passed, it seemed harder to bear; shame burned madly
in her veins, and a suffocating disgust with herself made everything
seem wretched and hopeless. There was a small deserted room containing
nothing but the trunks she had brought from home, and there she would
often sit, hour after hour, until the sun sank over the world out there
and filled the room with reddish light. There she tortured herself
with thoughts sharper than thorns and scourged herself with words more
stinging than whips, until she was stupefied by misery and tried to
deaden her pain by throwing herself down on the floor as something
too full of corruption and dregs—a carrion of herself—too foul to
be the seat of a soul. Her husband’s mistress! That thought was never
out of her mind; with that she threw herself in the dust and trampled
on herself; with that she barred every hope of regeneration and turned
every happy memory to stone.
Gradually a hard, brutal indifference came over her, and she ceased to
despair, as she had long ceased to hope. Her heaven had fallen, but she
did not try to raise the vault again in her dreams. The earth was good
enough for her, since she was but of earth, earthy. She did not hate
Erik, nor did she draw away from him. No, she accepted his kisses; she
despised herself too much to repulse them, and besides, was she not his
wife—his woman?
For Erik, too, the awakening was bitter, although his man’s prosaic
common sense had warned him that some time it must come. When it really
came, however, when love no longer gave boot for every bane, and the
veil of gleaming gold in which it had descended to earth for him had
been wafted away, he felt such a sinking of his spirits and such a
sluggishness creeping over all his powers that he was angered and
alarmed. Feverishly he turned to his work to assure himself that he
had lost nothing else besides happiness, but art did not give him the
answer he hoped for. He got hold of some unlucky ideas which he could
not do anything with and yet could not make up his mind to abandon.
Though they refused to take shape, they continued to tease his mind,
and prevented other ideas from breaking through or absorbing his
energy. He grew despondent and dissatisfied and sank into a moody
idleness, since work was so confoundedly perverse, and since, of
course, he had only to wait for the spirit to move him again. But time
passed; his talent was still barren, and here by the quiet fjord there
was nothing that could fructify it; nor were there any fellow artists
whose triumphs could spur him on either to emulation or to creative
opposition.
This inactivity grew unbearable. He was seized with a violent craving
to feel himself, no matter how or in what, and since nothing else
offered, he turned to a crowd of older and younger men about the
neighborhood who enlivened the dulness of country life by such
dissipations as their limited fancy could invent and their rather
one-sided taste could savor. The kernel of their pleasures was always
drinking and cards, no matter whether the shell enclosing them
was called a market-day or a hunt. Nor did it make any particular
difference that the scene was occasionally laid in a small neighboring
town, and certain real or imagined business was transacted with the
tradesmen during the afternoon; for the bargain was always closed at
night in the tavern, where the discriminating landlord always showed
persons of the right stripe into Number Caveat. If there happened to be
strolling players in town, the tradesmen were let go, for the players
were more sociable, did not shy at the bottle, and were usually ready
to undergo the miraculous—though never quite successful—cure of
drinking themselves sober in gin after getting drunk on champagne.
The leader of the crowd was a hunting squire of sixty, and its main
stock was made up of small landowners and country gentlemen in the
neighborhood, though it also included a massive young dandy of a
brandy-distiller and a white-necked tutor, who had not been a tutor for
twenty years or more, but had gone as a vagrant from house to house
with a sealskin bag and an old gray mare, which he used to say he had
bought from a horse-butcher. He was a silent drinker, a virtuoso on
the flute, and was supposed to know Arabic. Among those whom the squire
called his “staff“ were also a solicitor, who always had new stories to
tell, and a doctor, who knew only a single one from the siege of Lübeck
in the year 6.
The members of this band were widely scattered, and it scarcely ever
happened that they were all together at one time, but whenever any one
stayed away from the company too long the squire would issue a summons
to the faithful to inspect the renegade’s oxen, which all understood
to mean that they should quarter themselves upon the unfortunate man
for two or three days and turn his house upside down with drinking,
gambling, and whatever rustic amusements the season afforded. During
such a punitive visit, it once happened that the whole party was
snowbound, and the host’s supply of coffee, rum, and sugar ran out, so
that they were reduced to drinking a coffee punch boiled of chicory,
sweetened with sirup, and strengthened with brandy.
It was a coarse-grained crowd of boon companions that Erik had fallen
in with, but perhaps people of such tremendous animal vitality could
hardly find sufficient outlet in more civilized amusements, and their
unfailing good humor and broad, bruin-like joviality really took away
much of the grossness. If Erik’s talent had been akin to that of
Brouwer or Ostade, this choice band of revellers would have been a
perfect gold mine to him. As it was, he got nothing out of it except
that he enjoyed it very much, too much in fact, for soon this wild
racketing became indispensable to him and took up nearly all his time.
Now and then, he would blame himself for his idling and vow to end it,
but whenever he made an attempt at working, the sense of blankness and
spiritual impotence would come over him again and drive him back to the
old life.
The letter to Niels had been framed one day when his everlasting
barrenness had made him wonder if his talent had been attacked by a
wasting disease. As soon as it was sent, he regretted it, and hoped
that Niels would let his plaint go in at one ear and out at the other.
But Niels he came, the knight-errant of friendship personified, and was
met with that mixture of rebuff and pity which knights-errant in all
times have encountered from those in whose behalf they have dragged
Rosinante out of her snug stable. As Niels was tactful, however, and
bided his time, Erik thawed before long, and the old intimacy was soon
established between them; for Erik’s need of pouring himself out in
complaint and confession had grown into an almost physical craving.
One evening after bedtime, when Fennimore had retired, they sat over
their cognac and water in the dark sitting-room. Only the glow of their
cigars showed where they were, and once in a while, when Niels leaned
far back in his chair, his upturned profile would stand out black
against the dark window-pane. They had been drinking a good deal, Erik
especially, while they sat talking of the time when they were boys at
Lönborggaard. Now Fennimore’s departure had made a pause which neither
of them seemed inclined to break, for their thoughts came stealing upon
them in a pleasant languor, as they listened drowsily to the singing of
their blood, warm from the cognac.
“What fools we were when we were twenty,” came Erik’s voice at last.
“God knows what we expected and how we had got it into our heads that
such things were on earth. We called them by the same names that they
bear in reality, but we meant something entirely above and beyond
comparison with this tame sufficiency that we’ve got. There isn’t much
to life, really. Do you think so?”
“Oh, I don’t know; I take it for what it is worth. We don’t generally
live very much. Most of the time we only exist. If you could get life
handed to you in one whole large, appetizing cake that you could set
your teeth in ... but doled out in bits!—no, it’s not amusing.”
“Tell me, Niels—it’s only to you I can talk of such absurd things; I
don’t know how it is, but you’re so queer. Tell me—is there anything
in your glass? All right!—Have you ever thought of death?”
“Have I? Why, yes. Have you?“
“I don’t mean at funerals or when a man is sick, but sometimes when I’m
just sitting here comfortably it comes over me like—like a despair
simply. When I sit here and mope and don’t do anything and _can’t_ do
anything, then I actually feel the time slipping away from me. Hours
and weeks and months rush past with nothing in them, and I can’t nail
them to the spot with a piece of work. I don’t know if you understand
what I mean, but I want to get hold of it with something achieved.
When I paint a picture, the time I use for it remains mine forever;
it isn’t lost, even though it’s past. I am sick when I think of the
days as they go—incessantly. And I _have_ nothing, or I can’t get at
it. It’s torture! I sometimes get into such a rage that I have to get
up and walk the floor and sing some idiotic thing to keep myself from
crying, and then when I stop I am almost mad to think that the time has
gone meanwhile, and is going while I think, and going and going. There
is nothing more wretched than to be an artist. Here I am, strong and
healthy; I have eyes to see; my blood is warm and red; my heart beats,
and there is nothing the matter with my head, and I _want_ to work,
but I can’t. I am struggling and groping for something that eludes
me, something that I can’t grasp even if I toil and moil till I sweat
blood. What can a man do for inspiration or to get an idea? It is all
one whether I concentrate or whether I go out and pretend I am not
looking for anything, never, never anything except the sense that now
Time is standing up to the waist in eternity and hauling in the hours,
and they rush past, twelve white and twelve black, never stopping,
never stopping. What shall I do? What do people do when they feel like
that? Surely, I can’t be the first. Have you nothing to suggest?”
“Travel.”
“No, anything but that. What made you think of that? You don’t believe
I’m done for, do you?”
“Done for! No, but I thought the new impressions—”
“The new impressions! Exactly. Have you never heard about people who
had plenty of talent in their first youth while they were fresh and
full of hope and plans, but when youth had passed their talent was gone
too—and never came back?”
They were silent for a long time.
“_They_ travelled, Niels, to get new impressions, that was their fixed
idea. The south, the Orient—it was all in vain; it slid off from them
as from a looking-glass. I have seen their graves in Rome—two of them,
but there are many, many others. One of them went mad.”
“I have never heard that about painters before.”
“It’s true. What can it be, do you think? A hidden nerve that’s given
way? Or something we have failed in or sinned against in ourselves,
perhaps—who knows? A soul is such a fragile thing, and no one knows
how far the soul extends in a human being. We ought to be good to
ourselves—Niels!” His voice had grown low and soft. “I have often
longed to travel, because I felt so empty. You have no idea how I have
longed for it, but I simply don’t dare to, for suppose it didn’t help,
and that I was one of those people I was telling you of. What then!
Think of standing face to face with the certainty that I was done for,
didn’t possess anything, couldn’t do anything—think of it—couldn’t
do anything! A paltry wretch, a cursed dog of a cripple, a miserable
eunuch! What do you think would become of me? And after all it is not
impossible. My first youth is past, and as for illusions and that sort
of thing, I can assure you I haven’t many left. It’s terrible how we go
through them, and yet I was never one of those who’re anxious to get
rid of them. I was not like you and the rest of the people who used to
foregather at Mrs. Boye’s—you were always so busy plucking the fine
feathers from one another, and the balder you got, the more you crowed.
Still what’s the difference—sooner or later we all start molting.”
They were silent again. The air was bitter with cigar smoke and heavy
with cognac, and they sighed drearily, oppressed by the stuffiness of
the room and by their own very sad hearts.
Niels had travelled two hundred miles to bring aid, and here he sat
feeling his impulse put to shame, while the colder side of his nature
looked on. For what could he do, when it came to the point? What if
he tried to talk picturesquely to Erik, in many words of purple and
ultramarine, dripping with light and wading in shadow! There had been
a dream of something like that in his brain when he started out.
How utterly absurd! To bring aid! You might perhaps drive away the
goddess with the closed hands from an artist’s door, but that was
certainly the utmost; you could no more help him to create than you
could help him, if he were paralyzed, to lift his little finger by
his own strength. No, not though your heart overflowed with affection
and sympathy and devotion and everything else that was generous....
What you ought to do was to mind your own affairs; that was useful and
healthy, but of course it was easier to let your heart run amuck in a
large and generous way. The only trouble was that it was so lamentably
impracticable and so utterly ineffective. Minding your own affairs and
doing it well did not insure you paradise, but at least you did not
have to cast down your eyes before either God or man.
Opportunity was abundant for Niels to make melancholy reflections on
the impotence of a kind heart, for all that he accomplished was to keep
Erik at home a little more than usual for a month or so. Nevertheless,
he did not care to return to Copenhagen during the hot season, and as
he did not wish to remain a guest indefinitely, he engaged a room with
a family a little above the peasant class, on the opposite shore of
the fjord, so near that he could row over to Marianelund in fifteen
minutes. Now that he was accustomed to the neighborhood, he would
just as lief stay there as any other place, for he was one of the
susceptible people over whom outward surroundings easily acquire a
hold. Besides, his friend and his cousin Fennimore were there, and that
was reason enough, especially as there was not a human being anywhere
else expecting him.
During the trip from Copenhagen, he had carefully thought out his
behavior to Fennimore and how he would show her that he had forgotten
so completely that he did not remember there was anything to forget;
above all, no coldness, but a friendly indifference, a superficial
cordiality, a polite sympathy; that was the proper attitude.
But it was all thrown away.
The Fennimore he met was a different person from the one he had left.
She was still lovely; her form was luxuriant and beautiful as before,
and she had the same slow, languid movements that charmed him in former
days, but there was a dreary thoughtlessness in the expression of her
mouth as of one who had thought too much, and a pitiful, tortured
cruelty in her gentle eyes. He did not understand it at all, but one
fact was at least clear, and that was that she had had other things to
think of than remembering him, and that she was quite callous to any
memories he could awaken. She looked like one who had made her choice
and done the worst she could do with it.
Little by little, he began to spell and put things together, and one
day, when they were walking along the shore, he began to understand.
Erik was cleaning up his studio, and as they were strolling by the
water, the maid came out with an apronful of refuse which she threw
on the beach. There was a litter of old brushes, fragments of casts,
broken palette knives, bits of oil bottles, and empty paint tubes.
Niels poked the heap with his foot, and Fennimore looked on with the
vague curiosity people often feel in turning over old rubbish. Suddenly
Niels drew his foot away as if something had burned it, but caught
himself as quickly, and gave the pile another kick.
“Oh, let me see it,” begged Fennimore, and put her hand on his arm as
if to stop him. He bent down and pulled out a plaster cast of a hand
holding an egg.
“It must be a mistake,” he said.
“Why no, it is broken,” she replied quietly, as she took it from him.
“See, the forefinger is gone,” she added, pointing, but when she
suddenly became aware that the egg had been cut in two and a yolk
painted inside it with chrome yellow, she blushed, and, bending down,
she slowly and deliberately knocked the hand against a stone, until it
was broken into little bits.
“Do you remember the time it was cast?” Niels asked, in order to say
something.
“I remember that my hand was smeared with green soap so the plaster
should not stick to it. Is that what you were thinking of?”
“No, I mean the time when Erik passed the cast around at the tea-table.
Don’t you remember, when it came to your old aunt, how her eyes filled
with tears, and she embraced you with the deepest compassion and kissed
you on the brow, as if some harm had been done to you?”
“Yes, people are so sensitive.”
“No, we all laughed at her, but there was a delicacy in it
nevertheless, although it was so nonsensical.”
“Yes, there is much of that nonsensical delicacy in the world.”
“I believe you want to quarrel with me to-day.”
“No, I don’t, but there is something I want to say to you. You won’t
take offence at a little frankness?—Well, then—suppose a man tells
a story that is not very nice in his wife’s presence and perhaps
otherwise shows what appears to you a lack of consideration for her;
don’t you think it is unnecessary for you then to express your protest
by your emphatic fastidiousness and your exceeding great chivalry? It
is fair to assume that the man knows his own wife best, and knows that
it won’t offend or wound her; otherwise he would not do it. Is not that
true?”
“No, it is not true, generally speaking, but in this case, and on your
authority, I don’t mind saying yes.”
“That’s right. You may be sure that women are not the ethereal
creatures many a good youth fancies; they are really no more delicate
than men, and not very different from them. Take my word for it, there
has been some filthy clay used in the shaping of them both.”
“Dearest Fennimore! Thank God you don’t know what you are saying, but
you are very unjust to women and to yourself. _I_ believe in woman’s
purity.”
“Woman’s purity! What do you mean by woman’s purity?”
“I mean—that is—”
“You mean—I will tell you; you mean nothing, for that is another piece
of nonsensical delicacy. A woman can’t be pure, and isn’t supposed to
be—how could she? It is against nature! And do you think God made her
to be pure? Answer me!—No, and ten thousand times no. Then why this
lunacy! Why fling us up to the stars with one hand, when you have to
pull us down with the other! Can’t you let us walk the earth by your
side, one human being with another, and nothing more at all? It is
impossible for us to step firmly on the prose of life when you blind us
with your poetic will-o’-the-wisps. Let us alone! For God’s sake, let
us alone!”
She sat down and wept.
Niels understood much. Fennimore would have been miserable had she
known how much. Was it not partly the old story of love’s holiday fare
which refuses to turn into daily bread, but goes on being holiday fare,
only more tasteless, more insipid, and less nourishing, day by day? One
can’t perform a miracle, and the other can’t perform it, and there they
sit in their banqueting clothes, careful to smile and to use festive
words, but underneath they feel the agony of hunger and thirst, while
their eyes shrink from each other, and hatred begins to grow in their
hearts. Was not that the first chapter, and was not the other the
equally dreary tale of a woman’s despair at not being able to recover
herself after finding out that the demigod, whose bride she became so
joyously, was only an ordinary mortal? First the despair, the bootless
despair, and then the merciful stupor—that must be the explanation.
It seemed to Niels that he understood everything: the hardness in her,
the dreary humility, and her coarseness, which was the bitterest drop
in the whole goblet. By degrees he came to see also that his delicacy
and deferential homage must oppress and irritate her, because a woman
who has been hurled from the purple couch of her dreams to the pavement
below will quickly resent any attempt to spread carpets over the stones
which she longs to feel in all their hardness. In her first despair she
is not satisfied to tread the path with her feet: she is determined to
crawl it on her knees, choosing the way that is steepest and roughest.
She desires no helping hand and will not lift her head—let it sink
down with its own heaviness, so that she may put her face to the ground
and taste the dust with her tongue!
Niels pitied her with all his heart, but he left her alone as she
desired.