cloud to their heaven. It was scarcely perceptible at first, only a
doubt, light as thistle-down, flitting through Niels’s mind as to
whether his love were not nobler than the one he loved. It had not yet
taken shape as a thought, it was only a dim foreboding which pointed in
that direction, a vague giving way in his mind, a leaning to that side.
Yet it came again and brought others in its wake, thoughts at first
vague and indistinct, then clearer and sharper for each time they
appeared. It was astonishing with what furious haste these thoughts
could undermine, debase, and take away the glamor. Their love was not
lessened. On the contrary, it glowed more passionately while it sank,
but these handclasps stolen under table-covers, these kisses snatched
in passages and behind doors, these long looks right under the eyes of
him they deceived, took away all the lofty tenor. Happiness no longer
stood still above their heads; they had to filch her smiles and her
light as best they could, and after a while their wiles and cunning
were no longer necessary evils, but amusing triumphs. Deception became
their natural element and made them contemptible and petty. There
were degrading secrets, too, over which they had hitherto grieved
separately, assuming ignorance in each other’s eyes, but which they now
had to share; for Erik was not bashful, and would often caress his wife
in Niels’s presence, kiss her, take her on his lap, and embrace her,
while Fennimore had neither courage nor dignity sufficient to repel
these caresses; the consciousness of her guilt made her uncertain and
afraid.
So it sank and went on sinking, that lofty castle of their love, from
the pinnacles of which they had gazed so proudly out over the world,
and within which they had felt so strong and noble.
Still they were happy among the ruins.
When they walked in the woods now, it was usually on gloomy days, when
the fog hung under the dark branches and thickened between the wet
trunks, so that none should see how they kissed and embraced, both here
and there, and none should hear how their frivolous talk rang with
peals of wanton laughter.
The melancholy of eternity, which had exalted their love, was gone;
now there was nothing but smiles and jests between them. With feverish
haste they snatched greedily at the fleeting seconds of joy, as though
they must hurry in their love and had not a lifetime before them.
It brought no change when Erik, after a while, grew tired of his idea
and again began his carousing so eagerly that he was rarely at home for
forty-eight hours at a stretch. Where they had fallen, there they lay.
Once in a great while, perhaps, in lonely hours, they gazed regretfully
toward the heights from which they had fallen, or perhaps they only
wondered, and thought what a strain it must have been to stay on that
level, and felt themselves more snugly housed where they were. There
was no change. At least there was no return to the former days, but the
flabby uncleanness of living as they did and not running away together
became more present in their consciousness and linked them together in
a closer and baser union through the common sense of guilt; for neither
of them wished any change in things as they were. Nor did they pretend
to each other that they did, for there had developed a cynical intimacy
between them such as often exists between fellow criminals, and there
was nothing in their relations that they shrank from putting into
words. With sinister frankness, they called things by their right names
and, as they put it to themselves, faced the facts as they were.
* * * * *
In February it had seemed that the winter was over, but then Mother
March had come shaking her white mantle with its loose lining, and
snowstorm after snowstorm covered the ground with thick layers. Then
followed calm weather and hard frost, and the fjord settled under a
crust of ice six inches thick, which lay there a long time.
One evening toward the end of the month, Fennimore was sitting alone in
her parlor after tea and waiting.
The room was brightly illumined; the piano stood open with candles lit,
and the silk shade had been taken from the lamp. The gilded moldings
caught the light, and the pictures on the walls seemed to stand out
with a kind of vigilance. The hyacinths had been moved from the windows
to the writing-table, where they made a mass of delicate colors,
filling the air with a penetrating fragrance that seemed cool in its
purity. The fire in the stove burned with a pleasant subdued crackle.
Fennimore was walking up and down the room almost as if she were
balancing on a dark red stripe in the carpet. She wore a somewhat
old-fashioned black silk dress with a heavily embroidered edge that
weighed it down and trailed, first on one side, then on the other, with
every step she took.
She was humming to herself and holding with both hands a string of
large pale yellow amber beads that hung from her neck. Whenever she
wavered on the red stripe, she would stop humming, but still grasped
the necklace. Perhaps she was making an omen for herself: if she could
walk a certain number of times up and down without getting off the red
stripe and without letting go with her hands, Niels would come.
He had been there in the morning, when Erik went away, and had stayed
till late in the afternoon, but he had promised to come again as soon
as the moon was up and it was light enough to see the holes in the ice
on the fjord.
Fennimore had obtained her omen, whatever it was, and stepped over to
the window.
It looked as if there would not be any moon to-night; the sky was very
black, and the darkness must be more intense out there on the gray-blue
fjord than on land where the snow lay. Perhaps it was best that he did
not attempt it. She sat down at the piano with a sigh of resignation,
then got up again to look at the clock. She came back and resolutely
propped up a big book of music before her, but did not play, merely
turning the leaves absent-mindedly, lost in her own thoughts.
Suppose, after all, that he was standing on the opposite shore this
very moment, fastening on his skates. He could be here in an instant!
She saw him plainly, a little bit out of breath after skating, and
blinking with his eyes against the light on coming from the darkness
outside. He would bring a breath of cold air, and his beard would be
full of tiny little bright drops. Then he would say—what would he say?
She smiled and glanced down at herself.
And still the moon did not appear.
She went over to the window again and stood gazing out, till the
darkness seemed to be filled before her eyes with tiny white sparks and
rainbow-colored rings. But they were only a vague glimmer. She wished
they would be transformed into fireworks out there, rockets shooting up
in long, long curves and then turning to tiny snakes that bored their
way into the sky and died in a flicker; or into a great, huge pale
ball that hung tremulous in the sky and slowly sank down in a rain of
myriad-colored stars. Look! Look! Soft and rounded like a curtsy, like
a golden rain that curtsied.—Farewell! Farewell! There went the last
one.—Oh dear, if he would only come! She did not want to play—and at
that she turned to the piano, struck an octave harshly, and held the
keys down till the tones had quite died away, then did the same again,
and again, and yet again. She did not want to play, did not want
to.—She would rather dance! For a moment she closed her eyes, and
in imagination she felt herself whirling through a vast hall of red
and white and gold. How delicious it would be to have danced and to
be hot and tired and drink champagne! Suddenly she remembered how she
and a school friend had concocted champagne from soda water and eau de
cologne, and how sick it had made them when they drank it.
She straightened herself and walked across the room, instinctively
smoothing her dress as after a dance.
“And now let us be sensible!” she said, took her embroidery and settled
herself in a large armchair near the lamp.
Yet she did not work; her hands sank down into her lap, and soon she
snuggled down into the chair with little lazy movements, fitting
herself into its curves, her face resting on her hand, her dress
wrapped around her feet.
She wondered curiously whether other wives were like her, whether they
had made a mistake and been unhappy and then had loved some one else.
She passed in review the ladies at home in Fjordby, one by one. Then
she thought of Mrs. Boye. Niels had told her about Mrs. Boye, and she
had always been a tantalizing riddle to her—this woman whom she hated
and felt humiliated by.
Erik, too, had once told her that he had been madly in love with Mrs.
Boye.
Ah, if one could know everything about her!
She laughed at the thought of Mrs. Boye’s new husband.
All the time, while her thoughts were thus engaged, she was longing and
listening for Niels, and imagined him coming, always coming out there
on the ice. She little guessed that for the last two hours a tiny black
dot had been working its way over the snowy meadows with a message
for her very different from the one she was expecting from across the
fjord. It was only a man in homespun and greased boots, and now he
tapped on the kitchen window, frightening the maid.
It was a letter, Trine said when she came in to her mistress. Fennimore
took it. It was a telegram. Quietly she gave the maid the receipt and
dismissed her; she was not in the least alarmed, for Erik of late had
often telegraphed that he would bring one or two guests home with him
the following day.
Then she read.
Suddenly she turned white and darted wildly from her seat out into the
middle of the room, staring at the door with expectant terror.
She would not let it come into the house, did not dare to, and with one
bound she threw herself against the door, pressing her shoulder against
it, and turned the key till it cut her hand. But it would not turn, no
matter how hard she tried. Her hand dropped. Then she remembered that
the thing was not here at all—it was far away from her in a strange
house.
She began to shake, her knees would no longer support her, and she slid
along the door to the floor.
Erik was dead. The horses had run away, had overturned the carriage at
a street corner, and hurled Erik with his head against the wall. His
skull had been fractured, and now he lay dead at Aalborg. That was the
way it had happened, and most of this story was told in the telegram.
No one had been with him in the carriage except the white-necked tutor
known as the Arab. It was he who had telegraphed.
She crouched on the floor moaning feebly, both palms spread out on
the carpet, her eyes staring with a fixed, empty look, as she swayed
helplessly to and fro.
Only a moment ago everything had been light and fragrance around
her, and, however much she tried, she could not instantly put all
this out of her consciousness to admit the inky black night of grief
and remorse. It was not her fault that her mind was still haunted by
fitful, dazzling gleams of love’s happiness and love’s pleasure; that
intense, foolish desires would force their way out of the whirl,
seeking the bliss of forgetfulness, or trying to stop with a frenzied
wrench the revolving wheel of fortune.
But it soon passed.
In black swarms, from everywhere, dark thoughts came flying like
ravens, lured by the corpse of her happiness, and hacked it beak by
beak, even while the warmth of life still lingered in it. They tore and
slashed and made it hideous and unrecognizable, until the whole thing
was nothing but a carrion of loathing and horror.
She rose and walked about, supporting herself by chairs and tables
like one who is ill. Desperately she looked around for some cobweb of
help, if it were only a comforting glance, a sympathetic pat of the
hand, but her eyes met nothing but the glaring family portraits, all
the strangers who had been witnesses of her fall and her crime—sleepy
old gentlemen, prim-mouthed matrons, and their ever-present gnome
child, the girl with the great round eyes and bulging forehead. It had
acquired memories enough at last, this strange furniture, the table
over there, and that chair, the footstool with the black poodle-dog,
and the portière like a dressing-gown,—she had saturated them all with
memories, adulterous memories, which they now spewed out and flung
after her. Oh, it was terrible to be locked in with all these spectres
of crime and with herself. She shuddered at herself; she pointed
accusing fingers at herself, at this dishonored Fennimore who crouched
at her feet; she pulled her dress away from between her imploring
hands. Mercy? No, there was no mercy! How could there be mercy before
those dead eyes in the strange town, those eyes which had become
seeing, now that they were glazed in death, and saw how she had thrown
his honor in the mud, lied at his lips, been faithless at his heart.
She could feel those dead eyes riveted on her; she did not know whence
they came, but they followed her, gliding down her body like two
ice-cold rays. As she looked down, while every thread of the carpet,
every stitch in the footstools, seemed unnaturally clear in the strong,
sharp light, she felt something walking about her with the footsteps
of dead men, felt it brushing against her dress so distinctly that she
screamed with terror, and darted to one side. But it came in front of
her like hands and yet not like hands, something that clutched at her
slowly, clutched derisively and triumphantly at her heart, that marvel
of treachery, that yellow pearl of deceit! And she retreated till she
backed up against the table, but it was still there, and her bosom gave
no protection against it; it clutched through her skin and flesh....
She almost died of terror, as she stood there, helplessly bending back
over the table, while every nerve contracted with fear, and her eyes
stared as if they were being murdered in their sockets.
Then that passed.
She looked around with a haunted look, then sank down on her knees
and prayed a long time. She repented and confessed, wildly and
unrestrainedly, in growing passion, with the same fanatic self-loathing
that drives the nun to scourge her naked body. She sought fervently
after the most grovelling expressions, intoxicating herself with
self-abasement and with a humility that thirsted for degradation.
At last she rose. Her bosom heaved violently, and there was a faint
light in the pale cheeks, which seemed to have grown fuller during her
prayer.
She looked around the room as if she were taking a silent vow. Then she
went into the adjoining room, closed the door after her, stood still a
moment as though to accustom herself to the darkness, groped her way to
the door which opened on the glass-enclosed veranda, and went out.
It was lighter there. The moon had risen, and shone through the
close-packed frozen crystals on the glass; the light came yellowish
through the panes, blue and red through the squares of colored glass
that framed them.
She melted a hole in the ice with her hand and carefully wiped away the
moisture with her handkerchief.
As yet there was no one in sight out on the fjord.
She began to walk up and down in her glass cage. There was no furniture
out there except a settee of cane and bent wood, covered with withered
ivy leaves from the vines overhead. Every time she passed it, the
leaves rustled faintly with the stirring of the air, and now and
then her dress caught a leaf on the floor, drawing it along with a
scratching sound over the boards.
Back and forth she walked on her dreary watch, her arms folded over her
breast, hardening herself against the cold.
He came.
She opened the door with a quick wrench, and stepped out into the
frozen snow in her thin shoes. She had no pity on herself, she could
have gone bare-footed to that meeting.
Niels had slowed up at the sight of the black figure against the snow
and was skating toward land with hesitating, tentative strokes.
That stealthy figure seemed to burn into her eyes. Every familiar
movement and feature struck her as a shameless insult, as a boast
of degrading secrets. She shook with hatred; her heart swelled with
curses, and she could scarcely control her anger.
“It is I!” she cried out to him jeeringly, “the harlot, Fennimore!”
“But for God’s sake, sweetheart?” he asked, astonished, as he came
within a few feet of her.
“Erik is dead.”
“Dead! When?” He had to step out into the snow with his skates to keep
from falling. “Oh, but tell me!” Eagerly he took a step nearer.
They were now standing close together, and she had to restrain herself
from striking that pale, distorted face with her clenched fist.
“I will tell you, never fear,” she cried. “He is dead, as I said.
He had a runaway in Aalborg and got his head crushed, while we were
deceiving him here.”
“It is terrible!” Niels moaned, pressing his hands to his temples. “Who
could have dreamed—Oh, I wish we had been faithful to him, Fennimore!
Erik, poor Erik!—I wish I were in his place!“ He sobbed aloud,
writhing with pain.
“I hate you, Niels Lyhne!”
“Oh, what does it matter about us?” Niels groaned; “if we could only
get him back! Poor Fennimore!” he said with a change of feeling. “Never
mind me. You hate me, you say? You may well hate me.” He rose suddenly.
“Let us go in,” he said. “I don’t know what I am saying. Who was it
that telegraphed, did you say?”
“In!” Fennimore screamed, infuriated by his failure to notice her
hostility. “In there! Never shall you set your craven, despicable foot
inside that house again. How dare you think of it, you wretch, you
false dog, who came sneaking in here and stole your friend’s honor,
because it was too poorly hidden! What, did you not steal it under his
very eyes, because he thought you were honest, you house-thief!”
“Hush, hush, are you mad? What is the matter with you! What sort of
language are you using?” He had caught her arm firmly, drawing her to
him, and looked straight into her face in amazement. “You must try to
come to your senses, child,” he said in a gentler tone. “You can’t mend
matters by slinging ugly words.”
She wrenched her arm away with such force that he staggered and almost
lost his uncertain foothold.
“Can’t you hear that I hate you!” she screamed shrilly. “And isn’t
there so much of a decent man’s brain left in you that you can
understand it! How blind I must have been when I loved you, you patched
together with lies, when I had him at my side, who was ten thousand
times better than you. I shall hate and despise you to the end of my
life. Before you came, I was honest, I had never done anything wicked;
but then you came with your poetry and your rubbish and dragged me down
with your lies, into the mud with you. What have I done to you that you
could not leave me alone—I who should have been sacred to you above
all others! Now I have to live day after day with this shameful blot on
my soul, and I shall never meet any one so base but that I know myself
to be baser. All the memories of my girlhood you have poisoned. What
have I to look back on that is clean and good now! You have tainted
everything. It is not only he that is dead, everything bright and good
that has been between us is dead, too, and rotten. Oh, God help me, is
it fair that I can’t get any revenge on you after all you have done?
Make me honest again, Niels Lyhne, make me pure and good again! No,
no—but it ought to be possible to torture you into undoing the wrong
you have done. Can you undo it with lies? Don’t stand there and crouch
under your own helplessness. I want to see you suffer, here before
my eyes, and writhe in pain and despair and be miserable. Let him be
miserable, God, do not let him steal my revenge too! Go, you wretch,
go! I cast you off, but be sure that I drag you with me through all the
agonies my hate can call down over you.”
She had stretched out her arms menacingly. Now she turned and went in,
and the veranda door rattled softly, as she closed it.
Niels stood looking after her in amazement, almost with disbelief. That
pale, vengeful face seemed to be still there before him, so strangely
base-souled and coarse, all its delicate beauty of contour gone, as if
a rough, barbarous hand had ploughed up all its lines.
He stumbled cautiously down to the ice and began to skate slowly toward
the mouth of the fjord, with the moonlight in front of him and the wind
in his back. Gradually he increased his speed, as his thoughts took his
attention from the surroundings, till the ice splinters flew from the
runners of his skates and rattled on the smooth surface, blown along
with him by the rising frost wind.
So that was the end! So that was the way he had saved this woman soul
and lifted it and given it happiness! It was certainly beautiful, his
relation to the dead friend, his childhood friend, for whom he would
have sacrificed his future, his life, his all! He with his sacrificing
and his saving! Let heaven and earth behold in him a man who preserved
his life on the heights of honor without spot or blemish in order not
to cast a shadow over the Idea he served and was called to promulgate.
No doubt that was another of his boastful fancies that his paltry
little life could put spots on the sun of the Idea. Good God, he was
always taking these high and mighty views of himself, it was bred in
his bone. If he could not be anything better, he must at least be
a Judas and call himself Iscariot in grandiose gloom. That sounded
like something. Was he forever going to put on airs as if he were
a responsible minister to the Idea, a member of its privy council,
getting everything concerning humanity at first hand! Would he
never learn to do his duty in barrack service for the Idea with all
simplicity as a private of a very subordinate class?
There were red fires out on the ice, and he skated so near them that a
gigantic shadow shot out for a moment from his feet, turned forward,
and disappeared again.
He thought of Erik and of what kind of a friend he had been to Erik.
He! His childhood memories wrung their hands over him; his youthful
dreams covered their heads and wept over him; his whole past stared
after him with a long look full of reproach. He had betrayed it all for
a love as small and mean as himself. There _had_ been exaltation in
this love, but he had betrayed that too.
Whither could he flee to escape these attempts that always ended in
the ditch? All his life had been nothing else, and it would never
be anything else in the future; he knew that and felt it with such
certainty that he sickened at the thought of all this futile endeavor,
and he wished with all his soul that he could run away and escape this
meaningless fate. If only the ice would break under him now as he
skated, and all would be over with a gasp and a spasm in the cold water!
He stopped, exhausted, and looked back. The moon had gone down, and the
fjord stretched long and dark between the white hills on either side.
Then he turned and worked his way back against the wind. It was very
strong now, and he was tired. He skated closer to the shore to get the
shelter of the hills, but, as he struggled thus, he came on a hole in
the ice made by the winds sweeping down from the hills, and he felt the
thin, elastic crust give way under him with a crackling sound.
Ah, he breathed more easily, in spite of all, when he set foot on the
firm ice again! Under the stimulus of fear, his exhaustion had almost
left him, and he skated on vigorously.
* * * * *
While he was struggling out there, Fennimore sat in the lighted room,
baffled and miserable. She felt herself cheated out of her revenge.
She hardly knew what she had expected, but it was something entirely
different; she had had a vision of something mighty and majestic,
something of swords and red flames, or—not that, but something that
would sweep her along and lift her to a throne, but instead it had all
turned out so small and paltry, and she had felt more like a common
scold than like one who utters curses....
After all, she had learned something from Niels.
* * * * *
Early in the morning of the following day, while Niels, overcome with
exhaustion, was still asleep, she left the house.
_Chapter XII_
For the better part of two years Niels Lyhne had roamed about on the
Continent.