heart. Yet there was another and greater loneliness that encompassed
him; for however desolate and forsaken a man may feel when he has no
single spot on all this vast earth to which his affections can cling,
which he can bless when the heart _will_ overflow and yearn for when
longing _will_ spread its wings, there is no existence so lonely that
he is utterly alone if he can only see the fixed bright star of a life
goal shining overhead. But Niels Lyhne had no star. He did not know
what to do with himself and his gifts. It was all very well to have
talent if he could only have used it, but he went about like a painter
without hands. How he envied the people, great and small, who always,
whenever they reached out into life, found a handle to lay hold of; for
he could never find any handle. It seemed as though he could do nothing
but sing over again the old romantic songs, and in truth he had so far
done nothing else. His talent was like something apart in him, a quiet
Pompeii, or a harp that had to be taken out of its corner. It was not
all-pervading, did not run down the street with him or tingle in his
finger-tips—not in the least. His talent had no grip on him. Sometimes
it seemed to him that he had been born half a century too late,
sometimes that he had come altogether too early. His talent was rooted
in something of the past; it could not draw nourishment from his
opinions, his convictions, and his sympathies, could not absorb them
and give them form. The two elements seemed always to be gliding apart
like water and oil, which can be shaken together, but can never mix,
never become one.
Gradually, as he began to realize this, he sank into a boundless
dejection and grew inclined to take an ironic, suspicious view of
himself and his whole past. There must be something wrong with him,
he told himself, something incurably wrong in the very marrow of his
being; for surely a man could fuse the varying elements in his own
nature—that he firmly believed.
This was the state of his mind when he settled down, in the month of
September, toward the end of the second year of his exile, on the
shores of Lake Garda, in the little town of Riva.
Not long afterward, the region was hedged about by difficulties that
put a stop to travelling and kept all strangers away. Cholera had
broken out round about Venice and down south in Descensano and in the
north by the Trentino. Under these circumstances, Riva was not lively,
for the hotels had been emptied at the first rumor, and tourists bound
for Italy took another route.
Naturally, the few people who remained drew all the more closely
together.
The most remarkable person among them was a famous opera singer, whose
real name was Madame Odéro. Her stage name was far more celebrated. She
and her companion, Niels, and a deaf doctor from Vienna were the only
guests at the Golden Sun, the leading hotel in town.
Niels felt very much attracted to her, and she yielded to that warmth
of manner in him which is often a characteristic of people who are at
strife with themselves and therefore feel the need of establishing
their relations with others on a safe basis.
Madame Odéro had lived there for nearly seven months, trying to
recover, by complete rest, from the after effects of a throat trouble
that had threatened her voice. Her physician had told her to abstain
for a year from singing and, in order to avoid temptation, from all
music. Not until the year was over would he allow her to attempt to
sing, and then, if no weariness followed, she might consider herself
cured.
Niels acquired a kind of civilizing influence over Madame Odéro, who
was a fiery, passionate nature with no fine shades. It had been a
terrible sentence to her when she was condemned to live a whole year
without applause and adoration, and at first she had been in despair,
gazing horror-stricken at the twelve months stretching before her as
upon a deep, black grave into which she was being thrust; but everybody
seemed to think it was unavoidable, and one fine morning she suddenly
fled to Riva. It would have been quite possible for her to have
lived in a livelier and more frequented place, but that was the very
thing she sought to avoid. She felt ashamed, as though she had been
marked with an outward visible blemish, imagining that people pitied
her because of this infirmity, and that they discussed her among
themselves. Therefore she had shunned all society in her new abode
and had lived almost entirely in her rooms, where she sometimes took
revenge on the doors when her voluntary confinement became unbearable.
Now that everybody had left, she appeared again and learned to know
Niels Lyhne, for she was not at all afraid of people individually.
No one needed to be long in Madame Odéro’s presence before finding
out whether she liked him or not, for she showed it with sufficient
plainness. What she gave Niels Lyhne to see was very encouraging, and
they had not been alone for many days in the magnificent hotel garden
with its pomegranates and myrtles, with its arbors of blossoming nerias
and its marvellous view, before they were on very friendly terms.
They were not at all in love with each other, or if they were, it was
not very serious. It was one of the vague, pleasant intimacies that
will sometimes grow up between men and women who are past the time of
early youth when nature flames up and yearns toward an unknown bliss.
It is a kind of waning summer, in which people promenade decorously
side by side, gather themselves into graceful nosegays, each caressing
himself with the other’s hand and admiring himself with the other’s
eyes. They take out all their store of pretty secrets, all the
exquisite useless trifles people accumulate like bric-à-brac of the
soul, pass them from hand to hand, turn them round and hold them up,
seeking the most artistic light-effect, comparing and analyzing.
It is, of course, only when life passes in a leisurely way that such
Sunday friendships are possible, and here by the quiet lake these two
had plenty of time. Niels had made a beginning by draping Madame Odéro
in a becoming robe of melancholy. At first, she was several times on
the point of tearing the whole thing off and revealing herself as the
barbarian she was, but when she found that she could wear the drapery
with patrician effect, she took her melancholy as a rôle, and not only
stopped slamming the doors, but sought out the moods and emotions in
herself that might suit her new pose. It was astonishing how she came
to realize that she had actually known herself very little in the past.
Her life had, in fact, been too eventful and exciting to give her time
for exploring herself, and besides she was only now approaching the age
when women who have lived much in the world and seen much commence to
collect their memories, to look back at themselves and assemble a past.
From this beginning, their intimacy developed quickly and definitely
until they had become quite indispensable to each other. Each led only
a half-hearted existence without the other.
Then it happened one morning, as Niels was starting out for a sail,
that he heard Madame Odéro singing in the garden. His first impulse was
to turn back and scold her, but before he could make up his mind, the
boat had carried him out of hearing; the wind tempted him to a trip to
Limone, and he meant to be back by midday. So he sailed on.
Madame Odéro had descended into the garden earlier than usual. The
fresh fragrance that filled the air, the round waves rising and sinking
clear and bright as glass beneath the garden wall, and all this glory
of color everywhere—blue lake and sun-scorched mountains, white sails
flitting across the lake and red flowers arching over her head—all
this and with it a dream she could not forget, which went on throbbing
against her heart.... She could not be silent, she had to be a part of
all this life.
Therefore she sang.
Fuller and fuller rose the exultant notes of her voice. She was
intoxicated with its beauty, she trembled in a voluptuous sense of
its power; and she went on, she could not stop, for she was borne
blissfully along on wonderful dreams of coming triumphs.
No weariness followed. She could leave, leave at once, shake off the
nothingness of the past months, come out of her hiding and live!
By midday everything was ready for her departure.
Then, just as the carriages drove up to the door, she remembered Niels
Lyhne. She dived down into her pocket for a paltry little note-book,
and scribbled it full of farewells to Niels, for the pages were so
small that each could hold only three or four words. This she enclosed
in an envelope for him and departed.
When Niels came back in the late afternoon, after being detained by the
sanitary police in Limone, she had long since reached Mori and taken
the train.
He was not surprised, only sorry, and not at all angry. He could
even smile resignedly at this new hostile thrust of fate. But in
the evening, when he sat in the empty moonlit garden telling the
innkeeper’s little boy the story about the princess who found her wings
again and flew away from her lover back to the land of fairies, he was
seized with an intolerable longing for Lönborggaard. He yearned to
feel something closing around him like a home and holding him fast, no
matter how. He could not bear the indifference of life any longer, could
not endure being cast off and thrown back on himself again and again.
No home on earth, no God in heaven, no goal out there in the future!
He would at least have a home. He would make it his own by loving
everything there, big and little, every rock, every tree, the animate
and the inanimate; he would portion out his heart to it all so that it
could never cast him off any more.
_Chapter XIII_
For about a year, Niels Lyhne had lived at Lönborggaard, managing the
farm as well as he knew how and as much as his old steward would let
him. He had taken down his shield, blotted out his ’scutcheon, and
resigned. Humanity would have to get along without him; he had learned
to know the joy found in purely physical labor, in seeing the pile
growing under his hand, in being able to get through with what he was
doing so that he really _was_ through, in knowing that when he went
away tired the strength that he had used up lay behind him in his work,
and the work would stand and not be eaten up by doubt in the night or
dispersed by the breath of criticism on the morning after. There were
no Sisyphus stones in agriculture.
What a joy it was, too, when he had worked till he was tired, to go to
bed and gather strength in sleep and to spend it again, as regularly as
day and night follow one upon the other, never hindered by the caprices
of his brain, never having to handle himself gingerly like a tuned
guitar with loose pegs.
He was really happy in a quiet way, and often he would sit, as his
father had sat, on a stile or a boundary stone, staring out over the
golden wheat or the top-heavy oats, in a strange, vegetative trance.
As yet he had not begun to seek the society of the neighboring
families, except Councillor Skinnerup’s in Varde, whom he visited quite
frequently.
The Skinnerups had come to town while his father was still living, and
as the Councillor was an old university friend of Lyhne’s, the two
families had seen much of each other. Skinnerup, a mild, bald-headed
man with sharp features and kind eyes, was now a widower, but his house
was more than filled by his four daughters, the eldest seventeen, the
youngest twelve years old.
The Councillor had read much, and Niels enjoyed a chat with him on
various esthetic subjects, for though he had learned to use his
hands, that, of course, did not turn him into a country bumpkin all
at once. He was rather amused sometimes at the almost absurd care
he had to exercise whenever the conversation turned to a comparison
between Danish and foreign literature and, in fact, whenever Denmark
was measured against something not Danish. Caution was absolutely
necessary, however, for the mild-mannered Councillor was one of the
fierce patriots, occasionally met with in those days, who might
grudgingly admit that Denmark was not the greatest of the world powers,
but when so much was said would not subscribe to a jot or a tittle more
that might place his country or anything pertaining to it anywhere but
in the lead.
These conversations had another charm, which Niels felt at first
vaguely and without consciously thinking of it, in the look of
delighted admiration with which seventeen-year-old Gerda’s eyes
followed him as he spoke. She always managed to be present when he
came, and would listen so eagerly that he often saw her flushing with
rapture when he said something that seemed to her especially beautiful.
The truth was, he had unwittingly become this young lady’s ideal, at
first chiefly because he often rode into town wearing a gray mantle of
a very foreign and romantic cut, then because he always said Milano
instead of Milan, and finally because he was alone in the world and
had rather a sad countenance. There were certainly a great many ways
in which he differed from the rest of the people in Varde and in
Ringkjöbing too.
* * * * *
On a hot summer day, Niels came through the narrow street behind the
Councillor’s garden. The sun was pouring down over the brick-red little
houses, and the ships lying out on the sound had mats hung over their
sides to prevent the tar from melting and oozing out of the seams.
Round about him everything was open to admit a coolness which did not
exist. Within the open doors, the children were reading their lessons
aloud, and the hum of their voices mingled with that of the bees in the
garden, while a flock of sparrows hopped silently from tree to tree,
all flying up together and coming down together.
Niels entered a little house right behind the garden, and while the
woman went to bring her husband from the neighbor’s, he was left alone
in a spotless little room smelling of gillyflowers and freshly ironed
linen.
When he had examined the pictures on the walls, the two dogs on the
dresser, and the sea-shells on the lid of the work-box, he stepped over
to the open window, whence he heard the sound of Gerda’s voice, and
there were the four Skinnerup girls on the Councillor’s bleaching-green
only a few steps away.
The balsamines and other flowers in the window hid him, and he prepared
himself both to listen and to look.
It was clear that a quarrel was going on, and the three younger
sisters were making common cause against Gerda. All carried whips of
lemon-yellow withes. The youngest had formed three or four of them into
rings wound about with red bark, and had put them on her head like a
turban.
It was she who was speaking.
“She says he looks like Themistocles on the stove in the study,” she
remarked to her fellow conspirators, and turned up her eyes with a rapt
expression.
“Oh, pshaw,” said the middle one, a saucy little lady who had
just been confirmed that spring; “do you suppose Themistocles
was round-shouldered?” She imitated Niels Lyhne’s slight stoop.
“Themistocles! Not much!”
“There is something so manly in his look; he is a real man!” quoted the
twelve-year-old.
“He!” came the voice of the middle one again. “Why, he goes and pours
eau de cologne on himself. The other day his gloves were lying there
and just simply reeking with millefleur.”
“_Every_ perfection!” breathed the twelve-year-old in ecstasy, and
staggered back as though overcome with emotion.
They addressed all these remarks to each other and pretended not to
notice Gerda, who stood at a little distance, blushing furiously, as
she poked the ground with her yellow stick. Suddenly she lifted her
head.
“You’re a pair of naughty hussies,” she said, “to talk like that about
some one who is too good to look at you.”
“And yet you know he is _only_ a mortal,” remonstrated the eldest of
the three mildly, as if to make peace.
“No, he is _nothing_ of the kind.”
“And _surely_ he has his faults,” continued the sister, pretending not
to hear what Gerda said.
“No!”
“But, my dear Gerda, you _know_ he never goes to church.”
“What should he go there for? He knows _ever_ so much more than the
pastor.”
“Yes, but unfortunately he doesn’t believe in any God _at all_, Gerda.”
“Well, you can be mighty sure, my dear, that if he doesn’t, he has
_excellent_ reasons for it.”
“Why, Gerda, how can you say such a thing!”
“You’d almost think—” broke in the middle one.
“What would you almost think?” snapped Gerda.
“Nothing, nothing at all. Please don’t bite me!” replied the sister
with a sudden air of great meekness.
“Now will you tell me this minute what you meant!”
“No, no, no, no, no; I guess I’ve a right to hold my tongue if I want
to.”
She walked off together with the twelve-year-old, each with her arm
around the other’s shoulder in sisterly concord. The eldest followed
them, strutting with indignation.
Gerda, left alone, stood looking defiantly straight ahead, while she
cut the air with her yellow stick.
There was a moment of silence, and then the thin voice of the
twelve-year-old floated up from the other end of the garden, singing:
“_You ask me, my lad,
What I want with the withered flower_—”
Niels understood their teasing perfectly, for he had recently made
Gerda a present of a book with a dried vine leaf from the garden
in Verona which contains Juliet’s grave. He could hardly keep from
laughing; but just then the woman returned with her husband, whom she
had at last found, and Niels had to give the order for the carpenter
work he had come to see about.
From that day Niels observed Gerda more closely, and every time he saw
her he felt more keenly how sweet and fine she was. As time went on,
his thoughts turned more and more frequently to this confiding little
girl.
She was very lovely, with the tender, appealing beauty that almost
brings tears to the eyes. Her figure, in its early ripening, retained
something of the child’s roundness, which gave an air of innocence to
her luxuriant womanhood. The small, softly-moulded hands were losing
the rosy color of adolescence, and were without any of the restless,
nervous curiosity often seen at that age. She had a strong little neck,
cheeks that were rounded with a large, full line, and a low, dreamy
little woman’s forehead, where great thoughts were strangers and almost
seemed to hurt when they came, bringing a frown to the thick brows. And
her eye—how deep and blue it lay there, but deep only as a lake where
one can see the bottom; and in the soft corners the smile brooded
happily under lids that were lifted in slow surprise. This was the
way she looked, little Gerda, white and pink and blonde, with all her
short, bright hair demurely gathered into a knot.
They had many a talk, Niels and Gerda, and he fell more and more in
love with her. Open and frank and chivalrous was his regard, until a
certain day there came a change in the air about them, a gleam of that
which is too imponderable to be called sensuousness and yet is of the
senses, that which impels the hand and mouth and eyes to reach out for
what the heart cannot get close enough to its own heart. And another
day, not long after, Niels went to Gerda’s father, because Gerda was so
young, and because he was so sure of her love. And her father said yes,
and Gerda said yes.
In the spring they were married.
* * * * *
It seemed to Niels Lyhne that existence had grown wonderfully clear and
uncomplicated, that life was simple to live and happiness as near and
easy to win as the air he drew in with his breath.
He loved her, the young wife he had won, with all the delicacy of
thought and feeling, with all the large, deep tenderness of a man who
knows the tendency of love to sink and believes in the power of love to
rise. How he guarded this young soul which bent toward him with
infinite trust and pressed up against him in caressing faith, in
implicit reliance that he would do her nothing but good, as the ewe
lamb in the parable must have felt toward its shepherd when it ate
from his hand and drank of his cup! He had no heart to take her God
away from her or to banish all those white hosts of angels that fly
singing through the heavens all day and come to earth at eventide and
spread their wings from bed to bed, watching faithfully and filling the
darkness of night with a protecting wall of invisible light. He shrank
from allowing his own heavier, imageless view of life to come between
her and the soft blue of the heavens and make her feel uneasy and
forsaken.
But she would have it otherwise. She wanted to share everything with
him; there must be no place in heaven or on earth where their ways were
parted. Say what he would to hold her back, she met it all, if not with
the words of the Moabite woman, yet with the same obstinate thought
that lay in the words—thy people shall be my people, and thy God my
God.
Then he began to teach her in earnest. He explained to her that all
gods were the work of men and, like everything else made by men, could
not endure eternally, but must pass away, generation after generation
of gods—because humanity is ever-lastingly developing and growing
beyond its own ideals. A god on whom the noblest and greatest of men
could not lavish the richest gifts of their spirit, a god that did not
take his light from men, but had to give light by virtue of his own
being, a god that was not developing but stiffened in the historic
plaster of dogmas, was no longer a god, but an idol. Therefore Judaism
was right against Baal and Astarte, and Christianity was right against
Judaism, for an idol is nothing in the world. Humanity had gone on from
god to god, and therefore Christ could say, on the one hand, looking
toward the old God, that He had not come to destroy the law, but to
fulfil it, while on the other hand He could point beyond Himself to a
yet higher ideal with those mystical words about the sin that shall not
be forgiven, the sin against the Holy Ghost.
He went on to teach her how the belief in a personal God who guides
everything for the best and who punishes and rewards beyond the grave
is a running away from the harsh realities of life, an impotent attempt
to take the sting from its arbitrariness. He showed her that it must
blunt compassion and make people less ready to exert all their powers
in relieving misery, since they could soothe themselves with the
thought that suffering in this brief earthly life paved the way for the
sufferer to an eternity of glory and joy.
He laid stress on the strength and self-reliance mankind would gain
when men had learned faith in themselves, and when the individual
strove to bring his life into harmony with what seemed to him, in
his best moments, the highest that dwelt in him, instead of seeking
it outside of himself in a controlling deity. He made his faith as
beautiful and blessed as he could, but he did not conceal from her how
crushingly sad and comfortless the truth of atheism would seem in the
hour of sorrow compared to the old fair, happy dream of a Heavenly
Father who guides and rules. Yet she was brave. It is true, many of his
doctrines, and often those he had least expected to affect her, would
shake her to the innermost depths of her soul, but her faith knew no
bounds; her love carried her with him away from all heavens, and she
believed because she loved. Then, after a while, when the new ideas
had grown familiar and homelike, she became intolerant in the highest
degree and fanatical, as young disciples always are who love their
master intensely. Niels often reproached her for it, but that was the
one thing she could never understand—that when their belief was true,
that of others should not be horrible and reprehensible.
For three years they lived happily together, and much of this happiness
shone from a baby face, the face of a little boy who had been born to
them in the second year of their marriage.
Happiness usually makes people good, and Niels strove earnestly to make
their lives so beautiful, noble, and useful that there should never be
any pause in the growth of their souls toward the human ideal in which
they both believed. But he no longer thought of carrying the standard
of his ideal out into the world; he was content to follow it. Once
in a while, he would take out some of his old attempts, and then he
would always wonder if it was really he who had written these pretty,
artistic things. His own verses invariably brought tears to his eyes,
but he would not for anything in the world have changed places with the
poor fellow who wrote them.
Suddenly, in the spring, Gerda fell ill and could not recover.