The counselor's wife sat down on the sofa with her hands folded in her
lap. Arla remained standing a little farther away, so that the green
lamp-shade left her face in shadow.
"My little girl," began her mother in a mild voice, "do not feel hurt,
but I must make a few remarks on your behavior to-night. First of all,
you will have to hold yourself a little straighter when you dance.
This tendency to droop the head looks very badly. I noticed it
especially when you danced with Captain Lagerskioeld--and do you know,
it looked almost as if you were leaning your head against his
shoulder."
Arla blushed; she did not know why, but this reproach hurt her deeply.
"The dancing-teacher always said that to dance well one must lean
toward one's partner," she objected in a raised voice.
"If that is so, it is better not to dance so well," answered her
mother seriously. "And another thing. I heard you ask Mr. Oern to
excuse you. And you danced the cotillon after all."
"I suppose one has a right to dance with whom one pleases."
"One never has a right to hurt others; and besides, you said to Mr.
Oern that you were tired out and not able to dance again. How could you
then immediately after--"
"Captain Lagerskioeld leads so well," she said, lifting her head, and
her mother saw that her eyes were shining. "To dance with him is no
exertion."
Her mother seemed inclined to say something, but hesitated.
"Come a little nearer," she said. "Let me look at you."
Arla came up, knelt down on a footstool, hid her face in her mother's
dress, and began to cry softly.
"I shall have to tell you, then," said her mother, smoothing her hair.
"Poor child, don't give yourself up to these dreams. Captain
Lagerskioeld is the kind of a man that I should have preferred never to
have asked to our house. He is a man entirely without character and
principles--to be frank, a bad man."
Arla raised her tear-stained face quickly.
"I know that," she said almost triumphantly. "He told me so himself."
Her mother was silent with astonishment, and Aria continued, rising,
"He has never had any parents nor any home, but has always been
surrounded with temptations. And," she went on in a lower voice, "he
has never found any one that he could really love, and it is only
through love that he can be rescued from the dark powers that have
ruled his life."
She repeated almost word for word what he had said. He had expressed
himself in so commonplace a way, and she was so far from suspecting
what his confession really meant, that she would not have been able to
clothe them in her own words. She had only a vague impression that he
was unhappy and sinful--and that she should save him. Sinful was to
her a mere abstract idea: everybody was full of sin, and his sin was
very likely that he lived without God. He had perhaps never learned to
pray, and maybe he never went to church or took the communion. She
knew that there were men who never did. And then perhaps he had been
engaged to Cecilia, and had broken the engagement when he saw that he
did not really love her.
"And all this he has told you already!" exclaimed her mother, when she
got over her first surprise. "Well then, I can also guess what he said
further. Do you want me to tell you? You are the first girl he has
really loved--you are to be his rescuing angel--"
Arla made a faint exclamation.
"You do not suppose I have been listening?" asked her mother. "I know
it without that; men like this always speak so when they want to win
an innocent girl. When I was young I had an admirer of this kind--that
is not an uncommon experience."
Not uncommon! These words were not said to her only; other men had
said the same before this to other young girls! Oh! but not in the
same way, at any rate! thought Arla. As he had said them--with such a
look--such a voice--no, nobody else could ever have done that.
"And you didn't understand that a man who can make a young girl a
declaration of love the first time he sees her must be superficial and
not to be trusted?" continued her mother.
"Mamma does not know what love is," thought Aria. "She does not know
that it is born in a moment and lasts for life. She has of course
never loved papa; then they would not be so matter-of-fact now."
"And what did you answer?" asked her mother.
Arla turned away. "I answered nothing," she said in a low voice.
The mother's troubled face grew a little brighter.
"That was right," she said, patting her on the cheek. "Then you left
him at once."
Arla was on the point of saying, "Not at once," but she could not make
this confession. Other questions would then follow, and she would be
obliged to describe what had happened. Describe a scene like this to
her mother, who did not know what love was! That was impossible! So
she said yes, but in so weak and troubled a voice that her mother at
once saw it was not true. This was not Arla's first untruth; on the
contrary, she had often been guilty of this fault when a child. She
was so shy and loving that she could not stand the smallest reproach,
and a severe look was enough to make her cry; consequently she was
always ready to deny as soon as she had made the slightest mistake.
But when her mother took her face between her hands and looked
straight into her eyes, she saw at once how matters stood, for the
eyes could hide nothing. And since Arla grew older she had fought so
much against this weakness that she had almost exaggerated her
truthfulness. She was now as quick to confess what might bring
displeasure on herself, as if she were afraid of giving temptation the
slightest room.
The mother, who with deep joy had noticed her many little victories
over herself, was painfully impressed by this relapse. She could not
now treat Arla as she had done when she was a little girl. Instead of
this, she opened the Bible by one of the many book-marks, with a
somewhat trembling hand.
"Although it is late, shall we not read a chapter together, as we
always do before we go to bed?" she asked, and looked up at her
daughter.
Arla stepped back, and cast an almost frightened glance at the little
footstool where she had been sitting at her mother's knee every
evening since she was a little girl. All this seemed now so
strange--it was no longer herself, it was a little younger sister, who
used to sit there and confess to her mother all her dreams and all her
little sorrows.
"I don't want to--I cannot read to-night."
Her mother laid the book down again, gave her daughter a mild, sad
look and said, "Then remember, my child, that this was the consequence
of your first ball."
Arla bent her head and left the room slowly. Her mother let her go;
she found it wisest to leave her to herself until her emotion had
somewhat worn itself out. Aria would not go into her own room; she
dreaded Gurli's chatter; she had to be alone to get control over her
thoughts. In the drawing-room she found her father.
"Is mamma in her room?" he asked.
"Yes."
"Is she alone? Are the children asleep?"
"Yes, mamma is alone."
"Well! Good-night, my girl." He kissed her lips and went into the
bedroom.
Arla opened a window in the drawing-room to let out the hot air, and
then began to walk up and down wrapped in a large shawl, enjoying the
clear cold winter moonlight, which played over the snow and hid itself
behind the trees in the park outside the window. There they were to
meet to-morrow! Oh, if only he had said now, at once! If only she
could slip out now in her thin gown, and he could wrap his cape around
her to keep her warm--she did not remember that the men of to-day did
not wear capes like Romeo--and if then they could have gone away
together--far, far away from this prosaic world, where nobody
understood that two hearts could meet and find each other from the
first moment.
She was not left alone long; a door was opened, light steps came
tripping, and a white apparition in night-gown stood in the full light
of the moonbeam.
"But Arla, are you never, never coming?"
"Why, Gurli dear, why aren't you asleep long ago?"
"Eh? do you think I can sleep before I have heard something about the
ball? Come in now; how cold it is here!"
She was so cold that she shivered in her thin night-gown, but clung
nevertheless to her sister, who was standing by the window.
"Go; you are catching cold."
"I don't care," she said, chattering. "I am not going till you come."
Arla was, as usual, obliged to give in to the younger sister's strong
will. She closed the window and they went into their room, where Gurli
crept into bed again and drew the cover up to her very chin. Arla
began to unfasten her dress and take the flowers out of her hair.
"Well, I suppose you had a divine time," came a voice from the bed
behind chattering teeth. There was nothing to be seen out on the
floor. "Then you are much more of a schoolgirl than I. Is there
perhaps any man who has told you that he loves you? Is there?"
"Oh, but Gurli, what nonsense," said Arla laughing outright. "Has
really one of Arvid's friends--"
"Arvid's friends!" repeated Gurli with an expression of indescribable
contempt. "Do you think such little boys would dare? Ph! I would give
them a box on the ear,--that would be the quickest way of getting rid
of such little whipper-snappers. No indeed; it is a man, a real
_man_--a man that any girl would envy me."
She was so pretty as she stood there in her white gown, with her
dancing eyes and thick hair standing like a dark cloud around her rosy
young face, that a light broke on Arla, and a suspicion of the truth
flashed through her mind.
"It is not possible that you mean--of course you don't mean--him--that
you just spoke of--Captain Lagerskioeld?"
"And what if it _were_ he!" cried Gurli, who in her triumph forgot to
keep her secret. Arla's usual modest self-possession left her
completely at this news.
"Captain Lagerskioeld has told you that he loves you!" she cried with a
sharp and cutting voice, unlike her usual mild tone. "Oh, how wicked,
how wicked!"
She hid her face in her hands and burst out crying.
Gurli was frightened at her violent outbreak. She must have done
something awful, that Arla, who was always so quiet, should carry on
so. She crept close up to her sister, half ashamed and half
frightened, and whispered:--"He has only said it once. It was the day
before yesterday, and I ran away from him at once--I thought it was so
silly, and--"
"Day before yesterday!" cried Arla and looked up with frightened,
wondering eyes. "Day before yesterday he told you that he loved you?"
"Yes; if only you will not be so awfully put out, I will tell you all
about it. He used to come up to the coasting-hill a great deal lately,
and then we walked up and down in the park and talked, and when I
wanted to coast he helped me get a start, and drew my sleigh up-hill
again. At first I did not notice him much, but then I saw he was very
nice--he would look at me sometimes for a long, long time--and you
can't imagine how he does look at one! And then day before yesterday
he began by of Gurli but a pair of impatient dark eyes, under a
wilderness of brown hair.
Arla was sitting at the toilet-table, her back to her sister.
"Oh yes," she said.
"I see on your card that you danced two dances with Captain
Lagerskioeld. I suppose he dances awfully well, eh?"
"Do you know him?" asked Arla, and turned on the chair.
"Oh yes, I do. Didn't he ask for me?"
"Yes, now I remember. He said he had seen you with the children on the
coasting-hill. You must have been a little rude to him?"
The whole head came out above the cover now.
"Rude! how?"
"He said something about your being so pert."
"Pert? Oh, _what_ a fib you do tell!" cried Gurli, and sat up in bed
with a jump.
"I don't usually tell stories," said Arla with wounded dignity, but
blushed at the same time.
"Oh yes, you do now, I am sure you do. I don't believe you, if you
don't tell me word for word what he said. Who began talking of me? And
what did he say? And what did you say?"
"You had better tell me why you are so much interested in him," said
Arla in the somewhat superior tone of the elder sister.
"That is none of your business. I will tell you that I am no longer a
little girl, as you seem to think. And even though I am treated like a
child here at home, there are others who--who--"
"Are you not a child?" said Arla. "You are not confirmed yet."
"Oh, is that it? That 'confirmation' is only a ceremony, which I
submit to for mamma's sake. And don't imagine that it is confirmation
which makes women of us; no indeed, it is something else."
"What then?" asked Arla, much surprised.
"It is--it is--love," burst out Gurli, and hid her head under the
covers.
"Love! But Gurli, how you do talk! What do you know about that? You, a
little schoolgirl!"
"Don't say 'little schoolgirl'--that makes me furious," cried Gurli,
as she pushed the cover aside with both hands and jumped saying that
I had such pretty eyes--and then he said that such a happy little
sunbeam as I could light up his whole life, and that if he could not
meet me, he would not know what to do--"
"Gurli!" cried Arla, and grasped her sister's arm violently. "Do you
love him?"
Gurli let her eyes wander a little, and looked shy.
"I think I do--I have read in the novels Arvid borrowed in
school--only don't tell mamma anything about it; but I have read that
when you are in love you always have such an awful palpitation of the
heart when _he_ comes--and when I merely catch sight of him far off on
the hill in Kommandoersgatan, I felt as if I should strangle."
"Captain Lagerskioeld is a bad, bad man!" sobbed Arla, and rushed out
of the room, hiding her face in her hands.
The counselor's wife was still up and was reading, while her husband
had gone to bed. A tall screen standing at the foot of the bed kept
the light away from the sleeper. The counselor had just had a talk
with his wife, which most likely would keep her awake for the greater
part of the night; but he had fallen asleep as soon as he had spoken
to the point.
"You must forgive me that I cannot quite approve your way of
fulfilling your duties as hostess," he had said when he came in to
her.
His wife crossed her hands on the table and looked up at him with a
mild and patient face.
"You show your likes and dislikes too much," he continued, "and think
too little of the claims of social usage. For instance, to pay so much
attention to Mrs. Ekstroem and her daughters--"
"It was because nobody else paid any attention to them."
"But even so, my dear, a drawing-room is not a charity institution, I
take it. Etiquette goes before everything else. And then you were
almost rude to Admiral Hornfeldt's wife, who is one of the first women
in society."
"Forgive me; but I cannot be cordial to a woman for whom I have no
respect."
The counselor shrugged his shoulders with a gesture of great
impatience.
"I wish you could learn to see how wrong it is to let yourself be
influenced by these moral views in society."
His wife was silent; it was her usual way of ending a conversation
which she knew could lead to no result, since each kept his own
opinion after all.
"Did you notice Arla?" asked the counselor.
"Yes. Why?"
"Did you not see that she made herself conspicuous by taking such an
interest in this outlived Lagerskioeld?"
"I asked you not to invite Captain Lagerskioeld," said his wife mildly.
"The trouble is not there," interrupted her husband; "but the trouble
is that your daughter is brought up to be a goose who understands
nothing. That is the result of your convent system. Girls so guarded
are always ready to fall into the arms of the first man who knows
somewhat how to impress them."
This was the counselor's last remark before he fell asleep. It
awakened a feeling of great bitterness and hopelessness in his wife.
Her heart felt heavy at the thought of all the frivolity, all the
impurity into which her girls were to be thrown one after another.
When Arla, in whose earnestness and purity of character she had so
great a confidence, had shown herself so little proof against
temptation, what then would become of Gurli, who had such dangerous
tendencies? And the two little ones who were now sleeping soundly in
the nursery?
"To what use is then all the striving and all the prayers?" she asked
herself. "What good then does it do to try to protect the children
from evil, if just this makes them more of a prey to temptation?"
She laid her arms on the table and rested her forehead on her hands.
The awful question "What is the use of it? what is the use of it?" lay
heavy upon her.
Then there came a soft knock at her door; it was opened a little, and
a timid voice whispered, "Is mamma alone? May I come in?"
A ray of happiness came into the mother's face.
"Come in, my child," she whispered, and stretched out her hands toward
her. "Papa sleeps so soundly, you need not be afraid of waking him."
Arla came in on tiptoe, dressed in white gown and dressing-sack and
with her hair loose. There were red spots on her cheeks, and her eyes
were swollen from crying. She knelt down gently beside her mother, hid
her face in her mother's dress, and whispered in a voice trembling
with suppressed tears, "Will you read to me now, mamma?"
Translated for 'A Library of the World's Best Literature'
by Olga Flinch