A few days later, they were going to leave. They would travel together,
and that would be the end.
I might have pitied them both, for though life is good, life is stern. One
result at any rate was accomplished. She had not sent for him in vain, nor
had he come in vain.
That was the end of the act. But there were more acts to come--many more.
She had lost much: having been ravished, she gave herself away; why be
niggardly now? And this is the destiny of her type, that they lose
increasingly much, retaining ever less; what need to hold back now? The
ground has been completely shifted: from half-measures to the immolation
of all virtue. The type is well-known, and can be found at resorts and
boarding-houses, where it grows and flourishes.
In spite of her wasted adolescence, her examination and her
"independence," she has been coming home from her office stool or her
teacher's desk more or less exhausted; suddenly she finds herself in the
midst of a sweet and unlimited idleness, with quantities of tinned food
for her meals. The company round her is continually changing, tourists
come and go, and she passes from hand to hand for walks and talks; the
tone is "country informality." This is sheer loose living; this is a life
stripped of all purpose. She does not even sleep enough because she hears
through the thin wall every sound made by her neighbor in the next room,
while arriving or departing Englishmen bang doors all night. In a short
time she has become a neurotic, sated with company, surfeited with herself
and the place. She is ready to go off with the next halfway respectable
organ grinder that happens along. And so she pairs off with the most
casual visitors, flirts with the guide, hovering about him and making
bandages for his fingers, and at last throws herself into the arms of a
nameless nobody who has arrived at the house today.
This is the Torsen type.
And now, at this very moment, she retires to her room to collect the
fragments of herself, in preparation for her departure--at the end of the
summer. It takes time; there are so many fragments, one in every corner.
But perhaps it consoles her to think that she knows the genitive of
_mensa_.
Things are not quite so bad for the actor. He has staked nothing, is
committed to nothing. No part of his life is destroyed, nor anything
within him. As he came, so he goes, cheerful, empty, nice. In fact he is
even something more of a man because he has really made a conquest. He has
no wish but to spend some pleasant hours with the Torsen type.
He strolled about the garden waiting for her to get ready. Once she was
visible through the doorway, and he called to her:
"Aren't you coming soon? Don't forget we've got to cross the mountain!"
"Well, I can't go bareheaded," she replied.
He was impatient.
"No, you've got to put your hat on, and what a lot of time that takes!
Ugh!"
She measured him coldly and said:
"You're very--familiar."
If he had paid her back in the same coin there would have been weeping and
gnashing of teeth and cries of "Go away! Go alone!" and an hour's delay,
and reconciliation and embraces. But the actor's manner changed at once,
and he replied docilely, as his nature was,
"Familiar? Well--perhaps. Sorry!"
Then he strolled about the garden again, humming occasionally and swinging
his stick. I took note of the oddly feminine shape of his knees, and the
unusual plumpness of his thighs; there was something unnatural about this
plumpness, as though it did not belong to his sex.
His shoes were down at the heel, and his collar was open. His raincoat
hung regally from his shoulders and flapped in the wind, though it was not
raining. He was a proud and comical sight. But why speak harsh words about
a raincoat? It was not he, the owner, that had abused it, and it hung from
his shoulders as innocently as a bridal veil.
Why speak harsh words about anyone? Life is good, but life is stern.
Perhaps when she comes out, I think to myself, the following scene will
take place: I stand here waiting only for this departure. So she gives me
her hand and says good-bye.
"Why don't you say something?" she asks in order to seem bright and easy
in her mind.
"Because I don't want to hurt you in the great error of your ways."
"Ha, ha, ha," she laughs, too loudly and in a forced tone; "the great
error of my ways! Well, really!"
And her anger grows, while I am assured and fatherly, standing on the firm
ground of conscious virtue. Yet I say an unworthy thing like this:
"Don't throw yourself away, Miss Torsen!"
She raises her head then; yes, the Torsen type would raise her head and
reply, pale and offended:
"Throw myself away?--I don't understand you."
But it is possible, too, that Miss Torsen, at heart a fine, proud girl,
would have a lucid moment and see things in their true light:
"Why not, why shouldn't I throw myself away? What is there to keep? I am
thrown away, wasted ever since my school days, and now I am seven and
twenty...."
My own thoughts run away with me as I stand there wishing I were somewhere
else. Perhaps she, too, in her room wishes me far away.
"Good-bye," I say to the actor. "Will you remember me to Miss Torsen? I
must go now."
"Good-bye," says he, shaking hands in some surprise. "Can't you wait a few
minutes? Well, all right, I'll give her your greeting. Good-bye,
good-bye."
I take a short cut to get out of the way, and as I know every nook and
corner, I am soon outside the farm, and find a good shelter. From here I
shall see when these two leave. She has only to say good-bye now to the
people of the farm.
It struck me that yesterday was the last time I spoke to her. We spoke
only a few insignificant words that I have forgotten, and today I have not
spoken to her....
Here they come.
Curious--they seemed somehow to have become welded together; though they
walked separately up the mountain track, yet they belonged together. They
did not speak; the essential things had probably already been said. Life
had grown ordinary for them; it still remained to them to be of use to
each other. He walked first, while she followed many paces behind; it was
lonely to look at against the rugged background of the mountain. Where had
her tall figure gone to? She seemed to have grown shorter because she had
hitched up her skirt and was carrying her knapsack on her back. They each
carried one, but he carried hers and she his, probably because, owing to
the greater number of her clothes, hers was the heavier sack. Thus had
they shifted their burdens; what burdens would they carry in the future?
She was, after all, no longer a schoolmistress, and perhaps he was no
longer with the theater or the films.
I watched those two crossing rocky, mountainous ground, bare ground, with
not a tree anywhere except a few stunted junipers; far away near the ridge
murmured the little Reisa. Those two had put their possessions together,
were walking together; at the next halt they would be man and wife, and
take only one room because it was cheaper.
Suddenly I started up and, moved by some impulse of human sympathy--nay,
of duty--I wanted to run across to her, talk to her, say a word of
warning: "Don't go on!" I could have done it in a few minutes--a good
deed, a duty....
They disappeared behind the shoulder of the hill.
Her name was Ingeborg.