[4] A krone is worth about twenty-eight cents.
IRENE HOLM
BY HERMANN JOACHIM BANG
[Illustration]
_Bang was born in Seeland in 1858. During his sojourn among
foreigners he has been at various times journalist, author,
playwright, until he now stands first among Danish writers of
the modern realistic school, for Drachmann can not be accounted
to any school for any length of time._
_Outside of his critical writings his works form a series of
naturalistic romances and novels, showing a deep knowledge of
the sad side of life, all the way from his first novel, called
“Hopeless Struggle,” published in 1880, to “Alive or Dead,”
published in 1900, including the very remarkable play, “Ellen
Urne,” and his short stories. “Irene Holm” is as inconclusive
as life itself, and that is what it is intended to be; that is
the author’s conception of art when dealing with life._
[Illustration]
IRENE HOLM
BY HERMANN BANG
Translated by Grace Isabel Colbron. Copyright, 1907, by P. F.
Collier & Son.
I
One Sunday morning, after service, the bailiff’s son announced to the
gathering at the meeting-stone outside the church that Miss Irene
Holm, dancer from the Royal Theatre in Copenhagen, would open a course
for dancing and deportment, for children, ladies, and gentlemen, if
a sufficient number of subscribers could be found. The lessons would
begin the first of November, in the inn, and the price would be five
crowns for each child, with a discount for several in the same family.
Seven names were signed. Jens Larsens put up his three on the discount.
Miss Irene Holm considered the number sufficient. She arrived toward
the end of October, and stopped in at the Inn with her only baggage, an
old champagne basket tied up with a cord. She was little and wearily
meagre in form, had a childish face with the lines of forty years in
it under her fur cap, and she wore old handkerchiefs wrapped about
her wrists, because of the gout. She pronounced all the consonants
most carefully, and said, “Oh, thank you, I can do it myself,” for
everything, looking very helpless the while. She wanted nothing but a
cup of tea, and then crept into her bed in the tiny room, trembling in
fear of ghosts.
Next morning she appeared with a head full of curls, her figure encased
in a tight-fitting, fur-trimmed coat, much the worse for wear. She was
going to call upon the parents of her pupils. She inquired the way
timidly. Madam Henriksen came out to the door with her, and pointed
over the fields. At every step Miss Holm bowed once in her gratitude.
“Such a looking creature!” thought Madam Henriksen, and stood in the
doorway looking out after her. Miss Holm walked toward Jens Larsens’,
choosing the dike path to save her shoes. Miss Holm was wearing leather
shoes and fancy knit stockings.
When she had visited all the parents--Jens Larsens gave nine crowns
for his three children--Miss Holm looked about for a place to live.
She hired a tiny whitewashed room at the smith’s, the window looking
out over the level fields. The entire furnishing consisted of a bed, a
bureau, and a chair. The champagne basket was placed between the bureau
and the window.
Miss Holm moved into her new quarters. Her mornings were given up to
busy handling of curling tongs and pins, and much drinking of cold tea.
When her hair was dressed she tidied up her room, and then she knitted
all the afternoon. She sat on her basket in the corner, trying to catch
the last rays of light. The smith’s wife would drop in, sit down on
the chair and talk, Miss Holm listening with a pleasant smile and a
graceful nod of her curly head.
The hostess spun out her stories until it was time for supper. But Miss
Holm seldom knew what she had been talking about. With the exception
of dance, and positions, and the calculation for one’s daily bread--a
tiresome, never-ending calculation--the things of this world seldom
filtered into Miss Holm’s brain. When left alone she sat silent on her
basket, her hands in her lap, gazing at the narrow strip of light that
came in under the door.
She never went out. The level, dreary fields made her homesick, and she
was afraid of wild horses.
When evening came, she cooked her simple supper, and then busied
herself with her curl papers. When she had divested herself of her
skirts she practised her “pas” beside the bedpost, stretching her legs
energetically. The smith and his wife clung to the keyhole during
this proceeding. They could just see the high kicks from behind, and
the curl papers standing up on the dancer’s head like quills on a
porcupine. She danced so eagerly that she began to hum gently as she
hopped up and down in the little room, the whole family outside hugging
the keyhole closely.
When Miss Holm had practised her accustomed time, she crept into bed.
While she practised her thoughts would wander back to the time “when
she was at dancing school.” And she would suddenly laugh, a gentle,
girlish laugh, as she lay still in the darkness. She fell asleep
thinking of that time--that happy, merry time--the rehearsals, when
they pricked each other in the calves with pins--and screamed so
merrily--And then the evenings in the dressing-rooms, with the whir and
tumult of voices, and the silence as the stage-manager’s bell shrilled
out--Miss Holm would wake up in a fright, dreaming that she had missed
her entrance.