"No, I did not," denied the girl.
"I got it from a woman who of course is dead, as I have not returned
it."
"Have you been in love?" asked the girl with a strong doubt.
"Yes, but with open eyes! When one usually considers it commendable
to use sense, why quench it when one is going to take one of the most
important steps in life?"
"So, one should be calculating in love?"
"Strongly, incredibly calculating when it is to let loose one of the
wildest propensities!"
"Propensities?"
"Propensities! Yes!"
"You don't believe In love?"
"You propose questions which have no answer! Believe in love in
general? What do you mean by that? There exists a mass of species of
love, as much contrasted as black and white! I cannot believe in two of
them at the same time, or all of them at once."
"And the highest species?"
"The intellectual; in three stories but as the English house. Above is
the study, beneath the sleeping room and in the basement the kitchen."
"So practical! But love, a great love, is not calculating, that I have
imagined as the highest, as a storm, a lightning stroke, a cataract!"
"As a rude, uncurbed power of nature? So it appears to the animals and
the lower varieties of human beings...."
"Lower? Are not all human beings alike?"
"Oh, yes! All beings are alike as two berries, youths and old men, men
and women, Hottentots and Frenchmen, certainly they are alike! Look
at us two only! Perfectly alike, the only difference is that I have a
beard! Pardon, my lady, now I see that you have recovered I will leave
you. A pleasant sleep!"
He had arisen and taken his hat, but the next moment the girl stood at
his side with both his hands clasped in hers and with the same glances
with which she for the first time had vanquished him, she begged him to
stay!
Under these burning glances and hand pressures he felt something as he
thought a young girl might feel when she stood under the influence of
a seducer's passionate attack. He became perturbed and inwardly there
arose a feeling of violated bashfulness, and injured manliness. He
freed his hands, drew himself back and said in a calm voice, cutting in
its affected coldness:
"Consider!"
"Stay, or I shall seek you in your room!" rang the excited voice of
the girl, which seemed to imply a threat from which there was no appeal.
"Then I shall lock my door!"
"Are you a man, you?" rang the challenge with a hard laugh.
"Yes, in such a high degree that I will be both the selector and
attacker, and I do not like to be seduced!"
With this he went out and heard behind him a noise as from a human body
falling and striking against furniture.
After he was out he felt like turning back, for through mental strain
he was in a condition of weakness that made him susceptible to
impressions of the sufferings of others. But after having been alone
for a few seconds and collected himself, so that his powers returned,
he firmly decided to break this engagement, which threatened to usurp
his whole soul-life; and in time cut off all relation with a woman,
who had showed so plainly that it was only his body she desired, while
she ejected his soul, which he would pour into this lifeless image of
flesh. She enjoyed the sound of his voice, but the thoughts she did
not receive only in such cases as when they were of direct benefit.
He had often caught her looking at the lines of his figure, and she
used sometimes thoughtlessly to grasp his arm whose swelling muscles
formed a ridge beneath the soft cloth. He remembered now these many
overtures at the bath, on yachting; on going up to the lookout, which
he never visited because it upset his nerve system to stand on a bluff
without sufficient support. And now this evening, when he had seen
this eruption of uncontrollable passion, he saw with fear that this
woman was not of the developed race, which could individualize its
love to a certain one, and that he to her only played the rôle of the
indispensable opposite sex in general.
He had strolled down to the strand for a breeze, but the night was
sultry. The sea had ceased to roll, and in the northwest the heaven was
a faint melon color, while out in the east over the water rested the
night. The strand cliffs were still warm, and he placed himself down on
one of the many arm chairs, that the cold had blasted out and the waves
had polished smooth.
The events he had just lived through passed before him, and now, when
his senses were cooled off, he saw them in another light. His dream had
always been that he should awaken a woman's love to such a degree that
she should come begging, crawling to him, saying, "I love you, deign
to love me!" Such was the order of nature, that the weaker approach
the stronger with a submissive mind and not vice versa, although the
latter still was the case with those who were living with a trace of
superstitious ideas about something supernaturally exalted in woman,
notwithstanding that investigation had made it manifest that the
mysterious was only confusion and the exalted only a collection of
poems by the suppressed desires of male propensity.
Now she had come as he had dreamed it, the woman of the new time free
from prejudice, had shown all her inward incandescent nature, and he
had recoiled! Why? Perhaps tradition and conventional habits still
governed him! For there was nothing bold in her effusion, no trace of
the harlot offering, no immodest behavior or impudent mien! She loved
him in her way. What more could he desire, and with such a love he
could safely bind himself to her, for perhaps not many men could boast
of having lighted such a flame. But he felt no pride over having gained
her, for he felt his own value, and rather a pressing responsibility
which he would get rid of; and therefore he must depart from the island.
In thought now he sat and packed his belongings. He gathered the things
from the writing table and saw the green empty spread, took away the
lamp that shed light in the evening and sparkled colors in the daytime,
and there was a vacuum. Stripped the walls of their pictures and
draperies, and the white, sad, mathematical figure came forth. He took
the books from their shelves, and the dreadful solitude faced him,
monotony, nudeness, poverty!
And then came the fatigue from bodily efforts, fear of traveling and
its tiring effects; anxiety of the unknown where he now might be cast,
deprived of his accustomed surroundings and her company. And he saw
the young girl in her childish but still majestic beauty; heard her
complain, saw her whitened cheeks, which another would cause to blush
again as time passed.
Thus he suffered all the pangs of separation through a whole quarter
of an hour, which had seemed to him as long as hours, when in the dusk
of the summer night, he saw a woman's figure up on the rock outlined
against the light sky. The splendid contours, that he knew so well,
assumed still nobler proportions against the now pale yellow sky,
which could just as well be the end of a sunset as the beginning of
sunrise. She seemed to have come from the custom house cottage, and to
be searching for someone. Bareheaded and with her hair still hanging
over her shoulders, turning her head to spy, she seemed suddenly to
discover what she sought, and with brisk steps she hurried down to the
beach where the object of her search was sitting, immovable, without
the power to flee, without the will to proclaim himself. And when she
reached him she fell down and laid her head in his lap and talked
wildly, modestly, beseechingly, as though she was annihilated with
shame without being able to hold her tongue in check.
"Don't go away," sobbed she. "Despise me, but have mercy! Love me, love
me or I will go where I shall never return!"
There now awoke in him the mature man's intense longing for love. And
when he saw the woman at his feet, it aroused the inherent chivalry
of man, who would see in its mate the mistress not the slave; and he
arose, lifted her up, placed his arm round her waist and pressed her to
him.
"At my side, Mary, not at my feet," said he. "You love me, for you knew
that I loved you, and now you belong to me for life. And you will never
leave me alive, do you hear! For our whole life long. And now I place
you on my throne and give you the power over me and my belongings, my
name and my property, my honor and my actions, but if you forget that
it is I who gave you the power, and if you misuse or give it away, then
as a tyrant I will overthrow you to such a depth that you shall never
see the sunlight more! But you cannot do it, for you love me, is it not
true that you love me?"
He had placed her on the stone stool, and kneeling he laid his head in
her bosom.
"I lay my head in your lap," continued he, "but do not cut off my hair
meanwhile I sleep on your bosom. Let me uplift you but do not drag
me down. Become better than I am, for you can when I protect you from
contact with the world's corruption and misery, in which I must delve.
Ennoble yourself with great faculties which I do not possess, so that
we together shall become a perfect whole."
His feelings began to take the cooler tone of reason and seemed to
quench her exaltation, so that she interrupted him by placing her
glowing face to his, and when he did not answer her caress, she pressed
a burning kiss on his lips.
"You child," said she, "don't you dare to kiss when nobody can see it?"
Then he sprang up, clasped her round the neck and kissed her throat
repeatedly until she freed herself from him with a laugh and stood
erect before him.
"You are a perfect little savage," scolded she.
"The savage is there, be careful!" answered he, and grasping her round
the waist they wandered onwards on the warm sands which whispered round
their feet.
And now the lighthouse in the distance blinked, as the air had cooled
off and the dew had fallen. Out from the rookeries they heard the cries
of the seals as from the shipwrecked.
They wandered an hour or more, and spoke of their first meeting, about
their secret thoughts from time to time; about the future, about the
coming winter; about traveling in foreign countries; meantime they came
out on the point where the pile of stones with a cross was selected in
memory of a shipwreck with loss of life.
Suddenly they caught a glimpse of two shadows that sneaked away and
disappeared.
"It is Vestman and his sister-in-law," said Borg. "Fie! If I were her
husband I would sink her!"
"Not him?" came from the girl more hastily than she intended.
"He is not married!" answered Borg shortly; "that is the difference!"
There was a silence, a disagreeable silence, such as makes one seek
for a topic for conversation; and meantime whispered the thoughts, now
untied from the enchantment: and he already longed for the enchantment
again, for the intoxication, which blinded him, which turned gray to
rose color, which built pedestals; which placed gilded edges on cracked
china.
At this they turned from the rocky wall to go home. The wind which had
been quite asleep, now began to waft against them and in his anxiety
the awakened lover felt how freshly it blew. It was the north wind
which he had waited for, and which he now greeted as a rescuer. For in
a second when the girl's contradiction in a serious matter had just as
though broken something in him, so that he felt that her being could
only be soldered to his, not melted together with it, unless he gave up
resisting and delivered himself to her wholly and fully, he now grasped
the opportunity to raise himself again without treading upon her.
"Why do the people hate me?" asked he suddenly.
"Because you are superior to them," slipped from the girl without her
observing the confession she made.
"I do not believe it," answered he, "for their intellect is not
sufficient to value my superiority."
"Their hate can pervert their vision!"
"Superbly answered! But if they should see the miracle, would their
eyes open?"
"Perhaps! If the wonder aroused fear."
"Well, they shall have the miracle! To-morrow at ten o'clock it will
appear!"
"What?"
"That which I have promised you!"
The girl looked into his face with amazement as though she did not
believe what he said. After which she laughingly interposed:
"If it should be cloudy weather then?"
"But it won't be," answered the commissioner with decision. "However,
now we have already come so far as to speak about weather, we can even
think of what your mother will say about us."
"She won't trouble herself about it," answered the girl at once.
"It is astonishing that a mother does not pay any attention to what man
her daughter is to bind herself in relationship, and whose name she is
to carry! Can that be immaterial to her?"
"Good night, now!" interrupted Miss Mary and reached her mouth for a
kiss. "To-morrow morning you will come and visit us! Is it not so?"
"Certainly," answered he, "certainly!"
She walked away.
But he still stood on the same place and saw her slender figure rise
against the now sulphur yellow sky as she stepped upwards on the
hillock, and when she came to the highest point she turned back and
threw a kiss to him, and then she seemed to sink behind the slope
until he only saw her head with its loose hair which fluttered in the
northern wind.