We two are friends, are we not, and I think we shall always remain so,
even now that fate has severed our ways? If you feel that you have any
good reason for being angry with me now, then, indeed, our friendship
will be broken; for we shall have no further opportunity of becoming
reconciled.
If at this important juncture I not only hid the truth from you, but
deliberately misled you, it was not from any lack of confidence in you,
or with the wish to be unfriendly. I beg you to believe this. The fact
that I cannot even now explain to you my reasons for acting thus makes
it all the more difficult to justify my conduct to you. Therefore you
must be contented to take my word for it. Joergen Malthe, I would gladly
confide in you, but it is impossible. Call it madness, or what you will,
but I cannot allow any human being to penetrate my inner life.
You will not have forgotten that September evening last year, when I
spoke to you for the first time about one of my friends who was going to
separate from her husband, and who, through my intervention, asked you
to draw the plan of a villa in which she might spend the rest of her
days in solitude? You entered so completely into this idea of a solitary
retreat that your plan was almost perfect. Every time we met last year
we talked about the "White Villa," as we called it, and it pleased us to
share this little secret together. Nor were you less interested in the
interior of the house; in making sketches for the furniture, and
arranging the decorations. You took a real delight in this task,
although you were annoyed that you had no personal knowledge of your
client. You remember that I said to you sometimes in joke: "Plan it as
though it were for me"; and I cannot forget what you replied one day: "I
hate the idea of a stranger living in the house which I planned with you
always in my mind."
Judge for yourself, Malthe, how painful it was to leave you in error.
But I could not speak out then, for I had to consider my husband. For
this reason I avoided meeting you during the summer; I found it
impossible to keep up the deception when we were face to face.
It is I--I myself--who will live in the "White Villa." I shall live
there quite alone.
It is useless for me to say, "Do not be angry." You would not be what
you are if you were not annoyed about it.
You are young, life lies before you. I am old. In a very few years I
shall be so old that you will not be able to realise that there was a
time when I was "the one woman in the world" for you. I am not harping
on your youth in order to vex you--your youth that you hate for my sake!
I know that you are not fickle; but I know, too, that the laws of life
and the march of time are alike inexorable.
When I enter the new home you have planned for me, a lonely and divorced
woman, I shall think of you every day, and my thoughts will speak more
cordial thanks than I can set down coldly in black and white on this
paper.
I do not forbid you to write to me, but, save for a word of farewell, I
would prefer your silence. No letters exchanged between us could bring
back so much as a reflection of the happy hours we have spent together.
Hours in which we talked of everything, and chiefly of nothing at all.
I do not think we were very brilliant when we were together; but we were
never bored. If my absence brings you suffering, disappointment,
grief--lose yourself in your work, so that in my solitude I may still be
proud of you.
You taught me to use my eyes, and there is much, much in the world I
should like to see, for, thanks to you, I have learnt how beautiful the
world is. But the wisest course for me is to give myself up to my chosen
destiny. I shut the door of my "White Villa"--and there my story ends.
Your
ELSIE LINDTNER.
Reading through my letter, it seems to me cold and dry. But it is harder
to write such a letter to a dear friend than to a stranger.
LANDED ON MY ISLAND.
CREPT INTO MY LAIR.
The first day is over. Heaven help me through those to come! Everything
here disgusts me, from the smell of the new woodwork and the half-dried
wallpapers to the pattering of the rain over my head.
What an idiotic notion of mine to have a glass roof to my bedroom! I
feel as though I were living under an umbrella through which the water
might come dripping at any moment. During the night this will probably
happen. The panes of glass, unless they are very closely joined
together, will let the water through, and I shall awake in a pool of
water.
Awake, indeed! If only I ever get to sleep! My head aches and burns from
sheer fatigue, but I have not even thought of getting into bed yet.
For the last year I have had plenty of time to think things over, and
now I am at a loss to understand why I have done this. Suppose it is a
piece of stupidity--a carefully planned and irrevocable folly? Suppose
my irritable nerves have played a trick upon me? Suppose ... suppose ...
I feel lonely and without will power. I am frightened. But the step is
taken; and I can never turn back. I must never let myself regret it.
This constant rain gives me an icy, damp feeling down my back. It gets
on my nerves.
What shall I come to, reduced to the society of two females who have
nothing in common with me but our sex? No one to speak to, no one to
see. Jeanne is certainly attractive to look at, but I cannot converse
with her. As to Torp, she suits her basement as a gnome suits his
mountain cave. She looks as though she was made to repopulate a desert
unaided. She wears stays that are crooked back and front.
Never in all my life have I felt so disappointed, and compelled to put a
good face upon a bad business, as when I splashed through the wet
garden and entered the empty house where there was not even a flower to
welcome my arrival. The rooms are too large and bare.... Why did I not
think of that before?
All the same, decorum must be maintained, and my entry was not
undignified.
Ah, the rain, the rain! Jeanne and Torp are still cleaning up. They mean
to go on half the night, scrubbing and sweeping as though we expected
company to-morrow. I start unpacking my trunk, take out a few things and
stop--begin again and stop again, horrified at the quantity of clothes
I've brought. It would have been more sensible to send them to one of
our beloved "charity sales." They are of no use or pleasure now. Black
merino and a white woollen shawl--what more do I want here?
God knows how I wish at the present moment I were back in the Old Market
Place, even if I only had Richard's society to bore me.
What am I doing here? What do I want here? To cry, without having to
give an account of one's tears to anyone?
Of course, all this is only the result of the rain. I was longing to be
here. It was not a mere hysterical whim. No, no....
It was my own wish to bury myself here.
* * * * *
Yesterday I was all nerves. To-day I feel as fresh and lively as a
cricket.
We have been hanging the pictures, and made thirty-six superfluous holes
in the new walls. There is no way of concealing them. (I must write to
Richard to have my engravings framed.) It would be stretching a point to
say we are skilled picture-hangers; we were nearly as awkward as men
when they try to hook a woman's dress for her. But the pictures were
hung somehow, and look rather nice now they are up.
But why on earth did I give Torp my sketch of "A Villa by the Sea" to
hang in her kitchen? Was I afraid to have it near me? Or was it some
stupid wish to hurt _his_ feelings? _His_ only gift.... I feel ashamed
of myself.
Jeanne has arranged flowers everywhere, and that helps to make the house
more homelike.
The place is mine, and I take possession of it. Now the sun is shining.
I find pleasure in examining each article of furniture and remembering
the days when we discussed the designs together. I ought not to have let
him do all that. It was senseless of me.
* * * * *
They are much to be envied who can pass away the time in their own
society. I am in my element when I can watch other people blowing
soap-bubbles; but to blow them myself....
I am not really clever at creating comfortable surroundings. Far from
it. My white villa always looks uninhabited, in spite of all the flowers
with which I allow Jeanne to decorate the rooms. Is it because
everything smells so new? Or because there are no old smells? Here there
are no whiffs of dust, smoke, or benzine, nor anything which made the
Old Market Place the Old Market Place. Everything is so clean here that
one hesitates to move a step. The boards are as shiny as though they
were polished silver.... This very moment Torp appeared in felt shoes
and implored me to get her a strip of oilcloth to save her kitchen
floor. I feel just the same; I scarcely dare defile this spotless
pitchpine.
* * * * *
What is the use of all these discussions and articles about the equality
of the sexes, so long as we women are at times the slaves of an
inevitable necessity? I have suffered more than ever the last few days,
perhaps because I was so utterly alone. Not a human being to speak to.
Yes, I ought to have stayed in bed if only to conceal my ugliness. In
town I was wise. But here ...
* * * * *
All the same I am proud of my self-control. Many women do not possess as
much.
The moon is in her first quarter; a cold dry wind is blowing up; it
makes one cough merely to hear it whistle.
I hate winds of all kinds, and here my enemy seems to have free entry. I
ought to have built my house facing south and in some hollow sheltered
from the wind. Unfortunately it looks to the north, straight across the
open sea.
I have not yet been outside the garden. I have made up my mind to keep
to this little spot as long as possible. I shall get accustomed to it. I
_must_ get accustomed to it.
Dear souls, how they worry me with their letters. Only Malthe keeps
silence. Will he deign to answer me?
Jeanne follows me with her eyes as though she wanted to learn some art
from me. What art?
Good heavens, what can that girl be doing here?
She does not seem made for the celibate life of a desert island. Yet I
cannot set up a footman to keep her company. I will not have men's eyes
prying about my house, I have had enough of that.
A manservant--that would mean love affairs, squabbles, and troubles; or
marriage, and a change of domestics. No, I have a right to peace, and I
will secure it. The worst that could happen to me would be to find
myself reduced to playing whist with Jeanne and Torp. Well, why not?
Torp spends all her evenings playing patience on the kitchen
window-sill. Perhaps she is telling her fortune and wondering whether
some good-looking sailor will be wrecked on the shores of her desert
island.
Meanwhile Jeanne goes about in silk stockings. This rather astonishes
me. Lillie reproved me for the pernicious custom. Are they a real
necessity for Jeanne, or does she know the masculine taste so well?
* * * * *
From all the birch trees that stand quivering around the house a golden
rain is falling. There is not a breath of wind, but the leaves keep
dropping, dropping. This morning I stood on the little balcony and
looked out over the forest. I do not know why or wherefore, but such a
sense of quiet came over me. I seemed to hear the words: "and behold it
was very good." Was it the warm russet tint of the trees or the profound
perfume of the woods that induced this calm?
All day long I have been thinking of Malthe, and I feel so glad I have
acted as I have done. But he might have answered my letter.
Jeanne has discovered the secret of my hair. She asked permission to
dress it for me in the evening when my hair is "awake." She is quite an
artist in this line, and I let her occupy herself with it as long as she
pleased. She pinned it up, then let it down again; coiled it round my
forehead like a turban; twisted it into a Grecian knot; parted and
smoothed it down on each side of my head like a hood. She played with it
and arranged it a dozen different ways like a bouquet of wild flowers.
My hair is still my pride, although it is losing its gloss and colour.
Jeanne said, by way of consolation, that it was like a wood in late
autumn....
I should like to know whether this girl sprang from the gutter, or was
the child of poor, honest parents....
* * * * *
"Thousands of women may look at the man they love with their whole soul
in their eyes, and the man will remain as unmoved as a stone by the
wayside. And then a woman will pass by who has no soul, but whose
artificial smile has a mysterious power to spur the best of men to
painful desire...."
One day I found these words underlined in a book left open on my table.
Who left it there, I cannot say; nor whether it was underlined with the
intention of hurting my feelings, or merely by chance.
* * * * *
I sit here waiting for my mortal enemy. Will he come gliding in
imperceptibly or stand suddenly before me? Will he overcome me, or
shall I prove the stronger? I am prepared--but is that sufficient?
Torp is really too romantic! To-day it pleased her to decorate the table
with Virginia creeper. Virginia creeper festooned the hanging lamp;
Virginia creeper crept over the cloth. Even the joint was decked out
with wine-red leaves, until it looked like a ship flying all her flags
on the King's birthday. Amid all this pomp and ceremony, I sat all
alone, without a human being for whom I might have made myself smart. I,
who for the last twenty years, have never even dressed the salad without
at least one pair of eyes watching me toss the lettuce as though I was
performing some wonderful Indian conjuring trick.
A festal board at which one sits in solitary grandeur is the dreariest
thing imaginable.
I rather wish Torp had less "style," as she calls it. Undoubtedly she
has lived in large establishments and has picked up some habits and
customs from each of them. She is welcome to wait at table in white
cotton gloves and to perch a huge silk bow on her hair, which is
redolent of the kitchen, but when it comes to trimming her poor
work-worn nails to the fashionable pyramidal shape--she really becomes
tragic.
She "romanticises" everything. I should not be at all surprised if some
day she decked her kitchen range with wreaths of roses and hung up works
of art between the stewpans.
I am really glad I did not bring Samuel the footman with me. He could
not have waited on me better than Jeanne, and at any rate I am free from
his eyes, which, in spite of all their respectful looks, always reminded
me of a fly-paper full of dead and dying flies.
Jeanne's look has a something gliding and subtle about it that keeps me
company like a witty conversation. It is really on her account that I
dress myself well. But I cannot converse with her. I should not like to
try, and then to be disillusioned.
Men have often assured me that I was the only woman they could talk with
as though I were one of themselves. Personally I never feel at one with
menkind. I only understand and admire my own sex.
In reality I think there is more difference between a man and a woman
than between an inert stone and a growing plant. I say this ... I
who ...
* * * * *
What business is it of mine? We were not really friends. The fact of her
having confided in me makes no demands on my feelings. If this thing had
happened five years ago, I should have taken it as a rather welcome
sensation--nothing more. Or had I read in the paper "On the--inst., of
heart disease, or typhoid fever," my peace of mind would not have been
disturbed for an hour.
I have purposely refrained from reading the papers lately. Chancing to
open one to-day, after a month's complete ignorance of all that had been
happening in the world, I saw the following headline: Suicide of a Lady
in a Lunatic Asylum.
And now I feel as shaken as though I had taken part in a crime; as
though I had had some share in this woman's death.
I am so far to blame that I abandoned her at a moment when it might
still have been possible to save her.... But this is a morbid notion! If
a person wants "to shuffle off this mortal coil" it is nobody's duty to
prevent her.
To me, Agatha Ussing's life or death are secondary matters; it is only
the circumstances that trouble me.
Was she mad, or no? Undoubtedly not more insane than the rest of us, but
her self-control snapped like a bowstring which is overstrained. She
saw--so she said--a grinning death's head behind every smiling face.
Merely a bee in her bonnet! But she was foolish enough to talk about it;
and when people laughed at her words with a good-natured contempt, her
glance became searching and fixed as though she was trying to convince
herself. Such an awful look of terror haunted her eyes, that at her gaze
a cold shiver, born of one's own fears and forebodings, ran through one.
She compelled us to realise the things we scarcely dare foresee....
I shall never forget a letter in which she wrote these words in a queer,
faltering handwriting:
"If men suspected what took place in a woman's inner life after forty,
they would avoid us like the plague, or knock us on the head like mad
dogs."
Such a philosophy of life ended in the poor woman being shut up in a
madhouse. She ought to have kept it to herself instead of posting it up
on the walls of her house. It was quite sufficient as a proof of her
insanity.
I cannot think what induced me to visit her in the asylum. Not pure
pity. I was prompted rather by that kind of painful curiosity which
makes a patient ask to see a limb which has just been amputated. I
wanted to look with my own eyes into that shadowy future which Agatha
had reached before me.
What did I discover? She had never cared for her husband; on the
contrary she had betrayed him with an effrontery that would hardly have
been tolerated outside the smart world; yet now she suffered the
torments of hell from jealousy of her husband. Not of her lovers; their
day was over; but of him, because he was the one man she saw. Also
because she bore his name and was therefore bound to him.
On every other subject she was perfectly sane. When we were left alone
together she said: "The worst of it is that I know my 'madness' will
only be temporary. It is a malady incident to my age. One day it will
pass away. One day I shall have got through the inevitable phase. But
how does that help me now?"
No, it was no more help to her than the dreadful paint with which she
plastered her haggard features.
It was not the least use to her....
Her death is the best thing that could have happened, for her own sake
and for those belonging to her. But I cannot take my thoughts off the
hours which preceded her end; the time that passed between the moment
when she decided to commit suicide until she actually carried out her
resolve.
* * * * *
"If men suspected ..."
It may safely be said that on the whole surface of the globe not one man
exists who really knows a woman.
They know us in the same way as the bees know the flowers; by the
various perfumes they impart to the honey. No more.
How could it be otherwise? If a woman took infinite pains to reveal
herself to a husband or a lover just as she really is, he would think
she was suffering from some incurable mental disease.
A few of us indicate our true natures in hysterical outbreaks, fits of
bitterness and suspicion; but this involuntary frankness is generally
discounted by some subtle deceit.
Do men and women ever tell each other the truth? How often does that
happen? More often than not, I think, they deal in half-lies, hiding
this, embroidering that, fact.
Between the sexes reigns an ineradicable hostility. It is concealed
because life has to be lived, because it is easier and more convenient
to keep it in the background; but it is always there, even in those
supreme moments when the sexes fulfil their highest destiny.
A woman who knows other women and understands them, could easily prove
this in so many words; and every woman who heard her--provided they were
alone--would confess she was right. But if a man should join in the
conversation, both women would stamp truth underfoot as though it were a
venomous reptile.
Men can be sincere both with themselves and others; but women cannot.
They are corrupted from birth. Later on, education, intercourse with
other women and finally marriage, corrupt them still more.
A woman may love a man more than her own life; may sacrifice her time,
her health, her existence to him. But if she is wholly a woman, she
cannot give him her confidence.
She cannot, because she dares not.
In the same way a man--for a certain length of time--can love without
measure. He can then be unlocked like a cabinet full of secret drawers
and pigeonholes, of which we hold the keys. He discloses himself, his
present and his past. A woman, even in the closest bonds of love, never
reveals more of herself than reason demands.
Her modesty differs entirely from that of a male. She would rather be
guilty of incest than reveal to a man the hidden thoughts which
sometimes, without the least scruple, she will confide to another woman.
Friendship between men is a very different thing. Something honest and
frank, from which consequently they withdraw without anger, mutual
obligation, or fear. Friendship between women is a kind of masonic oath;
the breaking of it a mutual crime. When two women friends quarrel, they
generally continue to carry deadly weapons against each other, which
they are only restrained from using by mutual fear.
There _are_ honest women. At least we believe there are. It is a
necessary part of our belief. Who does not think well of mother or
sister? But who _believes entirely_ in a mother or a sister? Absolutely
and unconditionally? Who has never caught mother or sister in a
falsehood or a subterfuge? Who has not sometimes seen in the heart of
mother or sister, as by a lightning flash, an abyss which the
profoundest love cannot bridge over?
Who has ever really understood his mother or sister?
The human being dwells and moves alone. Each woman dwells in her own
planet formed of centrifugal fires enveloped in a thin crust of earth.
And as each star runs its eternal course through space, isolated amid
countless myriads of other stars, so each woman goes her solitary way
through life.
It would be better for her if she walked barefoot over red-hot
ploughshares, for the pain she would suffer would be slight indeed
compared to that which she must feel when, with a smile on her lips, she
leaves her own youth behind and enters the regions of despair we call
"growing old," and "old age...."
All this philosophizing is the result, no doubt, of having eaten
halibut for lunch; it is a solid fish and difficult to digest.
Perhaps, too, having no company but Jeanne and Torp, I am reduced to my
own aimless reflections.
Just as clothes exercise no influence on the majority of men, so their
emotional life is not much affected by circumstances. With us women it
is otherwise. We really _are_ different women according to the dresses
we wear. We assume a personality in accord with our costume. We laugh,
talk and act at the caprice of purely external circumstances.
Take for instance a woman who wants to confide in another. She will do
it in quite a different way in broad daylight in a drawing-room than in
her little "den" in the gloaming, even if in both cases she happens to
be quite alone with her confidante.
If some women are specially honoured as the recipients of many
confidences from their own sex, I am convinced they owe it more to
physical than moral qualities. As there are some rooms of which the
atmosphere is so cosey and inviting that we feel ourselves at home in
them without a word of welcome, so we find certain women who seem to be
endowed with such receptivity that they invite the confidences of
others.
The history of smiles has never yet been written, simply because the few
women capable of writing it would not betray their sex. As to men, they
are as ignorant on this point as on everything else which concerns
women--not excepting love.
I have conversed with many famous women's doctors, and have pretended to
admire their knowledge, while inwardly I was much amused at their
simplicity. They know how to cut us open and stitch us up again--as
children open their dolls to see the sawdust with which they are stuffed
and sew them up afterwards with a needle and thread. But they get no
further. Yes--a little further perhaps. Possibly in course of time they
begin to discover that women are so infinitely their superiors in
falsehood that their wisest course is to appear once and for all to
believe them then and there....
Women's doctors may be as clever and sly as they please, but they will
never learn any of the things that women confide to each other. It is
inevitable. Between the sexes lies not only a deep, eternal hostility,
but the unfathomable abyss of a complete lack of reciprocal
comprehension.
For instance, all the words in a language will never express what a
smile will express--and between women a smile is like a masonic sign; we
can use them between ourselves without any fear of their being
misunderstood by the other sex.
Smiles are a form of speech with which we alone are conversant. Our
smiles betray our instincts and our burdens; they reflect our virtues
and our inanity.
But the cleverest women hide their real selves behind a factitious
smile.
Men do not know how to smile. They look more or less benevolent, more or
less pleased, more or less love-smitten; but they are not pliable or
subtle enough to smile. A woman who is not sufficiently prudent to mask
her features, gives away her soul in a smile. I have known women who
revealed their whole natures in this way.
No woman speaks aloud, but most women smile aloud. And the fact that in
so doing we unveil all our artifice, all the whirlpool of our inmost
being to each other, proves the extraordinary solidarity of our sex.
When did one woman ever betray another?
This loyalty is not rooted in noble sentiment, but proceeds rather from
the fear of betraying ourselves by revealing things that are the secret
common property of all womanhood.
And yet, if a woman could be found willing to reveal her entire self?...
I have often thought of the possibility, and at the present moment I am
not sure that she would not do our sex an infinite and eternal wrong.
We are compounded so strangely of good and bad, truth and falsehood,
that it requires the most delicate touch to unravel the tangled skein of
our natures and find the starting point.
No man is capable of the task.
During recent years it has become the fashion for notorious women to
publish their reminiscences in the form of a diary. But has any woman
reader discovered in all this literature a single intimate feature, a
single frank revelation of all that is kept hidden behind a thousand
veils?
If indeed one of these unhappy women ventured to write a plain,
unvarnished, but poignant, description of her inner life, where would
she find a publisher daring enough to let his name appear on the cover
of the book?
I once knew a man who, stirred by a good and noble impulse, and
confident of his power, endeavoured to "save" a very young girl whom he
had rescued from a house of ill-fame. He took her home and treated her
like a sister. He lavished time and confidence upon her. His pride at
the transformation which took place in her passed all bounds. The girl
was as grateful as a mongrel and as modest as the bride in a romantic
novel. He then resolved to make her his wife. But one fine day she
vanished, leaving behind her a note containing these words: "Many thanks
for your kindness, but you bore me."
During the whole time they had lived together, he had not grasped the
faintest notion of the girl's true nature; nor understood that to keep
her contented it was not sufficient to treat her kindly, but that she
required some equivalent for the odious excitements of the past.
* * * * *
All feminine confessions--except those between relations which are
generally commonplace and uninteresting--assume a kind of beauty in my
eyes; a warmth and solemnity that excuses the casting aside of all
conventional barriers.
I remember one day--a day of oppressive heat and the heavy perfume of
roses--when, with a party of women friends, we began to talk about
tears. At first no one ventured to speak quite sincerely; but one thing
led to another until we were gradually caught in our own snares, and
finally we each gave out something that we had hitherto kept concealed
within us, as one locks up a deadly poison.
Not one of us, it appeared, ever cried because of some imperative inward
need. Tears are nature's gift to us. It is our own affair whether we
squander or economise their use.
Of all our confessions Sophie Harden's was the strangest. To her, tears
were a kind of erotic by-play, which added to the enjoyment of conjugal
life. Her husband, a good-natured creature, always believed he was to
blame, and she never enlightened him on the point.
Most of the others owned that they had recourse to tears to work
themselves up when they wanted to make a scene. But Astrid Bagge, a
gentle, quiet housewife and mother, declared she kept all her troubles
for the evenings when her husband dined at the volunteer's mess, because
he hated to see anyone crying. Then she sat alone and in darkness and
wept away the accumulated annoyances of the week.
When it came to my turn, I spoke the truth by chance when I said that,
however much I wanted to cry, I only permitted myself the luxury about
once in two years. I think my complexion is a conclusive proof that my
words were sincere.
There are deserts which never know the refreshment of dew or rain. My
life has been such a desert.
I, who like to receive confidences, have a morbid fear of giving them.
Perhaps it is because I was so much alone, so self-centred, in my
childhood.
The more I reflect upon life, the more clearly I see that I have not
laid out my talents to the best advantage. I have no sweet memories of
infidelity; I have lived irreproachably--and now I am very tired.
I sit here and write for myself alone. I know that no one else will ever
read my words; and yet I am not quite sincere, even with myself.
Life has passed me by; my hands are empty; now it is too late.
Once happiness knocked at my door, and I, poor fool, did not rise to
welcome it.
I envy every country wench or servant girl who goes off with a lover.
But I sit here waiting for old age.
Astrid Bagge.... As I write her name, I feel as though she were standing
weeping behind my back; I feel her tears dropping on my neck. I cannot
weep--but how I long for tears!
* * * * *
Autumn! Torp has made a huge fire of logs in the open grate. The burning
wood gives out an intoxicating perfume and fills the house with cosey
warmth. For want of something better to do I am looking after the fire
myself. I carefully strip the bark from each log before throwing it on
the flames. The smell of burning birch-bark goes to my head like strong
wine. Dreams come and go.
Joergen Malthe, what a mere boy you are!
* * * * *
The garden looks like a neglected churchyard, forgotten of the living.
The virginia creeper falls in blood-red streamers from the verandah. The
snails drag themselves along in the rain; their slow movements remind me
of women _enceinte_. The hedge is covered with spiders' webs, and the
wet clay sticks to one's shoes as one walks on the paths.
Yet there are people who think autumn a beautiful time of year!
* * * * *
My will is paralysed from self-disgust. I find myself involuntarily
listening and watching for the postman, who brings nothing for me. There
are moments when my fingers seem to be feeling the smoothness of the
cream-laid "At Home" cards which used to be showered upon us, especially
at this season. Towards evening I grow restless. Formerly my day was a
_crescendo_ of activity until the social hours were reached. Now the
hours fall one by one in ashes before my eyes.
I am myself, yet not myself. There are moments when I envy every living
creature that has the right to pair--either from hate or from habit. I
am alone and shut out. What consolation is it to be able to say: "It was
my own choice!"
* * * * *
A letter from Malthe.
No, I will not open it. I do not wish to know what he writes.... It is
a long letter.
* * * * *
My nerves are quiet. But I often lie awake, and my sleep is broken. The
stars are shining over my head, and I never before experienced such a
sense of repose and calm. Is this the effect of the stars, or the
letter?
I am forty-two! It cannot be helped. I cannot buy back a single day of
my life. Forty-two! But during the night the thought does not trouble
me. The stars above reckon by ages, not by years, and sometimes I smile
to think that as soon as Richard returns home, the rooms in our house in
the Old Market will be lit up, and the usual set will assemble there
without me.
The one thing I should like to know is whether Malthe is still in
Denmark.
I would like to know where my thoughts should seek him--at home or
abroad.
I played with him treacherously when I called him "the youth," and
treated him as a mere boy. If we compare our ages it is true enough,
but not if we compare feelings.
Can there be anything meaner than for a woman to make fun of what is
really sacred to her? My feelings for Malthe were and still are sacred.
I myself have befouled them with my mockery.
But when I am lying in my bed beneath the vast canopy of the sky, all my
sins seem forgiven me. Fate alone--Fate who bears all things on his
shoulders--is to blame, and I wish nothing undone.
The letter will never be read. Never voluntarily by me.
* * * * *
I do not know the day of the week. That is one step nearer the goal for
which I long. May it come to pass that the weeks and months shall glide
imperceptibly over me, so that I shall only recognise the seasons by the
changing tints of the forest and the alternations of heat and cold.
Alas, those days are still a long way off!
I have just been having a conflict with myself, and I find that all the
time I have been living here as though I were spending a summer holiday
in Tyrol. I have been simply deceiving myself and playing with the
hidden thought that I could begin my life over again.
I have shivered with terror at this self-deception. The last few nights
I have hardly slept at all. A traveller must feel the same who sails
across the sea ignorant of the country to which he journeys. Vaguely he
pictures it as resembling his native land, and lands to find himself in
a wilderness which he must plant and cultivate until it blossoms with
his new desires and dreams. By the time he has turned the desert into a
home, his day is over....
* * * * *
If I could but make up my mind to burn that letter! I weigh it, first in
my right hand, then in my left. Sometimes its weight makes me happy;
sometimes it fills me with foreboding. Do the words weigh so heavy, or
only the paper?
Last night I held it close to the candle. But when the flame touched my
letter, I drew it quickly away.--It is all I have left to me now....
* * * * *
Richard writes to me that Malthe has been commissioned to build a great
hospital. Most of our great architects competed for the work. He goes on
to ask whether I am not proud of "my young friend."
My young friend!...
* * * * *
Jeanne spoke to me about herself to-day. I think she was quite
bewildered by the extraordinary fall of leaves which has almost blinded
us the last three days. She was doing my hair, and tracing a line
straight across my forehead, she remarked:
"Here should be a ribbon with red jewels."
I told her that I had once had the same idea, but I had given it up out
of consideration for my fellow creatures.
"But there are none here," she exclaimed,