Produced by Eric Eldred
MOGENS AND OTHER STORIES
(1882)
By Jens Peter Jacobsen
(1847-1885)
Translated from the Danish By Anna Grabow
(1921)
CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION
MOGENS
THE PLAGUE AT BERGAMO
THERE SHOULD HAVE BEEN ROSES
MRS. FONSS
INTRODUCTION
In the decade from 1870 to 1880 a new spirit was stirring in the
intellectual and literary world of Denmark. George Brandes was
delivering his lectures on the _Main Currents of Nineteenth Century
Literature_; from Norway came the deeply probing questionings of the
granitic Ibsen; from across the North Sea from England echoes of the
evolutionary theory and Darwinism. It was a time of controversy and
bitterness, of a conflict joined between the old and the new, both going
to extremes, in which nearly every one had a share. How many of the
works of that period are already out-worn, and how old-fashioned the
theories that were then so violently defended and attacked! Too much
logic, too much contention for its own sake, one might say, and too
little art.
This was the period when Jens Peter Jacobsen began to write, but he
stood aside from the conflict, content to be merely artist, a creator
of beauty and a seeker after truth, eager to bring into the realm of
literature “the eternal laws of nature, its glories, its riddles, its
miracles,” as he once put it. That is why his work has retained its
living colors until to-day, without the least trace of fading.
There is in his work something of the passion for form and style
that one finds in Flaubert and Pater, but where they are often hard,
percussive, like a piano, he is soft and strong and intimate like a
violin on which he plays his reading of life. Such analogies, however,
have little significance, except that they indicate a unique and
powerful artistic personality.
Jacobsen is more than a mere stylist. The art of writers who are too
consciously that is a sort of decorative representation of life, a
formal composition, not a plastic composition. One element particularly
characteristic of Jacobsen is his accuracy of observation and minuteness
of detail welded with a deep and intimate understanding of the human
heart. His characters are not studied tissue by tissue as under a
scientist’s microscope, rather they are built up living cell by living
cell out of the author’s experience and imagination. He shows how they
are conditioned and modified by their physical being, their inheritance
and environment, Through each of his senses he lets impressions from
without pour into him. He harmonizes them with a passionate desire for
beauty into marvelously plastic figures and moods. A style which grows
thus organically from within is style out of richness; the other is
style out of poverty.
In a letter he once stated his belief that every book to be of real
value must embody the struggle of one or more persons against all those
things which try to keep one from existing in one’s own way. That is the
fundamental ethos which runs through all of Jacobsen’s work. It is in
Marie Grubbe, Niels Lyhne, Mogens, and the infinitely tender Mrs. Fonss.
They are types of the kind he has described in the following passage:
“Know ye not that there is here in this world a secret confraternity,
which one might call the Company of Melancholiacs? That people there
are who by natural constitution have been given a different nature and
disposition than the others; that have a larger heart and a swifter
blood, that wish and demand more, have stronger desires and a yearning
which is wilder and more ardent than that of the common herd. They are
fleet as children over whose birth good fairies have presided; their
eyes are opened wider; their senses are more subtile in all their
perceptions. The gladness and joy of life, they drink with the roots of
their heart, the while the others merely grasp them with coarse hands.”
He himself was one of these, and in this passage his own art and
personality is described better than could be done in thousands of words
of commentary.
Jens Peter Jacobsen was born in the little town of Thisted in Jutland,
on April 7, 1847. In 1868 he matriculated at the University of
Copenhagen, where he displayed a remarkable talent for science, winning
the gold medal of the university with a dissertation on Seaweeds.
He definitely chose science as a career, and was among the first in
Scandinavia to recognize the importance of Darwin. He translated
the Origin of Species and Descent of Man into Danish. In 1872 while
collecting plants he contracted tuberculosis, and as a consequence,
was compelled to give up his scientific career. This was not as great
a sacrifice, as it may seem, for he had long been undecided whether to
choose science or literature as his life work.
The remainder of his short life--he died April 30, 1885--was one of
passionate devotion to literature and a constant struggle with ill
health. The greater part of this period was spent in his native town of
Thisted, but an advance royalty from his publisher enabled him to visit
the South of Europe. His journey was interrupted at Florence by a severe
hemorrhage.
He lived simply, unobtrusively, bravely. His method of work was slow
and laborious. He shunned the literary circles of the capital with their
countless intrusions and interruptions, because he knew that the time
allotted him to do his work was short. “When life has sentenced you to
suffer,” he has written in Niels Lyhne, “the sentence is neither a fancy
nor a threat, but you are dragged to the rack, and you are tortured, and
there is no marvelous rescue at the last moment,” and in this book there
is also a corollary, “It is on the healthy in you you must live, it
is the healthy that becomes great.” The realization of the former has
given, perhaps, a subdued tone to his canvasses; the recognition of the
other has kept out of them weakness or self-pity.
Under the encouragement of George Brandes his novel Marie Grubbe was
begun in 1873, and published in 1876. His other novel Niels Lyhne
appeared in 1880. Excluding his early scientific works, these two books
together with a collection of short stories, Mogens and Other Tales,
published in 1882, and a posthumous volume of poems, constitute
Jacobsen’s literary testament. The present volume contains Mogens, the
story with which he made his literary debut, and other characteristic
stories.
The physical measure of Jacobsen’s accomplishment was not great, but
it was an important milestone in northern literature. It is hardly
an exaggeration to say that in so far as Scandinavia is concerned he
created a new method of literary approach and a new artistic prose.
There is scarcely a writer in these countries, since 1880, with any
pretension toward literary expression who has not directly or indirectly
come under Jacobsen’s influence.
O. F. THEIS.
MOGENS
SUMMER it was; in the middle of the day; in a corner of the enclosure.
Immediately in front of it stood an old oaktree, of whose trunk one
might say, that it agonized in despair because of the lack of harmony
between its fresh yellowish foliage and its black and gnarled branches;
they resembled most of all grossly misdrawn old gothic arabesques.
Behind the oak was a luxuriant thicket of hazel with dark sheenless
leaves, which were so dense, that neither trunk nor branches could be
seen. Above the hazel rose two straight, joyous maple-trees with gayly
indented leaves, red stems and long dangling clusters of green fruit.
Behind the maples came the forest--a green evenly rounded slope, where
birds went out and in as elves in a grasshill.
All this you could see if you came wandering along the path through the
fields beyond the fence. If, however, you were lying in the shadow of
the oak with your back against the trunk and looking the other way--and
there was a some one, who did that--then you would see first your own
legs, then a little spot of short, vigorous grass, next a large
cluster of dark nettles, then the hedge of thorn with the big, white
convolvulus, the stile, a little of the ryefield outside, finally the
councilor’s flagpole on the hill, and then the sky.
It was stifling hot, the air was quivering with heat, and then it was
very quiet; the leaves were hanging from the trees as if asleep. Nothing
moved except the lady-birds and the nettles and a few withered leaves
that lay on the grass and rolled themselves up with sudden little jerks
as if they were shrinking from the sunbeams.
And then the man underneath the oak; he lay there gasping for air and
with a melancholy look stared helplessly towards the sky. He tried to
hum a tune, but gave it up; whistled, then gave that up too; turned
round, turned round again and let his eyes rest upon an old mole-hill,
that had become quite gray in the drought. Suddenly a small dark spot
appeared upon the light-gray mold, another, three, four, many, still
more, the entire mole-hill suddenly was quite dark-gray. The air was
filled with nothing but long, dark streaks, the leaves nodded and swayed
and there rose a murmur which turned into a hissing--rain was pouring
down. Everything gleamed, sparkled, spluttered. Leaves, branches,
trunks, everything shone with moisture; every little drop that fell on
earth, on grass, on the fence, on whatever it was, broke and scattered
in a thousand delicate pearls. Little drops hung for a while and became
big drops, trickled down elsewhere, joined with other drops, formed
small rivulets, disappeared into tiny furrows, ran into big holes and
out of small ones, sailed away laden with dust, chips of wood and ragged
bits of foliage, caused them to run aground, set them afloat, whirled
them round and again caused them to ground. Leaves, which had been
separated since they were in the bud, were reunited by the flood; moss,
that had almost vanished in the dryness, expanded and became soft,
crinkly, green and juicy; and gray lichens which nearly had turned to
snuff, spread their delicate ends, puffed up like brocade and with a
sheen like that of silk. The convolvuluses let their white crowns be
filled to the brim, drank healths to each other, and emptied the water
over the heads of the nettles. The fat black wood-snails crawled forward
on their stomachs with a will, and looked approvingly towards the
sky. And the man? The man was standing bareheaded in the midst of the
downpour, letting the drops revel in his hair and brows, eyes, nose,
mouth; he snapped his fingers at the rain, lifted a foot now and again
as if he were about to dance, shook his head sometimes, when there was
too much water in the hair, and sang at the top of his voice without
knowing what he was singing, so pre-occupied was he with the rain:
Had I, oh had I a grandson, trala,
And a chest with heaps and heaps of gold,
Then very likely had I had a daughter, trala,
And house and home and meadows untold.
Had I, oh had I a daughter dear, trala,
And house and home and meadows untold,
Then very like had I had a sweetheart, trala.
And a chest with heaps and heaps of gold.
There he stood and sang in the rain, but yonder between the dark
hazelbushes the head of a little girl was peeping out. A long end of
her shawl of red silk had become entangled in a branch which projected
a little beyond the others, and from time to time a small hand went
forward and tugged at the end, but this had no other result, further
than to produce a little shower of rain from the branch and its
neighbors. The rest of the shawl lay close round the little girl’s head
and hid half of the brow; it shaded the eyes, then turned abruptly and
became lost among the leaves, but reappeared in a big rosette of folds
underneath the girl’s chin. The face of the little girl looked very
astonished, she was just about to laugh; the smile already hovered
in the eyes. Suddenly he, who stood there singing in the midst of the
downpour, took a few steps to the side, saw the red shawl, the face, the
big brown eyes, the astonished little open mouth; instantly his position
became awkward, in surprise he looked down himself; but in the same
moment a small cry was heard, the projecting branch swayed violently,
the red end of the shawl disappeared in a flash, the girl’s face
disappeared, and there was a rustling and rustling further and further
away behind the hazelbushes. Then he ran. He did not know why, he did
not think at all. The gay mood, which the rainstorm had called forth,
welled up in him again, and he ran after the face of the little girl.
It did not enter his head that it was a person he pursued. To him it
was only the face of a little girl. He ran, it rustled to the right, it
rustled to the left, it rustled in front, it rustled behind, he rustled,
she rustled, and all these sounds and the running itself excited him,
and he cried: “Where are you? Say cuckoo!” Nobody answered. When he
heard his own voice, he felt just a little uneasy, but he continued
running; then a thought came to him, only a single one, and he murmured
as he kept on running: “What am I going to say to her? What am I
going to say to her?” He was approaching a big bush, there she had hid
herself, he could just see a corner of her skirt. “What am I going to
say to her? What am I going to say to her?” he kept on murmuring while
he ran. He was quite near the bush, then turned abruptly, ran on still
murmuring the same, came out upon the open road, ran a distance, stopped
abruptly and burst out laughing, walked smiling quietly a few paces,
then burst out laughing loudly again, and did not cease laughing all the
way along the hedge.
It was on a beautiful autumn day; the fall of the foliage was going
on apace and the path which led to the lake was quite covered with the
citron-yellow leaves from the elms and maples; here and there were spots
of a darker foliage. It was very pleasant, very clean to walk on this
tigerskin-carpet, and to watch the leaves fall down like snow; the birch
looked even lighter and more graceful with its branches almost bare and
the roan-tree was wonderful with its heavy scarlet cluster of berries.
And the sky was so blue, so blue, and the wood seemed so much bigger,
one could look so far between the trunks. And then of course one could
not help thinking that soon all this would be of the past. Wood, field,
sky, open air, and everything soon would have to give way to the time of
the lamps, the carpets, and the hyacinths. For this reason the councilor
from Cape Trafalgar and his daughter were walking down to the lake,
while their carriage stopped at the bailiff’s.
The councilor was a friend of nature, nature was something quite
special, nature was one of the finest ornaments of existence. The
councilor patronized nature, he defended it against the artificial;
gardens were nothing but nature spoiled; but gardens laid out in
elaborate style were nature turned crazy. There was no style in nature,
providence had wisely made nature natural, nothing but natural. Nature
was that which was unrestrained, that which was unspoiled. But with the
fall of man civilization had come upon mankind; now civilization had
become a necessity; but it would have been better, if it had not
been thus. The state of nature was something quite different, quite
different. The councilor himself would have had no objection to
maintaining himself by going about in a coat of lamb-skin and shooting
hares and snipes and golden plovers and grouse and haunches of venison
and wild boars. No, the state of nature really was like a gem, a perfect
gem.
The councilor and his daughter walked down to the lake. For some time
already it had glimmered between the trees, but now when they turned the
corner where the big poplar stood, it lay quite open before them. There
it lay with large spaces of water clear as a mirror, with jagged tongues
of gray-blue rippled water, with streaks that were smooth and streaks
that were rippled, and the sunlight rested on the smooth places and
quivered in the ripples. It captured one’s eye and drew it across its
surface, carried it along the shores, past slowly rounded curves, past
abruptly broken lines, and made it swing around the green tongues of
land; then it let go of one’s glance and disappeared in large bays, but
it carried along the thought--Oh, to sail! Would it be possible to hire
boats here?
No, there were none, said a little fellow, who lived in the white
country-house near by, and stood at the shore skipping stones over the
surface of the water. Were there really no boats at all?
Yes, of course, there were some; there was the miller’s, but it could
not be had; the miller would not permit it. Niels, the miller’s son, had
nearly gotten a spanking when he had let it out the other day. It was
useless to think about it; but then there was the gentleman, who lived
with Nicolai, the forest-warden. He had a fine boat, one which was black
at the top and red at the bottom, and he lent it to each and every one.
The councilor and his daughter went up to Nicolai’s, the forest-warden.
At a short distance from the house they met a little girl. She was
Nicolai’s, and they told her to run in and ask if they might see the
gentleman. She ran as if her life depended on it, ran with both arms and
legs, until she reached the door; there she placed one leg on the high
doorstep, fastened her garter, and then rushed into the house. She
reappeared immediately afterwards with two doors ajar behind her and
called long before she reached the threshold, that the gentleman would
be there in a moment; then she sat down on the doorstep, leaned against
the wall, and peered at the strangers from underneath one of her arms.
The gentleman came, and proved to be a tall strongly-built man of some
twenty years. The councilor’s daughter was a little startled, when she
recognized in him the man, who had sung during the rainstorm. But he
looked so strange and absentminded; quite obviously he had just been
reading a book, one could tell that from the expression in his eyes,
from his hair, from the abstracted way in which he managed his hands.
The councilor’s daughter dropped him an exuberant courtesy and said
“Cuckoo,” and laughed.
“Cuckoo?” asked the councilor. Why, it was the little girl’s face! The
man went quite crimson, and tried to say something when the councilor
came with a question about the boat. Yes, it was at his service. But who
was going to do the rowing? Why, he of course, said the girl, and paid
no attention to what her father said about it; it was immaterial whether
it was a bother to the gentleman, for sometimes he himself did not mind
at all troubling other people. Then they went down to the boat, and on
the way explained things to the councilor. They stepped into the boat,
and were already a good ways out, before the girl had settled herself
comfortably and found time to talk.
“I suppose it was something very learned you were reading,” she said,
“when I came and called cuckoo and fetched you out sailing?”
“Rowing, you mean. Something learned! It was the ‘History of Sir Peter
with the Silver Key and the Beautiful Magelone.’”
“Who is that by?”
“By no one in particular. Books of that sort never are. ‘Vigoleis
with the Golden Wheel’ isn’t by anybody either, neither is ‘Bryde, the
Hunter.’”
“I have never heard of those titles before.”
“Please move a little to the side, otherwise we will list.--Oh no, that
is quite likely, they aren’t fine books at all; they are the sort you
buy from old women at fairs.”
“That seems strange. Do you always read books of that kind?”
“Always? I don’t read many books in the course of a year, and the kind I
really like the best are those that have Indians in them.”
“But poetry? Oehlenschlager, Schiller, and the others?”
“Oh, of course I know them; we had a whole bookcase full of them at
home, and Miss Holm--my mother’s companion--read them aloud after lunch
and in the evenings; but I can’t say that I cared for them; I don’t like
verse.”
“Don’t like verse? You said had, isn’t your mother living any more?”
“No, neither is my father.”
He said this with a rather sullen, hostile tone, and the conversation
halted for a time and made it possible to hear clearly the many little
sounds created by the movement of the boat through the water. The girl
broke the silence:
“Do you like paintings?”
“Altar-pieces? Oh, I don’t know.”
“Yes, or other pictures, landscapes for instance?”
“Do people paint those too? Of course they do, I know that very well.”
“You are laughing at me?”
“I? Oh yes, one of us is doing that”
“But aren’t you a student?”
“Student? Why should I be? No, I am nothing.”
“But you must be something. You must do something?”
“But why?”
“Why, because--everybody does something!”
“Are you doing something?”
“Oh well, but you are not a lady.”
“No, heaven be praised.”
“Thank you.”
He stopped rowing, drew the oars out of the water, looked her into the
face and asked:
“What do you mean by that?--No, don’t be angry with me; I will tell you
something, I am a queer sort of person. You cannot understand it. You
think because I wear good clothes, I must be a fine man. My father was a
fine man; I have been told that he knew no end of things, and I daresay
he did, since he was a district-judge. I know nothing because mother and
I were all to each other, and I did not care to learn the things they
teach in the schools, and don’t care about them now either. Oh, you
ought to have seen my mother; she was such a tiny wee lady. When I was
no older than thirteen I could carry her down into the garden. She was
so light; in recent years I would often carry her on my arm through the
whole garden and park. I can still see her in her black gowns with the
many wide laces....”
He seized the oars and rowed violently. The councilor became a little
uneasy, when the water reached so high at the stern, and suggested, that
they had better see about getting home again; so back they went.
“Tell me,” said the girl, when the violence of his rowing had decreased
a little. “Do you often go to town?”
“I have never been there.”
“Never been there? And you only live twelve miles away?”
“I don’t always live here, I live at all sorts of places since my
mother’s death, but the coming winter I shall go to town to study
arithmetic.”
“Mathematics?”
“No, timber,” he said laughingly, “but that is something you don’t
understand. I’ll tell you, when I am of age I shall buy a sloop and sail
to Norway, and then I shall have to know how to figure on account of the
customs and clearance.”
“Would you really like that?”
“Oh, it, is magnificent on the sea, there is such a feeling of being
alive in sailing--here we are at the landing-stage!”
He came alongside; the councilor and his daughter stepped ashore after
having made him promise to come and see them at Cape Trafalgar. Then
they returned to the bailiff’s, while he again rowed out on the lake. At
the poplar they could still hear the sounds of the oars.
“Listen, Camilla,” said the councilor, who had been out to lock the
outer door, “tell me,” he said, extinguishing his hand-lamp with the
bit of his key, “was the rose they had at the Carlsens a Pompadour or
Maintenon?”
“Cendrillon,” the daughter answered.
“That’s right, so it was,--well, I suppose we had better see that we get
to bed now; good night, little girl, good night, and sleep well.”
When Camilla had entered her room, she pulled up the blind, leaned
her brow against the cool pane, and hummed Elizabeth’s song from “The
Fairy-hill.” At sunset a light breeze had begun to blow and a few tiny,
white clouds, illumined by the moon, were driven towards Camilla. For
a long while she stood regarding them; her eye followed them from a
far distance, and she sang louder and louder as they drew nearer, kept
silent a few seconds while they disappeared above her, then sought
others, and followed them too. With a little sigh she pulled down the
blind. She went to the dressing table, rested her elbows against her
clasped hands and regarded her own picture in the mirror without really
seeing it.
She was thinking of a tall young man, who carried a very delicate,
tiny, blackdressed lady in his arms; she was thinking of a tall man,
who steered his small ship in between cliffs and rocks in a devastating
gale. She heard a whole conversation over again. She blushed: Eugene
Carlson might have thought that you were paying court to him! With a
little jealous association of ideas she continued: No one would ever run
after Clara in a wood in the rainstorm, she would never have invited
a stranger--literally asked him--to sail with her. “Lady to her
fingertips,” Carlson had said of Clara; that really was a reprimand
for you, you peasant-girl Camilla! Then she undressed with affected
slowness, went to bed, took a small elegantly bound book from the
bookshelf near by and opened the first page. She read through a short
hand-written poem with a tired, bitter expression on her face, then let
the book drop to the floor and burst into tears; afterwards she tenderly
picked it up again, put it back in its place and blew out the candle;
lay there for a little while gazing disconsolately at the moonlit blind,
and finally went to sleep.
A few days later the “rainman” started on his way to Cape Trafalgar. He
met a peasant driving a load of rye straw, and received permission to
ride with him. Then he lay down on his back in the straw and gazed at
the cloudless sky. The first couple of miles he let his thoughts come
and go as they listed, besides there wasn’t much variety in them. Most
of them would come and ask him how a human being possibly could be so
wonderfully beautiful, and they marveled that it really could be an
entertaining occupation for several days to recall the features of a
face, its changes of expression and coloring, the small movements of a
head and a pair of hands, and the varying inflections in a voice. But
then the peasant pointed with his whip towards the slate-roof about a
mile away and said that the councilor lived over there, and the good
Mogens rose from the straw and stared anxiously towards the roof. He had
a strange feeling of oppression and tried to make himself believe that
nobody was at home, but tenaciously came back to the conception that
there was a large party, and he could not free himself from that idea,
even though he counted how many cows “Country-joy” had on the meadow
and how many heaps of gravel he could see along the road. At last the
peasant stopped near a small path leading down to the country-house, and
Mogens slid down from the cart and began to brush away the bits of straw
while the cart slowly creaked away over the gravel on the road.
He approached the garden-gate step by step, saw a red shawl disappear
behind the balcony windows, a small deserted white sewing-basket on the
edge of the balcony, and the back of a still moving empty rocking-chair.
He entered the garden, with his eyes fixed intently on the balcony,
heard the councilor say good-day, turned his head toward the sound, and
saw him standing there nodding, his arms full of empty flowerpots. They
spoke of this and that, and the councilor began to explain, as one might
put it, that the old specific distinction between the various kinds of
trees had been abolished by grafting, and that for his part he did not
like this at all. Then Camilla slowly approached wearing a brilliant
glaring blue shawl. Her arms were entirely wrapped up in the shawl,
and she greeted him with a slight inclination of the head and a faint
welcome. The councilor left with his flower-pots, Camilla stood looking
over her shoulders towards the balcony; Mogens looked at her. How had
he been since the other day? Thank you, nothing especial had been the
matter with him. Done much rowing? Why, yes, as usual, perhaps not quite
as much. She turned her head towards him, looked coldly at him, inclined
her head to one side and asked with half-closed eyes and a faint smile
whether it was the beautiful Magelone who had engrossed his time. He did
not know what she meant, but he imagined it was. Then they stood for a
while and said nothing. Camilla took a few steps towards a corner, where
a bench and a garden-chair stood. She sat down on the bench and asked
him, after she was seated, looking at the chair, to be seated; he must
be very tired after his long walk. He sat down in the chair.
Did he believe anything would come of the projected royal alliance?
Perhaps, he was completely indifferent? Of course, he had no interest
in the royal house. Naturally he hated aristocracy? There were very few
young men who did not believe that democracy was, heaven only knew what.
Probably he was one of those who attributed not the slightest political
importance to the family alliances of the royal house? Perhaps he was
mistaken. It had been seen.... She stopped suddenly, surprised
that Mogens who had at first been somewhat taken aback at all this
information, now looked quite pleased. He wasn’t to sit there, and laugh
at her! She turned quite red.
“Are you very much interested in politics?” she asked timidly.
“Not in the least.”
“But why do you let me sit here talking politics eternally?”
“Oh, you say everything so charmingly, that it does not matter what you
are talking about.”
“That really is no compliment.”
“It certainly is,” he assured her eagerly, for it seemed to him she
looked quite hurt.
Camilla burst out laughing, jumped up, and ran to meet her father, took
his arm, and walked back with him to the puzzled Mogens.
When dinner was through and they had drunk their coffee up on the
balcony, the councilor suggested a walk. So the three of them went along
the small way across the main road, and along a narrow path with stubble
of rye on both sides, across the stile, and into the woods. There was
the oak and everything else; there even were still convolvuluses on the
hedge. Camilla asked Mogens to fetch some for her. He tore them all off,
and came back with both hands full.
“Thank you, I don’t want so many,” she said, selected a few and let the
rest fall to the ground. “Then I wish I had let them be,” Mogens said
earnestly.
Camilla bent down and began to gather them up. She had expected him to
help her and looked up at him in surprise, but he stood there quite
calm and looked down at her. Now as she had begun, she had to go on, and
gathered up they were; but she certainly did not talk to Mogens for a
long while. She did not even look to the side where he was. But somehow
or other they must have become reconciled, for when on their way back
they reached the oak again, Camilla went underneath it and looked up
into its crown. She tripped from one side to the other, gesticulated
with her hands and sang, and Mogens had to stand near the hazelbushes to
see what sort of a figure he had cut. Suddenly Camilla ran towards him,
but Mogens lost his cue, and forgot both to shriek and to run away, and
then Camilla laughingly declared that she was very dissatisfied with
herself and that she would not have had the boldness to remain
standing there, when such a horrible creature--and she pointed towards
herself--came rushing towards her. But Mogens declared that he was very
well satisfied with himself.
When towards sunset he was going home the councilor and Camilla
accompanied him a little way. And as they were going home she said to
her father that perhaps they ought to invite that lonesome young man
rather frequently during the month, while it was still possible to stay
in the country. He knew no one here about, and the councilor said “yes,”
and smiled at being thought so guileless, but Camilla walked along and
looked so gentle and serious, that one would not doubt but that she was
the very personification of benevolence itself.
The autumn weather remained so mild that the councilor stayed on at Cape
Trafalgar for another whole month, and the effect of the benevolence was
that Mogens came twice the first week and about every day the third.
It was one of the last days of fair weather.
It had rained early in the morning and had remained overclouded far
down into the forenoon; but now the sun had come forth. Its rays were
so strong and warm, that the garden-paths, the lawns and the branches
of the trees were enveloped in a fine filmy mist. The councilor walked
about cutting asters. Mogens and Camilla were in a corner of the garden
to take down some late winter apples. He stood on a table with a basket
on his arm, she stood on a chair holding out a big white apron by the
corners.
“Well, and what happened then?” she called impatiently to Mogens, who
had interrupted the fairy-tale he was telling in order to reach an apple
which hung high up.
“Then,” he continued, “the peasant began to run three times round
himself and to sing: ‘To Babylon, to Babylon, with an iron ring through
my head.’ Then he and his calf, his great-grandmother, and his black
rooster flew away. They flew across oceans as broad as Arup Vejle, over
mountains as high as the church at Jannerup, over Himmerland and through
the Holstein lands even to the end of the world. There the kobold sat
and ate breakfast; he had just finished when they came.
“‘You ought to be a little more god-fearing, little father,’ said the
peasant, ‘otherwise it might happen that you might miss the kingdom of
heaven.’”
“Well, he would gladly be god-fearing.”
“‘Then you must say grace after meals,’ said the peasant....”
“No, I won’t go on with the story,” said Mogens impatiently.
“Very well, then don’t,” said Camilla, and looked at him in surprise.
“I might as well say it at once,” continued Mogens, “I want to ask you
something, but you mustn’t laugh at me.”
Camilla jumped down from the chair.
“Tell me--no, I want to tell you something myself--here is the table and
there is the hedge, if you won’t be my bride, I’ll leap with the basket
over the hedge and stay away. One!”
Camilla glanced furtively at him, and noticed that the smile had
vanished from his face.
“Two!”
He was quite pale with emotion.
“Yes,” she whispered, and let go the ends of her apron so that the
apples rolled toward all corners of the world and then she ran. But she
did not run away from Mogens.
“Three,” said she, when he reached her, but he kissed her nevertheless.
The councilor was interrupted among his asters, but the district-judge’s
son was too irreproachable a blending of nature and civilization for the
councilor to raise objections.
*****
It was late winter; the large heavy cover of snow, the result of a whole
week’s uninterrupted blowing, was in the process of rapidly melting
away. The air was full of sunlight and reflection from the white snow,
which in large, shining drops dripped down past the windows. Within the
room all forms and colors had awakened, all lines and contours had come
to life. Whatever was flat extended, whatever was bent curved, whatever
was inclined slid, and whatever was broken refracted the more. All kinds
of green tones mingled on the flower-table, from the softest dark-green
to the sharpest yellow-green. Reddish brown tones flooded in flames
across the surface of the mahogany table, and gold gleamed and sparkled
from the knick-knacks, from the frames and moldings, but on the carpet
all the colors broke and mingled in a joyous, shimmering confusion.
Camilla sat at the window and sewed, and she and the Graces on the
mantle were quite enveloped in a reddish light from the red curtains
Mogens walked slowly up and down the room, and passed every moment in
and out of slanting beams of light of pale rainbow-colored dust.
He was in talkative mood.
“Yes,” he said, “they are a curious kind of people, these with whom
you associate. There isn’t a thing between heaven and earth which they
cannot dispose of in the turn of a hand. This is common, and that
is noble; this is the most stupid thing that has been done since the
creation of the world, and that is the wisest; this is so ugly, so
ugly, and that is so beautiful it cannot be described. They agree so
absolutely about all this, that it seems as if they had some sort of a
table or something like that by which they figured things out, for they
always get the same result, no matter what it may be. How alike they are
to each other, these people! Every one of them knows the same things and
talks about the same things, and all of them have the same words and the
same opinions.”
“You don’t mean to say,” Camilla protested, “that Carlsen and Ronholt
have the same opinions.”
“Yes, they are the finest of all, they belong to different parties!
Their fundamental principles are as different as night and day. No, they
are not. They are in such agreement that it is a perfect joy. Perhaps
there may be some little point about which they don’t agree; perhaps,
it is merely a misunderstanding. But heaven help me, if it isn’t
pure comedy to listen to them. It is as if they had prearranged to do
everything possible not to agree. They begin by talking in a loud voice,
and immediately talk themselves into a passion. Then one of them in his
passion says something which he doesn’t mean, and then the other one
says the direct opposite which he doesn’t mean either, and then the one
attacks that which the other doesn’t mean, and the other that which the
first one didn’t mean, and the game is on.”
“But what have they done to you?”
“They annoy me, these fellows. If you look into their faces it is just
as if you had it under seal that nothing especial is ever going to
happen in the world in the future.” Camilla laid down her sewing,
went over and took hold of the corners of his coat collar and looked
roguishly and questioningly at him.
“I cannot bear Carlsen,” he said angrily, and tossed his head.
“Well, and then.”
“And then you are very, very sweet,” he murmured with a comic
tenderness.
“And then?”
“And then,” he burst out, “he looks at you and listens to you and talks
to you in a way I don’t like. He is to quit that, for you are mine and
not his. Aren’t you? You are not his, not his in any way. You are mine,
you have bonded yourself to me as the doctor did to the devil; you are
mine, body and soul, skin and bones, till all eternity.”
She nodded a little frightened, looked trustfully at him; her eyes
filled with tears, then she pressed close to him and he put his arms
around her, bent over her, and kissed her on the forehead.
The same evening Mogens went to the station with the councilor who had
received a sudden order in reference to an official tour which he was to
make. On this account Camilla was to go to her aunt’s the next morning
and stay there until he returned.
When Mogens had seen his future father-in-law off, he went home,
thinking of the fact that he now would not see Camilla for several days.
He turned into the street where she lived. It was long and narrow and
little frequented. A cart rumbled away at the furthest end; in this
direction, too, there was the sound of footsteps, which grew fainter and
fainter. At the moment he heard nothing but the barking of a dog within
the building behind him. He looked up at the house in which Camilla
lived; as usual the ground-floor was dark. The white-washed panes
received only a little restless life from the flickering gleam of the
lantern of the house next door. On the second story the windows were
open and from one of them a whole heap of planks protruded beyond the
window-frame. Camilla’s window was dark, dark also was everything above,
except that in one of the attic windows there shimmered a white-golden
gleam from the moon. Above the house the clouds were driving in a wild
flight. In the houses on both sides the windows were lighted.
The dark house made Mogens sad. It stood there so forlorn and
disconsolate; the open windows rattled on their hinges; water ran
monotonously droning down the rainpipe; now and then a little water fell
with a hollow dull thud at some spot which he could not see; the wind
swept heavily through the street. The dark, dark house! Tears came into
Mogen’s eyes, an oppressive weight lay on his chest, and he was
seized by a strange dark sensation that he had to reproach himself for
something concerning Camilla. Then he had to think of his mother, and he
felt a great desire of laying his head on her lap and weeping his fill.
For a long while he stood thus with his hand pressed against his breast
until a wagon went through the street at a sharp pace; he followed it
and went home. He had to stand for a long time and rattle the front door
before it would open, then he ran humming up the stairs, and when he
had entered the room he threw himself down on the sofa with one of
Smollett’s novels in his hand, and read and laughed till after midnight.
At last it grew too cold in the room, he leaped up and went stamping up
and down to drive away the chill. He stopped at the window. The sky in
one corner was so bright, that the snow-covered roofs faded into it. In
another corner several long-drawn clouds drifted by, and the atmosphere
beneath them had a curious reddish tinge, a sheen that wavered
unsteadily, a red smoking fog. He tore open the window, fire had broken
out in the direction of the councilor’s. Down the stairs, down the
street as fast as he could; down a cross-street, through a side-street,
and then straight ahead. As yet he could not see anything, but as he
turned round the corner he saw the red glow of fire. About a score of
people clattered singly down the street. As they ran past each other,
they asked where the fire was. The answer was “The sugar-refinery.”
Mogens kept on running as quickly as before, but much easier at heart.
Still a few streets, there were more and more people, and they
were talking now of the soap-factory. It lay directly opposite the
councilor’s. Mogens ran on as if possessed. There was only a
single slanting cross-street left. It was quite filled with people:
well-dressed men, ragged old women who stood talking in a slow, whining
tone, yelling apprentices, over-dressed girls who whispered to each
other, corner-loafers who stood as if rooted to the spot and cracked
jokes, surprised drunkards and drunkards who quarreled, helpless
policemen, and carriages that would go neither forwards nor backwards.
Mogens forced his way through the multitude. Now he was at the corner;
the sparks were slowly falling down upon him. Up the street; there
were showers of sparks, the window-panes on both sides were aglow, the
factory was burning, the councilor’s house was burning and the house
next door also. There was nothing but smoke, fire and confusion, cries,
curses, tiles that rattled down, blows of axes, wood that splintered,
window-panes that jingled, jets of water that hissed, spluttered, and
splashed, and amid all this the regular dull sob-like throb of the
engines. Furniture, bedding, black helmets, ladders, shining buttons,
illuminated faces, wheels, ropes, tarpaulin, strange instruments; Mogens
rushed into their midst, over, under it all, forward to the house.
The facade was brightly illuminated by the flames from the burning
factory, smoke issued from between the tiles of the roof and rolled
out of the open windows of the first story. Within the fire rumbled and
crackled. There was a slow groaning sound, that turned into a rolling
and crashing, and ended in a dull boom. Smoke, sparks, and flames issued
in torment out of all the openings of the house. And then the flames
began to play and crackle with redoubled strength and redoubled
clearness. It was the middle part of the ceiling of the first floor that
fell. Mogens with both hands seized a large scaling-ladder which leaned
against the part of the factory which was not yet in flames. For a
moment he held it vertically, but then it slipped away from him and fell
over toward the councilor’s house where it broke in a window-frame on
the second story. Mogens ran up the ladder, and in through the opening.
At first he had to close his eyes on account of the pungent wood-smoke,
and the heavy suffocating fumes which rose from the charred wood that
the water had reached took his breath away. He was in the dining-room.
The living-room was a huge glowing abyss; the flames from the lower part
of the house, now and then, almost reached up to the ceiling; the few
boards that had remained hanging when the floor fell burned in brilliant
yellowish-white flames; shadows and the gleam of flames flooded over the
walls; the wall-paper here and there curled up, caught fire, and flew
in flaming tatters down into the abyss; eager yellow flames licked their
way up on the loosened moldings and picture-frames. Mogens crept over
the ruins and fragments of the fallen wall towards the edge of the
abyss, from which cold and hot blasts of air alternately struck his
face; on the other side so much of the wall had fallen, that he could
look into Camilla’s room, while the part that hid the councilor’s office
still stood. It grew hotter and hotter; the skin of his face became
taut, and he noticed, that his hair was crinkling. Something heavy
glided past his shoulder and remained lying on his back and pressed him
down to the floor; it was the girder which slowly had slipped out of
place. He could not move, breathing became more and more difficult, his
temples throbbed violently; to his left a jet of water splashed against
the wall of the dining-room, and the wish rose in him, that the cold,
cold drops, which scattered in all directions might fall on him. Then he
heard a moan on the other side of the abyss, and he saw something white
stir on the floor in Camilla’s room. It was she. She lay on her knees,
and while her hips were swaying, held her hands pressed against each
side of her head. She rose slowly, and came towards the edge of the
abyss. She stood straight upright, her arms hung limply down, and the
head went to and fro limply on the neck. Very, very slowly the upper
part of her body fell forward, her long, beautiful hair swept the floor;
a short violent flash of flame, and it was gone, the next moment she
plunged down into the flames.
Mogens uttered a moaning sound, short, deep and powerful, like the roar
of a wild beast, and at the same time made a violent movement, as if to
get away from the abyss. It was impossible on account of the girder. His
hands groped over the fragments of wall, then they stiffened as it were
in a mighty clasp over the debris, and he began to strike his forehead
against the wreckage with a regular beat, and moaned: “Lord God, Lord
God, Lord God.”