something standing beside him and touching him. It was a fireman who had
thrown the girder aside, and was about to carry him out of the house.
With a strong feeling of annoyance, Mogens noticed that he was lifted up
and led away. The man carried him to the opening, and then Mogens had a
clear perception that a wrong was being committed against him, and that
the man who was carrying him had designs on his life. He tore himself
out of his arms, seized a lathe that lay on the floor, struck the man
over the head with it so that he staggered backward; he himself issued
from the opening and ran erect down the ladder, holding the lathe above
his head. Through the tumult, the smoke, the crowd of people, through
empty streets, across desolate squares, out into the fields. Deep snow
everywhere, at a little distance a black spot, it was a gravel-heap,
that jutted out above the snow. He struck at it with the lathe, struck
again and again, continued to strike at it; he wished to strike it dead,
so that it might disappear; he wanted to run far away, and ran round
about the heap and struck at it as if possessed. It would not, would not
disappear; he hurled the lathe far away and flung himself upon the black
heap to give it the finishing stroke. He got his hands full of small
stones, it was gravel, it was a black heap of gravel. Why was he out
here in the field burrowing in a black gravel-heap?--He smelled the
smoke, the flames flashed round him, he saw Camilla sink down into them,
he cried out aloud and rushed wildly across the field. He could not
rid himself of the sight of the flames, he held his eyes shut: Flames,
flames! He threw himself on the ground and pressed his face down into
the snow: Flames! He leaped up, ran backward, ran forward, turned aside:
Flames everywhere! He rushed further across the snow, past houses, past
trees, past a terror-struck face, that stared out through a window-pane,
round stacks of grain and through farm-yards, where dogs howled and tore
at their chains. He ran round the front wing of a building and stood
suddenly before a brightly, restlessly lighted window. The light did him
good, the flames yielded to it; he went to the window and looked in. It
was a brew-room, a girl stood at the hearth and stirred the kettle. The
light which she held in her hand had a slightly reddish sheen on account
of the dense fumes. Another girl was sitting down, plucking poultry, and
a third was singeing it over a blazing straw-fire. When the flames grew
weaker, new straw was put on, and they flared up again; then they again
became weaker and still weaker; they went out. Mogens angrily broke a
pane with his elbow, and slowly walked away. The girls inside screamed.
Then he ran again for a long time with a low moaning. Scattered flashes
of memory of happy days came to him, and when they had passed the
darkness was twice as black. He could not bear to think of what had
happened. It was impossible for it to have happened. He threw himself
down on his knees and raised his hands toward heaven, the while he
pleaded that that which had happened might be as though it had not
occurred. For a long time he dragged himself along on his knees with his
eyes steadfastly fixed on the sky, as if afraid it might slip away from
him to escape his pleas, provided he did not keep it incessantly in his
eye. Then pictures of his happy time came floating toward him, more and
more in mist-like ranks. There were also pictures that rose in a sudden
glamor round about him, and others flitted by so indefinite, so distant,
that they were gone before he really knew what they were. He sat
silently in the snow, overcome by light and color, by light and
happiness, and the dark fear which he had had at first that something
would come and extinguish all this had gone. It was very still round
about him, a great peace was within him, the pictures had disappeared,
but happiness was here. A deep silence! There was not a sound, but
sounds were in the air. And there came laughter and song and low words
came and light and footsteps and dull sobbing of the beats of the pumps.
Moaning he ran away, ran long and far, came to the lake, followed the
shore, until he stumbled over the root of a tree, and then he was so
tired that he remained lying.
With a soft clucking sound the water ran over the small stones;
spasmodically there was a soft soughing among the barren limbs; now and
then a crow cawed above the lake; and morning threw its sharp bluish
gleam over forest and sea, over the snow, and over the pallid face.
At sunrise he was found by the ranger from the neighboring forest, and
carried up to the forester Nicolai; there he lay for weeks and days
between life and death.
*****
About the time when Mogens was being carried up to Nicolai’s, a crowd
collected around a carriage at the end of the street where the councilor
lived. The driver could not understand why the policeman wanted to
prevent him from carrying out his legitimate order, and on that account
they had an argument. It was the carriage which was to take Camilla to
her aunt’s.
*****
“No, since poor Camilla lost her life in that dreadful manner, we have
not seen anything of him!”
“Yes, it is curious, how much may lie hidden in a person. No one would
have suspected anything, so quiet and shy, almost awkward. Isn’t it so?
You did not suspect anything?”
“About the sickness! How can you ask such a question! Oh, you mean--I
did not quite understand you--you mean it was in the blood, something
hereditary?--Oh, yes, I remember there was something like that, they
took his father to Aarhus. Wasn’t it so, Mr. Carlsen?”
“No! Yes, but it was to bury him, his first wife is buried there. No,
what I was thinking of was the dreadful--yes, the dreadful life he has
been leading the last two or two and a half years.”
“Why no, really! I know nothing about that.”
“Well, you see, of course, it is of the things one doesn’t like to talk
about.... You understand, of course, consideration for those nearest.
The councilor’s family....”
“Yes, there is a certain amount of justice in what you say--but on the
other hand--tell me quite frankly, isn’t there at present a false,
a sanctimonious striving to veil, to cover up the weaknesses of our
fellow-men? As for myself I don’t understand much about that sort of
thing, but don’t you think that truth or public morals, I don’t mean
this morality, but--morals, conditions, whatever you will, suffer under
it?”
“Of course, and I am very glad to be able to agree so with you, and in
this case... the fact simply is, that he has given himself to all sorts
of excesses. He has lived in the most disreputable manner with the
lowest dregs, people without honor, without conscience, without
position, religion, or anything else, with loafers, mountebanks,
drunkards, and--and to tell the truth with women of easy virtue.”
“And this after having been engaged to Camilla, good heavens, and after
having been down with brain-fever for three months!”
“Yes--and what tendencies doesn’t this let us suspect, and who knows
what his past may have been, what do you think?”
“Yes, and heaven knows how things really were with him during the time
of their engagement? There always was something suspicious about him.
That is my opinion.
“Pardon me, and you, too, Mr. Carlsen, pardon me, but you look at the
whole affair in rather an abstract way, very abstractedly. By chance I
have in my possession a very concrete report from a friend in Jutland,
and can present the whole affair in all its details.”
“Mr. Ronholt, you don’t mean to...?”
“To give details? Yes, that is what I intend. Mr. Carlsen, with the
lady’s permission. Thank you! He certainly did not live as one should
live after a brain-fever. He knocked about from fair to fair with a
couple of boon-companions, and, it is said, was somewhat mixed up with
troupes of mountebanks, and especially with the women of the company.
Perhaps it would be wisest if I ran upstairs, and got my friend’s
letter. Permit me. I’ll be back in a moment.”
“Don’t you think, Mr. Carlsen, that Ronholt is in a particularly good
humor to-day?”
“Yes, but you must not forget that he exhausted all his spleen on an
article in the morning paper. Imagine, to dare to maintain--why, that is
pure rebellion, contempt of law, for him....”
“You found the letter?”
“Yes, I did. May I begin? Let me see, oh yes: ‘Our mutual friend whom we
met last year at Monsted, and whom, as you say, you knew in Copenhagen,
has during the last months haunted the region hereabouts. He looks just
as he used to, he is the same pale knight of the melancholy mien. He is
the most ridiculous mixture of forced gayety and silent hopelessness,
he is affected--ruthless and brutal toward himself and others. He is
taciturn and a man of few words, and doesn’t seem to be enjoying himself
at all, though he does nothing but drink and lead a riotous life. It
is as I have already said, as if he had a fixed idea that he received
a personal insult from destiny. His associates here were especially a
horse-dealer, called “Mug-sexton,” because he does nothing but sing and
drink all the time, and a disreputable, lanky, over-grown cross
between a sailor and peddler, known and feared under the name of Peter
“Rudderless,” to say nothing of the fair Abelone. She, however, recently
has had to give way to a brunette, belonging to a troupe of mountebanks,
which for some time has favored us with performances of feats of
strength and rope-dancing. You have seen this kind of women with
sharp, yellow, prematurely-aged faces, creatures that are shattered by
brutality, poverty, and miserable vices, and who always over-dress in
shabby velvet and dirty red. There you have his crew. I don’t understand
our friend’s passion. It is true that his fiancee met with a horrible
death, but that does not explain the matter. I must still tell you how
he left us. We had a fair a few miles from here. He, “Rudderless,” the
horse-dealer, and the woman sat in a drinking-tent, dissipating until
far into the night. At three o’clock or thereabouts they were at last
ready to leave. They got on the wagon, and so far everything went all
right; but then our mutual friend turns off from the main road and
drives with them over fields and heath, as fast as the horses can go.
The wagon is flung from one side to the other. Finally things get too
wild for the horse-dealer and he yells that he wants to get down. After
he has gotten off our mutual friend whips up the horses again, and
drives straight at a large heather-covered hill. The woman becomes
frightened and jumps off, and now up the hill they go and down on the
other side at such a terrific pace that it is a miracle the wagon did
not arrive at the bottom ahead of the horses. On the way up Peter had
slipped from the wagon, and as thanks for the ride he threw his big
clasp-knife at the head of the driver.’”
“The poor fellow, but this business of the woman is nasty.”
“Disgusting, madam, decidedly disgusting. Do you really think, Mr.
Ronholt, that this description puts the man in a better light?”
“No, but in a surer one; you know in the darkness things often seem
larger than they are.”
“Can you think of anything worse?”
“If not, then this is the worst, but you know one should never think the
worst of people.”
“Then you really mean, that the whole affair is not so bad, that there
is something bold in it, something in a sense eminently plebeian, which
pleases your liking for democracy.”
“Don’t you see, that in respect to his environment his conduct is quite
aristocratic?”
“Aristocratic? No, that is lather paradoxical. If he is not a democrat,
then I really don’t know what he is.”
“Well, there are still other designations.”
*****
White alders, bluish lilac, red hawthorn, and radiant laburnum were in
flower and gave forth their fragrance in front of the house. The windows
were open and the blinds were drawn. Mogens leaned in over the sill and
the blinds lay on his back. It was grateful to the eye after all the
summer-sun on forest and water and in the air to look into the subdued,
soft, quiet light of a room. A tall woman of opulent figure stood
within, the back toward the window, and was putting flowers in a large
vase. The waist of her pink morning-gown was gathered high up below,
the bosom by a shining black leather-belt; on the floor behind her lay a
snow-white dressing-jacket; her abundant, very blond hair was hanging in
a bright-red net.
“You look rather pale after the celebration last night,” was the first
thing Mogens said.
“Good-morning,” she replied and held out without turning around her
hand with the flowers in it towards him. Mogens took one of the flowers.
Laura turned the head half towards him, opened her hand slightly and
let the flowers fall to the floor in little lots. Then she again busied
herself with the vase.
“Ill?” asked Mogens.
“Tired.”
“I won’t eat breakfast with you to-day.”
“No?”
“We can’t have dinner together either.”
“You are going fishing?”
“No--Good-by!”
“When are you coming back?”
“I am not coming back.”
“What do you mean by that?” she asked arranging her gown; she went to
the window, and there sat down on the chair.
“I am tired of you. That’s all.”
“Now you are spiteful, what’s the matter with you? What have I done to
you?”
“Nothing, but since we are neither married nor madly in love with each
other, I don’t see anything very strange in the fact, that I am going my
own way.”
“Are you jealous?” she asked very softly.
“Of one like you! I haven’t lost my senses!”
“But what is the meaning of all this?”
“It means that I am tired of your beauty, that I know your voice and
your gestures by heart, and that neither your whims nor your stupidity
nor your craftiness can any longer entertain me. Can you tell me then
why I should stay?”
Laura wept. “Mogens, Mogens, how can you have the heart to do this?
Oh, what shall I, shall I, shall I, shall I do! Stay only today, only
to-day, Mogens. You dare not go away from me!”
“Those are lies, Laura, you don’t even believe it yourself. It is not
because you think such a terrible lot of me, that you are distressed
now. You are only a little bit alarmed because of the change, you are
frightened because of the slight disarrangement of your daily habits.
I am thoroughly familiar with that, you are not the first one I have
gotten tired of.”
“Oh, stay with me only to-day, I won’t torment you to stay a single hour
longer.
“You really are dogs, you women! You haven’t a trace of fine feelings in
your body. If one gives you a kick, you come crawling back again.”
“Yes, yes, that’s what we do, but stay only for to-day--won’t
you--stay!”
“Stay, stay! No!”
“You have never loved me, Mogens!”
“No!”
“Yes, you did; you loved me the day when there was such a violent wind,
oh, that beautiful day down at the sea-shore, when we sat in the shelter
of the boat.”
“Stupid girl!”
“If I only were a respectable girl with fine parents, and not such a one
as I am, then you would stay with me; then you would not have the heart
to be so hard--and I, who love you so!”
“Oh, don’t bother about that.”
“No, I am like the dust beneath your feet, you care no more for me. Not
one kind word, only hard words; contempt, that is good enough for me.”
“The others are neither better nor worse than you. Good-by, Laura!”
He held out his hand to her, but she kept hers on her back and wailed:
“No, no, not good-by! not good-by!”
Mogens raised the blind, stepped back a couple of paces and let it
fall down in front of the window. Laura quickly leaned down over the
window-sill beneath it and begged: “Come to me! come and give me your
hand.”
“No.”
When he had gone a short distance she cried plaintively:
“Good-by, Mogens!”
He turned towards the house with a slight greeting. Then he walked on:
“And a girl like that still believes in love!--no, she does not!”
*****
The evening wind blew from the ocean over the land, the strand-grass
swung its pale spikes to and fro and raised its pointed leaves a little,
the rushes bowed down, the water of the lake was darkened by thousands
of tiny furrows, and the leaves of the water-lilies tugged restlessly at
their stalks. Then the dark tops of the heather began to nod, and on
the fields of sand the sorrel swayed unsteadily to and fro. Towards the
land! The stalks of oats bowed downward, and the young clover trembled
on the stubble-fields, and the wheat rose and fell in heavy billows; the
roofs groaned, the mill creaked, its wings swung about, the smoke was
driven back into the chimneys, and the window-panes became covered with
moisture.
There was a swishing of wind in the gable-windows, in the poplars of the
manor-house; the wind whistled through tattered bushes on the green hill
of Bredbjerg. Mogens lay up there, and gazed out over the dark earth.
The moon was beginning to acquire radiance, and mists were drifting down
on the meadow. Everything was very sad, all of life, all of life, empty
behind him, dark before him. But such was life. Those who were happy
were also blind. Through misfortune he had learned to see; everything
was full of injustice and lies, the entire earth was a huge, rotting
lie; faith, friendship, mercy, a lie it was, a lie was each and
everything; but that which was called love, it was the hollowest of all
hollow things, it was lust, flaming lust, glimmering lust, smoldering
lust, but lust and nothing else. Why had he to know this? Why had he not
been permitted to hold fast to his faith in all these gilded lies? Why
was he compelled to see while the others remained blind? He had a right
to blindness, he had believed in everything in which it was possible to
believe.
Down in the village the lights were being lit.
Down there home stood beside home. My home! my home! And my childhood’s
belief in everything beautiful in the world.--And what if they were
right, the others! If the world were full of beating hearts and the
heavens full of a loving God! But why do I not know that, why do I know
something different? And I do know something different, cutting, bitter,
true...
He rose; fields and meadows lay before him bathed in moonlight. He went
down into the village, along the way past the garden of the manor-house;
he went and looked over the stone-wall. Within on a grass-plot in
the garden stood a silver poplar, the moonlight fell sharply on the
quivering leaves; sometimes they showed their dark side, sometimes
their white. He placed his elbows on the wall and stared at the tree; it
looked as if the leaves were running in a fine rain down the limbs.
He believed, that he was hearing the sound which the foliage produced.
Suddenly the lovely voice of a woman became audible quite near by:
“Flower in dew! Flower in dew!
Whisper to me thy dreams, thine own.
Does in them lie the same strange air
The same wonderful elfin air,
As in mine own?
Are they filled with whispers and sobbing and sighing
Amid radiance slumbering and fragrances dying,
Amid trembling ringing, amid rising singing:
In longing,
In longing,
I live.”
Then silence fell again. Mogens drew a long breath and listened
intently: no more singing; up in the house a door was heard. Now he
clearly heard the sound from the leaves of the silver poplar. He bowed
his head in his arms and wept.
The next day was one of those in which late summer is rich. A day with
a brisk, cool wind, with many large swiftly flying clouds, with
everlasting alternations of darkness and light, according as the clouds
drift past the sun. Mogens had gone up to the cemetery, the garden of
the manor abutted on it. Up there it looked rather barren, the grass
had recently been cut; behind an old quadrangular iron-fence stood a
wide-spreading, low elder with waving foliage. Some of the graves had
wooden frames around them, most were only low, quadrangular hills; a
few of them had metal-pieces with inscriptions on them, others wooden
crosses from which the colors had peeled, others had wax wreaths, the
greater number had nothing at all. Mogens wandered about hunting for a
sheltered place, but the wind seemed to blow on all sides of the church.
He threw himself down near the embankment, drew a book out of his
pocket; but he did not get on with his reading; every time when a cloud
went past the sun, it seemed to him as though it were growing chilly,
and he thought of getting up, but then the light came again and he
remained lying. A young girl came slowly along the way, a greyhound and
a pointer ran playfully ahead of her. She stopped and it seemed as if
she wanted to sit down, but when she saw Mogens she continued her walk
diagonally across the cemetery out through the gate. Mogens rose and
looked after her; she walked down on the main road, the dogs still
played. Then he began reading the inscription on one of the graves;
it quickly made him smile. Suddenly a shadow fell across the grave and
remained lying there, Mogens looked sideways. A tanned, young man stood
there, one hand in his game-bag, in the other he held his gun.
“It isn’t really half bad,” he said, indicating the inscription.
“No,” said Mogens and straightened up from his bent position.
“Tell me,” continued the hunter, and looked to the side, as if seeking
something, “you have been here for a couple of days, and I have been
going about wondering about you, but up to the present didn’t come near
you. You go and drift about so alone, why haven’t you looked in on us?
And what in the world do you do to kill the time? For you haven’t any
business in the neighborhood, have you?”
“No, I am staying here for pleasure.”
“There isn’t much of that here,” the stranger exclaimed and laughed,
“don’t you shoot? Wouldn’t you like to come with me? Meanwhile I have
to go down to the inn and get some small shot, and while you are getting
ready, I can go over, and call down the blacksmith. Well! Will you
join?”
“Yes, with pleasure.”
“Oh, by the way,--Thora! haven’t you seen a girl?” he jumped up on the
embankment.
“Yes, there she is, she is my cousin, I can’t introduce you to her,
but come along, let us follow her; we made a wager, now you can he the
judge. She was to be in the cemetery with the dogs and I was to pass
with gun and game-bag, but was not to call or to whistle, and if the
dogs nevertheless went with me she would lose; now we will see.”
After a little while they overtook the lady; the hunter looked straight
ahead, but could not help smiling; Mogens bowed when they passed. The
dogs looked in surprise after the hunter and growled a bit; then
they looked up at the lady and barked, she wanted to pat them, but
indifferently they walked away from her and barked after the hunter.
Step by step they drew further and further away from her, squinted
at her, and then suddenly darted off after the hunter. And when they
reached him, they were quite out of control; they jumped up on him and
rushed off in every direction and back again.
“You lose,” he called out to her; she nodded smilingly, turned round and
went on.
They hunted till late in the afternoon. Mogens and William got along
famously and Mogens had to promise that he would come to the manor-house
in the evening. This he did, and later he came almost every day, but in
spite of all the cordial invitations he continued living at the inn.
Now came a restless period for Mogens. At first Thora’s proximity
brought back to life all his sad and gloomy memories. Often he had
suddenly to begin a conversation with one of the others or leave, so
that his emotion might not completely master him. She was not at all
like Camilla, and yet he heard and saw only Camilla. Thora was small,
delicate, and slender, roused easily to laughter, easily to tears, and
easily to enthusiasm. If for a longer time she spoke seriously with some
one, it was not like a drawing near, but rather as if she disappeared
within her own self. If some one explained something to her or developed
an idea, her face, her whole figure expressed the most intimate trust
and now and again, perhaps, also expectancy. William and his little
sister did not treat her quite like a comrade, but yet not like
a stranger either. The uncle and the aunt, the farm-hands, the
maid-servants, and the peasants of the neighborhood all paid court to
her, but very carefully, and almost timidly. In respect to her they were
almost like a wanderer in the forest, who sees close beside him one
of those tiny, graceful song-birds with very clear eyes and light,
captivating movements. He is enraptured by this tiny, living creature,
he would so much like to have it come closer and closer, but he does not
care to move, scarcely to take breath, lest it may be frightened and fly
away.
As Mogens saw Thora more and more frequently, memories came more and
more rarely, and he began to see her as she was. It was a time of peace
and happiness when he was with her, full of silent longing and quiet
sadness when he did not see her. Later he told her of Camilla and of
his past life, and it was almost with surprise that he looked back upon
himself. Sometimes it seemed inconceivable to him that it was he who had
thought, felt, and done all the strange things of which he told.
On an evening he and Thora stood on a height in the garden, and watched
the sunset. William and his little sister were playing hide-and-seek
around the hill. There were thousands of light, delicate colors,
hundreds of strong radiant ones. Mogens turned away from them and
looked at the dark figure by his side. How insignificant it looked in
comparison with all this glowing splendor; he sighed, and looked up
again at the gorgeously colored clouds. It was not like a real thought,
but it came vague and fleeting, existed for a second and disappeared; it
was as if it had been the eye that thought it.
“The elves in the green hill are happy now that the sun has gone down,”
said Thora.
“Oh--are they?”
“Don’t you know that elves love darkness?”
Mogens smiled.
“You don’t believe in elves, but you should. It is beautiful to believe
in all that, in gnomes and elves. I believe in mermaids too, and
elder-women, but goblins! What can one do with goblins and three-legged
horses? Old Mary gets angry when I tell her this; for to believe what
I believe, she says is not God-fearing. Such things have nothing to do
with people, but warnings and spirits are in the gospel, too. What do
you say?”
“I, oh, I don’t know--what do you really mean?”
“You surely don’t love nature?”
“But, quite the contrary.”
“I don’t mean nature, as you see it from benches placed where there is
a fine view on hills up which they have built steps; where it is like a
set scene, but nature every day, always.”
“Just so! I can take joy in every leaf, every twig, every beam of light,
every shadow. There isn’t a hill so barren, nor a turf-pit so square,
nor a road so monotonous, that I cannot for a moment fall in love with
it.”