had been an eighteen-year old girl, she had loved with all her soul,
with every sense in her body, every living hope, every thought. It was
not to be, could not be. He had had nothing to offer except his loyalty
which would have involved the test of an endlessly long engagement, and
there were circumstances in her home which could not wait. So she had
taken the one whom they had given her, the one who was master over these
circumstances. They were married, then came children: Tage, the son,
who was with her in Avignon, and the daughter, who sat beside her,
Everything had turned out so much better than she could have hoped for,
both easier and more friendly. Eight years it lasted, then the husband
died, and she mourned him with a sincere heart. She had learned to love
his fine, thin-blooded nature which with a tense, egotistic, almost
morbid love loved whatever belonged to it by ties of relationship or
family, and cared nought for anything in all the great world outside,
except for what they thought, what their opinion was--nothing else.
After her husband’s death she had lived chiefly for her children, but
she had not devoted herself exclusively to them; she had taken part in
social life, as was natural for so young and well-to-do a widow; and now
her son was twenty-one years old and she lacked not many days of forty.
But she was still beautiful. There was not a gray thread in her heavy
dark-blonde hair, not a wrinkle round her large, courageous eyes, and
her figure was slender with well-balanced fullness. The strong, fine
lines of her features were accentuated by the darker more deeply colored
complexion which the years had given her; the smile of her widely
sweeping lips was very sweet; an almost enigmatical youth in the dewy
luminosity of her brown eyes softened and mellowed everything again. And
yet she also had the round fullness of cheek, the strong-willed chin of
a mature woman.
“That surely is Tage coming,” said Mrs. Fonss to her daughter when she
heard laughter and some Danish exclamations on the other side of the
thick hedge of hornbeam.
Elinor pulled herself together.
And it was Tage, Tage and Kastager, a wholesale merchant from
Copenhagen, with his sister and daughter; Mrs. Kastager lay ill at home
in the hotel.
Mrs. Fonss and Elinor made room for the two ladies; the men tried for
a moment to converse standing, but were lured by the low wall of
stone which surrounded the spot. They sat there and said only what was
absolutely necessary, for the newcomers were tired from a little railway
excursion they had taken into the Provence with its blooming roses.
“Hello!” cried Tage, striking his light trousers with the flat of his
hand, “look!”
They looked.
Out in the brown landscape appeared a cloud of dust, over it a mantle
of dust, and between the two they caught sight of a horse. “That’s
the Englishman, I told you about, who came the other day,” said Tage,
turning toward his mother.
“Did you ever see any one ride like that?” he asked, turning toward
Kastager, “he reminds me of a gaucho.”
“Mazeppa?” said Kastager, questioningly.
The horseman disappeared.
Then they all rose, and set out for the hotel.
They had met the Kastagers in Belfort, and since they were pursuing the
same itinerary through southern France and along the Riviera, they for
the time being traveled together. Here in Avignon both families had made
a halt; Kastager because his wife had developed a varicose vein, the
Fonss’ because Elinor obviously needed a rest.
Tage was delighted at this living together. Day by day he fell more and
more incurably in love with the pretty Ida Kastager. Mrs. Fonss did not
especially like this. Though Tage was very self-reliant and mature for
his age, there was no reason for a hasty engagement--and there was
Mr. Kastager! Ida was a splendid little girl, Mrs. Kastager was a very
well-bred woman of excellent family, and Kastager himself was capable,
rich, and honest, but there was a hint of the absurd about him. A smile
came upon people’s lips and a twinkle into their eyes when any one
mentioned Mr. Kastager.
The reason for this was that he was full of fire and given to
extraordinary enthusiasms; he was frankly ingenuous, boisterous, and
communicative, and nowadays it requires a great deal of tact to be
lavish with enthusiasm. But Mrs. Fonss could not bear the thought that
Tage’s father-in-law should be mentioned with a twinkle in the eye and
a smile round the mouth, and for that reason she exhibited a certain
coldness toward the family to the great sorrow of the enamored Tage.
*****
On the morning of the following day Tage and his mother had gone to
look at the little museum of the town. They found the gate open, but the
doors to the collection locked; ringing the bell proved fruitless. The
gateway, however, gave admission to the not specially large court which
was surrounded by a freshly whitewashed arcade whose short squat columns
had black iron bars between them.
They walked about and looked at the objects placed along the wall: Roman
sepulchral monuments, pieces of sarcophagi, a headless draped figure,
the dorsal vertebra of a whale, and a series of architectural details.
On all the objects of interest there were fresh traces of the masons’
brushes.
By now they had come back to their starting point.
Tage ran up the stairs to see if there might not be people somewhere in
the house, and Mrs. Fonss in the meantime walked up and down the arcade.
As she was on the turn toward the gate a tall man with a bearded, tanned
face, appeared at the end of the passage directly in front of her. He
had a guide-book in his hand; he listened for something, and then looked
forward, straight at her.
The Englishman of yesterday immediately came to her mind.
“Pardon me?” he began interrogatively, and bowed.
“I am a stranger,” Mrs. Fonss replied, “nobody seems to be at home, but
my son has just run upstairs to see whether....”
These words were exchanged in French.
At this moment Tage arrived. “I have been everywhere,” he said, “even in
the living quarters, but didn’t find as much as a cat.”
“I hear,” said the Englishman, this time in Danish, “that I have the
pleasure of being with fellow-countrymen.”
He bowed again and retreated a couple of steps, as if to indicate that
he had merely said this to let them know that he understood what they
were saying. Suddenly he stepped closer than before with an intent,
eager expression on his face, and said to Mrs. Fonss, “is it possible
that you and I are old acquaintances?”
“Are you Emil Thorbrogger?” exclaimed Mrs. Fonss, and held out her hand.
He seized it. “Yes, I am he,” he said gayly, “and you are she?”
His eyes almost filled with tears as he looked at her.
Mrs Fonss introduced Tage as her son.
Tage had never in his life heard mention of Thorbrogger, but that was
not his thoughts; he thought only of the fact that this gaucho turned
out to be a Dane; when a pause set in, and some one had to say something
he could not help exclaiming, “and I who said yesterday that you
reminded me of a gaucho!”
“Well,” replied Thorbrogger, “that wasn’t far from the truth; for
twenty-one years I have lived in the plains of La Plata, and in those
years certainly spent more time on horse-back than on foot.”
And now he had come back to Europe!
Yes, he had sold his land and his sheep and had come back to have a look
around in the old world where he belonged, but to his shame he had
to confess that he often found it very much of a bore to travel about
merely for pleasure.
Perhaps, he was homesick for the prairies?
No, he had never had any special feeling for places and countries; he
thought it was only his daily work which he missed.
In that way they went on talking for a while. At last the custodian
appeared, hot and out of breath, with heads of lettuce under his arms
and a bunch of scarlet tomatoes in his hand, and they were admitted into
the small, stuffy collection of paintings, where they gained only the
vaguest impression of the yellow thunder-clouds and black waters of old
Vernet, but on the contrary told each other with considerable detail
of their lives and the happenings during all the years since they had
parted.
For it was he whom she had loved, at the time when she married another.
In the days which now followed they were much together, and the others
thinking that such old friends must have much to say to each other left
them often alone. In those days both soon noticed that however much
they might have changed during the course of the years, their hearts had
forgotten nothing.
Perhaps it was he who first became aware of this, for all the
uncertainty of youth, its sentimentality and its elegiac mood came upon
him simultaneously, and he suffered under it. It seemed out of place
to the mature man, that he should so suddenly be robbed of his peace of
life and the self-possession which he had acquired during the course of
time, and he wanted his love to bear a different stamp, wished it to be
graver, more subdued.
She did not feel herself younger, but it seemed to her as if a fountain
of tears that had been obstructed and dammed had burst open again and
begun to flow. There was great happiness and relief in crying, and these
tears gave her a feeling of richness; it was as if she had become more
precious, and everything had become more precious to her--in short it
was a feeling of youth after all.
*****
On an evening of one of these days Mrs. Fonss sat alone at home,
Elinor had gone to bed early, and Tage had gone to the theater with the
Kastagers. She had been sitting in the dull hotel-room and had dreamed
in the half light of a couple of candles. At length her dreams had come
to a stop after their incessant coming and going; she had grown tired,
but with that mild and smiling weariness which wraps itself round us,
when happy thoughts are falling asleep in our mind.
She could not go on sitting here, staring in front of her, the whole
evening long without so much as a book. It was still over an hour before
the theater let out. So she began to walk up and down the room, stood in
front of the mirror, and arranged her hair.
She would go down into the reading-room, and look over the illustrated
papers. At this time of the evening it was always empty there.
She threw a large black lace shawl over her head and went down.
The room was empty.
The small room, overfull with furniture, was brilliantly illuminated
by half a dozen large gas-flames; it was hot and the air was almost
painfully dry.
She drew the shawl down around the shoulders.
The white papers there on the table, the portfolios with their large
gilt letters, the empty plush chairs, the regular squares of the carpet
and the even folds of the rep curtains--all this looked dull under the
strong light.
She was still dreaming, and dreaming she stood, and listened to the
long-drawn singing of the gas-flames.
The heat was such as almost to make one dizzy.
To support herself she slowly reached out for a large, heavy bronze
vase which stood on a bracket fixed in the wall, and grasped the
flower-decorated edge.
It was comfortable to stand thus, and the bronze was gratefully cool to
the touch of her hand. But as she stood thus, there came another feeling
also. She began to feel a contentment in her limbs, in her body, because
of the plastically beautiful position which she had assumed. She was
conscious of how becoming it was to her, of the beauty which was hers
at the moment, and even of the physical sensation of harmony. All
this gathered in a feeling of triumph, and streamed through her like a
strange festive exultation.
She felt herself so strong at this hour, and life lay before her like
a great, radiant day; no longer like a day declining toward the calm,
melancholy hours of dusk. It seemed to her like an open, wide-awake
space of time, with hot pulses throbbing every second, with joyous
light, with energy and swiftness and an infinity without and within. And
she was thrilled with the fullness of life, and longed for it with the
feverish eagerness with which a traveler sets out on a journey.
For a long time she stood thus, wrapped in her thoughts, forgetting
everything around her. Then suddenly as if she heard the silence in the
room and the long-drawn singing of the gas-flames, she let her hand
drop from the vase and sat down by the table and began to turn over the
leaves of a portfolio.
She heard steps, passing by the door, heard them turn back, and saw
Thorbrogger enter.
They exchanged a few words but as she seemed occupied with the pictures,
he also began to look at the magazines that lay in front of him. They,
however, did not interest him very much for when a little later she
looked up, she met his eyes which rested searchingly upon her.
He looked as if he were just about to speak, and there was a nervous,
decided expression round his mouth, which told her so definitely what
his words would be that she reddened.
Instinctively, as if she wished to hold back these words, she held out
a picture across the table and pointed at some horsemen from the pampas,
who were throwing lassoes over wild steers.
He was just about to make some jesting remark about the draftsman’s
naive conception of the art of throwing a lasso. It was so enticingly
easy to speak of this rather than of that which he had on his mind.
Resolutely, however, he pushed the picture aside, leaned a little ways
across the table and said,
“I have thought a great deal about you since we met again; I have always
thought a great deal about you, both long ago in Denmark and over where
I was. And I have always loved you, and if it sometimes seems to me that
it is only now that I really love you since we have met again, it is not
true, however great my love may be, for I have always loved you, I have
always loved you. And if it should happen now that you would become
mine--you cannot imagine what that would mean to me, if you, who were
taken from me for so many years, were to come back.”
He was silent for a moment, then he rose, and came closer to her.
“Oh, do say a word! I am standing here talking blindly. I speak to you
as to an interpreter, a stranger, who has to repeat what I am saying to
the heart I am speaking to.. I don’t know... to stand here and weigh my
words... I don’t know, how far or how near. I dare not put into words
the adoration which fills me--or dare I?”
He let himself sink down on a chair by her side.
“Oh, if I might, if I didn’t have to be afraid--is it true! Oh, God
bless you, Paula.”
“There is nothing now that need keep us apart any longer,” said she,
with her hand in his, “whatever may happen I have the right to be happy
once, to live fully in accordance with my being, my desire, and my
dreams. I have never renounced. Even though happiness was not my share,
I have never believed that life was nothing but grayness and duty. I
knew that there are people who are happy.”
Silently he kissed her hand.
“I know,” she said sadly, “that those who will judge me least harshly
will not envy me the happiness which I shall have in having your love,
but they will also say that I should be satisfied.”
“But that would not be enough for me, and you have not the right to send
me away.”
“No,” she said, “no.”
A little later she went upstairs to Elinor.
Elinor slept.
Mrs. Fonss sat down by her bed and looked at her pale child whose
features she could only dimly distinguish under the faint yellow glow of
the night lamp.
For Elinor’s sake they would have to wait. In a few days they would
separate from Thorbrogger, go to Nice, and stay there by themselves.
During the winter she would live only that Elinor might regain her
health. But to-morrow she would tell the children what had happened
and what was to be expected. However they might receive the news it was
impossible for her to live with them day in, day out, and yet be almost
separated from them by a secret like this. And they would need time to
get used to the idea, because it would mean a separation between them,
whether greater or smaller would depend on the children themselves. The
arrangement of their lives in so far as it concerned her and him was to
be left entirely to them. She would demand nothing. It was for them to
_give_.
She heard Tage’s step in the sitting-room and went to him.
He was so radiant and at the same time so nervous that Mrs. Fonss knew
something had happened, and she had an intuition of what it was.
He sought for an opening to unburden his heart and sat and talked
absent-mindedly of the theater. Not until his mother went over to him
and put her hand on his forehead, forcing him to look at her, was he
able to tell her that he had wooed Ida Kastager and gained her “yes.”
They talked about it for a long time, but throughout Mrs. Fonss felt
a coldness in whatever she said, which she could not overcome. She was
afraid of being too sympathetic with Tage on account of her own emotion.
Besides, in the uncertain state of her mind she was distrustful of the
idea that there might be even the faintest shadow of an association
between her kindness of to-night and what she was to tell to-morrow..
Tage, however, did not notice any coolness.
Mrs. Fonss did not sleep much that night; there were too many thoughts
to keep her awake. She thought how strange it was that he and she should
have met and that when they met they should love each other as in the
old days.
It was long ago, especially for her; she was no longer, could no longer,
be young. And this would show; and he would be thoughtful with her, and
grow used to the fact that it was a long time since she was eighteen
years old. But she felt young, she was so in many respects, and yet all
the while she was conscious of her years. She saw it very clearly, in a
thousand movements, in expressions and gestures, in the way in which she
would respond to a hint, in the fashion in which she would smile at an
answer. Ten times a day she would betray her age, because she lacked the
courage to be outwardly as young as she was within.
And thoughts came and thoughts went, but through it all the same
question always rose, as to what her children would say.
On the forenoon of the following day she put the answer to the test.
They were in the sitting-room.
She said that she had something important to tell them, something
that would mean a great change in their lives, something that would
be unexpected news to them. She asked them to listen as calmly as they
could, and not to let themselves be carried away by the first impression
into thoughtlessness. They must know that what she was about to tell
them was definitely decided, and that nothing they might say could make
her alter her decision.
“I am going to marry again,” she said, and told them of how she had
loved Thorbrogger, before she had known their father; how she had become
separated from him, and how they had now met again.
Elinor cried, but Tage had risen from his seat, utterly bewildered. He
then went close to her, kneeled down before her, and seized her hand.
Sobbing, half-stifled with emotion, he pressed it against his cheek with
infinite tenderness, with an expression of helplessness in every line of
his face.
“Oh, but mother, dearest mother, what have we done to you, have we not
always loved you, have we not always, both when we were with you
and when we were away from from you, wanted you as the best thing we
possessed in the world? We have never known father except through you;
it was you who taught us to love him, and if Elinor and I are so close
to each other, is it not because day after day you always pointed out
to each of us what was best in the other? And has it not been thus with
every other person to whom we became attached, do we not owe everything
to you? We owe everything to you, and we worship you, mother, if you
only knew.... Oh, you cannot imagine, how much we want your love, want
you beyond all bounds and limits, but there again you have taught us to
restrain our love, and we never dare to come as close to your heart as
we should like. And now you say that you are going to leave us entirely,
and put us to one side. But that is impossible. Only one who wanted to
do us the greatest harm in the world could do anything as frightful as
that, and you don’t want to do us the greatest harm, you want only what
is best for us--how can it then be possible? Say quickly that it is not
true; say it is not true, Tage, it is not true, Elinor.”
“Tage, Tage, don’t be so distressed, and don’t make it so hard, both for
yourself and us others.”
Tage rose.
“Hard,” he said, “hard, hard, oh were it nothing but that, but it is
horrible--unnatural; it is enough to drive one insane, merely to think
of it. Have you any idea of the things you make me think of? My mother
loved by a strange man, my mother desired, held in the arms of another
and holding him in hers. Nice thoughts for a son, worse than the worst
insult--but it is impossible, must be impossible, must be! Are the
prayers of a son to be as powerless as that! Elinor, don’t sit there and
cry, come and help me beg mother to have pity on us.”
Mrs. Fonss made a restraining gesture with her hand and said: “Let
Elinor alone, she is probably tired enough, and besides I have told you
that nothing can be changed.”
“I wish I were dead,” said Elinor, “but, mother, everything that Tage
has said is true, and it never can be right that at our age you should
give us a step-father.”
“Step-father,” cried Tage, “I hope that he does not for one moment
dare.... You are mad. Where he enters, we go out. There isn’t any power
on earth that can force me into the slightest intimacy with that
person. Mother must choose--he or we! If they go to Denmark after their
marriage, then we are exiles; if they stay here, we leave.”
“And those are your intentions, Tage?” asked Mrs. Fonss.
“I don’t think you need doubt that; imagine the life. Ida and I are
sitting out there on the terrace on a moonlit evening, and behind the
laurel-bushes some one is whispering. Ida asks who is whispering, and
I reply that it is my mother and her new husband.--No, no, I shouldn’t
have said that; but you see the effect of it already, the pain it causes
me, and you may be sure that it won’t help Elinor’s health either.”
Mrs. Fonss let the children go while she remained sitting here.
No, Tage was right, it had not been good for them. How far from her they
had already gone in that short hour! How they looked at her, not like
her children, but like their father’s! How quick they were to desert her
as soon as they saw that not every motion of her heart was theirs! But
she was not only Tage’s and Elinor’s mother alone; she was also a human
being on her own account, with a life of her own and hopes of her own,
quite apart from them. But she was, perhaps, not quite as young as she
had believed herself to be. This had come to her in the conversation
with her children. Had she not sat there, timid, in spite of her words;
had she not almost felt like one who was trespassing upon the rights of
youth? Were not all the exorbitant demands of youth and all its naive
tyranny in everything they had said?--It is for us to love, life belongs
to us, and your life it is but to exist for us.
She began to understand that there might be a satisfaction in being
quite old; not that she wished it, but yet old age smiled faintly at
her like a far-distant peace, coming after all the agitation of recent
times, and now when the prospect of so much discord was so near. For she
did not believe that her children would ever change their mind, and yet
she had to discuss it with them over and over again before she gave up
hope. The best thing would be for Thorbrogger to leave immediately. With
his presence no longer here the children might be less irritable, and
she could try to show them how eager she was to be as considerate as
possible to them. In time the first bitterness would disappear, and
everything... no, she did not believe, that everything would turn out
well.
They agreed that Thorbrogger should leave for Denmark to arrange their
affairs. For the time being they would remain here. It seemed, however,
that nothing was gained by this. The children avoided her. Tage spent
all his time with Ida or her father, and Elinor stayed all the time
with the invalid, Mrs. Kastager. And when they happened to be actually
together, the old intimacy, the old feeling of comfort, was gone. Where
were the thousand subjects for conversation, and, when finally they
found one, where was the interest in it? They sat there keeping up
a conversation like people who for a while have enjoyed each other’s
company, and now must part. All the thoughts of those who are about to
leave are fixed on the journey’s end, and those who remain think only
of settling hack into the daily life and daily routine, as soon as the
strangers have left.