Cordt entered, dressed to go out, and hurriedly crossed the room.
Fru Adelheid sat writing. She looked up, as he came in, and went on
writing.
“Where is Finn?”
“Upstairs, I suppose ... in his room,” she answered, without looking at
him.
He stood at the window for a moment. Then he flung himself into a chair
and got up again and stood by the table at which she was sitting:
“Have you been with him to-day?”
“No.”
She closed her blotting-book and turned her chair so that her face was
in shadow. Then she said:
“Finn is too much alone.”
“Yes.”
He nodded and said yes again; then stood with his head bowed deep in
thought.
“It is so quiet here,” said Fru Adelheid. “You are not happy and Finn
notices it. And Hans is away....”
“Yes ... yes....”
She crossed her arms over her breast and sat silent and looked at the
tip of her foot.
“Adelheid....”
Cordt drew himself erect:
“We will fill the house with gayety,” he said. “We will go and pay
visits to-morrow morning ... you and Finn and I ... to old friends and
new. We will have young and cheerful people here and pretty women and
clever men ... lights and music.”
She looked up at him. He smiled and put his hand on her shoulder.
“Yes,” she said.
Cordt talked about it a little and then went out hurriedly.
Fru Adelheid remained sitting long. The room grew dark. The lamps
before the gateway were lit and their flickering gleams danced on the
ceiling. The fire in the hearth smouldered under the ashes. Where she
sat, no light fell; her white dress shone faintly through the gloom.
She thought of Cordt’s smile ... he had said that to her much as though
he were asking one of the people in the office to take pains in a
difficult matter.
She thought of Finn, who looked at her with such strange eyes, as
though the relations between him and his mother had changed and he
could not understand it.
She thought of herself. She felt like a tree in autumn, when the leaves
fall ... a tree that had always thought itself green and beautiful
until now, when it saw its glory flutter before the wind.
And, day after day and every hour of the day, she rebuilt it all as it
might have been.
She built up the temple of the old room again and locked the door with
seven seals. She put time back and sat with her little boy in her lap
and resented old Marie’s undressing him and singing him to sleep. She
put time forward and celebrated the day when Finn should lead his wife
into the secret chamber of the house and tell her all about it, in all
its beauty and solemnity, and write his name and hers on the yellow
document.
Fru Adelheid smiled sadly.
She thought she was like the man who had put the celestial globe up
there in the old room ... the man whose intellect was obscured and who
sat and played with the stars until he died.
But her thoughts always went the same way, while the darkness fell ever
closer about Cordt’s house.
She wondered, would it be any use now, if the house were filled with
lights and gayety? Or would the darkness lurk in every gloomy corner
and spring forth when the feast was over and for ever hide the three
who moved about the house, each his own way, anxiously and alone?
She did not know. But she always thought of it. And there was nothing
tempestuous in her hope and in her fear and in her regret.
Fru Adelheid was calm now, always.