whole place was made habitable. I have no Jeanne—I do my own hair, and
make myself beautiful for my boy. Alack! it is hard work to inspire him
with any desire to make himself presentable.
I am thinking of finding a tutor for him. He ought not to be allowed to
run wild and devour sensational American novelettes—of which there are
none in Denmark—and remain ignorant of all other subjects.
Forgive me, Jeanne, but I have only one thought, and that is Kelly. He
fills my life at all points, so that everything else now has to give way
to him.
He has a craze for collecting snails and slugs, which he brings into
the house and lets crawl about on the white window-sills. I must own it
makes a horrible mess, but Kelly may do anything. Only I draw the line at
helping him to collect his snails, for, much as I should like to oblige
him, it is too disgusting.
Now in exchange for these confidences, tell me all your news. It was
indeed a piece of good fortune that Malthe’s design took the prize. And
in Paris, too! You will, I suppose, stay there the two years. Or are
you still the incorrigible nomads who prefer to travel about with your
houses on your backs, with your trunks and perambulator—to settling down
quietly in a refined, comfortable home. Don’t work yourself to shreds,
Jeanne. Remember that life is long, and that you mustn’t grow old and
ugly. I concluded that you are doing everything in your power fairly to
spoil your excellent husband. You go to market. You pack the boxes, take
the tickets, and accompany your husband to the museums where you make
drawings for him, and you look after the children. Jeanne! Jeanne! take
thought for your hair, and be careful of your hands.
And don’t forget your happy _home_-flown friend,
ELSIE LINDTNER.
* * * * *
DEAR GOOD MAGNA,
That this notion should have occurred to you, and that you should have
the courage to carry it out—. But ought I to offer up this sacrifice
to you, and can I relinquish Kelly? The last few nights have been long
and sleepless; only when dawn begins to glimmer can I bring my confused
thoughts into any order, and then it seems as if I had found a solution
which is the right one. I fall asleep, and when I wake up again,
everything is as unsettled as ever.
I don’t know my way in or out. Magna, it’s not selfishness which makes me
dread letting Kelly out of my hands—the day does not seem far off when I
shall be forced to live under another roof from that which shelters him,
and that is why I don’t want to die.
My every thought is dedicated to him for whom and with whom I now live,
and so I will continue to live without complaint so long as life
is granted me. I have looked it all in the face, and have recoiled,
shuddering, at the petrifying horror of impossibilities, but I have made
my resolve. So long as I inhabit the earth Kelly has a human being who
stands in the place of mother to him.
I am not afraid to make any sacrifices. I shrink only from the thought
of shirking the responsibility. From the day Kelly came into my life
I have made myself answerable for his actions and conduct. Would it
not be cowardice and treachery if I now said, “The yoke has become too
burdensome, now I will shunt it on to the shoulders of another”?
And yet, Magna, your plan seems to me the one possibility of salvation.
Before I express my hearty thanks, and confide my boy to your care, I
must tell you something which I have been compelled to keep to myself
till now. Kelly has before been taken care of by others. By force of
circumstances. He tried—remember he was only nine years old—to burn
me. Of course no one suspected him, otherwise the police would not have
been asked to investigate the affair, but then it was brought to light,
and he was taken away from me. I could have murdered them for taking
him.... It is hard, even now, years after, to talk about it. My one idea
was to find a means of getting him back. In America everything possible
is done to save children whose feet are set on the downward path to
crime. And it is done with a tenderness and love which is marvellous,
but I didn’t know it. I thought of what I had read in the papers at home
about reformatories for children, about floggings and starvation, and
lockings-up in dark cellars. I was ready to help Kelly to escape till the
first time that they gave me permission to visit him.
There was no wall round the institution, not even a railing. The main
building abutted on the high road, and from there you could see the
heaps of smaller red houses resembling a town of villas.
As I came up to the inspector’s dwelling, I was almost run down by a
crowd of boys headed by a small negro, who were having a race.
Just as I entered the door, I heard an outcry which made my heart
stand still. I thought it was one of the boys being punished. But the
inspector showed me from the window what the noise meant. The boys were
playing at fire, and at that moment they were letting the hose play on
the inspector’s house. My little Kelly—in oilskins and a helmet on his
head—held the hose.
And I was told that of the six hundred boys who are in the reformatory
many of them on account of gross misconduct, for which but for their
tender years, they would have been sentenced to a long period of
imprisonment, not a single one had been guilty of doing anything wrong
during his detention here. Punishments such as thrashing and being put
on bread and water and under arrest, simply do not exist. The boys live
in their little villas, twelve in a batch, under the supervision of a
pair of foster-parents. The only punishment is that a boy who has been
disobedient or lazy gets no cake at five o’clock tea, and is not given
permission to sit with the others at the large flower-decked table, but
has to sit alone at a small table. And he mayn’t lie before the fire at
dusk and listen to fairy-tales.
No mother could have had more delightful letters from her child than I
had from Kelly during that year. If I had only been as wise then as I am
now, I should have let him stay there as long as the inspector would have
kept him.
All the small “prisoners” were taught in succession various industries
which they might choose themselves. I saw them baking, ironing, washing,
carving, carpentering, binding books, making clothes, and toys, and I
saw them planting trees, ploughing, and, Magna, I saw them milking cows.
But I was a foolish mother. I didn’t want my boy brought up to a trade;
I imagined it was my duty to develop his great gifts in a different
direction.
So after a year he was sent back to me. But the inspector warned me that
there would be a lapse. In two months it came. Kelly disappeared. I tore
about like a maniac hunting for him everywhere. I don’t believe there
was a beer-cellar, a common lodging-house, or a thieves’ kitchen that
I didn’t search. He was traced through the scar on his forehead, and I
recovered him. But how?
The Kelly who for twelve months had been living a model life among six
hundred little abandoned chaps, had plotted with a group of homeless
playmates to commit a crime so diabolical and remorseless that at first I
refused to believe his brain could have hatched it. By the train between
Philadelphia and New York travels every day a crowd of millionaires who
come to do their business on the Stock Exchange. The other boys were,
through all sorts of tricks, to distract the attention of the signalman
while Kelly was to switch on the signals so that another train would come
into collision with the train from Philadelphia. After the collision they
meant to plunder the dead bodies!
It’s true, Magna; now say, no! you dare not take Kelly under your roof
to associate with Oluf. I can’t help it, it was my duty to tell you all.
My friend, Judge Rander, in Children’s Court, helped me in every way. He
procured for me leave to travel with Kelly out of the country on a verbal
and written oath that I would never bring him back. That is why I lived
two years, summer and winter, in my White Villa with Kelly and a tutor.
I was afraid to let him come near the town, and yet the child needed
companions. So at last I ventured to migrate to a town, with the result
that Kelly in two years was expelled from three schools. Can you still
have the courage, Magna, to let the innocent child, offspring of your
heart, become Kelly’s playfellow? And if you are so courageous, how shall
I be able to exonerate myself if you come to me one day and say, “Kelly
has corrupted my boy”?
I put the words into your mouth, Magna.
Say no, while there is still time. You are strong, stronger than any
other woman I know, since you have found yourself again through strenuous
exertion and labour. But there are powers that the strongest cannot
conquer.
Behind my fears about your saying yes, lies the burning wish that you
will, but how shall I ever find words to thank you?
Of course, I realise what it will mean if Kelly from now onwards takes
up his abode with you, and directly after his confirmation leaves off
school. It’s not what Kelly is to be, but _how_ he becomes what he is,
that is going to be for me the main question. I fold my hands in my lap,
and I confess my powerlessness.
Make Kelly a man. Make Kelly a good man.
You will understand, Magna, that I could not say all this if we stood
face to face. While I have been writing Kelly has been several times to
the door. He wants to know what I am doing. Every time I feel tempted to
lay down my pen to enjoy his society. He asked me the other day, “Mother,
do you believe that people’s fate is pre-ordained?” What could he have
meant by it? I dared not ask him. He went on his knees, buried his head
in my lap, and cried bitterly.
Magna, don’t keep me long in uncertainty. At least promise me that.
Your
ELSIE LINDTNER.
* * * * *
I have begun to darn Kelly’s stockings. Why did I never think of it
before?
He was whitewashing the attic with Magna, and I saw that one of his
stockings was without a heel. I actually blushed, I felt so ashamed. The
boy, of course, doesn’t trouble about such trifles, and Magna, splendid
creature, has enough to do. I don’t believe she would mind a bit going
about with holes in her own stockings.
In the country it doesn’t matter so much, but still—
She simply laughed at me when I asked to be allowed to look after his
clothes, and I didn’t quite know how to explain why I wanted to do it.
But Magna is so clever, and when I was seated comfortably she brought
me out a whole bundle. She has done the same for her own children. I am
convinced that she would not let any one else darn Oluf’s stockings.
I don’t find it easy. I have quite forgotten the proper way of doing it,
which I learnt at school. And I haven’t thought anything about darning
stockings since.
But I take no end of trouble, and it is a wonderful feeling to sit out
here on the balcony with a whole pile of big, big stockings in front of
me—Kelly has positively a gigantic foot. My dear little balcony. It’s to
me what an airship is for young, impatient folks. I sit so serenely in my
charming, soft seat, between sweet-peas and nasturtiums, and beneath me
streams by the current of life with its men and beasts.
* * * * *
It amuses me to see how skilfully Richard’s eldest can drive an
automobile. If only he can avoid accidents.
Richard himself is aging, but his little wife sits so upright in the car.
She wears well.
Since Richard caught sight of me one day by chance he always looks up
and bows, and then we all bow, ... I overhear the lanky youth say, “Papa,
we are passing your old wife,” and then they laugh.
Yes, I should like to see the home in the old Market Place once more.
Probably I should hardly recognise it, or perhaps Richard, from long
habit, has kept things much the same.
The eldest son is to succeed to the business, of course, but the second
looks to me so dandified. I know this for certain that none of Richard’s
sons will ever work out in the fields in clogs and woollen shirts. And
their mother will never have the joy of darning stockings with holes in
them as big as goose’s eggs. While I sit with a pair of these coarse,
huge, manly socks in which my hand is absolutely drowned, I feel to the
full extent a mother’s glorious rights. I only wish the holes were double
the size, so that the time they take to mend lasted longer.
I have been and bought the pan for cooking oxeyes in, and I have
promised Kelly and Oluf that every time they come they shall have oxeyes
baked in butter. Magna requires nothing but her horrid nut-suet which has
no flavour. She alone can eat it. Dear, dear boys.
* * * * *
DEAR AGNETE,
It was well that you wrote to me this time, and not to your mother. You
are not to trouble her with your unhappy affairs, do you understand?
Every time that she gets a letter from you she shuts herself up and
cries. Lately I have read quite a number of your letters, and I must
confess that I was not pleased with them.
At one time you presumed to sit in judgment on your mother’s life, and
now you blame her because yours is a failure. You have no right to do it.
You cannot justly lay your married wretchedness at either your mother’s
or your husband’s door. Its origin is to be sought in a train of
circumstances. You must know, though you seem to have forgotten it, that
it was not your mother who gave in to your desire to go to the French
Convent School. It was my doing that you went. I sent you for her peace
of mind’s sake.
That you have married a Catholic while you yourself are a Protestant is
no one’s fault but your own, as you did not ask anybody’s permission.
Unfortunately you have inherited from your mother a hysterical
temperament, and from your father a certain matter-of-factness which
prevents your enjoying life.
I feel compelled to act like a surgeon who undertakes a necessary
operation, in spite of the patient’s objection to scars.
The only time your husband was here on a visit I was able to get a
certain impression of his character. You are right in saying that he is
“dangerous to women through the animal magnetism which radiates from his
person, attracting to him adults and children alike.” And you might
add, “through his natural amiability and his kindliness.” He makes no
disguise of his vanity, but when you plume yourself on being his only
chick because you alone resist him, you are adopting a dangerous line.
The man who wishes to be worshipped will not be discouraged by superior
airs, especially when these are put on, and you merely feign opposition
in order to annoy him, and to conceal how much you are in love.
Owing to the position he holds he is the centre of much attention. He
is unable, like most men, to diverge from the high road. Every movement
of his is noticed, and may cause him unpleasantness. Thus his position
forces him to be cautious. Yet you as his loving wife accuse him of
giving to every woman what ought to be your position alone.
Your want of trust puts him on the rack. You pluck his nerves to pieces,
and dissect his secret thoughts. You hate him for not being unfaithful
to you in deed in that you suspect continually that he is unfaithful to
you in thought. You hurt him by telling him constantly that your mutual
life is animal and savage, that he lacks soul, and does not comprehend
what it is to love with the soul as you do. He retorts by calling you
hysterical.
Then a young girl comes to stay in your house. She falls in love with
your husband, and he is in love with her. You say, “She made a dead set
at him.” Instead of deciding to remove her immediately you watch for
proofs of the criminal relations which you suspect. I don’t condemn you
for getting hold of your husband’s letters by any means honourable or the
reverse, because jealous wives are as irresponsible for their actions as
patients with a temperature of a hundred and six. You triumph and cause
yourself diabolical torments by revelling in the stolen love-letters. You
find in them the “psychological” impulse that you have missed in your
husband’s love.
What ought you to do now? Either you must go, as you cannot stay with a
man who is in love with another; or you must remain and leave him and his
feelings in peace. Nonsense! Instead you thrust a dagger into his heart
and turn it in the wound. If he moans, you ask, “Do you still love her?”
You think that love can be wrenched out of a man’s life as easily as a
tooth is drawn, root and all.
Agony brings your husband to reason and his senses, he belies what he
feels and cries, “I love no one but you!” But even then can you leave him
alone? Certainly not. You now insist on his telling everything, betraying
and deceiving. You know, as a Catholic, he cannot claim a divorce, and
yet you ask if he will marry her in the case of your retiring? Not a word
of this offer do you intend seriously. You want to humiliate and torment
him.
Next you make a scene with the girl, pervert his words about her,
misapply your knowledge, and use such expressions as “Impurity, lies,
vulgarity.” But she only answers, “I love him, I cannot do anything
else.” And you find this exasperating.
Not once has it occurred to you to set your husband free. He belongs to
you, he is in your power. You begin all over again. You haven’t an hour’s
rest because you must spy on all his actions. You reproach him for being
a Catholic. His baseness is trebled because he is Catholic—as if lies had
anything to do with articles of faith.
You are leading a pretty life! Then your husband falls ill. For a long
time he has complained of a tumour in his chest. “If it grows it’ll have
to be removed for it may be cancer.” This is a trifling matter, or you
inwardly triumph over it as “a judgment.”
One morning he leaves the house on business. He takes leave of you
tenderly and comes back over and over again to kiss you with emotion. You
at once suspect deceit, and heap reproaches on him for intending to do
something behind your back. He smiles sadly and says, “If that is so you
will soon hear what it is.”
At mid-day you have a “vision,” if what you write is true. You see him
lying on the operating table. You telephone to the hospital and learn
that the operation has taken place. You hurry there and meet the girl.
To you he has not spoken of the serious ordeal in store for him. But he
has sent for her.
This is the last drop that overflows your cup of anguish. You take your
sick husband home. You torture him till he says, “Death would be better
than this.”
And now you ask me what you ought to do.
It would be much simpler to tell you what you ought not to have done.
But it is too late for that now. All the same, I will, to the best of
my poor abilities, give you advice and the benefit of my experience,
gathered from contemplation of many wretched and foolish cases in which
people tread happiness under foot, and then instantly lament what they
have lost.
First and foremost, Agnete, you must look into yourself, and get rid of
the lie which like an octopus has caught you in its embrace and smothers
the best within you.
The lie about your husband’s deficiency. Your expressions of longing for
a harmony of souls is a lie, just as your pretension to love with the
soul and not with the senses is a lie.
You are one of the many women who, for reasons which I fail to
understand, find no salvation in your relations to a man. What for him
was the highest enjoyment, for you was only a torturing excitement.
A physical shortcoming in yourself would in him appear a crime in
your eyes. Instead of honestly and frankly explaining to him the state
of things and the cause of your unhappy condition, you try to seek
satisfaction by making scenes.
Don’t you see, dear child, a clever woman never makes scenes. It isn’t
politic. A scene that lasts an hour does fourteen days’ detriment to her
appearance.
Your question, “What ought I to do now?” really means, “How can I punish
him further?”
Rather you should ask, “What can I do to heal his wounded soul?” And this
is my answer, Agnete, “You can do it by confessing your own mistakes, and
forgetting his.”
You must not ape humility, and let something cry within you, “See what a
sacrifice I am making!”
No, you must acknowledge your wrongdoing and not let it out of sight.
Take it in both hands, hold it tightly like a costly goblet, and keep
your eyes fixed on it. You should remember that it is no credit to you
that you have not betrayed him because there has been no necessity; for
you know nothing of the mad impulse that can arise between two human
creatures, suddenly, like a storm in the thickest part of the wood.
Above all things, recognise that at the time your husband summoned his
mistress to his side when he thought he was going to die, he acted from
the greatest and most primitive of instincts—the instinct of love.
Tell him that you have been wrong. Show him your love. Give him your
best. Not for an hour or a day, but every hour and every day. That is the
only way to his heart, and to your own peace of mind. And then the time
will come when mutual forgiveness has performed its miracle.
Try to understand what I mean.
Hearty good wishes from your mother’s old friend. If you like you may
show your husband this letter.
ELSIE LINDTNER.
* * * * *
It is certainly a very fine trait in Magna’s character, that she who used
to be—well, never mind, I won’t say what—has never breathed the name of
her child’s father to any living soul.
The man must have been good and strong, and I am fortunate indeed that my
Kelly has found a protector in the little fellow. Oluf doesn’t like Kelly
drinking schnaps. So Kelly doesn’t drink schnaps. Oluf wants Kelly’s
moustache to grow, so Kelly lets it grow.
“So long as I have Oluf, who takes care of me, you need not be afraid of
me.” Those words are close to my heart.
And yet I have still some anxiety. The world is so big, and here things
are reduced to such a groove. I notice the effect on Oluf when Kelly
tells him about America. Who knows if the day will not come when the pair
come to bid me and Magna farewell to go off on adventures?
Oluf was making plans the other day for travelling to Canada, and camping
in the great forests far away from civilisation. The boy had fixed it
all up. They were to live in the trees, and live by hunting and fishing.
Perched up on the highest branches they would spread out their nets, and
catch fish out of the great river that rolls through the forest. They
would only enter a town twice a year to sell the skins of the beasts they
had caught.
Oluf is not too small for such dreams, but Kelly—
I am so unwilling to budge from here till Kelly has taken root in the
soil so that he can’t tear himself away. He promises to stay here always,
but what is a promise?
* * * * *
DEAR MAGNA,
I must really tell you without delay. Richard has been to see me. When
Lucie brought in his card I was dumbfounded. But the moment he entered
the room, thank God I got over my feeling of embarrassment. We stood and
looked at each other, and were at a loss how to begin the conversation,
till it occurred to Richard to say something about Kelly. He knew, of
course, the whole story.
It did one good to see the dear fellow, to speak to him again. He
said he could only stay a few minutes, and he stayed two hours. In
reality, it was his little wife who sent him to see me. She thought it
so extraordinary that she should not know me, who had played such an
important part for so many years in Richard’s life.
We spoke a great deal of our respective children, and were both equally
proud.
Now Richard has promised to visit me next Sunday with his family.
You and our boys come, too. In the course of the week I shall return
Richard’s call.
Do you know, Magna, I intend to make it quite a festive occasion, and
there shall be no feeling in the matter that I am a divorced wife. You
will have to lend me a few things as most of my china is over in the
villa, and I shall order the food to be sent in from Palace Street. One
can be certain of getting it good there, or would you advise going to an
hotel? I have got so out of the habit of entertaining that I feel nervous
at the thought of it.
Anyhow, you must come, Magna, and take care that Kelly is properly
attired. Also see to his hands.
When Richard was gone, I sat a long time and meditated in retrospect on
how very nicely he and I had once got on together. The one drawback was
that we had no children. On that account I made the sacrifice and left
him. I have been royally rewarded for it, through my Kelly.