“It is wonderful how one doesn’t get bored, here at the seashore,
Morten. Imagine lying anywhere else for hours at a time, flat on your
back, doing nothing, not even thinking--”
“Yes. But I must confess that I used to be bored sometimes--only not in
the last few weeks.”
Autumn was at hand. The first strong wind had risen. Thin, tattered
grey clouds raced across the sky. The dreary, tossing sea was covered
far and wide with foam. Great, powerful waves rolled silently in,
relentless, awesome; towered majestically, in a metallic dark-green
curve, then crashed thundering on the sand.
The season was quite at an end. On that part of the beach usually
occupied by the throng of bathers, the pavilions were already partly
dismantled, and it lay as quiet as the grave, with only a very few
basket-chairs. But Tony and Morten spent the afternoon in a distant
spot, at the edge of the yellow loam, where the waves hurled their
spray as far up as Sea-gull Rock. Morten had made her a solid sand
fortress, and she leaned against it with her back, her feet in their
strap shoes and white stockings crossed in front of her. Morten lay
turned toward her, his chin in his hands. Now and then a sea-gull flew
past them, shrieking. They looked at the green wall of wave, streaked
with sea-weed, that came threateningly on and on and then broke against
the opposing boulders, with the eternal, confused tumult that deafens
and silences and destroys all sense of time.
Finally Morten made a movement as though rousing himself from deep
thought, and said, “Well, you will soon be leaving us, Fräulein Tony.”
“No; why?” Tony said absently.
“Well, it is the tenth of September. My holidays are nearly at an end,
anyhow. How much longer can it last? Shall you be glad to get back to
the society of your own kind? Tell me--I suppose the gentlemen you
dance with are very agreeable?--No, no, that was not what I wanted
to say. Now you must answer me,” he said, with a sudden resolution,
shifting his chin in his hands and looking at her. “Here is the
question I have been waiting so long to ask. Now: who is Herr Grünlich?”
Tony sat up, looking at him quickly, her eyes shifting back and forth
like those of a person recollecting himself on coming out of a dream.
She was feeling again the sense of increased personal importance first
experienced when Herr Grünlich proposed for her hand.
“Oh, is that what you want to know, Morten?” she said weightily.
“Well, I will tell you. It was really very painful for me to have
Thomas mention his name like that, the first afternoon; but since you
have already heard of him--well, Herr Grünlich, Bendix Grünlich, is
a business friend of my father, a well-to-do Hamburg merchant, who
has asked for my hand. No, no,” she replied quickly to a movement of
Morten’s, “I have refused him; I have never been able to make up my
mind to yield him my consent for life.”
“And why not?--if I may ask,” said Morten awkwardly.
“Why? Oh, good heavens, because I couldn’t endure him,” she cried
out in a passion. “You ought to have seen him, how he looked and how
he acted. Among other things, he had yellow whiskers--dreadfully
unnatural. I’m sure he curled them and put on gold powder, like the
stuff we use for the Christmas nuts. And he was underhanded. He fawned
on my Father and Mother and chimed in with them in the most shameful
way--”
Morten interrupted her. “But what does this mean: ‘That trims it up
uncommonly.’”
Tony broke into a nervous giggle.
“Well, he talked like that, Morten. He wouldn’t say ‘That looks very
well’ or ‘It goes very well with the room.’ He was frightfully silly, I
tell you. And very persistent; he simply wouldn’t be put off, although
I never gave him anything but sarcasm. Once he made such a scene--he
nearly wept--imagine a man weeping!”
“He must have worshipped you,” Morten said softly.
“Well, what affair was that of mine?” she cried out, astonished,
turning around on her sand-heap.
“You are cruel, Fräulein Tony. Are you always cruel? Tell me: You
didn’t like this Herr Grünlich. But is there any one to whom you have
been more gracious? Sometimes I think: Has she a cold heart? Let me
tell you something: a man is not idiotic simply because he weeps when
you won’t look at him. I swear it. I am not sure, not at all, that I
wouldn’t do the same thing. You see, you are such a dainty, spoilt
thing. Do you always make fun of people that lie at your feet? Have you
really a cold heart?”
After the first giggle, Tony’s lip began to quiver. She turned on him
a pair of great distressed eyes, which slowly filled with tears as she
said softly: “No, Morten, you should not think that of me--you must not
think that of me.”
“I don’t; indeed I don’t,” he cried, with a laugh of mingled emotion
and hardly suppressed exultation. He turned fully about, so that he
lay supporting himself on his elbows, took her hands in both his, and
looked straight into hers with his kind steel-blue eyes, which were
excited and dreamy and exalted all at once.
“Then you--you won’t mock at me if I tell you--?”
“I know, Morten,” she answered gently, looking away from him at the
fine white sand sifting through the fingers of her free hand.
“You know--and you--oh, Fräulein Tony!”
“Yes, Morten. I care a great deal for you. More than for any one else I
know.”
He started up, making awkward gestures with his arms, like a man
bewildered. Then he got to his feet, only to throw himself down again
by her side and cry in a voice that stammered, wavered, died away
and rose again, out of sheer joy: “Oh, thank you, thank you! I am so
happy! more than I ever was in all my life!” And he fell to kissing her
hands. After a moment he said more quietly; “You will be going back
to town soon, Tony, and my holidays will be over in two weeks; then I
must return to Göttingen. But will you promise me that you will never
forget this afternoon here on the beach--till I come back again with
my degree, and can ask your Father--however hard that’s going to be?
And you won’t listen to any Herr Grünlich meantime? Oh, it won’t be so
long--I will work like a--like anything! it will be so easy!”
“Yes, Morten,” she said dreamily, looking at his eyes, his mouth, his
hands holding hers.
He drew her hand close to his breast and asked very softly and
imploringly: “And won’t you--may I--seal the promise?”
She did not answer, she did not look at him, but moved nearer to him on
the sand-heap, and Morten kissed her slowly and solemnly on the mouth.
Then they stared in different directions across the sand, and both felt
furiously embarrassed.