Jenny brought her arms out from under the blanket and put them behind
her neck. It was icy cold in the room, and dark. No ray of light came
through the shutters. She struck a match and looked at her watch—it was
nearly seven. She could doze a little longer, and she crept down under
the blankets again, with her head deep in the pillow.
“Jenny, are you asleep?” Francesca opened the door without knocking, and
came close to the bed. She felt for her friend’s face in the dark and
stroked it. “Tired?”
“No. I am going to get up now.”
“When did you come home?”
“About three o’clock. I went to Prati for a bath before lunch and ate at
the Ripetta, you know, and when I came home I went to bed at once. I am
thoroughly rested. I’ll get up now.”
“Wait a moment. It’s very cold; let me light the fire.” Francesca lighted
the lamp on the table.
“Why not call the signora? Oh, Cesca, come here, let me look at you.”
Jenny sat up in bed.
Francesca placed the lamp on the table by the bed and turned slowly round
in the light of it. She had put on a white blouse with her green skirt
and thrown a striped scarf about her shoulders. Round her neck she wore
a double row of deep red corals, and long, polished drops hung from her
ears. She pulled her hair laughingly from her ears to show that the drops
were tied to them by means of darning wool.
“Fancy, I got them for sixty-eight lire—a bargain, wasn’t it? Do you
think they suit me?”
“Capitally! With that costume, too. I should like to paint you as you are
now.”
“Yes, do. I can sit to you if you like—I’m too restless nowadays to work.
Oh dear!” She sighed and sat down on the bed. “I had better go and bring
the coal.”
She came back carrying an earthenware pot of burning charcoal, and
stooped down over the little stove. “Stay in bed, dear, till it gets a
little warmer in here. I will make the tea and lay the table. I see you
have brought your drawing home. Let me have a look at it.” She placed the
board against a chair and held the lamp to it.
“I say! I say!”
“It is not too bad—what do you think? I am going to make a few more
sketches out there. I am planning a big picture, you see—don’t you think
it is a good subject, with all the working people and the mule-carts in
the excavation field?”
“Very good. I am sure you can make something of it. I should like to show
it to Gunnar and Ahlin. Oh, you are up! Let me do your hair. What a mass
of it you have, child. May I do it in the new fashion?—with curls, you
know.” Francesca pulled her fingers through her friend’s long, fair hair.
“Sit quite still. There was a letter for you this morning. I brought it
up. Did you find it? It was from your little brother, was it not?”
“Yes,” said Jenny.
“Was it nice?—were you pleased?”
“Yes, very nice. You know, Cesca, sometimes—only on a Sunday morning once
in a while—I wish I could fly home and go for a stroll in Nordmarken with
Kalfatrus. He is such a brick, that boy.”
Francesca looked at Jenny’s smiling face in the glass. She took down her
hair and began to brush it again.
“No, Cesca; there is no time for it.”
“Oh yes. If they come too early they can go into my room. It is in a
terrible state—a regular pigsty—but never mind. They won’t come so
early—not Gunnar, and I don’t mind him if he does, and not Ahlin either
for that matter. He has already been to see me this morning; I was in
bed, and he sat and talked. I sent him out on to the balcony while I
dressed, and then we went out and had a good meal at Tre Re. We have been
together the whole afternoon.”
Jenny said nothing.
“We saw Gram at Nazionale. Isn’t he awful? Have you ever seen anything
like it?”
“I don’t think he is bad at all. He is awkward, poor boy, exactly as
I was at first. He is one of those people who would like to enjoy
themselves, but don’t know how to.”
“I came from Florence this morning,” said Francesca, imitating him, and
laughed. “Ugh! If he had come by aeroplane at least.”
“You were exceedingly rude to him, my dear. It won’t do. I should have
liked to ask him here tonight, but I dared not because of you. I could
not take the risk of your being discourteous to him when he was our
guest.”
“No fear of that. You know that quite well.” Francesca was hurt.
“Do you remember that time when Douglas came home with me to tea?”
“Yes, after that model business, but that was quite a different matter.”
“Nonsense. It was no concern of yours.”
“Wasn’t it? When he had proposed to me and I had very nearly accepted
him.”
“How could he know?” said Jenny.
“Anyway, I had not quite said no, and the day before I had been with him
to Versailles. He kissed me there several times and lay with his head in
my lap, and when I told him I didn’t care for him he didn’t believe me.”
“It is not right, Cesca.” Jenny caught her eye in the mirror. “You are
the dearest little girl in the world when you use your brains, but
sometimes it seems as if you had no idea you are dealing with living
beings, with people who have feelings that you must respect. You _would_
respect them if you were not so thoughtless, for I know you only want to
be good and kind.”
“_Per Bacco._ Don’t be too sure of that. But I must show you some roses.
Ahlin bought me quite a load this afternoon at a Spanish stairs.” Cesca
smiled defiantly.
“You ought to stop that kind of thing, I think—if only because you know
he cannot afford it.”
“I don’t care. If he is in love with me, I suppose he likes it.”
“I won’t talk of reputation after all these doings of yours.”
“No, better not speak about my reputation. You are quite right there. At
home, in Christiania, I have spoilt my reputation past mending, once and
for all.” She laughed hysterically. “Damn it all! I don’t care.”
“I don’t understand you, Cesca darling. You don’t care for any of those
men. Why do you want.... And as to Ahlin, can’t you see he is in earnest?
Norman Douglas, too, was in earnest. You don’t know what you are doing. I
really do believe, child, that you’ve no instincts at all.”
Francesca put away brush and comb and looked at Jenny’s hairdressing in
the glass. She tried to retain her defiant little smile, but it faded
away and her eyes filled with tears.
“I had a letter this morning, too.” Her voice trembled. “From Berlin,
from Borghild.” Jenny rose from the dressing-table. “Yes, perhaps you had
better get ready. Will you put the kettle on, or do you think we’d better
cook the artichokes first?” She began to make the bed. “We might call
Marietta—but don’t you think we had better do it ourselves?”
“Borghild writes that Hans Hermann was married last week. His wife is
already expecting a child.”
Jenny put the matchbox on the table. She glanced at Francesca’s miserable
little face and then went quietly up to her.
“It is that singer, Berit Eck, you know, he was engaged to.” Francesca
spoke in a faint voice, leaning for an instant against her friend, and
then began to arrange the sheets with trembling hands.
“But you knew they were engaged—more than a year ago.”
“Yes—let me do that, Jenny; you lay the table. I know, of course, that
you knew all about it.”
Jenny laid the table for four. Francesca put the counterpane on the bed
and brought the roses. She stood fumbling with her blouse, then pulled
out a letter from inside it and twisted it between her fingers.
“She met them at the Thiergarten—she writes. She says—oh, she can be
brutal sometimes, Borghild.” Francesca went quickly across the room,
pulled open the door of the stove, and threw the letter in. Then she sank
down in an arm-chair and burst into tears.
Jenny went to her and put one arm round her neck.
“Cesca, dearest little Cesca!”
Francesca pressed her face against Jenny’s arm:
“She looked so miserable, poor thing. She hung on his arm, and he seemed
sullen and angry. I can quite imagine it. I am sorry for her—fancy
allowing herself to become dependent on him in such a way. He has brought
her to her knees, I am sure. How could she be such an idiot, when she
knew him? Oh, but think of it, Jenny! He is going to have a child by
somebody else—oh, my God! my God!”
Jenny sat on the arm of the chair. Cesca nestled close to her:
“I suppose you are right—I have no instincts. Perhaps I never loved him
really, but I should have liked to have a child by him. And yet I could
not make up my mind. Sometimes he wanted me to marry him straight off,
go to the registry office, but I wouldn’t. They would have been so angry
with me at home, and people would have said we were obliged to marry, if
we had done it that way. I did not want that either, although I knew they
thought the worst of me all the same, but that did not worry me. I knew I
was ruining my reputation for his sake, but I did not care, and I don’t
care now, I tell you.
“But he thought I refused because I was afraid he would not marry me
afterwards. ‘Let’s go to the registry office first, then, you silly
girl,’ he said, but I would not go. He thought it was all sham. ‘You
cold!’ he said; ‘you are not cold any longer than you choose to be.’
Sometimes I almost thought I wasn’t. Perhaps it was only fright, for he
was such a brute; he beat me sometimes—nearly tore the clothes off me. I
had to scratch and bite to protect myself—and cry and scream.”
“And yet you went back to him?” said Jenny.
“I did, that is true. The porter’s wife did not want to do his rooms any
longer, so I went and tidied up for him. I had a key. I scrubbed the
floor and made his bed—Heaven only knows who had been in it.”
Jenny shook her head.
“Borghild was furious about it. She proved to me that he had a mistress.
I knew it, but I did not want proof. Borghild said he had given me the
key, because he wanted me to take them by surprise, and make me jealous,
so that I should give in, as I was compromised anyway. But she was not
right, for it was _me_ he loved—in his way—I know he loved me as much as
he could love anybody.
“Borghild was angry with me because I pawned the diamond ring I had from
our grandmother. I have never told you about it. Hans said he _had_ to
have money—a hundred _kroner_—and I promised to get it. Where I didn’t
know. I dared not write to father, for I’d spent more than my allowance
already, so I went and pawned my watch and a chain bracelet and that
ring—one of those old ones, you know, with a lot of little diamonds on
a big shield. Borghild was angry because it had not been given to her,
being the eldest, but grandmother had said I should have it, as I was
named after her. I went down one morning as soon as they opened; it was
hateful, but I got the money and I took it to Hans. He asked where I had
got it from, and I told him. Then he kissed me and said: ‘Give me the
ticket and the money, puss’—that is what he used to call me—and I did.
I thought he meant to redeem it, and said he need not. I was very much
moved, you see. ‘I will settle it in another way,’ said Hans, and went
out. I stayed in his rooms and waited. I was very excited, for I knew
he wanted the money, and I decided to go and pawn the things again the
next day. It would not be so horrid a second time—nothing more would be
difficult. I would give him everything now. Then he came—and what do you
think he had done?” She laughed amidst the tears. “He had redeemed the
things from the loan-office and pawned them with his private banker, as
he called him, who gave more for them.
“We went about all day together—champagne and all the rest of it—and I
went home with him at night. He played to me—my God, how he played! I
lay on the floor and cried. Nothing mattered as long as he played like
that, and to me alone. You have not heard him play; if you had, you would
understand me. But afterwards it was awful. We fought like mad, but I got
away at last. Borghild was awake when I came home. My dress was torn to
tatters. ‘You look like a street-girl,’ she said. I laughed. It was five
o’clock.
“I should have given in in the end, you know, if it hadn’t been for one
thing he had said. Sometimes he used to say: ‘You are the only decent
girl I have met. There is not a man who could get round you. I respect
you, puss.’ Fancy, he respected me for refusing to do what he begged and
worried me about constantly. I wanted to give in, for I would have done
anything to please him, but I could not get over my scare; he was so
brutal, and I knew there were others. If only he had not frightened me
so many times, I might have given up the struggle but then, of course, I
should have lost his respect. That is why I broke with him at last—for
wanting me to act in such a way that he would despise me.”
She nestled close to Jenny, who caressed her.
“Do you love me a little, Jenny?”
“You know I do, darling child.”
“You are so kind. Kiss me once more! Gunnar is kind, too—and Ahlin. I
shall be more careful. I don’t wish him any harm. Besides, I may marry
him, as he is so fond of me. Ahlin would never be brutal—I know that. Do
you think he would worry me? Not much. And I might have children. Some
day I will come into money, and he is so poor. We could live abroad and
we could both work. There is something refined about all his work, don’t
you think? That relief of the boys playing, for instance, and the cast
for the Almquist monument. Not very original, perhaps, in composition,
but so beautiful, so noble and restful, and the figures so perfectly
plastic.”
Jenny smiled a little and stroked the hair from Francesca’s forehead; it
was wet with tears.
“I wish I could work like that—always—but I have those eternal pains in
my heart and my head. My eyes hurt me too, and I am dead tired always.”
“You know what your doctor says—only nerves—every bit of it. If you only
would be sensible!”
“I know. That is what they all say, but I am afraid. You say that I
have no instincts—not in the way you mean, but I have them all right
in another way. I have been a devil all this week—I know it perfectly
well—but I have been waiting all the time for something awful I knew was
going to happen. You see, I was right.”
Jenny kissed her again.
“I was down at S. Agostino tonight. You know that image of the Madonna
that works miracles; I knelt before it and prayed to the Virgin. I think
I should be happier if I turned Catholic. A woman like the Virgin Mary
would understand. I ought really never to marry. I ought to go into a
convent—Siena, for instance. I might paint copies in the gallery and earn
some money for the convent. When I copied that angel for Melozzo da Forli
in Florence there was a nun painting every day. It wasn’t so bad.” She
laughed. “I mean, it was awful. I hated it. But they all said my copies
were so good—and so they were. I believe I should be happy in that way.
Oh, Jenny, if I only felt well and were at peace in my mind, but I am
so bewildered and frightened. If I were well, I could work, work—always.
And I’d be so good and nice—you don’t know how good I could be. I know
I am not always good. I give in to every mood when I feel as I do at
present. I am going to stop it, if only you will love me, all of you, but
you especially. Let us ask that Gram here. Next time I see him I’ll be so
nice and sweet to him, you see. We’ll ask him here and take him out, and
I will do anything to amuse him. Do you hear, Jenny? Are you pleased with
me now?”
“Yes, Cesca dear.”
“Gunnar does not think I can be serious,” she said pensively.
“Oh yes, he does; he only thinks you are very childish. You know what he
thinks of your work. Don’t you remember what he said in Paris about your
energy and your talent? Great and original, he said. He did not think
lightly of you that time.”
“Gunnar is a nice boy, but he was angry with me because of Douglas.”
“Any man would have been angry with you. I was, too.”
Francesca sighed and sat quiet an instant. “How did you get rid of Gram?
I thought you would never be able to shake that fellow off. I thought
that he would come home with you and sleep here on the sofa.”
Jenny laughed. “Oh no! He went with me to the Aventine and had breakfast;
then he went home. I rather like him, you know.”
“_Dio mio!_ Jenny, you are abnormally good. Have you not got enough to
mother already, with us? Or have you fallen in love with him?”
Jenny laughed again. “I don’t think there is much chance for me. I
suppose he will fall in love with you, like the rest, if you are not
careful.”
“They all do, it seems—Heaven only knows why. But they soon get cured,
and then they’re angry with me afterwards.” She sighed.
They heard steps on the stairs.
“That is Gunnar. I am going into my room a little. I must bathe my eyes.”
She passed Heggen in the door with a short greeting as she hurried away.
He shut the door and came into the room.
“You are all right, I see—but so you always are. You are an extraordinary
girl, Jenny. I suppose you have been working all the morning—and she?” He
pointed towards Cesca’s room.
“In a bad state, poor little thing.”
“I saw it in the papers when I looked in at the club. Have you finished
the study? Show me. It is very good.” Heggen held the picture to the
light and looked at it for some time. “This part stands out beautifully.
It is powerful work. Is she lying on her bed crying, do you think?”
“I don’t know. She has been crying in here. She had a letter from her
sister.”
“If ever I meet that cad,” said Heggen, “I shall find some pretext to
give him a sound thrashing.”
V
One afternoon Helge Gram sat in the club reading Norwegian newspapers. He
was alone in the reading-room when Miss Jahrman entered. He stood up and
bowed, but she came up to him with a smile and shook hands: “How are you
getting on? Jenny and I have been wondering why we never see you; we were
determined to come here on Saturday to see if we could find you and ask
you to go out with us somewhere. Have you got rooms yet?”
“No, I am sorry to say. I am still at the hotel. All the rooms I have
seen are so expensive.”
“But it is not cheaper at the hotel, is it? I suppose you have to pay
three lire a day at least? I thought so. It is not cheap in Rome, you
know. You must have rooms to the south in winter. You don’t speak
Italian, of course, but why did you not ask us to help you? Jenny or I
would willingly have gone with you to look for rooms.”
“Thank you very much. I would not dream of troubling you about that.”
“It is no trouble whatever. How are you getting on? Have you met any
people?”
“No. I came here on Saturday, but I did not speak to anybody. I read the
papers. The day before yesterday I saw Heggen in a café on the Corso and
exchanged a few words with him. I have also met two German doctors I knew
in Florence, and I went with them to Via Appi one day.”
“Ugh! German doctors are not nice, are they?”
Helge smiled, embarrassed.
“Perhaps not, but we have some interests in common, and when one goes
about without having anybody to talk to....”
“Yes, but you must make up your mind to speak Italian; you know the
language, don’t you? Come for a walk with me and we will talk Italian all
the way. I shall be a very strict _maestra_, you will see.”
“Thank you very much, Miss Jahrman, but I am afraid you will not find me
very entertaining—except unwittingly perhaps.”
“Rubbish! Look here, I’ve got an idea! Two old Danish ladies left for
Capri the day before yesterday. Their room may be vacant still. I am sure
it is. A nice little room and cheap. I don’t remember the name of the
street, but I know where it is. Shall I go with you and have a look at
it? Come along.”
On the stairs she turned round and smiled awkwardly at him:
“I was awfully rude to you the other evening, Mr. Gram. Please accept my
apologies.”
“My dear Miss Jahrman!”
“I was out of sorts that day. You cannot imagine what a scolding I got
from Jenny, but I deserved it.”
“Not at all. I was to blame for forcing my company upon you, but it
was so tempting to speak to you when I saw you and heard that you were
Norwegians.”
“Of course, an adventure like that could be great fun, but I spoilt it
with my bad temper. I was ill, you see. My nerves worry me; I can’t sleep
and I can’t work, and then I get horrid sometimes.”
“Are you feeling better now?”
“Not really. Jenny and Gunnar are working—everybody works but myself. Is
your work getting on all right? Aren’t you pleased? Every afternoon I sit
to Jenny for my picture. I am having a day off today. I think she does it
only to prevent me from being alone with my thoughts. Sometimes she takes
me for a ride outside the walls. She is like a mother to me—_Mia cara
mammina_.”
“You are very fond of your friend?”
“I should think so! She is so good to me. I am delicate and spoilt, and
nobody but Jenny could stand me in the long run. She is so clever too,
intelligent and energetic. And pretty—don’t you think she is lovely? You
should see her hair when it is let down! When I am good she lets me do it
for her. Here we are,” she said.
They mounted a pitch-dark staircase.
“You mustn’t mind the stairs; ours are still worse: you will see for
yourself when you pay us a visit. Come one evening. We’ll get hold of the
others and all go for a proper rag. I spoilt the last one for you.”
She rang a bell on the top floor. The woman who opened the door looked
nice and tidy. She showed them a room with two beds. It looked out over a
grey backyard with washing hanging in the windows, but there were plants
on the balconies; loggias and terraces with green shrubs rose above the
grey roofs.
Francesca went on talking to the woman while she examined the beds and
looked into the stove, and explained things to Helge:
“There’s sun here all the morning. When one bed’s moved out, the room
will look bigger; and the stove is all right. The price is forty lire
without light and fire, and two for _servizio_. It is cheap. Shall I say
you take it? You can move in tomorrow, if you like.”
“Don’t thank me. I just loved to help you,” she said, as they walked down
the stairs. “I hope you will like it. Signora Papi is very clean, I know.”
“It is not a common virtue here, I suppose?”
“No, indeed. But I don’t think the people who let rooms in Christiania
are much better. My sister and I lived once in rooms in Holbergsgate and
I had a pair of patent leather shoes under the bed, but I never dared to
take them out. Sometimes I peeped at them under the bed; they looked like
two little white woolly lambs.”
“I have no experience in that way. I have always lived at home.”
Francesca burst out laughing all of a sudden. “The signora thought I
was your _moglie_, do you know, and that we were going to live there
together. I said I was your cousin, but she did not catch on. _Cugina_—it
is not an accepted relationship anywhere in the world, it seems.”
Both laughed.
“Would you care to go for a walk?” asked Miss Jahrman suddenly. “Shall we
go to Ponte Molle? Have you been there? Is it too far? We can come back
by tram.”
“Is it not too far for _you_? You’re not well.”
“It does me good to walk. ‘You must walk more,’ says Gunnar always—Mr.
Heggen, you know.”
She chatted all the time, looking at him now and again to see if he was
amused. They took the new road along by the Tiber; the yellow-grey river
rolled between the green slopes. Small, pearl-tinted clouds sailed over
the dark shrubbery of Monte Mario and the blocks of villas between the
evergreen trees.
Francesca nodded to a policeman and said laughingly to Gram:
“Do you know, that man has proposed to me. I used to walk here very often
alone, and sometimes I spoke to him, and one day he proposed. The son of
our tobacconist has also proposed to me. Jenny says it was my own fault,
and I suppose it was.”
“Miss Winge seems to scold you very often. She is a strict mamma, I can
see.”
“No, she isn’t. She only scolds me when I need scolding: I wish somebody
had done it long before.” She sighed. “But nobody ever did.”
Helge Gram felt quite free and easy in her company. There was something
very soft about her—her lissom gait, her voice, and her face under the
big mushroom hat. He did not quite like Jenny Winge when he thought of
her now; she had such determined grey eyes and such an enormous appetite.
Cesca had just told him that she herself could hardly eat anything at
present.
“Miss Winge is a very determined young lady, I should think,” he said.
“No doubt about that! She has a very strong character; she has always
been wanting to paint, but she had to go on teaching, teaching! She has
had a hard time, poor Jenny. You would not believe it when you see her
now. She is so strong, she never gives in. When I first met her at the
art school I thought she was very reserved, almost hard—armour-plated,
Gunnar called it. She was very retiring; I did not know her really till
we came out here. Her mother is a widow for the second time—she is a
Mrs. Berner—and there are three more children. They had only three small
rooms, imagine, and Jenny had to live in a tiny servant’s room, work and
study to complete her education, besides helping her mother in the house
and with money as well. They could not afford a servant. She knew nobody
and had no friends. She shuts herself up, as it were, when things go
badly, and does not want to complain, but when she is in luck she opens
her arms to every one that needs comfort and support.”
Francesca’s cheeks were burning. She looked at him with her big eyes.
“All the bad luck I have had has been my own doing. I am a bit
hysterical, and give way to all sorts of moods. Jenny gives me a
talking-to; she says that if anything irreparable happens to you it is
always your own fault, and if you cannot train your will to master your
moods and impulses and so on, and have not complete control of yourself,
you might as well commit suicide at once.”
Helge smiled at her. “Jenny says,” and “Gunnar says,” and “I had a friend
who used to say.” How young and trusting she seemed!
“Don’t you think it possible that Miss Winge’s principles might not apply
to you? You are so different, you two. No two people have the same views
on life itself even.”
“No,” she said quietly. “But I am so fond of Jenny. I need her so.”
They came to the bridge. Francesca bent over the railing. Farther up
the river there was a factory; its tall chimney stood reflected in
the swift yellow water. Behind the undulating plain, far away, lay the
Sabine mountains, mud-grey and bare, and behind them, farther still, rose
snowclad peaks.
“Jenny has painted this with strong evening light on it. The factory and
the chimney are quite red. It was on a hot day, when you cannot see the
mountains for mist, but only a few white snow-peaks in the heavy metallic
blue of the sky, and the clouds above the snow. It is very pretty. I must
ask her to show it to you.”
“Shall we have some wine here?” he asked.
“It’ll soon be getting cold, but we might sit down a little.”
She led the way across the round piazza behind the bridge. She chose an
_osteria_ with a small garden. Behind a shed with chairs and tables stood
a seat under some bare elms. At the back of the garden was a meadow, and
on the opposite side of the river the slope appeared dark against the
limpid sky. Francesca broke a twig from an elder that grew by the fence;
it had small green shoots, with tops blackened by the cold.
“All the winter they stand like that, shivering with cold, but when
spring comes they have not been harmed.”
When she dropped the twig he picked it up and kept it. They had white
wine. Francesca mixed hers with water, and hardly drank any of it. She
smiled imploringly:
“Will you give me a cigarette?”
“With pleasure, if you think you can stand it.”
“I scarcely ever smoke now. Jenny has almost given it up for my sake. I
suppose she is making up for it tonight, though. She is with Gunnar.” She
laughed. “You must not tell Jenny that I smoked, promise me.”
“I won’t,” he said, laughing too.
She smoked in silence for a while: “I wish she and Gunnar would marry,
but I am afraid they won’t. They have always been such friends. You don’t
easily fall in love with a friend, do you? One you knew so well before.
They are very much alike in character, and it is just the contrast that
attracts you, people say. It is stupid it should be so, I think, for it
would be much better to fall in love with somebody akin to you, as it
were; it would save all the misery and disappointment, don’t you think?
“Gunnar’s home is a small farm in the country. He came to Christiania, to
an aunt, who took care of him, because they were so poor at home. He was
only nine then, and had to carry the washing; his aunt kept a laundry.
Later he got into a factory. He’s taught himself all he knows by sheer
hard work. He reads a lot; he takes an interest in everything, and wants
to get to the bottom of it. Jenny says he even forgets to paint. He has
learnt Italian thoroughly; he can read any book—poetry, too.
“Jenny is the same. She has learnt heaps because it interested her. I can
never learn out of books; reading always gives me a headache. But when
Jenny or Gunnar tell me things, I remember them. You are very clever too;
do tell me about the things you are studying. There is nothing I love
more, and I store it in my memory.
“Gunnar has taught me to paint too. I always loved to draw; it came
naturally. Three years ago I met him in the mountains at home. I had
gone there to sketch. I made very nice pictures, quite correct, but
not an ounce of art in them. I could see it myself, but I could not
understand the reason why. I saw there was something missing in my
pictures—something I wanted to put into them—but did not quite know what
it was, and had not the least idea how to get it there.
“I spoke to him about it, showed him my things. He knew less than I about
technique—he is only a year older than I—but he could make better use
of what he had learnt. Then I made two pictures of a summer night in
that wonderful chiaroscuro, where all the colours are so deep and yet
with such a strong light. They were not good, of course, but they had
something of what I had wanted. I could see they were done by me and not
by any little girl who had just learnt something about drawing. You see
what I mean?
“I’ve a subject out here—on the other way to the city. We’ll go there
another time. It is a road between two vineyards—quite a narrow one. In
one place there are two baroque gates with iron gratings, each of them
with a cypress beside it. I have made a couple of coloured drawings.
There is a heavy dark blue sky above the cypresses and clearness of green
air, and a star, and a faint outline of houses and cupolas in the distant
city. I wanted the picture to be sort of stirring, you see.”
Twilight began to fall upon them. Her face looked pale under the brim of
her hat.
“Don’t you think I ought to get well, and be allowed to work?”
“Yes,” he said in a low voice; “dear....”
He could hear that she was breathing heavily. They were both quiet for a
moment, then he said:
“You are very fond of your friends, Miss Jahrman?”
“I want to like everybody, you see,” she said quietly, taking a long
breath.
Helge Gram bent suddenly forward and kissed her hand, which rested white
and small on the table.
“Thank you,” said Francesca in a low voice, and after a short pause:
“Let us go back now; it is getting cold.”
The next day when he moved into his new room a majolica vase with
small blue iris was standing in the sunlight on his table. The signora
explained that his “cousin” had brought them. When Helge was alone he
bent over the flowers and kissed them one by one.