When she awoke in the morning she told herself that he would very likely
not come at all, and so much the better—but when he knocked at her door
she was pleased all the same.
“I have had nothing to eat yet, Miss Winge. Could you give me a cup of
tea and some bread?”
Jenny looked about her in the room.
“Yes, but the room isn’t done yet.”
“I’ll shut my eyes while you lead me on to the balcony,” said Gram from
behind the door. “I am dying for a cup of tea.”
“Very well, half a minute.” Jenny covered her bed with the counterpane,
tidied the dressing-table, and changed her dressing-jacket for a long
kimono. “Come in, and please go and sit on the balcony while I get your
tea.” She brought out a stool and placed some bread and cheese on it.
Gram looked at her bare, white arms in the long, fluttering sleeves of
the dark blue kimono with a pattern of yellow and purple iris.
“What a pretty thing you have on. It looks like a real geisha dress.”
“It is real. Cesca and I bought these in Paris to wear at home in the
morning.”
“It is a capital idea, I think, to go about like that and look pretty
when you are alone. I like it.”
He lit a cigarette and gazed at the smoke as it rose in the air.
“Ugh! At home the maid and my mother and sister used to look like
anything in the morning. Don’t you think women ought always to make
themselves look as pretty as possible?”
“Yes, but it isn’t always possible when you have to do housework.”
“Perhaps not, but they might at least do their hair before breakfast and
put on a thing like that, don’t you think?”
He was just in time to save a cup, which she was on the point of brushing
down with her sleeve.
“You see how practical it is. Now, drink your tea; you said you were
thirsty.”
She discovered suddenly that Cesca’s whole stock of coloured stockings
were hanging to dry on the balcony, and she removed them a little
nervously.
While he was having his tea he explained:
“I lay awake last night thinking, almost until dawn, and then, of course,
I overslept, so had no time to stop at the _latteria_ on my way. I think
we should go to Via Cassia to that anemone place of yours.”
“Anemone place.” Jenny laughed. “When you were a boy did you, too, have
special places for violets and bluebells, and kept them a secret from the
others and went there all alone every year?”
“Of course I had. I know a beech grove by the old road to Holmenkollen,
where there are real scented violets.”
“I know it too,” she interrupted triumphantly, “to the right, just before
the road branches off to Sorkedal.”
“Exactly. I had some other places too, on Fredriksborg and——”
“I must go in and put on my dress,” said Jenny.
“Put on the one you had yesterday, please!” he called after her.
“It will get so dusty”—but she changed her mind in the same moment. Why
should she not make herself look nice? The old black silk had been her
best for a good many years; she need not treat it with such deference any
more.
“I don’t care! but it fastens at the back, and Cesca’s not in.”
“Come out here and I’ll button it for you. I am an expert at it. It seems
to me I have done nothing all my life but fasten mother’s and Sophy’s
buttons at the back.”
She could manage all but two, and she allowed Gram to help her with them.
As she stood by him in the sunshine while he fastened her dress, he
became aware of the faint, mild fragrance of her hair and her body. He
noticed one or two small rents in the silk, which were carefully darned,
and the sight of it filled his heart with an infinite tenderness towards
her.
* * * * *
“Do you think Helge a nice name?” he asked, when they were having lunch
at an _osteria_ far out on the Campagna.
“Yes; I like it.”
“Do you know that it is my Christian name?”
“Yes; I saw you had written it in the visitors’ book at the club.” She
blushed slightly, thinking he might believe that she had looked it up on
purpose.
“I suppose it is nice. On the whole, there are few names that are nice
or ugly in themselves; it all depends if you like the people or not.
When I was a boy we had a nurse called Jenny; I could not bear her,
and ever since I thought the name was hideous and common. It seemed to
me preposterous that you should be called Jenny, but now I think it so
pretty; it gives one an idea of fairness. Can you not hear how delicately
fair it sounds?—Jenny—a dark woman could not be called that, not Miss
Jahrman, for instance. Francesca suits her capitally, don’t you think? It
sounds so capricious, but Jenny is nice and bright.”
“It is a name we’ve always had in my father’s family,” she said, by way
of an answer.
“What do you think of Rebecca, for instance?”
“I don’t know. Rather harsh and clattering, perhaps, but it is pretty,
though.”
“My mother’s name is Rebecca,” said Helge. “I think it sounds hard, too.
My sister’s name is Sophy. She married only to get away from home, I am
sure, and have a place of her own. I wonder mother could be so delighted
to get her married, considering the cat-and-dog life she herself has led
with my father. But there was no end of a fuss about the Rev. Arnesen,
when my sister got engaged to him. I can’t stand my brother-in-law,
neither can father, I believe, but mother!...
“My fiancée—I was engaged once, you know—her name was Catherine, but she
was always called Titti. I saw she had that name put into the papers,
too, when her marriage was announced.
“It was a stupid thing altogether. It was three years ago. She was
giving some lessons in the school where I was teaching. She was not a
bit pretty, but she flirted with everybody, and no woman had ever taken
any notice of me—which you can easily understand, when you think of me
as I was here at first. She always laughed at everything—she was only
nineteen. Heaven knows why she took to me.
“I was jealous, and it amused her. The more jealous she made me, the more
in love was I. I suppose it was less love than male vanity, having a
sweetheart very much in demand. I was very young then. I wanted her to be
exclusively taken up with me—a very difficult proposition as I was then.
I have often wondered what she wanted me for.
“My people wanted our engagement to be kept secret, because we were so
young. Titti wanted it made public, and when I reproached her for being
too much interested in other men, she said she could not spend all her
time with me, as our engagement was a secret.
“I took her home, but she could not get on with my mother. They always
quarrelled, and Titti simply hated her. I suppose it would have made
no difference to mother if I had been engaged to somebody else; the
fact that I was going to marry was enough to put her against any woman.
Well—Titti broke it off.”
“Did it hurt you very much?” Jenny asked quietly.
“Yes, at the time. I did not quite get over it till I came here, but I
think it was mostly my pride that suffered. Don’t you think that if I had
loved her really, I should have wished her to be happy when she married
another? But I didn’t.”
“It would have been almost too unselfish and noble,” said Jenny, smiling.
“Oh, I don’t know. That is how you ought to feel if you really love.
Don’t you think it is strange that mothers never care for their sons’
sweethearts? They never do.”
“I suppose a mother thinks no woman is good enough for her boy.”
“When a daughter gets engaged it is quite different. I saw that in the
case of my sister and the fat, red-haired clergyman. There was never much
sympathy between my sister and myself, but when I saw that fellow making
love to her, and thought that he.... Ugh!
“I sometimes think women who have been married some time become more
cynical than we men ever are. They don’t give themselves away, but you
notice it all the same. Marriage to them means merely business. When a
daughter marries they are pleased to have her saddled on to some one who
can feed and clothe her, and if she has to put up with the shady side
of marriage in return, it’s not worth making a fuss about. But if a son
takes upon himself the same kind of burden for a similar return, they are
not so enthusiastic about it. Don’t you think there is something in it?”
“Sometimes,” said Jenny.
When she came home that evening she lit the lamp and sat down to write to
her mother to thank her for the birthday greetings and tell her how she
had spent the day.
She laughed at herself for having been so solemn the night before. Heaven
knows, she had had difficulties and been lonely, but so had most of the
young people she knew. Some of them had been worse off than she. She
thought of all the young girls—and the old ones—who had taught at the
school; nearly all of them had an old mother to support, or sisters and
brothers to help. And Gunnar?—and Gram? Even Cesca, the spoilt child from
a rich home, had fought her way, since she had left home at twenty-one
and kept herself on the little money left her by her mother.
As to loneliness, she had chosen it herself. All said and done, she had
perhaps not been quite sure about her own powers, and to deaden her
doubts, had held by the idea that she was different from other people—and
they had been repelled. She had made some headway since, had proved to
herself that she could do something, and had grown more friendly, less
reserved, than before. She was obliged to admit that she had never made
any advances, either as a child or since; she had always been too proud
to take the first step. All the friends she had—from her stepfather to
Gunnar and Cesca—had first stretched out their hands to her. And why
had she always imagined that she was passionate? Such nonsense! She who
had reached twenty-eight without ever having been the least in love.
She believed that she would not be a failure as a woman, if once she
were fond of a man, for she was healthy, good looking, and had sound
instincts, which her work and outdoor life had developed. And very
naturally she longed to love and be loved—longed to live. But to imagine
that she would be able, from sheer rebellion of her senses, to fall into
the arms of any man who happened to be near at a critical moment was
utter nonsense. It was only because she would not admit to herself that
she was dull sometimes and wished to make a conquest and flirt a little
just like other girls—a pastime which in reality she did not approve
of—that she preferred to imagine she was consumed by a thirst for life
and clamouring senses. Such high-flown words were only invented by men,
poor things, not knowing that women generally are simple and vain, and
so stupid that they are bored unless there is a man to entertain them.
That is the origin of the legend of the sensual woman—they are as rare as
black swans, or disciplined, educated women.
Jenny moved Francesca’s portrait on to the easel. The white blouse and
the green skirt looked hard and ugly. It would have to be toned down. The
face was well drawn, the position good.
This episode with Gram was really nothing to be serious about. It
was time she became reasonable. She must do away with those silly
notions that she was afraid of every man she met—as with Gunnar in the
beginning—afraid of falling in love with him, and almost more of his
falling in love with her: a thing she was so unused to that it bewildered
her.
Why could one not be friends with a man? If not, the world would be all a
muddle. She and Gunnar were friends—a solid, comfortable friendship.
There was much about Gram that would make a friendship between them quite
natural. They had had much the same experiences. He was so young and so
full of confidence in her; she liked his “Is it not?” and “Don’t you
think?” He had talked yesterday about being in love with her—he thought
at least he was, he said. She smiled to herself. A man would not speak
to her as he had done if he had really fallen in love with a woman and
wanted to win her.
“He is a dear boy; that’s what he is.”
Today he had not broached the subject. She liked him when he said that if
he had been really fond of the girl he would have wished her happiness
with the other man.
X
Jenny and Helge were running hand in hand down Via Magnanapoli. The
street was merely a staircase, leading to the Trajan Forum. On the last
step he drew her to him and kissed her.
“Are you mad? You mustn’t kiss people in the street here.”
And they both laughed. One evening they had been spoken to by two
policemen on the Lateran piazza for walking up and down under the pines
along the old wall kissing each other.
The last sunrays brushed the bronze figures on top of the pillar and
burned on the walls and on the tree-tops in the gardens. The piazza lay
in the shade, with its old, rickety houses round the excavated forum
below the street level.
* * * * *
Jenny and Helge leaned over the railing and tried to count the fat, lazy
cats which had taken their abode among the stumps of pillars on the
grass-covered plot. They seemed to revive a little as the twilight began
to fall. A big red one which had been lying on the pedestal of the Trajan
pillar stretched himself, sharpened his claws on the masonry, jumped down
on to the grass, and ran away.
“I make it twenty-three,” said Helge.
“I counted twenty-five.” She turned round and dismissed a post card
seller, who was recommending his wares in fragments of every possible
language.
She leaned again over the railing and stared vaguely at the grass, giving
way to the pleasant languor of a long sunny day and countless kisses out
in the green Campagna. Helge held one of her hands on his arm and patted
it—she moved it along his sleeve until it rested between both of his.
Helge smiled happily.
“What is it, dear?”
“I am thinking of those Germans.” She laughed too—quietly and
indifferently, as happy people do at trifles that do not concern them.
They had passed the Forum in the morning and sat down a moment on the
high pedestal of the Focas pillar, talking in whispers. Beneath them
lay the crumbled ruins, gilded by the sun, and small black tourists
rambled among the stones. A newly married German couple were walking by
themselves, seeking solitude in the midst of the crowd of travellers. He
was fair and ruddy of face, wore knickerbockers and carried a kodak, and
read to his wife out of Baedeker. She was very young, plump, and dark,
with the inherited stamp of _hausfrau_ on her smooth, floury face. She
sat down on a tumbled pillar, posing to her husband, who took a snapshot
of her. And the two who sat above, under the Focas pillar, whispering of
their love, laughed, heedless of the fact that they were sitting above
the Forum Romanum.
“Are you hungry?” asked Helge.
“No; are you?”
“No—but do you know what I should like to do?”
“Well?”
“I should like to go home with you and have supper. What do you say to
that?”
“Yes, of course.”
They walked home arm in arm through small side streets. In her dark
staircase he drew her suddenly to him, and kissed her with such force and
passion that her heart began to beat violently. She was afraid, and at
the same time angry with herself for being so, and whispered in the dark:
“My darling,” to prove to herself that she was calm.
“Wait a moment,” whispered Helge, when she was going to light the lamp,
and he kissed her again. “Put on the geisha-dress; you look so sweet in
it. I will sit on the balcony while you change.”
Jenny changed her dress in the dark; she put the kettle on and arranged
the anemones and the almond sprigs before she called him in and lighted
up.
He took her again in his arms and said:
“Oh, Jenny, you are so lovely. Everything about you is lovely; it is
heavenly to be with you. I wish I could be with you always.”
She took his face between her two hands.
“Jenny—you wish it—that we could be always together?”
She looked into his beautiful brown eyes:
“Yes, Helge; I do.”
“Do you wish that this spring—our spring—never would end?”
“Yes—oh yes.” She threw herself suddenly into his arms and kissed him;
her half-open lips and closed eyes begged for more kisses; his words
about their spring, that should never cease, awoke a painful anxiety in
her heart that the spring and their dream _would_ come to an end. And yet
behind it all was a dread, which she did not try to explain to herself,
but it came into existence when he asked if she wished they could always
be together.
“I wish I were not going home,” said Helge sadly.
“But I am going home soon too,” she said softly, “and we shall probably
come back here together.”
“You are quite determined to go? Are you sorry that I have upset all your
plans in this way?”
She gave him a hurried kiss and ran to the kettle, which was boiling over.
“No, you silly boy. I had almost made up my mind before, because mamma
wants me badly.” She gave a short laugh. “I am ashamed of myself—she is
so pleased that I am coming home to help her, and it is really only to be
with my lover. But it is all right. I can live cheaper at home even if I
help them a little, and I may be able to earn something. What I can save
now, I shall want here later.”
Helge took the cup she gave him and seized her hand:
“But next time you come here you will come with me; for I suppose you
will—you mean—that we should marry?”
His face was so young and so anxiously inquiring that she had to kiss him
several times, forgetting that she had been afraid of that word, which
had not been mentioned between them before.
“I suppose that will be the most practical plan, you dear boy, since we
have agreed to be together always.”
Helge kissed her hand, asking quietly: “When?”
“When you like,” she answered as quietly—and firmly.
Again he kissed her hand.
“What a pity we can’t be married out here,” he said a moment after in a
different voice.
She did not answer, but stroked his hair softly. Helge sighed:
“But I suppose we ought not to, as we are going home so soon in any case.
Your mother would feel hurt, don’t you think, at such a hurried marriage?”
Jenny was silent. It had never occurred to her that she owed her mother
any account of her doings—her mother had not consulted her when she had
wanted to marry again.
“It would hurt my people, I know. I don’t like to admit it, but it is so,
and I should much prefer to write and tell them that I am engaged. As you
are going home before me, it would be nice of you to go and see them.”
Jenny bent her head as if to shake off a disagreeable sensation, and said:
“I will, dear, if you wish me to—of course.”
“I don’t like it at all. It has been so lovely here—only you and I,
nobody else in all the world. But mother would be so vexed, you see, and
I don’t want to make things worse for her than they are already. I don’t
care for my mother any longer—she knows it, and is so grieved at it. It
is only a formality, I know, but she would suffer if she thought I wanted
to keep her out in the cold. She would think it was vengeance for the old
story, you know. When we are through with all that, we will get married,
and nobody will have anything more to say. I wish so much that it would
be soon—don’t you?”
She kissed him in answer.
“I want you,” he whispered, and she made no resistance when he caressed
her. But he let her go suddenly and, buttering his biscuit, began to eat.
Afterwards they sat by the stove smoking, she in the easy-chair and he on
the floor with his head in her lap.
“Isn’t Cesca coming back tonight either?” he asked suddenly.
“No; she is staying in Tivoli till the end of the week,” Jenny answered a
little nervously.
“You have such pretty, slender feet.”
“You are so lovely—oh, so lovely—and I am so fond of you. You don’t know
how I love you, Jenny—I should like to lie down on the floor at your
feet.”
“Helge! Helge!” His sudden violence frightened her, but then she said to
herself: he is my own darling boy. Why should I be afraid of him.
“No, Helge—don’t. Not the shoes I stamp about with in those dirty
streets.”
Helge rose—sobered and humble. She tried to laugh the whole matter away.
“There may be many dangerous bacilli on those shoes, you know.”
“Ugh! What a pedant you are. And you pretend to be an artist.” He laughed
too, and to hide his embarrassment, he went on boisterously: “A nice
sweetheart you are. Let me smell: I thought so—you smell of turpentine
and paint.”
“Nonsense, dear; I have not touched a brush for three weeks. But you will
have to wash, sir.”
“Have you any carbolic, in case of infection?” While he was washing his
hands he said: “My father used to say that women are utterly destitute of
poetry.”
“Your father is quite right.”
“And they can cure people by ordering cold baths,” he said, with a laugh.
Jenny became suddenly serious. She went to him, put her hands on his
shoulders, and kissed him: “I did not want you at my feet, Helge.”
When he had gone she was ashamed of herself. He was right. She did want
to give him a cold bath, but she would not do it again, for she loved
him. She had played a poor part tonight. She had thought of Signora
Rosa. What would she have said if anything had happened? It was rather
humiliating to realize that she had been afraid of a scene with an angry
signora—and tried to get out of her promise to her lover. In accepting
his love and responding to his kisses she had as good as bound herself
over to give him all he asked. She, of all people, would not play a game
where she took everything and gave but little—not more than she could
easily withdraw, if she changed her mind.
It was only nerves—this dread of something she had never tried. But she
was glad he had not asked for more than she could willingly give, for
there would come a moment, she thought, when she herself would wish to
give him all.
It had all come so slowly and unnoticeably—just like spring in the
south—and as steadily and surely. No sudden transition, no cold and
stormy days that made one long desperately for the sun, for wealth of
light and consuming heat. There had been none of those tremendously
clear, endless, maddening spring nights of her own country. When the
sunny day was past, night came quietly, the cold and darkness bringing
peaceful sleep between the bright, warm days—each new day a little
warmer than the one before, each day with more flowers on the Campagna,
which did not seem greener than yesterday, yet was much more green and
mellow than the week before.
Her love for him had come in the same way. Every night she looked forward
to the next sunny day with him on the Campagna, but gradually it was more
himself and his young love that she longed for. She had let him kiss her
because it gave her pleasure, and from day to day their kisses had grown
more frequent, till at last words faded away and kisses took their place.
He had become more manly and mature from day to day; the uncertainty
and the sudden despondency of the earlier days had quite left him. She
herself was brighter, friendlier, more sure of herself, not the coldness
of youth, always ready to fight, but more a calm confidence in herself.
She was not disappointed with life now because it would not shape itself
according to her dreams, but accepted each day, trusting that the unknown
was right and could be turned to advantage.
Why should not love come in the same way, slowly, like the warmth that
grows day by day, thawing and tempering, and not as she had always
believed it would come—as a storm that would change her at once into a
woman she did not know, and whom her will could not control.
Helge accepted this slow, sound growth of her love quite naturally and
calmly. Every night when they parted her heart was filled with gratitude
to him, because he had not asked for more than she could give that day.
Oh, if they could have stayed here till May—till summer—the whole of
summer, so that their love might ripen until they belonged to one another
completely. They would go together to the mountains in the summer; the
marriage could take place here later, or at home in the autumn, for they
would marry, of course, in the ordinary way, since they were fond of each
other. When she thought of her journey home, she was almost afraid that
she would awake as from a dream, but she told herself such thoughts were
nonsense, since she loved him and he loved her. She did not like the
disturbing elements of engagements, visiting relations, and so on, though
they were trifles after all.
Heaven be praised for this blessed spring in Rome that had brought them
together—they two alone on the green Campagna among the daisies.
“Don’t you think Jenny will be sorry some day that she ever got engaged
to that Gram?” asked Francesca one evening when she was sitting in
Heggen’s room.
He shook the ashes from his cigarette without answering. He discovered
all of a sudden that it had never struck him as indiscreet to speak about
Francesca’s affairs to Jenny. But to speak about Jenny’s to Francesca was
quite another matter.
“Can you understand what she wants with him?” she asked again.
“Well, it’s hard to say. We don’t always understand what you women want
with this or that man. We imagine that we choose for ourselves, but we
are more like our brothers, the dumb animals, than we care to think.
Some say we are disposed to love—because of our natural state—place and
opportunity do the rest.”
“Ugh!” said Francesca, shrugging her shoulders. “If that is so, you, I
should say, are always disposed.”
Gunnar laughed reluctantly: “Or I have never been disposed enough; I have
never thought of any woman as the only one—and so on, and that is an
essential condition in love—because of our natural state.”
Francesca stared thoughtfully in front of her.
“I daresay you are right. But it happens sometimes that one falls in
love with somebody for some special reason—not only because time and
circumstances are favourable. I for one love _him_—you know who I
mean—because I don’t understand him. It seems to me impossible that
anybody could really be what he appeared to be. I always expected
something would happen that would explain what I saw. I searched for the
hidden treasure. You know how desperately anxious one gets to find the
longer one seeks. Even now, when I think that some other woman may find
it, I.... But there are some who love because the loved one is perfect
to them—can give them all they need. Have you ever been in love with any
woman to such an extent that you thought everything in her was right and
good and beautiful—that you could love everything in her?”
“No,” he said briskly.
“But that is real love, don’t you think? And that is how I thought Jenny
would love, but it is impossible for her to love Helge Gram like that.”
“I don’t know him really. I know only that he is not so stupid as he
looks—as the saying goes—I mean, there is more in him than you’d think at
first sight. I suppose Jenny has found out his real value.”
Cesca was quiet. She lit a cigarette and watched the flame of the wax
vesta till it burnt out.
“Have you noticed that he always asks, ‘Don’t you think?’ and ‘Is
it not?’? Has it not struck you that there is something effeminate,
something unfinished, about him?”
“Perhaps so. Possibly that’s what attracted her. She is strong and
independent herself, and might love a man weaker than herself.”
“I’ll tell you what I think. I don’t believe that Jenny really is so
strong and independent. She’s only been forced to be. At home she had
to help and support, and there was nobody to support her. She had to
take care of me, because I needed her—now it is Gram. She is strong and
determined, and she knows it, and nobody asks her in vain for help, but
nobody can go on for ever giving help and never getting any themselves.
Don’t you see that it will make her very lonely, always being the
strongest? She is lonely now, and if she marries that fellow she will
never be anything else. We all talk to her about ourselves, and she has
nobody she could talk to in the same way. She ought to have a husband she
could look up to, whose authority she should feel, one to whom she could
say: This is how I have lived and worked and fought, for I thought it
right, and who could judge if it was right? Gram cannot, because he is
her inferior. How can she know if she has been in the right, when she has
nobody with authority to confirm it? _Jenny_ should ask, ‘Is it not?’ and
‘Don’t you think?’—not he.”
They sat both quiet a while, then Heggen said:
“It is rather curious, Cesca, that when it is a question of your own
affairs you cannot make head or tail of it, but when it concerns somebody
else, I think you often can see clearer than any of us.”
“Perhaps. That is why I think sometimes I ought to go into a convent.
When I am outside a trouble I seem to understand it all, but when I am
mixed up in it myself I can’t see a thing.”