I
Towards evening of a clear and calm afternoon in May there was a haze
over the black sites of the city; the naked walls looked reddish yellow
and the factory chimneys a livery brown in the sunlight. Large and small
houses, high and low roofs, stood outlined against the greyish-purple
air, heavy with dust and smoke and vapours. A little tree by a red wall
showed tiny greenish-yellow leaves, transparent in the sunlight.
The mould on the board walls of the workshops was bright green and the
soot flakes on the factory walls jet black in some places and in others
covered, as it were, with a thin, glistening silvery film.
Jenny had been walking about all the morning in the outskirts of the
town, where the sky rose dark blue and hot over the olive-golden fir-tops
and the amber-coloured buds of the leaf trees, but here in the city over
the high houses and the net of telephone wires it was growing pale behind
a thin veil of opal-white haze. This was really the prettier sight of
the two, though Gert could not see it. To him the city was always ugly,
grey, and dirty; it was the city they had cursed, all those young men of
the eighties who had been obliged to settle down there to work. He was
probably standing at his window this moment, looking out in the sun, and
to him the play of light in line and colour was not worth noticing; it
was merely a sunray outside his prison window.
She stopped a few steps from his door, looking up and down the street, as
usual. There was nobody she knew, only business people on their way home.
It was past six o’clock.
She ran up the stairs—those dreadful iron steps that echoed their
movements when they stole down from his rooms late in the winter nights.
The naked walls seemed ever to retain the cold, raw air.
She hurried along the corridor and gave the usual three knocks at his
door. Gram opened it. He put his arm round her, and locked the door
with his other hand as they kissed. Over his shoulder she could see the
flowers on the little table, with wine and foreign fruits in a crystal
bowl. There was a slight mist of cigarette smoke in the room, and she
knew that he had been sitting there since four o’clock waiting for her.
“I could not come before,” she whispered. “I was so sorry to let you
wait.” When he released her she went to the table, bending over the
flowers. “I will take two and make myself nice, may I? I am getting so
spoilt since I have come to you, Gert.” She stretched out her hands to
him.
“When must you go?” he asked, kissing her arms tenderly.
Jenny bent her head:
“I promised to be back for supper. Mother always waits up for me, and she
is so tired now; she needs me to help her in the evening with one thing
or another,” she said quickly. “It is not so easy to get away from home,
you see,” she whispered in excuse.
He listened to her many words with bowed head. When she came towards him
he took her in his arms so that her face was hidden against his shoulder.
She could not lie, poor little thing, not so well, anyhow, that he would
believe it for a single merciful second. In the winter—the very short
time of their love—and in the early spring she could always be away from
home.
“It is tiresome, Gert, but now I am living at home it is much more
difficult to manage; you know I have to be there because mother needs the
money as well as the help. You agreed with me, did you not, that I had
better move home?”
Gert nodded assent. They were sitting on the sofa close together, Jenny’s
head resting on his shoulder, so that she could not see his face.
“I was in the country this morning, walking where we used to go together.
Let us go there again soon—the day after tomorrow if it is fine—will you?
You are sorry because I have to go home so early today, are you not?”
“My dear, have I not said that thousands of times already?” She could
hear from his voice that he was saying this with his melancholy smile
again. “I am grateful for every second of your life that you give me.”
“Don’t speak like that, Gert,” she said, pained.
“Why should I not say it when it is true? Dearest little girl, do you
think I will ever forget that all you have given me is as a princely
grace, and I can never understand how you came to give it to me at all?”
“When I realized last winter that you were fond of me—how much you really
loved me—I said to myself it must stop. But then I understood that I
could not be without you, and so I gave myself to you. Was that a grace?
When I could not let you go?”
“I call it an inconceivable grace that you ever came to love me.”
She nestled in his arms without speaking.
“My own darling ... so young and sweet you are....”
“I am not young, Gert. When you met me I was already beginning to get
old without ever having been young. You seemed young to me, much younger
at heart than I, because you still believed in what I called childish
dreams and used to laugh at them. You have made me believe in love and
tenderness and all such things.”
Gert Gram smiled, and whispered: “Perhaps my heart was not older than
yours—for it seemed to me that I had never yet had any youth, and deep
down in my soul I still entertained the hope that some day youth would
touch me, if only for once, with his wand. But my hair has turned white
meanwhile.”
Jenny raised her head and laid her hand caressingly on his head.
“Are you tired, little one? Shall I take off your shoes? Will you not lie
down and rest?”
“No, let me stay as I am; it is nicer so.”
She drew her feet up under her and nestled closer in his lap. He laid one
arm about her, and with the other hand he poured out some wine, holding
the glass to her lips. She drank readily. He dropped cherries into her
mouth and took the stones from her lips, putting them on the plate.
“More wine?”
“Thanks. I think I will stay with you. I can send a message home to say
I have met Heggen—I believe he is in town—but I must go home before the
trams stop.”
“I’ll go and see about it now.” He let her down gently on the sofa. “Lie
still there and rest, little one.”
When he was gone she took off her shoes, drank some more wine, and lay
down on the sofa with her head deep in the cushions, pulling a rug over
herself.
After all, she loved him, and was glad to be with him. Sitting as she had
been a moment ago, resting in his arms, she was happy. He was the only
one in the world who had taken her on his knee, warming her and hiding
her and calling her his little girl. He was the only being who had stood
by her really—so why should she not be close to him?
When he held her close to him and hid her so that she saw nothing,
but only felt that he had his arms round her and warmed her, she was
contented. She could not do without him, so why not give him the little
she had to give, when he gave her what she needed most of all?
He could kiss her, do with her what he liked, provided he did not speak,
for then they drew so far apart. He spoke of love, but her love was not
what he believed it to be, and she could not explain it in words. It was
no grace or princely gift—she clung to him with a poor, begging love;
she did not want him to thank her for it, only to be fond of her and say
nothing.
When he came back she was lying with her eyes wide open, but she closed
them under his discreet caresses, smiling a little; then she put her arms
round his neck and pressed close to him. The faint scent of violet that
he used was mild and agreeable. She nodded slightly when he lifted her up
with questioning eyes. He wanted to say something, but she put her hand
across his mouth and then kissed him so that he could not speak.
* * * * *
He saw her to the car. She remained an instant standing on the platform,
looking after him as he walked down the street in the blue light of a May
night. Then she went in and sat down.
Gram had left his wife that Christmas, and lived alone in the office
building, where he had taken another room. Jenny understood that he was
going to get a separation later on when Rebecca Gram had seen that he
was not coming back to her. It was his way of doing it; he had not the
strength to break with her at once.
Jenny dared not think of what his plans for the future might be. Did he
think they would marry?
She could not deny to herself that she had never for a second thought of
binding herself to him for good, and that was why she felt the bitter,
hopeless humiliation and shame at the thought of him when she was not
with him and could hide in his love. She had deceived him—all the time
she had deceived him.
“That you have learnt to love me, Jenny, that is what I call an
inconceivable grace”—was it her fault that he looked upon it in that way?
He could not have made her his mistress unless she had wanted it herself
or made him feel that she wanted it. She understood that he was longing
for her; it worried her every time they were together to know herself
desired and to see his efforts to conceal it—he was too proud to let her
see it, too proud to beg where he had once offered to give—and too proud
to risk refusal. Knowing that she did not want to reject his love and to
lose the only being who loved her, what else could she do, if she wished
to be honest, but offer him what she had to give when she accepted from
him something she could not do without?
But she had been faced with the necessity of saying words stronger and
more passionate than her feelings, and he had believed them. And it
happened again and again. When she came to him depressed, worried, tired
of thinking what the end of it all would be, and saw that he understood,
she used again the tender words, feigning more feeling than she had, and
he was deceived at once.
He knew no other love than the love which was happiness in itself.
Unhappiness in love came from outside, from some relentless fate, or
from stern justice as a vengeance for old wrongs. She knew what his fear
was—he dreaded that her love would die one day when she saw that he was
too old to be her lover, but he never had a suspicion that her love was
born a weakling and had in it the germ that would lead to death. It was
no good trying to explain this to Gert; he would not understand. She
could not tell him that she had sought shelter in his arms because he was
the only one who had offered to shelter her when she was weary to death.
When he offered her love and warmth she had not the strength to reject,
although she knew she ought not to accept it—she was not worthy of it.
No, he was not old. It was the passion of a youth of twenty, a childish
faith, a reverent worship, and the kindness and tenderness of a grown
man—all the love that filled a man’s life—that flared up on the border
of old age. And it should have been given to a woman who could love him
in return, who could live with him for those few years the life he had
dreamt of, longed and hoped for, would last—live with him so that she
would be bound to him by a thousand happy memories when old age came,
having been in true love the wife of his youth and manhood, and ageing
with him.
But she—what could she give him if she remained? She had never been able
to give him anything, only taken what he gave. If she tried to stay, she
would not be able to make him believe that all her longing for life was
quenched for ever in the love of their youth. He would himself tell her
to go. She had loved and given; she did not love any more, and would be
free. That is how he would look upon it; he would never understand that
she mourned because there was nothing—nothing she had been able to give.
She could not bear to hear him speak about her gifts to him. It is true
that she had brought him her pure soul when she gave herself to him.
He could never forget it, and he measured, as it were, the depth and
strength of her love by this fact, for she had given him the purity of
her youth—of twenty years.
She had kept it as a white bridal dress, unused, unstained, and in her
longing and anxiety lest she should never come to wear it, in despair
over her cold solitude and her inability to love, she had clung to it,
crumpled it, and soiled it with her thoughts. Was not any one who had
lived the life of love purer than she, who had been brooding and spying
and longing until all her faculties were paralysed by that longing?
She had given herself—and yet what a slight impression it had made on
her. She was not altogether cold; sometimes she was carried away by his
passion, but she feigned passion while she was cool, and when she was
away from him she scarcely remembered it at all. Yet, to please him,
she wrote of a longing which did not exist—yes, she had been feigning,
feigning all the time before his honest passion.
There was a time when she had not been a hypocrite, or if she had lied to
Gert she had also lied to herself. She had felt a storm in herself; it
was perhaps pity for him and his fate and rebellion against her own—why
should they both be harried by a longing for something impossible?—and in
the growing anxiety for where it all would lead, she had rejoiced that
she loved him, for she was forced to fall into the arms of this man,
however mad she knew it to be.
She would sit in the tram when she left him of an evening, looking at all
the sleepy, placid faces of the people, and rejoicing that she came from
her lover—that he and she were whirled by the tempest of their fate. They
had been driven into it and did not know where they were going, and she
was proud of her fate because unhappiness and darkness threatened.
And now she was sitting here only wishing for it to end, planning a
journey abroad to escape from it all. She had accepted an invitation to
stay at Tegneby with Cesca to prepare the break. It was better for Gert
that he was alone—if she could manage to end the life between them now,
she could have done him some good.
* * * * *
Two young women were sitting opposite her. They were probably not older
than she, but stupefied by a few years of marriage. Three or four years
ago they had no doubt been a couple of neat office girls, who dressed
attractively and sported with their admirers in Nordmarken. She knew
the face of one of them, now she thought of it; she had seen her at
Hakloa one Easter. Jenny had noticed her then because she was such a
good ski-runner and looked so brisk and smart in her sport-suit. In
a way she was not badly dressed now either; her walking habit was
fashionable enough, but did not fit. The figure had no firmness; she was
well covered, and at the same time the shoulders and hips were angular.
The face under a big hat with ostrich feathers was old, with bad teeth,
and furrows round the mouth. She was talking, and her friend listened
interestedly, sitting there heavily and painfully _enceinte_, with knees
apart and her hands in a colossal muff. The face was originally pretty,
but fat and red, and with a treble chin.
“I have to lock up the cheese in the sideboard; if it goes into the
kitchen only the rind is left the next day—a big piece of Gruyère costing
nearly three _kroner_.”
“I quite believe it.”
“And then there’s another thing. She is very fond of eggs. The other day
I went into her bedroom—she is such a pig and her room is very smelly;
the bed had not been made for I don’t know how long. ‘Really, Solveig,’
I said, lifting the blankets, and what do you think I found? Three eggs
and a paper of sugar in the bed. She said she had bought it herself—and
perhaps she had.”
“I don’t think so,” said the other.
“The sugar was in a paper bag, so she may have bought it, but the eggs
she had certainly taken, and I gave her a scolding. Last Saturday we
were to have rice pudding. When I went into the kitchen I found the rice
boiling on the gas and quite burnt, while she was sitting in her room
doing needlework. I called her while I was stirring the rice, and what do
you think I found in the spoon? An egg, if you please. She boils eggs for
herself with the rice! I had to laugh, but did you ever hear anything so
dirty? I gave her a piece of my mind. Don’t you think she deserved it?”
“Certainly. Servants are a bother. What do you think mine did the other
day?...”
They had also been longing for love when they were young girls—their
ideal of love was a smart, straight lad with a secure position, who
could take them away from the monotonous work in office or shop and
settle them in a little home, where the three rooms would hold all their
belongings, and they could spread out all the pieces of needlework with
embroidered roses and bluebells which they had made while dreaming their
girlish day-dreams about love. They smiled at those dreams now with a
superior air, and to those who still dreamed they had the satisfaction
of stating that the reality was quite different. They were pleased to be
among the initiated who knew what it really meant—and they were perhaps
content.
But there was happiness all the same in not being content, in refusing
to put up with things and be thankful when life offered things of little
worth; far better to say: I believe in my dreams; I will call nothing
happiness but that which I claim, and I believe it exists. If it is not
to be mine, it is my own fault; it is because I have been one of the
foolish virgins who did not watch and wait for the bridegroom, but the
wise will see him and will enter in with rejoicing.
* * * * *
When Jenny came home she saw there was a light in her mother’s room, so
she went in to tell her about the party at Ahlström’s studio, and how
Heggen was. Ingeborg and Bodil slept farther down in the room, with their
black plaits across the pillows. Jenny felt no compunction at standing
there telling falsehoods to her mother. She had always done it from
the time she was a schoolgirl and used to tell merry tales about the
children’s parties, where she had in reality been sitting alone, watching
the others dance—an unhappy and lonely little girl who could not dance or
talk of anything that the boys cared for.
When Ingeborg and Bodil came home from a dance their mother sat up in
bed listening and smiling and asking questions, young and rosy in the
lamplight, and they could always tell the truth, because it was full of
merriment and laughter. There may have been a thing or two so nice that
they wanted to keep it to themselves, but it did not matter, for their
smiles were true.
Jenny kissed her mother good-night. Passing through the sitting-room, she
happened to pull down a photograph; she picked it up, knowing in the dark
that it was a brother of her own father, with his wife and little girls.
He had lived in America, and she had never seen him; he was dead, and
his picture stood in its place without anybody ever thinking of it. She
herself dusted it every day, yet never looked at it.
She went into her own room and began to take down her hair.
She had always lied to her mother—could she ever have been truthful to
her without making her suffer, and to what purpose? Mother would never
have understood. She had had happiness and sorrow since she was quite
young; she had been happy with Jenny’s father and had bemoaned his death,
but she had her child to live for, and learnt to be content. Then she
met Nils Berner, who filled her life with fresh happiness and fresh
sorrow—and again the children consoled her, inasmuch as they filled the
emptiness of her life. The joy of motherhood is bought with too much
suffering; it is too actual, when held living in one’s arms, for one ever
to doubt its existence. To love one’s child is so natural that there
is no cause for reflection. A mother never doubts that she loves her
child, or that she wants it to be happy—that she does her best for it,
or that it returns her love. The grace of nature is so great to mothers
that children instinctively shrink from confiding their sorrows and
disappointments to her; illness and money troubles are almost the only
sorrows she ever gets to know. Never the irreparable, the shame, the
failures in life, and were she told of them ever so emphatically by her
own children, she would never believe they were irreparable.
Her mother was not to know anything about her sorrow—nature itself had
raised a wall between them. Rebecca Gram would never know a tenth part
of the sufferings her children had endured for her sake. And a friend of
her mother’s was still mourning her handsome boy, who had been killed by
an accident, and dreaming of the future that would have been his; she was
the only person who did not know that he had shot himself as the only way
of escape from insanity.
Love of one’s children did not exclude any other love; one or two mothers
among her acquaintances had lovers, and believed that the children did
not know. Some were divorced, and found happiness in new ties; only if
the new love brought disappointment did they ever complain or regret.
Her own mother had idolized her—yet there was room for Berner in her
heart too, and she had been happy with him. Gert had been fond of his
children—and a father’s affection is more understanding, more a matter
of reflection and less instinctive than a mother’s—yet he had scarcely
thought of Helge all last winter.