Jenny had been to fetch their mail bag at the station; and gave Francesca
the papers and the letters, and opened the one addressed to herself.
Standing on the gravel of the station platform in the blazing sun, she
looked through Gert’s long effusion, reading the expressions of love at
the beginning and the end and skipping the rest, which was only a mass
of observations on love in general. She put it back in the envelope and
placed it in her hand-bag. Ugh! those letters from Gert—she could not
be bothered to read them. Every word proved to her that they did not
understand one another; she felt it when they talked together, but in
writing it was more painfully distinct still. Yet there was a mental
relationship between them—how was it that they did not harmonize? Was
he stronger or weaker than she? He had lost repeatedly, had resigned,
stooped, and submitted in every way, and yet he went on hoping, living,
and believing. Was it weakness or vitality? She could not make out.
Was it the difference in their ages after all? He was not old, but
his youthfulness belonged to another period, when youth was more
unsophisticated and had a healthier creed. Perhaps she was naïve too—with
her aims and opinions—but it was in a quite different way. Words change
their meanings after twenty years—was that the reason?
The gravel glittered red and purple, and the paint on the station
building was blistered by the scorching sun. As she looked up everything
went dark before her eyes for a moment; it was a peculiar sensation, but
probably the effect of the heat, which she seemed to feel more than usual
this summer.
The haze hung trembling over fields and meadows, reaching right out to
where the forest lay, a dark green line under the deep blue summer sky.
The foliage of the birches had already changed its colour to a darker
green.
Cesca was reading a letter from her husband. Her linen dress was
strikingly white against the dark gravel of the platform.
Gunnar Heggen’s luggage had been put on the pony cart, and he stood
stroking the horse’s head and talking to it while he waited for the
ladies. Cesca put her letter in her pocket, shaking her head as if trying
to drive away a thought.
“Sorry to keep you so long, boy—now let us start.” Jenny and Cesca took
the front seat; she was taking the reins herself. “I am so pleased,
Gunnar, that you could come. Won’t it be nice to be together again for a
few days, we three? Lennart sends his love to both of you.”
“Thanks—is he all right?”
“Oh yes—first-rate, thanks. Brilliant idea of father, wasn’t it, to go
away with Borghild and leave the house to me and Jenny? Old Gina looks
after us, and is ready to stand on her head for us. I call it perfectly
lovely.”
“It is delightful to see you again, you two.”
He laughed and chatted with them, but Jenny imagined she noticed a touch
of sadness behind his merry talk. She knew that she looked worn and
tired herself, and Cesca in her cheap, ready-made costume looked like a
tomboy beginning to get old without having been properly grown up. Cesca
seemed to have shrunk very much in the one year they had been separated,
but she chatted on as before, telling them what they were going to have
for dinner, that they would have coffee in the garden, and that she had
bought liqueurs and whisky and soda to celebrate the occasion of their
visit.
That night, when Jenny came into her bedroom, she sat down on the
window-seat to cool her face in the fresh breeze made by the fluttering
curtain. She was not sober; it was an extraordinary thing, but it was
a fact. She could not understand how it had happened; all she had had
was one glass and a half of toddy and a couple of small liqueurs after
supper. True, she had not eaten much, but she had no appetite lately. She
had had strong coffee, so perhaps it was that and the cigarettes which
affected her, although she smoked much less now than she used to.
Her heart beat irregularly, and hot waves were rushing over her till she
felt moist all over. The landscape she was looking at from the window,
the greyish fields, the soft coloured flower-beds in the garden, and the
dark trees against the pale summer sky turned and twisted before her
eyes, and the room seemed turning round. A taste of whisky and liqueur
rose to her throat. How horrid!
She spilt the water when she poured some in the basin, and she felt
unsteady on her feet. _Jenny mia_, this is scandalous. You will soon be
done for, my girl, if you cannot stand that much. In the olden days you
could have taken twice as much.
She bathed her face and her hands for a while, keeping her wrists under
water; then she pulled off her clothes and squeezed the full sponge over
her body. She was wondering if Cesca and Gunnar had noticed it; she
had not realized it herself till she got to her room; a good thing the
Colonel and Borghild had not been there.
She felt better after her wash, got into her nightdress, and went to
sit by the window again. Her thoughts were wandering about confusedly,
calling up fragments of conversation between Cesca and Gunnar, but all
of a sudden she felt wide awake, realizing with vivid surprise that she
had been drunk. Never before had she had such an experience; she used
scarcely to feel it at all, even if she took quite a lot of wine.
Anyhow, it had passed off now, and, feeling limp and cold and sleepy, she
went to lie down in the big bed. Fancy if she were to wake up tomorrow
with a “head”—that would be a new experience.
She had scarcely settled down in the bed and closed her eyes when the
disagreeable heat again stole over her, plunging her whole body in a bath
of perspiration. The bed seemed to rock under her like a ship in a storm,
and she felt sea-sick. Lying perfectly still, she tried to overcome the
nausea, telling herself: I will not, I will not, but it was no good. Her
mouth filled with water, and she had scarcely time to get up before she
was overcome with sickness.
Heavens! Was she really as drunk as that? It became most embarrassing,
but it ought to be over now. She tidied up, drank some water, and went
to bed again, hoping to sleep it away, but after a brief moment of rest,
with her eyes shut, the rocking began again and with it the heat and the
nausea. It was astonishing, for her head was now quite clear—yet she had
to get up once more.
Stepping back into bed, a thought suddenly struck her. Nonsense! She lay
down again, pressing her neck deep into the pillows. It was impossible.
She did not want to think of it, but, unable to dismiss the thought
from her mind, she began a review of recent events. She had not felt
quite well lately, had been tired and worn out, worried and nervous
generally; that was probably why the little she had taken last night had
been too much for her. She could quite understand now that people become
abstemious after a few nights of the kind she had just experienced. The
other matter she would not consider; if things had gone wrong she would
know it in due time—it was no good worrying unnecessarily. She was going
to sleep; she was so tired—but she could not keep her thoughts away from
that awful subject—ugh!
At the beginning of their relations the possibility of consequences had
quite naturally presented itself to her mind, and once or twice she had
been in the throes of anxiety, but she had been able to master it and
had forced herself to look reasonably at the matter. What if it were
true? The dread of having a child is really a senseless superstition;
it happens every day. Why should it be worse for her than for any poor
working girl, who was able to provide for herself and her child? The
anxiety was a remnant from the times when an unmarried woman in similar
circumstances had to go to the father or her relations and confess that
she had had a good time, and that they had to pay the expenses—with the
sad prospect of never afterwards having her provided for by somebody
else—a quite sufficient reason for their anger.
Nobody had any right to be angry with her. Her mother would, of course,
be sorry, but when a grown-up person tried to live according to his
conscience the parents had nothing to say. She had tried to help her
mother as much as possible, she had never worried her with her own
troubles, her reputation had never been spoilt by any tales of levity,
flirtation, or revelling, but where her own opinions about right and
wrong differed from that of other people, she meant to follow them, even
if it would be painful to her mother to hear disagreeable things said
about her.
If her relations with Gert were a sin, it did not mean that she had given
too much, but too little, and whatever the consequences would be, she had
to bear them without complaint.
She could provide for a child just as well as many a girl who had not
a tenth part of her knowledge. There was still some money left of her
inheritance—enough for her to go abroad. If the profession she had chosen
was a poor one, she knew that several of her fellow-artists were able to
keep wife and children with it, and she had been used to helping others
from the time she was almost a child. She would, of course, prefer not to
have to do it; so far everything had been all right—she would not think
of it.
Gert would be in despair.
If it was true, how dreadful that it should happen now. If it had
happened when she loved him, or thought she did, and she could have gone
away in good faith, but now, when everything that had been between them
had crumbled to pieces, torn asunder by her own thinking and pondering....
During these weeks at Tegneby she had made up her mind not to go on any
longer. She was longing to go away to new conditions, new work. Yes, the
longing for work had come back; she had had enough of this sickly desire
of clinging to somebody, to be cuddled and petted and called little girl.
At the thought of breaking with him her heart winced with pain. She
shrank from causing him sorrow, but she had kept it up as long as
possible. Gert had been happy while it lasted, and he was free from the
degrading slavery with his wife.
She was perfectly resigned to the thought that her life henceforth would
be work and solitude only. She knew she could not obliterate the past
months from her life; she would always remember them and the bitter
lessons they had taught her. The love that others found enough was not
enough for her—it was better for her to dispense with it altogether than
to be contented.
Yes, she would remember, but as years went by the memory of the short
happiness mixed with so much pain and bitter repentance would perhaps be
less poignant, and she would be able partly to wipe out the memory of the
man to whom she had done a deadly wrong—and whose child perhaps she bore.
No; it was impossible. Why lie here brooding over it?
But if it were true....
* * * * *
When Jenny at last sank into a heavy and dreamless sleep it was almost
daylight, but when she awoke again with a shock, it was not much lighter.
The sky was a little more yellow above the garden trees, and the birds
were chirping sleepily. She was instantly wide awake, and the same
thoughts returned; she would hardly get any more sleep that night, and
she resigned herself to thinking them over and over again.