So she moved from one widow to another, and into another small
cottage—this time a red one with whitewashed windowsills and standing in
a little garden with flagged paths and shells around the flower-beds,
where the dahlias and chrysanthemums stood black and rotting. Twenty to
thirty similar houses stood along a small street leading from the railway
station to the fishing harbour, where the waves foamed against the long
stone piers. On the beach, a little away from the village, stood a small
hotel with the shutters up. Endless roads, with bare, straggling poplars
bending in the wind, led out over interminable plains and swamps past
small brick farms with a strip of garden front and a couple of haystacks
at the back.
Jenny walked along the road as far as she could manage, returning home
to sit in her little room, which this time was overloaded with precious
knick-knacks, coloured plaster casts of castles, and merry scenes at
country inns in brass frames. She had not the strength to change her
wet shoes even, but Mrs. Schlessinger took off the boots and stockings,
talking all the time, exhorting her to keep up her courage, telling her
about all the other young ladies she had had in the house—how So-and-so
had married and was well off and happy now.
When she had been there a month Mrs. Schlessinger came into her room
one day, excited and beaming—a gentleman had come to see the young
lady. Jenny was paralysed with fright, but managed at last to ask what
he looked like. “Quite young,” said Mrs. Schlessinger, with a lurking
smile—“and very nice looking.” It dawned upon her that it might be
Gunnar, and she got up, but, suddenly changing her mind, wrapped herself
up in a rug and sat down in the deepest of her armchairs.
Mrs. Schlessinger departed, pleased to announce a visitor. Showing Gunnar
into the room, she remained an instant smiling by the door before closing
it.
He squeezed her hand, almost hurting her, and greeted her with a beaming
smile:
“I thought I had better come up here to see what kind of a place you had
settled on. It is rather a dull part of the world you have chosen, but it
is healthy anyway.” He shook the water from his hat as he spoke.
“You must have some tea and something to eat,” said Jenny, making a
movement as if meaning to rise, but remained sitting, saying with a
blush: “Do you mind ringing the bell?”
Heggen ate with excellent appetite, talking all the while. He was
delighted with Berlin; he had lived in a workmen’s quarter—the Moabit—and
spoke with equal enthusiasm about the social democrats and the military,
for “there is something grand and manly about it, and the one stimulates
the other.” He had been over some great factories and had studied night
life, having met a Norwegian engineer who was on his honeymoon and a
Norwegian couple with two lovely daughters, who were dying to see a
little vice at close quarters. They had been to National, Riche, and to
Amorsaale, and the ladies had enjoyed it all immensely.
“But I offended them, I’m afraid—asked Miss Paulsen to come home with me
late one evening.”
“Gunnar, how could you!”
“Well, I was not quite sober, you understand; it was only a joke, you
know. If by any chance she had consented, I should have been in an awful
fix. Might have had to marry a little girl who amuses herself sniffing
at such things—no, thank you. It was great fun to see her so virtuously
offended. There was no danger really—little girls of that sort don’t give
away their treasure without making sure of a fair return.”
He blushed suddenly. It struck him that Jenny might think it tactless of
him to speak like that before her—now. But she only laughed:
“What mad things you do!”
As Heggen went on talking, the unnatural, painful shyness gradually
left her. Once or twice, when she did not notice it, his eyes anxiously
scanned her face—heavens! how thin and hollow-eyed she was, and furrowed
about the mouth. The sinews of her neck were prominent, and there were a
couple of ugly lines across the throat.
The rain had stopped, and she consented to go for a walk with him. They
walked in the sea-mist along the deserted road with the scraggy poplars.
“Take my arm,” said Gunnar casually, and Jenny took it, feeling heavy and
tired.
“It must be awfully dull for you here, Jenny—don’t you think it would be
much better if you went to Berlin?”
Jenny shook her head.
“You would have the museums there to go to and other things besides—and
somebody to be with at times. You don’t care to go to National anyway.
Won’t you come, just for a bit of a change? You must be deadly dull here.”
“Oh no, Gunnar—I could not go now, you understand.”
“You look quite nice in that ulster,” said Gunnar cautiously, after a
short pause.
Jenny bent her head.
“Oh, I am a fool,” said he suddenly. “Forgive me. You must tell me,
Jenny, if I bother you.”
“Oh no, you don’t bother me. I am glad you came.”
“I realize that it must be awful for you, Jenny.” His voice had changed
completely. “I quite realize it, but I am sure you are making it still
worse by going about here all alone. I do think you ought to go somewhere
else—somewhere a little less hopeless than this.” He was looking at the
dark plain and the rows of poplars losing themselves in the distance.
“Mrs. Schlessinger is so very kind,” said Jenny evasively.
“Oh yes, good soul; I am sure she is.” He smiled. “I think she suspects
me of being the culprit.”
“Probably,” said Jenny, smiling too.
They walked on in silence. After a while Gunnar asked:
“How are you going to arrange matters? Have you made any plans as to the
future?”
“I don’t know yet. I suppose you mean about the child? I may leave it
with Mrs. Schlessinger for a time; she would look after it all right, I
dare say. Or I may get some one to adopt it; you know, such children are
adopted sometimes. I might call myself Mrs. Winge and never mind what
people think.”
“You are quite decided, then, to break completely with—er—the man
concerned? You wrote me to that effect.”
“I am,” she said firmly. “It is not the man I was engaged to,” she added,
after a pause.
“Thank God!” he burst out, so relieved that Jenny could not help smiling
a little.
“Well, you know, Jenny, he was not worth reproducing—not by you anyway. I
saw in the papers recently that he has got his doctor’s degree. Well, it
might have been worse—I was afraid....”
“It is his father,” she said abruptly.
Heggen came to a dead stop. She fell to crying desperately, and he put
his arm round her and laid his hand to her cheek while she went on
sobbing with her head on his shoulder.
Standing so, she began to tell him all about it. Once she looked up at
his face; it was pale and haggard; and she started crying again. When
she stopped, he lifted her head, looking at her:
“My God, Jenny—what you must have suffered! I cannot realize it.”
* * * * *
They walked back to the village in silence.
“Come with me to Berlin,” he said suddenly. “I cannot bear to think of
you here alone and brooding over this.”
“I have almost given up thinking,” she said, tired.
“Oh, it’s too awful!” he burst out, with such violence that she came to
a sudden stop. “Always the best of you that get let in for this kind
of thing, and we have no idea of what you have to go through. It is
dreadful!”
* * * * *
Heggen stayed three days. Jenny could not explain why, but she felt much
better after his visit. The unbearable feeling of humiliation was gone;
she was able to face her confinement with more composure and confidence.
Mrs. Schlessinger went about smiling slyly in spite of Jenny’s
declaration that the gentleman was her cousin.
He had offered to send her some of his books, and at Christmas a whole
case arrived, besides flowers and chocolates. Every week he wrote her
a long letter about all manner of trifles, enclosing cuttings from
Norwegian papers. In January he came up for her birthday and stayed two
days, leaving behind some of the latest Norwegian books. Shortly after
his last visit she fell ill. She was poorly, worried, and sleepless
during the remaining weeks. She had never busied her thoughts with the
actual confinement or been anxious about it before, but, feeling always
wretched now, she was seized by a sudden dread of what she had to go
through, and when the time came she was quite worn out with insomnia and
anxiety.
It was a nasty case. Jenny was more dead than alive when the doctor, who
had been sent for from Warnemünde, at last held her son in his hands.