“P.S.—I must add something: If it is a girl she is going to
be called Jenny. I don’t mind what Lennart says. He sends his
regards to you, by the way.”
Gunnar handed the letter back to Jenny, who put it in her pocket.
“I am so pleased,” she said gently. “I am glad there are some people who
are happy. That feeling is something still left of my old self—even if
there is nothing else.”
Instead of going back to the city, they crossed the Piazza, walking in
the direction of the church.
The shadows fell coal black on to the square in the moonlight. White
light and night-black darkness played about ghostlike in one of the
arcades. The other lay in complete obscurity but for the row of statues
on top. The front of the church was in shadow, but here and there the
dome glittered like water. The two fountains sent their white jets
sparkling and foaming towards the moon-blue sky. The water rose whirling
in the air, splashing down again to the porphyry shelves to drop and
trickle back into the basin.
Gunnar and Jenny walked slowly in the shade of the arcade towards the
church.
“Jenny,” he said all of a sudden, in a perfectly cool and everyday voice,
“will you marry me?”
“No,” she answered after a pause, in a similar tone.
“I mean it.”
“Yes, but surely you understand that I don’t want to.”
“I don’t see why not. If I understood you rightly, you don’t value your
life very highly at present, and you entertain thoughts of suicide
occasionally. As you feel so inconsolable in any case, why should you not
marry me? I think you might try.”
Jenny shook her head: “Thank you, Gunnar—but I think it would be taxing
your friendship too heavily.” She spoke in earnest. “In the first place,
you ought to understand that I cannot accept it, and in the second that,
if you could make me accept you as a last resource, it would not be worth
your troubling to reach out one of your little fingers to save me.”
“It is not friendship.” He hesitated a little. “The truth is that I have
got fond of you. It is not to save you—although I would do anything to
help you, of course—but because I realize now that if anything happened
to you I don’t know what I should do. I dare not think of it. There is
nothing in the world I would not gladly do for you, because you are very
dear to me.”
“Oh, Gunnar, don’t!” She stopped and looked at him almost in fear.
“I know quite well that you are not in love with me, but that need not
prevent your marrying me. You say you are tired of everything, and have
nothing to live for, so why not try it?” His voice grew more earnest, and
he exclaimed: “For I know that one day you too will be fond of me! You
could not help it, seeing how fond I am of you.”
“You know that I have always been fond of you,” she said seriously, “but
it is not a feeling you would be satisfied with in the long run. A strong
and entire devotion is more than I can give.”
“Not at all. We can all give that. Was I not convinced that I should
never experience anything but—little love affairs? In fact, I did not
believe anything else existed.” His voice sank. “You are the first woman
I love.”
She stood still and silent.
“I have never uttered that word to any woman before—I had a kind of
reverence for it, but then I have never loved a woman before. I was
always in love with something particular about them—the corners of
Cesca’s mouth, for instance, when she smiled; her unconscious coquetry.
There was always one thing or other that took my fancy and inspired me
to invent adventures about them—adventures I wanted to experience. I
fell in love with one woman because the first time I saw her she wore a
beautiful red silk dress, almost black in the folds, like the darkest of
roses. I thought of her always in that dress. And with you that time in
Viterbo—you were so sweet, so gentle and reserved, and there was a glint
in your eyes when the rest of us laughed as if you would have liked to
be merry with us, but dared not. That time I was in love with the idea of
seeing you gay and smiling.
“But I have never loved another human being till now.”
He turned his face from her, staring at the jet of water rising in the
moonlight, and the new sensation in him rose too, inspiring him with new
words, which burst in ecstasy from his lips:
“I love you so much, Jenny, that everything else is of no account. I am
not sorry you don’t love me in return, for I know you will some day; I
feel that my love is strong enough to make you return it. I have time to
wait; my happiness will be in loving you.
“When you spoke about being trampled upon and throwing yourself under
the train, something happened to me. I could not explain what it was.
I knew only that I could not listen to you saying such things. I knew
I would never allow it to happen—not for my life. And when you spoke
of the child, I felt infinitely sad to think that you had suffered so
intensely and that I could not do anything for you. And I was sad too
because I wanted you to love me. Everything you said was echoed in my
soul—the boundless love and the bitter longing—and I understood that my
love for you was just that. While we were in the _trattoria_ and walking
out here it has grown more and more clear to me how much you are to me,
how I love you—and it seems to me that it has always been so. All I know
and remember of you is part of it. I understand now why I have been so
depressed since you came here. It was because I saw how you suffered.
You were so quiet and sad the first weeks, and then came those fits of
dissipation—and I remember that day on the road to Warnemünde, when you
were crying against my shoulder—everything that concerns you is part of
my love for you.
“I know how it all happened with the other men you have known—the boy’s
father too. You have talked and talked with them about all you have been
thinking, and there was no response to your words even when you tried to
make them realize what you felt, because they could not understand your
mind. But I know it—all you have been telling me today and what you said
to me that day in Warnemünde you could not have told to anybody else.
Only to me, because I understand—is it not so?”
She bent her head in surprised assent. It was true.
“I know that I alone understand you thoroughly. I know exactly what you
are, and I love you as you are. If your mind were full of stains and
bleeding wounds, I would love and kiss them until you were clean and well
again. My love has no other purpose but to see you become what you always
wanted to be and must be to feel happy. If you did ever so foolish a
thing, I would only think you were ill or that some strange influence had
poisoned your mind. If you deceived me or if I found you lying drunk in
the road, you would be my own darling Jenny just the same.
“Will you not be mine—give yourself to me? Will you not come into my arms
and let me hold you and make you happy and whole? I don’t know now quite
how to set about it, but my love will teach me, and every morning you
will wake up less sad—every day will seem a little brighter and warmer
than the day before, and your sorrow less great. Let us go to Viterbo or
anywhere you like. Give yourself to me, and I will nurse you as if you
were a sick child. When you are well again you will have learnt to love
me and to know that we two cannot live without each other.
“You are ill; you cannot look after yourself. Close your eyes and give me
your hands; I will love you and make you well—I know I can do it.”
Jenny was leaning against a pillar. She turned her white face to him,
smiling sadly:
“How can you imagine I would do such a great wrong, and sin against God?”
“You mean because you don’t love me? But I tell you it does not matter,
because I know my love is such that you will end by returning it, when
you have lived wrapped in it for a time.”
He seized her in his arms, covering her face with kisses. She made no
resistance, but whispered:
“Don’t, Gunnar, please.”
He released her reluctantly:
“Why may I not?”
“Because it is you. I don’t know if I should have minded if it had been
anybody else for whom I did not care at all.”
Gunnar held her hand and they walked up and down in the moonlight.
“I understand. When you had the little boy you thought your life had some
aim and purpose again after all these aimless years, because you loved
him and you needed him. When he died you became indifferent to everything
and considered yourself superfluous in the world.”
Jenny nodded:
“There are a few people I care for enough to be sorry if I knew them in
distress and glad if all was well with them. But I myself cannot add
either to their sorrow or their joy—it has always been so, and one of the
reasons why I was unhappy and filled with longing was just that my life
was spent without making anybody happy. My sole wish and yearning was to
make another being happy. I have always believed in that as the greatest
blessing in life. You spoke of the joy of work—to me it never seemed
enough, and it is very selfish, besides, because the greatest joy and
satisfaction of it is yours alone; you cannot share it with anybody else.
Unless you can share your happiness with others, you lose the greatest
possible joy. When you are quite young and feel strongly you are selfish
perhaps sometimes—I have felt it myself when I have reached a step
nearer my goal, but as a rule it is only the abnormal beings who amass
riches for any other purpose than spending. A woman’s life is useless
to my mind if she is not the joy of somebody else—and I have never been
that—I have only caused sorrow. The little happiness I have been able to
give was only what any one else could have given just as well; they have
loved me only for what they imagined me to be, not for my real self.
“After my baby’s death I began to realize how fortunate it was that
there was nobody in the world whom I could cause a really inconsolable
grief—nobody to whom I was indispensable.
“And now you tell me all this. You have always been the one person I
least of all wanted to drag into my confused life; I have always been
more fond of you, in a way, than of any one else I know. I enjoyed our
friendship so much, because I thought that love and all it brings in its
train could never come between us. You were too good for it, I thought.
Oh, how I wish it had never changed!”
“To me it seems now that it has never been different,” he said gently. “I
love you and you need me. I know I can make you happy again, and when I
have done that you will have made me happy.”
Jenny shook her head:
“If I had the least bit of faith in myself left, it would be different. I
might have listened to you if I had not felt so keenly that I have done
with life. You say you love me, but I know that what you think you love
in me is destroyed—dead. It is the same old story: you are in love with
some quality you dream that I possess—that I have before or might have
acquired. But one day you would see me as I really am, and I should only
have made you unhappy too.”
“I should never look upon it as unhappiness whatever my fate might be.
You may not be aware of it yourself, but I know that in the state you are
now it only needs a touch for you to fall—into something that would be
madness. But I love you, and I can see all the way that has led you to
it, and if you feel I would follow you to try and carry you back in my
arms, because I love you in spite of all.”
As they stood by their doors in the dark passage he took her hands:
“Jenny, rather than be alone, would you not like me to remain with you
tonight?”
She looked at him with a curious smile.
“Oh, Jenny!” He shook his head. “I may come to you, all the same. Would
you be angry—or sorry?”
“I think I should be sorry—for your sake. No, do not come, Gunnar. I will
not take your love when I know I could just as well give mine to anybody
else.”
He laughed a little, half angrily, half sadly.
“Then I ought to do it. If once you were mine you would never belong to
anybody else—I know you too well for that—but as you ask me not to, I
will wait:” he added, with the same curious little laugh.