XI

All day long the weather had been bad, with cold, pale clouds high up

in the sky; towards evening some thin brass-yellow stripes appeared on

the western horizon. Jenny had been up to Monte Celio to sketch in the

afternoon, but it did not come to much—she had been sitting listlessly

on the big stairs outside of San Gregorio, looking down into the grove

where the big trees were beginning to bud and daisies shone all over

the grass. She came back through the avenue below the south side of the

Palatine. The ruins showed dull grey against the palms of the convent on

the mountain-top; the evergreen shrubs hung on the slope, powdered with

chalky dust.

Some shivering postcard-sellers loitered about outside the Constantin

arch on the Piazza, where the ruins of the Colosseum, the Palatine, and

the Forum lay. Very few tourists were about; a couple of skinny old

ladies bargained in vile Italian with a mosaic pedlar.

A small boy of barely three hung on to Jenny’s cloak, offering her a

small wisp of pansies. He was exquisitely black eyed and long haired, and

dressed in national costume, with pointed hat, velvet jacket, and sandals

over white woollen socks. He could not speak distinctly yet, but he could

manage to ask for a _soldo_.

Jenny gave him the coin, and instantly the mother came up to his side,

thanking her and taking the money herself. She, too, had tried to give

her dress a national touch by lacing a red velvet bodice on top of her

dirty checked blouse, and pinning on top of her hair a serviette folded

into a square. She carried an infant in her arms. It was three weeks old,

she said, in answer to Jenny’s question. Yes, the poor dear was ill.

The infant was no bigger than Jenny’s own boy had been at birth. Its skin

was red and sore and peeling, it was panting as if its throat were choked

by mucus, and the eyes looked wearily from under inflamed, half-closed

lids.

Oh yes, she took it every day to the hospital for treatment, said the

mother, but they said there that it was going to die. Best thing for

it, too—the woman was looking so tired and sad, besides being ugly and

toothless.

Jenny felt the tears mounting to her eyes. Poor little creature, it

certainly was much better for it to die. She passed her hand caressingly

over the little ugly face. She had given the woman some money, and was on

the point of going when a man suddenly passed her. He took off his hat

and stopped for a moment, but walked on as Jenny did not acknowledge his

salute. It was Helge Gram.

She was too much taken aback to think of answering. She bent down to the

little boy with the pansies, taking his hands and pulling him closer to

her, and talked to him, trying to master the unreasonable shivering of

her whole body.

She turned her head once in the direction he had gone and saw him

standing on the stairs that led to the street from the Piazza round the

Colosseum, and looking in her direction.

She remained in the same position, talking to the child and the woman.

When she looked up again he was gone, but she waited long after she had

seen his grey coat and hat disappear round a corner.

Then she went home, almost running through side streets and passages,

afraid of meeting him every time she turned a corner.

She got as far as the other side of Pincio, and went to have some food in

a _trattoria_ where she had never been before. Then after a rest and some

wine, she began to feel better.

If she met Helge and he spoke to her it would be very painful; she would

much prefer to escape it, but if it happened, it was nothing to be so

senselessly afraid of. Everything between them was finished; what had

occurred after their separation was no concern of his, and he had no

right to take her to task for anything. Whatever he knew about it, and

whatever he had to say, she had said it all to herself, for nobody knew

better than she what she had done. She had to answer only to herself;

nothing else could compare with that ordeal.

Need she fear anybody? Nobody could do her a great wrong than she had

done to herself.

It had been a bad day—one of those days when she did not feel sober.

However, she felt better now.

Scarcely was she out in the street before the same stupid, desperate

fright came over her again, and, without realizing it, she rushed on as

if lashed by it, with clenched hands and muttering to herself.

Once she pulled off her gloves, because she was burning hot, and she

recollected suddenly having noticed a wet spot on one of them after she

had caressed the child. She flung them away in disgust.

When she reached home she stood a moment hesitating in the passage, then

knocked at Gunnar’s door, but he was not in. She went to look on the

roof; there was no one there.

She entered her room, lit the lamp, and sat staring at the flame,

her arms folded. After a while she rose and began walking restlessly

up and down the floor—only to sit down again as before. She listened

breathlessly to every sound on the stairs. Oh, if only Gunnar would

come! And not the other one. But how could he? He did not know where she

lived—he might have met somebody who knew and asked. Oh, Gunnar, Gunnar,

come!

She would go straight to him, throw herself in his arms.

The moment she had seen Helge Gram’s light brown eyes again, her whole

past, that had begun under their glance, confronted her. It all came

back—the disgust, the doubt of her own ability to feel, to will and

to choose, and the suspicion that in reality she wanted what she said

she did not. While she was pretending to herself that she wanted to be

strong, pure, and whole in her feelings, and while she said she wanted

to be honest, courageous, disciplined—to work and to sacrifice herself

for others—she allowed herself to be tossed between moods and desires she

did not care to fight, although she knew she should have done so. She had

pretended to love so as to sneak into a place in life which she could

never have attained if she had been honest.

She had wanted to change her nature to fall in with the others who lived,

although she knew she would always be a stranger among them because

she was of a different kind. She had not been able to stand alone, a

prisoner, so to say, of her own nature. And her relations to those who

were strange to her innermost being—the son and the father—had been

unnatural and repulsive. In consequence of it her own inner self was

ruined; every fixed point in herself, to which she had held on, gave

way—crumbled to nothing. She felt as if she were dissolving from within.

If Helge came, if she met him, she knew that the despair and disgust of

her own life would overwhelm her. She did not know what would happen, but

one thing was certain—she could not face a repetition of the old scenes.

And Gunnar. All these weeks, while he had been begging of her to be his,

she had not made up her mind if she loved him or not. He wanted her such

as she was, and he vowed that he could help her—build up again all that

had been destroyed in her.

Sometimes she wished that he would take her by force, so that she need

not choose. It did not matter what he said; she knew that if she became

his, the little pride she had left told her that the responsibility was

her own. She had to become what she had once been—what he believed she

had been and could be again. Whether she cared or not, she had to clean

herself from all that soiled her now, bury in a new life everything that

had happened since she gave Helge Gram the kiss by which she betrayed her

faith and her whole life up to that spring day on the Campagna.

Did she want to be his? Did she love him because he was all that she had

wished to be, because his whole being awoke in her all that which she

had once chosen to worship and to nurse—every faculty she had thought

worth developing?

The love she had looked for on byways, driven by her morbid longing

and feverish restlessness—would she find it here by surrendering to

him, by shutting her eyes and giving herself to the one man she really

trusted—the one who all her instincts told her was her conscience and her

just judge?

She had not been able to do it—not in all these weeks. It seemed to her

that she ought to try and get out by her own will from the mire into

which she had descended; she wanted to feel that it was her will from

the old days which had taken the lead of her shattered mind, so that she

could get back ever so little of the respect and confidence in herself

from before.

If she was to go on living, Gunnar was life itself to her. A few words

written by him on a piece of paper, a book that brought her a message

from some emotion in his soul had awakened the last smouldering longing

back to life when after the death of the child she had dragged herself

about like a maimed animal.

If he came now—he would win her. If he would but carry her the first bit

of the way, she would try to walk the rest of it herself. And as she sat

there waiting for him she decided in her shrinking soul: If he comes, I

shall live. If the other one comes, I must die.

And when she heard steps on the stairs, and they were not those of

Gunnar, and there was a knock at the door, she bent her head and went

shivering to open it for Helge Gram, instinctively feeling that she

opened the door to the fate she had challenged.

She stood looking at him while he walked into the room, putting his hat

on a chair. She had not acknowledged his greeting this time either.

“I knew you were in town,” said he. “I came the day before yesterday

from Paris. I looked up your address at the club, and meant to come and

see you some day—but then I saw you in the street this afternoon. I

recognized your grey fur a long way off.” He spoke swiftly—out of breath,

as it were. “Will you not say good evening to me? Are you vexed because I

have come to see you?”

“Good evening, Helge,” she said, taking the hand he offered her. “Will

you not sit down, please?”

She sat down on the sofa. She could hear that her voice sounded calm and

as usual. But in her brain she had the same delirious sensation of dread

as in the afternoon.

“I wanted to come and see you,” said Helge, sitting down on a chair close

to her.

“It was good of you,” replied Jenny. Both were silent.

“You live in Bergen now,” she said. “I saw that you had got your degree.

I congratulate you.”

“Thank you.”

There was another pause.

“You have been abroad a long time. I meant to write to you sometimes, but

it never came off. Heggen lives in this house, I see.”

“Yes; I wrote him to get a studio for me, but they are so dear and so

difficult to find. This room has a good light, though.”

“I see that you have some pictures drying.”

He rose, went across the room, but returned immediately to his seat.

Jenny bent her head, feeling that he did not take his eyes from her. They

tried to keep up conversation. He asked about Francesca Ahlin and other

acquaintances they had in common, but there were long intervals when he

sat staring at her.

“Do you know that my parents are divorced?” he asked suddenly.

She nodded.

“They stayed together for our sake as long as they could, whining and

creaking against each other like two millstones until they had ground

everything to powder between them. There was nothing more to grind, I

suppose, so the mill stopped.

“I remember when I was a boy. They did not fight, but there was something

in their voices that made you think they would like to. Mother abused

him and used plain talk, always ending with tears. Father kept cool and

quiet, but his voice was full of hatred and so hard and cutting. I lay

in my bed listening to this performance that was forced on me. I used to

think what a relief it would be to put a knitting needle right through my

head, in at one ear and out at the other. The voices created a physical

pain in my ears and spread to the whole of my head. Well, that was the

beginning—they have done their duty as parents, and now it is all over.

“Hatred is an ugly thing; it makes everything ugly that comes in contact

with it. I went to see my sister last summer. We have never been

sympathetic, but I thought it disgusting to see her with that husband of

hers. Sometimes I saw him kiss her—taking his pipe out of his thick wet

mouth, he kissed his wife. I saw Sophy get quite white when he touched

her. He is a pope in his pulpit and a libertine at home.

“As to you and me—it was quite natural. I understood it afterwards—that

the fine, delicate threads between us should break, that they could

not stand the atmosphere at home. When I had gone from you that time

I regretted it, and meant to write to you, but do you know why I did

not? I had a letter from my father, telling me he had been to see you

and that he thought I ought to resume my relations with you. I have a

superstitious objection to any advice from that quarter, so I did not

write.

“All the time since we parted I have been longing for you, Jenny,

dreaming of you, and recalling again and again to my memory the time I

spent here with you. Do you know which place in Rome I revisited first

of all—yesterday? I went to Montagnola and I found our names on the

cactus leaf.”

Jenny was sitting with clenched hands, very pale.

“You look exactly the same as then, and you have lived three years about

which I don’t know anything,” said Helge gently. “I can scarcely realize

that I am here with you again—it seems as if all that has happened since

we parted here in Rome were not true. Yet you belong perhaps to somebody

else now?”

Jenny did not answer.

“Are you engaged?” he asked quietly.

“No.”

“Jenny”—Helge bent his head so that she could not see his face—“all these

years I have been hoping—dreaming of winning you back. I have imagined

that we should meet again some day and come to an understanding. You said

I was the first man you had been fond of. Is my dream impossible?”

“Yes,” she said.

“Heggen?”

She did not answer at once.

“I have always been jealous of Heggen,” said Helge gently. “I thought he

was the one, especially when I saw that you both lived here. So you are

in love with each other?”

Jenny still did not answer.

“Do you love him?”

“Yes, but I will not marry him.”

“Oh, I see,” said Helge, in a hard voice.

“No.” She bent her head, tired, smiling sadly: “I have done with love; I

don’t want to have anything more to do with it. I am tired, and I wish

you would go, Helge.”

But he did not move.

“I cannot realize now when I see you again that it is all over. I never

would believe it. I have been thinking so much of it, I suppose it was

my own fault. I was so timid, I never knew what was the right thing to

do. Everything might have been quite different. I have often remembered

the last evening I was with you in Rome, and it seemed always that such

an occasion would present itself again, for I left you then because I

thought it was right. Surely, that could not have been the cause of my

losing you? I had never been near a woman then,” he said, looking down.

“I was warned by what I had seen at home. Dreams and fancies became a

hell at times, but that fear was always paramount.

“I am twenty-nine and there has been no beautiful or happy experience in

my life but that short spring spent with you. Can you not understand that

I have never been able to separate you from my thoughts, that I love you

as before? The only happiness I have known is that you gave me. I cannot

let you go out of my life—not now.”

She got up, trembling, and he rose too. Instinctively she drew back a few

steps from him:

“Helge, there has been another.”

He stood still, looking at her.

“You say there has been another—and it could have been I. I don’t care; I

want you all the same. I want you now because you promised me once to be

mine.”

Terrified, she tried to go past him, but he seized her violently in his

arms. It took a few seconds for her brain to realize that he was kissing

her mouth. She thought she made a resistance, but was in fact almost

passive in his arms. She wanted to tell him not to, and she wanted to say

who the other had been, but she could not. She would have told him about

the child, but when she remembered the boy she shrank from mentioning

him; she felt she must not drag her child into the disaster she knew was

coming. As this thought crossed her mind she imagined she felt the dead

little one caressing her, and it gave her a sensation of joy, so that her

body relaxed for a second in his arms.

“You are mine—mine only—yes, yes, Jenny!”

She tore herself away from him and, running to the door, she called aloud

for Gunnar. Helge was at her side again in an instant, taking her back in

his arms.

They wrestled with each other by the door without a word. It seemed to

Jenny that her life depended on her opening it and escaping into Gunnar’s

room, but feeling Helge close to her, stronger than she, as he held her,

it seemed to her that there was no escape—and at last she gave way.

* * * * *

In the grey morning light, he came over to her to kiss her:

“My glorious Jenny. How wonderfully beautiful you are. You are mine now,

and everything will come right, will it not? Oh, I love you so.

“Are you tired? You must sleep when I have gone, and I will come to see

you again at noon. Sleep soundly, my darling Jenny. Are you so tired?”

“Yes, very tired, Helge.”

She was lying with her eyes half closed, looking at the pale morning

light coming through the ribs of the blind.

He kissed her when he stood fully dressed, holding his hat; then he

kneeled by her bed and put an arm under her shoulder:

“Thank you for tonight. Do you remember that I said those same words to

you the first morning in Rome, when we were at Aventine?”

Jenny nodded on her pillow.

“One more kiss—and good-night—my lovely Jenny.”

At the door he stopped:

“What about the front door? Is there a key, or is it one of those

ordinary ones with a latch?”

“Yes, an ordinary one. You can open it all right from the inside.”

She remained in bed with her eyes closed. She saw her own body as it lay

under the cover, white, bare, beautiful—a thing that she had flung away

as she had the gloves. It was not hers any more.

She gave a start on hearing Heggen mount the stairs slowly and open his

door. He walked up and down in his room, then came out again and went up

the stairs to the roof. She heard him pacing to and fro above her head.

She was sure he knew, but it did not make much impression on her tired

brain. She felt no pain now. It seemed to her that he would probably

think what had happened as natural and unavoidable as she did. She could

not decide what was the next thing to do—it must just come as the other

had done, as a necessary consequence of her opening the door last night

to Helge.

She put out one foot from under the cover and lay looking at it. It was

pretty. She bent it, accentuating the instep. Yes, it was pretty, white

with blue veins and pink heel and toes.

She was tired—it was nice to feel so utterly tired. It felt like having

recovered from some keen suffering. She was tired now, and what she had

to do she did mechanically.

She got up and dressed. When she had put on stockings, bodice, and a

skirt she slipped her feet into a pair of bronze slippers, washed, and

did her hair in front of the glass without noticing the reflection of her

face in it. Then she went to the small table where she kept her painting

things, looking for the box containing her implements. In the night she

had been thinking of the small triangular scraper,—she had sometimes

played with it, putting it against her artery.

She took it out, looked at it, testing it with her finger, but she put

it back again and took out a folding knife that she had once bought in

Paris. It had a corkscrew, tin-opener, and many blades; one was short,

pointed, and broad. She opened it.

She went back to her bed and sat down on it. Putting her pillow on the

table at the side of the bed, she steadied her left hand on it and cut

through the artery.

The blood spurted out, hitting a small water-colour on the wall above

her bed. Noticing it, she moved her hand. She lay down on the bed and

mechanically pushed off her shoes with her feet, and put her hand under

the cover to prevent the blood from making a mess.

She did not think; she was not afraid; she felt only that she was

surrendering to the inevitable. The pain of the cut was not great—only

sharp and distinct, and concentrated on one spot.

After a while a strange, unknown sensation took hold of her, an agony

that grew and grew—not a fear of anything in particular, but the feeling

of an ache round her heart and sickness, as it were. She opened her eyes,

but black specks flickered before her sight and she could not breathe.

The room seemed to crumble down on her. She tumbled out of bed, tore the

door open, rushed up the stairs to the roof, and collapsed on the last

step.

Helge had met Gunnar Heggen as he came out of the front door. They had

looked at each other, both touching their hats, and passed on without a

word.

That meeting had sobered Helge. After the intoxication of the night his

mood instantly changed to the other extreme, and what he had experienced

seemed to him incredible, inconceivable, and monstrous.

He had dreamt of this meeting with her all these years. She, the queen

of his dreams, had scarcely spoken to him, at first sitting quiet and

cold and then suddenly throwing herself into his arms, wild, mad, without

saying a word. It struck him now that she had said nothing—nothing at all

to his words of love in the night. A strange, appalling woman, his Jenny.

He realized suddenly that she had never been his.

Helge walked about in the quiet streets, up and down the Corso. He tried

to think of her as she had been when they were engaged, to separate the

dreams from the reality, but he could not form a clear picture of her,

and he realized that he had never penetrated to the bottom of her soul.

There had always been something about her he could not see, though he

felt it was there.

He did not really know anything about her. Heggen might be with her

now—why not? There had been another—she said so herself—who? How many

more? What else that he did not know—but had always felt?...

And now—after this he could not leave her; he knew it—less than ever now.

Yet he did not know her. Who was she, who had held him in a spell for

three years—who had this power over him?

He turned on his way, hurrying back to her door, driven by fear and by

rage. The front door stood open. He rushed up the stairs—she would have

to answer him—tell him everything—he would not let her go. The door was

open; he looked in and saw the empty bed with the blood-stained sheets

and the blood on the floor. Turning round, he saw that she was lying

huddled at the top of the stairs, and that the marble steps were red with

her blood.

With a scream he ran up the stairs and lifted her up. He felt her body

limp against his arm and her hands hung down cold—and he understood that

the body he had held in his arms a few hours ago, hot and trembling with

life, was now a dead thing, and would soon be carrion.

He sank to his knees with her on his arm, calling out wildly.

Heggen tore open the door to the terrace. His face was white and drawn.

He saw Jenny. Seizing Helge, he flung him aside and bent down on his

knees beside her.

“She was lying there when I came back—lying there....”

“Run for a doctor—quick!” Gunnar had pulled away her clothes, feeling her

heart; he steadied her head and lifted her hands. Then he saw the wound,

and, pulling out the blue silk ribbon from her bodice, he tied it hard

round her wrist.

“Yes, but where shall I find....”

Gunnar gave a sudden cry of rage—then said in a quiet voice:

“I will go. Carry her in,” but he took her in his own arms and went

towards the door. At sight of the blood-stained bed his face twitched.

Turning away, he pushed open the door to his room and placed her on his

own untouched bed. Then he rushed down the stairs.

Helge had moved at his side the whole time, his mouth half open as if

paralysed in the act of crying out. But he stopped at Gunnar’s door. When

he was left alone with her he stole into the room, touching her hand

with his finger-tips, and he fell down beside the bed, crying wildly,

hysterically, with his head against it....

* * * * *