Gunnar walked along the narrow road, overgrown with grass, between
the high, whitewashed garden walls. On the one side lay the barracks,
probably with a terrace, as high up over his head some soldiers were
laughing and talking. A tuft of yellow flowers, growing in a cleft of the
wall, hung swaying. On the other side of the road the huge old poplars by
the Cestius pyramid and the cypress grove in the new part of the cemetery
stretched their tops towards the blue and silver clouded sky.
Outside the grated gate a girl sat crocheting. She opened to him,
curtseying to thank him for the coin he gave her.
The spring air was mild and damp; in the closed green shade of the
churchyard it became wet and warm as in a hothouse, and the narcissus
along the border of the path gave out a hot, sickly scent.
The old cypresses stood round the graves that lay, green and dark with
creepers and violets, set in terraces from the ivy-clad wall of the
town. Above the flowers rose the monuments of the dead, little marble
temples, white figures of angels, and big, heavy slabs of stone. Moss
grew on them and on the trunks of the cypresses. Here and there a
white or red flower still clung to the camelia trees, but most of them
lay brown and faded on the black earth, exhaling raw, damp fumes. He
remembered something he had read: the Japanese did not like camelias
because they fell off whole and fresh like heads chopped off.
Jenny Winge lay buried at the farthest end of the cemetery near the
chapel on a grassy slope, covered with daisies. There were only a few
graves. On the border of the slope cypresses had been planted, but they
were still very small, like toy trees with their pointed green tops on
straight brown trunks, reminding one of the pillars in a cloister arcade.
Her grave was a little way from the others; it was only a pale grey mound
of earth, the grass round it having been trodden down when it was being
dug. The sun shone on it and the dark cypresses formed a wall behind it.
Covering his face with his hands, Gunnar bent on his knees until his head
rested on the faded wreaths.
The weariness of spring weighted his limbs, the blood flowed aching with
sorrow and regret at every beat of his heavy heart.
Jenny—Jenny—Jenny—he heard her pretty name in every trill of the
birds—and she was dead.
Lying far down in the dark. He had cut off a curl from her fair hair
and carried it in his pocket-book. He took it out and held it in the
sunshine—those poor little filmy threads were the only part of her
luxurious, glossy hair the sun could reach and warm.
She was dead and gone. There were some pictures of hers ... there had
been a short notice about her in the papers. And the mother and sisters
mourned her at home, but the real Jenny they had never known, and they
knew nothing about her life or her death. The others—those who had
known—stared in despair after her, not understanding what they knew.
She who lay there was his Jenny; she belonged to him alone.
* * * * *
Helge Gram had come to him; he had asked and told, wailed and begged:
“I don’t understand anything. If you do, Heggen, I beg you to tell me.
You know—will you not tell me what you know?”
He had not answered.
“There was another; she told me so. Who was it? Was it you?”
“No.”
“Do you know who it was?”
“Yes, but I am not going to tell you. It is no good your asking, Gram.”
“But I shall go mad if you don’t explain.”
“You have no right to know Jenny’s secrets.”
“But why did she do it? Was it because of me—of him—or of you?”
“No; she did it because of herself.”
He had asked Gram to leave him and had not seen him since; he had left
Rome. It was in the Borghese garden, two days after the funeral, that
Gram had come across him sitting in the sunshine. He was so tired; he had
had to see to everything—give satisfactory explanations at the inquest,
arrange for the interment, and write to Mrs. Berner that her daughter
had died suddenly from heart failure. And all the time he had a kind of
satisfaction in the thought that nobody knew of his own sorrow, that the
real cause of her death was known only by him and for ever hidden with
him. The sorrow had sunk so deep into him that it would for ever be the
inmost essence of his soul, and he would never speak of it to any living
being.
It would govern his whole life—and be governed by it; the colour and
form of it would change, but it would never be effaced. Every hour of the
day it was different, but it was always there, and always would be. On
the morning when he had run for the doctor, leaving the other man alone
with her, he had wanted to tell Helge Gram all he knew, and in such a
way that his heart would turn to ashes like his own had done; but in
the days that followed all he knew became a secret between him and the
dead woman—the secret of their love. All that had happened had happened
because of her being what she was, and as such he had loved her. Helge
Gram was a casual, indifferent stranger to him and to her, and he had no
more wish to avenge himself on him than he had pity for his sorrow and
dread at the mystery.
And he understood that what had happened was natural because she was made
as she was. Her mind swayed and bent for a gust of wind, because it had
grown so upright and slender; he had thought she could grow as a tree
grows, and had not understood that she was only a flower, a rich, fragile
stem, springing up to be kissed by the sun and to let all the heavy,
longing buds break into bloom. She had only been a little girl after all,
and to his eternal sorrow he had not understood it until too late.
For she could not right herself again when once she had been bent; she
was like a lily, that does not grow from the root again if the first
stalk has been broken. There was nothing supple or luxuriant about her
mind—but he loved her such as she was. And she was his only, for he alone
knew how fair and delicate she had been—so strong in her desire to grow
straight, and yet so frail and brittle, and with delicate honour, from
which a spot never could be washed away because it made so deep a mark.
She was dead. He had been alone with his love many nights and days, and
he would be alone with it all the days and nights of his life.
He had stifled his cries of despair many a night in his pillows. She was
dead, and she had never been his. He was the one she should have loved
and belonged to, for she was the only one he had ever loved. He had never
touched or seen her beautiful, slim, white body that enclosed her soul
like a velvet sheath about a thin, feeble blade. Others had possessed it,
and had not understood what a strange and rare treasure had happened to
fall into their hands. It lay buried in the grave, a prey to ugly change
until it was consumed and reduced to a handful of dust in the earth.
Gunnar was shaking with sobs.
Others had loved her, soiled, and destroyed her, not knowing what they
did—and she had never been his.
As long as he lived there would be moments when he would feel the same
agony about it as now.
Yet he was the only one who owned her at the last; in his hand only would
her golden hair sparkle, and she herself was living in him now; her soul
and her image were reflected in him clear and firm as in still water.
She was dead; she had no more sorrow—it stayed with him instead, to go
on living, not to die until he died himself, and because it was living
it would grow and change. What it would be like in ten years, he did not
know, but it might grow to something great and beautiful.
As long as he lived there would be moments when he would feel the same
strange, deep joy that it was so, as he felt now.
He remembered dimly what he had been thinking in the early morning hour
when he was walking on the terrace overhead while she was ending her
life. He had been enraged with her. How could she do it? He had begged
and implored to be allowed to help her, to carry her away from the
abyss she was nearing, but she had pushed him away and thrown herself
down before his eyes—exactly in the way a woman would—an obstinate,
irresponsible, foolish way.
When he saw her lying lifeless he had been in despair and rage again,
because he would not have let her go. Whatever she had done he would have
exonerated her, helped her, offered her his love and trust.
As long as he lived there would be moments when he would reproach her
for choosing to die—Jenny, you should not have done it. Yet there would
be moments when he would understand that she did so, because it was in
keeping with her character, and he would love her for it as long as he
lived. And never would he wish that he had not loved her.
But he would cry desperately, as he had already done, because he had not
loved her long before; he would cry for the lost years when she had lived
beside him as his friend and comrade and he had not understood that she
was the woman who should have been his wife. And never would the day dawn
when he would wish he had not understood, even if only to see that it was
too late.
Gunnar rose from his knees. He took a small box from his pocket and
opened it. One of Jenny’s pink crystal beads was in it. He had found it
in the drawer of her dressing-table when he packed up her belongings;
the string had broken and he kept one of the beads. He took some earth
from the grave and put it in the box. The bead rolled about in it and was
covered with grey dust, but the clear rose colour showed through and the
fine rents in the crystal glittered in the sun.
He had sent all her possessions to her mother, except the letters, which
he had burnt. The child’s clothes were in a sealed cardboard box. He sent
it to Francesca, remembering that Jenny had said one day she would give
them to her.
He had looked through all her sketch-books and drawings before packing
them and carefully cut out the leaves with the picture of the boy, hiding
them in his pocket-book. They were his—all that was hers alone was his.
On the plain grew some purple anemones; he rose mechanically to pick
them. Oh, spring-time!
He remembered a spring day two years ago when he had been in Norway. He
had been given a cart and a red mare at the posting station; the owner
was an old schoolfellow of his. It was a sunny day in March; the meadows
were yellow with withered grass, and the dung-heaps over the ploughed
fields shone like pale brown velvet. They drove past the familiar farms
with yellow, grey, and red houses and apple yards and lilac bushes. The
forest all round was olive green, with a purple tint on the birch twigs,
and the air was full that day with the chirping of invisible birds.
Two little fair-haired children were walking in the road, carrying a can.
“Where are you going, little ones?”
They stopped, looking suspiciously at him.
“Taking food to father?”
They assented hesitatingly—a little astonished that a strange gentleman
should know it.
“Climb up here and I’ll give you a ride.” He helped them into the cart.
“Where is father working?”
“At Brusted.”
“That’s over beyond the school, is it not?”
Thus went the conversation. A stupid, ignorant man asking and asking, as
grown-up people always talk to children, and the little ones, who have
such a lot of wisdom, consult each other quietly with their eyes, giving
sparingly of it—as much as they think convenient.
Hand in hand they walked along beside a rushing brook when he put them
down, and he turned his horse in the direction he wanted to go.
There was a prayer meeting that evening at his home. His sister Ingeborg
was sitting by the old corner cupboard, following with a pale, ecstatic
face and shining steel-blue eyes a shoemaker, who spoke of spiritual
grace; then suddenly she rose herself to bear witness.
His pretty, smart sister who once had been so fond of dancing and
merriment. She loved to read and to learn; when he had got work in town
he sent her books and pamphlets and the _Social Democrat_ twice a week.
At thirty she was “saved,” and now she “spoke in tongues.”
She had bestowed all her love on her nephew Anders and a little girl they
had with them—an illegitimate child from Christiania. With sparkling eyes
she told them about Jesus, the children’s Friend.
The next day it was snowing; he had promised to take the children to a
cinema in the small neighbouring town, and they had to walk a couple of
miles in the melting snow, leaving black footprints behind. He tried to
talk to the children, asking questions and receiving guarded answers.
But on the way back the children were the inquisitive ones, and,
flattered, he gave frank and detailed answers, anxious to give them
proper information about the films they had seen—of cowboys in Arizona
and cocoanut harvest in the Philippines. And he tried his best to tell
them properly and answer without ever being at a loss.
* * * * *
Oh, spring-time!
It was on a spring day he had gone to Viterbo with Jenny and Francesca.
Dressed in black, she had been sitting by the window looking out with
eyes so big and grey—he remembered it well.
The stormy clouds sent showers over the brown plains of the Campagna,
where there were no ruins for the tourists to go and see, only a
crumbled wall here and there and a farm with two pines and some pointed
straw-stacks near the house. The pigs herded together in the valley,
where some trees grew beside a stream. The train sped between hills
and oak woods where white and blue anemones and yellow primroses grew
among the faded leaves. She said she wanted to get out to pick them,
gather them in the falling rain among the dripping leaves under the wet
branches. “This is like spring at home,” she said.
It had been snowing; some of the snow was still lying grey in the
ditches, and the flowers were wet and heavy, with petals stuck together.
Little rivulets rushed down the crevices, vanishing under the railway
line. A shower beat against the window and drove the smoke to earth.
Then it cleared over valleys and grove, and the water streamed down the
sides of the hills.
He had had some of his things in one of the girls’ boxes. When he
remembered it in the evening they had already begun to undress and were
laughing and chatting when he knocked at their door. Jenny opened it a
little, giving him what he asked for. She had on a light dressing-jacket
with short sleeves, leaving the slender white arm bare. It tempted him to
many kisses, but he dared only give it one single, light one. He had been
in love with her then, intoxicated with the spring, the wine, the merry
rain, and the sudden sunshine, with his own youth and the joy of life. He
wanted to make her dance—that tall, fair girl, who smiled so guardedly as
if she were trying a new art, something she had never yet done—she who
had stared with grey, serious eyes at all the flowers they passed and
that she wanted to pick.
Oh, how different all might have been! The dry, bitter sob shook his
frame again.
The day they went to Montefiascone it rained too, so hard that the water
was flung back from the stone bridge on to the girls’ lifted skirts and
ankles. How they had laughed, all three of them, when they walked up the
narrow street, the rain-water streaming towards them in small torrents.
When they reached Rocca, the castle cliff in the centre of the old town,
it cleared. They leaned over the rampart, looking at the lake, which lay
black beneath the olive groves and the vineyards. The skies hung low
about the hills round the lake, but across the dark water there came a
silver line, which broadened, the mist rolled back into the crevices, and
the mountain came into better view. The sun pierced the clouds, which
sank down to rest round the small promontories with grey stone castles.
Towards the north a distant peak became visible—Cesca said it was Monte
Amiata.
The last rain-clouds rolled across the blue spring sky, melting before
the sun; the bad weather fled westward, darkening the Etrurian heights,
which sloped desolately towards the far yellow-white strip of the
Mediterranean. The sight reminded him of the mountain scenery in his own
country, in spite of the olive grove and the vineyards.
He and she had stooped behind the hedge, and he had held out his coat so
that she could light her cigarette. The wind was keen up there, and she
shivered a little in her wet clothes. Her cheeks were red and the sun
glittered in her damp, golden hair as she stroked it away from her eyes
with one hand.
He would go there tomorrow to meet the spring, the cold, naked spring,
full of expectation, with all the buds wet and shivering in the
wind—blossoming all the same.
* * * * *
She and the spring were one to him, she who stood shivering and smiled in
the changing weather and wanted to gather all the flowers into her lap.
Little Jenny, you were not to gather the flowers, and your dreams never
came true—and now I am dreaming them for you.
And when I have lived long enough to be so full of longing as you were,
perhaps I will do as you, and say to fate: Give me a few of the flowers;
I will be satisfied with much less than I wanted in the beginning of
life. But I will not die as you did, because you could not be content.
I will remember you, and kiss your head and your golden hair and think:
She could not live without being the best, and claiming the best as her
right; and maybe I shall say: Heaven be praised that she chose death
rather than living content.
Tonight I will go to Piazza San Pietro and listen to the wild music of
the fountain that never stops, and dream my dream. For you, Jenny, are my
dream, and I have never had any other.
* * * * *
Dream—oh, dream!
If your child had lived he would not have been what you dreamt when you
held him in your arms. He might have done something good and great, or
something bad and disgraceful, but he would never have accomplished what
you dreamt he should do. No woman has given life to the child she dreamt
of when she bore it—no artist has created the work he saw before him in
the moment of his inspiration. And we live summer after summer, but not
one is like the one we have been longing for when we stooped to gather
the wet flowers in the spring showers. And no love is what lovers dreamed
when they kissed for the first time.
If you and I had lived together we might have been happy or not, we might
have done good or ill to one another, but I shall never know what our
love would have been if you had been mine. The only thing I know is that
it would never have been what I dreamt that night when I stood with you
in the moonlight while the fountain was playing.
And yet I would not have missed that dream, and I would not miss the
dream I am dreaming now.
Jenny, I would give my life if you could meet me on the cliff and be as
you were then, and kiss me and love me for one day, one hour. Always I am
thinking of what it might have been if you had lived and been mine, and
it seems to me that a boundless joy has been wasted. Oh, you are dead,
and your death has made me so poor. I have only my dream of you, but if I
compare my poverty with others’ riches it is ever so much more glorious.
Not to save my life would I cease to love you and dream of you and mourn
you.
* * * * *
Gunnar Heggen did not know that in the great storm of his heart he
had lifted his arms towards heaven and was whispering to himself. The
anemones he had picked were still in his hand, but he did not know it.
The soldiers on the wall laughed at him, but he did not see. He pressed
the flowers to his heart, and whispered gently to himself as he walked
slowly from the grave toward the cypress grove.