Yet another half-day in wretchedness and boredom; a night with changes of train in the darkness, and at last they were in Copenhagen. There they were unknown and had no need to feel embarrassed. But when they entered the dining-saloon, she began to pass the "searchlight" of her looks, as he called it, over all those present, so that when the baron looked at her he never saw her eye except in profile. At last he became angry and kicked her shin under the table. Then she turned away and appealed with her eyes to the company. She could not look at him—so hateful did he seem to her. Upstairs in their room the corks were drawn out. They reached the stage of recriminations. His spoilt career was her fault ... she had lost her child and home through him. So it went on till past midnight when sleep had mercy on them.
Then next morning they sat at the breakfast-table, silent and ghastly to look at. She remembered her honeymoon journey and very much the same situation. They had nothing to say to each other, and he was as tedious as her husband had been. They kept silence and were ashamed of being in each other's presence. They were conscious of their mutual hatred, and poisoned each other with nerve-poison.
At last the deliverer came. The waiter approached with a telegram for the baron, who opened and read it at a glance. He seemed to consider, cast a calculating glance at his enemy, and after a pause said: "I am recalled by the commanding officer."
"And mean to leave me here?"
He changed his resolve in a second: "No, we will travel back together." A plan suggested itself and he told her of it. "We will sail across to Landskrona; there no one knows you, and you can wait for me."
The idea of sailing had a smack of the adventurous and heroic about it, and this trifle outweighed all other considerations. She was kindled, kindled him, and they packed at once. The prospect of leaving her, for however short a time, restored his courage.
Accordingly, some hours later, he took his seat in a hired sailing-boat with his beloved by the foresail and put off from Lange Linie like a sea-robber with his bride, blustering, ostentatious and gorgeous.
In order to conceal his plan he had only spoken to the owner of the boat of a pleasure-trip in the Sound. His intention was to telegraph from Landskrona and send the money due for the boat and have the boat itself towed by a steamer.
As they were putting off from shore, the boat owner stood near and watched them. But when he saw that they were directing their course to the Island Hven, he put his hands to his mouth and shouted: "Don't go too near Hven," and something else which was carried away by the wind.
"Why not Hven?" asked the baron aloud. "The shore is steep, so that there are no rocks under water."
"Yes, but if he tells us so, he must have had some reason for it," she objected.
"Don't talk nonsense! Look after the foresail!"
The wind blew a light gale on the open sea, and since there was a considerable distance between the foresail and the stern there was no need for conversation, much to the baron's relief.
Their course was directed towards the south-east corner of Hven, though at first not noticeably so. But when she at last saw whither they were going, she called out: "Don't steer for Hven!"
"Hold your——!" answered the baron and tacked.
After an hour's good run they had come abreast of the white island and a light pressure on the rudder turned the boat's prow towards Landskrona, which appeared in the north.
"Saved!" cried the steersman and lit a cigar.
At the same instant a little steamer put out from Hven and made straight for the sailing-boat.
"What is that steamer?" she asked.
"It is a custom-house boat," answered the baron who was at home on the sea.
But now the steamer hoisted a yellow flag and whistled.
"That has nothing to do with us," said the baron, and kept on his course.
But the steamer took a sweep round, signalled with the flag, and let off several short, sharp whistles like cries of distress, increasing speed at the same time. Then the baron jumped up wildly at the stern as though he intended plunging into the sea. He remembered the outbreak of cholera at Hamburg and cried: "It is the quarantine! Three days! We are lost!"
The next moment he sat down again in his place, hauling taut the main-sheet and drifting before the wind, straight towards the Sound. The chase began, but soon the steamer stood athwart the bow of the sailing-boat, which was captured.
The whole carefully-thought-out device of the baron to avoid the gaze of curious eyes was defeated, and as their sailing-boat was towed into the harbour of Hven, the unhappy pair were saluted from the bridge by hundreds of their fellow-countrymen with derisive applause and peals of laughter, though the latter did not know whom they were applauding. But the chagrin of the captured pair was greater than the others guessed, for they believed that people were ridiculing their unfortunate love affair.
To make matters worse the baron had unpardonably insulted the quarantine doctor by upbraiding him on board the steamer. Therefore no special consideration was shown them, but they were treated like all others who come from a cholera-infected port. Since their incognito was bound to be seen through sooner or later, they went about in perpetual fear of discovery. Full of suspicion, they believed every other hour that they were recognised.
No one would have the patience to read the story of the torture of those three days. So much is known, that the first day she spent in weeping for her child, while he walked about the island. The second day she enlarged upon the excellent qualities of her husband as contrasted with the execrable ones of her lover. On the third day she cursed him for having taken her away, and when she ended by calling him an idiot for not having obeyed her own and the boat-owner's advice to avoid Hven, he gave her a box on the ear.... On the fourth day when they were really discovered, and newspapers arrived with the whole story, they went into a crevice in the rocks to hide their shame.
When at last two steamers came to fetch the unfortunates, each went on board a different one. And after that day they never saw nor knew each other again.
It was nearly midnight when the reading was ended. An interval of silence followed, but the postmaster felt he must say something. "One generally says 'thanks'!" he remarked. "Meanwhile, after you have said all, there is not much to add: I will only ask myself, you, and everyone a general question: 'What is love?'"
"What is love? Answer: 'I don't know.' Love has been called a piece of roguery on the part of Nature. I don't believe that, for I know that Nature has neither made itself nor can it think out pieces of roguery. But if we accept that proposition, we descend to zoology, and that I do not wish to do. I do not share the theoretical veneration for woman which my contemporaries cherish; on the other hand, I instinctively place her higher than ourselves. She seems to me to be formed out of finer material than we men, but I may be wrong, for she seems to be furnished with more animal functions than we are. If I were a theosophist, I should believe she was only a kind of intermediary chrysalis stage on the way to man, only a temporary manifestation, out of which love, i.e. man's love, creates in, her possibilities of being and seeming. When he finds this really lifeless form of existence and breathes his immortal breath into it, he shares the Creator's joy on the seventh day. The process of refining, which his coarser substance hindered him bringing about in his own soul, he brings about in hers, and through reaction—no! it is too difficult for me to explain; it is like dividing an angle into three equal parts. Anyhow, the fact is certain, and my story is an illustration of it, that when a man is deceived in his love as he always is, his whole being revolts against the government of the world, which seems to him to have condescended to mock at his holiest possession, the holiest thing in all creation. If Providence is consonant with such deceit and such coarse jesting then he discovers a devil where he thought he had seen a good angel. After that what shall he trust, what shall he value, at what shall he not make a grimace? And when after marriage the veil falls, and like Adam and Eve they are naked and ashamed, then even the most unbelieving is conscious of something resembling the Fall. Then comes a fresh error and they think they have deceived each other, which they have not done. So they scourge each other for crimes which neither has committed. A second deception follows the first."
They were again silent. Then the postmaster gave the conversation another turn and descended to the earth. "You can guess that I, at any rate, recognise the lady of your story. She lives in her own little house, here on the island by the shore."
"Yes she does! I know her, and I was quarantine doctor at Hven when she was captured. Now that she is elderly she has renewed her acquaintance with me, and it is from her own mouth that I heard the story. She has been in love countless times, and declares that every time she believed she had found the right man who had been predestined for her from the foundation of the world."
"Does not reason feel its helplessness before such riddles, riddles of every day?"
"Yes and therefore ... yes, next Saturday you shall hear another story, and I think we shall approach the riddle a little more closely, i.e. we shall find its insolubility more strongly proved."
"I shall be glad to hear it. But why don't you have your stories printed?"
"Because I have been a doctor, and a woman's doctor. I have no right to reveal what I have heard in my official capacity. Sometimes I should like to be a writer with a prescriptive right to find material for his art in men's lives and destinies; but that is a calling and a task which is denied to me."
"Very well; good night till next Saturday."
When Saturday evening came round, the two old men sat in the corner room with their toddy and tobacco and a large pile of manuscript on the table. The postmaster looked a little nervously at it, as a child might at a family book of sermons.
"We can give two evenings to it," said the doctor soothingly.
"Ah no! we have the whole evening before us and to-morrow is Sunday. Fire ahead! We will have an interval for refreshments."
The doctor began to read at six o'clock and had finished when it struck eleven.
He had left his Christiania full of bitterness because a public injustice had been done him. At forty years of age he had written the best modern drama and had invented a new form of play with a new plot which answered the expectations of the generation which was growing up. But the older generation was still alive, and spectators, actors, and critics felt that their ideals were leaving them in the lurch, and that they themselves would be involved in their fall. If the public taste took a new direction which they could not follow, they would be regarded as superannuated, and be left behind. Accordingly his masterpiece had been called idiotic and had been hissed off the stage, and it had been suggested to him that he should return to America, where he had already been and left his wife, from whom he was separated.
But, instead of going to America, he went to Copenhagen. In the centre of the city he set up a restaurant where he foregathered with Swedes and Finns. After some months' delay he succeeded in getting his drama performed at a Copenhagen theatre. It was decidedly successful and his reputation was saved. He had felt that he had done with life, but now he began to wake up and to look about him. But when he did enter into life again, he did so with dull resignation and an almost fatalistic spirit which found expression in his favourite motto: "Prepared for everything!"
His dramatic success resulted in his receiving social invitations. One evening he went to a soiree at a distinguished author's, round whom the younger stars in art and literature were accustomed to gather. The supper was long and brilliant, but several unoccupied places were waiting for guests who should arrive after the theatres had closed. At half-past ten there was a stir in the company, for the expected guests came—three ladies and three men all unknown to the Norwegian. But one of the three ladies greeted him as an acquaintance and reached the stranger her hand. Immediately afterwards he asked the hostess in a whisper who it was.
"Who is it? Miss X—— of course! You talked with her at Doctor E——'s supper."
"Really! It is strange that with my good memory I cannot recall her appearance. One evening lately, in a well-lit theatre lobby, I passed her without a greeting."
"Of course you don't see that she is pretty."
"Is she?" He leant forward to look at the young lady who had taken her seat far down the table. "Yes she doesn't look bad."
"Fie! Fie! She is a celebrated beauty of the best Copenhagen type."
"Oh! Formerly I only admired blondes but latterly have confined my admiration to brunettes." Then they talked of something else. After supper the company gathered in the drawing-room and the beautiful Dane and the Norwegian sat so close together that he put her cup down for her. When she asked who would escort her home, he answered: "I of course," and his escort was accepted. When at last the company broke up, he and she found themselves in the same mysterious way so deep in conversation that a group of ladies and gentlemen formed a circle round them with a mischievous air to watch them. The pair, however, did not observe this, but continued to talk. As they went down the steps they heard a "good night!" and a ringing laugh overhead from the young and charming hostess who was leaning over the balcony-railing. They went along the shore, and past the bridges, continuing their conversation without a pause. When they came to X—— Street she invited him to supper the following evening to meet a young female artist. But she prepared him to find her surroundings very simple, as she was staying in a pension kept by a strict old lady. Then they parted as though they had been old acquaintances and colleagues.
As he walked home alone through the night, and tried to recall the events of the evening to his mind, he noticed again the curious fact that he could not remember her appearance. Yet as a former reporter, he had been so accustomed to photograph people and scenes, landscapes and interiors with his eye that he could not understand it. Moreover, he observed that she was quite a different person this evening to what she had been the first time they met. There was now no trace of "independence" about her, only a mild yieldingness, a certain melancholy, which became her well and aroused sympathy. When they talked of the unfortunate fate of a certain person, there were tears in her voice. It was the voice which he remembered more than anything else about her—somewhat deep and melancholy with a slight accent which carried one far away from the great town and awoke memories of wood and sea, the sounds of nature, shepherds' huts, and hay-rakes. He now recollected how they had really treated her like a child the previous evening, had teased her about her writings, and asked her for recommendations, at which she had only smiled. She also had the unfortunate habit of letting fall naive expressions, which were really seriously meant, but sometimes had a repellent effect.
The only one who had taken her seriously was himself, the foreigner. And he had seen that she was no child but a woman with whom he could speak of men and books and all that interested him, without once having to explain his remarks.
When he awoke the next morning, he tried to call to his mind the events and persons of the previous day. It was his habit, when he made a new acquaintance, to seek in his memory for the "corresponding number," as he called it, in order to get a clear idea of his character; i.e. he thought which of his old friends most nearly resembled the person in question. This psychical operation was often performed involuntarily, i.e. when he tried to call up the image of his new acquaintance, the figure of an old one rose up in his mind and more or less obliterated the latter. When he now recalled his yesterday's memories of Miss X—— he saw her with an elderly married cousin, to whom he had always felt indifferent. This suppressed any sentimental feeling, if any were present, and he only thought of her as a kindly woman-friend. Accordingly, in the evening, he felt perfectly calm and without a trace of that embarrassment which one sometimes feels in attempting to make oneself agreeable to a young lady. He was received with perfect frankness as an old acquaintance and led into a lady's boudoir elegantly furnished with a well-appointed writing-table, flower-plants, family portraits, carpets, and comfortable chairs.
Since the lady painter had been prevented coming, he had to be content with atête-à-tête, and this somewhat jarred on his sense of propriety. But his hostess's simple and unaffected manner caused him to suppress some remarks which might have hurt her feelings.
So they sat opposite each other and talked. Her black silk dress had blue insets and was cut in the "empire style," with dark lace trimmings which hung from her shoulders like a sleigh-net. This gave her a somewhat matronly appearance, and when he noticed her tone like that of an experienced woman of the world, he thought for a moment: "She is divorced!" Her face, which he could now examine in full light, showed a flat forehead which looked as though it had been hammered smooth and betokened a determined will without obstinacy. The eyes were large and well-defined as with Southerners. The nose seemed to have altered its mind while growing, for it took a little bend in the middle and became Roman by degrees. This little unexpected "joy-ful surprise" lent a cameo-like charm to her profile.
Their conversation was still more lively this evening, for they had already amassed a small store of common experiences to discuss, acquaintances to analyse, and ideas to test. They sat there and cut out silhouettes of their friends, and as neither of them wished to seem spiteful, they cut them in handsome shapes, and not with pointed scissors.
During this innocent interchange of thought, he had glanced at a very large flower-basket full of splendid roses. She had divined his thoughts, and just as a servant brought in a bottle of wine and cigarettes, she got up and went towards the roses.
("She is engaged!" he thought and felt himself superfluous.)
"I was given these by a friend on his departure," she said.
But in order to show that she was not engaged she broke off a stem carelessly. It was fastened with wire, and she had to look for her scissors. As these were in her work-basket on the lowest shelf of her work-table, she knelt down and remained kneeling. She remained in that attitude while she fastened two of the finest roses in his buttonhole, and she only needed to stretch out an arm to reach a glass of wine and drink to his health.
"'Roses and wine!' I have used that as a refrain for a ballad," he said. He thought the situation somewhat strange but insignificant in itself.
"Oh! do repeat the ballad!"
He had forgotten it.
She rose up and sat on her chair, and he persuaded her to tell him something of her life. She had early left her parents, who lived separated without being divorced, for they were Catholics. She had been educated in convent-schools in London, Paris, Italy, and elsewhere. In Paris especially, when with English ladies, she had been bothered with religion, but had finally thrown it all overboard. She certainly felt an emptiness without it, but expected, like everyone else, that some new substitute was coming into the world. Meanwhile, like her contemporaries, she devoted her energies to the deliverance of humanity from pauperism and oppression. She had superficially studied Nietzsche among others and laid him aside again after finding in him a slight corrective to over-strained expectations of universal equality.
While she was talking, he noticed that light fell through a curtain behind her back, which screened a door apparently leading into the interior of the house. Like lightning the thought struck him that he might be the object of a joke, and was to be surprised in the ridiculous position of a woman-worshipper. Or perhaps it was only for propriety's sake that communication was kept open with the main building. This wholesome doubt kept their conversation free from all tincture of flirtation, and when supper was served he reproached himself for having suspected his hostess of evil purposes or a want of trust in him.
About half-past eight he was about to go, but she only needed to express a suspicion that he was longing for the café to make him remain. About half-past nine o'clock he was going again but was kept back.
"But," he remonstrated, "it is my part as the elder and more prudent to spare you any unpleasantness."
She understood nothing, but declared that she was independent and that the lady who kept the pension was accustomed to her suppers.
At last his instinct told him that it was a mistake to stay longer; he rose and took his leave. On his way home, he said to himself, "No, people are not so simple, and cannot be labelled by formulas, for I don't comprehend an atom of this evening or of this woman."
The next time they met it was in a museum. Her outer dress made her look like a young married woman of thirty or more. Her mouth had a tired expression and had fine little wrinkles near it, as is the case with those who laugh often. But she was melancholy, hinted at having had a breach with her father, and spoke of taking her departure shortly. She inquired regarding her friend's relations to theatres and publishers, and offered to help him with advice and influence. To-day she was mere motherly tenderness, and a certain carelessness in her toilet suggested that she did not want to please as a woman.
But when she proposed that they should go to the theatre together he declined, from a feeling that he ought not to compromise her, nor expose himself to danger, for his precarious pecuniary position did not permit him to think of a love affair.
He proposed to her instead that they should go for a stroll together, and she suggested that he should escort her from her new lodging, for she had changed her rooms.
("They have given her notice at the pension, because of me," he thought, but said nothing.)
By this time his curiosity as an author was aroused, and he wished to learn the riddle of this woman, for he had never seen any other change their appearance as she did.
When in the evening he rang at her door, he was shown into a side room and asked to wait. When she was dressed he was let out into the front hall, where they met. This, then, was a new order of things.
They went westward by an empty street which led to the Zoological Gardens, and entered a restaurant which she seemed to know well. In her fur jacket and with a kerchief on her head she looked in the dark like an old woman, and as she stooped somewhat, she seemed to have something witchlike about her. But when they entered the well-lit restaurant, and she laid aside kerchief and jacket she stood revealed all at once in her youthful beauty. A moss-green, tightly fitting dress showed the figure of a girl of eighteen, and with her hair brushed smooth, she looked like an overgrown schoolgirl. He could not conceal his astonishment at this witchery, and looked her all over as though he were seeking a concealed enemy with a searchlight. ("Eros! Now I am lost!" he thought. And from that moment he was indeed.)
She saw quite well the effect she had produced, and seemed to glisten there in a sort of phosphorescent light, sure of victory, with a triumphant expression round her mouth, for she saw that he was conquered. He felt a sudden fear. She had his soul in her pocket, and could cast it into the river or into the gutter; therefore he hated her at the same time. He saw that his only chance of safety lay in awakening a reciprocal flame in her, so that she might be as closely bound to him as he was to her. With this half-conscious purpose, he did what every man in his place would have done—insinuated himself into her confidence, made himself as little as a child and aroused her sympathy, the sympathy of a woman for a lacerated and damned soul which has no more hope of happiness. She listened to him and received his confidence as a tribute, with calm majestic motherliness, without a trace of coquetry or pleasure at hearing of another's misfortune.
When at last, after eating a cold supper, they were about to go, he rose to look up a train in a railway guide. When he returned to the table and wished to pay the bill, the waiter informed him that it had already been paid by the lady! Then he flared up, and wrongly suspecting that she thought he had no money, demanded that at any rate he should pay for himself.
"I don't know the customs of your country," he said, "but in mine a man who lets a lady pay for him is dishonoured."
"You were my guest," she answered.
"No, we went out together, and we cannot come here again. Don't you know what kind of a reputation you will give me, and by what a hateful name this waiter may call me?"
When he recalled the waiter to make good the mistake, there was another scene, so that he rose angrily and laid his share on the table. She was sad, but would not acknowledge herself in the wrong. They were both out of humour, and he noticed that she was thoughtless, just as thoughtless as when she invited a gentleman alone to her room so late in the evening. Or was it an expression of feminine independence demanding to be treated exactly like a man in spite of propriety and prejudice? Perhaps it was the latter, but he fell it to be a piece of presumption, and was angry. There threatened to be an uncomfortable silence between them as they walked home, but she put out her hand and said in a kind, confidential voice: "Don't be cross."
"No I am not that, but, but ... never do it again."
They parted as friends, and he hurried to the café. He had not been there for a long time, partly through a certain dislike to the tone prevailing there, which no longer harmonised with his present mood, and partly because he had promised his friend to be moderate. He found the usual company, but felt somewhat out of place, and made a clear resolve never to bring her there. Accordingly, he soon went home and sank in meditations which were partly gloomy and partly bright. When he recollected the moment of emergence of the youthful beauty from the fur skin of the animal there seemed to him something weird and ominous about it. It was not the youthful beauty which is clothed in reflections from a paradise of innocence, but a dark, demoniac beauty which becomes a man's death, the grave of his virile will, and which leads to humiliation, ruin, and disgraceful bargaining. But it is as inevitable and unescapable as Fate.
The next day he was invited, together with her, to dinner at an art professor's. She then appeared in a new character, talking like a woman of the world in a confident tone, firing off smart sayings and epigrams and never at a loss for an answer. At intervals she seemed indifferent, blase, and cruel.
The professor, who had just been sitting on a jury, told us that he had joined in giving a verdict of guilty against a child murderess.
"I should have acquitted her," said Miss X——. The professor, who belonged to the Danish Academy and had the entree to the Court, was astonished, but did not argue with her. He construed her answer as a burst of caprice and let the matter drop. The conversation at table was somewhat forced. The Norwegian, who had been invited by the lady of the house, did not feel at ease in this circle where everything revolved round the Court. Probably his friend had arranged this invitation with the kind intention of making him known and of investing him, who had the reputation of being half an anarchist, with an air of gentility. The discord was felt when the talk turned upon Art, and the professor was in a minority of one with his opinions and academic ideals.
Therefore, when at dessert time his hostess asked the Norwegian whether he would come to one of her receptions, where he would have the opportunity of meeting many celebrities, she received such a sharp look from her husband, that the Norwegian declined the invitation decidedly. Just then the Scandinavians were in ill favour in the higher circles of society because a Norwegian artist by his new style of painting had caused a schism in the Academy.
Again he had let himself be enticed by his friend's thoughtlessness. She had brought him into a circle to which he did not belong and in which he was not welcome. On the other hand she seemed to notice nothing of it, but was as much at home and at her ease as before.
After dinner there was music. The young beauty behaved as though her friend was not there and never looked at him at all. When the party broke up, she took leave of him as though of a stranger, and let herself be escorted home by someone else.
It was a Sunday afternoon in February. They were walking in one of the outer streets of the city towards the west, where they were sure to meet no acquaintances. Finally they entered a restaurant which lay off the road. She spoke of her approaching departure, and he said he would miss her society.
"Come along too," she said simply and openly.
"Yes," he answered, "it is really all the same to me where I stay."
That was an idea which seemed to drive away certain clouds. She now began to speak of Berlin, the theatrical prospects there, and so on.
"But," he objected, "it would be too far from my children."
"Your children! Yes, I have often thought of them. Have you their portraits with you? Do let me see them!"
He really had the portraits with him, and as she repeated her wish, he showed them. The two girls did not interest her much but she was delighted at the eight-year-old fair boy with the upturned look. "What a lovely child's face! Isn't it a happiness to have such a child!"
"To have it to-day, and lose to-morrow!" he replied.
She now examined the photograph more exactly and began to compare it with the father somewhat too closely. He began to feel some of that shyness which a man feels before a woman when she assumes this rôle.
"It is you," she said, "and not you also."
He asked for no explanation, and she requested that she might keep the portrait by her.
They resumed the discussion of the proposed journey, but she was absent-minded and often let her looks rest on the photograph.
He could not guess what was in her mind but he noticed that there was a struggle of some kind and that she was on the point of forming a resolution. He felt how a network of fine sucker-like tendrils spread from her being and wove itself into his. Something fateful was impending. He felt depressed, longed for the circle of male friends whom he had abandoned, and asked her to release him from his promise not to go any more to the café.
"Are you longing to go downthereagain?" she said in a motherly voice. "Think of your little son!"
They went out silent in the dark but starlit evening. He had for the first time offered her his arm and the cape of his coat flapped loose in the wind and struck her face. "I have already dreamt this once," she said. But he gave no answer.
When they came to her door, she took him by both hands, looked him in the eyes and said: "Don't go to your friends." Then she let her veil drop, and before he divined her intention, printed a kiss through the veil on his mouth. As he stretched out his arms to embrace her, she was already behind the door, and closed it. He stood there completely crestfallen without being able to understand how it had happened. Then came the conclusion: "She loves me and has not been playing with me." But what audacity! It is true she let her veil fall, for she was modest, and fled, alarmed at what she had done. It was original, but not bold-faced; other countries, other manners!
But for a man it was somewhat humiliating to receive the first sign of love and not to bestow it. Yet he would never have dared to run the risk of a possible box on the ears and a scornful laugh. It was well that it had happened; now he had certainty, and that was enough.
She loved him! Since he was loved, he could say to himself: "I am not so bad after all if someone can look up to me and believe good of me." This awoke his self-respect, hope, and confidence. He felt himself young again, and was ready to begin a new spring. It was true that he had only shown her his good side, but his habit of suppressing his worse nature for the occasion had brought his better nature into prominence. This was the secret of the ennobling influence of real love. He played the part of the magnanimous till it became a second nature. The fact that he discovered her beauty, and was delighted with her as a woman later on was a further guarantee that the stages of their love affair had developed themselves in orderly progression, and that he had not been merely captivated by a beautiful exterior. He had indeed guessed her defects and overlooked them, for that is the duty of love, and the chief proof of its genuineness, for without forbearance with faults there is no love. He went home and wrote the inevitable letter. It ended with the words: "Now the man lays his head in your lap as a sign that the good in you overcomes the evil in him, but do not misuse your power, for then you must expect the usual fate of tyrants."
The next morning he sent off the letter by a messenger. Ilmarinen his Finnish friend stood by the head of his bed and looked mysterious. "Well!" he said. "Are you going to try once more?"
"Yes, so it appears."
"And you dare to?"
"If it comes to the worst, I only dare to be unhappy, and one is unhappy anyhow."
"Yes, yes."
"It is a change at any rate, and this lonely life is no life."
Instead of an answer to his letter he received a telegram with a request to meet her that evening at the office of an editor who might be useful to them.
In answer to this he sent a message by telegram: "I don't come till I have received an answer to my letter."
Again came a telegram, in which she asked to be allowed to postpone her answer till the next day.
He thought the whole affair nonsensical but went to keep the appointment. She seemed as though nothing had happened; they ate their supper and discussed business. The editor was a married man, and pleasant, nor did he seem to wish his visitors to worship him.
This evening, however, the Norwegian thought her ugly. She was carelessly dressed, had ink on her fingers, and she talked so exclusively of business that she lost all her ideal aspect. He had experienced much in his life, and seen many strange people, but anyone so eccentric as this woman he had never seen. He went home with a feeling of relief, firmly resolved not to follow her to Berlin, nor to link his destiny any closer with hers. The next morning he received her letter; this strengthened him still further in his resolve to withdraw. She wrote that she was one of those women who cannot love. ("What sort of a woman is that? A mere phrase!" he thought.) He believed that he loved her but he was only in love with her love. ("Alexandre Dumas I think!") She still desired, however, to remain his friend and asked him to meet her that day.
He answered this with a farewell letter of thanks.
Then there rained on him telegrams and express messengers.
Towards evening a hotel waiter entered his room and announced that a lady in a carriage was waiting below to see him. At first he thought of declining to go down, but she might come to his room, and then the bond would be made fast. Accordingly he went down, entered the carriage, and without reflection or saying anything they gave each other a kiss, which seemed perfectly natural. There ensued a stormy conversation which was extremely like a quarrel. She asked that he should accompany her that very night on her journey, but he gave a decided refusal. If they were seen together, to-morrow the "elopement" would be in all the newspapers. That he could not bring his conscience to agree to, both on account of her parents and his own children. He also told her that he was dependent on other people's help, and that as soon as he was known as an adventurer all these resources would dry up.
"Then you don't love me!"
"What nonsense you talk, child."
He had to laugh at her. They got out of the cab and continued their contest in a little green lane which led down to the shore.
Now and then he put his arm round her neck and silenced her mouth with a kiss.
"I have seen that you are cracked, but I myself am half-mad, you see, and you won't get the better of me."
"I will jump into the sea!" she shrieked.
"Very well! I will follow, and can swim."
At last he got her to laugh. Then they entered a café in order to arrive at a final decision. Now he had the upper hand and treated her like a naughty girl, and curiously enough, as soon as he had assigned this rôle to her, she took it up and maintained it.
Did these two love each other now? Yes, certainly, for he knew how tied he was, and she had already, as appeared later on, confessed her love in a letter to her mother, adding that he was to know nothing of it, for then she would immediately be brought under the yoke of subjection.
The final decision they arrived at was that she should travel alone, and they made no promises to each other. They were to correspond and see whether they would be able to meet in the summer; when his position was more secure they would think of betrothal and marriage.
They parted, and did not see each other again for a long time.
He went immediately afterwards to look up his old friends in the café. There in his own circle he wished to find himself again, for during this month's exclusive living with a woman, he had become loosed from his own environment, lost his foothold, and built up a common life on the shaky foundation of the temperament of a young girl, whom his passion had transformed into a mature woman. Her last outbreak of anger had revealed a fury who believed that she could compel him to blind obedience. During this her face had exhibited all possible changes from the broad grin of Punch to the hissing of the cat which shows its white claws. He breathed more lightly, experienced a sensation of relief, and entered the café feeling as though he had left something oppressive behind him, something happily over and done with!
The Swede sat there, and probably the gossip regarding the Norwegian's engagement had caused him to bring his lady friend with him. She was a tall fragile-looking Swede who seemed to be emaciated by illness; she had a mournful, despairing sort of voice, a drawling accent and drooping eyes. As an artist, although obscure she was "emancipated" as the phrase is, but not free from the feminine vanity of being able to appear with a number of male hangers-on, whom she boasted of having made conquests of. Her thoughts had long turned upon the Norwegian. When they met, she found him novel and full of surprises. At the same time he brought with him the fire of his newly kindled flame. Within half an hour she had neither eyes nor ears for her old friend. When at last she snapped at him, he stood up and asked her to come with him. "You can go," she answered. And he went.
In less than an hour she had broken with her friend of many years and formed a tie with the Norwegian who an hour and a half before had kissed his fiancée at parting. He asked himself how that was possible, but took no time to reflect on it. She possessed the advantage of being able to understand him completely; he was able to speak out his thoughts after a long imprisonment; he needed only to give a hint in order to be understood. She drank in the eloquence of his words, seemed to follow the sudden leaps of his thought, and probably received answers to many questions which had long occupied her mind. But she was ugly and ill-dressed, and he sometimes felt ashamed at the thought that he might be suspected of being her admirer. Then he felt an unspeakable sympathy with her which she interpreted to mean that she had made a conquest of him.
They went out into the town and wandered from café to café, continually talking. Sometimes his conscience pricked him, sometimes he felt a repulsion to her, because she had been faithless to her friend. Faithlessness indeed was the link which united them, and they felt as if Destiny had driven them to commit the same wrong on the same evening. She had at once inquired about his engagement and he had at first given an evasive answer; but as she had continued to ask with comrade-like sympathy he had told her the whole story. But in doing so he spoke of his love, he became enthusiastic; she warmed herself at the glow and seemed to be a reflection of "the other." So the two images coincided, and the absent maiden, who should have been a barrier between them, was the one who brought them near each other.
The next day they met again, and she never seemed tired of discussing his engagement. She was in a critical mood and began to express doubts whether he would be happy. But she went carefully to work, showed indulgence, and only attempted purely objective psychological analysis. She also understood how to withdraw a severe expression at the right time in order not to frighten him away.
Now as ill-luck would have it, he received at noon a letter from his fiancée which was the answer to the stormy one he had written when they parted. In her letter she only wrote of business matters, gave good advice in a superior tone, in a word was pedantic and narrow-minded. Not a trace of the pretty young girl was to be found in the letter. This put him out of humour and aroused his disgust to such a degree that when he met his new friend, with a ruthless joy in destruction he proceeded to analyse his fiancée under the microscope. The Swede was not backward with her feminine knowledge of feminine secrets to put the worst interpretation on all the details which he narrated. He had cast his lamb to the she-wolf, who tore the prey asunder while he looked on.
At the beginning of April, that is three weeks later, the Norwegian sat in the café one afternoon with Lais, as she was called, after she had become the friend of the company in general, not of anyone in particular. He sat there with a resigned air, "prepared for everything" as usual. It had been difficult to keep his engagement alive by means of the post, and it had become still more uncertain after the news had reached her father's ears and brought him to despair. He was a Minister of State, lived at Odense, went to Court when he was in the capital, and wore twelve orders. He would rather shoot himself than be the father-in-law of a notorious nihilist. In order to put an end to the affair the old man had dictated his conditions, which were of course impossible.
The Norwegian must pay all his debts and give a guarantee that he would have a regular and sufficient income. Since a writer of plays has nothing guaranteed, but is dependent on popular favour, the wooer considered his proposal withdrawn, and regarded himself as unfettered, and indeed he was so. Moreover, thus humiliating correspondence about pecuniary matters had cooled his devotion, for love letters which were full of figures and motherly advice, practical items of information about publishers and so on, were not inspiring to read for a literary free-lance. And as the correspondence slackened, and finally ceased, he considered himself entirely free.
With her usual vanity, Lais had ascribed to herself the honour of having dissolved his engagement, although there was no reason for her doing so. Moreover, in the last few days a circumstance had happened which was fortunate for his future. Another friend of Lais had arrived from the north, and as he was one of her admirers she had such assiduous court paid to her that she did not notice how the Norwegian was slackening in his attentions.
In order to celebrate the arrival of the newcomer, the last few days had been a continual feast, and now they were in that strange condition, when the soul is, so to speak, loosed from its bearings and utters its thoughts without distinction and without regard.
Lais was possessed by the not unusual idea that she was irresistible, and liked to produce the impression that all her male friends, even those who had dropped her, were dismissed admirers. Now she wished to show her newly arrived friend how well she was provided with them and began to skirmish with the Norwegian. Since he had long cherished towards her the hate which is born of imprudently bestowed confidences, he seized the opportunity to bring about the breach without scandal, in a word to dispose of her without disgrace to either of them. Under some pretext, or perhaps with a foreboding that something was about to happen, he took his leave and left the other two together. But Lais pressed him to remain, probably to gain an opportunity of leaving him alone, when she went out with her friend. Here, however, she had made a miscalculation. Making a gesture of invitation to the new-comer, the Norwegian went out after saying the last word: "Now I leave you alone!"
When he came out on the street, he had a certain uneasy suspicion that he had left something unfinished behind him, and had something unexpected before him. He thought he heard the hissing voice of the woman he had left. She never opened her lips, which were sharply defined, like those of a snake, when she spoke, but brought the words straight out of her throat, which was always hoarse through her sitting up at night drinking and smoking. Such a voice in women he called a "porter voice" because it always reminded him of that black drink and its concomitants.
Such is friendship with women—either it ends in love or in hatred just like love!
When he came to his hotel, the waiter handed him a local telegram. "That is what brought me home," he said to himself. His experiences had made him believe in telepathy to such a degree that he was in the habit of saying when in company and there was talk of sending for some absent person: "Shall we telepath to him?"
Before he opened the telegram he believed he knew the contents, and when he had read, he felt as though he had done so before, and was not surprised. The telegram ran thus: "I am here; look me up at Doctor ----'s. Important news."
He stood still for two minutes in order to form a resolution. When the waiter came he asked him to telephone to the friendly doctor, who had a private hospital of his own and enjoyed a very good reputation. The doctor came at once and explained the situation: "Are you thinking of drawing back?" he asked.
"No, but I must collect myself, and sleep for twelve hours, for my nerves are out of control. I will send a telegram to say that I am not well. She will not believe that, but will come herself; I beg you therefore to wait for half an hour."
The telegram went off, and in half an hour steps were heard along the corridor. She entered, dressed in black and at first full of suspicion. But to be able to consult with the doctor gave her an advantage which pleased her. She said she would come next morning together, with the doctor, and then she went, after secretly imprinting a kiss on the patient's hand.
"You must not play with your feelings," said the doctor who remained behind. "This woman loves you and you love her. That is as plain as a pikestaff."
The Norwegian lay alone all the evening and sought to find some guiding thread through all this chaos, but in vain. What a tangled thicket was the human soul! How could one bring it into order? It passed from hate to contempt over esteem and reverence and then back again with one bound sideways and two forwards. Good and evil, sublime and mean, uniting treachery with deathless love, kisses and blows, insulting reproaches and boundless admiration. Since he knew the human soul he had adopted it as one of his fundamental principles never to balance accounts, never to go backwards, but always forwards. When in the beginning of their acquaintance she had wished to refer to something which he had said on a previous occasion he interrupted her: "Never look back! Only go forwards! One talks a lot of nonsense on the spur of the moment. I have no views but only speak impromptu, and life would be very monotonous if one thought and said the same things every day. It should be something new! Life is only a poem, and it is much jollier to float over the marsh than to stick one's feet in it and to feel for firm ground which is not there."
This must have suited her own ideas of life, for she was immediately ready to adopt this rôle. Therefore they found each other always novel, and always full of surprises. They could not take each other too seriously, and often when one of them attacked his or her own discarded views with the other's opinions of the day before, they were obliged to laugh at their own foolishness. Thus they were never clear about each other, and in really serious moments they would exclaim simultaneously: "Who are you? What are you really?" and neither of them could answer.
As he was on the point of falling asleep, he thought, "I shall make no resolve, for I have never seen a resolve lead to anything. The course of events may guide my destiny as it has done hitherto."
The next morning she came without waiting for the doctor. She had put on a wise air, as if she understood the illness thoroughly but did not wish to descend to trifles. She took a rod out of a basket she had brought with her.
"What is that?"
"That is 'the Easter rod'; to-day is Good Friday." She set up the rod at his feet, and adorned the edge of the bed with willow-branches in bloom. Like a little housewife she bustled about the room, surveying and putting it in order. Finally she sat down in an easy chair.
"Well! What is the great news?" he asked.
"We must enter on an engagement, for the papers have announced it."
"Have they, indeed? What about the old man?"
"Father has resigned himself, because the matter cannot be altered; but he is not happy. Now won't you congratulate me?"
"You should congratulate me first, for I am the elder."
"And the less intelligent."
"I have the honour to congratulate you. And what a man you have got!"
So they chatted, and soon came to the subject of their prospects. He dictated and she wrote. Such and such plays of his accepted for the stage.... That would be a thousand pounds.
"Discount thirty per cent for disappointments," she said.
"Thirty! I also reckon ninety or a hundred per cent."
"Be sober! It is serious." And then they laughed.
Divine frivolity! To look down on the ugly earnestness of life as if all one had to do was to blow at it. The poet's light-hearted way of treating economy like poetry.
"How could one bear the miseries of life, if one did not treat them as unrealities? If I took it seriously, I should have to weep the whole day, and I don't want to do that."
Dinner-time came; she laid the sofa-table, fed him, and was especially sparing with the wine.
"You have drunk enough now, and you must promise never to go to the café again, especially with Thais."
"Lais," he corrected her, but coloured. "You know that then?"
"A woman of twenty-three knows everything."
Glad to avoid a troublesome confession, he promised never to visit the café again and kept his word, for that was the only penance he could offer for his sorry behaviour. Thus they were engaged. His only social intercourse consisted in her company, while she continued to go to families which she knew, to visit theatres, and so on, for this belonged to her work as a newspaper correspondent. In case of an eventual struggle for power, she had all the advantages on her side, as she moved in an environment from which she derived moral support and fresh impulses, while he was thrown back on himself and his previous observations. They lived really like playfellows, for he never read what she wrote in the newspapers, while she had read all his writings but never referred to them. There was no consciousness shown on either side that he was a mature and well-known author and she a young critic of books and plays. They met simply as man and woman, and as her future husband he had placed himself on the same level with her, not above her.
Sometimes while they were together, he felt a prisoner, isolated and in her power. If he were to break with her now he would stand alone in the world, for he had got quite out of touch with his old friends and come to dislike the life of the café. Moreover, he felt so grown together with this woman, that he thought he would pine away if parted from her. In spite of her love she could not hide the fact that she thought she had him absolutely in her power, and sometimes she let him feel it. But then he raged like a lion in a cage, went out and sought his old friends, though he noticed he did not thrive among them and his conscience pricked him for his faithlessness. She sulked for half a day, then crept up to him, fell on her knees and was pardoned.
"At bottom," he said once, "we hate each other because we love each other. We fear to lose our individualities through the assimilating force of love, and therefore we must sometimes have a breach in order to feel that I am not you, and you are not I."
She agreed, but it was no remedy against the spirit of revolt, the struggle of the ego for self-justification. She loved him as a woman loves a man, for she thought him handsome, although he was ugly. He, for his part, demanded neither respect nor admiration but only a measure of trust, and a friendly demeanour. She was generally sparkling and cheerful, playful, without being teasing, yielding and gracious.
Once when he reflected over the various types of woman he had observed in her during the beginning of their acquaintance, he could scarcely understand how she had been able to play so many different parts. The literary independent lady with Madame de Staël's open mouth and loquacious tongue had entirely disappeared; the grand, pretentious woman of the world and thefin-de-sièclelady with morbid paradoxes were also both obliterated. She saw how unpretentious he was and she became like him.
April came and it was high spring-time. At the same time his prospects had brightened; some of his plays had been accepted; a novel sold for a considerable sum; and one of his dramas was acted in Paris. An untrue report was spread that the engaged pair had gone off together. Her parents in Odense were disturbed and urged on the marriage.
"Will you marry now?" she asked.
"Certainly I will," was his reply.
So the matter was settled! But then came difficulties. She was a Catholic and could not marry a divorced man as long as his first wife lived. In order to circumvent this difficulty he devised the plan of being married in England. And so it was settled. Her sister came as a witness to the ceremony. She was married to a famous artist, was herself an authoress, and therefore understood how to value talent, even when unaccompanied with earthly goods.
Thus they began their wedding journey.
It was a May morning on an island off the English coast. He had gone with her to the extreme end of a promontory where the cliff descends sheer into the sea. He wished to ask her something privately but did not dare to; therefore they stood there silently staring into the blue emptiness, seeking an object where there was none.
They had stayed there six days without being able to marry because through carelessness the notice of his divorce had not been published till some months after he had obtained a decree. Accordingly it bore so late a date that the time allowed for challenging it had not yet elapsed. He had exchanged telegrams with the authorities; confusion and misunderstanding caused further delay, and his fiancée's sister became impatient.
"Do you trust me?" he asked her.
"Yes, I believe in your honesty, but you are an unlucky creature."
"And your sister?"
"What is she to believe? She does not know you. She only knows that your assurances that the documents were valid, were incorrect."
"She is right, but it is not my fault. What does she mean to do?"
"She returns to-morrow, and I must go with her."
"So then we shall be parted before we are married, and I return to life in hotels, restaurants, and night cafés."
"No, not that," and after a pause she added: "Let us jump into the sea."
He put his arm round her: "Have you ever seen a destiny like mine? Wherever I go, I bring unhappiness and destruction with me. Think! Your parents!"
"Don't talk so! With patience we shall also get out of this."
"Yes, in order to fall into something else."
"Come! shall I blow at it?" And she blew the cloud away. There was an outbreak of divine frivolity again and they raced home through the fortifications and over the mines.
In the evening the decisive telegram came, and the wedding was fixed for the next day. It took place at first at the registry office. While the oaths were being taken the bride fell into hysterical laughter which nearly rendered the whole ceremony abortive, since the registrar did not know what to make of a scene which resembled one in a lunatic asylum.
It was not a brilliant wedding-party which assembled in the evening in the clergyman's house. Besides the bride's sister, four strangers —pilots—were present as witnesses when they plighted their troth "before God."
Fourteen days of May had passed. Both were sitting outside the comfortable little house and watching how the migratory birds rested in the garden before continuing their journey north-ward.
"So quiet?"
"How long?"
"Eight days more. But I had not thought that marriage was such a splendid arrangement."
"Although they call me a woman-hater," he said, "I have always loved woman, and although they call me a friend of immorality, I have always held by marriage."
"Can you imagine yourself leading a lonely life after this?"
"No, the thought chokes me."
"Do you know I am so happy that I am afraid?"
"Yes, so am I. I feel as if someone were lying and spying on us. She is called Nemesis, and follows not only guilty but also happy men."
"What are you most afraid of?"
"That we should part."
"But that depends on us, I suppose."
"Would that it did! But discord comes from without with the wind, with the dew, with too long-continued sunshine, with the rain. Try to explain which of us two was to blame for our last quarrel."
"Neither!"
"Neither of us two, then it was a third. Who is this third? In order to give it a name people call it 'misunderstanding'; but both of our understandings were completely clear, not disturbed at all."
"Don't frighten me."
"No, but be sure that the same event will happen again and that we shall blame each other as on the last occasion."
"Shall we not go and write now?" she broke in.
"I cannot write."
"Nor can I; my editor is angry because he has had no article from me for two months."
"And I have not had a single new idea for a whole year. What will be the end of it?"
The fact was that they had neutralised each other, so that there was no more reaction on either side. Their life together now consisted of a comfortable silence. The need to be near each other was so great that one could not leave the room without the other following. They tried to shut themselves in their rooms in order to work, but after a short time one would knock at the other's door.
"Do you know, all this is very fine, but I am becoming an idiot?" she complained.
"You also?"
"I can neither read, think, nor write any more, and can hardly speak."
"It is too much happiness, and we must seek some society, or we shall both become silly."
The fact was that they had both ceased to converse; they were apparently so harmonious in all questions and predilections and knew each other's opinions so well that there was no further need to exchange thoughts. The same tastes, the same habits, the same naughtinesses, the same superficial scepticism had brought them together, and now they were welded into one like two pieces of the same metal. Each had lost individuality and they were one. But the memory of independence and one's own personality was still present, and a war of liberation was impending. The sense of personal self-preservation awoke, and when each wished to resume their own share, there was a strife about the pieces.
"Why don't you write?" he asked.
"I have tried, but it is always you and about you."
"Whether it is I, or someone else, it all comes to the same thing."
"You mean I have no self?"
"You are too young to have a self."
He had better have left that unsaid, for by saying it, he woke her.
One morning there came a paper containing a notice to the effect that a volume of his poems had appeared with a London publisher.
"Shall we go to London?" she suggested.
"Yes, gladly, though I don't believe these notices which I have read so often. Anyhow, as a business journey, it can be made to pay its own expenses."
The resolve was carried out. They saw the little island[1]disappear with the same joy with which they had before seen it rise out of the mist.
In Dover they had to stay one day at an hotel. As he returned from a walk, he found his wife sealing up six packets, all of the same shape and size.
"What are you doing?" he asked.
"It is the account of your American journey, which I am sending to some papers I know in Denmark."
"But you should not cut it up into sections; you know that it forms a complete whole. Have you read it?"
"No, I have only glanced through it; but at any rate it will bring in some money."
"No, it will not; for no one will print it piecemeal. Only in a single volume would it have any value."
She paid no attention. "Come now," she said commandingly; "we will go to the post."
She meant well, but was foolish; and although experience had taught him what a dangerous adviser she was, he let her have her way, and followed.
On the stairs, he noticed that she limped, for she had bought too tight boots with high heels, such as were then only worn by cocottes.
When they reached the street, she hurried on to the post, and he followed. As he noticed how the symmetry of her little figure was impaired by the many packages which she insisted on carrying, and how she limped on the boot heel which she had trodden down, he was seized with a sort of repulsion.
It was the first time that he viewed her from behind, and he thought involuntarily of the wood-nymph of legend, who in front was a charming fairy, but behind quite hollow.
The next moment he felt a remorseful horror at himself and his thoughts. In this cruel heat the little woman was carrying the heavy load, and had already written six long letters to editors all for his sake. And she limped! But her brutal way of treating his work and cutting a manuscript to pieces without having read it; treating a literary work as a butcher does a carcass!...
Again he felt repulsion, and again remorse, mixed with that indescribable pain which a man feels when he sees his beloved ugly, badly dressed, pitiful, or ridiculous. People in the street looked after her, especially when the wind blew out her thin serge mantle, which resembled a morning coat; it swelled out like a balloon and spoilt her fine figure. He hurried forward to take the packets from her; but she only waved him off, and hastened on, cheerful and undismayed.
When she came out of the post office, she wanted to go and buy larger boots. He followed. Since the purchase of them would occupy half an hour, she told him to wait outside. When at last she came out, she walked quite comfortably for a time, but then discovered that the new boots also were too tight.
"What do you think of a shoemaker like that?" she said.
"Buthedid not make the boots too tight for you! There were larger ones also."
That was a dangerous commencement of the conversation, and as they sat down at a table in a café, the silence was uncomfortable. They sat opposite each other and had to look one another in the eyes; they sought to avoid doing so, but could not, and when they were obliged to look at each other, they turned away.
"You would like now to be in Copenhagen with your friends," she said. It was a good guess. But even if he could have transported himself thither for a second, he would have wished himself back again at once.
Her nervousness increased, and her eyes began to sparkle, but since she was intelligent, she understood that neither of them was to blame.
"Go for a walk," she said; "we must be away from each other for a while, and then you will see it will be better."
He quite agreed with her, and they parted without any bitterness.
As he walked along by the side of the harbour, he felt his nerves become settled and quiet. He became once more conscious of himself as a separate and independent being; he no longer gave out emanations but concentrated himself; he was once more an individual in his own skin. How well he knew these symptoms, which signified nothing, but which in spite of all attempts to explain them, persisted as a constant phenomenon.
Meanwhile, since he felt a positive satisfaction in her absence, the thought stole into his mind that perpetual freedom from her would be attended by yet greater satisfaction, and as he approached the steam-boat pier the thought passed through his mind like a flash of lightning: "If I go off now, I shall be in Copenhagen in two days."
He sat down, ordered a glass of beer, lighted a cigar, and considered.
"If I go to London," he thought, "she will get the upper hand, because she can speak the language. I shall be led about by her like a deaf and dumb man and shall have to sit like an idiot among my literary friends whom she will get under her thumb. A pleasant prospect! Being patronised by her in the Danish newspapers was already sufficiently humiliating. I incurred an obligation to her...."
But in the midst of his meditations he broke off, for he knew that no character could stand such close and critical analysis. He knew also that no one could endure being gazed at from behind and judged in absence. Then a feeling of loneliness came over him and a consciousness of being faithless and ungrateful. He was drawn back to her, stood up and went quickly to the hotel. When he entered in an elevated mood and not without sentimental feelings he was greeted by a laugh, long-lasting and cheerful like the song of the grasshoppers. Dressed in silk she lay there, coiled up like an Angora cat, eating sweetmeats, and smelling of perfume.
Then they laughed both together, as though they had seen something comic in the street, which had nothing to do with them.
Now they were in Pimlico, between Westminster and Chelsea. They had paid one visit and that was all. Everyone was away, all the theatres were shut, and a perfectly tropical heat prevailed. One's soul felt as if it would gladly shake off its fleshly husk in order to seek for coolness up in the air. From morning to evening one felt only half alive.
The pressure of need had forced him unwillingly to set to work and write. But as he had already utilised most of his experiences, he was obliged to make use of some material which should, properly speaking, not have been employed. However, he did violence to himself, overcame his scruples, and began.
"Now I am writing," he told her triumphantly, "we are saved!"
His wife came and saw how he had filled the first sheet with letters. After an hour she came again. He was lying on the sofa lamenting: "I can do nothing! Let us then perish!"
She left the room without saying a word, and when she had shut the door, he bolted it. Then he took out of his portmanteau a green linen bag containing a quantity of sheets of paper covered with dates. These had been often spoken of by his friends and nicknamed the "Last Judgment." It was an historical work, in which, from a new and bold point of view, he treated the history of the world as a branch of natural science. He had planned it carefully, but perhaps it was destined never to be printed and would certainly never bring in any money.
After working for some time, he felt the usual restlessness which he experienced in the absence of his second self, and went down to seek her.
She sat reading a book which she made a lame attempt to hide, as he entered. By her strange manner he saw that some fateful element had entered into their common life.
"What are you reading?" he asked.
"Your last book," she answered in a peculiar tone.