The Dangerous Age Part 6

We went on talking like two equals, and a few minutes later, remembering what I had observed, I gave her some silk stockings. Instead of thanking me, she remarked so suddenly that she took my breath away:

"Once I sold myself for a pair of green silk stockings."

I could not help asking the question:

"Did you regret your bargain?"

She looked me straight in the face:

"I don't know. I only thought about my stockings."

Naturally such conversations are rather risky; I shall avoid them in future. But the riddle is more puzzling than ever. What brought Jeanne to share my solitude on this island?

Now we have a man about the place. Torp got him. He digs in the garden and chops wood. But the odour impregnates Torp and even reaches me.

He makes eyes at Jeanne, who looks at me and smiles. Torp makes a fuss of him, and every night I smell his pipe in the bas.e.m.e.nt.

I have shut myself upstairs and played patience. The questions I put to the cards come from that casket of memories the seven keys of which I believed I had long since thrown into the sea. A wretched form of amus.e.m.e.nt! But the piano makes me feel sad, and there is nothing else to do.

Malthe's letter is still intact. I wander around it like a mouse round a trap of which it suspects the danger. My heart meanwhile yearns to know what words he uses.

He and I belong to each other for the rest of our lives. We owe that to my wisdom. If he never sees me, he will never be able to forget me.

How could I suppose it for a single moment! There is no possibility of remaining alone with oneself! No degree of seclusion, nor even life in a cell, would suffice. Strong as is the call of freedom, the power of memory is stronger; so that no one can ever choose his society at will.

Once we have lived with our kind, and become filled with the knowledge of them, we are never free again.

A sound, a scent--and behold a person, a scene, or a destiny, rises up before us. Very often the phantoms that come thronging around me are those of people whose existence is quite indifferent to me. But they appear all the same--importunate, overbearing, inevitable.

We may close our doors to visitors in the flesh; but we are forced to welcome these phantoms of the memory; to notice them and converse with them without reserve.

People become like books to me. I read them through, turn the pages lightly, annotate them, learn them by heart. Sometimes I am at fault; I see them in a new light. Things that were not clear to me become plain; what was apparently incomprehensible becomes as straightforward as a commercial ledger.

It might be a fascinating occupation if I could control the entire collection of these memories; but I am the slave of those that come unbidden. In the town it was just the reverse; one impression effaced another. I did not realise that thought might become a burden.

The time draws on. The last few days my nerves have made me feverish and restless; to-day for no special reason I opened and read all my letters, except his. It was like reading old newspapers; yet my heart beat faster with each one I opened.

Life there in the city runs its course, only it has nothing more to do with me, and before long I shall have dropped out of memory like one long dead. All these hidden fears, all this solicitude, these good wishes, preachings and forebodings--there is not a single genuine feeling among the whole of them!

Margethe Ernst is the only one of my old friends who is sincere and does not let herself be carried away by false sentiment. She writes cynically, brutally even: "An injection of morphia would have had just the same effect on you; but everyone to his own taste."

As to Lillie, with her simple, gus.h.i.+ng nature, she tries to write lightly and cheerfully, but one divines her tears between the lines. She wishes me every happiness, and a.s.sures me she will take Malthe under her motherly wing.

"He is quiet and taciturn, but fortunately much engrossed with his plans for the new hospital which will keep him in Denmark for some years to come."

His work absorbs him; he is young enough to forget.

As to the long accounts of deaths, accidents and scandals, a year or two ago they might have stirred me in much the same way as the sight of a fire or a play. Now it amuses me quite as much to watch the smoke from my chimney, as it ascends and seems to get caught in the tops of the trees.

Richard is still travelling with his grief, and entertains me scrupulously with accounts of all the sights he sees and of his lonely sleepless nights. Are they always as lonely as he makes out?

As in the past, he bores me with his interminable descriptions and his whole middle-cla.s.s outlook. Yet for many years he dominated my senses, which gives him a certain hold over me still. I cannot make up my mind to take the brutal step which would free me once and for all from him. I must let him go on believing that our life together was happy.

Why did I read all these letters? What did I expect to find? A certain vague hope stirred within me that if I opened them I should discover something unexpected.

The one remaining letter--shall I ever find courage to open it? I _will_ not know what he has written. He does not write well I know. He is not a good talker; his writing would probably be worse. And yet, I look upon that sealed letter as a treasure.

Merely touching it, I feel as though I was in the same room with him.

Lillie's letter has really done me good; her regal serenity makes itself apparent beneath all she undertakes. It is wonderful that she does not preach at me like the others. "You must know what is right for yourself better than anybody else," she says. These words, coming from her, have brought me unspeakable strength and comfort, even though I feel that she can have no idea of what is actually taking place within me.

Life for Lillie can be summed up in the words, "the serene pa.s.sage of the days." Happy Lillie. She glides into old age just as she glided into marriage, smiling, tranquil, and contented. n.o.body, nothing, can disturb her quietude.

It is so when both body and soul find their repose and happiness in the same identical surroundings.

Jeanne, with some embarra.s.sment, asked permission to use the bathroom.

I gave her leave. It is quite possible that living in the bas.e.m.e.nt is not to her taste. To put a bathroom down there would take nearly a fortnight, and during that time I shall be deprived of my own, for I cannot share my bathroom or my bedroom with anyone, least of all a woman....

I shall never forget the one visit I paid to the Russian baths and the sight of Hilda Bang. Clothed, she presents rather a fine appearance, with a good figure; but seen amid the warm steam, in nature's garb, she seemed horrible.

I would rather walk through an avenue of naked men than appear before another woman without clothes. This feeling does not spring from modesty--what is it?

How quiet it is here! Only on Wednesdays and Sat.u.r.days the steamer for England goes by. I know its coming by the sound of the screw, but I take care never to see it pa.s.s. What if I were seized with an impulse to embark on her....

If one fine morning when Jeanne brought the tea she found the bird flown?

The time is gone by. Life is over.

I am getting used to sitting here and st.i.tching at my seam. My work does not amount to much, but the mechanical movement brings a kind of restfulness.

I find I am getting rather capricious. Between meals I ring two or three times a day for tea--like a convalescent trying a fattening cure. Jeanne attends to my hair with indefatigable care. Without her, should I ever trouble to do it at all?

What can any human being want more than this peace and silence?