The Visionary Part 9

The impression of the moment has always had a great power over me, and, unaccustomed as I was both to this kind of gaiety and to strong drink, I had surrendered myself without a thought to the mirth that buzzed around me. I think I never laughed so much in my whole life together as I did at that dinner-table. Nearly opposite to me sat the red-haired merchant Wadel, with his long, dryly comical face, firing off one witticism after another, and at my side whispered the hump-backed clerk Gram, who was famed for his cleverness, and feared for his biting tongue. His sharp remarks upon the different people who sat at the table, grew in ill-nature as he drank, and if his words had been heard, the expression of many a beaming face would certainly have changed. I believe, also, that he took a secret pleasure in trying to make me intoxicated; at any rate he was unwearied in filling my gla.s.s, especially when the heating wines began to go round. His quick, sharp snake's-eyes and a few whispered words directed my now thoroughly beclouded attention to many a comical scene around me.

At length it seemed to me that the room and the table were going up and down, as if we were sitting in a large cabin in rough weather. I also remember indistinctly that afterwards in the moving room we squeezed past each other, round the table, between the wall and the chairs, in two opposite streams, and thanked our hosts for the dinner. [It is a Norwegian custom to shake hands with and thank the host and hostess, after a meal, for the hospitality of which one has partaken. Children in the same way always thank their parents.]

After all this I remember nothing, until I awoke, in total darkness, as if out of a heavy confused dream, and felt that I was lying in a soft eider-down bed. Little by little all that had pa.s.sed dawned upon my recollection, and I comprehended that I had been put to bed in one of the guest-chambers in the neighbouring house.

While I lay pondering over this, and feeling intensely unhappy, the elder Senor Martinez came in with a candle in his hand to look after me.

It then appeared that it was past two o'clock in the morning, and to the circ.u.mstance that I had thus slept six or seven hours in succession I probably owed the fact that I no longer felt any physical indisposition; but morally I suffered all the more from a feeling of shame.

As far as I could understand, as I dressed myself, the house had been turned into a perfect lazaretto for the same cla.s.s of fallen after dinner as myself, and among them I noticed, with a kind of revengeful joy, Gram the clerk, my hump-backed mischievous neighbour.

Senor Martinez made known to me, by all kinds of spirited gesticulations, that dancing was now going on briskly, and that I must join the dancers.

The thought that Susanna must have come long ago, and must have been waiting in vain, shot like lightning through my mind. How I could have forgotten her, though even for an instant, was a riddle; but the fact that I had done so weighed heavily upon me.

The dining-room was now transformed into a ball-room, and dancing had already been going on merrily for several hours to the sound of violin, clarionet, and violoncello. At an opportune moment, in the middle of a dance, I slipped in unnoticed.

At first, as I stood in my tight white kid gloves, pale and embarra.s.sed, down by the open door through which the heat streamed out into the cold pa.s.sage like a mist, I suffered very much from the feeling that every one would look at me and remember my unseemly behaviour.

Couple after couple glided past, so near that the ladies' dresses touched me, and gradually I began, as far as my near sight would allow, to find my bearings in the room.

The minister's wife sat on the sofa, farthest up among some elderly ladies, in earnest conversation with the little bald doctor.

The minister was probably playing cards downstairs; but of Susanna I saw nothing.

At the upper end of the room, young Martinez, with a beaming face, was just dancing a polka with a strikingly beautiful girl dressed in white, with a fluttering blue ribbon round her waist. She had thick beautiful hair of a shade nearly golden, with a large silver pin like a dart run through it, and a light wreath. The lady was taller and fuller in figure than Susanna, but with a certain grace that reminded me of her. The light, almost fas.h.i.+onably delicate way in which she placed her small feet in dancing--it was as though she floated--also resembled Susanna, and I therefore followed the pair with unconscious interest.

My short sight prevented me from distinguis.h.i.+ng well, and as they pa.s.sed me, the lady's bent head was hidden by her own arm, which rested confidingly on the shoulder of the evidently happy Martinez. What I saw was only a broad, pure, innocent brow, which could belong to but one person in the world, and that an escaped lock of hair played upon the round white shoulder.

I felt my knees tremble. This tall, elegant, distinguished lady could never be Susanna!

With a feeling of jealousy I watched the pair intently until the next time they came by. When just opposite to me the lady raised her eyes, her glance fell upon me, and a deep blush suddenly overspread her face and neck right down to the lace edging on her dress.

It was Susanna!

During the scarcely more than two years that we had been separated her beauty had developed wonderfully. The tender seventeen-year-old girl-bud had developed into a splendid full-grown woman.

The pair sat down at the top of the room near the row of elderly ladies.

I saw next that these two were going through the last long-dance of the ball, the cotillon, which is generally varied by an endless number of figures, and the thought darted through my mind, that probably young Martinez had been winning favour with Susanna the whole evening, since he was now her partner in this particular dance. I noticed how the minister's wife paid him marked attention, and I reflected bitterly that he was both a rich man, and also, though shorter in stature, looked much more grown-up and manly than I.

A knife seemed to go through my heart. I had been lying intoxicated, like a beast, and allowed a stranger to take Susanna from me.

With wild jealousy I noticed how the handsome Martinez, dumb, but speaking with his dark, fiery eyes, was trying, amid laughter and all kinds of lively nods and gestures, to explain to Susanna a new figure which was just going to begin, how he sometimes bent over her, as if whispering confidentially, and how she, from her seat, looked up at him and laughed merrily, as only Susanna could laugh. He took her hand and made her try the step on the floor in front of their seats, and this seemed to be even more amusing.

Young Martinez evidently engrossed her, and I feared she perhaps thought our old relations were only childish fancies, which as a grown-up woman she now wished forgotten. She might consider that after our agreement about the two trial years, everything between us was to be at an end, so that, as grown-up people we could talk and laugh over the whole affair without misunderstanding each other.

My blood boiled, and I felt that I must revenge myself. Before I had quite considered how, I began, with a sudden inspiration, to converse eagerly with Merchant R.'s pretty daughter, who happened to be standing close to me, so that it might appear as if I were paying court to her.

When presently Susanna pa.s.sed us in the new figure, she looked in a wondering, questioning way at me. The next time she pa.s.sed, she inadvertently dropped her handkerchief just at the place where I stood.

I picked it up, went up the room, and stiffly handed it to the minister's wife, who--in consequence either of my behaviour at the dinner-table, or of something else--received me with marked reserve and coldness. I bowed as coldly to her, and then returned to my old place, where I resumed the interrupted lively conversation with Miss R.

Shortly after, Susanna again came past, and this time looked at me with a serious, but uncertain expression, as if she could not quite make up her mind what to think; after that she purposely dropped her eyes every time she pa.s.sed me.

I discovered to my satisfaction that Martinez really danced clumsily.

While I talked with forced gaiety to my pretty companion, I was secretly tempted, all unnoticed, to put out my foot, a little ill-naturedly, so that he should trip over it. And I do not quite know how it happened, but the next time Martinez pa.s.sed, he fell full length on the floor, and must have hurt himself considerably; in falling, however, he was gallant enough to let go the support he might have had in his partner, so that Susanna only half fell.

He rose, and looked angrily at me, the innocent cause of the mishap, who was apparently too much engrossed in my neighbour to have even noticed what was going on. The look he received in return for his, however, revealed to him, though involuntarily, the whole truth; for he was in the act of rus.h.i.+ng at me, when he was unexpectedly stopped by Susanna, a trifle pale, stepping in front of him, and, with the bearing of a woman of the world, quietly stretching out her hand for him to conduct her farther.

As Susanna went arm in arm up the room with the limping Martinez, she suddenly turned her face to me with a look so beaming with joy, that from deep despair I was suddenly raised to the happiest, most exulting certainty.

She had evidently understood that Martinez's misfortune was an act of revenge on my part, for her sake, and her mind was thereby relieved of the doubt which my conduct for the last hour must have occasioned her; for she had soon seen that I was not intoxicated, and coquetry was a thing too far from her own sincere, truthful nature for her to be able to imagine it in me. In perfect truthfulness, she was really only a refined, feminine edition of her father's strong nature.

I went and made repeated apologies to young Martinez for my awkwardness, while Susanna sat by and listened, and at length, good-natured as in reality he was, he consented to be appeased. His face did grow rather long when, immediately after, Susanna proposed that I should lead her through the figure now going on, so that he could rest his injured leg for the next.

Yes, I danced with her, a beautiful, full-grown woman in the white ball-dress, whom a short while ago I had not recognised, because her own splendidly developed beauty hid her.

We had taught one another to dance, and I think we both danced unusually well. The light wreath with its delicate white flowers, set off the beauty of her luxuriant hair; my arm was round her waist, and I felt how yieldingly she leant upon me, happy and trusting as a child, as we swayed in the dance. Her forehead was near my lips, and as our eyes sought each other's during the dance, they said again and again, how delightful it was to meet, when we had longed so for one another for two whole years.

When I took her back to her place I received a pressure of the hand and a look, which made me completely invulnerable to the less friendly glances of her mother. It appeared that Susanna was then reprimanded for her neglect of the young Senor Martinez, but the doctor, who sat beside her, spoke in her defence.

I stood once more in my old place, and saw Susanna and Martinez go through the next figure.

Her curling lip showed at first a trace of the old childish defiance after reproof; but soon her expression became more tranquil and thoughtful.

Taken up as I was with the sight of her; and possibly weak after the many and varied emotions I had experienced, I suddenly felt the oppressive, uneasy sense of terror and misfortune come over me, which generally accompanies my visions. I attempted to leave the room, but the vision was upon me before I could do so.

I saw Susanna's face while she danced with Martinez, as white as that of a strikingly beautiful corpse, and the green wreath with the small white flowers hung in her hair like wet sea-gra.s.s. It seemed as if water were streaming down her.

The blood rushed to my heart; the room was now dark, amid sparks from thousands of lights, going round before my eyes with the dancing pair.

I should certainly have fainted at the door, had not the doctor taken me by the arm, and led me out into the cool pa.s.sage, and from thence into a little guest-chamber, where he made me drink some water and lie down on the bed.

When he came back, half an hour after the attack, and saw that I had recovered, he sat down by me on the bed, gentle and friendly, and began in his sincere way to speak out, as he said.

As he thoughtfully unravelled with the snuffers the wick of the candle which he had in his hand, having taken it from the dressing-table, in order, I suppose, to observe me, he said he had noticed me this evening, from the time I came into the room, and thought that my fancy inclined to the beautiful Susanna L., but that I was jealous of young Martinez.

He had also heard a little bird sing about this before.

It was a feeling which many young people would only be the better for and be developed by, but for me, with my mental disposition, this kind of exciting idea was harmful in the highest degree; he had, he gently added, unfortunately had experience of this in the case of my own poor mother; for her discovery, in my childhood, that I had inherited her mental disease, had only been the accidental cause of her loss of reason.

As a physician and a friend he would now say this, while he thought there was still time for me to prevent this fancy taking root. And he would say it not only for my own sake, but also for Susanna's, for he was very fond of her, and would very unwillingly see her led into what, from a human point of view, could only end in sorrow.

One thing I must consider, he continued--after a long pause, during which he seemed to be considering whether he should say all he had to say, and finally decided upon doing so--and that was, that my unfortunate hereditary disposition did not allow of my thinking of marriage; it might, he went on with a gesture, as if performing a last, decisive operation on the candle, even be regarded in the same light as if a leper married without heeding that he thereby transmitted his disease to his children. I must not, however--here he rose and laid his hand consolingly on my shoulder--take these things too much to heart.

The most bitter remedies--and unfortunately the truth was such--are generally the wholesomest, and for my sick, dreaming nature, he thought, after earnest, mature consideration, that the unvarnished truth was the only means of giving health and salvation.

After once more holding up the candle over me, he retired with, a serious nod; be could easily see that for the moment I was not in a condition to carry on any conversation, or give him any answer.

It was, in all friendliness, the death-blow to all my dreams and illusions.