Part 8

Richmond took his hand and pressed it sincerely.

So the two young people went on their way, alone and happy.

XII

The blue-clad Mother was in the most terrible suspense; every moment she expected a signal from the garden and the coast was not clear, nobody could come through it so long as her husband would not leave the house. Ah, that husband, that husband, with his forty years and his bald head! What sinister thoughts could they be that made him so pale this evening and kept him sitting in his chair, immovably, inexorably, staring at his paper?

She had not a minute's peace; now it was eleven o'clock. The children she had put to bed long ago; but the husband did not budge. What if the signal came? The door would be opened with the dear little latch-key--and two men would meet, stand face to face and look into each other's eyes! She dared not finish the thought.

She went away to the darkest corner of the room, wrung her hands, and at last said straight out:

"Now it's eleven. If you _are_ going to the club you must go now."

He got up at once, even paler than before, and went out of the room, out of the house.

Outside the garden he stopped and listened to a whistle, a little signal. Steps were heard on the gravel, a key was put into the latch and turned--a moment later there were two shadows on the drawing-room blind.

And he recognized the signal, the steps and the two shadows on the blind, none of it was new to him.

He went to the club. It was open, there were lights in the windows; but he did not go in. For half an hour he roamed about the streets and in front of his garden, an endless half-hour. Let me wait another quarter of an hour, he thought, and he prolonged it to three quarters. Then he entered the garden, went up the steps and rang at his own door.

The maid came and opened it, just put her head out and said:

"Madam has long since...."

Then she stopped and saw who he was.

"I know, gone to bed," he answered. "Will you tell your mistress that her husband has come home."

And the maid went. She knocked at her mistress's room and gave the message through the closed door:

"I was to say that the master has come back."

Her mistress asked from within:

"What do you say, is your master come back? Who told you to say so?"

"The master himself. He's standing outside."

There are sounds of sore distraction in the mistress's room, hurried whispers, a door opening and closing again. Then all is still.

And the master walks in. His wife receives him with death in her heart.

"The club was shut," he says at once, from pity and compassion. "I sent you a message so as not to alarm you."

She falls into a chair, comforted, relieved, saved. The blissful feeling makes her kind heart overflow and she is solicitous about her husband:

"You are so pale. Is there anything wrong with you, dear?"

"I am not cold," he answers.

"But has anything happened? Your face looks so strangely drawn."

The husband answers:

"No, I'm smiling. This is going to be my way of smiling. I want this grimace to be my special property."

She listens to his short, hoarse words and doesn't understand them, can't make them out at all. What can he mean?

But suddenly he throws his arms around her with a grip of iron, with terrible force, and whispers close against her face:

"What do you say to giving him a pair of horns ... the man who's just gone ... give him a pair of horns, eh?"

She utters a scream and calls the maid. He lets her go with a quiet, dry laugh, with his mouth agape and slapping both his thighs.

In the morning the wife's kind heart is again uppermost and she says to her husband:

"You had an extraordinary attack last night; it's over now, but you're still pale today."

"Yes," he replies, "it takes it out of one to be witty at my age. I'll never do it again."

* * * * *

But, after having spoken of many kinds of Love, Friar Vendt tells of yet another kind and says:

What rapture there is in _one_ kind of Love!

The young Lord and Lady had just come home, their long wedding tour was at an end and they settled down to rest.

A shooting star fell above their roof.

In summer the young couple walked together and never left each other's side. They plucked flowers, yellow, red and blue, and gave them to each other; they saw the grass swaying in the wind and heard the birds singing in the woods, and every word they spoke was like a caress. In winter they drove with bells on their horses and the sky was blue and high above them, the stars coursed over their everlasting plains.

Thus passed many, many years. The young couple had three children and their hearts loved one another as on the first day, in the first kiss.

Then the proud Lord fell sick, of the sickness that chained him to his bed so long and put his wife's patience to so stern a proof. The day he was well and arose from his bed he did not know himself again; the sickness had disfigured him and taken away his hair.

He suffered and brooded over it. Then one morning he said:

"Now you cannot love me any more."

But his wife threw her arms about him, blushing, and kissed him as passionately as in the springtime of their youth and answered:

"I love you, love you still. I will never forget that it was I and no other whom you chose and made so happy."

And she went into her chamber and cut off all her yellow hair, to be like her husband whom she loved.

And again many, many years went by, the young couple were now old and their children were grown up. They shared every happiness as before; in summer they still walked in the fields and saw the waving grass and in the winter they wrapped themselves in furs and drove beneath the starry sky. And their hearts continued warm and glad as with a marvellous wine.

The Lady was paralysed. The old Lady could not walk, she had to be drawn in a wheeled chair and the Lord himself drew her. But the Lady suffered so unspeakably from her misfortune and her face was deeply furrowed with sorrow.

Then she said one day:

"Now I would gladly die. I am so helpless and ugly and your face is so handsome, you cannot kiss me any more and you cannot love me as you used."

But her Lord embraced her, red with emotion, and answered:

"I love you more, more than my life, my dear one, love you as the first day, the first hour, when you gave me the rose. Do you remember? You handed me the rose and looked at me with your beautiful eyes; the rose smelt like you, you blushed like it and all my senses were intoxicated. But now I love you even more, you are more beautiful than in your youth and my heart thanks you and blesses you for every day you have been mine."

The Lord went into his chamber, threw acid on his face to disfigure it, and said to his wife:

"I have had the misfortune to get some acid on my face, my cheeks are covered with burns, and now you cannot love me any more?"

"Oh, my bridegroom, my beloved!" faltered the old woman, kissing his hands. "You are more beautiful than any man on earth, your voice kindles my heart even today and I love you till death."

XIII

Johannes met Camilla in the street; she was with her mother, her father and Young Richmond; they stopped their carriage and talked to him in a friendly way.

Camilla clutched his arm and said:

"You didn't come to our party. We had a great time, I can tell you; we were expecting you to the very last, but you didn't come."

"I was prevented," he replied.

"Excuse me for not having been to see you since," she went on. "I shall come one of these days, for certain, when Richmond has gone away. Oh, what a time we had! Victoria was taken ill, she was driven home, have you heard? I'm going up to her directly. I expect she's much better, quite well again perhaps. I've given Richmond a medallion, almost the same as yours. Look here, Johannes, you must promise me to look after your stove; when you're writing you forget everything and your room gets as cold as ice. You must ring for the girl."

"Yes, I'll ring for the girl," he answered.

Mrs. Seier spoke to him too, asked about his work, that piece about the Race, how was it getting on? She was eagerly looking forward to his next book.

Johannes gave the necessary answers, bowed very low and watched the carriage drive away. How little all this concerned him, this carriage, these people, this chatter! A cold and empty feeling came upon him and haunted him all the way home. Outside his doorway a man was walking up and down, an old acquaintance, the former Tutor at the Castle.

Johannes greeted him.

He was dressed in a long, warm overcoat which was carefully brushed and there was a brisk and decided air about him.

"Here you see your friend and colleague," he said. "Give me your hand, young man. God has guided my ways marvellously since we last met; I am married, I have a home, a little garden, a wife. The days of miracles are not yet past. Have you any observation to make on my last remark?"

Johannes looked at him in surprise.

"Agreed then. Yes, you see, I was giving lessons to her son. She has a son, a young hopeful from her first marriage; of course she has been married before, she was a widow. You see, I married a widow. You may object that this was not arranged by my fairy godmother; but there it is, I married a widow. The young hopeful she had already. It was like this, I go there and look at the garden and the widow and for a while I am absorbed in intense thought on the subject. Suddenly I have it and I say to myself: well, I dare say it wasn't promised by your fairy godmother and all that; but I'll do it all the same, I take it, for it was probably written in the book of fate. You see, that's how it came about."

"Congratulations!" said Johannes.

"Stop! not a word more. I know what you're going to say. What about the first one, you will say, have you forgotten the eternal love of your youth? That's exactly what you will say. May I then ask you, my good sir, in my turn, what became of my first, only and eternal love? Didn't she take a captain in the artillery? Moreover I will ask you another little question: have you ever, ever seen a case of a man getting the one he should have got? I haven't. There's a legend about a man whose prayers God heard in the matter, so that he was given his first and only love. But he didn't get much satisfaction out of it. Why not? you will ask again, and behold, I answer you: for the simple reason that she died immediately after--_immediately_ after, do you hear? ha-ha-ha, instantly. So it is always. Naturally one doesn't get the right woman, but if it happens once in a while out of pure cussedness, then she dies straight away. There's always some trick in it. So then the man is reduced to providing himself with another love of the best available sort and there's no reason why he should die of the change. I tell you, Nature has ordained it so wisely that he bears it remarkably well. Just look at me."

Johannes said:

"I can see that you're doing well."

"Excellently for that matter. Look, feel and listen! Has a set of unenticing troubles swept over my person? I have clothes, shoes, house and home, wife and children--well, the hopeful anyhow. What was I saying?--with regard to my poetry I'll answer the question on the spot. Oh, my young colleague, I am older than you and perhaps a little better equipped by Nature. I keep my poems in a drawer. They are to be published after my death. But then you get no pleasure out of them, you will object? You are wrong again there, for in the meantime I delight my household with them. In the evening when the lamp is lit I unlock the drawer, take out my poems and read them aloud to my wife and the hopeful. One is forty, the other twelve, they are both enchanted. If you come and see us one day you will find supper and toddy. Now I've invited you. God preserve you from death."

He gave Johannes his hand. Suddenly he asked:

"Have you heard about Victoria?"

"About Victoria? No. Oh yes, I heard just now, a moment ago...."

"Haven't you seen her declining, getting greyer and greyer under the eyes?"

"I haven't seen her since last spring at home. Is she still ill?"

The Tutor answered in a comically hard voice, stamping his foot:

"Yes."

"I heard just now.... No, I haven't seen her declining, I haven't met her. Is she very ill?"

"Very. Probably dead by now, you understand."

Johannes gave a stunned look at the man, then at his door, wondered whether he should go in or stay where he was; looked at the man again, at his long coat, his hat; and he smiled in a confused and painful way like one in distress.

The old Tutor resumed in a threatening tone:

"Another example; can you get away from it? _She_ did not get the right one either, her sweet-heart from childhood's days, a splendid young Lieutenant. He went shooting one evening, a shot hit him right in the forehead and blew his head to pieces. There he lay, a victim of the little trick God had a mind to play with him. Victoria, his bride, began to decline, a worm was preying on her, cribbling her heart like a sieve; we, her friends, could see it. Then a few days ago she went to a party, to some people named Seier; by the bye, she told me you were to have been there too, but didn't come. Be that as it may, at this party she overtaxes her strength, thoughts of her beloved rush in upon her and she is lively from sheer bravado; she dances, dances the whole evening, dances like a mad person. Then she falls, the floor turns red under her; they lift her up, carry her out, drive her home. She was near the end."

The Tutor went close up to Johannes and said in a hard voice:

"Victoria is dead."

Johannes began fending vaguely with his arms just like a blind man.

"Dead? When did she die? Do you say Victoria is dead?"

"She is dead," replied the Tutor. "She died this morning, this very forenoon." He put his hand in his pocket and brought out a thick letter. "And she confided this letter to me to hand to you. Here it is. After my death, she said. She is dead. I hand you this letter. My mission is ended."

And without taking leave, without a word more, the Tutor turned and strolled slowly down the street and vanished.

Johannes was left with the letter in his hand. Victoria was dead. He spoke her name aloud again and again and his voice was without feeling, almost callous. He looked at the letter and recognized the writing; there were big and small letters, the lines were straight, and she who had written them was dead!

Then he entered his doorway, went upstairs, found the right key to put into his latch and opened his door. His room was cold and dark. He sat down in the window and read Victoria's letter by the last of the daylight.

"Dear Johannes," she wrote. "When you read this letter I shall be dead. Everything is so strange to me now, I am no longer ashamed to write to you again as though nothing had happened to prevent it. Before, while I was altogether among the living, I would rather have suffered night and day than written to you again; but now I have begun to pass away I do not think so any longer. Strangers have seen me bleed, the Doctor has examined me and found that I have only a shred of a lung left; what is there to hold me back now?

"I have been thinking as I lay here in bed of the last words I said to you. It was that evening in the wood. I never thought then that they would be my last words, for then I would have said good-bye to you at the same time and thanked you. Now I shall never see you again, so now I am sorry I did not throw myself down and kiss your shoe and the ground you trod on, to show you how unspeakably I have loved you. I have lain here both yesterday and today wishing I could be just well enough to go home again and walk in the wood and find the place where we sat when you held both my hands; for then I could lie down there and see if I could find the trace of you and kiss all the heather about. But I cannot come home now, unless, as Mamma thinks, I may possibly get a little better.

"Dear Johannes, it is so curious to think that all I have ever been able to do was to come into the world and love you and now say good-bye to life. It is strange indeed to lie here waiting for the day and the hour. I am moving step by step away from life and the people in the street and the noise of the traffic; I shall never see spring again either, and these houses and streets and the trees in the Park I shall leave behind. Today I was allowed to sit up in bed and look out of the window a little while. Down at the corner I saw two people meet, they stopped and shook hands and laughed at what they said; but it seemed so strange to me that I who lay and watched them was to die. It made me think--of course those two people do not know that I am lying here waiting for my hour; but if they did know it they would still stop and talk just as they are doing now. Last night when it was dark I thought my last hour had come, my heart began to stand still and I seemed to hear already the distant roar of eternity coming towards me. But the next moment I was back from somewhere a long way off and began to breathe again. It was a feeling I can't describe at all. Mamma thinks it was perhaps only the river and the waterfall at home that were in my mind.

"O God, if you knew how I have loved you, Johannes. I have not been able to show it to you, so many things have come in my way, and above all my own nature. Papa was hard on himself in the same way and I am his daughter. But now that I am to die and it is all too late, I write to you once more and tell you so. I ask myself why I do it, as it cannot make any difference to you, especially as I shall not even be alive any more; but I want so much to be near you to the last so that I may not feel more lonely than before, at any rate. When you read this it is as though I can see your shoulders and hands and watch every movement you make as you hold the letter before you and read it. So we are not so far from each other, I think to myself. I cannot send for you, I have no right to do that. Mamma would have sent for you two days ago, but I would rather write. And I would rather you should remember me as I was once, before I began to be ill. I remember you ... [here some words are omitted] ... my eyes and eye-brows; but even they are not as they were. That is another reason why I would not have you come. And I will ask you not to see me in my coffin either. I expect I am much the same as when I was alive, only a little paler, and I am lying in a yellow dress; but still you would regret it if you came and saw me.

"Now I have been writing at this letter so many times today and yet I have not been able to say a thousandth part of what I wanted to say. It is so terrible for me to die, I do not want to, I am still hoping so fervently to God that perhaps I might get a little better, if only till the spring. Then the days are light and there are leaves on the trees. If I got well again now I would never be unkind to you any more, Johannes. How I have cried and thought about that! Oh, I would go out and stroke all the stones in the street and stop and thank every step of the stairs as I went by and be good to all. It would not matter how badly off I was if I might only live. I should never complain again about anything; no, I would smile at any one who attacked me and struck me and thank and praise God if I might live. My life is so unlived, I have not been able to do anything for anybody, and this failure of a life is to end now. If you knew how unwilling I was to die perhaps you would do something, do all in your power. I don't suppose you can do anything; but I thought that if you and every one else prayed for me and would not let me go then God would grant me life. Oh, how thankful I should be, I would never do harm to any one again, but smile at whatever fell to my lot, if only I were allowed to live.