As Helge Gram turned the corner into Via Condotti in the dusk a military band came down the street playing “The Merry Widow” in such a crazy, whirling time that it sounded like wild bugle calls. The small, dark soldiers rushed past in the cold afternoon, more like a Roman cohort intent on attacking barbarian hosts than peaceful men returning to their barracks for supper. That was perhaps the cause of their haste, Helge thought, smiling to himself, for as he stood there watching them, his coat-collar turned up for the cold, a peculiar atmosphere of history had pervaded him—but suddenly he found himself humming the same tune, and continued his way in the direction where he knew the Corso lay.
He stopped at the corner and looked. So that was the Corso—an endless stream of carriages in a crowded street, and a surging throng of people on a narrow pavement.
He stood still, watching the stream run past him, and smiled at the thought that he could drift along this street every evening in the dusk among the crowds, until it became as familiar to him as the best-known thoroughfare of his own city—Christiania. He was suddenly seized with the wish to walk and walk—now and all night maybe—through all the streets of Rome, for he thought of the town as it had appeared to him a while ago when he was looking down on it from Pincio, while the sun was setting.
Clouds all over the western sky, close together like small pale grey lambkins, and as the sun sank behind him it painted their linings a glorious amber. Beneath the pale skies lay the city, and Helge understood that this was the real Rome—not the Rome of his imagination and his dreams, but Rome as she actually was.
Everything else he had seen on his journey had disappointed him, for it was not what he had imagined at home when he had been longing to go abroad and see it all. One sight at last was far beyond his dreams, and that was Rome.
A plain of housetops lay beneath him in the valley, the roofs of houses new and old, of houses high and low—it looked as if they had been built anywhere and at any time, and of a size to suit the need of the moment. In a few places only a space could be seen between the mass of housetops, as of streets. All this world of reckless lines, crossing each other in a thousand hard angles, was lying inert and quiet under the pale skies, while the setting sun touched the borders of the clouds with a tinge of light. It was dreaming under a thin veil of white mist, which no busy pillar of smoke dared penetrate, for no factory chimney could be seen, and no smoke came from a single one of the funny little chimney pipes protruding from the houses. The round, old, rust-brown tiles were covered by greyish moss, grass and small plants with yellow blossoms grew in the gutters; along the border of the terraces the aloes stood immovably still in their tubs, and creepers hung in dead cascades from the cornices. Here and there the upper part of a high house rose above its neighbour, its dark, hollow windows staring at one out of a grey or reddish-yellow wall, or sleeping behind closed shutters. Loggias stood out of the mist, looking like parts of an old watchtower, and small summer-houses of wood or corrugated iron were erected on the roofs.
Above it all masses of church cupolas were floating—the huge, grey one, far on the other side of what Helge supposed to be the river, was that of St. Peter.
Beyond the valley, where the roofs covered the silent city—it well deserved the epithet “eternal” tonight—a low hill stretched its longish back toward the skies, carrying on the far-away ridge an avenue of pines, the foliage of which formed one large mass above the row of slender trunks. And behind the dome of St. Peter the eye was arrested by another hill with villas, built among pines and cypresses. Probably Monte Mario.
The dark leaves of the holly formed a roof over his head, and behind him a fountain made a curiously living sound as the water splashed against the stone border, before flowing into the basin beneath it.
Helge whispered to the city of his dreams, whose streets his feet had not yet touched, whose houses did not harbour one single soul he knew: “Rome—Rome—eternal Rome.” He was suddenly struck by his own loneliness and startled at his emotion, though he knew that there was nobody to witness it, and, turning round, he hurried down the Spanish stairs.
And now when he stood at the corner of Condotti and Corso he experienced a quaint and yet pleasant anxiety at the thought of mixing with those hustling crowds and finding his way in the strange city—to wander through it as far as Piazza San Pietro.
As he was crossing the street two young girls passed him. They looked like Norwegians, he thought, with a slight thrill of pleasure. One of them was very fair and wore light-coloured furs.
It was a joy to him even to read the names of the streets carved in clear, Latin type on white marble slabs set in the corners of the houses.
The street he took ran into an open space near a bridge, on which two rows of lanterns burned with a sickly, greenish flame in the pale light pouring down from the restless sky. A low parapet of stone ran along the waterline, bordered by a row of trees with faded leaves and trunks, dropping their bark in big white flakes. On the opposite side of the river the street lamps were burning among the trees, and the houses stood out black against the sky, but on this side the twilight still flickered on the window-panes. The sky was almost clear now, and hung transparent and greenish blue over the hill with the pine avenue, with here and there a few reddish, threatening, slowly moving clouds.
He stopped on the bridge and looked down into the Tiber. How dull the water was! It flowed on rapidly, reflecting the colours of the evening skies, sweeping twigs and gravel and bits of wood on its way between the stone walls. A small staircase on the side of the bridge led down to the water’s edge. Helge thought how easy it would be to walk down the steps one night, when one was tired of everything—had any ever done so? he wondered.
He asked a policeman the way to St. Peter’s cathedral in German; the man answered him first in French and then Italian, and when Helge repeatedly shook his head, he spoke French again, pointing up the river. Helge turned in that direction.
A huge, dark stone erection stood out against the sky, a low, round tower with a jagged crest and the jet-black silhouette of an angel on top. He recognized the lines of the San Angelo fort, and went close up to it. It was still light enough for the statues by the bridge to show up yellow in the twilight, the red skies were still mirrored in the flowing waters of the Tiber, but the street lamps had gained power, and threw out paths of light across the river. Beyond the San Angelo bridge the electric tramcars with illuminated windows rolled over the new iron bridge, throwing white sparks from the connecting wires.
Helge took off his hat to a man:
“San Pietro, favorisca?”
The man pointed with his finger and said something Helge did not understand. He turned into a dark and narrow street which, with a sensation of joy, he almost thought he recognized, for it was exactly like the Italian street of his imagination: shop after shop full of curios. He gazed into the poorly lit windows. Most of the things were rubbish—those dirty strips of coarse white lace hanging on a string were surely not Italian handiwork. There were bits of pottery exhibited in dusty box-lids and small bronze figures of a poisonous green, old and new brass candlesticks and brooches with heaps of stones that looked far from genuine. Yet he was seized by a senseless wish to go in and buy something—to inquire, to bargain, and to purchase. Almost before he knew it, he had entered a small, stuffy shop filled with all sorts of things. There were church-lamps hanging from the ceiling, bits of silk with gold flowers on red and green and white ground, and broken pieces of furniture.
Behind the counter a youth with a dark complexion and a bluish, unshaven chin was reading. He talked and asked questions while Helge pointed at various articles, “Quanto?” The only thing he understood was that the prices were excessive, but one ought not to buy until one knew the language well enough to bargain with them.
Several pieces of china were standing on a shelf, rococo figures and vases with sprays of roses, which looked quite modern. Helge seized one at random and placed it on the counter: “Quanto?”
“Sette,” said the youth, and spread out seven fingers.
“Quattro,” said Helge, holding out four fingers in a new brown glove, and felt quite pleased with himself at this leap into the foreign language. He did not understand one word of the man’s arguments, but each time he finished talking Helge raised his four fingers and repeated his quattro, adding with a superior air: “Non antica!”
But the shopkeeper protested, “Si, antica.” “Quattro,” said Helge again—the man had now only five fingers in the air—and turned towards the door. The man called him back, accepting, and Helge, feeling highly pleased with himself, went out with his purchase wrapped up in pink tissue paper.
He perceived the dark mass of the church at the bottom of the street outlined against the sky, and walked on. He hurried across the first part of the piazza with its lighted shop windows and passing trams towards the two semicircular arcades, which laid a pair of rounded arms, as it were, about one part of the place, drawing it into the quiet and darkness of the massive church, with its broad steps extending in a shell-like formation far out on the piazza.
The dome of the church and the row of saints along the roof of the arcades stood out black against the faint light of the sky; the trees and houses on the hill at the back seemed to be heaped one on top of the other in an irregular fashion. The street lamps were powerless here, the darkness streamed forth between the pillars, and spread over the steps from the open portico of the church. He went slowly up the steps close to the church and looked through the iron doors. Then he went back again to the obelisk in the middle of the piazza and stood there gazing at the dark building. He bent his head back, and followed with his eyes the slender needle of stone that pointed straight into the evening sky, where the last clouds had descended on the roofs of that part of the town whence he had come, and the first radiant sparks of the stars pierced the gathering darkness.
Again his ears caught the sound of water emptying into a stone cistern, and the soft ripple of the overflow from one receptacle into another into the basin. He approached one of the fountains and watched the thick, white jet, driven upwards as it were in angry defiance and looking black against the clear atmosphere, to break high in the air and sink back into the darkness, where the water gleamed white again. He kept staring at it until a gust of wind took hold of the jet and bent it towards him, raining icy drops on his face, but he remained where he was, listening and staring. Then he walked a few steps—stood still—and walked again, but very slowly, listening to an inner voice. It was true, then—really true—that he was here, far, far away from everything he had longed so intensely to leave. And he walked still more slowly, furtively, like one who has escaped from prison.
At the corner of the street there was a restaurant. He made for it, and on his way found a tobacco shop, where he bought some cigarettes, picture cards and stamps. Waiting for his steak, he drank big gulps of claret, while he wrote to his parents; to his father: “I have been thinking of you very often today”—it was true enough—and to his mother: “I have already got a small present for you, the first thing I bought here in Rome.” Poor mother—how was she? He had often been impatient with her these last years. He unpacked the thing and had a look at it—it was probably meant for a scent-bottle. He added a few words to his mother’s card that he managed the language all right, and that to bargain in the shops was an easy matter.
The food was good, but dear. Never mind, once he was more at home here he would soon learn how to live cheaply. Satisfied and exhilarated by the wine, he started to walk in a new direction, past long, low, dilapidated houses, through an archway on to a bridge. A man in a barrier hut stopped him and made him understand that he had to pay a soldo. On the other side of the bridge was a large, dark church with a dome.
He got into a labyrinth of dark, narrow bits of streets—in the mysterious gloom he surmised the existence of old palaces with projecting cornices and lattice windows side by side with miserable hovels, and small church-fronts in between the rows of houses. There were no pavements and he stepped into refuse that lay rotting in the gutter. Outside the narrow doors of the lighted taverns and under the few street lamps he had a vague glimpse of human forms.
He was half delighted, half afraid—boyishly excited, and wondering at the same time how he was to get out of this maze and find the way to his hotel at the ends of the earth—take a cab, he supposed.
He passed down another narrow, almost empty street. A small strip of clear, blue sky was visible between the high houses with their frameless windows, looking like black holes cut in the wall. On the uneven stone bridge dust and straw and bits of paper were tossed about by a light gust of wind.
Two women, walking behind him, passed him close under a lamp. He gave a start: they were the ones he had noticed that afternoon in the Corso and believed to be Norwegian. He recognized the light furs of the taller one.
Suddenly he felt an impulse to try an adventure—to ask them the way, so as to hear if they were Norwegian—or Scandinavian at any rate, for they were certainly foreigners. With slightly beating heart he started to walk after them.
The two young girls stopped outside a shop, which was closed, and then walked on. Helge wondered if he should say “Please” or “Bitte” or “Scusi”—or if he should blurt out at once “Undskyld”—it would be funny if they were Norwegians.
The girls turned a corner; Helge was close upon them, screwing up courage to address them. The smaller one turned round angrily and said something in Italian in a low voice. He felt disappointed and was going to vanish after an apology, when the tall one said in Norwegian: “You should not speak to them, Cesca—it is much better to pretend not to notice.”
“I cannot bear that cursed Italian rabble; they never will leave a woman alone,” said the other.
“I beg your pardon,” said Helge, and the two girls stopped, turning round quickly.
“I hope you will excuse me,” he muttered, colouring, and, angrily conscious of it, blushed still deeper. “I only arrived from Florence today, and have lost my way in these winding streets. I thought you were Norwegian, or at any rate Scandinavian, and I cannot manage the Italian language. Would you be kind enough to tell me where to find a car? My name is Gram,” he added, raising his hat again.
“Where do you live?” asked the taller girl.
“At a place called the Albergo Torino, close to the station,” he explained.
“He should take the Trastevere tram at San Carlo ai Catenari,” said the other.
“No; better take a No. 1 at the new Corso.”
“But those cars don’t go to the Termini,” answered the little one.
“Yes, they do. Those that have San Pietro, stazione Termini, written on them,” she explained to Helge.
“Oh, that one! It runs past Capo le Case and Ludovisi and an awful long way about first—it will take an hour at least to the station with that one.”
“No, dear; it goes direct—straight along Via Nazionale.”
“It does not,” insisted the other; “it goes to the Lateran first.”
The taller girl turned to Helge: “The first turning right will take you into a sort of market. From there you go along the Cancellaria on your left to the new Corso. If I remember rightly, the tram stops at the Cancellaria—somewhere near it anyway—you will see the sign. But be sure to take the tram marked San Pietro, stazione Termini, No. 1.”
Helge stood somewhat crestfallen, listening to the foreign names which the girls used with such easy familiarity, and, shaking his head, said: “I am afraid I shall never be able to find it—perhaps I had better walk till I find a cab.”
“We might go with you to the stop,” said the tall one.
The little one whispered peevishly something in Italian, but the other answered her decisively. Helge felt still more confused at these asides, which he did not understand.
“Thank you, but please do not trouble. I am sure to find my way home somehow or other.”
“It is no trouble,” said the tall one, starting to walk; “it is on our way.”
“It is very kind of you; I suppose it is rather difficult to find one’s way about in Rome, is it not?” he said, by way of conversation—“especially when it is dark.”
“Oh no, you will soon get into it.”
“I only arrived here today. I came from Florence this morning by train.” The smaller one said something in an undertone in Italian. The tall one asked: “Was it very cold in Florence?”
“Yes, bitterly cold. It is milder here, is it not? I wrote my mother anyway yesterday to send my winter coat.”
“Well, it is cold enough here too sometimes. Did you like Florence? How long were you there?”
“A fortnight. I think I shall like Rome better than Florence.”
The other young girl smiled—she had been muttering to herself in Italian all the time—but the tall one went on in her pleasant, quiet voice:
“I don’t believe there is any town one could love as much as Rome.”
“Is your friend Italian?” asked Helge.
“No; Miss Jahrman is Norwegian. We speak Italian because I want to learn, and she is very good at it. My name is Winge,” she added. “That is the Cancellaria.” She pointed towards a big, dark palace.
“Is the courtyard as fine as it is reported to be?”
“Yes; it is very fine. I will show you which car.” While they stood waiting two men came across the street.
“Hullo, you here!” exclaimed one of them.
“Good evening,” said the other. “What luck! We can go together. Have you been to look at the corals?”
“It was closed,” said Miss Jahrman sulkily.
“We have met a fellow-countryman, and promised to show him the right tram,” Miss Winge explained, introducing: “Mr. Gram—Mr. Heggen, artist, and Mr. Ahlin, sculptor.”
“I don’t know if you remember me, Mr. Heggen—my name is Gram; we met three years ago on the Mysusaeter.”
“Oh yes—certainly. And so you are in Rome?”
Ahlin and Miss Jahrman had stood talking to one another in whispers. The girl came up to her friend and said: “I am going home, Jenny. I am not in the mood for Frascati tonight.”
“But, my dear, you suggested it yourself.”
“Well, not Frascati anyway—ugh! sit there and mope with thirty old Danish ladies of every possible age and sex.”
“We can go somewhere else. But there is your tram coming, Mr. Gram.”
“A thousand thanks for your help. Shall I see you again—at the Scandinavian club, perhaps?”
The tram stopped in front of them. Miss Winge said: “I don’t know—perhaps you would like to come with us now; we were going to have a glass of wine somewhere, and hear some music.”
“Thank you.” Helge hesitated, looking round at the others a little embarrassed. “I should be very pleased, but”—and, turning with confidence to Miss Winge of the fair face and the kind voice, he said, with an awkward smile, “you all know one another—perhaps you would rather not have a stranger with you?”
“Indeed no,” she said, smiling—“it would be very nice—and there—your tram’s gone now. You know Heggen already, and now you know us. We’ll see you get home all right, so if you are not tired, let us go.”
“Tired, not a bit. I should love to come,” said Helge eagerly.
The other three began to propose different cafés. Helge knew none of the names; his father had not mentioned them. Miss Jahrman rejected them all.
“Very well, then, let us go down to St. Agostino; you know the one, Gunnar, where they give you that first-rate claret,” and Jenny began to walk on, accompanied by Heggen.
“There is no music,” retorted Miss Jahrman.
“Oh yes, the man with a squint and the other fellow are there almost every night. Don’t let us waste time.”
Helge followed with Miss Jahrman and the Swedish sculptor.
“Have you been long in Rome, Mr. Gram?”
“No, I came this morning from Florence.”
Miss Jahrman laughed. Helge felt rather snubbed. He ought perhaps to have said he was tired, and gone home. On their way down through dark, narrow streets Miss Jahrman talked all the time to the sculptor, and scarcely answered when he tried to speak to her. But before he had made up his mind he saw the other couple vanish through a narrow door down the street.
One day during Christmas week Gram went into a trattoria. Heggen and Jenny were sitting at a table, but they did not see him. As he was taking off his overcoat, he heard Heggen say:
“I don’t like that man.”
“No; he is disgusting,” said Jenny, sighing.
“It is not good for her either—with this sirocco blowing. She will be a rag tomorrow. I suppose she does not work at all—only walks about with that fellow?”
“Work, no! But I can do nothing. She walks from here to Viterbo with him in those thin slippers of hers, in spite of the cold and the sirocco—only because the man can tell her about Hans Hermann.”
Gram greeted them as he passed. They made a movement as if inviting him to sit at their table, but he pretended not to see, and sat down farther up the room with his back to them. He understood that they were speaking about Francesca.
He was almost a daily visitor now at the Via Vantaggio; he could not help it. Miss Winge was always alone, reading or sewing, and seemed pleased to see him. He thought she had changed a little of late; she was not so determined or so ready with her opinions as she used to be; not so inclined to argue and to lay down the law. She seemed almost a little sad. He asked her once if she were not quite well.
“Yes, I am very well, thank you. Why do you ask?”
“I don’t know—you seem so quiet nowadays.”
She had lighted the lamp meanwhile, and he noticed that she blushed.
“I may have to go home soon. My sister is ill with pneumonia, and my mother is so upset about it. I am very sorry to go,” she added after a pause. “I should have liked to stay for the spring at least.”
She sat down to her needlework. He wondered in his mind if it was Heggen—he had never been able to find out if there was an understanding between them. For the present, Heggen, who was said to be rather impressionable generally, was very much attached to a young Danish nurse staying in Rome with an elderly lady. It seemed so strange that she should blush; it was not like her.
Francesca came in that evening before he left. He had not seen her much since Christmas Eve, but enough to understand that he was quite indifferent to her. She was never in a temper, or childishly impetuous; she went about as if she did not see anybody, her mind completely absorbed by something or other. At times she seemed almost to walk in a trance.
He saw a great deal of Jenny; he went to the trattoria where she used to have her meals, and also to her rooms. He scarcely knew why, but he felt he wanted to see her.
One afternoon Jenny went into Francesca’s room to look for some turpentine. Francesca always took whatever she needed from Jenny’s belongings, but she never put the things back. Cesca was lying on the bed sobbing, with her head deep in the pillow. Jenny had not heard her come in.
“My dear, what is the matter? Are you ill?”
“No, but please go away, Jenny, do! I won’t tell you; you’ll only say it’s my own fault.”
Jenny understood it was no good talking to her when she was in that state, but at tea-time she knocked at her door. Cesca thanked her, but did not want any tea.
That night, when Jenny was reading in bed, Cesca suddenly came into the room in her nightdress. Her eyes were red and swollen with crying.
“May I sleep with you tonight? I don’t want to be alone.”
Jenny made room for her. She did not like the idea of sharing her bed, but Cesca used to come when she was very unhappy and ask to be allowed to sleep with her.
“Go on reading, Jenny; I won’t disturb you. I shall lie very still here by the wall.”
Jenny pretended to read for some time. Now and then a sigh like a sob was heard from Francesca.
“Shall I put out the lamp, or would you like it burning?” Jenny asked.
“No, put it out, please.”
In the dark she put her arm round Jenny and told her, sobbing, that she had been to the Campagna again with Hjerrild, and he had kissed her. At first she had just scolded him a little, thinking it was only fun, but he soon became so disgusting that she got angry. “And he wanted me to go and stay at an hotel with him tonight. He said it exactly as he would have asked me to go to a confectioner’s with him. I was furious, and he got very angry and said some nasty, horrid things.” She shivered as in a fever. “He spoke about Hans—he said that Hans, when he showed him my picture, had spoken to him about me in such a way as to make Hjerrild believe—you know what I mean?” She nestled close to Jenny. “Can you understand it—for I don’t—that I still care for that cad of a man? Hans had not mentioned my name, though, and he did not imagine, of course, that Hjerrild would meet me or know me from the photograph; it was taken when I was eighteen.”
Jenny’s birthday was on the seventeenth of January. She and Francesca were having a dinner-party in the Campagna, in a small osteria in the Via Appia Nuova. Ahlin, Heggen, Gram, and Miss Palm, the Danish nurse, made up the party.
From the tram terminus they walked two and two along the sunny, white road. Spring was in the air, the brown Campagna had a greyish-green tinge; the daisies, which had been blossoming more or less all the winter, began to spread all over in silvery spots, and the impatient clusters of tender green shoots on the elder bushes along the fences had grown.
The larks hung trembling high up in the blue-white sky, and there was a haze over the city and the ugly, red blocks of houses it had sprinkled over the plain. Beyond the massive arches of the canal, the Alban mountains, with small white villages, showed faintly through the mist.
Jenny walked in front with Gram, who carried her grey dust-coat. She was radiantly beautiful in a black silk dress; he had never seen her in anything but her grey dress or coat and skirt. It seemed to him almost as if he walked with a new and strange woman. Her waist was so small in the shiny black material that her form above it seemed round and supple; the bodice was cut open in a deep square in front, and her hair and skin were dazzlingly fair. She wore a big black hat, in which he had seen her before, but without specially noticing it. Even her pink beads looked quite different with the black dress.
They ate out of doors in the sunshine under the vine, which threw a shadow in the form of a fine bluish net over the tablecloth. Miss Palm and Heggen wanted to decorate the table with daisies; the macaroni was quite ready, but the others had to wait until they came back with the decorations. The food was good and the wine was excellent; Cesca had brought fruit, and coffee, which she was going to make herself, to make sure it should be good. After dinner Miss Palm and Heggen investigated marble reliefs and inscriptions that had been found on the site and fitted into the masonry of the house. After a while they disappeared round a corner. Ahlin remained sitting at the table smoking, his eyes half shut against the glare.
The osteria lay at the foot of a small hill. Gram and Jenny walked up the slope at random. She picked small wild flowers that grew in the yellow earth.
“There are masses of these at Monte Testaccio. Have you been there, Mr. Gram?”
“Yes, several times. I went there yesterday to have a look at the Protestant cemetery. The camelia trees are covered with blossoms, and in the old part I found anemones in the grass.”
“Yes, they are out now. Somewhere at Via Cassia, beyond Ponte Molle, there are lots of them. Gunnar gave me some almond blossoms this morning; they have them already at the Spanish stairs, but I daresay they are forced.”
They reached the top and began strolling about. Jenny walked with her eyes on the ground; the short grass was springing up everywhere, and variegated thistle-leaves and some big, silver-grey ones were basking in the sun. They walked towards a solitary wall, which rose out of a mound of gravel; the Campagna extended around them in every direction, grey-green below the light spring skies and the warbling larks. Its boundaries were lost in the haze of the sun. The city beyond them seemed a mirage only, the mountains and the clouds melted together, and the yellow arches of the canal appeared, only to vanish again in the mist. The countless ruins were reduced to small, glistening pieces of walls, strewn about on the green, and pines and eucalyptus trees by the red or ochre houses stood solitary and dark on this fine day of early spring.
“Do you remember the first morning I was here, Miss Winge? I imagined I was disappointed, and I believed it to be because I had longed so much and dreamt so much that everything I was going to see would be colourless and poor, compared to my dreams. Have you noticed how on a summer day, when you lie in the sun with your eyes closed, all colours seem grey and faded when you first open them? It is because the eyes are weakened by not being used and cannot at once grasp the complexity of the colours as they really are; the first impression is incomplete and poor. Do you understand what I mean?”
Jenny nodded.
“It was my case in the beginning here. I was overwhelmed by Rome. Then I saw you passing by, tall and fair and a stranger. I did not pay any attention to Francesca then—not till we were in the tavern. When I sat there with you, who were all strange to me—it was really the first time such a thing happened to me. Up till then my association with strangers had been only an occasional meeting on my way between school and home. I was confused; it seemed impossible to speak to people. I almost longed for home and all it meant—and I longed for Rome as I knew it from hearsay and from pictures. I thought I could not settle down to anything but look at pictures made by others—read books other men had written—made the best use of the work of others and live in a world of fiction. I felt desperately lonely among you. You once said something about being lonely; I understand now what you meant.
“Do you see that tower over there? I went there yesterday. It is the remnant of a fortress from the Middle Ages, from feudal times. There are a good many of them in the city and round about. You see sometimes an almost windowless wall built in between the houses in a street. It is a bit of the Rome of the robber barons. We know comparatively little about that time, but I am very interested in it at present. I find in the records names of dead people, of whom sometimes nothing is known but their names, and I long to know more about them. I dream of Rome in the Middle Ages, when they fought in the street with fierce cries, and the town was full of robber-castles, where their womenfolk were shut up—daughters of those wild beasts and with their blood in their veins. Sometimes they broke away from their prison and mixed in the life, such as it was, inside the red-black walls. We know so little about those times, and the German professors do not take great interest in them, because they cannot be remade so as to convey abstract ideas; they are simply naked facts.
“What a mighty current of life has washed over this country!—breaking into billows round every spot with town and castle on it. And yet the mountains rise above it bare and desolate. Think of the endless number of ruins here in the Campagna only; of the stacks of books written on the history of Italy—and on the history of the whole world for that matter—and think of the hosts of dead people we know. Yet the result of all these waves of life, rolling one after the other, is very, very small. It is all so wonderful!
“I have talked to you so often and you have talked to me; yet I don’t really know you. You are just as much a mystery to me as that tower.—I wish you could see how your hair shines where you are standing now. It is glorious.
“Has it ever struck you that you have never seen your face? Only the reflection of it in the glass. We can never see what our face looks like when we sleep or shut our eyes—isn’t it odd? It was my birthday the day I met you; today it is yours. Are you glad to be twenty-eight, you who think that every year completed is a gain?”
“I did not say that. I said that you may have had so much to go through the first twenty-five years of your life that you are glad they are over.”
“And now?”
“Now....”
“Yes; do you know exactly what you want to attain during the next year—what use you are going to make of it? Life seems to me so overwhelmingly rich in possibilities that even you, with all your strength, cannot avail yourself of them. Does it ever occur to you, and does it make you sad, Jenny?”
She only smiled in answer, and looked down. She threw the end of her cigarette on the ground and put her foot on it; her white ankle showed through the thin black stocking. She followed with her eyes a pack of sheep running down the opposite slope.
“We are forgetting the coffee, Mr. Gram—I am sure they are waiting for us.”
They returned to the osteria in silence; on the slope, which stretched right down to where they had been lunching, they noticed that Ahlin was lying forward over the table, his head on his arms. Francesca in her bright green gown bent over him, her arms round his neck, trying to lift his head.
“Oh, don’t, Lennart! Don’t cry. I will love you. I will marry you—do you hear?—but you must not cry like that. I will marry you, and I think I can be fond of you, only don’t be so miserable.”
Ahlin sobbed: “No, no—not if you don’t love me, Cesca; I don’t want you to....”
Jenny turned and went back along the slope. Gram noticed that she flushed a deep red down to her neck. A path took them down by the other side of the house into the orchard. Heggen and Miss Palm were chasing each other round the little fountain, splashing each other with water. Miss Palm shrieked with laughter. Helge saw the colour again mount to Jenny’s face and neck as he walked behind her between the vegetable beds. Heggen and Miss Palm had made peace.
“The same old round,” said Helge; “take your partners.”
Jenny nodded, with the shadow of a smile.
The atmosphere at the coffee-table was somewhat strained. Miss Palm alone was in good spirits. Francesca tried to make conversation while they were sipping their liqueurs, and, as soon as she decently could, proposed that they should go for a walk.
The three couples made for the Campagna, the distance between them increasing, until they lost sight of one another altogether among the hills. Jenny walked with Gram.
“Where are we going really?” she said.
“We might go to the Egeria grotto, for instance.”
The grotto lay in quite an opposite direction to the one chosen by the others. They started to walk across the scorched slopes to the Bosco Sacro, where the ancient cork trees stretched their dark foliage to the burning sun.
“I ought to have put on my hat,” said Jenny, passing a hand over her hair. The ground of the sacred grove was covered with bits of paper and other litter; on the stump of a tree near the edge two ladies were seated, doing crochet work, and some little English boys played hide-and-seek behind the massive trunks. Jenny and Gram turned out of the grove and walked down the slope towards the ruin.
“Is it worth while going down?” said Jenny, and without waiting for an answer, sat down on the slope.
“No; let us stay here,” and Helge lay down at her feet on the short, dry grass, took off his hat, and, steadying himself on his elbow, looked up at her in silence.
“How old is she?” he asked suddenly. “I mean Cesca.”
“Twenty-six.” She sat looking at the view in front of her.
“I am not sorry,” he said quietly. “You have noticed it, I daresay. A month ago I might have.... She was so sweet to me once, so kind and confidential, and I was not used to that kind of thing. I took it as—well, as l’invitation à la valse, you see, but now ... I still think she is sweet, but I don’t mind in the least if she dances with somebody else.”
He was lying looking at her: “I believe it is you, Jenny, I am in love with,” he said suddenly.
She turned half-way towards him, with a faint smile, and shook her head.
“Yes,” said Helge firmly; “I think so. I don’t know for certain, for I have never been in love before—I know that now—although I have been engaged once.” He smiled to himself. “It was one of my blunders in the old foolish days.
“This, I am sure, is love. It was you, Jenny, I saw that evening—not her. I noticed you already in the afternoon when you crossed the Corso. I stood there thinking that life was new, full of adventure, and just then you passed me, fair and slender, and stranger. Later, when I had wandered about in this foreign town, I met you again. I also noticed Cesca, of course, and no wonder I was a little flustered for a moment, but it was you I saw first. And now we are sitting here together—we two.”
Her hand was close to him as she sat leaning on it; suddenly he stroked it—and she drew it away.
“You are not cross with me, are you? It is really nothing to be cross about. Why should I not tell you that I believe I am in love with you? I could not resist touching your hand—I wanted to feel that it was real, for it seems to me so wonderful that you are sitting here. I do not really know you, though we have talked about many things. I know that you are clever, level-headed, and energetic—and good and truthful, but I knew that the moment I saw you and heard your voice. I don’t know any more about you now, but there is of course a great deal more to learn—and perhaps I shall never learn it. But I can see for myself, for instance, that your silk skirt is glowing hot, and that if I laid my face in your lap I should burn myself.”
She made an involuntary movement with her hand across her lap.
“It attracts the sun; there are sparks in your hair, and the sunrays filter through your eyes. Your mouth is quite transparent; it looks like a raspberry in the sun.”
She smiled, looking a little embarrassed.
“Will you give me a kiss?” he said suddenly.
“‘L’invitation à la valse?’” She smiled lightly.
“I don’t know—but you cannot be cross with me because I ask you for one single little kiss—on a day like this. I am only telling you what I am longing for, and, after all, why could you not do it?”
She did not move.
“Is there any reason why not?—I shall not try to kiss you, but I cannot see why you should not bend down for a second and give me a tiny little kiss as you sit there with the sun right on your lips. It is no more to you than when you pat a bambino on the head and give him a soldo. It is nothing to you, Jenny, and to me it is all I wish for—just this moment I long for it so much,” he said, smiling.
She bent suddenly down and kissed him. Only for a second did he feel her hair and lips brush his cheek, and he saw the movement of her body under the black silk as she bent down and rose again. Her face, he noticed, which was smiling serenely as she kissed him, now looked embarrassed, almost frightened. He did not move, but lay still, musing contentedly in the sunshine. She became herself again.
“There, you see,” he said at last laughingly, “your mouth is exactly as before; the sun is shining on your lips, right into the blood. It was nothing to you—and I am so happy. You must not believe that I want you to think of me—I only want you to let me think of you, while you may sit and think of anything in the world. Others may dance—to me this is much better—if only I may look at you.”
They were both silent. Jenny sat with her face turned away, looking at the Campagna bathing in the sun.
As they walked back to the osteria, Helge chatted merrily about all sorts of things, telling her about the learned Germans he had met in the course of his work. Jenny stole a glance at him now and again; he used not to be like that, so free and easy. He was really handsome as he walked, looking straight ahead, and his light brown eyes were radiant like amber in the sun.
There was a wait of several minutes at Frederikshald—time for a cup of coffee. Jenny hurried along the platform; then suddenly she stopped to listen. Somewhere, near by, a lark was singing overhead. Once back in her compartment she leaned back in her corner and closed her eyes, her heart heavy with longing for the south.
The train rushed past small rocks of red granite, torn as it were from the mountain range, and between them dazzling glimpses of deep-blue fjords met the eye. Spruce trees clung to the mountain-side, with the afternoon sun on their reddish trunks and dark green, shiny needles. Everything in nature seemed conspicuously clear and clean after its bath of melting snow. The naked branches of foliferous trees stood out distinctly against the thin air, and little streamlets gurgled alongside the line.
It was all so different from the southern spring, with its slow, sound breathing and softly blended colours—she missed it so much. The sharp colouring now before her eyes reminded her of other springs, when she had been filled with longing for a joy far different from her present restful happiness.
Oh! for the spring out there, with the sprouting vegetation on the immense plain and the firm, severe lines of the encircling mountains, which man has robbed of their woods, to build stone-grey cities on the spurs and plant olive groves on the slopes. For thousands of years life has been teeming on the sides of the mountain, borne by it in patience, yet it raises its crown in eternal solitude and quiet towards heaven. Its proud outlines and subdued green and silvery grey colouring, the ancient cities and the slowly advancing spring—in spite of all that can be said of the tumultuous life of the south—make one’s own life run with a calmer, healthier beat, that meets the coming of spring with greater equanimity than here, where it comes in such mighty waves.
Oh, Helge! She longed to be out there with him. It was so far away, and so long since it all happened. Not quite a week, yet it seemed almost a dream, as if she had never been away at all. But she had been there—not here to see and feel how the white, frosty, peaceful winter yielded and the dry, strong, light blue air, drenched with mist in the middle of the day, hung quivering over the ground. Every outline was blurred or broken, but the colours were vivid and sharp—naked, as it were—until evening came, when everything froze under a sky of pale green, everlasting light.
—You dear boy of mine—what are you doing now? I miss you so, and I want to be with you. I can scarcely believe that you are mine, and I can’t bear to be alone, longing for you, all this bright, long spring.—
As the train proceeded on its way the scenery changed. Strips of snow showed among the trees and along the fences; the soft, shaded brown of the faded meadows and the ploughed fields met the eye, and the intense blue of the sky toned down near the horizon. The undulating line of the forest-clad mountain slopes lay far away; the branches of detached groups of trees in the fields gave the effect of lattice-work against the sky. The old grey houses of the farms shone like silver, and the new barns were glowing red. The pine needles formed an olive green background for the purple buds of the beeches and the light green of the aspens.
Such is spring: glowing colours that last a little while, then everything turns a golden green, swelling with the sap of life, and ripens in a few weeks into full summer—spring, when no joy is great enough. Evening fell, the last long red sunrays vanished behind a ridge, and the golden light in the cloudless sky faded slowly.
When the train left Moss, the mountain ridge stood dark against the clear sky, and the reflection of it in the green fjord was black and transparent. One single large, bright star rose behind the range; its light was mirrored in a filmy golden thread on the water.
It reminded her of Francesca’s nocturnes; she was fond of reproducing the colourings after sunset. Jenny wondered how things were going with Cesca, and she felt a pang of conscience when she realized that she had seen very little of her in the two last months. Cesca was working hard and was perhaps in difficulties, but all Jenny’s intentions to have a good long talk with her had come to nothing.
It was dark when she arrived at her destination; her mother, Bodil, and Nils were at the station to meet her.
It was as if she had seen her mother a week ago, but Mrs. Berner cried when she kissed her daughter: “Welcome home, my darling child—God bless you!” Bodil had grown, and looked very smart in a long coat and skirt. Kalfatrus greeted her shyly.
As she came out of the station she smelt the odour peculiar to the railway square of Christiania—a mixture of sea-water, coal smoke, and dried herring.
The cab drove along Carl Johan, past the old familiar houses. Mrs. Berner asked about the journey, and where she had spent the night. It seemed all so commonplace to Jenny, as if she had never been away from it. The two young people on the back seat said never a word.
Outside a garden gate in Wergelandsveien a young couple stood kissing each other good-night. A few stars twinkled in the clear deep blue sky above the naked trees in the Castle gardens. A smell of mouldering leaves came through the carriage window, reminding her of melancholy springs of old.
The cab stopped at the house where they lived. There was light still in the dairy on the ground floor; the woman came out on the doorstep, when she heard the cab, and said: “Good evening; welcome back,” to Jenny. Ingeborg came rushing down the stairs to embrace her, and hurried up again, carrying her sister’s bag. Supper was laid in the sitting-room, and Jenny saw her napkin with her father’s silver ring in her old place beside Kalfatrus. Ingeborg hurried into the kitchen, and Bodil went with Jenny to her old room at the back, which had been Ingeborg’s during her absence, and still harboured some of her belongings. On the walls were some picture cards of actors; Napoleon and Madame Récamier in mahogany frames hung on either side of Jenny’s old empire mirror above the antique chest of drawers.
Jenny washed and did her hair; she felt an irritation in her skin from the journey, and passed the powder-puff a couple of times over her face. Bodil sniffed the powder to see if it was scented. They went to supper. Ingeborg had a nice hot meal ready; she had been to a cookery school that winter. In the light of the lamp Jenny saw that her young sisters had their thick curly hair tied up with silk bows. Ingeborg’s small, dark face was thinner, but she did not cough any longer. She saw, too, that mamma had grown older—or had she perhaps not noticed, when she was at home and saw her every day, that the small wrinkles in her mother’s pretty face increased, that the tall, girlish figure stooped a little, and that the shoulders lost their roundness? Since she grew up she had always been told that her mother looked like an elder and prettier sister of hers.
They spoke about everything that had happened at home during the year.
“Why didn’t we take a taxi?” said Nils suddenly. “How stupid of us to ride home in an old four-wheeler!”
“Well, it’s too late now; no good crying over spilt milk,” laughed Jenny.