Mogens and Other Stories Part 5

As Mogens saw Thora more and more frequently, memories came more and more rarely, and he began to see her as she was. It was a time of peace and happiness when he was with her, full of silent longing and quiet sadness when he did not see her. Later he told her of Camilla and of his past life, and it was almost with surprise that he looked back upon himself. Sometimes it seemed inconceivable to him that it was he who had thought, felt, and done all the strange things of which he told.

On an evening he and Thora stood on a height in the garden, and watched the sunset. William and his little sister were playing hide-and-seek around the hill. There were thousands of light, delicate colors, hundreds of strong radiant ones. Mogens turned away from them and looked at the dark figure by his side. How insignificant it looked in comparison with all this glowing splendor; he sighed, and looked up again at the gorgeously colored clouds. It was not like a real thought, but it came vague and fleeting, existed for a second and disappeared; it was as if it had been the eye that thought it.

"The elves in the green hill are happy now that the sun has gone down,"

said Thora.

"Oh--are they?"

"Don't you know that elves love darkness?"

Mogens smiled.

"You don't believe in elves, but you should. It is beautiful to believe in all that, in gnomes and elves. I believe in mermaids too, and elder-women, but goblins! What can one do with goblins and three-legged horses? Old Mary gets angry when I tell her this; for to believe what I believe, she says is not G.o.d-fearing. Such things have nothing to do with people, but warnings and spirits are in the gospel, too. What do you say?"

"I, oh, I don't know--what do you really mean?"

"You surely don't love nature?"

"But, quite the contrary."

"I don't mean nature, as you see it from benches placed where there is a fine view on hills up which they have built steps; where it is like a set scene, but nature every day, always."

"Just so! I can take joy in every leaf, every twig, every beam of light, every shadow. There isn't a hill so barren, nor a turf-pit so square, nor a road so monotonous, that I cannot for a moment fall in love with it."

"But what joy can you take in a tree or a bush, if you don't imagine that a living being dwells within it, that opens and closes the flowers and smooths the leaves? When you see a lake, a deep, clear lake, don't you love it for this reason, that you imagine creatures living deep, deep down below, that have their own joys and sorrows, that have their own strange life with strange yearnings? And what, for instance, is there beautiful about the green hill of Berdbjerg, if you don't imagine, that inside very tiny creatures swarm and buzz, and sigh when the sun rises, but begin to dance and play with their beautiful treasure-troves, as soon as evening comes."

"How wonderfully beautiful that is! And you see that?"

"But you?"

"Yes, I can't explain it, but there is something in the color, in the movements, and in the shapes, and then in the life which lives in them; in the sap which rises in trees and flowers, in the sun and rain that make them grow, in the sand which blows together in hills, and in the showers of rain that furrow and fissure the hillsides. Oh, I cannot understand this at all, when I am to explain it."

"And that is enough for you?"

"Oh, more than enough sometimes--much too much! And when shape and color and movement are so lovely and so fleeting and a strange world lies behind all this and lives and rejoices and desires and can express all this in voice and song, then you feel so lonely, that you cannot come closer to this world, and life grows l.u.s.terless and burdensome."

"No, no, you must not think of your fiancee in that way."

"Oh, I am not thinking of her."

William and his sister came up to them, and together they went into the house.

On a morning several days later Mogens and Thora were walking in the garden. He was to look at the grape-vine nursery, where he had not yet been. It was a rather long, but not very high hothouse. The sun sparkled and played over the gla.s.s-roof. They entered, the air was warm and moist, and had a peculiar heavy aromatic odor as of earth that has just been turned. The beautiful incised leaves and the heavy dewy grapes were resplendent and luminous under the sunlight. They spread out beneath the gla.s.s-cover in a great green field of blessedness. Thora stood there and happily looked upward; Mogens was restless and stared now and then unhappily at her, and then up into the foliage.

"Listen," Thora said gayly, "I think, I am now beginning to understand what you said the other day on the hill about form and color."

"And you understood nothing besides?" Mogens asked softly and seriously.

"No," she whispered, looked quickly at him, dropped the glance, and grew red, "not then."

"Not then," Mogens repeated softly and kneeled down before her, "but now, Thora?" She bent down toward him, gave him one of her hands, and covered her eyes with the other and wept. Mogens pressed the hand against his breast, as he rose; she lifted her head, and he kissed her on the forehead. She looked up at him with radiant, moist eyes, smiled and whispered: "Heaven be praised!"

Mogens stayed another week. The arrangement was that the wedding was to take place in midsummer. Then he left, and winter came with dark days, long nights, and a snowstorm of letters.

All the windows of the manor-house were lighted, leaves and flowers were above every door, friends and acquaintances in a dense crowd stood on the large stone stairway, all looking out into the dusk.--Mogens had driven off with his bride.

The carriage rumbled and rumbled. The closed windows rattled. Thora sat and looked out of one of them, at the ditch of the highway, at the smith's hill where primroses blossomed in spring, at Bertel Nielsen's huge elderberry bushes, at the mill and the miller's geese, and the hill of Dalum where not many years ago she and William slid down on sleighs, at the Dalum meadows, at the long, unnatural shadows of the horses that rushed over the gravel-heaps, over the turf-pits and rye-field. She sat there and wept very softly; from time to time when wiping the dew from the pane, she looked stealthily over towards Mogens. He sat bowed forward, his traveling-cloak was open, his hat lay and rocked on the front seat; his hands he held in front of his face. All the things he had to think of! It had almost robbed him of his courage. She had had to say good-by to all her relatives and friends and to an infinity of places, where memories lay ranged in strata, one above the other, right up to the sky, and all this so that she might go away with him. And was he the right sort of a man to place all one's trust in, he with his past of brutalities and debaucheries! It was not even certain that all this was merely his past. He had changed, it is true, and he found it difficult to understand what he himself had been. But one never can wholly escape from one's self, and what had been surely still was there.

And now this innocent child had been given him to guard and protect.

He had managed to get himself into the mire till over his head, and doubtless he would easily succeed in drawing her down into it too. No, no, it shall not be thus--no, she is to go on living her clear, bright girl's life in spite of him. And the carriage rattled and rattled.

Darkness had set in, and here and there he saw through the thickly covered panes, lights in the houses and yards past which they drove.

Thora slumbered. Toward morning they came to their new home, an estate that Mogens had bought. The horses steamed in the chill morning air; the sparrows twittered on the huge linden in the court, and the smoke rose slowly from the chimneys. Thora looked smiling and contented at all this after Mogens had helped her out of the carriage; but there was no other way about, she was sleepy and too tired to conceal it. Mogens took her to her room and then went into the garden, sat down on a bench, and imagined that he was watching the sunrise, but he nodded too violently to keep up the deception. About noon he and Thora met again, happy and refreshed. They had to look at things and express their surprise; they consulted and made decisions; they made the absurdest suggestions; and how Thora struggled to look wise and interested when the cows were introduced to her; and how difficult it was not to be all too unpractically enthusiastic over a small s.h.a.ggy young dog; and how Mogens talked of drainage and the price of grain, while he stood there and in his heart wondered how Thora would look with red poppies in her hair!

And in the evening, when they sat in their conservatory and the moon so clearly drew the outline of the windows on the floor, what a comedy they played, he on his part seriously representing to her that she should go to sleep, really go to sleep, since she must be tired, the while he continued to hold her hand in his; and she on her part, when she declared he was disagreeable and wanted to be rid of her, that he regretted having taken a wife. Then a reconciliation, of course, followed, and they laughed, and the hour grew late. Finally Thora went to her room, but Mogens remained sitting in the conservatory, miserable that she had gone. He drew black imaginings for himself, that she was dead and gone, and that he was sitting here all alone in the world and weeping over her, and then he really wept. At length he became angry at himself and stalked up and down the floor, and wanted to be sensible.

There was a love, pure and n.o.ble, without any coa.r.s.e, earthly pa.s.sion; yes, there was, and if there was not, there was going to be one. Pa.s.sion spoiled everything, and it was very ugly and unhuman. How he hated everything in human nature that was not tender and pure, fine and gentle! He had been subjugated, weighed down, tormented, by this ugly and powerful force; it had lain in his eyes and ears, it had poisoned all his thoughts.

He went to his room. He intended to read and took a book; he read, but had not the slightest notion what--could anything have happened to her!

No, how could it? But nevertheless he was afraid, possibly there might have--no, he could no longer stand it. He stole softly to her door; no, everything was still and peaceful. When he listened intently it seemed as if he could hear her breathing--how his heart throbbed, it seemed, he could hear it too. He went back to his room and his book. He closed his eyes; how vividly he saw her; he heard her voice, she bent down toward him and whispered--how he loved her, loved her, loved her! It was like a song within him; it seemed as if his thoughts took on rhythmic form, and how clearly he could see everything of which he thought! Still and silent she lay and slept, her arm beneath the neck, her hair loosened, her eyes were closed, she breathed very softly--the air trembled within, it was red like the reflection of roses. Like a clumsy faun, imitating the dance of the nymphs, so the bed-cover with its awkward folds outlined her delicate form. No, no, he did not want to think of her, not in that way, for nothing in all the world, no; and now it all came back again, it could not be kept away, but he would keep it away, away! And it came and went, came and went, until sleep seized him, and the night pa.s.sed.

When the sun had set on the evening of the next day, they walked about together in the garden. Arm in arm they walked very slowly and very silently up one path and down the other, out of the fragrance of mignonettes through that of roses into that of jasmine. A few moths fluttered past them; out in the grain-field a wild duck called, otherwise most of the sounds came from Thora's silk dress.

"How silent we can be," exclaimed Thora.

"And how we can walk!" Mogens continued, "we must have walked about four miles by now."

Then they walked again for a while and were silent.

"Of what are you thinking now?" she asked.

"I am thinking of myself."

"That's just what I am doing."

"Are you also thinking of yourself?"

"No, of yourself--of you, Mogens."

He drew her closer. They were going up to the conservatory. The door was open; it was very light in there, and the table with the snowy-white cloth, the silver dish with the dark red strawberries, the shining silver pot and the chandelier gave quite a festive impression.

"It is as in the fairy-tale, where Hansel and Gretel come to the cake-house out in the wood," Thora said.

"Do you want to go in?"

"Oh, you quite forget, that in there dwells a witch, who wants to put us unhappy little children into an oven and eat us. No, it is much better that we resist the sugar-panes and the pancake-roof, take each other by the hand, and go back into the dark, dark wood."