Mogens and Other Stories Part 9

Tage ran up the stairs to see if there might not be people somewhere in the house, and Mrs. Fonss in the meantime walked up and down the arcade.

As she was on the turn toward the gate a tall man with a bearded, tanned face, appeared at the end of the pa.s.sage directly in front of her. He had a guide-book in his hand; he listened for something, and then looked forward, straight at her.

The Englishman of yesterday immediately came to her mind.

"Pardon me?" he began interrogatively, and bowed.

"I am a stranger," Mrs. Fonss replied, "n.o.body seems to be at home, but my son has just run upstairs to see whether...."

These words were exchanged in French.

At this moment Tage arrived. "I have been everywhere," he said, "even in the living quarters, but didn't find as much as a cat."

"I hear," said the Englishman, this time in Danish, "that I have the pleasure of being with fellow-countrymen."

He bowed again and retreated a couple of steps, as if to indicate that he had merely said this to let them know that he understood what they were saying. Suddenly he stepped closer than before with an intent, eager expression on his face, and said to Mrs. Fonss, "is it possible that you and I are old acquaintances?"

"Are you Emil Thorbrogger?" exclaimed Mrs. Fonss, and held out her hand.

He seized it. "Yes, I am he," he said gayly, "and you are she?"

His eyes almost filled with tears as he looked at her.

Mrs Fonss introduced Tage as her son.

Tage had never in his life heard mention of Thorbrogger, but that was not his thoughts; he thought only of the fact that this gaucho turned out to be a Dane; when a pause set in, and some one had to say something he could not help exclaiming, "and I who said yesterday that you reminded me of a gaucho!"

"Well," replied Thorbrogger, "that wasn't far from the truth; for twenty-one years I have lived in the plains of La Plata, and in those years certainly spent more time on horse-back than on foot."

And now he had come back to Europe!

Yes, he had sold his land and his sheep and had come back to have a look around in the old world where he belonged, but to his shame he had to confess that he often found it very much of a bore to travel about merely for pleasure.

Perhaps, he was homesick for the prairies?

No, he had never had any special feeling for places and countries; he thought it was only his daily work which he missed.

In that way they went on talking for a while. At last the custodian appeared, hot and out of breath, with heads of lettuce under his arms and a bunch of scarlet tomatoes in his hand, and they were admitted into the small, stuffy collection of paintings, where they gained only the vaguest impression of the yellow thunder-clouds and black waters of old Vernet, but on the contrary told each other with considerable detail of their lives and the happenings during all the years since they had parted.

For it was he whom she had loved, at the time when she married another.

In the days which now followed they were much together, and the others thinking that such old friends must have much to say to each other left them often alone. In those days both soon noticed that however much they might have changed during the course of the years, their hearts had forgotten nothing.

Perhaps it was he who first became aware of this, for all the uncertainty of youth, its sentimentality and its elegiac mood came upon him simultaneously, and he suffered under it. It seemed out of place to the mature man, that he should so suddenly be robbed of his peace of life and the self-possession which he had acquired during the course of time, and he wanted his love to bear a different stamp, wished it to be graver, more subdued.

She did not feel herself younger, but it seemed to her as if a fountain of tears that had been obstructed and dammed had burst open again and begun to flow. There was great happiness and relief in crying, and these tears gave her a feeling of richness; it was as if she had become more precious, and everything had become more precious to her--in short it was a feeling of youth after all.

On an evening of one of these days Mrs. Fonss sat alone at home, Elinor had gone to bed early, and Tage had gone to the theater with the Kastagers. She had been sitting in the dull hotel-room and had dreamed in the half light of a couple of candles. At length her dreams had come to a stop after their incessant coming and going; she had grown tired, but with that mild and smiling weariness which wraps itself round us, when happy thoughts are falling asleep in our mind.

She could not go on sitting here, staring in front of her, the whole evening long without so much as a book. It was still over an hour before the theater let out. So she began to walk up and down the room, stood in front of the mirror, and arranged her hair.

She would go down into the reading-room, and look over the ill.u.s.trated papers. At this time of the evening it was always empty there.

She threw a large black lace shawl over her head and went down.

The room was empty.

The small room, overfull with furniture, was brilliantly illuminated by half a dozen large gas-flames; it was hot and the air was almost painfully dry.

She drew the shawl down around the shoulders.

The white papers there on the table, the portfolios with their large gilt letters, the empty plush chairs, the regular squares of the carpet and the even folds of the rep curtains--all this looked dull under the strong light.

She was still dreaming, and dreaming she stood, and listened to the long-drawn singing of the gas-flames.

The heat was such as almost to make one dizzy.

To support herself she slowly reached out for a large, heavy bronze vase which stood on a bracket fixed in the wall, and grasped the flower-decorated edge.

It was comfortable to stand thus, and the bronze was gratefully cool to the touch of her hand. But as she stood thus, there came another feeling also. She began to feel a contentment in her limbs, in her body, because of the plastically beautiful position which she had a.s.sumed. She was conscious of how becoming it was to her, of the beauty which was hers at the moment, and even of the physical sensation of harmony. All this gathered in a feeling of triumph, and streamed through her like a strange festive exultation.

She felt herself so strong at this hour, and life lay before her like a great, radiant day; no longer like a day declining toward the calm, melancholy hours of dusk. It seemed to her like an open, wide-awake s.p.a.ce of time, with hot pulses throbbing every second, with joyous light, with energy and swiftness and an infinity without and within. And she was thrilled with the fullness of life, and longed for it with the feverish eagerness with which a traveler sets out on a journey.

For a long time she stood thus, wrapped in her thoughts, forgetting everything around her. Then suddenly as if she heard the silence in the room and the long-drawn singing of the gas-flames, she let her hand drop from the vase and sat down by the table and began to turn over the leaves of a portfolio.

She heard steps, pa.s.sing by the door, heard them turn back, and saw Thorbrogger enter.

They exchanged a few words but as she seemed occupied with the pictures, he also began to look at the magazines that lay in front of him. They, however, did not interest him very much for when a little later she looked up, she met his eyes which rested searchingly upon her.

He looked as if he were just about to speak, and there was a nervous, decided expression round his mouth, which told her so definitely what his words would be that she reddened.

Instinctively, as if she wished to hold back these words, she held out a picture across the table and pointed at some hors.e.m.e.n from the pampas, who were throwing la.s.soes over wild steers.

He was just about to make some jesting remark about the draftsman's naive conception of the art of throwing a la.s.so. It was so enticingly easy to speak of this rather than of that which he had on his mind.

Resolutely, however, he pushed the picture aside, leaned a little ways across the table and said,

"I have thought a great deal about you since we met again; I have always thought a great deal about you, both long ago in Denmark and over where I was. And I have always loved you, and if it sometimes seems to me that it is only now that I really love you since we have met again, it is not true, however great my love may be, for I have always loved you, I have always loved you. And if it should happen now that you would become mine--you cannot imagine what that would mean to me, if you, who were taken from me for so many years, were to come back."

He was silent for a moment, then he rose, and came closer to her.

"Oh, do say a word! I am standing here talking blindly. I speak to you as to an interpreter, a stranger, who has to repeat what I am saying to the heart I am speaking to.. I don't know... to stand here and weigh my words... I don't know, how far or how near. I dare not put into words the adoration which fills me--or dare I?"

He let himself sink down on a chair by her side.

"Oh, if I might, if I didn't have to be afraid--is it true! Oh, G.o.d bless you, Paula."

"There is nothing now that need keep us apart any longer," said she, with her hand in his, "whatever may happen I have the right to be happy once, to live fully in accordance with my being, my desire, and my dreams. I have never renounced. Even though happiness was not my share, I have never believed that life was nothing but grayness and duty. I knew that there are people who are happy."