The Dangerous Age Part 5

I, who like to receive confidences, have a morbid fear of giving them.

Perhaps it is because I was so much alone, so self-centred, in my childhood.

The more I reflect upon life, the more clearly I see that I have not laid out my talents to the best advantage. I have no sweet memories of infidelity; I have lived irreproachably--and now I am very tired.

I sit here and write for myself alone. I know that no one else will ever read my words; and yet I am not quite sincere, even with myself.

Life has pa.s.sed me by; my hands are empty; now it is too late.

Once happiness knocked at my door, and I, poor fool, did not rise to welcome it.

I envy every country wench or servant girl who goes off with a lover.

But I sit here waiting for old age.

Astrid Bagge.... As I write her name, I feel as though she were standing weeping behind my back; I feel her tears dropping on my neck. I cannot weep--but how I long for tears!

Autumn! Torp has made a huge fire of logs in the open grate. The burning wood gives out an intoxicating perfume and fills the house with cosey warmth. For want of something better to do I am looking after the fire myself. I carefully strip the bark from each log before throwing it on the flames. The smell of burning birch-bark goes to my head like strong wine. Dreams come and go.

Joergen Malthe, what a mere boy you are!

The garden looks like a neglected churchyard, forgotten of the living.

The virginia creeper falls in blood-red streamers from the verandah. The snails drag themselves along in the rain; their slow movements remind me of women _enceinte_. The hedge is covered with spiders' webs, and the wet clay sticks to one's shoes as one walks on the paths.

Yet there are people who think autumn a beautiful time of year!

My will is paralysed from self-disgust. I find myself involuntarily listening and watching for the postman, who brings nothing for me. There are moments when my fingers seem to be feeling the smoothness of the cream-laid "At Home" cards which used to be showered upon us, especially at this season. Towards evening I grow restless. Formerly my day was a _crescendo_ of activity until the social hours were reached. Now the hours fall one by one in ashes before my eyes.

I am myself, yet not myself. There are moments when I envy every living creature that has the right to pair--either from hate or from habit. I am alone and shut out. What consolation is it to be able to say: "It was my own choice!"

A letter from Malthe.

No, I will not open it. I do not wish to know what he writes.... It is a long letter.

My nerves are quiet. But I often lie awake, and my sleep is broken. The stars are shining over my head, and I never before experienced such a sense of repose and calm. Is this the effect of the stars, or the letter?

I am forty-two! It cannot be helped. I cannot buy back a single day of my life. Forty-two! But during the night the thought does not trouble me. The stars above reckon by ages, not by years, and sometimes I smile to think that as soon as Richard returns home, the rooms in our house in the Old Market will be lit up, and the usual set will a.s.semble there without me.

The one thing I should like to know is whether Malthe is still in Denmark.

I would like to know where my thoughts should seek him--at home or abroad.

I played with him treacherously when I called him "the youth," and treated him as a mere boy. If we compare our ages it is true enough, but not if we compare feelings.

Can there be anything meaner than for a woman to make fun of what is really sacred to her? My feelings for Malthe were and still are sacred.

I myself have befouled them with my mockery.

But when I am lying in my bed beneath the vast canopy of the sky, all my sins seem forgiven me. Fate alone--Fate who bears all things on his shoulders--is to blame, and I wish nothing undone.

The letter will never be read. Never voluntarily by me.

I do not know the day of the week. That is one step nearer the goal for which I long. May it come to pa.s.s that the weeks and months shall glide imperceptibly over me, so that I shall only recognise the seasons by the changing tints of the forest and the alternations of heat and cold.

Alas, those days are still a long way off!

I have just been having a conflict with myself, and I find that all the time I have been living here as though I were spending a summer holiday in Tyrol. I have been simply deceiving myself and playing with the hidden thought that I could begin my life over again.

I have shivered with terror at this self-deception. The last few nights I have hardly slept at all. A traveller must feel the same who sails across the sea ignorant of the country to which he journeys. Vaguely he pictures it as resembling his native land, and lands to find himself in a wilderness which he must plant and cultivate until it blossoms with his new desires and dreams. By the time he has turned the desert into a home, his day is over....

If I could but make up my mind to burn that letter! I weigh it, first in my right hand, then in my left. Sometimes its weight makes me happy; sometimes it fills me with foreboding. Do the words weigh so heavy, or only the paper?

Last night I held it close to the candle. But when the flame touched my letter, I drew it quickly away.--It is all I have left to me now....

Richard writes to me that Malthe has been commissioned to build a great hospital. Most of our great architects competed for the work. He goes on to ask whether I am not proud of "my young friend."

My young friend!...

Jeanne spoke to me about herself to-day. I think she was quite bewildered by the extraordinary fall of leaves which has almost blinded us the last three days. She was doing my hair, and tracing a line straight across my forehead, she remarked:

"Here should be a ribbon with red jewels."

I told her that I had once had the same idea, but I had given it up out of consideration for my fellow creatures.

"But there are none here," she exclaimed,

I replied laughing:

"Then it is not worth while decking myself out!"

Jeanne took out the pins and let my hair down.

"If I were rich," she said, "I would dress for myself alone. Men neither notice nor understand anything about it."