Look Back on Happiness Part 26

"It was just in pa.s.sing, quite by accident."

This gave me a good opportunity for saying: "What a lot of things are accidental! It was an accident that I should have stopped under a particular lamppost to look up something, to read a few lines. And then you happened to live there."

"That's right."

"I expect you and the carpenter will be getting married," I said.

"Ha, ha! No, indeed, I shan't marry anyone."

"No?"

"You have to be pretty nave to marry."

"Well, I don't know that being nave does any harm--being not quite so clever. Where does your cleverness lead you? Only to being cheated.

Because there isn't anybody who's quite clever enough."

"I should have thought being clever is just the thing to protect you against being cheated. What else would it do?"

"Exactly. What else? But the trouble is we trust our cleverness so much that we get cheated that way. Or else we let things go from bad to worse, because why should we worry? After all we've got our cleverness to help get us out of the mess!"

"Well, in that case it's pretty hopeless!"

"Relying on your cleverness--yes. That was your own opinion last summer, you know."

"Yes, I remember that. I thought--oh, I don't know. But when I came back to town again it was as though--"

A pause.

"I don't know what to think," she said.

"And I do because I'm old and wise. You see, Miss Torsen, in the old days people didn't think so much about cleverness and secondary schools and the right to vote; they lived their lives on a different plane, they were nave. I wonder if that wasn't a pretty good way to live. Of course people were cheated in those days, too, but they didn't smart under it so; they bore it with greater natural strength. We have lost our healthy powers of endurance."

"It's getting cold," she said. "Shall we go home?--Yes, of course that's all quite true, but we're living in modern times. We can't change the times; I can't, at any rate; I've got to keep up with the times."

"Yes, that's what it says in the Oslo morning paper. Because it used to say so in the _Neue Freie Presse_. But a person with character goes his own way up to a point, even if the majority go a different way."

"Yes--well, I'm really going to tell you something now," she said, stopping. "I go to a really sensible school during the day."

"Do you?" I said.

"Only this time I'm learning housekeeping; isn't that a good thing?"

"You mean you're learning to cut sandwiches for yourself?"

"Ha, ha!"

"Well, you said you weren't going to marry!"

"Oh, I don't know."

"Very well. You marry; you settle down in his valley. But first you have to learn housekeeping so that you can make an omelette or possibly a pudding for tourists or Englishmen that pa.s.s through."

"His valley? Whose valley?"

"You'd much better go to his mother's and learn all the housekeeping you're going to need from her."

"Really, really," she said smiling as she walked on again, "you're quite on the wrong track. It isn't he--it isn't anybody."

"So much the worse for you. There ought to be somebody."

"Yes, but suppose it's not the one I want."

"Oh, yes, it will be the one you want. You're big enough and handsome enough and capable enough."

"Thank you very much, but--well. Thanks so much. Good night."

Why did she break off so suddenly and leave me so hurriedly, almost at a run? Was she crying? I should have liked to have said more, to have been wise and circ.u.mstantial and made useful suggestions, but I was left standing in a kind of stupid surprise.

Then something happened.

"We haven't seen each other for such a long time," she said, the next time we met. "I'm so glad to see you again. Shall we take a short walk? I was just--"

"Going to post a letter, I see."

"Yes, I was going to post a letter. It's only--it's not--"

We went to a newspaper office with the letter. It was evidently an advertis.e.m.e.nt; perhaps she was trying to find a situation.

As she came out of the office a gentleman greeted her. She turned a deep red, and stopped for a moment at the top of the two stone steps leading from the entrance. Her head was bent almost to her chest, as though she were looking very carefully at the steps before venturing to come down them. They greeted each other again; the stranger shook her hand, and they began to talk.

He was a man of her own age, good-looking, with a soft, fair beard, and dark eyebrows that looked as though he had blacked them. He wore a top hat, and his overcoat, which was open, was lined with silk.

I heard them mention an evening of the previous week on which they had enjoyed themselves; it had been a relaxation. There had been quite a party, first out driving, then at supper together. It was a memory they had in common. Miss Torsen didn't say much. She seemed a little embarra.s.sed, but smiling and beautiful. I began to look at the ill.u.s.trated papers displayed in the window, when suddenly the thought struck me: "Good G.o.d, she's in love!"

"Look, I have a suggestion," he said. Then they discussed something, agreed about something, and she nodded. After that he left her.

She came toward me slowly and in silence. I spoke to her about some of the pictures in the window. "Yes," she said, "just think!" But she gazed at them without seeing anything. Silently we walked on, and for several minutes, at least, she said nothing.

"Hans Flaten never changes," she said finally.

"Is that who it was?" I asked.

"His name's Flaten."

"Yes, I remember you mentioned the name last summer. Who is he?"

"His father's a merchant."