Mogens and Other Stories Part 4

"Are you jealous?" she asked very softly.

"Of one like you! I haven't lost my senses!"

"But what is the meaning of all this?"

"It means that I am tired of your beauty, that I know your voice and your gestures by heart, and that neither your whims nor your stupidity nor your craftiness can any longer entertain me. Can you tell me then why I should stay?"

Laura wept. "Mogens, Mogens, how can you have the heart to do this?

Oh, what shall I, shall I, shall I, shall I do! Stay only today, only to-day, Mogens. You dare not go away from me!"

"Those are lies, Laura, you don't even believe it yourself. It is not because you think such a terrible lot of me, that you are distressed now. You are only a little bit alarmed because of the change, you are frightened because of the slight disarrangement of your daily habits.

I am thoroughly familiar with that, you are not the first one I have gotten tired of."

"Oh, stay with me only to-day, I won't torment you to stay a single hour longer.

"You really are dogs, you women! You haven't a trace of fine feelings in your body. If one gives you a kick, you come crawling back again."

"Yes, yes, that's what we do, but stay only for to-day--won't you--stay!"

"Stay, stay! No!"

"You have never loved me, Mogens!"

"No!"

"Yes, you did; you loved me the day when there was such a violent wind, oh, that beautiful day down at the sea-sh.o.r.e, when we sat in the shelter of the boat."

"Stupid girl!"

"If I only were a respectable girl with fine parents, and not such a one as I am, then you would stay with me; then you would not have the heart to be so hard--and I, who love you so!"

"Oh, don't bother about that."

"No, I am like the dust beneath your feet, you care no more for me. Not one kind word, only hard words; contempt, that is good enough for me."

"The others are neither better nor worse than you. Good-by, Laura!"

He held out his hand to her, but she kept hers on her back and wailed: "No, no, not good-by! not good-by!"

Mogens raised the blind, stepped back a couple of paces and let it fall down in front of the window. Laura quickly leaned down over the window-sill beneath it and begged: "Come to me! come and give me your hand."

"No."

When he had gone a short distance she cried plaintively:

"Good-by, Mogens!"

He turned towards the house with a slight greeting. Then he walked on: "And a girl like that still believes in love!--no, she does not!"

The evening wind blew from the ocean over the land, the strand-gra.s.s swung its pale spikes to and fro and raised its pointed leaves a little, the rushes bowed down, the water of the lake was darkened by thousands of tiny furrows, and the leaves of the water-lilies tugged restlessly at their stalks. Then the dark tops of the heather began to nod, and on the fields of sand the sorrel swayed unsteadily to and fro. Towards the land! The stalks of oats bowed downward, and the young clover trembled on the stubble-fields, and the wheat rose and fell in heavy billows; the roofs groaned, the mill creaked, its wings swung about, the smoke was driven back into the chimneys, and the window-panes became covered with moisture.

There was a swis.h.i.+ng of wind in the gable-windows, in the poplars of the manor-house; the wind whistled through tattered bushes on the green hill of Bredbjerg. Mogens lay up there, and gazed out over the dark earth.

The moon was beginning to acquire radiance, and mists were drifting down on the meadow. Everything was very sad, all of life, all of life, empty behind him, dark before him. But such was life. Those who were happy were also blind. Through misfortune he had learned to see; everything was full of injustice and lies, the entire earth was a huge, rotting lie; faith, friends.h.i.+p, mercy, a lie it was, a lie was each and everything; but that which was called love, it was the hollowest of all hollow things, it was l.u.s.t, flaming l.u.s.t, glimmering l.u.s.t, smoldering l.u.s.t, but l.u.s.t and nothing else. Why had he to know this? Why had he not been permitted to hold fast to his faith in all these gilded lies? Why was he compelled to see while the others remained blind? He had a right to blindness, he had believed in everything in which it was possible to believe.

Down in the village the lights were being lit.

Down there home stood beside home. My home! my home! And my childhood's belief in everything beautiful in the world.--And what if they were right, the others! If the world were full of beating hearts and the heavens full of a loving G.o.d! But why do I not know that, why do I know something different? And I do know something different, cutting, bitter, true...

He rose; fields and meadows lay before him bathed in moonlight. He went down into the village, along the way past the garden of the manor-house; he went and looked over the stone-wall. Within on a gra.s.s-plot in the garden stood a silver poplar, the moonlight fell sharply on the quivering leaves; sometimes they showed their dark side, sometimes their white. He placed his elbows on the wall and stared at the tree; it looked as if the leaves were running in a fine rain down the limbs.

He believed, that he was hearing the sound which the foliage produced.

Suddenly the lovely voice of a woman became audible quite near by:

"Flower in dew! Flower in dew!

Whisper to me thy dreams, thine own.

Does in them lie the same strange air The same wonderful elfin air, As in mine own?

Are they filled with whispers and sobbing and sighing Amid radiance slumbering and fragrances dying, Amid trembling ringing, amid rising singing: In longing, In longing, I live."

Then silence fell again. Mogens drew a long breath and listened intently: no more singing; up in the house a door was heard. Now he clearly heard the sound from the leaves of the silver poplar. He bowed his head in his arms and wept.

The next day was one of those in which late summer is rich. A day with a brisk, cool wind, with many large swiftly flying clouds, with everlasting alternations of darkness and light, according as the clouds drift past the sun. Mogens had gone up to the cemetery, the garden of the manor ab.u.t.ted on it. Up there it looked rather barren, the gra.s.s had recently been cut; behind an old quadrangular iron-fence stood a wide-spreading, low elder with waving foliage. Some of the graves had wooden frames around them, most were only low, quadrangular hills; a few of them had metal-pieces with inscriptions on them, others wooden crosses from which the colors had peeled, others had wax wreaths, the greater number had nothing at all. Mogens wandered about hunting for a sheltered place, but the wind seemed to blow on all sides of the church.

He threw himself down near the embankment, drew a book out of his pocket; but he did not get on with his reading; every time when a cloud went past the sun, it seemed to him as though it were growing chilly, and he thought of getting up, but then the light came again and he remained lying. A young girl came slowly along the way, a greyhound and a pointer ran playfully ahead of her. She stopped and it seemed as if she wanted to sit down, but when she saw Mogens she continued her walk diagonally across the cemetery out through the gate. Mogens rose and looked after her; she walked down on the main road, the dogs still played. Then he began reading the inscription on one of the graves; it quickly made him smile. Suddenly a shadow fell across the grave and remained lying there, Mogens looked sideways. A tanned, young man stood there, one hand in his game-bag, in the other he held his gun.

"It isn't really half bad," he said, indicating the inscription.

"No," said Mogens and straightened up from his bent position.

"Tell me," continued the hunter, and looked to the side, as if seeking something, "you have been here for a couple of days, and I have been going about wondering about you, but up to the present didn't come near you. You go and drift about so alone, why haven't you looked in on us?

And what in the world do you do to kill the time? For you haven't any business in the neighborhood, have you?"

"No, I am staying here for pleasure."

"There isn't much of that here," the stranger exclaimed and laughed, "don't you shoot? Wouldn't you like to come with me? Meanwhile I have to go down to the inn and get some small shot, and while you are getting ready, I can go over, and call down the blacksmith. Well! Will you join?"

"Yes, with pleasure."

"Oh, by the way,--Thora! haven't you seen a girl?" he jumped up on the embankment.

"Yes, there she is, she is my cousin, I can't introduce you to her, but come along, let us follow her; we made a wager, now you can he the judge. She was to be in the cemetery with the dogs and I was to pa.s.s with gun and game-bag, but was not to call or to whistle, and if the dogs nevertheless went with me she would lose; now we will see."

After a little while they overtook the lady; the hunter looked straight ahead, but could not help smiling; Mogens bowed when they pa.s.sed. The dogs looked in surprise after the hunter and growled a bit; then they looked up at the lady and barked, she wanted to pat them, but indifferently they walked away from her and barked after the hunter.

Step by step they drew further and further away from her, squinted at her, and then suddenly darted off after the hunter. And when they reached him, they were quite out of control; they jumped up on him and rushed off in every direction and back again.

"You lose," he called out to her; she nodded smilingly, turned round and went on.

They hunted till late in the afternoon. Mogens and William got along famously and Mogens had to promise that he would come to the manor-house in the evening. This he did, and later he came almost every day, but in spite of all the cordial invitations he continued living at the inn.

Now came a restless period for Mogens. At first Thora's proximity brought back to life all his sad and gloomy memories. Often he had suddenly to begin a conversation with one of the others or leave, so that his emotion might not completely master him. She was not at all like Camilla, and yet he heard and saw only Camilla. Thora was small, delicate, and slender, roused easily to laughter, easily to tears, and easily to enthusiasm. If for a longer time she spoke seriously with some one, it was not like a drawing near, but rather as if she disappeared within her own self. If some one explained something to her or developed an idea, her face, her whole figure expressed the most intimate trust and now and again, perhaps, also expectancy. William and his little sister did not treat her quite like a comrade, but yet not like a stranger either. The uncle and the aunt, the farm-hands, the maid-servants, and the peasants of the neighborhood all paid court to her, but very carefully, and almost timidly. In respect to her they were almost like a wanderer in the forest, who sees close beside him one of those tiny, graceful song-birds with very clear eyes and light, captivating movements. He is enraptured by this tiny, living creature, he would so much like to have it come closer and closer, but he does not care to move, scarcely to take breath, lest it may be frightened and fly away.