by tacit agreement they passed the restaurant where they usually had their meals and where there were always a number of their countrymen, and, continuing their way in the twilight towards the tiber, they crossed the bridge into the old borgo quarters. in a corner by the piazza san pietro there was a small trattoria where they had dined after going to the vatican, and they went there.
they ate in silence. when she had finished jenny lit a cigarette, and sat sipping her claret and rubbing her fingers with the fragrant tangerine peel. heggen smoked, staring in front of him. they were almost alone in the place.
“would you like to read a letter i got from cesca the other day?” asked jenny suddenly.
“yes. i saw there was a letter for you from her—from stockholm, is it not?”
“yes; they are back there and going to stay the winter.” jenny took the letter out of her bag and handed it to him.
[272]
“dear, sweet jenny mine,—you must not be angry with me for not answering your last letter before. every day i meant to write, but it never came off. i am so pleased that you are back in rome and are working, and have gunnar to be with.
“we are back in stockholm living in the old place. it was quite impossible to stay in the cottage when it got cold; it was so draughty that we could only get warm in the kitchen. we would buy it if we could afford it, but it would cost too much; it wants so much done to it. the garret would have to be made into a studio for lennart, stoves would be wanted, and lots of other things—but we have rented it for next summer, and i am so happy about it, for there is no place in the world i love more. you cannot imagine anything more beautiful than the west coast; it is so bleak and poor and weather-worn—the grey cliffs with scraggy copse in the crevices, the woodbine, the poor little cottages, the sea, and the wonderful sky. i have made some pictures out there and people say they are good, and lennart and i have enjoyed it so much. we are always friends now, and when he thinks i am good, he kisses me and calls me a little mermaid and all kinds of nice names, and i suppose i shall grow very fond of him in time. we are back in town again and our journey to paris will not come off this time, but i don’t mind a bit. it seems almost heartless of me to write about it to you, for you are so much better than i, and it was so dreadfully sad that you should lose your little boy—and i don’t think i really deserve to be so happy and get what i have wished for more than anything—but i am going to have a baby. i have only five months to wait. i could scarcely believe it at first, but now it is certain enough. i tried to hide it from lennart as long as possible—you see, i was so ashamed of myself for having deceived him twice, and i was afraid of being mistaken. when he began to suspect it i denied it first, but i had to confess to it later. i cannot realize that i am to have a little boy—lennart says he would rather have another[273] little cesca, but i think he says it only to console me beforehand in case it is, for i am sure in his heart he wants a boy. however, if it is a girl, we shall be just as fond of her—and once we have got one child we might get some more.
“i am so happy that i don’t mind where we are, and i don’t long for paris. fancy mrs. l. asking me if i was not angry because the baby spoilt my journey abroad—can you understand it from a mother of two of the handsomest boys in the world? but they are not taken the slightest notice of, except when they are with us, and lennart says she would willingly make us a present of them. if i could afford it i would take them, so that baby would have two darling big brothers to play with when he comes. it will be such fun to show them their little cousin—they call me auntie, you see. i think it is nice. but i must close now. do you know i am very pleased also, because lennart cannot be jealous now—can he? and i don’t think he ever will be any more, for he knows quite well that i have never been really fond of anybody but him.
“do you think it unkind of me to write so much about this to you and that i am so happy? i know you don’t grudge me my luck.
“remember me kindly to all my friends—to gunnar first and foremost. you may tell him what i have written if you like. every good wish to yourself and welcome to us next summer.—much love from your sincere and devoted little friend,
cesca.
“p.s.—i must add something: if it is a girl she is going to be called jenny. i don’t mind what lennart says. he sends his regards to you, by the way.”
gunnar handed the letter back to jenny, who put it in her pocket.
“i am so pleased,” she said gently. “i am glad there are[274] some people who are happy. that feeling is something still left of my old self—even if there is nothing else.”
instead of going back to the city, they crossed the piazza, walking in the direction of the church.
the shadows fell coal black on to the square in the moonlight. white light and night-black darkness played about ghostlike in one of the arcades. the other lay in complete obscurity but for the row of statues on top. the front of the church was in shadow, but here and there the dome glittered like water. the two fountains sent their white jets sparkling and foaming towards the moon-blue sky. the water rose whirling in the air, splashing down again to the porphyry shelves to drop and trickle back into the basin.
gunnar and jenny walked slowly in the shade of the arcade towards the church.
“jenny,” he said all of a sudden, in a perfectly cool and everyday voice, “will you marry me?”
“no,” she answered after a pause, in a similar tone.
“i mean it.”
“yes, but surely you understand that i don’t want to.”
“i don’t see why not. if i understood you rightly, you don’t value your life very highly at present, and you entertain thoughts of suicide occasionally. as you feel so inconsolable in any case, why should you not marry me? i think you might try.”
jenny shook her head: “thank you, gunnar—but i think it would be taxing your friendship too heavily.” she spoke in earnest. “in the first place, you ought to understand that i cannot accept it, and in the second that, if you could make me accept you as a last resource, it would not be worth your troubling to reach out one of your little fingers to save me.”
“it is not friendship.” he hesitated a little. “the truth is that i have got fond of you. it is not to save you—although i would do anything to help you, of course—but because i[275] realize now that if anything happened to you i don’t know what i should do. i dare not think of it. there is nothing in the world i would not gladly do for you, because you are very dear to me.”
“oh, gunnar, don’t!” she stopped and looked at him almost in fear.
“i know quite well that you are not in love with me, but that need not prevent your marrying me. you say you are tired of everything, and have nothing to live for, so why not try it?” his voice grew more earnest, and he exclaimed: “for i know that one day you too will be fond of me! you could not help it, seeing how fond i am of you.”
“you know that i have always been fond of you,” she said seriously, “but it is not a feeling you would be satisfied with in the long run. a strong and entire devotion is more than i can give.”
“not at all. we can all give that. was i not convinced that i should never experience anything but—little love affairs? in fact, i did not believe anything else existed.” his voice sank. “you are the first woman i love.”
she stood still and silent.
“i have never uttered that word to any woman before—i had a kind of reverence for it, but then i have never loved a woman before. i was always in love with something particular about them—the corners of cesca’s mouth, for instance, when she smiled; her unconscious coquetry. there was always one thing or other that took my fancy and inspired me to invent adventures about them—adventures i wanted to experience. i fell in love with one woman because the first time i saw her she wore a beautiful red silk dress, almost black in the folds, like the darkest of roses. i thought of her always in that dress. and with you that time in viterbo—you were so sweet, so gentle and reserved, and there was a glint in your eyes when the[276] rest of us laughed as if you would have liked to be merry with us, but dared not. that time i was in love with the idea of seeing you gay and smiling.
“but i have never loved another human being till now.”
he turned his face from her, staring at the jet of water rising in the moonlight, and the new sensation in him rose too, inspiring him with new words, which burst in ecstasy from his lips:
“i love you so much, jenny, that everything else is of no account. i am not sorry you don’t love me in return, for i know you will some day; i feel that my love is strong enough to make you return it. i have time to wait; my happiness will be in loving you.
“when you spoke about being trampled upon and throwing yourself under the train, something happened to me. i could not explain what it was. i knew only that i could not listen to you saying such things. i knew i would never allow it to happen—not for my life. and when you spoke of the child, i felt infinitely sad to think that you had suffered so intensely and that i could not do anything for you. and i was sad too because i wanted you to love me. everything you said was echoed in my soul—the boundless love and the bitter longing—and i understood that my love for you was just that. while we were in the trattoria and walking out here it has grown more and more clear to me how much you are to me, how i love you—and it seems to me that it has always been so. all i know and remember of you is part of it. i understand now why i have been so depressed since you came here. it was because i saw how you suffered. you were so quiet and sad the first weeks, and then came those fits of dissipation—and i remember that day on the road to warnemünde, when you were crying against my shoulder—everything that concerns you is part of my love for you.
“i know how it all happened with the other men you have[277] known—the boy’s father too. you have talked and talked with them about all you have been thinking, and there was no response to your words even when you tried to make them realize what you felt, because they could not understand your mind. but i know it—all you have been telling me today and what you said to me that day in warnemünde you could not have told to anybody else. only to me, because i understand—is it not so?”
she bent her head in surprised assent. it was true.
“i know that i alone understand you thoroughly. i know exactly what you are, and i love you as you are. if your mind were full of stains and bleeding wounds, i would love and kiss them until you were clean and well again. my love has no other purpose but to see you become what you always wanted to be and must be to feel happy. if you did ever so foolish a thing, i would only think you were ill or that some strange influence had poisoned your mind. if you deceived me or if i found you lying drunk in the road, you would be my own darling jenny just the same.
“will you not be mine—give yourself to me? will you not come into my arms and let me hold you and make you happy and whole? i don’t know now quite how to set about it, but my love will teach me, and every morning you will wake up less sad—every day will seem a little brighter and warmer than the day before, and your sorrow less great. let us go to viterbo or anywhere you like. give yourself to me, and i will nurse you as if you were a sick child. when you are well again you will have learnt to love me and to know that we two cannot live without each other.
“you are ill; you cannot look after yourself. close your eyes and give me your hands; i will love you and make you well—i know i can do it.”
jenny was leaning against a pillar. she turned her white face to him, smiling sadly:
[278]
“how can you imagine i would do such a great wrong, and sin against god?”
“you mean because you don’t love me? but i tell you it does not matter, because i know my love is such that you will end by returning it, when you have lived wrapped in it for a time.”
he seized her in his arms, covering her face with kisses. she made no resistance, but whispered:
“don’t, gunnar, please.”
he released her reluctantly:
“why may i not?”
“because it is you. i don’t know if i should have minded if it had been anybody else for whom i did not care at all.”
gunnar held her hand and they walked up and down in the moonlight.
“i understand. when you had the little boy you thought your life had some aim and purpose again after all these aimless years, because you loved him and you needed him. when he died you became indifferent to everything and considered yourself superfluous in the world.”
jenny nodded:
“there are a few people i care for enough to be sorry if i knew them in distress and glad if all was well with them. but i myself cannot add either to their sorrow or their joy—it has always been so, and one of the reasons why i was unhappy and filled with longing was just that my life was spent without making anybody happy. my sole wish and yearning was to make another being happy. i have always believed in that as the greatest blessing in life. you spoke of the joy of work—to me it never seemed enough, and it is very selfish, besides, because the greatest joy and satisfaction of it is yours alone; you cannot share it with anybody else. unless you can share your happiness with others, you lose the greatest possible joy. when you are quite young and feel strongly you are selfish perhaps[279] sometimes—i have felt it myself when i have reached a step nearer my goal, but as a rule it is only the abnormal beings who amass riches for any other purpose than spending. a woman’s life is useless to my mind if she is not the joy of somebody else—and i have never been that—i have only caused sorrow. the little happiness i have been able to give was only what any one else could have given just as well; they have loved me only for what they imagined me to be, not for my real self.
“after my baby’s death i began to realize how fortunate it was that there was nobody in the world whom i could cause a really inconsolable grief—nobody to whom i was indispensable.
“and now you tell me all this. you have always been the one person i least of all wanted to drag into my confused life; i have always been more fond of you, in a way, than of any one else i know. i enjoyed our friendship so much, because i thought that love and all it brings in its train could never come between us. you were too good for it, i thought. oh, how i wish it had never changed!”
“to me it seems now that it has never been different,” he said gently. “i love you and you need me. i know i can make you happy again, and when i have done that you will have made me happy.”
jenny shook her head:
“if i had the least bit of faith in myself left, it would be different. i might have listened to you if i had not felt so keenly that i have done with life. you say you love me, but i know that what you think you love in me is destroyed—dead. it is the same old story: you are in love with some quality you dream that i possess—that i have before or might have acquired. but one day you would see me as i really am, and i should only have made you unhappy too.”
“i should never look upon it as unhappiness whatever my[280] fate might be. you may not be aware of it yourself, but i know that in the state you are now it only needs a touch for you to fall—into something that would be madness. but i love you, and i can see all the way that has led you to it, and if you feel i would follow you to try and carry you back in my arms, because i love you in spite of all.”
as they stood by their doors in the dark passage he took her hands: “jenny, rather than be alone, would you not like me to remain with you tonight?”
she looked at him with a curious smile.
“oh, jenny!” he shook his head. “i may come to you, all the same. would you be angry—or sorry?”
“i think i should be sorry—for your sake. no, do not come, gunnar. i will not take your love when i know i could just as well give mine to anybody else.”
he laughed a little, half angrily, half sadly.
“then i ought to do it. if once you were mine you would never belong to anybody else—i know you too well for that—but as you ask me not to, i will wait:” he added, with the same curious little laugh.
