Niels Lyhne. J. P. Jacobsen
when his light was hidden under the ugly fustian of a Diogenes’ mantle? Oh, for beauty! Take my soul and give me my thirty pieces of silver—Alcibiades’ body, Don Juan’s mantle, and a court chamberlain’s rank!
But, alas, he had none of these graces, and Edele was by no means attracted to his heavy, philosophic nature. His habit of seeing life in barbarously naked abstractions gave him a noisy dogmaticism, an unpleasant positiveness that jarred her like a misplaced drum in a concert of soft music. The strained quality of his mind, which always seemed to knit its muscles and strike an attitude before every little question like a strong man about to play with iron balls, seemed to her ridiculous. He irritated her by his censorious morality, which pounced on every lightly sketched feeling, indiscreetly tearing away its incognito, rudely calling it by name, just as it was about to flit past him in the course of conversation.
Bigum knew very well what an unfavorable impression he made and how hopeless his love was, but he knew it as we know a thing when we hope with all the strength of our soul that our knowledge is false. There is always the miracle left; and though miracles do not happen, they might happen. Who knows? Perhaps our intelligence, our instinct, our senses, in spite of their daylight clearness, are leading us astray. Perhaps the one thing needful is just that unreasoning courage which follows hope’s will-o’-the-wisp as it burns over seething passions pregnant with desire! It is only when we have heard the door of destiny slam shut that we begin to feel the iron-cold talons of certainty digging into our breast, gathering slowly, slowly around our heart, and fastening their clutches upon the fine thread of hope on which our world of happiness hangs: then the thread is severed; then all that it held falls and is shattered; then the shriek of despair sounds through the emptiness.
In doubt, no one despairs.
On a sunny afternoon in September, Edele was sitting on the landing of the half-dozen broad, old-fashioned steps that led down from the summer parlor into the garden. Behind her, the French windows were wide open, flung back against the motley wall-covering of bright red and bright green vines. She leaned her head against a chair piled high with large black portfolios, and held an etching up before her with both hands. Color prints of Byzantine mozaics in blue and gold were scattered on the pale green rush matting that covered the boards of the landing, on the threshold, and on the oak-brown parquet floor of the summer parlor. At the foot of the steps lay a white shade hat; for Edele’s hair was uncovered, with no ornament but a flower of gold filigree in a pattern to match the gold bracelet she wore high on her arm. Her white dress was of semi-transparent stuff with narrow silky stripes; it had an edging of twisted orange and black chenille and tiny rosettes in the same two colors. Light silk mitts covered her hands and reached to the elbow. They were pearl gray like her shoes.
The yellow sunlight was filtered through the drooping branches of an ancient ash. It pierced the cool dimness, forming distinct lines of light, powdering the air with gold dust, and painting the steps, the wall, and the doors with spots of light, spot of sun upon spot of sun, like a perforated shade. Through the tracery of shadow, each color rose to meet the light: white from Edele’s dress, blood-red from crimson lips, amber from yellow-blonde hair, and a hundred other tints round about, blue and gold, oak-brown, glitter of glass, red and green.
Edele dropped the etching and looked up despondently, her eyes expressing the silent plaint she was too weary to give vent to in a sigh. Then she settled down again as if to shut out her surroundings and withdraw within herself.
Just then Mr. Bigum appeared.
Edele looked at him with a drowsy blinking like that of a child who is too sleepy and comfortable to stir, but too curious to shut its eyes.
Mr. Bigum wore his new beaver hat. He was absorbed in his own thoughts, and gesticulated with his tombac watch in his hand, until the thin silver chain threatened to snap. With a sudden, almost vicious movement, he thrust the watch deep down into his pocket, threw back his head impatiently, caught the lapel of his coat in a peevish grasp, and would have gone on with an angry jerk of his whole body, his face darkened by all the hopeless rage that boils in a man when he is running away from his own torturing thoughts, and knows that he runs in vain.
Edele’s hat, lying at the foot of the steps and shining white against the black earth of the walk, stopped him in his flight. He picked it up with both hands, then caught sight of Edele, and as he stood trying to think of something to say, he held it instead of giving it to her. Not an idea could he find in his brain; not a word would be born on his tongue, and he looked straight ahead with a stupid expression of arrested profundity.
“It is a hat, Mr. Bigum,” said Edele carelessly, to break the embarrassed silence.
“Yes,” said the tutor eagerly, delighted to hear her confirm a likeness that had struck him also; but the next moment he blushed at his clumsy answer.
“It was lying here,” he added hurriedly, “here on the ground like this—just like this,” and he bent down to show where it had lain with an inconsequential minuteness born of his confusion. He felt almost happy in his relief at having given some sign of life, however futile. He was still standing with the hat in his hand.
“Do you intend to keep it?” asked Edele.
Bigum had no answer to that.
“I mean will you give it to me?” she explained.
Bigum came a few steps nearer and handed her the hat. “Miss Lyhne,” he said, “you think—you must not think—I beg you to let me speak; that is—I am not saying anything, but be patient with me!—I love you, Miss Lyhne, unutterably, unutterably, beyond all words I love you. Oh, if language held a word that combined the cringing admiration of the slave, the ecstatic smile of the martyr, and the gnawing homesickness of the exile, with that word I could tell you my love. Oh, listen to me, do not thrust me away yet! Do not think that I am insulting you with an insane hope! I know how insignificant I seem in your eyes, how clumsy and repulsive, yes, repulsive. I am not forgetting that I am poor,—you must know it,—so poor that I have to let my mother live in a charitable institution, and I can’t help it, can’t help it. I am so miserably poor. Yes, Miss Lyhne, I am only a poor servant in your brother’s house, and yet there is a world where I am ruler, powerful, proud, rich, with the crown of victory, noble by virtue of the passion that drove Prometheus to steal the fire from the heaven of the gods. There I am brother to all the great in spirit, whom the earth has borne, and who bear the earth. I understand them as none but equals understand one another; no flight that they have flown is too high for the strength of my wings. Do you understand me? Do you believe me? Oh, don’t believe me! It isn’t true, I am nothing but the Kobold figure you see before you. It is all past; for this terrible madness of love has paralyzed my wings, the eyes of my spirit have lost their sight, my heart is dried up, my soul is drained to bloodless poltroonery. Oh, save me from myself, Miss Lyhne, don’t turn away in scorn! Weep over me, weep, it is Rome burning!”
He had fallen to his knees on the steps, wringing his hands. His face was blanched and distorted, his teeth were clinched in agony, his eyes drowned in tears; his whole body shook under the suppressed sobs that were heard only as a gasping for breath.
“Control yourself, Mr. Bigum,” she said in a slightly too compassionate tone. “Control yourself; don’t give way so, be a man! Please get up and go down into the garden a little while and try to pull yourself together.”
“And you can’t love me at all?” groaned Mr. Bigum almost inaudibly. “Oh, it’s terrible! There is not a thing in my soul that I wouldn’t murder and degrade if I could win you thereby. No, no, even if any one offered me madness and I could possess you in my hallucinations, possess you, then I would say: Take my brain, tear down its wonderful structure with rude hands, break all the fine threads that bind my spirit to the resplendent triumphal chariot of the human mind, and let me sink in the mire of the physical, under the wheels of the chariot, and let others follow the shining paths that lead to the light! Do you understand me? Can you comprehend that even if your love came to me robbed of its glory, debased, befouled, as a caricature of love, as a diseased phantom, I would receive it kneeling as if it were the Sacred Host? But the best in me is useless, the worst in me is useless, too. I cry to the sun, but it does not shine; to the statue, but it does