Niels Lyhne. J. P. Jacobsen
that rend my whole being down to its deepest roots, this anguish is nothing to you but an impertinence. You feel nothing but a little cold offence; in your heart you laugh scornfully at the poor tutor and his impossible passion.”
“You do me an injustice, Mr. Bigum,” said Edele, rising, while Mr. Bigum rose too. “I am not laughing. You ask me if there is no hope, and I answer: No, there is no hope. That is surely nothing to laugh at. But there is one thing I want to say to you. From the first moment you began to think of me, you must have known what my answer would be, and you did know it, did you not? You knew it all the time, and yet you have been lashing all your thoughts and desires on toward the goal which you knew you could not reach. I am not offended by your love, Mr. Bigum, but I condemn it. You have done what so many people do: they close their eyes to the realities and stop their ears when life cries ‘No’ to their wishes. They want to forget the deep chasm fate has placed between them and the object of their ardent longing. They want their dream to be fulfilled. But life takes no account of dreams. There isn’t a single obstacle that can be dreamed out of the world, and in the end we lie there crying at the edge of the chasm, which hasn’t changed and is just where it always was. But we have changed, for we have let our dreams goad all our thoughts and spur all our longings to the very highest tension. The chasm is no narrower, and everything in us cries out with longing to reach the other side, but no, always no, never anything else. If we had only kept a watch on ourselves in time! But now it is too late, now we are unhappy.”
She paused almost as if she woke from a trance. Her voice had been quiet, groping, as if she were speaking to herself, but now it hardened into a cold aloofness.
“I cannot help you, Mr. Bigum. You are nothing to me of what you wish to be. If that makes you unhappy, you must be unhappy; if you suffer, you must suffer—there are always some who have to suffer. If you make a human being your God and the ruler of your fate, you must bow to the will of your divinity, but it is never wise to make yourself gods, or to give your soul over to another; for there are gods who will not step down from their pedestals. Be sensible, Mr. Bigum! Your god is so small and so little worth your worship; turn from it and be happy with one of the daughters of the land.”
With a faint little smile, she went in through the summer parlor, while Mr. Bigum looked after her, crestfallen. For another fifteen minutes he walked up and down before the steps. All the words that had been spoken seemed to be still vibrating through the air; she had so lately gone, it seemed that her shadow must still linger there; it seemed that she could not yet be out of reach of his prayers, and everything could not be inexorably ended. But after a while the chambermaid came out and gathered up the engravings, carried in the chair, the portfolios, the rush matting—everything.
Then he could go too.
In the open gable window up above, Niels sat gazing after him. He had heard the whole conversation from beginning to end. His face had a frightened look, and a nervous trembling passed through his body. For the first time he was afraid of life. For the first time his mind grasped the fact that when life has sentenced you to suffer, the sentence is neither a fancy nor a threat, but you are dragged to the rack, and you are tortured, and there is no marvellous rescue at the last moment, no awakening as from a bad dream.
He felt it as a foreboding which struck him with terror.
* * * * *
Edele did not have a good autumn, and the winter drained her strength completely. Spring, when it came, did not find one poor little life-germ that it could warm and coax into growth; it found only a withering, which no gentleness and no warmth could arrest or even retard. But it could at least pour a flood of light over the paling life and caress the ebbing strength with fragrant, balmy air, as the evening crimson follows slowly in the wake of dying day.
The end came in May, on a day flooded with sunshine, one of the days when the lark is never silent, and you can almost see the rye grow. The great cherry-trees outside of her window were white with flowers—nosegays of snow, wreaths of snow, cupolas, arches, garlands, a fairy architecture against the bluest of skies.
She was very weak that day, and withal she felt a strange sense of lightness. She knew what was coming, for that morning she had sent for Bigum and said good-by to him.
Her uncle had come over from Copenhagen, and all that afternoon the handsome, white-haired man sat by her bedside with his hand folded in her hands. He did not speak, but once in a while he would move his hand, and she would press it; she would look up, and he would smile to her. Her brother, too, was in the room, gave her medicine, and helped her in other ways.
She lay very still with closed eyes, while familiar pictures from life over there flitted past her. Sorgenfri with hanging birches, the red church at Lyngby standing on a foundation of graves, and the white country house with the bit of sunken road leading down to the sea, where the paling always was green as if painted by the water,—the images took shape before her, grew clear, melted away, and vanished. And other pictures came. There was Bredgade when the sun went down, and the darkness closed in around the houses. There was the queer Copenhagen you found when you came in from the country in the forenoon. It seemed so weird with its hurry and bustle in the sunlight, with the whitened window-panes and the streets smelling of fruit. There was something unreal about the houses in the strong light; the noise and rattle of wheels could not chase away the silence that seemed to enfold them.... Then came the dim, quiet drawing-room in the autumn evenings, when she was dressed for the theatre, and the others were not down yet—the smell of incense, the wood fire from the stove lighting up the carpet—the rain whipping the windows—the horses stamping at the door—the melancholy cry of the mussel-venders ... and back of all this the theatre awaiting her with light and music and festive glow.
With such pictures the afternoon wore away.
Niels and his mother were in the parlor. Niels knelt by the sofa with his face pressed down against its brown velvet and his hands clasped over his head. He wept and wailed aloud, giving himself up to his grief without any attempt at self-control. Mrs. Lyhne sat beside him. The hymn-book lay on the table in front of her, open at the hymns usually sung at funerals. Now and then she read a few verses, and sometimes she would bend down over her son to speak a word of soothing or chiding, but Niels would not be comforted, and she could not stop his weeping or the wild prayers born of his despair.
Presently Lyhne appeared in the door of the sick-room. He made no sign, but looked at them so solemnly that both rose and followed him in to his sister. He took them by the hand and led them to the bed. Edele looked up and gazed at each one in turn, while her lips motioned for words. Then Lyhne took his wife over to the window and sat down there with her. Niels threw himself on his knees at the foot of the bed.
He wept softly and prayed with clasped hands, eagerly and incessantly, in a low, passionate whisper. He told God that he would not stop hoping. “I won’t let You go, Lord, I won’t let You go before You have said ‘Yes’! You mustn’t take her away from us; for You know how we love her—You mustn’t, You mustn’t! Oh, I can’t say, ‘Thy will be done;’ for Your will is to let her die, but, oh, let her live! I will thank You and obey You. I will do everything I know You want me to do. I’ll be so good and never offend You, if You will only let her live! Do You hear, God? Oh, stop, stop, and make her well before it’s too late! I will, I will, oh, what can I promise You?—Oh, I’ll thank You, never, never, forget You; oh, but hear me! Don’t You see she’s dying, don’t You see she’s dying? Do You hear? Take Your hand away! I can’t lose her, God, I can’t! Let her live, won’t You please, won’t You please? Oh, it’s wicked of You—”
Outside, beyond the window, the white flowers flushed to pink in the light of the setting sun. Arch upon arch, the blossoming sprays built of their gossamer bloom a rose-castle, a vaulted choir of roses, and through this airy dome the azure sky shone with a softened twilight blue, while golden lights and lights of gold flaming to crimson shot like the rays of a nimbus from every garlanded line of the ethereal temple.
White and still, Edele lay there with the old man’s hand between both of hers. Slowly she breathed out her life, breath by breath; fainter and fainter was the rising of her breast; heavier and heavier fell the eyelids.
“My