VI.
Suddenly, with surprising vividness, a little incident of my childhood rises up before me. I was ten years old. I had been ill in the Winter and my parents had boarded me out in the country for the Summer holidays; all the love of adventure in me surged up. At the Straw Market a fat, greasy, grinning peasant promised to take me in his cart as far as the little town of Farum, where I was to stay with the schoolmaster. He charged two dalers, and got them. Any sum, of course, was the same to me. I was allowed to drive the brown horses, that is to say, to hold the reins, and I was in high glee. Where Farum was, I did not know and did not care, but it was a new world. Until now I, who was a town child, had seen nothing of the country except my nurse's house and land at Glostrup,--but what lay in front of me was a village, a schoolhouse, a large farm, in short an adventure in grand style.
I had my shirts and blouses and stockings in a portmanteau, and amongst them a magnificent garment, never yet worn, a blue cloth jacket, and a white waistcoat belonging to it, with gold buttons, which my mother had given me permission to wear on Sundays. For days, I always wore blouses, so the jacket implied a great step forward. I was eager to wear it, and regretted profoundly that it was still only Monday.
Half-way there, the peasant pulled up. He explained to me that he could not very well drive me any farther, so must put me down; he was not going to Farum himself at all. But a peat cart was coming along the road yonder, the driver of which was going to Farum, and he transferred me, poor defenceless child as I was, to the other conveyance. He had had my money; I had nothing to give the second man, and sadly I exchanged the quick trot of the brown horses for the walking pace of the jades in the peat-cart.
My first experience of man's perfidy.
At last I was there. On a high, wide hill--high and wide as it seemed to me then--towered the huge schoolhouse, a miniature Christiansborg Castle, with the schoolmaster's apartments on the right and the schoolroom on the left. And the schoolmaster came out smiling, holding a pipe which was a good deal taller than I, held out his hand, and asked me to come in, gave me coffee at once, and expressed the profoundest contempt for the peasant who had charged two rigsdaler for such a trifle, and then left me in the road. I asked at once for pen and paper, and wrote in cipher to a comrade, with whom I had concocted this mysterious means of communication, asking him to tell my parents that I had been most kindly received. I felt a kind of shyness at the schoolmaster seeing what I wrote home from his house. I gave him the sheet, and begged him to fold it up, as I could not do it myself. There were no envelopes in those days. But what was my surprise to hear him, without further ado, read aloud with a smile, from my manufactured cipher: "I have been most kindly received," etc. I had never thought such keen-wittedness possible. And my respect for him and his long pipe rose.
Just then there was a light knock at the door. In walked two girls, one tall and one short, the former of whom positively bewildered me. She was fair, her sister as dark as a negro. They were ten and eight years old respectively, were named Henrietta and Nina K., came from Brazil, where their home was, and were to spend a few years in Denmark; came as a rule every day, but had now arrived specially to inspect the strange boy. After gazing for two minutes at the lovely Henrietta's fair hair and wonderful grey eyes, I disappeared from the room, and five minutes afterwards reappeared again, clothed in the dark-blue jacket and the white waistcoat with gold buttons, which I had been strictly forbidden to wear except on Sundays. And from that time forth, sinner that I was, I wore my Sunday clothes every blessed day,--but with what qualms of conscience!
I can still see lovely fields, rich in corn, along the sides of which we played; we chased beautiful, gaudy butterflies, which we caught in our hats and cruelly stuck on pins, and the little girls threw oats at my new clothes, and if the oats stuck fast it meant something, sweethearts, I believe. Sweethearts--and I!
Then we were invited to the manor, a big, stately house, a veritable castle. There lived an old, and exceedingly handsome, white-haired Chamberlain, called the General, who frequently dined with Frederik VII, and invariably brought us children goodies from dessert, lovely large pieces of barley sugar in papers with gay pictures on the outside of shepherd lovers, and crackers with long paper fringes. His youngest son, who owned a collection of insects and many other fine things, became my sworn friend, which means that I was his, for he did not care in the least about me; but I did not notice that, and I was happy and proud of his friendship and sailed with him and lots of other boys and girls on the pretty Farum lake, and every day was more convinced that I was quite a man. It was a century since I had worn blouses.
Every morning I took all the newspapers to Dr. Dörr, the German tutor at the castle, and every morning I accidentally met Henrietta, and after that we were hardly separated all day. I had no name for the admiration that attached me to her. I knew she was lovely, that was all. We were anxious to read something together, and so read the whole of a translation of Don Quixote, sitting cheek against cheek in the summer-house. Of course, we did not understand one-half of it, and I remember that we tried in vain to get an explanation of the frequently recurring word "doxy"; but we laughed till we cried at what we did understand. And after all, it is this first reading of Don Quixote which has dominated all my subsequent attempts to understand the book.
But Henrietta had ways that I did not understand in the least; she used to amuse herself by little machinations, was inventive and intriguing. One day she demanded that I should play the school children, small, white-haired boys and girls, all of whom we had long learnt to know, a downright trick. I was to write a real love-letter to a nine-year-old little girl named Ingeborg, from an eleven or twelve-year-old boy called Per, and then Henrietta would sew a fragrant little wreath of flowers round it. The letter was completed and delivered. But the only result of it was that next day, as I was walking along the high road with Henrietta, Per separated himself from his companions, called me a dandy from Copenhagen, and asked me if I would fight. There was, of course, no question of drawing back, but I remember very plainly that I was a little aghast, for he was much taller and broader than I, and I had, into the bargain, a very bad cause to defend. But we had hardly exchanged the first tentative blows before I felt overwhelmingly superior. The poor cub! He had not the slightest notion how to fight. From my everyday school life in Copenhagen, I knew hundreds of tricks and feints that he had never learnt, and as soon as I perceived this I flung him into the ditch like a glove. He sprang up again, but, with lofty indifference, I threw him a second time, till his head buzzed. That satisfied me that I had not been shamed before Henrietta, who, for that matter, took my exploit very coolly and did not fling me so much as a word for it. However, she asked me if I would meet her the same evening under the old May-tree. When we met, she had two long straps with her, and at once asked me, somewhat mockingly and dryly, whether I had the courage to let myself be bound. Of course I said I had, whereupon, very carefully and thoroughly, she fastened my hands together with the one strap. Could I move my arms? No. Then, with eager haste, she swung the other strap and let it fall on my back. Again and again.
My first smart jacket was a well-thrashed one. She thoroughly enjoyed exerting her strength. Naturally, my boyish ideas of honour would not permit me to scream or complain; I merely stared at her with the profoundest astonishment. She gave me no explanation, released my hands, we each went our own way, and I avoided her the rest of my stay.
This was my first experience of woman's perfidy.
Still, I did not bear a grudge long, and the evening before I left we met once again, at her request, and then she gave me the first and only kiss, neither of us saying anything but the one word, "Good-bye."
I have never seen her since. I heard that she died twenty years ago in Brazil. But two years after this, when I was feeling my first schoolboy affection for an eleven-year-old girl, she silenced me at a children's ball with the scoffing remark: "Ah! it was you who let Henrietta K. thrash you under the May-tree at Farum." Yes, it was I. So cruel had my fair lady been that she had not even denied herself the pleasure of telling her friends of the ignominious treatment to which she had subjected a comrade who, from pure feeling of honour, had not struck back.
This was my first real experience of feminine nature.