Elsie Lindtner / A sequel to "The Dangerous Age"

by Karin Michaëlis

AN UNSENT LETTER FROM LILI ROTHE TO PROFESSOR ROTHE.

Henry, I had on my mind to write to you and, for the last time, ask you to forgive me, but I know that it is no use. Perhaps your forgiveness could do me no good now. It is too late. I have suffered so much. I cannot bear more. But this letter contains nothing but the truth, and it is the last letter that I shall write.

Henry, I have never denied my love for you. I have never forgotten you, and never deceived you. If I am to die now, because I long for the sleep, which while I live, cannot mercifully be granted to me, you must believe my poor last words.

I don’t know whither I am going, but even if I knew for certain that I should reach the open gates of Paradise, I could not cross the threshold. So long as you had not forgiven me in your heart, eternal peace would not encompass me. And if I knew, he for whose sake I have caused you such great trouble that it casts a shadow behind and dims all that was once radiant and happy, if I knew that he was standing ready to receive me with those words which up till this hour I have never heard him utter, “Welcome, my beloved,” it would be impossible for me to follow him into everlasting bliss. Consciousness of guilt would prevent it.

In the years when I loved you alone, I was happy; when he came into my life and I loved you both, my happiness increased with my love, and I did not feel guilty. I was so unspeakably happy. I loved you, and I loved him. You are a doctor, and when women are ill you can make them well, but for my sickness you had no panacea to prescribe.

And I cannot do what you desire of me; I cannot say that my love for him is dead. Love cannot die, when once it has lived.

Henry, when you took me back, I entreated you to ask me no questions, and you asked none. But your eyes asked and the walls asked, and everything round me asked questions. I do not wish to have any more secrets from you. Yet you never can understand what I am now going to say.

He did not know me when I came to him, and he died without having recognised me. But it made me happy to be with him. When the others were asleep, and it was all quiet, I heard him mention a name. Not my name. He did not love me, you see. Every time he mentioned that other name I felt I was expiating some of my guilt towards you. I sat and listened, the nights were so long, but my name never came. The name of the one he loved, the names of others, but mine never.

One night I fell asleep and dreamed that he called me. I awoke, and he lay dead. And now I shall never find out whether that was only a dream or something more.

I have thought so much over the question whether other women are the same as I am. Were I strong enough I would go about and look till I found one who could tell me truthfully that she had loved two men, loved both with her whole heart and soul. I would then beg her to go to you and explain how that is something one cannot help, cannot fight against, and cannot kill.

My nun has espoused a husband, and I have been to call on the young couple. He has only one eye, is superannuated, and has warts in his ears. He is a hod carrier. When she contemplates him she feels as if heaven were opening before her.

She comes from a good family, and has had a good education; he is ignorant and stupid, but he seems to appreciate her adoration. I had a ticket for “Lohengrin” this evening, but I am not inclined to go.

After all, I can understand it. Once I should have thought it silly, but my ideas have undergone a change. When I reflect on it there is really only one condition that can be called unhappy, and that is loneliness. Loneliness on a desert island, loneliness in a great city, loneliness in married life.... Loneliness.

For this reason all living beings crowd together. The animals seek each other. The faded leaves, as they flutter down from the trees, wed in the hour of their destruction.

She feels that she has been cheated for all the years of her convent life, has loved without an object. She has cast off her shackles, and achieved her liberty. The thought of a joint life with some one, that she may have pined for vaguely in the convent, became, out in the world, the highest thing to aim at. In her excessive modesty she humbly accepted the first thing that offered. Surely there is nothing ridiculous in that.

But I am alone. I am solitary.

⁂ ⁂ ⁂

God in heaven, what have I done? There he lies asleep, as if he were never going to wake. Such a little gnome. But I couldn’t do anything else, and behind all my anxiety and fidgetting I have a feeling that for the first time in my life I have done what is right.

For it was not unpremeditated, or was it? Do I know? A transformation has been going on lately within me. But when did it begin, and where will it lead me? If I only had some one whom I could consult, but there is no one. I have broken all my old ties. I stand quite alone. Even Jeanne.... Jeanne must be told as soon as possible, but, of course, she will think it is nothing except one of my whims in which I indulge to kill time.

When I ask myself deep down in my heart why I did it, there is no answer, and, meanwhile, the boy is lying in my bed. I have slept an hour or two here on this chair without knowing it. The windows are wide open, yet every minute I inhale a horrible smell of spirits ... a little boy of seven! How am I to know whether he is seven, five, or nine?

I must collect myself. This hour may decide the whole course of my life. I have only to hold the telephone receiver to my ear, and directly the house-porter will call in the police. Before noon the boy will be gone, and I shall never see him again.

⁂ ⁂ ⁂

Why should it concern me? It would be sheer folly if I gave way to a sickly sentimentality and wished to keep this small tramp. Small as he is, he seems to be endowed with every vice.

I feel as if I had dreamed it all, and not seen it with my eyes.... And it all comes of my freak of using the subway under the river instead of taking a motor. What induced me to waste time in that fashion? I who, of all others, detest subterranean zigzagging?

Was it a presentment? Did I expect a sensation, and wish to gloat over the sight of roofless night-wanderers, who for five cents travel backwards and forwards by this route all day? One’s way of living and thinking is different in New York from what it is in great European capitals. We don’t follow each other like sheep. We think more for ourselves.

I felt so tired inwardly on the journey, so utterly without an anchor. I tried to fall asleep before we reached the river to escape hearing the ghastly rushing sound in the air behind. The boy had seen me at once. I believe I inspired him with a certain awe. My clothes probably were too smart for him.

He hurled himself past me without calling out rude words, or making grimaces. I could not take my eyes off him. At first I thought it was one of the dwarfs out of the Hippodrome, and I squirmed with disgust. Then I saw that it was a child. A child sick with a fever which his senses could not master. I, like the other passengers, thought him mad, till we grasped what was the matter with him.

He jumped on ladies’ laps, and spat in their faces; he kicked gentlemen’s legs violently with his heels. When the guard caught hold of his wrists and commanded him to be quiet, he bit the man so hard he was obliged to let him go. At the next station he was ejected. But directly the train was in motion again, he swung himself on to the car, and this process was repeated at every station. No one knew how to cope with him; no one knew where he came from, or to whom he belonged. Suddenly he began to sing, what, I couldn’t understand, but from the expression on the faces of the men present, and from his own gestures, I gathered that it was something indecent.

How shall I describe my feelings? Were they prompted by horror, repulsion, or compassion? I must try to analyse them clearly.... I felt as if I had brought this wretched creature into the world, as if I were responsible for him. I experienced a mother’s agony and a mother’s boundless tenderness.

Directly it became plain to me that the child was not speaking in the delirium of fever, but of drunkenness, I had to bite my lips till they bled, so as not to cry out. Then the boy came to me, and threw himself across my lap. There he stayed, nestling his head against me, and went to sleep.

⁂ ⁂ ⁂

Were I to act now sensibly and as common reason demanded, I should send the child back whence he came, though I don’t know in the least where that is.... The child who has awakened the most sacred feeling in my poor, withered heart.... The child who is to blame for my having shed, for the first time in my life, tears of joy.

When I offered to take Jeanne’s child, I had my reasons at my fingers’ ends, but they were not honourable ones. I wanted to start for myself an interest in life. I started from the hypothesis that what filled the lives of so many women might equally well fill mine. I wanted to take Jeanne’s child, in the same way as five years before I had taken her ... as an experiment, a distraction.

But it was not so to-night. This small boy had kissed my hands, and I had blessed him.

I have heard somewhere of a holy man who met once a little child who was tired. He lifted him on to his shoulders and carried him over a river, but on the way the child grew and became heavier and heavier, while the man sank deeper and deeper.... All that, however, doesn’t matter.

I took him home with me. Here you can do what you like. My proceeding excited no remark. A stranger asked if he should fetch me a carriage, and we drove home.

I must, of course, make inquiries about his antecedents. He says nothing himself. He woke up when I struck a light, but he wouldn’t tell me his name even. The people in the train thought he was one of those outcast children without parents who live from hand to mouth by selling newspapers, and stealing from the banana carts, and who pass the night on the river’s bank or in empty wagons.

I haven’t succeeded yet in getting his boots off. Though they have evidently once belonged to a grown-up, they are so tightly laced on his little legs that they can only be moved by cutting. He must have worn them day and night for months.

⁂ ⁂ ⁂

What will be the end of it? I daren’t think, and I daren’t act. I keep saying to myself without ceasing, the same thing, “Suppose he is taken away from me?” and I seem to see into the future, his life ending in crime, his death taking place in prison.

I intend to sacrifice my own life for this child’s ... but is that sufficient? Can that avert his fate?

My beautiful, beautiful boy! He is asleep. I have locked both doors and sit with the key in my pocket. Every quarter of an hour I look in at him; he smiles in his sleep as only innocent children smile. Then suddenly he clenches his little fists and his mouth becomes so distorted and ugly that I have to turn away. What can he be dreaming about?

Help me, help! To whom am I praying? I, who am without faith, and without hope. But I am not without love. No longer without love; for I love this poor, miserable child.

Could I but give him back his innocence!... Has he never been innocent like other children? Was he contaminated from the first by the two creatures who gave him life? Is it in my power to atone for others’ sins against him?

I wonder why he tried to run away to-day? Where did he want to go, and what was in his mind? If I had not got him back, God knows, I could not have faced another day.

⁂ ⁂ ⁂

I sat with him on my lap, and he looked up at me as if he would ask, “What are you going to do with me?”

His childish gaze was so suspicious and hard. I told him that I wanted to be his mother and to live for nothing else but to make him happy. All the time his little hands were feeling about to find my pocket. I pretended not to see, and smiling angelically, he plunged his hand after my purse, and began to fidget with it till it opened. My heart beat so that I could hear it distinctly resound in my ears.

Is it to be wondered at that he steals? He has known what it is to starve. But now I give him everything that heart can desire. I have bought him a little purse of his own, and filled it with money. Yet still his tiny face retains its expression of desperate greed when he sees me take out money. When will this alter?

And he asks me if I have bought him. Or have been given money to keep him. He does not remember that blessed, thousandfold blessed, night when he took my heart by storm, and transformed me into a real human being....

I wanted to test him, so to-day I went without lunch, explaining to him that I had no more money, but he was to eat, I could go without it. He nodded, and without troubling about me at all, ate up his lunch.

⁂ ⁂ ⁂

Kelly. That’s his name. Kelly! or he says it’s his name. He has been with me now for six days, and only to-day he told me what he was called. Well, it is at least a beginning. I am thankful for little.

I dare not hesitate any longer. If I could, I would travel off with him like a thief with his booty, even if somewhere a mother sat and wept for him. No, no! I wouldn’t rob a mother of her child. But I needn’t be afraid. Kelly’s whole bearing tells me that he has been for a long, long time alone in the world. Enquiries will be only a matter of form, and then I can adopt him properly. He will be mine by law.

⁂ ⁂ ⁂

It is quite a matter of indifference to me if people shake their heads at my insane action. How should they know that Kelly alone, only this boy with the vicious little face and criminal glance is the source of all my bliss and riches in this life? But it distresses me when people talk about it in his presence, and I cannot prevent them shaking their heads. Kelly understands what they mean. He seems conscious that his brow is branded with the mark of Cain.

⁂ ⁂ ⁂

To-morrow we are going to the Children’s Court; I have written to Mr. Rander. He is said to be one of the cleverest child-psychologists in America.

He has replied that I need cherish no fears. So long as my love is sufficiently great ... my love.... Yes, my love is great enough to bear the strain.

⁂ ⁂ ⁂

Why had that to happen just to-day, when I was feeling in such good heart? It’s only a trifle, certainly. He may not have thought what he was doing.

It’s a necessity of children’s nature to be destructive. They are cruel without being conscious of it. What, after all, do I care about the stupid cacti? I would have made him a present of all of them. But it was the glance of his! The sly, uncanny glance when I said, “But, Kelly, why have you cut my flowers in pieces?”

⁂ ⁂ ⁂

I am doing it entirely on my own responsibility. I should do it, even if the whole world cried out, “Leave it alone, it will prove your ruin!” I should do it. Even if I could see into the future, and behold my boy a full-fledged criminal sentenced to death.... I consecrate my life to him, my poor, squandered life. But it isn’t poor now. I am rich. I am a mother!

⁂ ⁂ ⁂

Mr. Rander meant well, I daresay, when he said, “Don’t do it. Take any of them, only not him!” And he related what he knew.

As if a single spoken phrase could dissolve the bond my heart has entered into voluntarily.

“Born, double-dyed criminal.” Nevertheless, I will educate myself to be a worthy mother to him.

Dear Magna Wellmann,

“From earth thou comest, to earth thou shalt return....” These words of Scripture occurred to me when I read your letter. That is the eternal circle ... in this case the circle of your family. Your grandfather was a renegade from the calling of his forefathers when he became a townsman. Your father degenerated, and now you have gone back to the land.

Magna, Magna, I admire you. Of course, I am heart and soul for the enterprise. In this manner my money will become a breathing, living entity, doing its own work, and reaping its own reward. Don’t talk about being cautious. I am running no risks. I know what I am about. Your lawyer’s letter informs me in business language that the undertaking is “sound,” besides I am not giving the whole or even half the capital.

I need no assurances that you will carry the thing through. But read before you begin a little book by Flaubert. I don’t mind betting you have never heard of it. It is called, “Bouvard et Pécuchet.” A prospective agriculturist can learn a good deal from it. It’s splendid that Jarl is so keen on farming. But you won’t surely let him put his hand to the plough, and work in the fields from the start, will you? The boy is only seventeen, and I hope, too, that his mother isn’t going to begin at once digging turnips and milking cows. I should not care to set foot in a cow-shed—it’s a thing I have never done. But all the same I shall enjoy having letters yards long about all your first experiments and blunders.

You mustn’t take it too much to heart that Agnete is cool towards you. The poor child has a dash of prudishness in her, inherited from her mother! When she has children of her own she will be different.

Your account of the scandal was rich! Especially do I like that remark of a friend, “She might at least have had the tact to say that it was an adopted child.” I read between the lines that you have not passed through this humiliation without it’s having left scars behind. But, Magna, nothing is in vain. You can afford to pay the cost of your happiness. I am reminded of a little story about you which used to be told in our “set.” It related to the way in which you conquered Professor Wellmann’s heart. You were at a party, and had been so bored you had spoken to no one. There was something to drink in big, tall glasses. Suddenly in an ebullition of superfluous strength you bit the glass with your teeth and bit a piece out of it. Professor Wellmann sat with distended eyes and open mouth, and watched you.

And on his way out of the house he remarked to a not very discreet friend, “She, the girl who bit the glass, shall be my wife!”

The story may or may not be true, but it is characteristic of you all the same.

I can see you in hobnail boots, and a smock, tramping over the fields, superintending the plough and the breeding of cattle.

I have very little to tell about myself. Since I linked my fate to Kelly’s I live in a new world. Every day that goes by I come nearer to myself, but I cannot write about it. It is too sacred a subject. Troubles which were unknown to me before have taken up their continued abode within me, but joys which were equally strange keep watch over me with drawn swords. Magna, I ask you, can the woman who has brought her own child into the world experience greater bliss and greater torment than I, to whom my boy was given by chance?

With a thousand loving remembrances,

Your

Elsie Lindtner.

The White Villa.

Dear Jeanne,

As you will see from this heading, we are now at home again.

We, and at home again!

My home is where Kelly is, and Denmark was never his home. But for his sake, I have uprooted once more. I did not think such a big, big town was good for him. The island here is certainly small enough.

Oh, if you could see how it looks now! I was determined to be the first with Kelly to enter the house, since you and I left it together, how many years ago?

The carpets were in tatters. The window panes were beaten in, either by the wind or vagabonds. Dead leaves and dead flies lay about the floors. My beautiful pieces of furniture were mildewed from damp ... one or two of the chairs had collapsed; the chintz coverings were moth-eaten. My bedroom—my ridiculous bedroom—was the most deplorable of all. It must have been struck by lightning, otherwise I don’t understand how the mirrors got smashed, and the rain and snow lay congealed on my bed.

Kelly laughed, and rushed from room to room, and in the end I laughed, too. Then Kelly got hold of the mad idea that instead of putting up at the inn, we should turn in here the first night. I half think he contemplated a sort of burglarious attempt on the deserted house. I yielded, of course. Never in my life have I seen any one more industrious and handy than this boy when he likes. He ran about pumping water and sweeping floors, and made all straight, God knows how. Tea was prepared! ante-diluvian sugar and a canister of Albert biscuits. He ushered me into the large parlour where my piano, my poor, wretched, beautiful piano, had been standing all these years, the prey of wind and rain, till it hasn’t a sound left in its body from hoarseness—and then he brought in the tea. I won’t go so far as to say that it tasted clean or nice, and the biscuits were musty, but Kelly’s hand had prepared it.

And we slept together in the same bed, in your bed, Jeanne, in yours! It was the only one in which the blankets were dry. I wanted to lie on a sofa with a rug, but Kelly would cuddle up beside me.

Jeanne, I—really I, your fond, old travelling companion, am now once more “at home,” and I lay awake the whole night thinking over my happiness.

Kelly slept in my arm, and my arm, of course, went to sleep, but no other part of me slept ... and Kelly woke with my arm round him.

Then we went to “The Jug,” and put up there for a fortnight till the whole place was made habitable. I have no Jeanne—I do my own hair, and make myself beautiful for my boy. Alack! it is hard work to inspire him with any desire to make himself presentable.

I am thinking of finding a tutor for him. He ought not to be allowed to run wild and devour sensational American novelettes—of which there are none in Denmark—and remain ignorant of all other subjects.

Forgive me, Jeanne, but I have only one thought, and that is Kelly. He fills my life at all points, so that everything else now has to give way to him.

He has a craze for collecting snails and slugs, which he brings into the house and lets crawl about on the white window-sills. I must own it makes a horrible mess, but Kelly may do anything. Only I draw the line at helping him to collect his snails, for, much as I should like to oblige him, it is too disgusting.

Now in exchange for these confidences, tell me all your news. It was indeed a piece of good fortune that Malthe’s design took the prize. And in Paris, too! You will, I suppose, stay there the two years. Or are you still the incorrigible nomads who prefer to travel about with your houses on your backs, with your trunks and perambulator—to settling down quietly in a refined, comfortable home. Don’t work yourself to shreds, Jeanne. Remember that life is long, and that you mustn’t grow old and ugly. I concluded that you are doing everything in your power fairly to spoil your excellent husband. You go to market. You pack the boxes, take the tickets, and accompany your husband to the museums where you make drawings for him, and you look after the children. Jeanne! Jeanne! take thought for your hair, and be careful of your hands.

And don’t forget your happy home-flown friend,

Elsie Lindtner.

Dear Good Magna,

That this notion should have occurred to you, and that you should have the courage to carry it out—. But ought I to offer up this sacrifice to you, and can I relinquish Kelly? The last few nights have been long and sleepless; only when dawn begins to glimmer can I bring my confused thoughts into any order, and then it seems as if I had found a solution which is the right one. I fall asleep, and when I wake up again, everything is as unsettled as ever.

I don’t know my way in or out. Magna, it’s not selfishness which makes me dread letting Kelly out of my hands—the day does not seem far off when I shall be forced to live under another roof from that which shelters him, and that is why I don’t want to die.

My every thought is dedicated to him for whom and with whom I now live, and so I will continue to live without complaint so long as life is granted me. I have looked it all in the face, and have recoiled, shuddering, at the petrifying horror of impossibilities, but I have made my resolve. So long as I inhabit the earth Kelly has a human being who stands in the place of mother to him.

I am not afraid to make any sacrifices. I shrink only from the thought of shirking the responsibility. From the day Kelly came into my life I have made myself answerable for his actions and conduct. Would it not be cowardice and treachery if I now said, “The yoke has become too burdensome, now I will shunt it on to the shoulders of another”?

And yet, Magna, your plan seems to me the one possibility of salvation.

Before I express my hearty thanks, and confide my boy to your care, I must tell you something which I have been compelled to keep to myself till now. Kelly has before been taken care of by others. By force of circumstances. He tried—remember he was only nine years old—to burn me. Of course no one suspected him, otherwise the police would not have been asked to investigate the affair, but then it was brought to light, and he was taken away from me. I could have murdered them for taking him.... It is hard, even now, years after, to talk about it. My one idea was to find a means of getting him back. In America everything possible is done to save children whose feet are set on the downward path to crime. And it is done with a tenderness and love which is marvellous, but I didn’t know it. I thought of what I had read in the papers at home about reformatories for children, about floggings and starvation, and lockings-up in dark cellars. I was ready to help Kelly to escape till the first time that they gave me permission to visit him.

There was no wall round the institution, not even a railing. The main building abutted on the high road, and from there you could see the heaps of smaller red houses resembling a town of villas.

As I came up to the inspector’s dwelling, I was almost run down by a crowd of boys headed by a small negro, who were having a race.

Just as I entered the door, I heard an outcry which made my heart stand still. I thought it was one of the boys being punished. But the inspector showed me from the window what the noise meant. The boys were playing at fire, and at that moment they were letting the hose play on the inspector’s house. My little Kelly—in oilskins and a helmet on his head—held the hose.

And I was told that of the six hundred boys who are in the reformatory many of them on account of gross misconduct, for which but for their tender years, they would have been sentenced to a long period of imprisonment, not a single one had been guilty of doing anything wrong during his detention here. Punishments such as thrashing and being put on bread and water and under arrest, simply do not exist. The boys live in their little villas, twelve in a batch, under the supervision of a pair of foster-parents. The only punishment is that a boy who has been disobedient or lazy gets no cake at five o’clock tea, and is not given permission to sit with the others at the large flower-decked table, but has to sit alone at a small table. And he mayn’t lie before the fire at dusk and listen to fairy-tales.

No mother could have had more delightful letters from her child than I had from Kelly during that year. If I had only been as wise then as I am now, I should have let him stay there as long as the inspector would have kept him.

All the small “prisoners” were taught in succession various industries which they might choose themselves. I saw them baking, ironing, washing, carving, carpentering, binding books, making clothes, and toys, and I saw them planting trees, ploughing, and, Magna, I saw them milking cows. But I was a foolish mother. I didn’t want my boy brought up to a trade; I imagined it was my duty to develop his great gifts in a different direction.

So after a year he was sent back to me. But the inspector warned me that there would be a lapse. In two months it came. Kelly disappeared. I tore about like a maniac hunting for him everywhere. I don’t believe there was a beer-cellar, a common lodging-house, or a thieves’ kitchen that I didn’t search. He was traced through the scar on his forehead, and I recovered him. But how?

The Kelly who for twelve months had been living a model life among six hundred little abandoned chaps, had plotted with a group of homeless playmates to commit a crime so diabolical and remorseless that at first I refused to believe his brain could have hatched it. By the train between Philadelphia and New York travels every day a crowd of millionaires who come to do their business on the Stock Exchange. The other boys were, through all sorts of tricks, to distract the attention of the signalman while Kelly was to switch on the signals so that another train would come into collision with the train from Philadelphia. After the collision they meant to plunder the dead bodies!

It’s true, Magna; now say, no! you dare not take Kelly under your roof to associate with Oluf. I can’t help it, it was my duty to tell you all. My friend, Judge Rander, in Children’s Court, helped me in every way. He procured for me leave to travel with Kelly out of the country on a verbal and written oath that I would never bring him back. That is why I lived two years, summer and winter, in my White Villa with Kelly and a tutor. I was afraid to let him come near the town, and yet the child needed companions. So at last I ventured to migrate to a town, with the result that Kelly in two years was expelled from three schools. Can you still have the courage, Magna, to let the innocent child, offspring of your heart, become Kelly’s playfellow? And if you are so courageous, how shall I be able to exonerate myself if you come to me one day and say, “Kelly has corrupted my boy”?

I put the words into your mouth, Magna.

Say no, while there is still time. You are strong, stronger than any other woman I know, since you have found yourself again through strenuous exertion and labour. But there are powers that the strongest cannot conquer.

Behind my fears about your saying yes, lies the burning wish that you will, but how shall I ever find words to thank you?

Of course, I realise what it will mean if Kelly from now onwards takes up his abode with you, and directly after his confirmation leaves off school. It’s not what Kelly is to be, but how he becomes what he is, that is going to be for me the main question. I fold my hands in my lap, and I confess my powerlessness.

Make Kelly a man. Make Kelly a good man.

You will understand, Magna, that I could not say all this if we stood face to face. While I have been writing Kelly has been several times to the door. He wants to know what I am doing. Every time I feel tempted to lay down my pen to enjoy his society. He asked me the other day, “Mother, do you believe that people’s fate is pre-ordained?” What could he have meant by it? I dared not ask him. He went on his knees, buried his head in my lap, and cried bitterly.

Magna, don’t keep me long in uncertainty. At least promise me that.

Your

Elsie Lindtner.

I have begun to darn Kelly’s stockings. Why did I never think of it before?

He was whitewashing the attic with Magna, and I saw that one of his stockings was without a heel. I actually blushed, I felt so ashamed. The boy, of course, doesn’t trouble about such trifles, and Magna, splendid creature, has enough to do. I don’t believe she would mind a bit going about with holes in her own stockings.

In the country it doesn’t matter so much, but still—

She simply laughed at me when I asked to be allowed to look after his clothes, and I didn’t quite know how to explain why I wanted to do it. But Magna is so clever, and when I was seated comfortably she brought me out a whole bundle. She has done the same for her own children. I am convinced that she would not let any one else darn Oluf’s stockings.

I don’t find it easy. I have quite forgotten the proper way of doing it, which I learnt at school. And I haven’t thought anything about darning stockings since.

But I take no end of trouble, and it is a wonderful feeling to sit out here on the balcony with a whole pile of big, big stockings in front of me—Kelly has positively a gigantic foot. My dear little balcony. It’s to me what an airship is for young, impatient folks. I sit so serenely in my charming, soft seat, between sweet-peas and nasturtiums, and beneath me streams by the current of life with its men and beasts.

⁂ ⁂ ⁂

It amuses me to see how skilfully Richard’s eldest can drive an automobile. If only he can avoid accidents.

Richard himself is aging, but his little wife sits so upright in the car. She wears well.

Since Richard caught sight of me one day by chance he always looks up and bows, and then we all bow, ... I overhear the lanky youth say, “Papa, we are passing your old wife,” and then they laugh.

Yes, I should like to see the home in the old Market Place once more. Probably I should hardly recognise it, or perhaps Richard, from long habit, has kept things much the same.

The eldest son is to succeed to the business, of course, but the second looks to me so dandified. I know this for certain that none of Richard’s sons will ever work out in the fields in clogs and woollen shirts. And their mother will never have the joy of darning stockings with holes in them as big as goose’s eggs. While I sit with a pair of these coarse, huge, manly socks in which my hand is absolutely drowned, I feel to the full extent a mother’s glorious rights. I only wish the holes were double the size, so that the time they take to mend lasted longer.

I have been and bought the pan for cooking oxeyes in, and I have promised Kelly and Oluf that every time they come they shall have oxeyes baked in butter. Magna requires nothing but her horrid nut-suet which has no flavour. She alone can eat it. Dear, dear boys.

Dear Agnete,

It was well that you wrote to me this time, and not to your mother. You are not to trouble her with your unhappy affairs, do you understand? Every time that she gets a letter from you she shuts herself up and cries. Lately I have read quite a number of your letters, and I must confess that I was not pleased with them.

At one time you presumed to sit in judgment on your mother’s life, and now you blame her because yours is a failure. You have no right to do it.

You cannot justly lay your married wretchedness at either your mother’s or your husband’s door. Its origin is to be sought in a train of circumstances. You must know, though you seem to have forgotten it, that it was not your mother who gave in to your desire to go to the French Convent School. It was my doing that you went. I sent you for her peace of mind’s sake.

That you have married a Catholic while you yourself are a Protestant is no one’s fault but your own, as you did not ask anybody’s permission. Unfortunately you have inherited from your mother a hysterical temperament, and from your father a certain matter-of-factness which prevents your enjoying life.

I feel compelled to act like a surgeon who undertakes a necessary operation, in spite of the patient’s objection to scars.

The only time your husband was here on a visit I was able to get a certain impression of his character. You are right in saying that he is “dangerous to women through the animal magnetism which radiates from his person, attracting to him adults and children alike.” And you might add, “through his natural amiability and his kindliness.” He makes no disguise of his vanity, but when you plume yourself on being his only chick because you alone resist him, you are adopting a dangerous line. The man who wishes to be worshipped will not be discouraged by superior airs, especially when these are put on, and you merely feign opposition in order to annoy him, and to conceal how much you are in love.

Owing to the position he holds he is the centre of much attention. He is unable, like most men, to diverge from the high road. Every movement of his is noticed, and may cause him unpleasantness. Thus his position forces him to be cautious. Yet you as his loving wife accuse him of giving to every woman what ought to be your position alone.

Your want of trust puts him on the rack. You pluck his nerves to pieces, and dissect his secret thoughts. You hate him for not being unfaithful to you in deed in that you suspect continually that he is unfaithful to you in thought. You hurt him by telling him constantly that your mutual life is animal and savage, that he lacks soul, and does not comprehend what it is to love with the soul as you do. He retorts by calling you hysterical.

Then a young girl comes to stay in your house. She falls in love with your husband, and he is in love with her. You say, “She made a dead set at him.” Instead of deciding to remove her immediately you watch for proofs of the criminal relations which you suspect. I don’t condemn you for getting hold of your husband’s letters by any means honourable or the reverse, because jealous wives are as irresponsible for their actions as patients with a temperature of a hundred and six. You triumph and cause yourself diabolical torments by revelling in the stolen love-letters. You find in them the “psychological” impulse that you have missed in your husband’s love.

What ought you to do now? Either you must go, as you cannot stay with a man who is in love with another; or you must remain and leave him and his feelings in peace. Nonsense! Instead you thrust a dagger into his heart and turn it in the wound. If he moans, you ask, “Do you still love her?”

You think that love can be wrenched out of a man’s life as easily as a tooth is drawn, root and all.

Agony brings your husband to reason and his senses, he belies what he feels and cries, “I love no one but you!” But even then can you leave him alone? Certainly not. You now insist on his telling everything, betraying and deceiving. You know, as a Catholic, he cannot claim a divorce, and yet you ask if he will marry her in the case of your retiring? Not a word of this offer do you intend seriously. You want to humiliate and torment him.

Next you make a scene with the girl, pervert his words about her, misapply your knowledge, and use such expressions as “Impurity, lies, vulgarity.” But she only answers, “I love him, I cannot do anything else.” And you find this exasperating.

Not once has it occurred to you to set your husband free. He belongs to you, he is in your power. You begin all over again. You haven’t an hour’s rest because you must spy on all his actions. You reproach him for being a Catholic. His baseness is trebled because he is Catholic—as if lies had anything to do with articles of faith.

You are leading a pretty life! Then your husband falls ill. For a long time he has complained of a tumour in his chest. “If it grows it’ll have to be removed for it may be cancer.” This is a trifling matter, or you inwardly triumph over it as “a judgment.”

One morning he leaves the house on business. He takes leave of you tenderly and comes back over and over again to kiss you with emotion. You at once suspect deceit, and heap reproaches on him for intending to do something behind your back. He smiles sadly and says, “If that is so you will soon hear what it is.”

At mid-day you have a “vision,” if what you write is true. You see him lying on the operating table. You telephone to the hospital and learn that the operation has taken place. You hurry there and meet the girl.

To you he has not spoken of the serious ordeal in store for him. But he has sent for her.

This is the last drop that overflows your cup of anguish. You take your sick husband home. You torture him till he says, “Death would be better than this.”

And now you ask me what you ought to do.

It would be much simpler to tell you what you ought not to have done.

But it is too late for that now. All the same, I will, to the best of my poor abilities, give you advice and the benefit of my experience, gathered from contemplation of many wretched and foolish cases in which people tread happiness under foot, and then instantly lament what they have lost.

First and foremost, Agnete, you must look into yourself, and get rid of the lie which like an octopus has caught you in its embrace and smothers the best within you.

The lie about your husband’s deficiency. Your expressions of longing for a harmony of souls is a lie, just as your pretension to love with the soul and not with the senses is a lie.

You are one of the many women who, for reasons which I fail to understand, find no salvation in your relations to a man. What for him was the highest enjoyment, for you was only a torturing excitement. A physical shortcoming in yourself would in him appear a crime in your eyes. Instead of honestly and frankly explaining to him the state of things and the cause of your unhappy condition, you try to seek satisfaction by making scenes.

Don’t you see, dear child, a clever woman never makes scenes. It isn’t politic. A scene that lasts an hour does fourteen days’ detriment to her appearance.

Your question, “What ought I to do now?” really means, “How can I punish him further?”

Rather you should ask, “What can I do to heal his wounded soul?” And this is my answer, Agnete, “You can do it by confessing your own mistakes, and forgetting his.”

You must not ape humility, and let something cry within you, “See what a sacrifice I am making!”

No, you must acknowledge your wrongdoing and not let it out of sight. Take it in both hands, hold it tightly like a costly goblet, and keep your eyes fixed on it. You should remember that it is no credit to you that you have not betrayed him because there has been no necessity; for you know nothing of the mad impulse that can arise between two human creatures, suddenly, like a storm in the thickest part of the wood.

Above all things, recognise that at the time your husband summoned his mistress to his side when he thought he was going to die, he acted from the greatest and most primitive of instincts—the instinct of love.

Tell him that you have been wrong. Show him your love. Give him your best. Not for an hour or a day, but every hour and every day. That is the only way to his heart, and to your own peace of mind. And then the time will come when mutual forgiveness has performed its miracle.

Try to understand what I mean.

Hearty good wishes from your mother’s old friend. If you like you may show your husband this letter.

Elsie Lindtner.

It is certainly a very fine trait in Magna’s character, that she who used to be—well, never mind, I won’t say what—has never breathed the name of her child’s father to any living soul.

The man must have been good and strong, and I am fortunate indeed that my Kelly has found a protector in the little fellow. Oluf doesn’t like Kelly drinking schnaps. So Kelly doesn’t drink schnaps. Oluf wants Kelly’s moustache to grow, so Kelly lets it grow.

“So long as I have Oluf, who takes care of me, you need not be afraid of me.” Those words are close to my heart.

And yet I have still some anxiety. The world is so big, and here things are reduced to such a groove. I notice the effect on Oluf when Kelly tells him about America. Who knows if the day will not come when the pair come to bid me and Magna farewell to go off on adventures?

Oluf was making plans the other day for travelling to Canada, and camping in the great forests far away from civilisation. The boy had fixed it all up. They were to live in the trees, and live by hunting and fishing. Perched up on the highest branches they would spread out their nets, and catch fish out of the great river that rolls through the forest. They would only enter a town twice a year to sell the skins of the beasts they had caught.

Oluf is not too small for such dreams, but Kelly—

I am so unwilling to budge from here till Kelly has taken root in the soil so that he can’t tear himself away. He promises to stay here always, but what is a promise?

Dear Magna,

I must really tell you without delay. Richard has been to see me. When Lucie brought in his card I was dumbfounded. But the moment he entered the room, thank God I got over my feeling of embarrassment. We stood and looked at each other, and were at a loss how to begin the conversation, till it occurred to Richard to say something about Kelly. He knew, of course, the whole story.

It did one good to see the dear fellow, to speak to him again. He said he could only stay a few minutes, and he stayed two hours. In reality, it was his little wife who sent him to see me. She thought it so extraordinary that she should not know me, who had played such an important part for so many years in Richard’s life.

We spoke a great deal of our respective children, and were both equally proud.

Now Richard has promised to visit me next Sunday with his family. You and our boys come, too. In the course of the week I shall return Richard’s call.

Do you know, Magna, I intend to make it quite a festive occasion, and there shall be no feeling in the matter that I am a divorced wife. You will have to lend me a few things as most of my china is over in the villa, and I shall order the food to be sent in from Palace Street. One can be certain of getting it good there, or would you advise going to an hotel? I have got so out of the habit of entertaining that I feel nervous at the thought of it.

Anyhow, you must come, Magna, and take care that Kelly is properly attired. Also see to his hands.

When Richard was gone, I sat a long time and meditated in retrospect on how very nicely he and I had once got on together. The one drawback was that we had no children. On that account I made the sacrifice and left him. I have been royally rewarded for it, through my Kelly.

Richard’s wife plays a good game of bridge, and we have already started a society for the winter. The report of your enormous pluck has reached the old Market Place, for Richard spoke of you in terms of the warmest admiration and esteem. At parting we both positively had tears in our eyes.

May I, without hurting you, give a hint? Please put on your silk dress, Magna. I shall have a new one made, I think, as quickly as possible. You see, this is to be a very important event in my life.

Embrace my boy for me, and remember what I said about his hands.

Elsie.

Dear Jeanne,

It is wrong of me to have been so lazy lately about writing. But I have had so much to do. I have, as a matter of fact, moved house. It happened in a twinkling. This habitation became to let through a death, and mine was taken by a young married couple.

Now I am living on the beach road so far out that I am hardly to be reckoned as belonging to Copenhagen. Can you guess why I have moved? Simply to be nearer the farm, so childish does one become with advancing age. Magna advised me strongly to come out altogether, but I am not inclined to do that. I am always and shall be a child of towns, though in the year that Kelly has been learning to be a farmer I have taken an almost incredible interest in cows, pigs, winter crops, and all the rest of it. My life is so full of richness and light, I have nearly more joy than I can bear, and no troubles at all.

Magna manages our “estate,” as she always calls it to please me, most admirably. And how well she understands the art of setting others to work!

My Kelly and her little Oluf are now, as they always have been, inseparable, and I believe that the blue-eyed little comrade exercises a most beneficent influence on Kelly. Magna told me one day that she had heard Oluf saying—the boy lay in a hay-cock and didn’t know that Magna was on the other side of it taking her after-dinner nap—“I have no father, for my father died ten years before I was born. But if you like to be my father, I shall be quite content to have no other.”

Magna visits me every time that she has anything to do in the town. When the window is open I can hear the crack of her whip above all the rest. And will you believe it, Jeanne, my heart begins to beat at the sound, for it means that the boys are with her, or that Magna is coming to tell me about them. You should just see her sitting rosy and upright in the dog-cart, her head hidden in a hood, with an old sealskin on, all rubbed the wrong way, the same that twenty years ago formed a topic of conversation the whole winter through, because it had cost her poor, struggling husband goodness knows how many thousands.

Magna is now getting on for sixty. But no one would think it. She beams as if the whole world were at her feet. I look at least ten years older, although, God knows, I take a lot of trouble over my hair, and touch up my cheeks a little, as I always did. She makes a fuss about getting out of the cart as if the coachman could not look after the butter and eggs.

Just think, she gets up at four in summer and at six in winter, and works for two. There is no work that she considers is too menial.

Lately she and Kelly painted all the four buildings for Whitsun. And they did it like the wind, so that one could hardly believe one’s own eyes. I sat out on the verandah and watched, and was nearly sick with delight.

Then we had roast ribs and oxeyes for dinner. How Kelly eats! You can have no conception of his appetite. It’s not elegant, but oh, so splendid! And after they have been slaughtering Kelly brings me lambs’ fry, black puddings, and liver sausages. What I once couldn’t tolerate now tastes to me better than the finest Astrakhan caviare.

How I chat on all about my own affairs. But I don’t forget my little fellow-traveller on that account, and her troubles are mine. Still, I am not going to make them such a serious matter as you do, for they are not worth it. You have arrived at a stage when everything looks to you black, and must look so. I should be deeply pained if I had not long ago seen what the cause of it is. You are now just about the age I was when we first met each other; that age which for women is so difficult and dangerous. And the inexplicable happiness is not granted to every woman to come through the time unscathed and triumphant as I did.

I have thought about it, and wondered what the reason could be why I, contrary to every one else, should remain during those years much the same as always; and I have come to the conclusion that it was because I lived so superficially at that time, and without any deep feeling for other people.

But you, little Jeanne, since you linked your fate so fortunately with Malthe’s, have been a sheer compost of love-worship and self-sacrifice. I could have foretold long ago that your transition age would be a hard time. But now try yourself to make it easier. Review the circumstances, sift, and explain them to yourself.

You have something to be thankful for that does not fall to the lot of one woman in ten thousand. Your husband continues to love you as much to-day as when you first became his. Does that not counter-balance everything? Are the little cosmopolitan godless angels of children really so hard to bring up as you think? They have, of course, the artistic temperament, and you attempt to model them into normal human beings. You will never succeed.

And is Malthe’s depression of spirits of any great significance? There is cause for it. He has of late, with justice or injustice, been overlooked, and younger powers have been preferred before him; his name has no longer the cachet it once had, and even his talent seems to have taken a back seat. But, dear Jeanne, you are greatly to blame for this. You have loved your husband so blindly and fondly that you have not set him on a pedestal, but you have built a castle of air far up in the highest clouds, and there you have placed him like a golden ball on the most inaccessible pinnacle, with no one above him and no one near him.... You have fed his ambition and stifled your own natural, critical faculty, instead of standing at his side and being helpful to him in deciding between good and mediocre, and now you complain that you cannot console, and that he spurns you. You are ashamed to say so, but I read between the lines that you are very, very unhappy.... And it is all because you are not well, dear Jeanne, and your despondency is likely to last some years.

But I could hit, I think, on ways and means of putting your cares to flight; if only you will at once make up your mind to bring your little flock northwards, so that I may take them with me to the Villa this summer, and teach the little goose-herds, the Parisian, the Sicilian, and the Smyrna child, indifferent Danish, while you and your Malthe close the house, store your furniture, and trot round the globe.

Don’t let the thought of money stand in your way. Tell Joergen from me that he may with an easy hand use the money which he would set aside as a dowry for his daughters.

He must be ashamed of himself if he has not that opinion about his own flesh and blood, that it will be a pure joy to any one to take over the girls, even if they come without a rag to their backs or clothed in flour sacks.

Besides, I have made my will, and, dear Jeanne, if I once played la banque at Monte Carlo, I am not likely to do it again.

What a glorious summer it will be over there in the White Villa with your chicks. And we’ll borrow Magna’s Oluf and my Kelly for a week, too. What does my old travelling companion say to this?

Much love to you and to your husband, and the whole small flock, from

Yours always,

Elsie Lindtner.

Poor Jeanne and poor Joergen.... So it fares worse with you than I thought.

I have the greatest desire to travel over to them and mediate, but in these days my heart is too touchy and my neuralgia a consideration. I ought not by rights to sit out on the balcony in the cool evening air, but I never could be careful.

But it shall not happen; it would be too foolish and irresponsible a step—people don’t separate in a hurry like that without a ghost of a real reason. All very well if Malthe had another string to his bow, or if Jeanne was in love with another man, but, good Lord! one of them couldn’t live without the other, and yet she talks of having “weighed” the matter, and thoroughly thought it out. I am so angry my hands tremble.

Jeanne must really collect herself, and understand that all this is nothing but a transition. When I think of it, I can recall no case among the many I have known—except, of course, my own—of a single woman who has managed to get through these years without a slight rumpus of some kind. Afterwards they have taken endless trouble to patch up the wounds they have inflicted. Now, Jeanne has been more than unreasonable in this respect. There isn’t a man in the world who can stand such an everlasting adoration.

It was certainly brutal of him to say, “Mind yourself, your house, and your children, but don’t meddle with my work.”

But he meant nothing more by it than a child in a temper does when it vents its anger in trampling on a favourite toy. Yet the words rankled in Jeanne as a reproach—a reproach for what?

He has lost faith in his talent. Therefore he is irritable and dejected, and Jeanne, who all these years has had enough to do in bringing children into the world, and caring for them and him, now stands suddenly still, looks round and behind her, and feels disillusioned. Now is the time when she wants the tenderest words he has ever lavished on her, but he, with his head full of building plans, sees no sense or object in two people talking of love—two people who have proved their love with their whole life.

One of them ought to fall sick unto death ... so that the other should forget his small grievances.

Well, we shall see. If Jeanne listens to my advice, and lets the children come up here, all will be well.... A little air and freedom is what they need; otherwise I shall have to sacrifice myself and for the second time knock about the world with my little travelling companion.

So I have been in my old home once more! Weeks will have to go by before I get over the re-visiting of it. Every trace of me had been removed—with a scrupulous care and thoroughness as if every piece of furniture, every hanging and picture had been dangerously infected. Doors had been obliterated, and new ones cut in walls which used to be doorless. Not even the peaceful white fireplaces were there any longer, but instead gilded radiators. Had I never inhabited the rooms they could not have seemed more strange. I looked in vain for Richard’s oak bookcase, and the panels from his grandmother’s country place.

I had to see everything. My namesake—she who bears the name by right, not courtesy—led me from one room to another. It was as if she asked me incessantly, “Isn’t there anything that reminds you of your reign?” No, nothing, not the very least thing.

And then when we sat round the table at which Richard and I used to sit alone with the servants waiting behind our chairs, all the vacant places were filled with children whose appearance in the world was one of the conditions of my departure. Wonderful, wonderful! and a little sad.

I noticed how Richard exerted himself that I should feel at ease. But he, too, I think, was moved by the oddness of the situation.

She calls me Madame Elsie, and I call her Madame Beathe.

Involuntarily I glanced round for the big portrait Kröyer in his day painted of me, the portrait which Richard simply idolised. He saw what I was looking for, and cast down his eyes. I felt inclined to say, “Dearest friend, don’t let us be sentimental. What was once is no longer. But the picture was a true work of art, and for that reason you should have let it hang where it was.”

One thinks such things, but doesn’t say them.

I was shown, too, the daughters’ bedroom upstairs, and there—there hung my picture among photographs of actresses and school friends. Finally it will land in the attic unless it occurs to some one to make money out of it.

Why is it I cannot get rid of a feeling of bitterness and humiliation? They were all very kind and considerate. But when Madame Beathe joking suggested a match between her Annelisa and my Kelly, I felt near to crying. Annelisa is a thoroughly nice girl, it is true. But I cannot endure the thought of Kelly being looked down on, because of his country manners. And she does look down on him.

The little mistress has one fault. She is too immaculately tidy. I noticed that all the carpets had dusting sheets over them, and naturally supposed their removal had been forgotten, till I saw that every single article on her dressing-table was covered in the middle of the day with gauze, and I heard her scolding one of the maids for not washing her hands before beginning to lay the cloth after touching some books. Richard, I am sure, finds it trying.

When he smokes a cigar she sits on pins and needles for fear he shall scatter the ash about. And God knows that for a man Richard is tidy enough. She discovered a mark on the white window-ledge, only a raindrop, I believe, but got up twenty times at least to scrub, brush, and breathe on the spot.

It gives me food for thought. It is not for me to judge what she does and how she acts. But I can’t get over it. I feel bound to criticise her. And somehow the idea will bother me that this is my home she is fussing about in, and not the other way about.

Annelisa kissed me at parting, and asked if she might soon come to see me. But she shall not come when Kelly is at home. That is certain.

And now they have invited me to a grand dinner-party.

⁂ ⁂ ⁂

Kelly must have a tail-coat, there is no question of that.

⁂ ⁂ ⁂

No, Kelly shall not have a dress suit. Kelly won’t come with me to the dinner-party at Richard’s. I am going alone.

⁂ ⁂ ⁂

Pah! I am positively excited! It was a grand occasion. And it did me good to hear pretty speeches made about my appearance. The orchids certainly did go well with my mauve silk. They couldn’t have come from anywhere but Paris, of course.

Annelisa and I became great friends. She took me up to her room and confided in me that she and her mother don’t get on.

You were afraid to move almost for fear of being told you were making things in a mess. And the child betrayed, by the way, the little domestic secret that her mother now had a bedroom to herself, because her father was so untidy in shaving. When no one was looking her mother went about with a duster and wiped away the marks left by the soles of your boots. Wasn’t it too awful? But it didn’t seem so dreadful to me, for all at once I saw plainly what it meant, and I consoled the child by telling her that in a year or two the scouring demon would be cleaned away.

Richard seems quite unconcerned. He doesn’t dream of complaining. But if he has any memory, it must occur to him in looking back, how in the years that I was passing through the phase, everything inwardly and outwardly went on the same as usual.

Richard plays a brilliant game of bridge. But I must say I was utterly unprepared for Professor Rothe making the third. He behaved as if nothing whatever had passed between us. And Lili’s name was not mentioned.

Richard said when I rose to go, “You have been the Queen of the Feast!” God knows I blushed.

Maybe that in his secret heart he recognises the great sacrifice I made for him. It was, undoubtedly, no easy matter to leave him and the beautiful house. But my exemplary conscience was sufficient reward, even if I had not afterwards received the guerdon of Kelly.

⁂ ⁂ ⁂

I believe I shall succeed in having a chat with Madame Beathe about her tic doloreux. If one broaches the subject tactfully, it’s possible to achieve a great deal; and it is only a matter of getting her to see herself that her malady is an appendage of her years.

⁂ ⁂ ⁂

What holes Kelly wears his stockings into, and how black he makes his pocket-handkerchiefs! I do believe the boy uses them to wash the cart-wheels.

⁂ ⁂ ⁂

Kelly said yesterday, “And if you hadn’t adopted me, I should have been in the gutter all my life.” How he looks at me!

⁂ ⁂ ⁂

I suppose I had better have left it alone. I was told that for others such a period of incapability might exist, but not for her. She knew the duties of a proper housewife, and did not attend to a fifth part of things and leave the rest in dirt and disorder.

It was a little too much that I should not only come and interfere in her housekeeping, but ascribe to her a fictitious illness that only existed in my imagination.... And then followed a long story which to listen to was enough to make one laugh and weep together. Goodness! she had actually been jealous of my former régime, and had no peace till she had turned the whole house topsy-turvy. She didn’t intend that I should know this. But the storm burst when she thought to-day I had been taking my revenge. Her one object in life was to live for her husband, her home, and her children, and she had no notions about posing as a beauty, and be painted by famous artists. And so on....

She was so beside herself finally, that I was obliged to cave in, and say that I had made a mistake, she was not at the dangerous age, and her scouring mania was a perfectly natural instinct, and it was a pity that all housewives did not follow her example.

And then we were good friends again, and she told me that she was very glad I was really quite old.

Any woman so old and harmless, of course didn’t count.

No, I shall not burn my fingers again. It is most curious how forgetful one becomes with the flight of years.

But forgetful is not exactly the right word. It is much more a sort of half-unconscious perversion of actual facts. The same kind of thing as parents making out to their children and almost believing it themselves, that when they were children they were absolute angels.

Magna, for instance, is capable of self-delusion and lying with regard to the miseries of her dangerous age. Magna, usually the soul of truthfulness, who never tries to make herself out better than she is, apparently believes that she got over those difficult years easily and calmly. Good God!

For once we nearly grew angry with one another. I maintained that it was nothing to be ashamed of, but rather an honour, that she had afterwards matured into the magnificent, vigorous creature she now is.

But she wouldn’t hear of it. The only thing she would admit was Oluf, and she only did that because he is flesh and blood.

We both became vehement, and in the end Magna went the length of asserting in her excitement that I had been far more affected by the critical years than she and Lili Rothe put together!

It was useless to protest against such a ludicrous mis-statement of facts. But we very soon made it up again, and played our game of Friday bridge. Unfortunately Kelly had not come in with Magna.

He and Oluf had to sit up all night with a sick cow. It would have sufficed if one of them had done it, but where Kelly is there Oluf will be also.

God bless Magna for her way of chatting about the two boys. I devour the words as they fall from her lips. It is so splendid to hear her. Magna thinks it will be a good thing for Kelly if he marries in a year or two ... it seems almost as if she had fixed on some one already. What if it should be to the new dairy-maid? Well, I should not mind, so long as it was for my boy’s happiness. In that event we must think of taking a farm for Kelly, for Kelly and Oluf.

⁂ ⁂ ⁂

It would interest me to prove to Magna who was right. If I could bring myself to reading through once more what I wrote down in those days ... yes, I will to-morrow.

⁂ ⁂ ⁂

I am ashamed, oh, how ashamed I am! It is not fancy or forgery. I wrote every word of it in circumstances which bear witness to the honesty of the writer. I can never look either Magna or Jeanne in the face again ... or in my boy’s.

Not I who have a thousand times dreamed and wished with all my heart that I had brought him into the world! I can only hang my head now and be thankful that he never had such a person for his mother.

I, I, who strutted about like a peacock, proud of my own perfections; I, who pointed the finger of scorn at others; I, who presumed with the rights of a judge to condemn or pardon others, inwardly jubilating triumphantly, “Thank God I am not as other men are.”

That can never be erased, never made good.

Now that I have reached the evening of my days, and my one occupation is to sit and look out of the window at the people who pass, and dream happy dreams for my boy, I commit no thought or deed that needs the veil of oblivion.

But then, when I was in my prime ... when I might have applied my gifts for usefulness and pleasure—I was such a....

The memory of it can never be wiped out. It can never be made good.

And I had thought that Kelly was to read it all after my death, so that he might learn to know what I really was; learn to despise me as I lay in my grave.... I have had the fire lit though it is summer. I intend to destroy every line. Every line!

But will that prevent Kelly beholding me in all my pitiableness? Am I such a coward? Such a coward?... No, Kelly shall read it, every scrap when I am dead.

Then he shall see what a deplorable, wretched creature I was till love entered my life, when he did. Then he shall know the great miracle which love wrought.

Kelly has a claim to me in bad as well as good....

I feel to-day so ineffably tired. It seems as if this day were to be my last. The day of judgment, when I am to stand face to face with myself.

But the day of judgment is to be followed by regeneration. Kelly is to be my regeneration. Not for myself do I pray to be granted a year, an hour; I pray for Kelly’s sake alone, that our meeting that night may not have been in vain. This prayer throbs from my lips into Eternity.

Will it be heard?

⁂ ⁂ ⁂

There are bells chiming for vespers. Now Kelly is coming home from work, so tall, strong, and healthy. They are busy with the spring ploughing, and to-morrow will be Sunday. Then I shall see him, have him to myself....

Kelly, Kelly ... why aren’t you here at this hour? Kelly, I want to see you, and to thank you.

Be good ... be happy....

THE DANGEROUS AGE

BY

Karin Michaëlis

Cloth 12mo $1.20 net Postage 12 cents

“One can hardly fail to be heartily in accord with Marcel Prevost in regard to the literary value of the story, the artistic insight, the skill, and the peculiarly feminine flavor that it displays. As a piece of fiction of unique form and substance, written with unusual skill and artistic feeling, the book is worth reading.”—New York Times

“The book will have a powerful appeal for a great many women.”—New York Herald

“An admirable piece of workmanship, both subtle and sincere.... Fine literary taste and an artistic reticence are characteristics of this Danish woman’s method.”—New York Sun

“An extraordinary document, and reveals the feminine soul of all time.”—Boston Evening Herald

“It is not a record of deeds, but of thoughts; as such it will attract many who think, and who have had experience with life.”—Cincinnati Times-Star

“The author’s great success came with ‘The Dangerous Age,’ in which she bares the very soul of a woman with the relentless sternness of the surgeon and the power of expression of the literary artist.”—Philadelphia Public Ledger

“The book is sure to appeal to women and those interested in the study of feminism.”—Detroit News

“The book is admirably written, never extreme, always chaste in language, but fascinatingly leaving much to the imagination. Will interest all readers.”—Pittsburg Dispatch

JOHN LANE CO., NEW YORK

AN UNOFFICIAL HONEYMAN

BY

Dolf Wyllarde

Author of “The Rat Trap,” “The Riding Master,” etc.

Cloth 12mo $1.30 net Postage 12 cents

“A strong story in more senses than literary, and well worth the reading.”—New York Times

“A distinct achievement in the realm of fiction, and should add to the laurels the writer has already won. The theme is an old one—a man and a woman cast upon an uninhabited island—but the handling of it is new and in Miss Wyllarde’s best style. The descriptions are vivid and realistic.... The story is told with unusual vigor. It is human, simple, convincing and absorbing.”—Boston Herald

“As interesting as the first sea story ever written; a fresh, vividly-told tale.”—Baltimore Evening News

“A highly entertaining story for the lover of adventure, a sort of modernized Robinson Crusoe, with a heroine to take the place of Goodman Friday.”—Chicago Evening Post

“Brilliant writing and realistic psychology.”—New York Sun

“The book is more than an entertaining story.”—Boston Globe

“Miss Wyllarde invests this tale with a keenly attractive quality.”—Washington Evening Star

“Miss Wyllarde has ability above the average, and the gift of characterization to a marked degree.”—Providence Journal

“There is a fascination in reading the book that comes to one but rarely in any other contingent circumstance that is brought up in the present day pages of romance.”—Cincinnati Press Leader

JOHN LANE CO., NEW YORK

THE UNKNOWN WOMAN

BY

Anne Warwick

Author of “Compensation”

Cloth 12mo $1.30 net Postage 12 cents

Frontispiece and Jacket Illustration by Will Grefé

“From start to finish an interesting story. It is entertaining because the incidents keep the reader in some suspense, and—even more—because of the author’s undoubted mastery in reproducing a certain modern atmosphere.”—New York Times

“An exceptionally good piece of work, planned on a large scale and executed with an able, firm hand. A tale of one of the most interesting phases of the life of contemporary New York—of the line where art and intellect and wealth meet.”—New York Tribune

“There are clever and original things here; the book is well written.”—New York Sun

“Holds the interest very well.”—New York Evening Globe

“Brilliant and charming bits of life.”—Washington Evening Star

“Its conversational parts are lively and entertaining and its descriptions interesting.”—Buffalo Commercial

“A strong, vital story of the artistic and business life of New York.”—Brooklyn Eagle

“The person who likes dialogue will find the book fascinating. The author has a genuinely sincere purpose in her method of depicting life. A handsome frontispiece in color by Will Grefé enhances the appearance of the book.”—Cincinnati Times-Star

“There is a Bohemian atmosphere about the story, which is laid in Rome and New York, that is most appealing, and it is so dramatic and interesting in treatment and theme, and the plot itself is so absorbing, that ‘The Unknown Woman’ is quite one of the most remarkable books of the year.”—Salt Lake City Herald

JOHN LANE CO., NEW YORK

WINGS OF DESIRE

BY

M. P. Willcocks

Author of “A Man of Genius,” “The Way Up,” etc.

Cloth 12mo $1.30 net Postage 12 cents

“So far as it deals with the problems of the modern woman, or rather, with the modern woman’s new way of facing a problem that is as old as life—that of love—the book is curiously revelatory.”—New York Tribune

“The story of the woman who forces herself on the weakling to save him from himself is good work.”—New York Sun

“The story is so remarkable for its analytical power, its minute observation, its sense of background, its delicate style as literature, that it arrests and holds, and calls the reader back again and again.”—Boston Evening Transcript

“The right of woman to her own individuality is the book’s chief inspiration. It is for serious minds, and to such provides much food for thought.”—Springfield Republican

“The author handles her characters as might a true mother her children—knowing, yet not specially noting, the faults and virtues of all. The style is clear and terse to incisiveness, and almost every page has its sage or witty saying. It isn’t an easy story to lay aside unfinished.”—Chicago Record Herald

“Much of beauty and truth, with occasional instances of vivid strength.”—Chicago Evening Post

“There is in all Miss Willcocks’ stories a certain quality that makes for the heights. She has a precious vocabulary. The realism that distinguishes her never for a moment extinguishes her grace of style or charm. She is essentially an artist who offends neither by useless detail nor disappoints by leaving too much to the reader’s imagination. Always she handles her wisdom and wit perfectly, while she presents her stories powerfully. This is a book to read and keep.”—Philadelphia Record

“Her technique is good, her details are exceedingly well handled, and her study of types is most delightful.”—Louisville Post

JOHN LANE CO., NEW YORK

HECTOR GRAEME

BY

Evelyn Brentwood

Cloth 12mo $1.25 net Postage 12 cents

“A tale which carries conviction with it. The story is well told and the conception of the central character is extremely interesting.”—New York Times

“A remarkable book. The study of that virile character, Hector Graeme, is exceedingly powerful. The gripping power of the novel is undeniable and its psychology sure-based.”—Boston Evening Transcript

“One of the most convincing novels of military life ever written.”—Rochester Post Express

“One of the strongest pieces of fiction to reach this desk for many a month. It is a character study of the sort that may be honestly described as unusual.”—Cleveland Plain Dealer

SEKHET

BY

Irene Miller

Cloth 12mo $1.25 net Postage 12 cents

“A novel of genuine dramatic power. Its pages are marked by a strong, cumulative interest. It is a long while since a novel of greater dramatic force has claimed our attention.”—New York Herald

“To those aweary of novels that are not novel, and stories that lack blood and bone and sinew, ‘Sekhet’ will seem as manna to hungry palates. It is as human a document as one might find. Its characters live today, and love and sin and die, just as surely as the author relates. A better sermon than is often preached, a better novel than is often written, describes the book exactly.”—Philadelphia Record

“A powerfully written tale with marvellous descriptive bits and very strong character drawing—a story which grips the emotions from the start.”—Nashville American

JOHN LANE CO., NEW YORK

EARTH

BY

Muriel Hine

Cloth 12mo $1.25 net Postage 12 cents

“A readable story.”—Boston Evening Transcript

“The story is well told and is without an uninteresting paragraph in all its pages.”—Boston Globe

“The story is pleasantly told.”—Washington Evening Star

“The tale is well written and has a good plot and the character delineation is well done.”—San Francisco Call

HALF IN EARNEST

BY

Muriel Hine

Cloth 12mo $1.25 net Postage 12 cents

“The story compels interest from first to last.”—New York Times

“The real interest of the book—and it is a very real interest—lies in the conflict of character and will between the two protagonists.”—New York Evening Post

“A well built, well written tale.”—Washington Evening Star

“Holds the interest, being well constructed and smoothly told.”—Washington Herald

JOHN LANE CO., NEW YORK

THE STORY OF A PLOUGHBOY

BY

James Bryce

With an Introduction by Edwin Markham

Cloth 12mo $1.25 net Postage 12 cents

“A big story, bearing the blood prints of reality.”—Edwin Markham

“Whoever reads this story will get so keen a sense of actuality, will feel so strongly the grip of a living, human hand through all its pages that he can hardly help rejoicing, as for a friend, that the lad lives true to his vision and the man to his final glimpse of the solidarity of mankind.”—New York Times

“This ‘Story of a Ploughboy’ ought to rouse people to the degrading effects on men of unremitting, unregulated, unsweetened, unenlightened toil, and also to the fact that it is the ploughboys of the world who make the fortunes of the rich. It is a most unusual story and makes a good impression.”—New York Evening Globe

“Three of the greatest merits that any book can have cannot be denied to this story: it is a book of good faith; it is a book of vital actuality, and it is a book for men.”—New York Herald

“The pictures of life and labor are admirably well done, and if the book does preach socialism, it preaches it logically and convincingly.”—James L. Ford in New York Herald

“To read this story that quivers with the pathos and passion of life is to get a keener and kindlier vision of our mortal existence.”—Buffalo Commercial

“Those who are interested in stories with a sociological trend will be charmed with this history, minute and graphic, of a ploughboy.”—Buffalo Express

“A record of a young man’s life—one of the most popular themes of today. The story has pathos, sincerity of intention, and all the multiplied details of realism that make happy the heart of the reader on Socialistic problems.”—Baltimore Evening News

JOHN LANE CO., NEW YORK

AWAKENING

BY

Maud Diver

Author of “Candles in the Wind,” “Captain Desmond, V.C.” and “The Great Amulet”

Cloth 12mo $1.30 net Postage 12 cents

“A story of very human interest, a careful study well thought out in all its possibilities.”—Boston Evening Transcript

“A most delightful and enjoyable story.”—Boston Times

“This is a story told with a good deal of poesy and power, a story disclosing and suggesting much of the inner life of two great civilizations.”—New York American

“Apart from its romantic interest the book has good literary style.”—New York Herald

“Mrs. Diver’s sympathetic appreciation of the Indian point of view is remarkable and could only come from long experience.”—Providence Journal

“Even the most enthusiastic admirer of Maud Diver’s previous works will not hesitate to say that ‘Awakening’ is the greatest book she has yet given us.”—Cleveland Town Topics

“The author is a word painter and her story gives her plenty of opportunity to show her talent. Many of the situations are exquisitely tendered and are brought out with a delicacy of touch that is worthy of a poet.”—Albany Argus

“Like the other works by the same author, ‘Awakening’ is marked by excellent diction and delicate touch of descriptive powers.”—Chicago Journal

“The story is engrossing.”—Detroit Free Press

JOHN LANE CO., NEW YORK

THE BEACON

BY

Eden Phillpotts

Author of “The Thief of Virtue,” “Demeter’s Daughter,” etc.

Cloth 12mo $1.30 net Postage 12 cents

“One is lost in the beauty of imagination of the word paintings of Dartmoor, and absorbed by the thoughtful study of human nature.”—The Outlook

“The book has the usual excellences of clearness and picturesqueness.”—The Nation

“We seldom see such strong buffets of wit in present day stories. The book has greatly pleased us.”—New York Sun

“The dramatic power of plot and characters of the tale are undeniable. Mr. Phillpotts remains an admirable artist in the maturity of his powers.”—New York Tribune

“The tale in its mingled tragedy and comedy is admirable and holds the attention. The people are alive and interesting. This book ranks high.”—New York Herald

“No one who has once begun to read ‘The Beacon’ will fail to read eagerly to the end.”—New York Evening Mail

“As a prose poem of great beauty, those parts that sing the beauty of Cosdon will delight the reader.”—Chicago Evening Post

“A problem worked out in a way that must fascinate any thoughtful reader.”—Chicago Record Herald

“There is a flavor of a whole portion of humanity in Mr. Phillpotts’ men of the soil that makes his novels much more than passing fiction. There is also the aroma, the color, the austerity of the moors that creates an atmosphere long remembered. Both will be found at their best in ‘The Beacon.’”—Boston Herald

JOHN LANE CO., NEW YORK

MANALIVE

BY

Gilbert K. Chesterton

Author of “The Innocence of Father Brown,” “Heretics,” “Orthodoxy,” etc.

Cloth 12mo $1.30 net Postage 12 cents

Frontispiece and Jacket Illustration by Will Foster

“Mr. Chesterton has undertaken in this quaint narrative to make burlesque the vehicle of a sermon and a philosophy. It is all a part of the author’s war upon artificial attitudes which enclose the living men like a shell and make for human purposes a dead man of him. He speaks here in a parable—a parable of his own kind, having about it a broad waggishness like that of Mr. Punch and a distinct flavor of that sort of low comedy which one finds in Dickens and Shakespeare. You are likely to find, before you are done with the parable, that there has been forced upon your attention a possible view of the life worth living. ‘Manalive’ is a ‘Peterpantheistic’ novel full of Chestertonisms.”—New York Times

“One of the oddest books Mr. Chesterton has yet given us.”—New York Evening Globe

“The fun of the book (and there is plenty of it) comes quite as much from the extraordinary and improbable characters as from the situations. Epigrams, witticisms, odd fancies, queer conceits, singular whimsies, follow after one another in quick succession.”—Brooklyn Eagle

“One of the most humorous tales of modern fiction, combined with a very tender and appealing love story.”—Cleveland Plain Dealer

“The book is certain to have a wide circulation, not only because of the name of the author attached to it, but because of its own intrinsic worth.”—Buffalo Commercial

“There can be no doubt as to the iridescent brilliance of the book. Page after page—full of caustic satire, humorous sally and profound epigram—fairly bristles with merriment. The book is a compact mass of scintillating wit.”—Philadelphia Public Ledger

JOHN LANE CO., NEW YORK

THE INNOCENCE OF FATHER BROWN

BY

Gilbert K. Chesterton

Author of “Manalive,” “Orthodoxy,” “Heretics,” etc.

Cloth 12mo $1.30 net Postage 12 cents

Illustrations by Will Foster

“Mr. Chesterton writes extremely good detective stories—detective stories the more fascinating because if there is about them a hint of irony, there is also more than a hint of poetry and a shadow—or, if you will, a glow—of the mystic and the supernatural.”—New York Times

“The stories are entertaining; the mysteries and their solutions are ingenius and interesting.”—New York Sun

“The stories are vastly entertaining, and excellent specimens of literary craftsmanship at the same time.”—The Outlook

“Never were philosophy, ethics and religion preached in a more unusual manner.”—Chicago Tribune

“In their own Chestertonic realm, the stories are personal and convincing; full, too, of the charm of landscape. The author arranges his scenes and marshals his characters with an artistic eye worthy of a Poe.”—Chicago Evening Post

“The stories have a charming variety, and interest in them is awakened more insidiously than in the average story dealing with the detection of crime.”—Chicago Record Herald

“Throughout these meteoric adventures there is, of course, besides Father Brown a lot of Mr. Chesterton himself, scintillating along the way, to the fascination and bedazzlement of the reader.”—Washington Evening Star

“The stories are of the dashing and brilliant kind that Stevenson invented—exciting tales told in an artistic manner.”—Albany Argus

JOHN LANE CO., NEW YORK

THE GLORY OF CLEMENTINA

BY

William J. Locke

Author of “The Belovèd Vagabond,” “Simon the Jester,” etc.

Cloth 12mo $1.30 net Postage 12 cents

Illustrations by Arthur I. Keller

“Mr. Locke has succeeded in uniting with the firm carefulness of his early work the rapid, fluent, vibrating style that makes his later books so delightful; therefore it is easy to make the deduction that ‘Clementina’ is the best piece of work he has done.”—New York Evening Sun

“Among the novels of the past five years no books have more consistently produced an effect at once certain, satisfactory and delightful than those of William J. Locke. This latest addition to his shelf is full of life and laughter and the love not only of man for woman but of man for man and for humanity. Mr. Locke is a born story-teller and a master of the art of expression.”—The Outlook

“The book contains a mass of good material, with original characterization, and is written in a style piquant and clever.”—The Literary Digest

“A story containing the essence of humanity, with an abundance of sensible and sensitive, casual and unobtrusive commentary upon life and man, and especially upon woman.”—Boston Evening Transcript

“It contains even more of the popular qualities than are usually associated with the writings of this noted author.”—Boston Times

“Mr. Locke’s flights into the realms of fancy have been a delight to many readers. He has a lightness of touch that is entirely captivating, and his remarkable characterization of inconsequent people gives them a reality that is very insistent.”—Baltimore Evening Sun

“Never has he drawn so deeply from that well that is the human heart; never so near those invisible heights which are the soul; and, if we are not altogether mistaken, ‘The Glory of Clementina’ will also prove to be that of its author.”—Baltimore News

“A fascinating story with delicate, whimsical touches.”—Albany Times-Union

“The book seems destined to live longer than any written by the author to date, because it is so sane and so fundamentally true.”—Philadelphia Enquirer

JOHN LANE CO., NEW YORK