II
“Now, then—one—two”—Miss Irene Holm raised her skirt and put out her foot—“feet out—one—two—three—” The seven pupils toed in, and hopped about with their fingers in their mouths. “Here, little Jens—toes out—one, two, three—bow—one, two, three—now once more.” Jens bowed, his tongue hanging out of his mouth. “Now, Maren, left—one, two, three; Maren turns to the right—once more—one, two, three—” Miss Holm sprang about like a kid, so that one could see long stretches of fancy stockings.
The dancing lessons were in full swing, and were held three times a week in the hall of the inn, under the two old lamps that hung from the beams. The long, undisturbed dust in the cold room whirled up under their feet. The seven pupils flew about wildly like a flock of magpies, Miss Holm straightening their backs and bending their arms. “One, two, three—battement—one, two, three—battement.” The seven bobbed at “battement” and stepped out energetically.
The dust gathered in Miss Holm’s throat as she called out her orders. Now the pupils were to dance a round dance in couples. They held their partners at arm’s length, stiff-armed and embarrassed, and turned in sleepy circles. Miss Holm swung them around, with encouraging words. “Good—now around—four, five—turn again—good—” She took hold of Jens Larsen’s second, and little Jette, and turned them as one would turn a top.
Jette’s mother had come to look on. The peasant women would drop in for the lessons, their cap-bands tied in stiff bows, and sit motionless as wooden figures against the wall, without speaking a word even to each other. Miss Holm addressed them as “Madame,” and smiled at them as she skipped about.
Now it was the turn of the lanciers. “Ladies to the right—good—now three steps to the left, Jette—good—” The lanciers was more like a general skirmish than a dance.
Miss Holm groaned from her exertions. She leaned against the wall, her temples beating with hammer-strokes. “Good—this way, Jette—” The dust hurt her eyes, as the seven hopped about in the dusk.
When Miss Holm came home after her dancing lessons, she wrapped her head up in a handkerchief. But in spite of this, she suffered from an everlasting cold, and sat, most of her leisure hours, with her head over a bowl of hot water.
Finally, they had music for their lessons—Mr. Broderson’s violin. Two new pupils, a couple of half-grown young people, joined the class. They all hopped about to the tune of tailor Broderson’s fiddle, as the dust flew up in clouds, and the old stove seemed to dance on its rough carved feet.
They had spectators, too, and once the young people from the rectory, the pastor’s daughter and the curate, came to look on. Miss Holm danced out more energetically under the two dim lamps, threw out her chest, and arched her feet. “Throw out your feet like this, children—throw out your feet—” She threw out her feet proudly and raised the hem of her skirt—now she had an audience!
Every week Miss Holm sent a package of knitting to Copenhagen. The teacher took charge of the package. Each time it was clumsily wrapped or addressed wrong, and he had to put it to rights himself. She stood watching him with her girlish nod and the smile of faded sixteen. The newspapers that had come by the mail lay ready for distribution on one of the school-tables. One day Miss Holm asked timidly if she might look at the “Berlinske.” She had gazed longingly at the bundle for a week before she could pluck up courage enough to proffer her request. After that she came every day, in the noon pause. The schoolteacher soon came to recognize her timid knock. “Come in, little lady, the door is open,” he would call.
She tripped across the schoolroom and took her chosen paper from the bundle. She read the theatrical advertisements, the repertoire, and the criticisms, of which she understood but little. But it was about “those over there.” She needed a lengthy time to go the length of a column, following the words with one gracefully pointed finger. When she had finished reading she crossed the hall and knocked once more at the other door. “Well?” said the teacher. “Anything new happened in the city?”
“It’s only about—those over there—the old friends—” she would answer.
The schoolteacher looked after her, as she wandered home to her knitting. “Poor little creature!” he sighed. “She’s really quite excited about her dancing master—” It was the news of a new ballet, by a lately promoted master of the ballet, that had so excited her. Miss Holm knew the list of names by heart, and knew the names of every solo dance. “We went to school together,” she would say.
And on the evening when the ballet was performed for the first time she fevered with excitement, as if she were to dance in it herself. She lit the two candles, gray with age and dust, that stood one on each side of a plaster cast of Thorwaldsen’s Christ on the bureau, and sat down on her champagne basket, staring into the light. But she couldn’t bear to be alone that evening. All the old unrest of theatrical life came over her. She went into the room where the smith and his wife were, and sat down beside the tall clock. She talked more during the next hour than she had talked for a whole year. She talked about the theatre and about first nights; she talked about the big “solos” and the famous “pas.” She hummed and she swayed in her chair while she talked.
The novelty of it all so excited the smith that he began to sing an old cavalry song, and finally called out: “Mother, shan’t we have a punch to-night?”
The punch was brewed, the two candles brought out from the little room, and they sat there and chatted merrily. But in the midst of all the gaiety, Miss Holm grew suddenly silent, and sat still, great tears welling up in her eyes. Then she rose quietly and went to her room. In there she sat down on her basket and wept quietly and bitterly, before she undressed and went to bed. She did not practise her steps that evening. She could think of but one thing. He had gone to school with her.
She lay sobbing gently in the darkness. Her head moved uneasily on the pillow as the remembered voice of the old dancing master of the school rang in her ears, cross and excited: “Holm has no élan—Holm has no élan—” He cried it out for all the hall to hear. How plainly she could hear it now—how plainly she could see the great bare hall—the long rows of figurantes practising their steps—she herself leaning for a moment against the wall with the feeling as if her tired limbs had been cut off from her body altogether—and then the voice of the dancing master: “Haven’t you any ambition, Holm?”
Then she saw her little home, her mother shrunken down into the great armchair, her sister bending over the rattling sewing-machine. And she heard her mother ask, in her asthmatic voice: “Didn’t Anna Stein dance a solo?”—“Yes, mother.”—“Did they give her 'la grande Napolitaine’?”—“Yes, mother.”—“You both entered the school at the same time,” she asked, looking over at her from behind the lamp.
“Yes, mother.” And she saw Anna Stein in her gay-colored skirts, with the fluttering ribbons on her tambourine, so happy and smiling in the glare of the footlights as she danced her solo.
And suddenly the little woman in the darkness buried her head in her pillow and sobbed convulsive, heart-breaking, unchecked sobs of impotent and despairing grief. It was dawn before she fell asleep.
The new ballet was a success. Miss Holm read the notices, and two little, old woman’s tears fell softly down upon the printed page as she read.
Letters came now and then from her sisters, letters about pawn-tickets and dire need. The days such letters came Miss Holm would forget her knitting and sit with her hands pressed to her temples, the open letter lying before her. Finally, one day, she made the round of the homes of her pupils, and begged shyly, with painful blushes, for the advance of half her money. This she sent home to her family.
So the days passed. Miss Irene Holm went back and forth to her dancing lessons. More pupils came to her, a half-score young peasants formed an evening class that met three times a week in Peter Madsen’s big room on the edge of the woods. Miss Holm walked the half mile in the darkness, timid as a hare, pursued by all the old ghost stories of the ballet school. At one place she had to pass a pond deeply fringed with willows. She would stare up at the trees that stretched their great arms weirdly in the blackness, her heart hanging dead as a stone in her breast.
They danced three hours each evening. Miss Holm called out, commanded, skipped here and there, and danced with the gentlemen pupils until two deep red spots appeared on her withered cheeks. Then it was time to go home. A boy would open the gate for her, and hold up a lantern to start her on the way. She heard His “Good night” behind her and then the locking of the gate, as it rasped over the rough stone pavement. Along the first stretch of the path was a hedge of bushes that bent over at her and nodded their heads.
It was nearly spring when Miss Holm’s course of lessons came to an end. The company at Peter Madsen’s decided to finish off with a ball at the inn.