The Old Room

by Carl Ewald

Then Cordt said good-night and Finn. But Fru Adelheid told the servants to leave her for a little and the candles burnt where the rout had been.

Restlessly she wandered about the room and again thought of the days that were gone and could never return. And she readily surrendered herself to her fancies, for there was in her now but one hope and one faith and one repentance.

She fancied that one of the long evenings was over in which gay acquaintances filled her rich house and Cordt and she exchanged glances which only they understood.

She had been to the nursery and leant over her little boy, who was sleeping with red cheeks. Now she would take the reddest flower there was and then go up the secret stair ... up to where the old room stood, in its wonderful glory.

There he sat and waited for her.

She saw him as she entered ... he raised his face to her and nodded and then lapsed again into his heavy thoughts. And she stood silent at the window, where the red flowers blushed before her feet and the square lay below her in the darkness of the night and the fountain sang its refrain, which never begins and never stops.

Then she rose and crossed the room. She heard his voice when he talked to her, as he so often talked ... ever the same judgment upon the dance that passed over the world, the same mighty song in praise of great marriage, the same passionate, loving prayer that she would only see it while there was yet time and let those dance who had nothing better to do and take the proud place which he offered her by his side ... in the old chair, in which people became so small and so strong, because they sat with their feet on an altar that was raised in faith and built up of faith and fenced in with faith throughout the changing times.

Then, when he had said that and sat by the chimney, where the fire glowed and the candles shed their rays sparingly in the corners of the old room ... she would stand for a little at the window, while all was silent in the room, and look at him, who was the man in her life and had never ceased to be so. And then she would go up to him ... slowly and quietly, because she honored the ground she trod on ... kneel down where he sat and raise to him the eyes whose beauty he had loved, whose glance he had sought in such great hope and such great fear.

Then she would tell him exactly how it was ... how strong it was and how silent:

“Cordt ... you strong, you irresistible man ... I love you as you would be loved. I thank you, because you talked to me and never grew weary. Because you always besought me. Because you waited for me and trusted that the day would come when the silence of the old room should turn to gladsome song in my soul and all the other sounds in the world like a distant buzz in the woods. Now I am here ... Cordt ... you strong, you irresistible man. Now I am yours, as I was before, and I am yours in the old room. There is nothing threatening or gloomy now in the strange things up here from the vanished days. I can sing to the old spinet so that no strings snap and no memories are mortally startled, for I sing only of you and of my boy and of my happiness. I can cherish the thread upon great-grandmother’s spinning-wheel because I have woven the cloth of happiness in my own room. I can lovingly hide the wax doll in the folds of the curtain, because I have lived to see the day when I went gladly and readily to the secret chamber of the house and sat there long and was contented.... But the jar with the naked man writhing through thorns: I set that up here when I was not yet what I am. It shall stand here in memory of the evil time that pulled at Fru Adelheid’s soul and lured her desires with sounds from the square outside.... And our little boy, who sleeps with red cheeks, shall grow to man’s estate and come up here one day, when you and I are dead, and sit with his wife in the chairs in which we sat. Then he shall know that his mother was tempted, it is true, but not destroyed.”