Mogens, and Other Stories

by J. P. Jacobsen

In proportion as the father in this way rose in her estimation, the mother sank. The fact that she had fallen in love with a man harmed her less in her daughter’s eyes; but she was no lenger the mother, the unfailing, the wisest, the supreme, most beautiful. She was a woman like other women; not quite, but just because not quite, it was possible to criticize and judge her and to find weaknesses and faults in her. Elinor was glad that she had not confided her unhappy love to her mother; but she did not know how much it was due to her mother that she had not done so.

One day passed like another, and their life became more and more unendurable. All three felt that it was useless; instead of bringing them together, it only drove them further apart.

Mrs. Kastager had now recovered. Though she had not played an active part in anything that had happened, she knew more about the situation than any one else, because everything had been told her. One day she had a long talk with Mrs. Fonss who was glad that there was some one who would quietly listen to her plans for the future. In this conversation Mrs. Kastager suggested that the children go with her to Nice, while they sent for Thorbrogger to come to Avignon, so that they might be married. Kastager could stay on as witness.

Mrs. Fonss wavered a little while longer, for she had been unable to discover what her children’s reaction would be. When they were told, they accepted it with proud silence, and when they were pressed for answer, they merely said that they would, of course, adjust themselves to whatever she decided to do.

So things turned out as Mrs. Kastager had proposed. She said good-by to the children, and they left; Thorbrogger came, and they were married.

Spain became their home; Thorbrogger chose it for the sake of sheep-farming.

Neither of them wished to return to Denmark.

And they lived happily in Spain.

She wrote several times to her children, but in their first violent anger that she had left them, they returned the letters. Later they regretted it; they were unable, however, to admit this to their mother and to write to her; for that reason all communication between them ceased. But now and then in round about ways they heard about each other’s lives.

For five years Thorbrogger and his wife lived happily, but then she suddenly fell ill. It was a disease whose course ran swiftly and whose end was necessarily fatal. Her strength dwindled hourly, and one day when the grave was no longer far away she wrote to her children.