For a while they missed him sorely and bitterly, for their life had been gradually formed on the supposition that they were three to share it. Three were company, variety, change; two were boredom and nothing at all.
What in the world could two find to do?
Could two shoot at a target or two play ball? They could play Friday and Robinson Crusoe, to be sure, but then who would be the savages?
Such Sundays! Niels was so weary of existence that he began first to review and afterwards, with the aid of Mr. Bigum’s large atlas, to extend his geographical knowledge far beyond the prescribed bounds. Finally, he started to read the whole Bible through and to keep a diary. But Frithjof, in his utter loneliness, stooped so low as to seek consolation in playing with his sisters.
After a while the past became less vivid to them, the longing less keen. Sometimes on a quiet evening, when the sun reddened the wall in the lonely chamber, and the distant, monotonous calling of the cuckoo died down, making the stillness wider and larger, the longing would come creeping into Niels’s mind, stealing its power; but it no longer tortured, it was a vague thing that lay lightly on him and was half sweet like a pain that is passing.
His letters showed the same trend. In the beginning they were full of regrets, questions, and wishes loosely strung together, but soon they grew longer, dealt more with externals, narrated, and were written throughout in a well-formed style that hid between the lines a certain conscious pleasure in being able to write so well.
As time passed, many things that had not dared to show themselves while Erik was there began to raise their heads. Imagination strewed its bright flowers through the humdrum calm of an eventless life. A dream atmosphere enveloped Niels’s mind, bringing with it the provocative fragrance of life, and, hidden in the fragrance, the insidious poison of life-thirsting fancies.
So Niels grows up, and all the influences of his childhood work on the plastic clay. Everything helps to shape it; everything is significant, the real and the dreamed, what is known and what is foreshadowed—all add their touch, lightly but surely, to that tracery of lines which is destined to be first hollowed out and deepened and afterwards flattened out and smoothed away.
Chapter VI
