“They travelled, Niels, to get new impressions, that was their fixed idea. The south, the Orient—it was all in vain; it slid off from them as from a looking-glass. I have seen their graves in Rome—two of them, but there are many, many others. One of them went mad.”
“I have never heard that about painters before.”
“It’s true. What can it be, do you think? A hidden nerve that’s given way? Or something we have failed in or sinned against in ourselves, perhaps—who knows? A soul is such a fragile thing, and no one knows how far the soul extends in a human being. We ought to be good to ourselves—Niels!” His voice had grown low and soft. “I have often longed to travel, because I felt so empty. You have no idea how I have longed for it, but I simply don’t dare to, for suppose it didn’t help, and that I was one of those people I was telling you of. What then! Think of standing face to face with the certainty that I was done for, didn’t possess anything, couldn’t do anything—think of it—couldn’t do anything! A paltry wretch, a cursed dog of a cripple, a miserable eunuch! What do you think would become of me? And after all it is not impossible. My first youth is past, and as for illusions and that sort of thing, I can assure you I haven’t many left. It’s terrible how we go through them, and yet I was never one of those who’re anxious to get rid of them. I was not like you and the rest of the people who used to foregather at Mrs. Boye’s—you were always so busy plucking the fine feathers from one another, and the balder you got, the more you crowed. Still what’s the difference—sooner or later we all start molting.”
They were silent again. The air was bitter with cigar smoke and heavy with cognac, and they sighed drearily, oppressed by the stuffiness of the room and by their own very sad hearts.
Niels had travelled two hundred miles to bring aid, and here he sat feeling his impulse put to shame, while the colder side of his nature looked on. For what could he do, when it came to the point? What if he tried to talk picturesquely to Erik, in many words of purple and ultramarine, dripping with light and wading in shadow! There had been a dream of something like that in his brain when he started out. How utterly absurd! To bring aid! You might perhaps drive away the goddess with the closed hands from an artist’s door, but that was certainly the utmost; you could no more help him to create than you could help him, if he were paralyzed, to lift his little finger by his own strength. No, not though your heart overflowed with affection and sympathy and devotion and everything else that was generous.... What you ought to do was to mind your own affairs; that was useful and healthy, but of course it was easier to let your heart run amuck in a large and generous way. The only trouble was that it was so lamentably impracticable and so utterly ineffective. Minding your own affairs and doing it well did not insure you paradise, but at least you did not have to cast down your eyes before either God or man.
Opportunity was abundant for Niels to make melancholy reflections on the impotence of a kind heart, for all that he accomplished was to keep Erik at home a little more than usual for a month or so. Nevertheless, he did not care to return to Copenhagen during the hot season, and as he did not wish to remain a guest indefinitely, he engaged a room with a family a little above the peasant class, on the opposite shore of the fjord, so near that he could row over to Marianelund in fifteen minutes. Now that he was accustomed to the neighborhood, he would just as lief stay there as any other place, for he was one of the susceptible people over whom outward surroundings easily acquire a hold. Besides, his friend and his cousin Fennimore were there, and that was reason enough, especially as there was not a human being anywhere else expecting him.
During the trip from Copenhagen, he had carefully thought out his behavior to Fennimore and how he would show her that he had forgotten so completely that he did not remember there was anything to forget; above all, no coldness, but a friendly indifference, a superficial cordiality, a polite sympathy; that was the proper attitude.
But it was all thrown away.
The Fennimore he met was a different person from the one he had left. She was still lovely; her form was luxuriant and beautiful as before, and she had the same slow, languid movements that charmed him in former days, but there was a dreary thoughtlessness in the expression of her mouth as of one who had thought too much, and a pitiful, tortured cruelty in her gentle eyes. He did not understand it at all, but one fact was at least clear, and that was that she had had other things to think of than remembering him, and that she was quite callous to any memories he could awaken. She looked like one who had made her choice and done the worst she could do with it.
Little by little, he began to spell and put things together, and one day, when they were walking along the shore, he began to understand.