“I don’t know what it is, but I have felt it too. When I was left alone abroad, my watch stopped, and when it came back from the watchmaker and was going as before, it was—just what you mean. I liked the feeling; there was something peculiar about it, something genuinely good.”
“Yes indeed! Oh, I should have kissed it, if I had been you.”
“Would you?”
“Do you know,” she said suddenly, “you have never told me anything about Erik as a boy? What was he like?”
“Everything that is good and fine, Fennimore. Splendid, brave—a boy’s ideal of a boy, not exactly a mother’s or a teacher’s ideal, but the other, which is so much better.”
“How did you get along together? Were you very fond of each other?”
“Yes, I was in love with him, and he didn’t mind—that is about how it was. We were very different. I always wanted to be a poet and become famous, but what do you suppose he said he wanted to be, one day when I asked him?—An Indian, a real red Indian with war paint and all the rest! I remember that I couldn’t understand it at all. It was incomprehensible to me how any one could want to be a savage—civilized creature that I was!”
“But was it not strange, then, that he should become an artist?” said Fennimore, and there was something cold and hostile in her tone, as she asked.
Niels noticed it with a little start. “Not at all,” he answered; “it is really rare that people become artists with the whole of their nature. And such strong fellows overflowing with vitality like Erik often have an unutterable longing for what is fine-grained and delicate: for an exquisite virginal coldness, a lofty sweetness—I hardly know how to express it. Outwardly they may be robust and full-blooded enough, even coarse, and no one suspects what strange, romantic, sentimental secrets they carry about with them, because they are so bashful—spiritually bashful, I mean—that no pale little maiden can be more shy about her soul than are these big, hard-stepping menfolks. Don’t you understand, Fennimore, that such a secret, which can’t be told in plain words right out in common every-day air, may dispose a man to be an artist? And they can’t express it in words, they simply can’t; we have to believe that it is there and lives its quiet life within them, as the bulb lives in the earth; for once in a while they do send fragrant, delicately tinted flowers up to the light. Do you understand?—Don’t demand anything for yourself of this blossoming strength, believe in it, be glad to nourish it and to know that it is there.—Forgive me, Fennimore, but it seems to me that you and Erik are not really good to each other. Can’t you make a change? Don’t think of who is right or how great the wrong is, and don’t treat him according to his deserts—how would even the best of us fare if we got our deserts! No, think of him as he was in the hour when you loved him most; believe me, he is worthy of it. You must not measure and weigh. There are moments in love, I know, full of bright, solemn ecstasy, when we would give our lives for the beloved if need be. Is not that true? Remember it now, Fennimore, for his sake and your own.”
He was silent.