Niels Lyhne

by J. P. Jacobsen

Yet it came again and brought others in its wake, thoughts at first vague and indistinct, then clearer and sharper for each time they appeared. It was astonishing with what furious haste these thoughts could undermine, debase, and take away the glamor. Their love was not lessened. On the contrary, it glowed more passionately while it sank, but these handclasps stolen under table-covers, these kisses snatched in passages and behind doors, these long looks right under the eyes of him they deceived, took away all the lofty tenor. Happiness no longer stood still above their heads; they had to filch her smiles and her light as best they could, and after a while their wiles and cunning were no longer necessary evils, but amusing triumphs. Deception became their natural element and made them contemptible and petty. There were degrading secrets, too, over which they had hitherto grieved separately, assuming ignorance in each other’s eyes, but which they now had to share; for Erik was not bashful, and would often caress his wife in Niels’s presence, kiss her, take her on his lap, and embrace her, while Fennimore had neither courage nor dignity sufficient to repel these caresses; the consciousness of her guilt made her uncertain and afraid.

So it sank and went on sinking, that lofty castle of their love, from the pinnacles of which they had gazed so proudly out over the world, and within which they had felt so strong and noble.

Still they were happy among the ruins.

When they walked in the woods now, it was usually on gloomy days, when the fog hung under the dark branches and thickened between the wet trunks, so that none should see how they kissed and embraced, both here and there, and none should hear how their frivolous talk rang with peals of wanton laughter.

The melancholy of eternity, which had exalted their love, was gone; now there was nothing but smiles and jests between them. With feverish haste they snatched greedily at the fleeting seconds of joy, as though they must hurry in their love and had not a lifetime before them.

It brought no change when Erik, after a while, grew tired of his idea and again began his carousing so eagerly that he was rarely at home for forty-eight hours at a stretch. Where they had fallen, there they lay. Once in a great while, perhaps, in lonely hours, they gazed regretfully toward the heights from which they had fallen, or perhaps they only wondered, and thought what a strain it must have been to stay on that level, and felt themselves more snugly housed where they were. There was no change. At least there was no return to the former days, but the flabby uncleanness of living as they did and not running away together became more present in their consciousness and linked them together in a closer and baser union through the common sense of guilt; for neither of them wished any change in things as they were. Nor did they pretend to each other that they did, for there had developed a cynical intimacy between them such as often exists between fellow criminals, and there was nothing in their relations that they shrank from putting into words. With sinister frankness, they called things by their right names and, as they put it to themselves, faced the facts as they were.

In February it had seemed that the winter was over, but then Mother March had come shaking her white mantle with its loose lining, and snowstorm after snowstorm covered the ground with thick layers. Then followed calm weather and hard frost, and the fjord settled under a crust of ice six inches thick, which lay there a long time.

One evening toward the end of the month, Fennimore was sitting alone in her parlor after tea and waiting.

The room was brightly illumined; the piano stood open with candles lit, and the silk shade had been taken from the lamp. The gilded moldings caught the light, and the pictures on the walls seemed to stand out with a kind of vigilance. The hyacinths had been moved from the windows to the writing-table, where they made a mass of delicate colors, filling the air with a penetrating fragrance that seemed cool in its purity. The fire in the stove burned with a pleasant subdued crackle.

Fennimore was walking up and down the room almost as if she were balancing on a dark red stripe in the carpet. She wore a somewhat old-fashioned black silk dress with a heavily embroidered edge that weighed it down and trailed, first on one side, then on the other, with every step she took.