THE OLD ROOM

THE OLD ROOM

BY
CARL EWALD
AUTHOR OF “MY LITTLE BOY,” “TWO-LEGS,” “THE SPIDER AND
OTHER TALES,” ETC.

TRANSLATED FROM THE DANISH BY
ALEXANDER TEIXEIRA DE MATTOS

CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS
NEW YORK :: :: :: :: :: 1908

Copyright, 1908, by
CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS
Sole Authorized Translation
Published March, 1908

THE AUTHOR’S DEDICATION OF THE
SECOND EDITION

NOW THAT I AM PUBLISHING, UNDER MY OWN NAME, A NEW
EDITION OF THIS BOOK, THE FIRST TO WIN ME FRIENDS IN ANY
NUMBER, I DEDICATE IT, GRATEFULLY AND RESPECTFULLY, TO
FRU AGNES HENNINGSEN,
TO WHOM MY ART OWES MORE THAN TO ANY.

CONTENTS

TRANSLATOR’S NOTE

The two parts forming this story are published separately in Denmark; and Part I, which I have called Cordt, was first issued anonymously as The Old Room, with a preface intended to convey the idea that the work had been written by the heroine of the story. When Part II appeared, under the title of Cordt’s Son, in which Fru Adelheid has returned to the old house and the old room, Carl Ewald suppressed this preface. It is so beautiful that it were unfair to deprive the author’s American readers of the joy of it. The German translator prints it at the end of his version, by way of an appendix; I prefer to give it here:

PREFACE
TO THE FIRST (ANONYMOUS) DANISH
EDITION

I who write this book am still young and fair to look upon and rich and very sad.

My youth and my beauty fill me with horror and I know not what to do with the wealth which I possess. Daily my sorrow sings the same song in my ears. It rustles in the folds of my train; it sighs in the fragrant flowers at my breast. Through the long nights I sit on the edge of my bed thrusting away the dream that comes with glaring eyes.

Now what I have written is a lie.

When I wrote it, it was the truth: now, it is a lie. When I saw it set down on paper, I knew that my youth was my strength and my right; that, if I were ugly, I could not live; and that, if I were poor, I should die.

And now I am glad; and there is nothing on earth but my gladness.

I am in this case.

But I let the words stand as I wrote them, for I know that the time will come—and that soon—when all of them will be true again ... until they once more become a lie.

And so my book will grow, through still and stormy times, until the day comes when I am again what I now am.

But that, too, is itself a lie. For I was always the same.

But there came a moment at which HE saw me as I am; and there my book will end. For after that there was but little that differed from the stories in other books and less still that I remember.

Be that as it may, it is true that the world contains a room in which the radiant light of happiness flamed up before my eyes. And the light went out and the door closed upon me.

And, if any one, from what I have here written, comes to think me a great and abject sinner, then he is indeed right. But, if he thinks that I have been cast off by the world, then he is at fault.

For I go with head erect and peacefully along the road that others go; and I am welcome among the best. The lights in the high hall stream down upon my hair; the men honour me with their desire, the women with their ill-will.

There lives only one who knows my guilt and he has condemned me.

For it was HE that stayed in the room where the light burns. And she that went out into the street was I.

I am indebted to the collaboration of my friend Mr. Osman Edwards—one of the foremost linguists in Europe—for his translation of the six songs, in which he has carefully preserved both the sense and the exquisite rhythm, and also for many suggestions regarding the accurate solution of such difficulties as occurred in the prose text.

Alexander Teixeira de Mattos.

Chelsea, England, 10 December, 1907.

PART I
CORDT

PART I
CORDT

CHAPTER I

THE room looks out upon the square, which is so big and so fashionable that there is no business done in it.

By day there is a sound of carriages, but at a distance; for the house that contains the room is thrust a long way back and its walls are as thick as the walls of a castle. In the evening, the square shines with a thousand lights; at night, you can hear the rippling of the fountain, which never begins and never stops, cries, no one knowing what they are, and solitary steps that approach and retreat again.

The room is built high over the square. Its window is a door and leads to a balcony filled with red flowers. When the wind lashes them, their petals fly right over into the basin of the fountain and rock upon the water.

The room is long and deep.

Where the window is, the light streams in through the wide, stained-glass panes; but, inside, where the fireplace rises to the ceiling, it is always dark.

No one has ever seen the curtain drawn before the window. But, even if the sun could shine right into the room, it would never have seen a human being there. By day, the room is dead.

It is placed so strangely in the house that it seems to form no part of it. The life of every day passes outside it; and, even when the whole house is lighted up and the horses paw the ground in the gateway and glasses clink and music sounds in the great drawing-room, the door of the room remains constantly closed.

No one has ever crossed its threshold but the master of the house and his wife and the oldest servant in their employ.

For the room is the soul of the house and its tradition and its secret chamber.

It was destined for this purpose long ago by the man who built the house; and so cunningly did he contrive it that no one could guess that it was there, unless he knew of it. Then, when the work was ended, he sealed the architect’s tongue with a solemn oath and a heavy fee and the man kept his sworn word.

And the builder of the house decorated the room as richly as was possible according to the means of those days, with gilt and figured leather hangings and stained-glass window-panes and costly carpets from the East. But he placed no furniture in it until the very last. Then he brought two splendid armchairs which he had had made for him in Milan.

They were odd-looking chairs. They glided so smoothly over the floor that a child could move them, and were so large that people became quite small when they sat in them. Their woodwork was carved into birds and animals, whose faces grinned strangely in the dark but ceased to do so when the lights were lit.

When everything was thus ordered for the best, he called an old servant, who had been in the house since he was a child, gave him a key of the room and told him to care for it faithfully. Every evening, when it grew dusk, he was to light the candles on the mantelpiece and he was to do this even if he knew that his master was travelling in distant lands. Every morning, he was to adjust the room with his own hands. None but himself was ever to cross the threshold.

On the evening of the day when he took possession of his house, the master, having first shown her all its other beauties, brought his wife to the room.

She looked round in wonder. But he made her sit in one of the great chairs, seated himself in the other and spoke to her in these words:

“Sweetheart, this room is for you and me and for none other in the world. I have placed it in the most secluded part of the house, far from the counting-house, where we work, from the passages, along which our servants go, and from the drawing-room, where we receive our guests, ay, even from our marriage-bed, where you will sleep by my side.”

She took his hand and kissed it and looked at him.

“It shall be the temple of our marriage, hallowed by our love, which is greater than anything that we know. Here we will pray to Him Who gave us to each other. Here we will talk gladly and earnestly every evening when our hearts impel us to. And, when we come to die, our son shall bring his wife here and they shall do as we did.”

Thereupon he wrote down in a document how all this had happened and they both sealed it with their names. He hid the document in a secret recess in the wall. And, when all this was accomplished, they fell upon their knees and, folding their hands together, offered a simple prayer to God before they went to rest.

These two are long since dead. But their son complied with their will and his son after him and so on and so forth until the present day.

And, however riches might increase or diminish with the varying fortunes of the times, the old house in the square continued in the possession of the family. For he who was its head always lived in such a way that he kept his ancestral home.

The room stood untouched, as was appointed, and the document grew old and yellow in the secret recess in the wall. Once only in the time of each master of the house was it taken out; and that was on the evening when he first brought his young wife to the secret chamber. Then they wrote their names upon it and put it away again.

But it became the custom for each of them that took lawful possession of the room to adorn it with a piece of furniture after his own taste and heart. And they were strange objects that, in the course of time, gathered round the two great, strange chairs.

There was one of the owners of the house who was kindly and cheerful to the end. He placed in the room, in his wife’s honor, a costly spinning-wheel, richly inlaid, which whirred merrily every evening for many a good year and which stood as it was, with thread upon the spindle.

There was one whose thoughts were always roaming and never at rest and whose intellect was obscured before he died. He presented the room with an ingenious representation of the heavenly system. When a spring was pressed, the spheres lit up and ran their eternal courses; and he sat and played with the stars to his last day.

There was another whose wife dreaded the deep silence of the room and never entered it but once. He waited for five years and then had a doll made, a woman, life-size and beautifully dressed. He put it on a chair in the window, so that the light fell on its vacant face. But his son, who loved his mother, drew the doll back, so that it was hidden in the curtain.

There was one whose wife was in the habit of singing when she was sad, as she often was. She brought a spinet, with slender, beautiful notes, which sang like a mother singing her child to sleep. In time, its sound grew very thin. When it was played upon in the room at night, it sounded over the silent square like a humming in the air; and none that passed knew what it was.

There was also one who had his wife’s portrait painted and hung the picture on the wall. He broke his wedding-vows and his grandson took the picture down. But, where it had been, a light stain remained that could not be removed.

The man who was master of the house at the time when that happened which is related in this book had brought nothing as yet. But his wife had set up a thing that had caught her eye more than all that she had seen in the way of art on her long travels. This was a jar of a preposterous shape, large and bright and of a pale tint. On one side was the figure of a naked man writhing through thorns. It stood on a stone pedestal hewn from a rock near Jerusalem.

That was how the room was.

Each evening, when it grew dark, the oldest servant in the house lit the candles on the mantelpiece. Each morning, before any one was awake, he cleaned the room with his own hands and watered the red flowers on the balcony. When winter came, he strewed bread-crumbs for the sparrows that gathered on the baluster and twittered.

But the name of him that owned the house was Cordt. And his wife was Fru Adelheid.

CHAPTER II

Cordt sat in one of the armchairs by the chimney, reading.

He was in evening clothes and held his crush-hat and his gloves on his knees. He turned the pages quickly. Every moment, he swept his thick hair from his forehead; every moment, he looked at Fru Adelheid, who was walking up and down the floor with her hands behind her back.

She was very tall and slender. Her face was as white as her white gown. Her mouth was very red, her eyes looked large and strange. She wore flowers in her hair and at her waist.

“You are not reading, Cordt,” she said; but she passed with her back to him.

He closed the book and laid it aside. Then he moved the chair so as to turn his face towards her. His eyes were larger than hers and steadier, his mouth firmer.

“How beautiful you are!” he said.

She laughed softly and took his hand and kissed it:

“How charming of you!” she said.

She began to walk again. He stretched out his legs and lay with his head back in the chair, but followed her all the time with his eyes. Now and again, she stopped, smoothed her gown, let her fingers stray over the keys of the spinet and then went out on the balcony through the open door. He could not see her from where he was sitting, but the white train of her dress lay inside the room and he looked at that.

Then she returned, sat on the arm of the other chair and swung her foot to and fro.

“I do not like you to be in good spirits, Adelheid,” he said.

Her eyes shone. She looked at the fireplace, where a log lay glowing:

“You should drink a glass of wine, Cordt.”

“I do not care for wine.”

“No more do I. But I like its exhilaration. It makes one so light-hearted. Then everything becomes so charming.”

“Have you been drinking?”

“But, Cordt ... what makes you ask that?”

“Because you are so light-hearted and I so charming.”

She went up to him and laid her cheek against his hair:

“Now don’t spoil it for me,” she said. “You can, with a single word, and that would be a great, great sin. You say I am pretty; and I am glad because you think so and because I am going out with you and because you are handsome and belong to me. We shall be far from each other and close together for all that. We shall nod to each other, as we always do, and know what we know.”

He released himself from her gently:

“Sit down a little,” he said, “and talk to me.”

She kissed him and sat down in the chair and then and there forgot her despondency. Her eyes shone as before. He raked out the embers and threw a log upon them. They sat and watched it catch fire and saw the smoke surround it and rise up. Her foot tapped the carpet; he shaded his eyes with his hand and pursued his thoughts:

“In my first year at the university,” he said, “there were five of us who were chums and we used to meet every Saturday evening. It was generally at my rooms, for I could best afford it. We used to sit and drink wine until bright daylight and then take one another home.”

“You must have drunk a great deal.”

“I don’t know. Perhaps we did. We talked so loud and deep. The wine made us feel bigger, braver and cleverer. Next day, we were quite different, more reserved and cool. But we could look one another boldly in the face, for we had nothing to repent of. It did not matter if we had allowed ourselves to be carried away. We knew one another so well and trusted one another.”

She sat and looked at him as he spoke, but said nothing. Lost in thought, he continued to throw logs on the fire until she took one out of his hand and put it aside:

“You’ll set the house on fire!”

“One should never drink wine with strangers,” he said. “You see, it is so degrading to be stripped bare. And that is just what happens.”

“You say that as if it meant getting drunk.”

He paid no attention to her words, but went on:

“One unbuttons one’s self, one reveals one’s self. Look at your eyes and your smile. I have felt it in my own eyes: hundreds of times, I have suddenly seen them all naked together round the table.”

“In good company, Cordt?”

“Where else?”

“I don’t understand that,” she said.

“I do not know the people whom you speak of.”

“You will be with them this evening, Adelheid.”

She shrugged her shoulders discontentedly and tapped her foot on the carpet.

“Adelheid.”

She looked at him and her eyes were dark and angry. He took her hand and held it fast in his:

“I have seen it in eyes that were looking at you, Adelheid.”

She drew her hand away:

“This is hideous, Cordt!”

She rose and went to the balcony-door. He looked after her and his eyes gleamed:

“Adelheid.”

She stood with her back to him, leaning against the window-frame, and buttoned her gloves. He leant forward and gripped the arms of his chair with his hands:

“I have seen it in your eyes, Adelheid.”

She did not move, uttered not a word. When she had finished buttoning her gloves, she gathered up her train and went out on the balcony.

The May air was cold and she shivered in her thin gown. The lamps shone dimly through the mist; many carriages drove across the square. She could hear the tinkling of the harness-bells in the gateway; the footman was tramping up and down below.

She turned and stood at the window and looked at Cordt. He had moved his chair round towards the fireplace. She could see nothing of him but one shoulder and arm, his thick hair and his legs.

“The carriage is there,” she said.

He rose and went to her.

“You must not be angry with me,” he said, gently. “I am out of sorts.”

“Are you ill?”

“Yes ... perhaps.... No, not that.”

“Well, for all that I care, we can stay at home. You have spoilt my pleasure.”

“Have I?”

“Of course you have. It was for you I made myself look so nice ... it was with you I wanted to go out.”

“Was it?”

He took her hand and drew her to the fire:

“Sit down, Adelheid ... there ... only for a minute. Shall we stay at home to-night ... get some wine ... have a party of our own...?”

“Yes ... you’re in such a festive mood!”

“Now be good, Adelheid. You are my only dissipation.... You know you are ... there have been hundreds of delightful days to prove it. If you are of my mind to-night, we will do this. And you will be beautiful for me and I for you and our eyes will sparkle together.”

She did not look at him, but shook her head:

“I will stay at home, if you wish it,” she said.

They sat silent. The candles on the mantelpiece flickered and guttered in the draught.

“It is strange,” he said. “Do you remember the evening in London, Adelheid, when we were to go to that great ball? Then I begged you to stay at home and you did and you were glad.”

She lay far back in her chair, with her arms behind her neck:

“I was not glad that evening,” she said.

He raised his head and listened.

“I submitted, Cordt, but I was not glad to. I was acting a part, for your sake.”

She met his eyes. Hers were still and sad and she did not remove them while she spoke:

“I was wicked, Cordt. I hated you. I told you a lie. I was dancing at the ball, hour after hour, while I sat and held your hand and laughed so gaily.”

She slipped from her chair and crouched before him, with her hands folded round his knee and her eyes fixed humbly on his face:

“Do not look at me so strangely, Cordt. That is how I am. I love you. But I cannot live without the others ... without having them to see it, to see my happiness. I want to be pretty and I want them to fall in love with me and I want to belong to you. I only care to be pretty if I am loved. Don’t look like that, Cordt.”

She clung to him with eyes of entreaty.

“I am not really wicked, Cordt ... am I? I was with our little baby day and night when he was ill ... wasn’t I, Cordt?”

“Yes,” he said.

“Yes ... I was. But I cannot always be quiet.”

He lifted her from her chair and crossed the room with his arm round her waist. They went out on the balcony. A carriage came across the square at a brisk trot, followed soon after by a multitude of others. They came from the streets all round, but drove away in the same direction and disappeared round a street-corner. The horses’ hoofs clattered against the pavement, the lamps shone on the glittering carriages, coachmen and footmen sat stiff and black on their boxes.

“Come, Adelheid,” he said. “Let us go.”

The candles on the mantelpiece burnt down and the faces in the big chairs grinned in the darkness. When day dawned, the old servant came and arranged the room. When it was evening, he lit the candles.

He did this the next day and the next and many days after. The sun rose and the sun set. The water splashed in the fountain. The lamps shone and the people swarmed over the square. The balcony was bright with its red flowers and, every evening, the light fell through the open door.

But the summer passed and no one entered the room.

CHAPTER III

Fru Adelheid stood on the balcony. She plucked the red flowers and threw them into the square below. She wore a long, white gown; her gloves and her white boa lay on the ground. She had just come from the theatre and had been bored.

Now she turned towards the room.

Cordt sat huddled together before the fireplace and stared in front of him. She wanted to see his face and called to him. He pushed back his chair and looked up:

“I was thinking of the play we have been to see,” he said.

“Yes, it was stupid.”

She drew the other chair over the floor, so that she could look at the jar with the naked man writhing through thorns.

“There was a time when I was tired of law,” said Cordt. “I was glad when the poet showed me a marriage that was broken for love. I used to think that people grew greater through it and that Heaven seemed higher and earth more green.”

She shuddered again and wrapped her skirt closer about her feet.

“Now I am so tired of lawlessness. I loathe these women and their lovers.”

“You are married yourself now,” she answered.

“What do you say?”

He looked up. She could see that he had not caught her words and she was glad.

“There must be a struggle, no doubt,” she said.

“Of course there must. There is. In the old days, they were not allowed to come together and now they are not allowed to stay together.”

She said nothing, but let her hand glide over the jar.

“All these faithless wives have lowered love. I could imagine a woman of refinement stifling her love, because she would not give it scope.”

“Because she was afraid.”

“Because she was refined.”

They sat silent for a time and looked at the live embers in the white ashes.

“Do you think there are many who do that?”

He looked up.

“Do you think there are many faithless wives?”

“I don’t know. Why shouldn’t there be?”

He leant his head on his hands. Fru Adelheid played with the jar.

“But I can’t understand that people care to go to the theatre.”

“Where would you have them go?”

He pushed back his chair so that he could see her. She remained sitting as she sat and thought of nothing.

“Adelheid,” he said, “I suppose you wouldn’t care to stay at home to-night?”

She lay back in her chair and looked at her hands.

“Oh,” she said, “I wanted to go out to supper.”

“I should so much like to talk to you.”

“But I did come home from the theatre, dear,” she replied and put out her hand to him.

He did not see it and she let it fall.

“I would rather have stayed at home after the theatre, Adelheid.”

“Yes, I see,” she answered and just shrugged her shoulders. “I did not understand.”

“But you understood it in the theatre. And now you want to sup out all the same.”

He bent over to her to catch her eyes. She said nothing and did not look at him.

“Adelheid.”

Fru Adelheid knit her brow:

“I don’t go to the theatre, you see, for the sake of the play,” she said. “That does not amuse me. But it amuses me to watch that sea of people and to hear them clamor and then fall silent. I like the way they clap and the way they are quite still when anything good is being said on the stage. Then something sings inside me and I enjoy it.”

He looked at her for a moment; then he laughed and rubbed his hands. Fru Adelheid turned her chair towards him, so close that her knees touched his:

“What is it that you wanted to talk to me about this evening?” she asked. “That couldn’t be postponed until the theatre was over? That couldn’t wait for an hour, now that I feel like going out to supper?”

He looked at her and shook his head.

“Was it anything? Or were you only tired and empty, as I was ... and as the faithless wives are ... and the modern poets and ... and everybody?”

“No, Adelheid,” he said. “No. It was nothing. Nothing at all.”

“I don’t know what you mean,” she said and suddenly flung herself violently back in her chair. “There is something behind your words.”

Cordt nodded.

“You are angry with me. What is it that I do? We live no differently, that I know of, from other people in our circle. We travel, we go to the theatre, we go out and we receive our friends at home. We meet amusing people, artists ... everybody who is anybody.”

“Are you always amused among amusing people?”

She looked at him a little doubtfully:

“There is no such thing as always anywhere.”

“No,” he said, “more’s the pity. There is not.”

They sat silent, both steeped in thought. Then he pushed his hair from his forehead and said, calmly:

“Try if you can understand me, Adelheid. When a woman marries and becomes a mother, she usually becomes quiet ... quieter, I mean. I mean that there are victories which she cannot win, triumphs which she cannot achieve ... which she does not trouble about. She does not trouble about them, Adelheid, because she has deepened her life ... because she has come so near to one man that the approach of other men is distasteful to her. Then she becomes quiet ... quieter. And this quietness is not empty, but just richer than all the rest.”

She looked at him with a strangely inquisitive flash in her angry eyes:

“Are you jealous?” she asked.

He shook his head and made a gesture of denial with his hand. But she sprang from her chair and stood before him with great, proud eyes:

“You ought to be, Cordt,” she said. “You ought to be. I am yours and I love you. You won me once: see to it that you know how to keep me. Fight for me, Cordt. I am young, I am pretty and the world is full of men.”

He rose deliberately and looked at her till she thought for a moment that he would strike her.

“You will be twenty-six next month,” he said. “And, besides, we in our family don’t fight to keep our wives.”

“Cordt.”

She sat down without knowing what she was doing. He looked at her and she looked back at him. She could not help thinking how tall he was; and how easily he wore his clothes; and that one of his shoulders was a little lower than the other.

Then he crossed the room, so quickly that he nearly tripped over the carpet. He struggled with the old spinning-wheel and pulled it over the floor. She followed him with her eyes.

“Can you spin on my great-grandmother’s wheel, Adelheid?” he asked.

She crossed her arms on her breast and looked at him.

“Can’t you, Adelheid? Couldn’t you learn? Not if I begged you to?”

He pulled the spinning-wheel right in front of her and placed it as if she were to use it then and there. Then he sat down in his chair again.

“Don’t you think you could, Adelheid?”

They looked hard at each other. Then they became timid and shy and dropped their eyes.

They both thought of holding out their hands, but neither could see the other’s. They longed to throw themselves into each other’s arms, but they sat as stiff as statues. Their lips trembled; but they did not look at each other and neither knew anything of the other’s thought.

“I am thinking how very small we look in these big chairs,” he said, at last.

His voice was calm and she grew quite calm at once. It was all over; there was peace in their souls. It was not a reconciliation, for they remembered no quarrel. Their glances rested confidently upon each other.

There was nothing between them and they were friends.

“I wonder if we are inferior to those who sat here before us,” she said. “Different, yes; but inferior?”

They both rose.

“Much inferior,” said Cordt, “and much less happy.”

They crossed the room and went out on the balcony, as was their custom before they went to bed.

The stars of the September night rode in a high sky. Most of the lamps were extinguished and there were but few people in the square. A drunken man was singing far away. The sound of the water falling in the fountain swelled up in the silence.

“How beautiful it is here!” he said.

“Yes.”

“And now the summer nights are over and we have not enjoyed them.”

She laid her head on his shoulder and closed her eyes.

“I do not think that in the whole world there is a square so pretty as this,” he said.

“Oh, yes ... in Florence....”

He sighed and led her into the room:

“We have travelled too much, Adelheid.”

She crossed the floor quickly and opened the door. He remained standing on the balcony.

It had all seethed up in him again. He fought against it, but to no purpose.

“Are you coming, Cordt?”

She was outside in the passage and could not see him.

“Do you go.... I will come presently.”

He forced his voice to be as calm as possible, but it sounded very unnatural in his own ears. He stood quite still and listened. She remained standing for a moment, as though she were considering.

Then she closed the door and went. He could hear that she went hurriedly.

CHAPTER IV

The first snow had fallen and lay fine and white on the balcony, embroidered by the feet of the sparrows.

The red flowers stood indoors, in the warmth, and looked pitiful. And a big table had been placed at the back of the room, with a lamp upon it and a pile of books.

Cordt came early.

He went straight up to the table, sat down and opened a book. Soon after, he stood at the window and looked out.

It was growing dusk. A damp and misty evening, with a thin, reddish light behind the mist and cold feet and dripping roofs. The snow on the square had melted into slush. The fountain was silent, covered with boards and pine-faggots.

He sat down again and read. He stood up, looked at his watch, went to the window, walked up and down the floor and sat down again. He lit a cigar and let it go out. He went away and came back in an hour and began all over again.

A little before midnight, the carriage drove in through the gateway and, five minutes later, Fru Adelheid stood in the room, tall and white, with large eyes.

“Have you enjoyed yourself, Adelheid?”

She could hear that he did not care to know and she did not answer:

“I am freezing,” she said.

She drew her chair close up to the fire, nestled into it and put her feet on the fender.

“They asked after you, Cordt.”

“I daresay.”

He turned over the leaves of his book a little, then closed it and drew his chair beside hers. He sat resting his cheek in his hand and looked tired.

“Do you intend to sit in this room all day, Cordt?”

“No, only in the evening. When I have nothing else to do. I love this room.”

She pressed her hands hard together and closed her eyes.

“I hate it,” she said. “All the unkindness that has come between you and me comes from here.”

He said nothing to this, but rose and went to the table for a cigar. Something went through her as he slammed the lid of the box.

“Are you going with me to-morrow?”

He shook his head.

“Do you want to cut off all our acquaintance, Cordt?”

“No,” he said. “I do not. But I don’t care to go out just now.”

“What do you think our friends will say?”

“Let them say what they like.”

“Don’t you consider how unpleasant it is for me?”

“Oh, yes. But I don’t care to go out at present.”

He lit his cigar at the candle on the mantel-shelf. Then he sat down again and smoked quietly and looked into the fire. She looked at him and sighed.

And, without knowing how it happened and without intending it, she suddenly felt her heart touched and her eyes grew moist:

“Are you not happy, Cordt?”

He looked up and gazed at her:

“No.”

“And it is my fault? Because your wife is a silly woman, who wants to go out every day?”

“You are not that, Adelheid.”

“Because I am an empty, restless, modern creature?”

“You are not that.”

“What am I then, Cordt?”

He took her hand and kissed it and smiled to her:

“You are my wife, Adelheid. And we have a little baby, we two, and perhaps will have another.”

“No,” she said and drew her hand away. “No, Cordt. That was only my nonsense.”

He said nothing. His hand fell down slackly and he turned paler than she could remember ever having seen him. She was afraid that he was ill and stooped over him and called to him.

He did not see her, did not hear her.

She could not take her eyes from him. She thought he could not look more distressed if their boy were dead. She felt it as an appalling shame, that she herself was glad of it; and she dreaded lest he should look at her.

Then he did and read her thoughts.

And she grew worse and worse the more she saw him grieve. She did not understand it, felt troubled by it.

And, as there was no anger in his eyes, it grew worse for her still. She cast about for a word that could make him move and say something, no matter what.

But he sat still and silent and slowly turned his face away from her. And she could find nothing to say.

She rose and went to the window and stood there for a while. Then she came back and sat down in a chair:

“What are you thinking of, Cordt?”

“Of you.”

Again they sat silent.

“Adelheid.”

He spoke her name quite calmly and gently, but she was frightened.

“I will fight for you, Adelheid; I mean to fight for you; and the new little baby would have helped me. Now I shall have to fight alone.”

She remembered vaguely that this phrase had once been uttered between them, but she did not understand him.

“I will stake life and happiness to win you,” he said. “I will talk to you and importune you and conquer you. I will take you in my arms and close my door against you and run after you and forgive you.”

“And, if you don’t win me?”

“I shall win you.”

“But if?”

She looked at his mouth, while she listened for the answer. It came quite calmly; he did not even look at her:

“Then I shall cast you off.”

Fru Adelheid closed her eyes tightly and then opened them wide:

“Better cast me off at once, Cordt. If you can.”

“I can’t. We have the baby. And we are fond of each other.”

“I don’t know,” she said.

“What don’t you know?”

She did not answer, only shook her head.

“You shall have your liberty,” he said. “Go out as much as you please, amuse yourself, fill the house with guests. Be gay and melancholy the whole day long, as your fate decides. Go away, if you feel inclined.”

“And will you never go with me?”

“As little as possible. I will not fight for you out there. I won you there once and I am not afraid for you ... that way. There, in any case, I need not trouble to win you again.”

“And then?”

“Then you will know that you can find me here any evening. Here is where I shall live.”

He rose and walked slowly through the room. Fru Adelheid let herself slip to the floor and lay there with her cheek on the fender and stared before her. She saw him return and stand beside her and go and come back again.

“Cordt,” she said, “I shall never come here.”

“You can do about that as you please.”

He sat down and rested his head on his hand:

“My ancestor well knew what he was doing, when he built this sacred nuptial secret chamber in his rich, new house ... high above the street, far from the day’s work ... and the night’s. He saw deep and far.”

“It is the torture-chamber of the house,” said Fru Adelheid. “I am certain that many women have wept bitterly in here.”

He half rose in his seat and passed his hand over his forehead.

“I am frightened, Cordt. You want to ill-use me. I can’t do what you wish. Shall we talk somewhere else ... in your room, Cordt?”

“No,” he said. “Our place is here. Here we are bound to be.”

He stood up and sat down again at once. His eyes glittered as he spoke:

“Here they all sat, the men who lived in the house and their wives ... in joy and in sorrow. Their faces look at us from every corner, their words whisper all around.... Can you not hear my great-grandmother’s spinning-wheel?... Do you not hear the spinet singing?”

“Yes, Cordt.”

“Here our words become greater and weightier in the stillness. Here we grow more powerful in our affection and our anger. Whatever we can do we can do here. They knew something, those old, big men and women.”

She rose and stood before him, leaning against the mantel, tall and white:

“They knew how to keep discipline in their house,” she said.

She looked at him and there was pride and fear and anger about her red mouth and in her strange eyes.

“That they did,” he said. “God bless them for it in their graves!”

She sat down in the old chair and put her arms around the jar, where the man writhed through thorns. She stared at the man’s face and it was as though she were with him and felt the thorns in her flesh.

“Here also it was that we two bound ourselves to each other for good and all, Adelheid. That evening when we put our names to the old yellow paper there, in the wall. Then you pledged yourself to this room, which you hate. And, when the time comes, our son will come here with the woman who shall be his joy.”

He went out on the balcony and came back, white and wet with snow. He brought the cold in with him and she shivered. He stood silent by the fire and then began to walk about again. She listened to his step and waited for a word and could find nothing to say.

Then she went to the old spinet and sat down and sang:

My Lenore, how dark and drear

The burden of daylight’s bringing!

No music of chiming hours I hear,

No birds in the sunlight singing.

Sweet Lenore, O lady mine,

Bright-eyed, as the day wanes weaker,

Now pledge me deep in the golden wine

Night pours from her fragrant beaker.

The violets watch us, blue in the plain,

Not a star our secret misses.

Kiss me, Lenore, and kiss me again

And give me a thousand kisses

The slender tones sang through the room, when she stopped.

She listened, but could not hear his footstep. He was sitting in one of the big chairs and did not move.

She looked at him for a moment over her shoulder. Then she rose and closed the instrument, with as much noise as she could:

“Good-night, Cordt.”

“Good-night.”

Then she turned very red and very pale and went away with moist and angry eyes.

CHAPTER V

Fru Adelheid was icy cold and had drawn her chair as near the chimney as she could.

It blazed and flared in there; the red glow scorched her face and her white gown. But she kept on adding logs to the fire and could not get warm.

Cordt sat in the other chair reading, with his book on his knees and his head leaning on his hands. The book was a large one, with yellow pages and old-fashioned characters.

Fru Adelheid looked at him despondently. She regretted that she had come up to the room and would have gone away, had she had the strength to. She sighed and looked into the fire with tired eyes.

“Adelheid ... listen.”

He pushed his hair with both hands from his forehead and read:

“But, when the tidings came to Queen Thyre that Olav Trygvasson was dead, she fell into a swoon and lay thus for long. And, when, at the last, she came to herself again, she was so sorrowful that it was pity for those of her house to behold. When the day was over, she went to a monk who dwelled near by and was known in all that land for a holy man. Him she asked if folk who died by their own hands sinned against God’s law; since her lord and husband was dead and she had no more liking for life. But the monk answered and said:

“‘Indeed it is a sin. For God has given us life and will take it back again when He thinks right.’

“Then the queen wept, because she must sin so grievously. But, early the next morning, she came again and asked the holy man how little one was allowed to eat without angering God. And the monk took pity on her and said:

“‘If you eat an apple every day, that will be enough.’

“Then Queen Thyre lay down on her couch and bade all her handmaidens leave her, so that she might be alone with her dule and sorrow, bidding them that one of her maidens, whom she best loved, was to bring her each morning an apple in the golden cup from which she was wont to take her morning draught. And so it fell that, when the maiden came on the morning of the ninth day with the apple in the golden cup, the queen was in Heaven with her husband.”

He closed the book; his lips moved as though he were repeating the words to himself. Fru Adelheid looked thoughtfully into the fire. Then she said:

“It was all very well for those old, dead people. They always had a holy man to whom they could go in their distress.”

But Cordt shook his head.

“You distort the chronicle, Adelheid,” he said. “It was not at all like that. The queen wanted to die and she died. She went to the monk to be released from sin and piously subjected herself to his command.”

“They had God, in those days,” said Fru Adelheid.

“Yes, they had. The old, strong God held them in His hands.”

He rose quickly and stood by the chimney.

“Do you believe in God, Cordt?”

“No,” he answered. “I do not. But I believe that He once existed. And I think that it would be a good thing if He were here now.”

“I think so too.”

He put his foot on the fender and folded his hands over his knee:

“God is somewhere still. And I do not fear His mighty face. If ever I come to look upon it, then I daresay I shall see all that was high and glorious for me in my days, all that made my blood red and my back straight.”

Fru Adelheid smiled:

“Is that the old, strong God, I wonder?”

He glanced at her face, but there was nothing there to rouse his anger. Then he crossed the room and stood beside her again with the same expression in his eyes:

“The old, strong God,” he said. “I myself can do well enough without Him. But I need Him in my house.”

She laid her head back in her chair and laughed:

“Yes, indeed, Cordt. That you certainly do.”

And she kept on laughing and said again:

“Then I daresay that wouldn’t have happened with ... what was his name, who robbed you down below, in the counting-house? Do you think so, Cordt? And then your wife would kiss your hand every morning and ask to know her stern lord’s commands.”

He walked up and down and did not answer.

Fru Adelheid understood that he paid no attention to her sally, because her words were too small for his thoughts and she was displeased with herself and angry with him:

“But, to come back to the story, surely there are also Hagbarth and Signe,” she said. “Not to speak of Romeo and Juliet. And Maria Veczera ... and Elvira Madigan.”

Cordt continued his walk.

“I don’t say anything against it. It is a beautiful story. And perhaps it is true besides. In any case, it is right to place a good example before the young. But, as for Queen Thyre, it surely depends a little upon how long she had been Fru Trygvasson.”

He did not so much as look at her. She felt that she was being treated as a child whom one does not trouble to answer and she worked herself up into a steadily increasing passion and sought for words to wound him:

“Every love passes,” she said. “That we know. It is all very well for those who die first. They show up prettily in history; but there is nothing to prove that they were better than the rest of us.”

Cordt was still walking. Now he stood over by the window and looked out. Then he began to walk again.

“Cordt.”

He stopped before her chair and looked at her.

“Do you know how long King Olav and Queen Thyre were married?”

“What is the point of all this, Adelheid?”

She pushed back her chair and stood up. She was not able to say at once what she wished, but took a step towards him and sat down again and felt quite powerless.

Then there was something in his glance that helped her. And she drew herself up and looked him firmly in the face:

“It means that you are sitting here and growing musty in old books and old stuff and nonsense, while life is taking its course around you. In time, your beard will grow fast to the table and you will never speak a word, except once every ten years, and then it will be so wise and deep that no one will understand it.”

“There is no danger of that, Adelheid,” he said.

“But I don’t want to be Queen Thyre or Signe or any of them,” she said; and her voice was so hard that something gave a wrench inside him. “I want to be the woman I am, the woman you fell in love with and took in your arms. I am not in a book. They will never read about me in the girls’ schools. I have no time to spare for this endless old drab affection beyond the grave. I don’t understand it, I don’t believe in it. I want the wild, red love....”

Cordt had turned his face from her, while she was speaking. Now he looked at her again:

“Haven’t you got it, Adelheid?”

She lay back in her chair and gave him a strange look. He had never seen those eyes before. Veil after veil fell over them, till they were quite dark, and then there suddenly lighted in them a gleam that was gone at the same moment and the veils fell again.

“I do not know,” she said.

She said it so softly that he could only just hear. He listened a moment whether she would say any more.

Then he bowed his head, so that his thick hair fell over his forehead, and threw it back again and turned very pale:

“Indeed?” he said.

He slowly crossed the room to the window and stood with his forehead against the panes. And slowly Fru Adelheid turned her face to him and back again to the fire.

It did not seem to her as though she had said it; and then, the next moment, she heard his quiet answer and saw his face, which was so terribly stern and white. She knew that it was not what she meant to say and she knew that it was true. She felt a bitter remorse at having hurt the man she loved, a senseless despair at not being able to make amends.

Then all this was dissolved in anger that he had led her on to speak like that. And the anger died away in a profound, soft pity for herself.

She saw deeper into her own soul than she had ever done before and turned dizzy with what she saw. She was seized with a wild and curious longing and bent lower over the well. Then it seemed to her as though she were falling and she gripped the arms of the chair so tightly that her knuckles turned white.

And behind the terror was the distant bird, that sang ... a green and golden land, which she had never seen in her dreams....

Cordt stood before her and put out his hand:

“Good-night, Adelheid,” he said.

She sat straight up and looked at him in bewilderment:

“Are you going?” she asked.

“No. But I should like you to go to bed. I shall stay here a little longer and read.”

He sat down and took his book. Fru Adelheid rose slowly and went across the room.

At the door, she stood for a moment and looked at him. His face was very still. It seemed to her as though he were far away. She wondered whether he would look up and say good-night once more. Or only nod.

But he was reading and turning the pages of his book.

CHAPTER VI

The fire in the hearth was nearly out and the candles had burnt quite low. It was quiet in the room and quiet outside.

Cordt sat in his chair. He had been sitting there long and had not stirred, only pondered, with his fingers buried in his hair, and listened for Fru Adelheid’s footsteps.

She was at home, had been at home the whole week. But she had not set foot in the room for the last fortnight.

Cordt looked at his watch. Then he rose and left the room, left the house.

A little later, Fru Adelheid came.

She remained standing at the door, surprised to find the room empty. She called to the balcony, but no one answered. Lingeringly, she went to the window and looked out. There was no one there.

She turned quickly to go. Then the thought came to her of what it had cost her to come up here; and she was annoyed that Cordt was not there. But that was only for a moment; then she was happy again at escaping the encounter. She felt in a lighter mood than she had for many days.

She looked about her curiously. She had never been alone in the room and she seemed not to have seen it properly before.

She stood long in front of the old chairs, lost in contemplation of the strange faces in the woodwork. She pushed them round the floor, placed them opposite each other and beside each other and sat down in them as though to try what it was like. She summoned up in her memory all that she knew about those who had sat in them and amused herself with imagining what one had said and the other.

Then she went to the celestial globe and looked at it. She pressed the spring, so that the stars ran and shone. She looked with delight at the queer plaything and, when the clockwork stopped, set it in motion again.

She pulled out the old spinning-wheel and sat down beside it and set it going. The wheel whirred lustily in the silent room and its whirring put Fru Adelheid in a very cheerful mood. She wished the great-grandmother would come in at the door and praise her for being so industrious.

She rose from the spinning-wheel and stood in the middle of the room and looked round. She thought of an occasion when she had stood in an Indian temple and reflected that she was examining these singular old things just as calmly as she had contemplated the Hindu sanctuary.

It seemed to her as though she were standing in a mortuary chapel, where old and interesting, but foolish ideas and preposterous superstitions stared at her from the sunken faces of mummies. She felt no terror, for she knew that all that was dead and gone and could never return.

Her eyes fell on the light stain on the wall, where the portrait had hung.

“Poor Fru Lykke!” she said, aloud. “You were shut out of the temple, because your husband deceived you.”

And she lifted her arms in the air in jubilant gladness that she was born in gentler times and still lived and felt the warm blood beating in her heart.

Fru Adelheid went round the room and laughed aloud to think how easily she had broken the spell of the old room. She patted the big chairs on their stiff backs and talked kindly to them. She used to hate them; her blood had turned to ice each time she sat in them. Now they were two handsome, valuable chairs and nothing more.

She had torn the veil from the Holy of Holies. There was nothing behind it.

She ran to the window and pulled the curtain aside with a jerk.

There sat the doll ... stiff and stupid.

She laid her face on its waxen cheek and kissed it with her red mouth.

Humming a tune, she sat down to the old spinet. She sought for a hymn that should celebrate her victory over the ghost.

But, when she struck the first notes, she suddenly grew frightened.

She had an uncomfortable feeling that there was some one in the room.

She sprang up, so that the chair upset, and looked around her.

There was no one.

The candles were all burnt out but one and it was dark in every corner. Now the last candle flickered up and struggled a little and went out.

And then there came a treacherous and threatening muttering and whispering all round the room.

People passed over the floor ... many and heavy footsteps. The spinning-wheel whirred, the spinet sang behind her back. The stars ran and shone, the doll rocked at her. The faces in the old chairs raised themselves on their long necks and pecked at her and grinned uncannily.

But the man who writhed through thorns called for help.... She could hear him call. He grew bigger ... he came nearer.... She saw the blood drip from his naked limbs....

Fru Adelheid crept to the door with quivering hands and fearful eyes.

CHAPTER VII

Fru Adelheid laid her hands over Cordt’s book:

“May I talk to you a little? May I tell you something? May I tell you that what you are doing is madness?”

He moved her hands from his book and looked up:

“Sit down, Adelheid,” he said wearily. “Sit down in that chair.”

But she took the book from him and threw it on the floor:

“You are ill, Cordt. You have become ill up here in this dreadful room.”

“Have you a household remedy?” he asked.

“How can you have the heart to make a jest of it?”

“It would be a bitter jest, if it were one,” he said. “But it was not a jest. I believe in the old household remedies.”

Fru Adelheid sat down in her chair and stared helplessly before her:

“Of course you do,” she said. “And in old books and in everything that has ceased to exist.”

He said nothing, but yawned wearily.

“And God shall be set on His throne again and I shall sit at the spinning-wheel and we shall enjoy a blessed married life and be happy ever after.”

Cordt crossed his legs and looked at his nails:

“Yes ... that is my programme,” he said quietly. “Something like that. And you have stated it in your usual affectionate manner.”

“Cordt, how can you have the heart?”

She swung her body to and fro; her hands lay folded in her lap, her eyes were moist. She wanted to say something, but could not, because the tears prevented her. She could not understand that he did not help her. Then she said:

“Things are going badly with us, Cordt.”

And, as he was still silent, she pulled herself together with an effort and spoke with closed eyes, constantly rocking to and fro:

“We must obey the law under which we were born ... must we not, Cordt? After all, we are modern people ... both of us. Tired, empty people, if you like. But we do think and feel otherwise than people did when ... when they were the sort of people whom you like. And we cannot alter ourselves. But we can be as happy as it is possible to be ... nowadays, being what we are. Why should we not be happy, Cordt?”

“I am not happy.”

“Oh, Cordt!”

She pressed her hands together and wrung them and bent over them so that her tears fell upon them. Then she turned her wet face to him and asked, softly:

“Then am I no longer pretty, Cordt?”

He stood up and kissed her white forehead:

“That you are,” he said. “But that won’t help us any longer.”

He began to walk up and down. Fru Adelheid wept hard and silently. A little later, she said:

“You are driving me away from you, Cordt. I do so want to tell you this, while there is still time, if only I could find the right words. Won’t you sit down a little, Cordt? My head aches so.”

He sat down in the chair. Then she rose and put some wood on the fire and sat down again:

“I am so afraid of myself when we talk together, Cordt,” she said. “It is not only that I am wicked and say what I do not mean. I do that, too. But you are so good. And you show me thoughts in my mind which are not there before you utter them. But then they come and I think that you are right and that they have been there always. That is so terrible, Cordt.”

They sat silent. Fru Adelheid closed her eyes; Cordt moved restlessly in his chair:

“Adelheid,” he said.... “You told me that evening....”

“You must not say that ... you must not.”

“Do you remember, you said ... about the wild, red love ... that it was not the love which you have?”

She shook his hand and pressed it:

“That is just it,” she said. “I am grateful to you because you were so good. And because you did not take it ill. But that was not in me, Cordt. I did not know it. But then you said it ... and made me say ... what I said. But then, at that very moment, I understood that it was so. And that made me feel so terribly bad ... as I did. But then I felt a sort of secret joy ... a secret treasure. It seemed to me that I was richer than before. I was no longer afraid of what may come ... for women sometimes think of that, Cordt, while they are young, how empty everything will be, when that is past.”

He listened, with his face turned to the fire.

“I am sure that there is not a man who can understand that,” she said.

And then she lay down on the floor, with her chin on the fender ... and her eyes shone:

“A woman is young for so short a time,” she said. “And she is always dreading that it will pass. Can’t you understand, when she suddenly suspects that there is something greater than the greatest ... and then, when she is sad and afraid ... that then it may suddenly dawn upon her that all is not over yet?”

Cordt laughed:

“It is a poor pleasure to be the greatest when there is something greater still,” he said.

But Fru Adelheid shook her head:

“It’s not like that, Cordt,” she said.

He pushed back his chair and walked up and down many times and it was silent in the room. Then he sat down again beside her and said:

“What you say is true. But it was in you and I am glad I showed it to you. I could not do differently, when I once saw it. I cannot go and wait until another man knocks at the secret door of your heart and offers you the greatest of all.”

She laid her cheek against the fender and looked at him:

“No, Cordt,” she said. “If it is like that, then what I said was not true.”

He waved his hand and shook his head impatiently:

“Not to-day or to-morrow,” he said. “But in a year, or two years, or ten. And, if it does not happen, then it is only an accident.”

Then she moved nearer to him and laid her head on his knee. She looked up to see if he minded. But he was far away in his thoughts and did not notice it.

She suddenly felt peaceful and contented. She was glad that she had got it said. She felt as if it was removed to a distance ... perhaps it was quite gone ... she could not understand why he continued to speak of it.

And what he said about another man seemed so far to her and so impossible. She thought about it as though it concerned somebody else:

“I love you, Cordt,” she said. “And, if, one day, another man came and I loved him ... could I help it?”

He sprang up so suddenly that she had to seize the arm of the chair lest she should fall:

“No,” he said, scornfully. “You could not.”

He rushed through the room and repeated his words three or four times. Fru Adelheid rose from the floor and sat down in her chair and closed her eyes.

“The man who hit upon that excuse did a fine day’s work,” said Cordt. “He drove out of the world a great portion of men’s strength to live their lives.”

He threw himself so violently into his chair that Fru Adelheid started. Then he sat long quiet and she was glad that he was silent.

“Why should one not be able to control one’s heart?” he said, at last. “Suppose I have a wife and child; and my wife is she whom I myself chose. Then, one day, I meet another woman, who rouses my desires. I meet her at a party, where there are lights and wine and music ... we are not ourselves, she and I ... we are in another mood than usual ... everything is done to lead us from the way by which we go on ordinary days. But why should I not be able to step aside, in loyal gratitude for that which I possess?”

She opened her eyes at intervals and closed them again. She heard what he said, but did not realize that he was speaking to her.

“Who is it that placed love outside the laws? If I take it into my head to kill a fellow-creature, there is no doubt but that I am indulging a most criminal fancy. If I have given my word and think of breaking it, I am no gentleman. But my heart may do as it pleases.”

“Yes,” said Fru Adelheid.

She was thinking of nothing when she spoke and he did not hear her.

“There are people, we know, who have the right to send thousands to their death,” he said. “There are people whose passion rises skywards in red flames and devours the poor chattels that stand in its way and lights up all the land. Poets sing about it and a wax taper burns before its image in every human heart. But, if a man plays the Napoleon in the Store Bröndstræde, we hang him ... Why should every second woman be entitled to look upon herself as an Héloïse?”

He sank into his chair and stared before him:

“I am not sure either whether the radiance of the one great flame makes up for the thousand tiny lights that are put out. Does any one know, I wonder? Can any one measure it?”

Fru Adelheid moved and Cordt turned his face to her and looked at her attentively. Her eyes were soft and dreamy; she smiled faintly, like a drowsy child.

“And if that be so,” he said, in a subdued voice, “if it be the case that I am not able to control my heart....” He let his head fall heavily on the arm of the chair. “If it be the case that love makes me happy and confident, so that I build my life and the life of my family upon it ... if it can then expire, without my knowing how or why, and I have to look for the mother of my children in a strange man’s bed, then why do I let my wife go out in the street unveiled? Why do I not lock her up, as the Turk does? Or why do we not kill the mother when the child is born?”

He rose and walked round the room and grew calmer as he walked:

“But it is not so,” he said. “Let the great keep their greatness ... let the poets celebrate them and the puny moderns ape them in their wretched way. And may there always be women who cannot give themselves more than once and men who love them.”

He stood by the fire and looked through the room. It was still on every side; the church-clock struck two.

“See, Adelheid,” he said, “how life passes more and more into law’s domain. Every day, the liberty of the one is taken for an encroachment upon the rights of the other. Every day, land, hitherto free of law, is regulated by law. Flowers beget no flowers without the gardener’s consent; animals no longer select their own mates. But no one can control his heart; and human beings pair like dogs in the street.”

The fire had burnt out when Cordt woke from his musings.

He saw that Fru Adelheid was asleep. He stood before her a long time, sick with compassion for her and for himself.

Then he stroked her gently on the hair:

“It is late ... Adelheid.”

CHAPTER VIII

“I could wish we were not married, Cordt,” said Fru Adelheid.

She laid her arms across her breast and looked at him with deep, dark eyes:

“I could wish I were your mistress. If it meant that, all would be over and done with in the morning. Then there would be no more of this unpleasantness. And no fear, either. And the joys we have would be all the fairer.”

He stood by the fire and played with the keys in his pocket.

“Then your forehead would be smooth and your eyes bright, Cordt, for then you would be making love to me.”

He looked up and said gently:

“Don’t I make love to you, Adelheid?”

She sighed and said nothing. Cordt sat down in his chair and time passed. Then he asked:

“Do you hear what I say, Adelheid?”

“I am longing to hear what you will say next.”

“I read something similar to what you have been saying in a book lately,” he said. “I forget what the book was called. I was looking into it ... just where the author railed against marriage, with its security and its habits and all that. I have read exactly the same thing in a hundred books, I think.”

“Yes ... they all sing the same song,” she replied. “It is not particularly entertaining. But it is true enough, I daresay.”

Cordt struck his hands together lightly:

“It is curious how little imagination the poets have nowadays,” he said. “One would think there were only half a dozen women, whom they have all kissed and married and run away from. I wonder that it never occurs to one of them to glorify custom.”

Cordt pulled his chair forward and sat with his head in his hands and looked into the fire:

“If I were a poet, I would sing a song in honour of sacred custom,” he said.

“Would you, Cordt?”

“Yes, yes ... that I would.”

He laid his head back and listened to the gale whistling in the chimney:

“Now just look, Adelheid, at two people thrown into each other’s arms by the strongest power on earth. For them there exists neither day nor night, neither time nor place. The whole earth is fragrant with violets. Their joy is terror and their terror is full of exultant gladness. Then a child lies in her lap and the light in her eyes is deeper than before. And then the years go by ... there are fewer violets on the earth as the years go by, Adelheid. She bears her children in pain. And the pain sears her cheek. The children have sucked her breast dry; her eyes are weary with the night-watches. The stranger who passes the house sees only the faded woman. But he who drank intoxication from her young eyes and kissed the strength of her bosom ... he does not see it. He has grown accustomed to that woman. She has quenched the longing of his youth and given him peaceful happiness instead.”

He was silent for a while. Then he turned his face towards her:

“He does not live in his first eager longing for the trysting-hour, but confidently seeks his accustomed couch by her side. Custom has gently bound the two people into one family. Is that not beautiful, Adelheid? And good?”

“Yes,” she said. “It is beautiful, as you tell it. But it is not youth.”

“Then what is youth, Adelheid?”

“Youth is not rest.”

“Then one should not marry before one is old,” said Cordt. “For marriage is rest. Deep, powerful, happy ... generating rest.”

“No more one should,” replied Fru Adelheid. “And that is why I could wish I were your mistress.”

She looked at him, as she said this, and he at her.

Then he stood up and laid his hand on the back of her chair and bent close down to her:

“How far estranged from each other we have become!” he said.

And Fru Adelheid nodded sadly and Cordt crossed the room and stood by the fire again:

“In vain I pitch my call in every key,” he said. “It has availed me nothing that my ancestor built this room ... his heirs have borne witness here, generation after generation, to no purpose.”

A gust of wind came and blew the balcony-door open.

Fru Adelheid shuddered and looked that way, while Cordt went and closed it. Then he remained standing by the celestial globe and pressed the spring:

“I so often think of the poor man who placed this toy up here,” he said. “He was a man who could not be content with the circle in which he moved. So he lost his reason and devoted himself to playing with the stars.... For us modern people it is different ... the other way round. We go mad because the circle in which we move is too large. We leave the stars to the babies. We play ball with bigger things. We try a fall with God Himself, if the fancy takes us ... provided that we have not outgrown that plaything too! We dare not speak of love and we smile at marriage. We despise courage and do not believe in honesty and each of us has his own opinion about virtue.”

She heard what he said even as people listen to music when it does not so very much matter if they catch every note.

“Then it happens that we long for a fixed point in our lives ... just one point. Something that cannot be pulled to pieces and discussed. And something that is not past.”

Cordt sat and moved about in his chair and could not settle down:

“If I were to put anything in this room,” he said, “it would be a little tiny house ... from far away in the country. There would be only one door and two windows and it would be evening and the smoke would rise up gently from the chimney. The house would have to be as small as could be; but that would show that there was no room for doubt inside it. Husband and wife would go in and out of the door to the end of their days.”

Now she heard what he said and looked at him.

“That is what my marriage ought to be, Adelheid. If I had had any talent, I daresay it would have been different. Or if I had to work for my bread.... And I am no different from other men of to-day ... no stronger, no braver. I know nothing about God and I have no excessive belief in men.”

He had lowered his voice and spoke without looking at her. But she understood that he was listening for a word from her and her heart wept because she had nothing to say to him.

“My fixed point,” he said.

Then he was silent for a little. But, soon after, he rose and stood with his arm on the back of her chair and spoke again:

“There was also something in what I used to see at home. Father and mother were so kind ... and so strong. I see them before me now, as they used to kiss each other after dinner, however numerous the company might be. And they kissed each other good-morning and good-night until they died. And when father and his brother met in the street, they always kissed ... people used to laugh ... and it was such a pretty habit.”

While he spoke, she sought for an opportunity to interrupt him.

“My family-feeling has always been too strong,” he said. “Until now. And yet ... I once had a sweetheart....”

He stopped. Fru Adelheid sat up and looked at him. Her eyes shone.

“Or a connection, if you like....”

“You never told me about that!” she said.

Cordt raised his head and looked at her and she lowered her eyes.

“There is nothing to tell,” he said.

Then he said no more, but went to the window and stood there.

And Fru Adelheid again felt small and ill at ease in the big old chair.

CHAPTER IX

Cordt stood on the threshold and waited, but then closed the door and went to the fire.

He was in dress-clothes and tired and pale and his eyes were bright with wine. When he had been sitting for a little while, it grew too warm for him and he drew his chair to the balcony-door. There he sat and let his hands play with the red flowers.

Fru Adelheid did not see him when she entered.

She moved slowly and stopped in the middle of the room, when she discovered that he was not by the fireplace. She was surprised at this, but soon forgot it, in her gayety and her lingering excitement at the evening’s entertainment, with her mind full of bright and clever phrases and the lights gleaming in her great eyes.

She sat down to the spinet and laid her forehead against the keys. Something was singing inside her; her foot softly beat the carpet.

Then she sought among the music and sang:

Lenore, my heart is wrung.

Thine is so dauntless, thine is so young.

Tell me, Lenore, the truth confessing

(Which never were mine by guessing):

Whence do thy soul’s fresh fountains pour?

Where the mountains dip or the valleys soar?

Tell me, the truth confessing;

Open to me youth’s door.

Lenore, my heart is sad.

Thine is so constant, thine is so glad.

Teach me thine equable gait to borrow;

Teach me laughter and sorrow.

My heart is a desert, sterile and bare;

My heart is thine: do thou whisper there

Of a fount that shall flood to-morrow,

Of a sun that shall gild God’s air.

She put one hand on the music-sheet and played with the other and hummed the tune again.

Then Cordt clapped his hands in applause. She started and her hand fell heavily on the keyboard:

“How you frightened me, Cordt!”

He came and stood beside the spinet. Fru Adelheid looked at his face and sighed. Then she stood up, put the music away and went and sat in a chair by the fireplace:

“Won’t you come here, Cordt?”

Cordt walked to and fro again and up and down.

“Sit down here for a little,” she said.

“Why should I?” he asked. “You are not here, you know.”

She looked up and met his calm eyes.

“You are still down below, among the crowd of our guests. Don’t you know that, Adelheid? They are all empty carriages that drove out at the gate. For, as each one came to shake hands and say good-bye, you entreated him to stay a little longer.”

Fru Adelheid sighed and crossed her hands in her lap. He stood up by the fireplace so that he could see her face.

“I was sitting over there among the flowers, when you came in, and I saw it all. You entered with a gleam and a rustle, accompanied by the whole throng ... you were the fairest of them all. By your side went Martens, supple and handsome. A long way after came his wife ... the woman who wears those tired eyes and that painful smile. She did not even look to see to whom he was offering his homage.”

She puckered her forehead and looked at him angrily.

“Then he begged you to sing the song once more and they crowded round you and added their entreaties to his. You crossed the floor ... with your slow, sure gait.... You always walk in the same way, Adelheid ... like one who is not to be stopped. Your white dress trailed behind you; there was silence in the room.”

Cordt ceased for a moment. Fru Adelheid laid her head back in the chair and closed her eyes.

“Then you sang ... his song ... the one you were singing a minute ago at the old spinet.... Yes, you heard me applauding, Adelheid. He stood beside you and looked at you ... deferentially, happily. And you looked at him to read in his eyes how charming you were.”

“How wicked you make it all seem!” she said.

Cordt bent over her:

“Look at me, Adelheid.”

She looked at him and was afraid.

“How dare you come up here with your retinue?” he asked. “Up here ... to me ... in this room? Look at me, Adelheid. Is there not room enough in the house besides? Are there not a hundred houses in the town where you can play the game you love?”

Fru Adelheid stretched out her hands to him:

“Cordt!”

But his eyes were large and stern and she could not bear to look into them.

Then she rose and stood before him with bowed head:

“Shall I go, Cordt?” she asked, softly.

He did not answer, but crossed the room. And Fru Adelheid sat down on the edge of the big chair, as if she were not at home in the room.

“Yes ... Martens,” he said.

“You were not at all friendly to him this evening, Cordt.”

She said this in order to say something and without thinking, but regretted it at the same moment and looked at him dejectedly. But he made a gesture with his hand and answered, calmly:

“Indeed I was. As friendly as he could wish and a great deal more so than I feel.”

He stood by the mantel and looked down before him. She took his hand and laid her cheek against it:

“Martens is nothing to me,” she said.

“No,” said Cordt. “Not really. It is not the man ... it is men. It has not gone so far as that. But it has gone farther.”

“I don’t understand you,” she said, sadly.

“It is not a man, a good man or a bad one, that is wooing your heart and has won or is trying to win it. Martens is not my rival. He does not love you and he is not trying to make you believe that he is. He does not lie. That is not called for nowadays, except among the lower classes. With us, we rarely see so much as the shade of a scandal. Whence should we derive the strength that is needed for a rupture, a separation, a flight from society? It’s a soldier that tells his girl that she is his only love ... a journeyman smith that kills his faithless sweetheart ... a farm-girl that drowns herself when her lover jilts her for another.”

He drew away his hand and folded his arms across his chest.

“Martens is no Don Juan. It is not his passion that infatuates women, not his manly courage and strength that wins them. He carries his desires to the back-streets; he takes his meals with his wife. He cannot love. The women become his when he covets them, but he has never belonged to any woman. His eyes, his words, his ditties sing love’s praises with a charming, melancholy languor which no woman can resist. Then he lays his head in her lap and tells her of his perpetual yearnings and his perpetual disappointments. He unbosoms himself to her and begs her not to betray him. Then she loves him. And she is his ... to any extent he pleases.”

She tried to speak; but Cordt shook his head in denial and she sighed and was silent.

“He is no longer young. But that makes no difference. He was never young. His unbounded susceptibility, his eternal readiness make him young in the women’s eyes, as though he were a woman in man’s clothing. His limp sensuousness has permeated every fibre of his body and his soul ... so much so that it affects his every word, look and thought. He is destitute of will and insipid and sickly and untrustworthy. He is never hungry and he is insatiable. He swallows women and spits them out again ... with morbid longings and a despondent temper and a diminished strength to live their lives.”

“Cordt!... Cordt!... What is he to me?... What is he to us?”

He looked at her and was silent for a moment. Then he said:

“Martens tends the garden in which you pluck your flowers. He is the chief gardener. But he is only one of a thousand. In the main, these passion-hunters are all alike. Shall I introduce them to you?”

“No, Cordt.”

“I can do so without hurting the feelings of any of them by mentioning their names,” he said. “You will recognize them all. You will recognize them at once.”

“Cordt!”

But Cordt did not hear.

“You will remember the man of whom we all know that he has many mistresses, even though we can say nothing to his face. He often takes a new one. Then he has one more ... that is all ... for he never lets go the old ones.”

“That will do, Cordt.”

“Then there is the man who tells his fair friends that he has only loved one woman in his life and that is his mother. Have you ever observed the part which the mother plays in these worn-out men’s imaginations? In their books ... in their love ... she is the emblem for their morning head-aches, their impotent compunctions. Her business it is to soothe their worm-eaten thoughts ... they whisper her name while they kiss their lady-loves. I don’t know which is the greater insult: that offered to the mother or to the mistress.”

Fru Adelheid tried to rise, but just then he passed so close to her that she could not move. So she remained sitting, weary and racked, and he went round the room and stopped here and there while he spoke:

“These are the men to whom our wives belong,” he said. “And they do not take them away, so that we can bemoan their loss and get new wives in their stead. They are content to nibble the crest of the tree of love, which we have planted in our garden, and to leave it to stand and thrive as best it can.”

Fru Adelheid stood up before him with moist eyes and quivering lips:

“Cordt!”

But Cordt’s face was white with anger and she could not find a word to say.

“Do I amuse you, Adelheid?” he asked.

She went to her place by the chimney and sat down again:

“You are putting out all my lights,” she said.

He walked across the room and went on talking:

“A man’s honest love goes for nothing, when one of these gentry has laid eyes on his wife. Then he is degraded to the mere husband ... a dull and clumsy person ... the owner of something which he cannot own. Then there awakes in my wife’s mind a longing for something which she does not possess. Her peace has turned into weariness and the love which her marriage offered into an empty custom. She resigns herself. And the silly words of every silly book sing in her ears. She knows that no love endures for ever ... that marriage is odious. Impatient sighs rise up in her soul, embitter her days and sadden her nights. Then she changes the gold of love for small coin and fritters it away, while the lights shine forth and the music strikes up.”

He folded his hands about his neck and stood by her chair and looked before him:

“Adelheid,” he said ... “I cannot understand that the men who occasion this state of things are allowed to go free among us. And we honor them as the most distinguished of mankind. When we see a poor cripple, a shudder comes over us ... am I not right, Adelheid? We are disgusted with a face full of pain. But these lepers beam before our eyes with a radiance and a beauty that know no equal.”

He walked up and down for a while and time passed and there was silence in the room.

Then he sat down in his chair, where it stood by the balcony-door, among the red flowers.

He was tired and closed his eyes. Now and then, he opened them, when a carriage drove across the square or a cry sounded. Then he closed them again and fell into a drowsiness in which everything was present to him and painful.

And then suddenly he started up.

Fru Adelheid was lying before him on the floor, with her cheek against his knee. His hand was wet with her tears.

“Don’t be angry with me, Cordt!”

He looked at her, but said nothing.

“Cordt ... when you speak like that ... it is true ... true for me also.... It is all so good and so beautiful....”

He pushed back his chair and rose to his feet:

“Be very careful what you do, Adelheid,” he said. “I am not a fashionable preacher, working up your nerves and quieting them again ... not a poet, reading his last work to you. I am your husband, calling you to account.”

He crossed the room and then returned and stroked her hair:

“It is beyond our strength, Adelheid,” he said, sorrowfully. “God help us!”

She took his hand and laid it over her eyes, so firmly that it hurt her.

“If the old God were still here, then we could go down on our knees and fold our hands together, as they did who built this room. Would that not be good, Adelheid?”

“Yes.”

“I call upon Him, Adelheid.... And upon everything in the world that is greater than my own power.... And upon the little child downstairs....”

CHAPTER X

Fru Adelheid lay on the floor before her chair and pulled the flowers of her bouquet to pieces. Cordt sat with his head leaning on his hand and looked at the flowers.

“If only you would speak, Cordt.... If only you would ask me something. Why don’t you ask me something?”

“What can I ask you?”

“Ask me what I am thinking about. Why I have come home so early. Why I have not been here for so long.”

“I know all that, Adelheid.”

She crossed her hands on her knee and swayed to and fro and looked at him with dark and angry eyes:

“Is there anything you do not know, Cordt?”

“No.”

“I don’t think so either. You know the right and the wrong of everything between heaven and earth. You are never in doubt and never at a loss. You know at once what is good and what is bad; and then you go away and do what is good.”

He shook his head and said nothing and she grew still more angry:

“You alone know. Whoever does not obey you is lost. There is no room in the house for any but you and those who serve you.”

Cordt bent over her and lifted her up in the chair.

“Be silent for a little, Adelheid,” he said. “And stay quiet for a little.”

But she slipped to the floor again and looked at him defiantly:

“I will not sit in that chair,” she said. “Never again. I am not worthy of the honor. You do not know everything, Cordt. You do not know me.”

He stroked her hair with his two hands and forced her head back:

“Then show yourself to me,” he said.

She released her head and her eyes grew moist:

“You must not be good to me,” she said. “You don’t know me. I am not the woman you think.”

Then she laid her head on the chair and said, softly:

“I am so sad, Cordt.”

“You will be glad again.”

“I daresay,” she said. “But I shall always be sad.”

She took the ruined bouquet and laid it on the chair and her cheek upon it. She closed her eyes. Cordt looked at her—she seemed so tired—and they were long silent. Then she said:

“It is so cold in here.”

And then silence fell upon the room again.

“Cordt!”

Fru Adelheid sat with her back against the chair and stared into the fire with strange eyes:

“Cordt ... do you know ... that sometimes, when I am merriest ... outside ... it is as though I heard little children crying.”

He sat silent.

“I hear little children crying, Cordt. When I am dancing ... and sometimes when I am singing. And at the theatre ... when there are many lights and people and I am happy ... then it comes so often. Then I hear little children crying ... far, far away, but still I can hear them distinctly ... I can never help hearing them ... Cordt ... do you know what it is?”

“Yes, I know, Adelheid.”

Adelheid looked at him and turned her eyes to the fireplace again:

“Sometimes it happens differently,” she said. “When I hear a child crying ... when it is really a child crying ... a strange child, which has nothing to do with me, which I know nothing at all about ... I needn’t even see it, Cordt ... but then I have to cry myself.”

She was silent for a little. Then she turned her face to him and asked:

“Do you know what that is, Cordt?” And he looked at her calmly and said again:

“Yes, I know, Adelheid.”

“I do not know,” she said and shook her head softly. “I love our little boy and love to have him with me. Don’t I, Cordt?”

“Yes.”

“But he is much happier with old Marie. He prefers to be with her. He puts out his little hands to me when I come in. But, when I have had him in my arms for a while, he wants to go back to Marie. He is so small still.”

“Yes.”

“Sometimes he will not kiss me on any account. He always kisses old Marie.”

“When she comes to die, we will put a tombstone on her grave,” he said. “And on the stone we will write, ‘Here lies one whom the children in the house kissed.’”

Fru Adelheid folded her hands behind her neck and looked up at the ceiling:

“At one time, you used to tell me about your mother ... that is long, long ago, Cordt. You talked of her so often, in those days ... why do you never do so now?”

“I think only of you.”

She moved nearer to him and laid her head on his knee:

“May I lie like this, Cordt?”

He stroked her hair and left his hand lying on her shoulder.

“That’s nice,” she said.

Cordt looked at her hair and stroked it again. She closed her eyes and nestled up against him:

“It is so quiet here,” she said. “Now I will go to sleep.”

But then she grew restless again. She half raised herself and lay on her knees, with her hands folded in her lap. Her hair had become undone and slipped down over her shoulders. Her eyes stared into the fire:

“You used to tell me that your mother undressed you every night when you were a little boy,” she said. “And every morning she dressed you ... always.”

“So she did.”

“You said that it so often made her late when she was going to the theatre ... or else she would get up from the table when there were guests. And your father used to be so angry with her.”

He nodded.

“I think your father was right,” she said. “I think it was odd of your mother ... not quite ... not quite natural.”

Cordt pushed the hair from his forehead, but said nothing.

“I could see quite well that you would have me do the same. But I couldn’t do it. I can’t do it as well as old Marie does and I can’t see that that is necessary in order to be a good mother.... Then you also told me that, one evening, when your mother had to go out, you cried without stopping until she came home again.”

“Yes.”

“But, if your mother had been like me and if old Marie had undressed you every night, then it would have been she whom you would have cried for.”

“So it would,” he replied. “But it was good for me and good for herself that it was mother.”

“I don’t understand that,” she said.

But then she raised her head and looked at him with great, proud eyes:

“Yes ... I understand,” she said. “I understand that it is good for a man and gives him confidence to see his wife chained to her baby’s cradle.”

“That is so, Adelheid.”

He looked at her quietly and sadly and her defiance was broken then and there:

“How strangely you say that,” she said. “Cordt....”

Then she laid her head on his knee again and they were silent for a time. Then she said:

“I remember the evening when I was going to my first grown-up ball. A lady came to dress my hair. I was so solemn and the lady so talkative. She told me that I was pretty and that I was sure to be married soon; therefore I must lose no time and dance as much as I could; for, once a girl was married, she had to give up dancing. I asked her what she meant and said that I knew many married women who danced. Then she told me that that was true enough and that there were many fine ladies who did, but then they danced their children dead and therefore it was a great sin.”

He moved in his chair. She raised her head and laid it on his knee again:

“Do you believe that we can dance our children dead, Cordt?”

He did not reply, but stroked her cheek. But she pushed his hand away and turned her face and looked at him:

“Do you believe it, Cordt?”

He nodded.

Then Fru Adelheid rose awkwardly from the floor and stood before him. Slowly, she raised her hands and pressed them against her temples.

Cordt sprang up and took her hands firmly in his own and drew her to him. But she tore herself away and her eyes stared vacantly into his and did not see him.

“Adelheid!”

“Those are your children and mine, Cordt ... the little children who cry when I am merry ... the children who died because their mother danced....”

“Adelheid!”

His voice was very soft and his eyes very gentle. She stared into them and saw a gleam in their depths. She understood that he was rejoicing within himself, because he thought that he had her as he wanted her.

He put out his hands to her and his eyes and his silent, quivering mouth spoke a thousand loving words to her. She stood stiff and cold and looked at him stiffly and coldly.

And, when his hands touched her, she drew from him and pushed her chair far back, as if she could not find room enough:

“You do not understand me,” she said.

She crossed the room to the balcony-door and stood there. Then she came back to the fireplace, where he had sat down, and looked at him as though he were a stranger:

“Those little children who cry,” she said, “what do they cry for?”

He raised his hands and let them fall on the arms of his chair.

“Why do they cry?” she repeated. “Because they have not been brought into a world which is closed to them at the very moment when they see its beauty?... Because they are not born to die?”

She went away again and came back and sat in her chair with a strained expression on her face, as though she had to explain something to one who was slow of comprehension:

“It’s no use,” she said.

Her voice was harsh. She swung her body to and fro and her thoughts hunted for words in which she could say what she wanted in such a way that it would be settled once and for all and could not be misunderstood.

Then her looks fell on Cordt, as he sat there by her side, shattered and tired, with closed eyes and nerveless hands. She saw the pain she was giving him. She wished to undo and repair it and the tears broke out in her:

“Cordt!”

She took his hand and it lay lifeless in hers.

“Can’t you help me?”

“No, Adelheid.”

Then her mood changed about. She pushed herself back in her chair and crossed her arms over her breast:

“Then I must help myself,” she said. “How could you, either, an old ... yes, an old man like you?”

He did not answer, did not stir, did not look at her.

“An old man like you,” she repeated, “who longs for peace and quiet and nothing else. Then you give out that that is the best happiness which is the easiest and the cheapest and the best adapted to domestic use.”

Cordt had raised himself upright in his chair. His hands lay clenched about his knee, his eyes blazed.

“Then you put the woman you love in your mother’s chair ... your grandmother’s and your great-grandmother’s chair....”

He flew up and stood before her with his hands on his hips and his lips pressed close together:

“Hold your tongue!”

Fru Adelheid started and looked at him with frightened eyes:

“You have no right to speak to me like that,” she said.

He sat down again and threw his head back in his chair, with his face turned away from her. She was so tired, could not find the words she wanted, said everything differently and in another tone than that in which she thought it.

And, as he quieted down beside her, she began to think more clearly than usual and it seemed to her that there was nothing to be done but to say her worst. Then she clenched her fists, to give herself strength, and closed her eyes while she spoke:

“You must know things as they are, Cordt. It is all true, as you have seen it and as you have said it. I have lied to you, Cordt. I lied in my words ... I lied every time I came up here and sat with you.”

Now she looked at him. He raised his head with an effort and met her eyes. Then he turned his face away again:

“You are lying now,” he said.

She opened her mouth and closed it again, so that her teeth struck together.

Then she crossed her hands in her lap and bent over them and wept:

“I don’t know that,” she said.

Cordt stood up and walked across the floor, slowly and wearily and without thinking. Fru Adelheid’s tears fell into her lap.

They were in this room, each independent of the other, each without sympathy for the other. Their hearts were dead, their thoughts paralyzed. They were no longer two people who loved each other and who strove to be happy, not even two who were angry or sorry because they were to be parted. They were just two people under sentence of death, whom chance had imprisoned in the same cell, but who had nothing else in common.

Cordt was the first to come to his senses.

He was standing behind her chair and the scent of her hair awakened him. He bowed deeper over her and remembered who she was. He looked at her hands, which were wet with tears, and his heart wept with her.

Then, at that moment, he saw that he must spare his sympathy if he wished to keep her. And, when he saw this, he at once realized that she was lost to him for ever.

He sat down in his chair and sought for the words which he should say. He felt like the actor who has to deliver the last sentence in the play, while the audience is already leaving, because the end of the performance is there and the tension over.

“Adelheid!” he said.

That was all he could say. She understood what was passing within him and was speechless too and wept softly.

And the night sped on.

She was lying on the floor again, where she had lain before, with her cheek upon his knee. She talked ... hastily, by fits and starts, without troubling what she said, as long as she could get it all said.

Cordt leant his head on his hand and his thick hair fell over his forehead. He closed his eyes and opened them again, heard what she said and forgot it again, answered from time to time and knew only that it was over.

“There are other men for me besides yourself ... it is true ... it is all true.... Ah, Cordt, may I say it, wicked as it is?... And you will be kind ... you understand that it is not that ... that it is not infidelity....”

She pressed her hands together and shook her head in despair:

“Yes ... yes ... it is infidelity, Cordt ... it is.... It is, because it’s you ... and because I understand it now. May I tell you, Cordt ... may I?... I love the desire in their eyes.... I am curious about it.... There is nothing in it that insults me.... I am happy in it, I even try to kindle it....”

“Those things are not said to one’s husband, Adelheid.”

She looked at him:

“To whom shall I say them, then?”

“Those things are not said.”

“Ah ... well ... I say them. I will say them. Because you are the man you are. And, also, you asked me about it, Cordt ... you saw it and wanted to save me ... that was why you spoke to me about it, wasn’t it?... I did not know what it was ... now I do know.... I am not lying now ... but I did not know, before you said it. And it is no uglier for me ... it is better for me.... Cordt, Cordt ... it is less ugly so.”

She hid her face in her hands and wept so that she could not speak:

“And it is worse still, Cordt ... it is worse than I have said ... why do you not turn me out?... Ah, if you were only dead, Cordt!... Why should you be so unhappy and why should it be I that make you so? If you cast me away, it will be only what I deserve. For I know that it is you I love.... I know it now as I never knew it before ... you are the man that was destined for me....”

She seized his clothes with her hands and half raised herself, so that her white face was close to his:

“Cordt ... can’t you wait for me?... I am coming....”

Then she released her hold and sank in a heap on the floor:

“No ... no ... I cannot do what you wish.”

He rose to his feet and stood before her and looked into the fire:

“It’s your will that is sick, Adelheid,” he said.

He walked across the room and stood at the balcony-door and looked out. Then he came back and sat in his chair again:

“You know where the great joy lies. And you know that it would be yours and mine, if you could reach it. But you cannot. There is no sense of perspective in your life ... everything to you seems quite close or quite far, quite small or quite big. You are like Martens and the others. You belong to them, because your will is weak, like theirs. You are becoming like them.”

“No, Cordt.”

“Yes, you are like them. You are a woman and you are refined and therefore you dread the mire. But you belong to them. You and I are mortal enemies. If you were she whom my son had chosen for his wife, I should tremble for his happiness. And you had the happiness which you seek ... nay, the happiness that exists. You set the cup to your lips when you were young enough to stand wine and old enough to know that it was good.”

He pushed the hair from his forehead and looked round the room:

“There is nothing more to be said. You are a child of the time and the time claims you as its own. There was no sense in bringing you to the old room.”

“No, Cordt.”

“But you are clever and you are refined and you have seen its great, silent beauty. And, one day, you will see that happiness lay in the land where you were and you sallied forth to find it in distant climes.”

“Yes, Cordt.”

“You will see that, one day. But then it will be too late. Then the years will be gone. Then the strings of the old spinet will be rusted and mute and the spinning-wheel will have fallen to dust and the fire died out in the chimney. Then your fancy will be frightened and bewildered, like the bird that keeps on flapping against the window-pane. Your faith will be lost and your modesty turned to unchastity.”

He rose and went across to the balcony-door. Fru Adelheid lay with her cheek on the fender and with closed eyes.

A silence hung over the room greater than it had ever known before. They both of them felt it and felt it as the silence when pain is dumbed at the approach of death. They no longer fought against the inevitable, against what was stronger than themselves; and they were so tired that they no longer thought of the defeat which they had suffered, but only smiled in the peace which they had won.

And the night sped on.

They were sitting again in the quaint old chairs and looked at the embers that were expiring in the hearth. The candles were nearly burnt out.

They were both of them very gentle and very still. It seemed years since they had last differed. Their faces were calm, their eyes clear and sad, when they looked at each other, but without longing, without anger or bitterness.

And they looked at each other and talked together ... of that which was over.

Their words had lost all sting. He held her hand in his and pressed it as that of a good friend. Once, she pushed his hair from his forehead as she would have done to a child.

“If any one saw us sitting here, he would not understand what has happened to us,” said Cordt.

“No.”

“And, if anyone had heard every word that fell between us in this room, he would perhaps say that we were a pair of simpletons.”

Fru Adelheid shook her head:

“It is well that nothing more has happened to us,” she said.

“I don’t know,” replied Cordt.

Then he let go her hand and drew himself up in his seat:

“Sometimes I think it would be easier if there were an action that had to be forgiven,” he said. “Something to be forgotten. Then it would not be over.”

“It is not over,” she said. “We have missed happiness, because I did not keep the measure by which I should be gauged. But our boy down below lives and he can win a wife who shall sit in the old room with honor.”

“No,” said Cordt. “The secret of the old room is out. It does not suit these times and still less the times to come. Our son shall not see his happiness shattered here.”

And, a little later, he pressed his hand hard to his temples and said so softly that she just heard it:

“For it is hard to decrease one’s own happiness.”

The candles went out ... one after the other.

“It is late, Adelheid,” he said. “We had better go.”

“Yes,” she said.

But neither of them was able to.

They looked at each other and sat steeped in the same thoughts, afraid to end this still night, which was to be followed by bad days.

Then the last candle went out.

Cordt’s lamp still burnt on the table, but it was as though everything in the room was displaced in its glow. There was darkness where light had been before and great shadows on the wall.

They both felt it as something uncanny and involuntarily moved closer together.

“Sing to me, Adelheid,” he said.

She went to the spinet and sat down and looked at the keys.

“Sing the last of the Lenore songs.”

She looked over her shoulder, but could not see the expression on his face.

Then she sang:

When death comes, come, Lenore, too:

Thou wert Life’s beacon rosy-red;

And, by those glad, great eyes shot through,

In that same instant, Death were dead.

So am I never Death’s, but thine;

No tears shed I, nor once complain:

Set only thy red lips to mine

And take thy soul again.

I shall have seen for the last time

The radiant, loving eyes I treasure;

And what of song and what of crime

I wrought let others weigh and measure.

But thou sometimes wilt not forget,

When evening creeps across the pane,

The scent of shy blue violet

That sweetened all the plain.

Cordt was standing behind her chair when the song was finished. She did not perceive it, but sat with her hands on the keys and softly repeated the last lines.

He looked at her hair and her hands and at the white dress that hung over her shoulders and her lap. He knew as he had never known before what he had lost and knew that he would never win it back. His hands trembled, his eyes burned. He thought that he must kill her and himself.

Then he spoke her name.

She looked up and looked at him.

She forgot everything, saw nothing but him. He could see it in her great, strange eyes and in her red mouth.

And she sprang up with a cry of happiness and he took her in his arms and carried her away.

CHAPTER XI

The candles on the mantelpiece were lighted and their gleam fell through the balcony-door over the square, as it had done every evening since the house was built.

Outside, the square shone with a thousand lights. There was a sound of carriages, but at a distance, for the house was thrust a long way back and its walls were as thick as the walls of a castle.

And, when time passed and night came, the noise died away and you could hear the rippling of the fountain, which never begins and never stops, and cries, no one knowing what they are, solitary steps that approach and retreat again.

Cordt stood by the fireplace of the empty room.

He stared at the places where the quaint old things had stood which had seen his race pass through the room.

He remembered every single piece that had been brought there and looked at the empty spot where each had stood. He closed his eyes and saw everything in its place again ... the spinet sang ... Fru Adelheid’s white train rustled over the carpet.

He thought of the man who had built the house and the room and who had called it the soul of the house and its tradition and its secret chamber. Of all those after him who had brought their wives in here ... of the day when he himself stood in the room for the first time.

And he went and opened the secret recess in the wall which hid the old, yellow document on which each of them who took possession of the room had written his name and his wife’s.

He read the report of the builder of the house, with its plain, homely phrases.

And, when he had read it and read it again, he struck out his own name and Fru Adelheid’s and went away and left the door open behind him.

PART II
CORDT’S SON

CHAPTER XII

WHEN Cordt had finished telling the story of the old room, he sat by the window and looked across the square, where the dusk was gathering about the newly-lighted lamps.

The servant entered noiselessly and lit the chandelier and went out noiselessly again. And the light filled the whole of the room and fell upon Cordt, who sat and gazed before him, and upon Finn, who stood by him with his eyes fixed on his face.

But Finn and Cordt were not where the light found them.

They were in the wonderful mystery of the old room. They heard the rippling of the fountain outside in the silent square; they saw the blaze of the red flowers on the balcony. The slender notes of the spinet sounded in their ears; Fru Adelheid’s white gown rustled over the floor.

And, when Cordt turned his face towards his son, he appeared to Finn as a very big, old man; and Finn seemed to Cordt the little child that once lay and laughed in the cradle and fought with its little fat fists.

Then Cordt stood up and took Finn’s arm and they walked to and fro, silent, overcome with what they had seen and afraid lest they should shatter the dream by speaking.

They walked for some time. And, when, at length, they stopped before the window, which was dewed with the heat, so that they could see nothing through it, Cordt remembered that there was still something which Finn ought to know and which he could not ask about.

He looked at Finn and remembered how he had loved his mother.

It was her eyes, but more restful-looking; her mouth, but paler and tired, as though it had tried a thousand times to say something which it never could. He had her slender waist and he was taller than Cordt, but carried his height like a burden. Then he also had Fru Adelheid’s pale cheeks and forehead, but Cordt’s hair, only thicker still and blacker.

“Finn,” said Cordt and laid his hands on his shoulders.

Finn started and could not look at him. But Cordt took him under the chin and lifted his head and looked with a sad smile into his frightened eyes:

“There is only one thing left to tell you, Finn.... Fru Adelheid did not take a lover.”

His smile widened when he saw his son’s sudden and great joy; and he drew him to him and kissed him.

But then he suddenly left him and sat down somewhere in the room, with his back to him. Finn followed him and stood by him for a while and thought kindly and fondly of him and could find nothing to say.

The thoughts rushed through Cordt’s head.

Now that he had lived through it all anew, the scab broke which the silence of many years had placed upon the wound in his will. His eyes grew hard and angry, he wanted to speak as he used to speak when he fought his hopeless fight for Fru Adelheid.

But then his glance fell upon Finn.

He sat as he liked best to sit, with bent head and his hands open upon his knees.

And Cordt grew gentle again and said, softly:

“You are glad, of course. For, you see, she is your mother.”

He crossed the room and came back and stood with his arm over the back of the chair and looked at Finn, who was lost in his thoughts. It was silent in the room and silent outside, for it was Sunday. They could hear the bells ringing for evening service.

“She never secured the red flowers in the place of the blue which she valued so little,” said Cordt, “I don’t know ... I often thought....”

The bells rang out.

There was one that was quite close and one that was farther away, but louder, nevertheless. And there was a sound of distant bells which could not be distinguished from one another, but which sang in the air.

It sounded louder than it was, because they were thinking of it; and the ringing grew and filled the room with its deafening clamor.

Then there came a rumbling in the gateway. The carriage drove out in the soft snow, where they could not hear it.

“That’s Fru Adelheid going to church,” said Cordt.

He sat down by his son and began to talk in a low voice and without looking at him.

The bells rang and then suddenly stopped and increased the silence a hundredfold.

“There was a night at Landeck when the bells caught her, a night following upon a day of sunshine and merriment and many people. She was the gayest of us all and, in the evening, all at once, she became silent and tired, as so often happened, without any cause that I knew of.... You were with us. You were ten years old then; you lay and slept. We had been standing together by your bed and looking at you and she began to cry and I could do nothing but hold her hand in mine and stop speaking.”

Finn listened, as he had just listened to the bells, without making out what the words had to tell him. He only knew that his mother was without blame and that his father had been able to tell it him all on that day and to leave it to him to pronounce judgment between himself and her. His joy at this sang within him and made all the rest easy and light and indifferent.

And Cordt continued:

“Then I went out on the verandah with my cigar and she stood in the doorway and listened to the bell of a little chapel up in the mountains, where we had been during the day. We had heard the story when we were there. Once, in the old days, a pious man had built the chapel in expiation of a sin and, since then, the bell had rung two hours after midnight every day.... She asked whether it would go on ringing till the end of the world and we came to talk of all the bells that ring over the earth, by day and by night, sun up and sun down, and comfort weary mortals.... Sometimes she was silent. But the bell rang up there constantly. And she constantly began to talk again and constantly about the same thing. About the bells that sounded so eternally and so identically over the whole world ... about those who heard them for the first time, one day when they were running like wild heathens in the endless wood ... about those whose will suddenly broke in the midst of the modern crowd, so that they fell on their knees and crept away where the bells summoned them.”

Finn looked up. The words now caught his mind and he woke from his dreams.

“I see her before me still, as she stood on the night when she carried her soul to God. Her strange eyes lifted to the stars ... her white face ... her hands ... and her words, which came so quickly, as though her life depended upon their coming, and so heavily, as though every one of them caused her pain. She never gave it a thought that I was there: she spoke as though she were doing public penance in the church-porch.... And then she declared that it was over.... It had become empty around her and cold and dark to anguish and despair, there where her glad eyes had beamed upon the lights and the crowd of the feast. Despair had come long since and slowly and she had closed her eyes to it and denied it. It had grown and come nearer to her and she had run away from it, as though she were running for her life. Now it was there and reached from earth to heaven, in her, around her, far and wide. And, if the bells could not conquer it, then she must die.”

Cordt spoke so softly that Finn could hardly catch his words.

“Then the bell up there ceased. Soon after, the day dawned and the sun shone on her white, moist cheeks. She was still now and silent, but her thoughts were the same. When things began to stir around us, in the town and at the hotel, she went out, I did not know where, but I daresay she was at the chapel. Towards evening, she returned and, at midnight, we sat on the verandah again and listened to the church-bell.... A week passed thus. I often feared for her reason. She always talked of the same thing and it was almost worse when she was silent. I sent old Hans home with you and, the next day, we left. But it was long before we reached home. She wanted to travel by the same road which we had taken on the journey out. She said she wanted to pray in every church which she had passed on her hunt for happiness through the world.”

Finn half raised himself in his chair:

“And did you?” he asked.

“I did as she wished. It became a pilgrimage to every region where life lies nakedest in its pleasure. Restlessly we travelled from place to place. She omitted none, afraid lest there should remain a single sin which she had not prayed away, a single memory which the bells had not rung into the grave.”

“And then did you come home?”

Cordt looked at his son as if he had forgotten that he was in the room. He suddenly awoke to the consciousness of what lay between those days and these; and his face became so gloomy and his eyes so serious that Finn was frightened.

“Then we came home. And then....”

He rose quickly and stood with his arms crossed on his breast and looked at Finn:

“Then we came home. And the years passed and Fru Adelheid recovered her peace of mind. She found herself again and became the same as in the old days. Her thoughts waver restlessly, her desires yearn insatiably. Her carriage now rattles through the streets as before ... only it stops at the church instead of the theatre.”

Finn wanted to speak, but could not, because Cordt stood in front of him and looked at him fixedly and nodded to him, once, as if to say that he knew what it was and that it was no use.

“She goes to Heaven’s table,” said Cordt, “and Heaven comes to her parties.”

Finn sank back in his chair.

He was surprised and ashamed that he was not grieved with his father for saying that, nor with his mother, if it were true. He knew that he ought to rouse himself to protest or sympathy, but could not, because he understood it all so well.

But Cordt crossed the room with a firm stride:

“Heaven is not what Fru Adelheid thinks, nor where she seeks it,” he said. “Perhaps you will not understand me until you have lived longer in the world; but look here, Finn ... what I have seen of God in my life I have seen most in those who denied Him. In their sense of responsibility, in their humanity ... in their pride I have seen God’s splendor. The others, those who confess His name and fill His house ... they masked Him from me so closely, when they ought to glorify Him, made Him so small, when they praised His might....”

He talked about this for a time. Finn sat dumb and helpless in his chair and wished his father would cease. He felt like one who has inadvertently witnessed something he ought not to see, or like one who is receiving a confidence under a false pretence.

And deep down within him lay a little ironical astonishment at the fire and authority with which his father was talking.

But, at that moment, Cordt sat down in front of him with both his hands in his own and sad and gentle eyes and words as soft and humble as though he were a sinner begging for peace:

“I don’t know, Finn. I cannot really tell you anything about it. I can never talk with you about these things. A father is a poor creature, Finn, and I am a poor father. I cannot tell you that the forest is green and that the birds sing and that there is nothing behind the blue sky. I dare not, Finn. I do not think I have the right to. I cannot go to church with you, either ... nor even be glad when you go with your mother.”

He pressed Finn’s hands nervously. They lay dead in his and Finn did not know what to do with his eyes.

“But I must talk to you a little ... just this once ... to-day, when I have confessed to you and made up your parents’ accounts. If you will try to understand me ... and to forgive me ... to forgive us, because we are not so rich as our child could expect ... since we have a child.... You love the bells, Finn. When they ring, you fall a-dreaming; they ring you far away from where you are. You were like that ever since you were a little boy. And I can well understand it. I love them, too. I am glad because they are there. But ... Finn ... Finn, there are so many bells in the world besides those which summon us to church. Every man has his own, which are his and his only ... which he alone can hear, which call no one but him. There are men, opulent, charming men, for whom the bells ring wherever they set foot. They lead more powerful lives than we and prouder lives. They suffer us ... those of us who love them. But there is not in the world a man so small but that the bells call him. One has them in his work, Finn. And one in his child ... and one in his love. For one they hang in a neat little room where his mother lives and where he can only come for an hour, perhaps ... on a Sunday.... It is not the same for the one as for the other, Finn, but the bells are there always. They call their man back when he has strayed from the way he should go, or, if that is too late, they ring for his remorse. They ring to the banquet and they ring their music when he is tired and sad.... But the church-bells ... they ring for the man whose ears life has deafened ... and life makes such a terrible noise. They ring on Sundays to remind us of that which we have forgotten throughout the week.... And it is well that they are there.... But ... Finn ... it is so tragic when the church-bells drive and tumble people together who once had each his own sacred church. It is just as when a home breaks up and the old find a refuge in the workhouse. The sun shines through the windows and it is warm indoors and there are flowers in the casement. But there was once something that was better.... For your mother and me, Finn ... for us the bells used to ring in the old room.”