At last she could contain herself no longer.
“Don’t forget what you were going to say,” she exclaimed, “but I implore you, Mr. Lyhne, stop doing that with your hand—that gesture as if you were pulling teeth! Please do, and don’t let me interrupt you! Now I am all attention again, and I quite agree with you.”
“But then it’s of no use to say any more.”
“Why not?”
“When we agree?”
“When we agree!”
Neither of them meant anything in particular by these last words, but they said them in a significant tone, as if a world of delicate meanings were hidden in them, and looked at each other with a subtle smile, like an afterglow of the wit that had just flashed between them, while each wondered what the other meant and felt slightly annoyed at being so slow of comprehension.
They strolled back to the other end of the room, and Mrs. Boye took her seat on the low chair again.
Erik and Frithjof had talked till they were beginning to be bored with each other and were glad to be joined by the others. Frithjof approached Mrs. Boye and made himself agreeable, while Erik, with the modesty of the host, kept himself in the background.
“If I were curious,” said Frithjof, “I should inquire what the book was that made you and Refstrup quarrel just as we were coming in.”
“Do you inquire?”
“I do.”
“Ergo?”
“Ergo!” replied Frithjof with a humble, acquiescent bow.
She held up the book and solemnly announced: “Helge, Oehlenschläger’s Helge.—And what canto? It was ‘The Mermaid visits King Helge.’—And what verse? It was the lines telling of how Tangkjær lay down by Helge’s side, and how he couldn’t control his curiosity any longer, but turned
—and at his side,
With white arms soft and round,
The greatest beauty he espied
That e’er on earth was found.The maid had doffed her cloak of gray;
Her lovely limbs were bare,
Save for the robe like silver spray
That veiled her form so fair.
That is all he allows us to see of the mermaid’s charms, and that is what I am dissatisfied with. I want a luxuriant, glowing picture there; I want to see something so dazzling that it takes my breath away. I want to be initiated into the mysterious beauty of such a mermaid body, and I ask of you, what can I make of lovely limbs with a piece of gauze spread over them? Good heavens! No, she should have been naked as a wave and with the wild lure of the sea about her. Her skin should have had something of the phosphorescence of the summer ocean and her hair something of the black, tangled horror of the seaweed. Am I not right? Yes, and a thousand tints of the water should come and go in the changeful glitter of her eyes. Her pale breast must be cool with a voluptuous coolness, and her limbs have the flowing lines of the waves. The power of the maelstrom must be in her kiss, and the yielding softness of the foam in the embrace of her arms.”
She had talked herself into a glow, and stood there still animated by her theme, looking at her young listeners with large, inquiring child-eyes.
But they said nothing. Niels had flushed scarlet, and Erik looked extremely embarrassed. Frithjof was absolutely carried away and stared at her with the most open admiration, though of the three he was the one least aware how entrancingly beautiful she was, as she stood there with the glamor of her words about her.
Not many weeks had passed before Niels and Frithjof were as constant visitors in Mrs. Boye’s home as Erik Refstrup. Besides her pale niece, they met a great many young people, coming poets, painters, actors, and architects, all artists by virtue of their youth rather than their talent, all full of hope, valiant, lusting for battle, and easily moved to enthusiasm. It is true, there were among them some of those quiet dreamers who bleat wistfully toward the faded ideals of the past; but most of them were full of ideas that were modern at the time, drunk with the theories of modernity, wild with its powers, dazzled by its clear morning light. They were modern, belligerently modern, modern to excess, and perhaps not least because in their inmost hearts there was a strange, instinctive longing which had to be stifled, a longing which the new spirit could not satisfy—worldwide, all-embracing, all-powerful, and all-enlightening though it was.
But, for all that, the exultation of the storm was in their young souls. They had faith in the light of the great stars of thought; they had hope fathomless as the ocean. Enthusiasm bore them on the wings of the eagle, and their hearts expanded with the courage of thousands.
No doubt life would in time wear it all out, lull most of it to sleep; worldly wisdom would break down much, and cowardice would sweep away the rest—but what of it? The time that has gone with happiness does not come back with grief, and nothing the future may bring can wither a day or wipe out an hour in the life that has been lived.
To Niels the world, in those days, began to wear a different aspect. He heard his own vaguest, most secret thoughts loudly proclaimed by ten different mouths. He saw his own unique ideas, which to him had been a misty landscape, with lines blurred by fog, with unknown depths and muted notes—he saw this landscape unveiled in the bright, clear, sharp colors of day, revealed in every detail, furrowed everywhere by roads, and with people swarming on the roads. There was something strangely unreal in the very fact that the creations of his fancy had become so real.
He was no longer a lonely child-king, reigning over lands that his own dreams had conjured up. No, he was one of a crowd, a man in an army, a soldier in the service of modern ideas. A sword
