They gleam white under dark cypresses and among the winter bloom of the viburnum; early roses strew their petals over many of them, and often the ground at their base is blue with violets, but over every mound and every stone creep the glossy-leaved vines of the gentle periwinkle, Rousseau’s favorite flower, sky blue as never a sky was blue.
IX
Niels Lyhne hurried home. He could not bear his loneliness among so many strangers, but the nearer he came to Copenhagen, the oftener he asked himself what he wanted there, and the more he regretted that he had not stayed abroad. For whom did he have in Copenhagen? Not Frithjof, and Erik was travelling in Italy on a scholarship, so he was not there. Mrs. Boye? It was a queer affair, this relation with Mrs. Boye. Now that he came straight from his mother’s grave, it seemed to him, not exactly a desecration or anything like that, and yet out of tune with the key in which his present moods were pitched. It was a discord. If he had been going to meet his fiancée, his young blushing bride, now that his soul had so long been bent on filial duties, it would not have conflicted with his feeling. It was of no use that he tried to take a superior tone with himself and call the change in his conception of his intimacy with Mrs. Boye Philistine and provincial. The word “Bohemian” formed itself subconsciously as an expression of a distaste that he could not reason away, and it was in line with this mood that his first visit, after he had engaged his old rooms at the embankment, was to the Neergaards and not to Mrs. Boye.
The following day he called on her, but did not find her in. The janitor said she had taken a villa at Emiliekilde, which surprised Niels, for he knew that her father’s country house was in that neighborhood.
Well, he would have to go out there in a day or two.
But the very next day he received a note from Mrs. Boye asking him to meet her in her apartment in town. The pale niece had seen him in the street. A quarter before one he was to come—he must come. She would tell him why, if he did not know it. Did he know it? He must not misjudge her, and not be unreasonable. He knew her too well, and why should he take it as a plebeian nature would? He must not—please! After all, they were not like other people. Oh, if he only would understand her! Niels, Niels!
This letter made him strangely excited, and he suddenly remembered with a sense of uneasiness that Mrs. Neergaard had looked at him with a sarcastic pitying expression and had smiled and said nothing in a curious meaning way. What could it be? What in the world could have happened?
The mood that had kept him away from Mrs. Boye had vanished so completely that he could not understand how he had ever felt it. He was alarmed. If they had only written to each other like sensible people! Why had they not written? He certainly had not been so busy. It was queer how he would allow himself to be so absorbed in the place where he happened to be that he forgot what was far away, or if he did not forget it, at least pushed it into the distant background, where it was buried by the present—as under mountains. No one would think he had imagination.
At last! Mrs. Boye herself opened the door to the anteroom before he had time to ring. She said nothing, but gave him her hand in a long, sympathetic clasp; the newspapers had announced his bereavement. Niels said nothing either, and so they walked silently through the parlor, between the two rows of chairs in red-striped covers. The chandelier was wrapped in paper, and the windowpanes were whitened. In the sitting-room everything was as usual, except that the Venetian blinds were rolled down before the opened windows, and as they moved to and fro in the slight breeze, they struck the casement with a faint, monotonous tapping. Rays of light reflected from the sunlit canal outside filtered in between the yellow slats and made squares of tremulous wavy lines in the ceiling, which quivered with the rippling of the waves outside. Otherwise all was hushed and still, silently waiting with bated breath. …
Mrs. Boye could not make up her mind where she wanted to sit: finally she decided on the rocking-chair, and dusted it assiduously with her handkerchief, but instead of sitting down she stood behind the chair, resting her hands on its back. She still wore her gloves and had only drawn one arm out of her half-fitting black mantilla. Her dress was of silk tartan in a very tiny check matching the broad ribbons on the wide, round Pamela hat of light straw which half hid her face as she stood looking down and rocking the chair nervously.
Niels seated himself on the piano-stool at a distance from her, as if he expected something unpleasant.
“Then you know it, Niels?”
“No, but what is it I don’t know?”
The chair stopped. “I am engaged.”
“Are you engaged? But how—why—Mrs. Boye?”
“Oh, don’t call me Mrs. Boye, and don’t begin to be unreasonable right away!” She leaned against the back of the rocking-chair with a little air of defiance. “Surely you can understand that it isn’t the pleasantest thing in the world for me to stand here and explain to you. I will do it, but you might at least help me.”
“What do you mean? Are you engaged, or are you not?”
“I have just told you that I am,” she replied with gentle impatience, looking up.
“Then may I be allowed to wish you joy, Mrs. Boye,
