She was still sleeping.
The fumes of the vinegar and the vanilla scent of the heliotrope, mingling in a pungent odor like wine, filled the room. Warmed by their breath, the air covered the gray windowpanes with a dewy film, which grew denser with the increasing coolness of the evening.
By this time, he was far away in memories and dreams, though a part of his consciousness still watched over the sleeper and followed her sleep. Gradually, as the darkness pressed in, his fancy wearied of feeding these dreams that flickered up and died down, just as the soil gets tired of bringing forth the same crop again and again; and the dreams grew feebler, more sterile, and stiffer, losing the luxuriant details that had entwined them like long shoots of clinging vines. His thoughts left the distance and came homing back.—How quiet everything was! Was it not as if they were together, he and she, on an island of silence rising above the monotonous sea of sound made by the soft patter of the rain? And their souls were still, calm and safe, while the future seemed to slumber in a cradle of peace.
Would that it might never awaken, and that all might remain as now—no more happiness than that of peace, but neither any misery nor irking unrest! Would that the present might close as a bud closes around itself, and that no spring would follow!
Fennimore called. She had been lying awake for some time, too happy in being free from pain to think of speaking. Now she wanted to get up and light the lamp, but Niels continued to act as physician, and compelled her to lie still. It was not good for her to get up yet; he had matches and could easily find the lamp.
When he had lit it, he put it on the flower stand in the corner, where its milky white globe shone softly veiled by the delicate, slumbering leaves of an acacia. The room was just light enough so that they could see each other’s face.
He sat down in front of her, and they spoke about the rain and said how lucky it was that Erik had taken his raincoat, and how wet poor Trine would be. Then their conversation came to a standstill.
Fennimore’s thoughts were not quite awake yet, and in her weakness it seemed pleasant to lie thus musing without speaking. Nor was Niels inclined to talk, for he was still under the spell of the afternoon’s long silence.
“Do you like this house?” Fennimore asked at last.
“Why yes, fairly well.”
“Really? Do you remember the furniture at home?”
“At Fjordby? Yes indeed, perfectly.”
“You don’t know how I love it, and how I long for it sometimes. The things we have here don’t belong to us—they are only rented—and have no association with anything, and we are not going to live with them any longer than we stay in this place. You may think it queer, but I assure you, I often feel lonely here among all these strange pieces of furniture that stand around here so indifferent and stupid and take me for what I am without caring the least bit about me. And as I know they are not going with me—that they will just stay here and be rented by other people—I can’t get fond of them or interested in them as I should if I knew that my home would always be theirs, and that whatever came to me of good or ill would come in the midst of them. Do you think it childish? Perhaps it is, but I can’t help it.”
“I don’t know what it is, but I have felt it too. When I was left alone abroad, my watch stopped, and when it came back from the watchmaker and was going as before, it was—just what you mean. I liked the feeling; there was something peculiar about it, something genuinely good.”
“Yes indeed! Oh, I should have kissed it, if I had been you.”
“Would you?”
“Do you know,” she said suddenly, “you have never told me anything about Erik as a boy? What was he like?”
“Everything that is good and fine, Fennimore. Splendid, brave—a boy’s ideal of a boy, not exactly a mother’s or a teacher’s ideal, but the other, which is so much better.”
“How did you get along together? Were you very fond of each other?”
“Yes, I was in love with him, and he didn’t mind—that is about how it was. We were very different. I always wanted to be a poet and become famous, but what do you suppose he said he wanted to be, one day when I asked him?—An Indian, a real red Indian with war paint and all the rest! I remember that I couldn’t understand it at all. It was incomprehensible to me how anyone could want to be a savage—civilized creature that I was!”
“But was it not strange, then, that he should become an artist?” said Fennimore, and there was something cold and hostile in her tone, as she asked.
Niels noticed it with a little start. “Not at all,” he answered; “it is really rare that people become artists with the whole of their nature. And such strong fellows overflowing with vitality like Erik often have an unutterable longing for what is fine-grained and delicate: for an exquisite virginal coldness, a lofty sweetness—I hardly know how to express it. Outwardly they may be robust and full-blooded enough, even coarse, and no one suspects what strange, romantic, sentimental secrets they carry about with them, because they are so bashful—spiritually bashful, I mean—that no pale little maiden can be more shy about her soul than are these big, hard-stepping menfolks. Don’t you understand, Fennimore, that such a secret, which can’t be told in plain words right out in common everyday air, may dispose a man to be an artist? And they can’t express it in words, they simply can’t; we have to believe that it is there and lives
