Suppose, after all, that he was standing on the opposite shore this very moment, fastening on his skates. He could be here in an instant! She saw him plainly, a little bit out of breath after skating, and blinking with his eyes against the light on coming from the darkness outside. He would bring a breath of cold air, and his beard would be full of tiny little bright drops. Then he would say—what would he say?
She smiled and glanced down at herself.
And still the moon did not appear.
She went over to the window again and stood gazing out, till the darkness seemed to be filled before her eyes with tiny white sparks and rainbow-colored rings. But they were only a vague glimmer. She wished they would be transformed into fireworks out there, rockets shooting up in long, long curves and then turning to tiny snakes that bored their way into the sky and died in a flicker; or into a great, huge pale ball that hung tremulous in the sky and slowly sank down in a rain of myriad-colored stars. Look! Look! Soft and rounded like a curtsy, like a golden rain that curtsied.—Farewell! Farewell! There went the last one.—Oh dear, if he would only come! She did not want to play—and at that she turned to the piano, struck an octave harshly, and held the keys down till the tones had quite died away, then did the same again, and again, and yet again. She did not want to play, did not want to.—She would rather dance! For a moment she closed her eyes, and in imagination she felt herself whirling through a vast hall of red and white and gold. How delicious it would be to have danced and to be hot and tired and drink champagne! Suddenly she remembered how she and a school friend had concocted champagne from soda water and eau de cologne, and how sick it had made them when they drank it.
She straightened herself and walked across the room, instinctively smoothing her dress as after a dance.
“And now let us be sensible!” she said, took her embroidery and settled herself in a large armchair near the lamp.
Yet she did not work; her hands sank down into her lap, and soon she snuggled down into the chair with little lazy movements, fitting herself into its curves, her face resting on her hand, her dress wrapped around her feet.
She wondered curiously whether other wives were like her, whether they had made a mistake and been unhappy and then had loved someone else. She passed in review the ladies at home in Fjordby, one by one. Then she thought of Mrs. Boye. Niels had told her about Mrs. Boye, and she had always been a tantalizing riddle to her—this woman whom she hated and felt humiliated by.
Erik, too, had once told her that he had been madly in love with Mrs. Boye.
Ah, if one could know everything about her!
She laughed at the thought of Mrs. Boye’s new husband.
All the time, while her thoughts were thus engaged, she was longing and listening for Niels, and imagined him coming, always coming out there on the ice. She little guessed that for the last two hours a tiny black dot had been working its way over the snowy meadows with a message for her very different from the one she was expecting from across the fjord. It was only a man in homespun and greased boots, and now he tapped on the kitchen window, frightening the maid.
It was a letter, Trine said when she came in to her mistress. Fennimore took it. It was a telegram. Quietly she gave the maid the receipt and dismissed her; she was not in the least alarmed, for Erik of late had often telegraphed that he would bring one or two guests home with him the following day.
Then she read.
Suddenly she turned white and darted wildly from her seat out into the middle of the room, staring at the door with expectant terror.
She would not let it come into the house, did not dare to, and with one bound she threw herself against the door, pressing her shoulder against it, and turned the key till it cut her hand. But it would not turn, no matter how hard she tried. Her hand dropped. Then she remembered that the thing was not here at all—it was far away from her in a strange house.
She began to shake, her knees would no longer support her, and she slid along the door to the floor.
Erik was dead. The horses had run away, had overturned the carriage at a street corner, and hurled Erik with his head against the wall. His skull had been fractured, and now he lay dead at Aalborg. That was the way it had happened, and most of this story was told in the telegram. No one had been with him in the carriage except the white-necked tutor known as the Arab. It was he who had telegraphed.
She crouched on the floor moaning feebly, both palms spread out on the carpet, her eyes staring with a fixed, empty look, as she swayed helplessly to and fro.
Only a moment ago everything had been light and fragrance around her, and, however much she tried, she could not instantly put all this out of her consciousness to admit the inky black night of grief and remorse. It was not her fault that her mind was still haunted by fitful, dazzling gleams of love’s happiness and love’s pleasure;
