“I’ll tell you what I think. I don’t believe that Jenny really is so strong and independent. She’s only been forced to be. At home she had to help and support, and there was nobody to support her. She had to take care of me, because I needed her—now it is Gram. She is strong and determined, and she knows it, and nobody asks her in vain for help, but nobody can go on forever giving help and never getting any themselves. Don’t you see that it will make her very lonely, always being the strongest? She is lonely now, and if she marries that fellow she will never be anything else. We all talk to her about ourselves, and she has nobody she could talk to in the same way. She ought to have a husband she could look up to, whose authority she should feel, one to whom she could say: This is how I have lived and worked and fought, for I thought it right, and who could judge if it was right? Gram cannot, because he is her inferior. How can she know if she has been in the right, when she has nobody with authority to confirm it? Jenny should ask, ‘Is it not?’ and ‘Don’t you think?’—not he.”
They sat both quiet a while, then Heggen said:
“It is rather curious, Cesca, that when it is a question of your own affairs you cannot make head or tail of it, but when it concerns somebody else, I think you often can see clearer than any of us.”
“Perhaps. That is why I think sometimes I ought to go into a convent. When I am outside a trouble I seem to understand it all, but when I am mixed up in it myself I can’t see a thing.”
XI
The juicy, blue-grey giant leaves of the cactus were scarred by names, initials, and hearts carved in the flesh. Helge was carving an H and a J, and Jenny stood with her arms round his shoulder, looking on.
“When we come back here our initials will be a brown scar like all the others,” said he. “Do you think we shall be able to find them?”
She nodded.
“Among all the others?” he inquired in doubt. “There are so many. We will go and look for them, won’t we?”
“Of course we will.”
“You do think we shall come back here, don’t you? And stand as we are now.” He put his arm round her.
“Yes; I don’t see why we should not, dear.”
With arms encircled they went to the table and sat down, looking in silence out over the Campagna.
The sunlight seemed to move and the shadows wandered along the hillocks. Sometimes the rays came in thick bunches between white clouds, sailing in the sky. On the horizon, where the dark eucalyptus grove by the Fontane peeped over the farthest hill, rose a pearl-yellow haze, which would grow towards evening and cover the whole sky.
Far on the plain the Tiber hurried to the sea, golden when the sunshine fell on it, but silvery grey like the side of a fish when it mirrored the clouds. The daisies on the hill looked like new-fallen snow; on the field behind the osteria pale-grey, silky wheat was coming up, and two almond trees were covered with light pink blossoms.
“Our last day in the Campagna,” said Helge. “It’s quite sad!”
“Till next time,” she said, kissing him and trying not to give in to her own sad mood.
“Yes. Have you thought of it, Jenny, that when we sit here again it cannot be exactly the same as now? One changes day by day; we shall not be the same when we sit here again. Next year—next spring—is not this spring?—we shall not be the same either. We may be just as fond of one another, but not exactly in the same way as now.”
Jenny shivered: “A woman would never say that, Helge.”
“You think it strange that I should say it? I cannot help thinking it, because these months have made such a change in me—and in you, too. Don’t you remember, you told me on that first morning how different you are now from the time you first came here? You could not have been fond of me as I was when we first met—could you, now?”
She stroked his cheek: “But, Helge, dear boy, the great change is just that we have got so fond of one another, and our love will ever increase. If we change, it will be only because our love has grown, and that is nothing to be afraid of, is it? Do you remember the day at Via Cassia—my birthday—when the first fine threads between us were spun? They have grown stronger now, and grow stronger every day. Is there anything in that to make you afraid?”
He kissed her neck: “You are leaving tomorrow. …”
“And you are coming to me in six weeks.”
“Yes; but we are not here. We cannot go about in the Campagna. We have to leave in the midst of spring.”
“It is spring at home too—and larks are singing there as well. Look at those driving clouds—just like those at home. Think of Nordmarken. We shall go there together. Spring is lovely at home, with strips of melting snow on all the hills round the deep blue fjords, the last runs on ski when the snow is melting and the brooks are rushing down the mountainside; when the sky is green and clear at night with large, bright golden stars, and the ski scrape and sing on the icy crust of the snow. We may be able to go there together yet this spring.”
“Yes, yes—but I have been to all these places—Vester Aker, Nordmarken—so often alone that I dread them. It seems to me almost as if fragments of my old discarded souls were hanging on every shrub up there.”
“Hush, hush, dear. I
