But he would cry desperately, as he had already done, because he had not loved her long before; he would cry for the lost years when she had lived beside him as his friend and comrade and he had not understood that she was the woman who should have been his wife. And never would the day dawn when he would wish he had not understood, even if only to see that it was too late.
Gunnar rose from his knees. He took a small box from his pocket and opened it. One of Jenny’s pink crystal beads was in it. He had found it in the drawer of her dressing-table when he packed up her belongings; the string had broken and he kept one of the beads. He took some earth from the grave and put it in the box. The bead rolled about in it and was covered with grey dust, but the clear rose colour showed through and the fine rents in the crystal glittered in the sun.
He had sent all her possessions to her mother, except the letters, which he had burnt. The child’s clothes were in a sealed cardboard box. He sent it to Francesca, remembering that Jenny had said one day she would give them to her.
He had looked through all her sketchbooks and drawings before packing them and carefully cut out the leaves with the picture of the boy, hiding them in his pocketbook. They were his—all that was hers alone was his.
On the plain grew some purple anemones; he rose mechanically to pick them. Oh, springtime!
He remembered a spring day two years ago when he had been in Norway. He had been given a cart and a red mare at the posting station; the owner was an old schoolfellow of his. It was a sunny day in March; the meadows were yellow with withered grass, and the dung-heaps over the ploughed fields shone like pale brown velvet. They drove past the familiar farms with yellow, grey, and red houses and apple yards and lilac bushes. The forest all round was olive green, with a purple tint on the birch twigs, and the air was full that day with the chirping of invisible birds.
Two little fair-haired children were walking in the road, carrying a can. “Where are you going, little ones?”
They stopped, looking suspiciously at him.
“Taking food to father?”
They assented hesitatingly—a little astonished that a strange gentleman should know it.
“Climb up here and I’ll give you a ride.” He helped them into the cart. “Where is father working?”
“At Brusted.”
“That’s over beyond the school, is it not?”
Thus went the conversation. A stupid, ignorant man asking and asking, as grown-up people always talk to children, and the little ones, who have such a lot of wisdom, consult each other quietly with their eyes, giving sparingly of it—as much as they think convenient.
Hand in hand they walked along beside a rushing brook when he put them down, and he turned his horse in the direction he wanted to go.
There was a prayer meeting that evening at his home. His sister Ingeborg was sitting by the old corner cupboard, following with a pale, ecstatic face and shining steel-blue eyes a shoemaker, who spoke of spiritual grace; then suddenly she rose herself to bear witness.
His pretty, smart sister who once had been so fond of dancing and merriment. She loved to read and to learn; when he had got work in town he sent her books and pamphlets and the Social Democrat twice a week. At thirty she was “saved,” and now she “spoke in tongues.”
She had bestowed all her love on her nephew Anders and a little girl they had with them—an illegitimate child from Christiania. With sparkling eyes she told them about Jesus, the children’s Friend.
The next day it was snowing; he had promised to take the children to a cinema in the small neighbouring town, and they had to walk a couple of miles in the melting snow, leaving black footprints behind. He tried to talk to the children, asking questions and receiving guarded answers.
But on the way back the children were the inquisitive ones, and, flattered, he gave frank and detailed answers, anxious to give them proper information about the films they had seen—of cowboys in Arizona and coconut harvest in the Philippines. And he tried his best to tell them properly and answer without ever being at a loss.
Oh, springtime!
It was on a spring day he had gone to Viterbo with Jenny and Francesca. Dressed in black, she had been sitting by the window looking out with eyes so big and grey—he remembered it well.
The stormy clouds sent showers over the brown plains of the Campagna, where there were no ruins for the tourists to go and see, only a crumbled wall here and there and a farm with two pines and some pointed straw-stacks near the house. The pigs herded together in the valley, where some trees grew beside a stream. The train sped between hills and oak woods where white and blue anemones and yellow primroses grew among the faded leaves. She said she wanted to get out to pick them, gather them in the falling rain among the dripping leaves under the wet branches. “This is like spring at home,” she said.
It had been snowing; some of the snow was still lying grey in the ditches, and the flowers were wet and heavy, with petals stuck together.
Little rivulets rushed down the crevices, vanishing under the railway line. A shower beat against the window and drove the smoke to earth.
Then it cleared over valleys and grove, and the water streamed down the sides of the hills.
He had had some of his things in one of the girls’ boxes. When he remembered it in the evening they had already begun to undress and were laughing and chatting when he
