雙語·老屋子 第七章

Chapter 7

Fru Adelheid laid her hands over Cordt's book:

“May I talk to you a little? May I tell you something? May I tell you that what you are doing is madness?”

He moved her hands from his book and looked up:

“Sit down, Adelheid,”he said wearily.“Sit down in that chair.”

But she took the book from him and threw it on the foor:

“You are ill, Cordt. You have become ill up here in this dreadful room.”

“Have you a household remedy?”he asked.

“How can you have the heart to make a jest of it?”

“It would be a bitter jest, if it were one,”he said.“But it was not a jest. I believe in the old household remedies.”

Fru Adelheid sat down in her chair and stared helplessly before her:

“Of course you do,”she said.“And in old books and in everything that has ceased to exist.”

He said nothing, but yawned wearily.

“And God shall be set on His throne again and I shall sit at the spinning-wheel and we shall enjoy a blessed married life and be happy ever after.”

Cordt crossed his legs and looked at his nails:

“Yes…that is my programme,”he said quietly.“Something likethat. And you have stated it in your usual affectionate manner.”

“Cordt, how can you have the heart?”

She swung her body to and fro; her hands lay folded in her lap, her eyes were moist. She wanted to say something, but could not, because the tears prevented her. She could not understand that he did not help her. Then she said:

“Things are going badly with us, Cordt.”

And, as he was still silent, she pulled herself together with an effort and spoke with closed eyes, constantly rocking to and fro:

“We must obey the law under which we were born…must we not, Cordt? After all, we are modern people…both of us. Tired, empty people, if you like. But we do think and feel otherwise than people did when…when they were the sort of people whom you like. And we cannot alter ourselves. But we can be as happy as it is possible to be…nowadays, being what we are. Why should we not be happy, Cordt ?”

“I am not happy.”

“Oh, Cordt!”

She pressed her hands together and wrung them and bent over them so that her tears fell upon them. Then she turned her wet face to him and asked, softly:

“Then am I no longer pretty, Cordt?”

He stood up and kissed her white forehead:

“That you are,”he said.“But that won't help us any longer.”

He began to walk up and down. Fru Adelheid wept hard and silently. A little later, she said:

“You are driving me away from you, Cordt. I do so want to tell you this, while there is still time, if only I could fnd the right words.Won't you sit down a little, Cordt? My head aches so.”

He sat down in the chair. Then she rose and put some wood on the fre and sat down again:

“I am so afraid of myself when we talk together, Cordt,”she said.“It is not only that I am wicked and say what I do not mean. I do that, too. But you are so good. And you show me thoughts in my mind which are not there before you utter them. But then they come and I think that you are right and that they have been there always. That is so terrible, Cordt.”

They sat silent. Fru Adelheid closed her eyes; Cordt moved restlessly in his chair:

“Adelheid,”he said…“You told me that evening…”

“You must not say that…you must not.”

“Do you remember, you said…about the wild, red love…that it was not the love which you have?”

She shook his hand and pressed it:

“That is just it,”she said.“I am grateful to you because you were so good. And because you did not take it ill. But that was not in me, Cordt. I did not know it. But then you said it…and made me say…what I said. But then, at that very moment, I understood that it was so. And that made me feel so terribly bad…as I did. But then I felt a sort of secret joy…a secret treasure. It seemed to me that I was richer than before. I was no longer afraid of what may come…for women sometimes think of that, Cordt, while they are young, how empty everything will be, when that is past.”

He listened, with his face turned to the fre.

“I am sure that there is not a man who can understand that,”she said.

And then she lay down on the floor, with her chin on the fender…and her eyes shone:

“A woman is young for so short a time,”she said.“And she is always dreading that it will pass. Can't you understand, when she suddenly suspects that there is something greater than the greatest…and then, when she is sad and afraid…that then it may suddenly dawn upon her that all is not over yet?”

Cordt laughed:

“It is a poor pleasure to be the greatest when there is something greater still,”he said.

But Fru Adelheid shook her head:

“It's not like that, Cordt,”she said.

He pushed back his chair and walked up and down many times and it was silent in the room. Then he sat down again beside her and said:

“What you say is true. But it was in you and I am glad I showed it to you. I could not do differently, when I once saw it. I cannot go and wait until another man knocks at the secret door of your heart and offers you the greatest of all.”

She laid her cheek against the fender and looked at him:

“No, Cordt,”she said.“If it is like that, then what I said was not true.”

He waved his hand and shook his head impatiently:

“Not to-day or to-morrow,”he said.“But in a year, or two years, or ten. And, if it does not happen, then it is only an accident.”

Then she moved nearer to him and laid her head on his knee. She looked up to see if he minded. But he was far away in his thoughts and did not notice it.

She suddenly felt peaceful and contented. She was glad that she had got it said. She felt as if it was removed to a distance…perhaps it was quite gone…she could not understand why he continued to speak of it.

And what he said about another man seemed so far to her and so impossible. She thought about it as though it concerned somebody else:

“I love you, Cordt,”she said.“And, if, one day, another man came and I loved him…could I help it?”

He sprang up so suddenly that she had to seize the arm of the chair lest she should fall:

“No,”he said, scornfully.“You could not.”

He rushed through the room and repeated his words three or four times. Fru Adelheid rose from the floor and sat down in her chair and closed her eyes.

“The man who hit upon that excuse did a fne day's work,”said Cordt.“He drove out of the world a great portion of men's strength to live their lives.”

He threw himself so violently into his chair that Fru Adelheid started. Then he sat long quiet and she was glad that he was silent.

“Why should one not be able to control one's heart?”he said, at last.“Suppose I have a wife and child; and my wife is she whom I myself chose. Then, one day, I meet another woman, who rouses my desires. I meet her at a party, where there are lights and wine and music…we are not ourselves, she and I…we are in another mood than usual…everything is done to lead us from the way by which we go on ordinary days. But why should I not be able to step aside, in loyal gratitude for that which I possess?”

She opened her eyes at intervals and closed them again. She heard what he said, but did not realize that he was speaking to her.

“Who is it that placed love outside the laws? If I take it into my head to kill a fellow-creature, there is no doubt but that I am indulging a most criminal fancy. If I have given my word and think of breaking it, I am no gentleman. But my heart may do as it pleases.”

“Yes,”said Fru Adelheid.

She was thinking of nothing when she spoke and he did not hear her.

“There are people, we know, who have the right to send thousands to their death,”he said.“There are people whose passion rises skywards in red fames and devours the poor chattels that stand in its way and lights up all the land. Poets sing about it and a wax taper burns before its image in every human heart. But, if a man plays the Napoleon in the Store Br?ndstr?de, we hang him…Why should every second woman be entitled to look upon herself as an Hélo?se?”

He sank into his chair and stared before him:

“I am not sure either whether the radiance of the one great fame makes up for the thousand tiny lights that are put out. Does any one know, I wonder? Can any one measure it?”

Fru Adelheid moved and Cordt turned his face to her and looked at her attentively. Her eyes were soft and dreamy; she smiled faintly, like a drowsy child.

“And if that be so,”he said, in a subdued voice,“if it be the case that I am not able to control my heart…”He let his head fall heavily on the arm of the chair.“If it be the case that love makes mehappy and confdent, so that I build my life and the life of my family upon it…if it can then expire, without my knowing how or why, and I have to look for the mother of my children in a strange man's bed, then why do I let my wife go out in the street unveiled? Why do I not lock her up, as the Turk does? Or why do we not kill the mother when the child is born?”

He rose and walked round the room and grew calmer as he walked:

“But it is not so,”he said.“Let the great keep their greatness…let the poets celebrate them and the puny moderns ape them in their wretched way. And may there always be women who cannot give themselves more than once and men who love them.”

He stood by the fre and looked through the room. It was still on every side; the church-clock struck two.

“See, Adelheid,”he said,“how life passes more and more into law's domain. Every day, the liberty of the one is taken for an encroachment upon the rights of the other. Every day, land, hitherto free of law, is regulated by law. Flowers beget no fowers without the gardener's consent; animals no longer select their own mates. But no one can control his heart; and human beings pair like dogs in the street.”

The fre had burnt out when Cordt woke from his musings.

He saw that Fru Adelheid was asleep. He stood before her a long time, sick with compassion for her and for himself.

Then he stroked her gently on the hair:

“It is late…Adelheid.”