Part 17 (1/2)
The only thriving thing in the whole picture is the ivy; for ivy, like sorrow, is fresh both summer and winter.
It comes creeping along with its soft feelers, it thrusts itself into the tiniest c.h.i.n.ks, it forces its way through the minutest crannies; and not until it has waxed wide and strong do we realize that it can no longer be rooted up, but will inexorably strangle whatever it has laid its clutches on.
Ivy, however, is like well-bred sorrow; it cloaks its devastations with fair and glossy leaves. Thus people wear a glossy mask of smiles, feigning to be unaware of the ivy-clad ruins among which their lot is cast.--
In the middle of the open summer-house sits a young girl on a rush chair; both hands rest in her lap. She is sitting with bent head and a strange expression in her beautiful face. It is not vexation or anger, still less is it commonplace sulkiness, that utters itself in her features; it is rather bitter and crus.h.i.+ng disappointment. She looks as if she were on the point of letting something slip away from her which she has not the strength to hold fast--as if something were withering between her hands.
The man who is leaning with one hand upon her chair is beginning to understand that the situation is graver than he thought. He has done all he can to get the quarrel, so trivial in its origin, adjusted and forgotten; he has talked reason, he has tried playfulness; he has besought forgiveness, and humbled himself--perhaps more than he intended--but all in vain. Nothing avails to arouse her out of the listless mood into which she has sunk.
Thus it is with an expression of anxiety that he bends down towards her: ”But you know that at heart we love each other so much.”
”Then why do we quarrel so easily, and why do we speak so bitterly and unkindly to each other?”
”Why, my dear! the whole thing was the merest trifle from the first.”
”That's just it! Do you remember what we said to each other? How we vied with each other in trying to find the word we knew would be most wounding? Oh, to think that we used our knowledge of each other's heart to find out the tenderest points, where an unkind word could strike home! And this we call love!”
”My dear, don't take it so solemnly,” he answered, trying a lighter tone. ”People may be ever so fond of each other, and yet disagree a little at times; it can't be otherwise.”
”Yes, yes!” she cried, ”there must be a love for which discord is impossible, or else--or else I have been mistaken, and what we call love is nothing but--”
”Have no doubts of love!” he interrupted her, eagerly; and he depicted in warm and eloquent words the feeling which enn.o.bles humanity in teaching us to bear with each other's weaknesses; which confers upon us the highest bliss, since, in spite of all petty disagreements, it unites us by the fairest ties.
She had only half listened to him. Her eyes had wandered over the fading garden, she had inhaled the heavy atmosphere of dying vegetation--and she had been thinking of the spring-time, of hope, of that all-powerful love which was now dying like an autumn flower.
”Withered leaves,” said she, quietly; and rising, she scattered with her foot all the beautiful leaves which the wind had taken such pains to heap together.
She went up the avenue leading to the house; he followed close behind her. He was silent, for he found not a word to say. A drowsy feeling of uneasy languor came over him; he asked himself whether he could overtake her, or whether she were a hundred miles away.
She walked with her head bent, looking down at the flower-beds. There stood the asters like torn paper flowers upon withered potato-shaws; the dahlias hung their stupid, crinkled heads upon their broken stems, and the hollyhocks showed small stunted buds at the top, and great wet, rotting flowers cl.u.s.tering down their stalks.
And disappointment and bitterness cut deep into the young heart. As the flowers were dying, she was ripening for the winter of life.
So they disappeared up the avenue. But the empty chair remained standing in the half-withered summer-house, while the wind busied itself afresh in piling up the leaves in a little cairn.
And in the course of time we all come--each in his turn--to seat ourselves on the empty chair in a corner of the garden and gaze on a little cairn of withered leaves.--
THE BATTLE OF WATERLOO.
Since it is not only entertaining in itself, but also consonant with use and wont, to be in love; and since in our innocent and moral society, one can so much the more safely indulge in these amatory diversions as one runs no risk of being disturbed either by vigilant fathers or pugnacious brothers; and, finally, since one can as easily get out of as get into our peculiarly Norwegian form of betrothal--a half-way house between marriage and free board in a good family--all these things considered I say, it was not wonderful that Cousin Hans felt profoundly unhappy. For he was not in the least in love.
He had long lived in expectation of being seized by a kind of delirious ecstasy, which, if experienced people are to be trusted, is the infallible symptom of true love. But as nothing of the sort had happened, although he was already in his second year at college, he said to himself: ”After all, love is a lottery if you want to win, you must at least table your stake. 'Lend Fortune a helping hand,' as they say in the lottery advertis.e.m.e.nts.”
He looked about him diligently, and closely observed his own heart.
Like a fisher who sits with his line around his forefinger, watching for the least jerk, and wondering when the bite will come, so Cousin Hans held his breath whenever he saw a young lady, wondering whether he was now to feel that peculiar jerk which is well known to be inseparable from true love--that jerk which suddenly makes all the blood rush to the heart, and then sends it just as suddenly up into the head, and makes your face flush red to the very roots of your hair.
But never a bite came. His hair had long ago flushed red to the roots, for Cousin Hans's hair could not be called brown; but his face remained as pale and as long as ever.