Part 19 (1/2)
Eva answers:
”It was cruel of her to laugh at you.”
”No, it was not cruel of her,” I cry. ”How dare you sit there speaking ill of her? She never did an unkind thing; it was only right that she should laugh at me. Be quiet, devil take you, and leave me in peace--do you hear?”
And Eva, terrified, leaves me in peace. I look at her, and repent my harsh words at once; I fall down before her; wringing my hands.
”Go home, Eva. It is you I love most; how could I love a dream? It was only a jest; it is you I love. But go home now; I will come to you to-morrow; remember, I am yours; yes, do not forget it. Good-night.”
And Eva goes home.
The third iron night, a night of extremes! tension. If only there were a little frost! Instead, still heat after the sun of the day; the night is like a lukewarm marsh. I light my fire...
”Eva, it can be a delight at times to be dragged by the hair. So strangely can the mind of a man be warped. He can be dragged by the hair over hill and dale, and if asked what is happening, can answer in ecstasy: 'I am being dragged by the hair!' And if anyone asks: 'But shall I not help you, release you?' he answers: 'No.' And if they ask: 'But how can you endure it?' he answers: 'I can endure it, for I love the hand that drags me.' Eva, do you know what it is to hope?”
”Yes, I think so.”
”Look you, Eva, hope is a strange thing, a very strange thing. You can go out one morning along the road, hoping to meet one whom you are fond of. And do you? No. Why not? Because that one is busy that morning--is somewhere else, perhaps... Once I got to know an old blind Lapp up in the hills. For fifty-eight years he had seen nothing, and now he was over seventy. It seemed to him that his sight was getting better little by little; getting on gradually, he thought. If all went well he would be able to make out the sun in a few years' time. His hair was still black, but his eyes were quite white. When we sat in his hut, smoking, he would tell of all the things he had seen before he went blind. He was hardy and strong; without feeling, indestructible; and he kept his hope. When I was going, he came out with me, and began pointing in different ways. 'There's the south,' he said, 'and there's north. Now you go that way first, and when you get a little way down, turn off that way.' 'Quite right,' I said. And at that the Lapp laughed contentedly, and said: 'There! I did not know that forty or fifty years back, so I must see better now than I used to--yes, it is improving all the time.'
And then he crouched down and crept into his hut again--the same old hut, his home on earth. And he sat down by the fire as before, full of hope that in some few years he would be able to make out the sun...
Eva, 'tis strange about hope. Here am I, for instance, hoping all the time that I may forget the one I did not meet on the road this morning...”
”You talk so strangely.”
”It is the third of the iron nights. I promise you, Eva, to be a different man to-morrow. Let me be alone now. You will not know me again to-morrow, I shall laugh and kiss you, my own sweet girl. Just think--only this one night more, a few hours--and then I shall be a different man. _G.o.dnat_, Eva.”
_”G.o.dnat.”_
I lie down closer to the fire, and look at the flames. A pine cone falls from the branch; a dry twig or so falls too. The night is like a boundless depth. I close my eyes.
After an hour, my senses begin swinging in a certain rhythm. I am ringing in tune with the great stillness--ringing with it. I look at the half-moon; it stands in the sky like a white scale, and I have a feeling of love for it; I can feel myself blus.h.i.+ng. ”It is the moon!” I say softly and pa.s.sionately; ”it is the moon!” and my heart strikes toward it in a soft throbbing. So for some minutes. It is blowing a little; a stranger wind comes to me a mysterious current of air. What is it? I look round, but see no one. The wind calls me, and my soul bows acknowledging the call; and I feel myself lifted into the air, pressed to an invisible breast; my eyes are dewed, I tremble--G.o.d is standing near, watching me. Again several minutes pa.s.s. I turn my head round; the stranger wind is gone, and I see something like the back of a spirit wandering silently in through the woods...
I struggle a short while with a heavy melancholy; I was worn out with emotions; I am deathly tired, and I sleep.
When I awoke the night was past. Alas, I had been going about for a long time in a sad state, full of fever, on the verge of falling down stricken with some sickness or other. Often things had seemed upside down. I had been looking at everything through inflamed eyes. A deep misery had possessed me.
It was over now.
XXV
It was autumn. The summer was gone. It pa.s.sed as quickly as it had come; ah, how quickly it was gone! The days were cold now. I went out shooting and fis.h.i.+ng--sang songs in the woods. And there were days with a thick mist that came floating in from the sea, damming up everything behind a wall of murk.
One such day something happened. I lost my way, blundered through into the woods of the annexe, and came to the Doctor's house. There were visitors there--the young ladies I had met before--young people dancing, just like madcap foals.
A carriage came rolling up and stopped outside the gate; Edwarda was in it. She started at sight of me. ”Good-bye,” I said quietly. But the Doctor held me back. Edwarda was troubled by my presence at first, and looked down when I spoke; afterwards, she bore with me, and even went so far as to ask me a question about something or other. She was strikingly pale; the mist lay grey and cold upon her face. She did not get out of the carriage.