Part 12 (1/2)
She had resolutely tried to put the Prince Mirko episode out of her mind, but with slight success. She had locked Angelescu's sketch of him away in her writing-case, and rarely allowed herself to look at it, but she knew it was there, she felt its occult presence as at times she still felt the presence of Mirko's lips on hers. When, by chance, she came upon his name in the newspapers the blood would rush to her heart.
Once an ill.u.s.trated journal had published a portrait of him, accompanied by a short biographical sketch, and she cut the page out, and laid it away with her sketch. She had never heard from her dream-hero directly, but each New Year's day brought her a card from Count Angelescu--He, at least, still remembered her!
She was at a loss to explain the restlessness that often possessed her.
More often than she dared confess to herself, her work and her studies bored her; in vain did she try to throw herself entirely into her serious occupations; emptiness, the vanity of it all, would in spite of her efforts, rise up and confront her.
The truth was, her physical nature was awake and clamouring for satisfaction, and the difficulty lay in the fact that having tasted the caviare of the sophisticated pa.s.sion of a Don Juan, she could not content herself with the bread-and-b.u.t.ter of a calm, everyday affection.
Had she never been awakened, even if but partially, to the possibilities of the latent pa.s.sion within her, her life would have been calmer, less eventful and happier--if happiness lie in the absence of upheaving emotion. Requiring less of life she would have been more easily satisfied, or would have imagined herself so. The narrow boundaries of conventional contentment would have shut out the larger horizon of emotional experience, pain and soul discipline. She would have remained iron, Destiny was to make her steel tempered by fire.
She was writing in the living-room when her Aunt came in. The comfortable room, with its low-raftered ceiling and large porcelain stove looked very cheerful in the glow of the lamp. The heavy red curtains were drawn across the windows, and the red table-cloth threw a rosy reflection on the girl's face, as she leaned over her work. Her hair was like live gold in the strong light of the hanging lamp.
Fru Boyesen came in and seated herself heavily in an upholstered armchair. Ragna had raised her head on her Aunt's entrance but had not interrupted her writing. Her Aunt scanned her closely; she had come to look upon the girl as her own; she enjoyed her presence in the house, and it was her proprietary feeling that was mortified by the girl's failure to take advantage of the opportunities offered her. Astrid's engagement, especially, rankled in the good woman's mind. Here was a girl not as pretty, not as clever as Ragna, and several months younger, whose mother had not the social influence and importance she herself possessed, yet this girl was making an excellent match. It was too vexatious!
Ragna looked up and meeting her Aunt's eyes, said:
”You have been out a long time, Auntie, did you enjoy yourself?”
”No,” answered Fru Boyesen, ”at least not very much. I don't see, Ragna, why you can't go out and enjoy yourself like other young people instead of moping here all by yourself and spoiling your looks with all your studying. Now Astrid goes about and has a good time--she is out skating with her friends now. Why can't you be more like her?”
”So you've been to Fru Bjork's,” remarked Ragna quietly.
”I've been where I pleased,” said Fru Boyesen, untying her bonnet-strings and smoothing them between her plump fingers. ”I don't see what it has to do with you where I go. You shouldn't take me up so.
I think you are a very strange girl--and Fru Bjork can't understand you any better than I do,” she added.
”I do wish, Auntie, that you would not discuss me with Fru Bjork, or anyone else.”
”Hoighty, toighty, Miss! I shall discuss whom I please, and if you will be so peculiar and different from other girls, you must expect people to talk.”
”It's none of 'people's' business what I choose to do or not to do,”
returned Ragna, making little scribbles on the sheet of paper before her. When her Aunt came in, she had been asking herself if she were not really foolish in holding herself thus aloof from her fellows, but at the hint of public criticism on her actions she was up in arms again.
”Ragna, you are positively hopeless; I don't know how a niece of mine can have so little sense! If you lived in a hut in the woods or on the Desert of Sahara, you might do as you like, but here one has to consider the opinion of one's neighbours.”
”Who is my neighbour?” quoted Ragna softly, smiling in spite of herself.
She knew well that to her Aunt, ”public opinion” consisted of the prejudices of four or five of the foremost families of Christiania; outside of that charmed circle she had a fine disregard as to what people might think, in fact she expected people of less importance to follow her example and conform to her opinions.
The smile was unwise in that it irritated the elder lady, already ruffled by the unsuccessful visit to Dr. Tommsen.
”Oh, you may well laugh in your sleeve at me, Miss Know-it-all! The day will come when you will realise that I am in the right--and it may be too late!”
Ragna made no reply; she returned to her writing and the scratching of her pen and the ticking of the clock filled the silence. Fru Boyesen, after one or two ineffectual efforts, rose from her chair and left the room.
”It's no use,” she said to herself as she puffed up the stairs--she had grown very stout of late,--”she is quite impossible. I've more than half a mind to pack her off with the Bjorks. Else Bjork is not very clever, but she has brought Astrid up to be a credit to her and I think I'll let her try her hand with Ragna. I've been a fool to let her have her own way so long,--her head is full of the stuff these atheistic professors pour into it. I'll let her go; it can't do any harm, anyhow.”