Part 16 (2/2)
Hardly were they seated before his face became gloomy. He looked compa.s.sionately at Mary. ”But your father, my poor child!”
”Father is much better now,” she answered evasively. Uncle Klaus looked searchingly at her. ”But he can never....” He stopped; he was not capable of putting his thought into words; neither was Mary. They sat silent.
When they began to speak again, it was of the unusually bad times. It seemed as if there were to be no end to them. Investments were yielding no interest, the s.h.i.+pping trade was in a bad way, there were no new undertakings, money was not forthcoming. Whilst they were talking, Uncle Klaus looked several times at Jorgen as if he would put more questions but for his presence. Mary understood, and made a sign to Jorgen, who rose and asked permission to go, as he had an appointment with some friends in town. It was, thus, tacitly agreed upon between Mary and him that she should have a private interview with Uncle Klaus. But what was it Uncle Klaus wished to speak to her about? She was most curious.
As soon as the door closed behind Jorgen, the old man, with an anxious look, began: ”Is it true, my poor child, that your father has had great losses in America?”
”He has lost everything,” Mary replied.
Klaus jumped up, pale with the shock.
”Lost everything?”
He stared at her, open-mouthed and turning purple. Then exclaiming: ”Good Lord! This is a simple enough explanation of the shock!” began to march up and down the room as if no one else were present. The wide trousers twisted themselves round his legs; he waved his long arms.
”He has always been a confiding simpleton! an absolute fool! Fancy having a fortune like that invested in another man's business and never looking after it! What a d.a.m.ned--” Here he stopped suddenly and asked in astonishment: ”What do you mean to marry upon--?”
Mary had felt herself mortally insulted long before this question came.
To behave thus in her presence--to speak thus of her father in her hearing! Nevertheless she answered archly and with her sweetest smile: ”On our expectations from you, Uncle Klaus!”
Klaus's astonishment was beyond all measure. She tried to moderate it before it found vent; she joked--said in English that she felt dreadfully sorry for him, as she knew what a poor man he was! But he paid no more attention to her than a bear to the twitter of birds.
Out it came at last. ”It is like that scoundrel Jorgen to speculate upon me!” Marching up and down again, faster than before, he continued: ”Ha, ha! I might have known it! Whenever anything goes wrong, it is I who must come to the rescue--and at this moment, too, when I am hardly earning my bread! I never knew anything so impudent in my life!” He did not see her, he did not see anything. The rich man was accustomed to give free vent to his petulance, anger, insolence. ”Jorgen deserves--confound him!--that I should stop the allowance I give him! He does nothing but ask for more. And now I am to----ha, ha! It's just like him!”
Mary listened, pale as death. Never before had she been so humiliated; never had any human being treated her otherwise than with the deference paid to a privileged person.
But she did not lose her head. ”I keep Father's accounts now,” she said coldly; ”and I see from them that there is money of his in your hands.”
”Yes,” said Klaus, without stopping and without looking at Mary; ”oh, yes--two hundred thousand kroner or so. But if you keep the accounts, you also see that at present these investments hardly yield anything.”
”It is not so bad as that,” she replied.
”Well--what about them?” asked he, standing still. An idea suddenly occurred to him: ”Has Jorgen asked you to sell out?”
”Jorgen has asked nothing of me,” Mary said, and rose to her feet.
As she stood there tall, pale, stately, facing him so bravely, Klaus felt himself worsted. He could do nothing but stare. When she said: ”I am sorry that I did not know before what kind of man you are!” all his superiority vanished. He felt stupid and helpless, unable to answer, unable even to move. He allowed her to go--the very last thing he intended!
He looked out at the window and saw her sweep past towards the market-place. What a vision of proud beauty she was!
When, in course of time, Jorgen came to fetch Mary, or rather to stay to dinner there with her--for he was certain that they would be invited--an even more violent explosion of wrath awaited him; because now Uncle Klaus was extremely dissatisfied with himself too.
”Why the devil did you not come alone? You were afraid!--And you wanted her to sell shares now, when they are worth nothing--like the cursedly extravagant, reckless fellow you always have been!”
Uncle Klaus was wrong; but Jorgen knew him--knew that he must not answer. He slunk away and joined Mary at the house in the market-place, even more wretched than the day when she found him on the ridge, gazing down into the lost paradise. She herself had been weeping with anger and disappointment; but there was abundance of elasticity in her; now came the rebound. Their fall from the triumphant elevation of half-an-hour ago had been so precipitous that when Jorgen's misery was added as a finis.h.i.+ng touch, the whole became ridiculous. She laughed so heartily, so exhilaratingly, that even Jorgen was cured. A quarter of an hour later the two went out to order a good dinner, with champagne. They had agreed to take a walk whilst it was being prepared. But no sooner did they feel the delicious fresh air, than Jorgen rushed upstairs again and telephoned to Krogskogen that they were coming out to dine there. It was a good two hours' walk by the new coast-road--how they would enjoy it!
They set off at a rapid pace. It was the very weather for walking, this bright, cool autumn day with the fresh breeze.
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