Mogens and Other Stories Part 3

About the time when Mogens was being carried up to Nicolai's, a crowd collected around a carriage at the end of the street where the councilor lived. The driver could not understand why the policeman wanted to prevent him from carrying out his legitimate order, and on that account they had an argument. It was the carriage which was to take Camilla to her aunt's.

"No, since poor Camilla lost her life in that dreadful manner, we have not seen anything of him!"

"Yes, it is curious, how much may lie hidden in a person. No one would have suspected anything, so quiet and shy, almost awkward. Isn't it so?

You did not suspect anything?"

"About the sickness! How can you ask such a question! Oh, you mean--I did not quite understand you--you mean it was in the blood, something hereditary?--Oh, yes, I remember there was something like that, they took his father to Aarhus. Wasn't it so, Mr. Carlsen?"

"No! Yes, but it was to bury him, his first wife is buried there. No, what I was thinking of was the dreadful--yes, the dreadful life he has been leading the last two or two and a half years."

"Why no, really! I know nothing about that."

"Well, you see, of course, it is of the things one doesn't like to talk about.... You understand, of course, consideration for those nearest.

The councilor's family...."

"Yes, there is a certain amount of justice in what you say--but on the other hand--tell me quite frankly, isn't there at present a false, a sanctimonious striving to veil, to cover up the weaknesses of our fellow-men? As for myself I don't understand much about that sort of thing, but don't you think that truth or public morals, I don't mean this morality, but--morals, conditions, whatever you will, suffer under it?"

"Of course, and I am very glad to be able to agree so with you, and in this case... the fact simply is, that he has given himself to all sorts of excesses. He has lived in the most disreputable manner with the lowest dregs, people without honor, without conscience, without position, religion, or anything else, with loafers, mountebanks, drunkards, and--and to tell the truth with women of easy virtue."

"And this after having been engaged to Camilla, good heavens, and after having been down with brain-fever for three months!"

"Yes--and what tendencies doesn't this let us suspect, and who knows what his past may have been, what do you think?"

"Yes, and heaven knows how things really were with him during the time of their engagement? There always was something suspicious about him.

That is my opinion.

"Pardon me, and you, too, Mr. Carlsen, pardon me, but you look at the whole affair in rather an abstract way, very abstractedly. By chance I have in my possession a very concrete report from a friend in Jutland, and can present the whole affair in all its details."

"Mr. Ronholt, you don't mean to...?"

"To give details? Yes, that is what I intend. Mr. Carlsen, with the lady's permission. Thank you! He certainly did not live as one should live after a brain-fever. He knocked about from fair to fair with a couple of boon-companions, and, it is said, was somewhat mixed up with troupes of mountebanks, and especially with the women of the company.

Perhaps it would be wisest if I ran upstairs, and got my friend's letter. Permit me. I'll be back in a moment."

"Don't you think, Mr. Carlsen, that Ronholt is in a particularly good humor to-day?"

"Yes, but you must not forget that he exhausted all his spleen on an article in the morning paper. Imagine, to dare to maintain--why, that is pure rebellion, contempt of law, for him...."

"You found the letter?"

"Yes, I did. May I begin? Let me see, oh yes: 'Our mutual friend whom we met last year at Monsted, and whom, as you say, you knew in Copenhagen, has during the last months haunted the region hereabouts. He looks just as he used to, he is the same pale knight of the melancholy mien. He is the most ridiculous mixture of forced gayety and silent hopelessness, he is affected--ruthless and brutal toward himself and others. He is taciturn and a man of few words, and doesn't seem to be enjoying himself at all, though he does nothing but drink and lead a riotous life. It is as I have already said, as if he had a fixed idea that he received a personal insult from destiny. His a.s.sociates here were especially a horse-dealer, called "Mug-s.e.xton," because he does nothing but sing and drink all the time, and a disreputable, lanky, over-grown cross between a sailor and peddler, known and feared under the name of Peter "Rudderless," to say nothing of the fair Abelone. She, however, recently has had to give way to a brunette, belonging to a troupe of mountebanks, which for some time has favored us with performances of feats of strength and rope-dancing. You have seen this kind of women with sharp, yellow, prematurely-aged faces, creatures that are shattered by brutality, poverty, and miserable vices, and who always over-dress in shabby velvet and dirty red. There you have his crew. I don't understand our friend's pa.s.sion. It is true that his fiancee met with a horrible death, but that does not explain the matter. I must still tell you how he left us. We had a fair a few miles from here. He, "Rudderless," the horse-dealer, and the woman sat in a drinking-tent, dissipating until far into the night. At three o'clock or thereabouts they were at last ready to leave. They got on the wagon, and so far everything went all right; but then our mutual friend turns off from the main road and drives with them over fields and heath, as fast as the horses can go.

The wagon is flung from one side to the other. Finally things get too wild for the horse-dealer and he yells that he wants to get down. After he has gotten off our mutual friend whips up the horses again, and drives straight at a large heather-covered hill. The woman becomes frightened and jumps off, and now up the hill they go and down on the other side at such a terrific pace that it is a miracle the wagon did not arrive at the bottom ahead of the horses. On the way up Peter had slipped from the wagon, and as thanks for the ride he threw his big clasp-knife at the head of the driver.'"

"The poor fellow, but this business of the woman is nasty."

"Disgusting, madam, decidedly disgusting. Do you really think, Mr.

Ronholt, that this description puts the man in a better light?"

"No, but in a surer one; you know in the darkness things often seem larger than they are."

"Can you think of anything worse?"

"If not, then this is the worst, but you know one should never think the worst of people."

"Then you really mean, that the whole affair is not so bad, that there is something bold in it, something in a sense eminently plebeian, which pleases your liking for democracy."

"Don't you see, that in respect to his environment his conduct is quite aristocratic?"

"Aristocratic? No, that is lather paradoxical. If he is not a democrat, then I really don't know what he is."

"Well, there are still other designations."

White alders, bluish lilac, red hawthorn, and radiant laburnum were in flower and gave forth their fragrance in front of the house. The windows were open and the blinds were drawn. Mogens leaned in over the sill and the blinds lay on his back. It was grateful to the eye after all the summer-sun on forest and water and in the air to look into the subdued, soft, quiet light of a room. A tall woman of opulent figure stood within, the back toward the window, and was putting flowers in a large vase. The waist of her pink morning-gown was gathered high up below, the bosom by a s.h.i.+ning black leather-belt; on the floor behind her lay a snow-white dressing-jacket; her abundant, very blond hair was hanging in a bright-red net.

"You look rather pale after the celebration last night," was the first thing Mogens said.

"Good-morning," she replied and held out without turning around her hand with the flowers in it towards him. Mogens took one of the flowers.

Laura turned the head half towards him, opened her hand slightly and let the flowers fall to the floor in little lots. Then she again busied herself with the vase.

"Ill?" asked Mogens.

"Tired."

"I won't eat breakfast with you to-day."

"No?"

"We can't have dinner together either."

"You are going fis.h.i.+ng?"

"No--Good-by!"

"When are you coming back?"

"I am not coming back."

"What do you mean by that?" she asked arranging her gown; she went to the window, and there sat down on the chair.

"I am tired of you. That's all."

"Now you are spiteful, what's the matter with you? What have I done to you?"

"Nothing, but since we are neither married nor madly in love with each other, I don't see anything very strange in the fact, that I am going my own way."