Books: Mogens and Other Stories
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Jens Peter Jacobsen >> Mogens and Other Stories
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With a soft clucking sound the water ran over the small stones;
spasmodically there was a soft soughing among the barren limbs; now
and then a crow cawed above the lake; and morning threw its sharp
bluish gleam over forest and sea, over the snow, and over the pallid
face.
At sunrise he was found by the ranger from the neighboring forest, and
carried up to the forester Nicolai; there he lay for weeks and
days between life and death.
* * *
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
associates here were especially a horse-dealer, called "Mug-sexton,"
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 passion. 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,
arid 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 shining 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 fishing?"
"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."
"Are you jealous?" she asked very softly.
"Of one like you! I haven't lost my senses!"
"But what is the meaning of all this?"
"It means that I am tired of your beauty, that I know your voice and
your gestures by heart, and that neither your whims nor your stupidity
nor your craftiness can any longer entertain me. Can you tell me then
why I should stay?"
Laura wept. "Mogens, Mogens, how can you have the heart to do this?
Oh, what shall I, shall I, shall I, shall I do! Stay only today, only
to-day, Mogens. You dare not go away from me!"
"Those are lies, Laura, you don't even believe it yourself. It is not
because you think such a terrible lot of me, that you are distressed
now. You are only a little bit alarmed because of the change, you are
frightened because of the slight disarrangement of your daily habits.
I am thoroughly familiar with that, you are not the first one I have
gotten tired of."
"Oh, stay with me only to-day, I won't torment you to stay a single
hour longer.
"You really are dogs, you women! You haven't a trace of fine feelings
in your body. If one gives you a kick, you come crawling back again."
"Yes, yes, that's what we do, but stay only for to-day--won't
you--stay!"
"Stay, stay! No!"
"You have never loved me, Mogens!"
"No!"
"Yes, you did; you loved me the day when there was such a violent
wind, oh, that beautiful day down at the sea-shore, when we sat in the
shelter of the boat."
"Stupid girl!"
"If I only were a respectable girl with fine parents, and not such a
one as I am, then you would stay with me; then you would not have the
heart to be so hard--and I, who love you so!"
"Oh, don't bother about that."
"No, I am like the dust beneath your feet, you care no more for me.
Not one kind word, only hard words; contempt, that is good enough for
me."
"The others are neither better nor worse than you. Good-by, Laura!"
He held out his hand to her, but she kept hers on her back and wailed:
"No, no, not good-by! not good-by!"
Mogens raised the blind, stepped back a couple of paces and let it
fall down in front of the window. Laura quickly leaned down over the
window-sill beneath it and begged: "Come to me! come and give me your
hand."
"No."
When he had gone a short distance she cried plaintively:
"Good-by, Mogens!"
He turned towards the house with a slight greeting. Then he walked on:
"And a girl like that still believes in love!--no, she does
not!"
* * *
The evening wind blew from the ocean over the land, the strand-grass
swung its pale spikes to and fro and raised its pointed leaves a
little, the rushes bowed down, the water of the lake was darkened by
thousands of tiny furrows, and the leaves of the water-lilies tugged
restlessly at their stalks. Then the dark tops of the heather began to
nod, and on the fields of sand the sorrel swayed unsteadily to and
fro. Towards the land! The stalks of oats bowed downward, and the
young clover trembled on the stubble-fields, and the wheat rose and
fell in heavy billows; the roofs groaned, the mill creaked, its wings
swung about, the smoke was driven back into the chimneys, and the
window-panes became covered with moisture.
There was a swishing of wind in the gable-windows, in the poplars of
the manor-house; the wind whistled through tattered bushes on the
green hill of Bredbjerg. Mogens lay up there, and gazed out over the
dark earth. The moon was beginning to acquire radiance, and mists were
drifting down on the meadow. Everything was very sad, all of life, all
of life, empty behind him, dark before him. But such was life. Those
who were happy were also blind. Through misfortune he had learned to
see; everything was full of injustice and lies, the entire earth was a
huge, rotting lie; faith, friendship, mercy, a lie it was, a lie was
each and everything; but that which was called love, it was the
hollowest of all hollow things, it was lust, flaming lust, glimmering
lust, smoldering lust, but lust and nothing else. Why had he to know
this? Why had he not been permitted to hold fast to his faith in all
these gilded lies? Why was he compelled to see while the others
remained blind? He had a right to blindness, he had believed in
everything in which it was possible to believe.
Down in the village the lights were being lit.
Down there home stood beside home. My home! my home! And my
childhood's belief in everything beautiful in the world.--And what if
they were right, the others! If the world were full of beating hearts
and the heavens full of a loving God! But why do I not know that, why
do I know something different? And I do know something different,
cutting, bitter, true . . .
He rose; fields and meadows lay before him bathed in moonlight. He
went down into the village, along the way past the garden of the
manor-house; he went and looked over the stone-wall. Within on a
grass-plot in the garden stood a silver poplar, the moonlight fell
sharply on the quivering leaves; sometimes they showed their dark
side, sometimes their white. He placed his elbows on the wall and
stared at the tree; it looked as if the leaves were running in a fine
rain down the limbs. He believed, that he was hearing the sound which
the foliage produced. Suddenly the lovely voice of a woman became
audible quite near by:
"Flower in dew! Flower in dew!
Whisper to me thy dreams, thine own.
Does in them lie the same strange air
The same wonderful elfin air,
As in mine own?
Are they filled with whispers and sobbing and sighing
Amid radiance slumbering and fragrances dying,
Amid trembling ringing, amid rising singing:
In longing,
In longing,
I live."
Then silence fell again. Mogens diew a long breath and listened
intently: no more singing; up in the house a door was heard. Now he
clearly heard the sound from the leaves of the silver poplar. He bowed
his head in his arms and wept.
The next day was one of those in which late summer is rich. A day with
a brisk, cool wind, with many large swiftly flying clouds, with
everlasting alternations of darkness and light, according as the
clouds drift past the sun. Mogens had gone up to the cemetery, the
garden of the manor abutted on it. Up there it looked rather barren,
the grass had recently been cut; behind an old quadrangular iron-fence
stood a wide-spreading, low elder with waving foliage. Some of the graves
had wooden frames around them, most were only low, quadrangular hills;
a few of them had metal-pieces with inscriptions on them, others
wooden crosses from which the colors had peeled, others had wax
wreaths, the greater number had nothing at all. Mogens wandered about
hunting for a sheltered place, but the wind seemed to blow on all
sides of the church. He threw himself down near the embankment, drew a
book out of his pocket; but he did not get on with his reading; every
time when a cloud went past the sun, it seemed to him as though it
were growing chilly, and he thought of getting up, but then the light
came again and he remained lying. A young girl came slowly along the
way, a greyhound and a pointer ran playfully ahead of her. She stopped
and it seemed as if she wanted to sit down, but when she saw Mogens
she continued her walk diagonally across the cemetery out through the
gate. Mogens rose and looked after her; she walked down on the main
road, the dogs still played. Then he began reading the inscription on
one of the graves; it quickly made him smile. Suddenly a shadow fell
across the grave and remained lying there, Mogens looked sideways. A
tanned, young man stood there, one hand in his game-bag, in the other
he held his gun.
"It isn't really half bad," he said, indicating the inscription.
"No," said Mogens and straightened up from his bent position.
"Tell me," continued the hunter, and looked to the side, as if seeking
something, "you have been here for a couple of days, and I have been
going about wondering about you, but up to the present didn't come
near you. You go and drift about so alone, why haven't you looked in
on us? And what in the world do you do to kill the time? For you
haven't any business in the neighborhood, have you?"
"No, I am staying here for pleasure."
"There isn't much of that here," the stranger exclaimed and laughed,
"don't you shoot? Wouldn't you like to come with me? Meanwhile I have
to go down to the inn and get some small shot, and while you are
getting ready, I can go over, and call down the blacksmith. Well! Will
you join?"
"Yes, with pleasure."
"Oh, by the way,--Thora! haven't you seen a girl?" he jumped up on the
embankment.
"Yes, there she is, she is my cousin, I can't introduce you to her,
but come along, let us follow her; we made a wager, now you can he the
judge. She was to be in the cemetery with the dogs and I was to pass
with gun and game-bag, but was not to call or to whistle, and if the
dogs nevertheless went with me she would lose; now we will see."
After a little while they overtook the lady; the hunter looked
straight ahead, but could not help smiling; Mogens bowed when they
passed. The dogs looked in surprise after the hunter and growled a
bit; then they looked up at the lady and barked, she wanted to pat
them, but indifferently they walked away from her and barked after the
hunter. Step by step they drew further and further away from her,
squinted at her, and then suddenly darted off after the hunter. And
when they reached him, they were quite out of control; they jumped up
on him and rushed off in every direction and back again.
"You lose," he called out to her; she nodded smilingly, turned round
and went on.
They hunted till late in the afternoon. Mogens and William got along
famously and Mogens had to promise that he would come to the
manor-house in the evening. This he did, and later he came almost
every day, but in spite of all the cordial invitations he continued
living at the inn.
Now came a restless period for Mogens. At first Thora's proximity
brought back to life all his sad and gloomy memories. Often he had
suddenly to begin a conversation with one of the others or leave, so
that his emotion might not completely master him. She was not at all
like Camilla, and yet he heard and saw only Camilla. Thora was small,
delicate, and slender, roused easily to laughter, easily to tears, and
easily to enthusiasm. If for a longer time she spoke seriously with
some one, it was not like a drawing near, but rather as if she
disappeared within her own self. If some one explained something to
her or developed an idea, her face, her whole figure expressed the
most intimate trust and now and again, perhaps, also expectancy.
William and his little sister did not treat her quite like a comrade,
but yet not like a stranger either. The uncle and the aunt, the
farm-hands, the maid-servants, and the peasants of the neighborhood
all paid court to her, but very carefully, and almost timidly. In
respect to her they were almost like a wanderer in the forest, who
sees close beside him one of those tiny, graceful song-birds with very
clear eyes and light, captivating movements. He is enraptured by this
tiny, living creature, he would so much like to have it come closer
and closer, but he does not care to move, scarcely to take breath,
lest it may be frightened and fly away.
As Mogens saw Thora more and more frequently, memories came more and
more rarely, and he began to see her as she was. It was a time of
peace and happiness when he was with her, full of silent longing and
quiet sadness when he did not see her. Later he told her of Camilla
and of his past life, and it was almost with surprise that he looked
back upon himself. Sometimes it seemed inconceivable to him that it
was he who had thought, felt, and done all the strange things of which
he told.
On an evening he and Thora stood on a height in the garden, and
watched the sunset. William and his little sister were playing
hide-and-seek around the hill. There were thousands of light, delicate
colors, hundreds of strong radiant ones. Mogens turned away from them
and looked at the dark figure by his side. How insignificant it looked
in comparison with all this glowing splendor; he sighed, and looked up
again at the gorgeously colored clouds. It was not like a real
thought, but it came vague and fleeting, existed for a second and
disappeared; it was as if it had been the eye that thought it.
"The elves in the green hill are happy now that the sun has gone
down," said Thora.
"Oh--are they?"
"Don't you know that elves love darkness?"
Mogens smiled.
"You don't believe in elves, but you should. It is beautiful to
believe in all that, in gnomes and elves. I believe in mermaids too,
and elder-women, but goblins! What can one do with goblins and
three-legged horses? Old Mary gets angry when I tell her this; for to
believe what I believe, she says is not God-fearing. Such things have
nothing to do with people, but warnings and spirits are in the gospel,
too. What do you say?"
"I, oh, I don't know--what do you really mean?"
"You surely don't love nature?"
"But, quite the contrary."
"I don't mean nature, as you see it from benches placed where there is
a fine view on hills up which they have built steps; where it is like
a set scene, but nature every day, always."
"Just so! I can take joy in every leaf, every twig, every beam of
light, every shadow. There isn't a hill so barren, nor a turf-pit so
square, nor a road so monotonous, that I cannot for a moment fall in
love with it."
"But what joy can you take in a tree or a bush, if you don't imagine
that a living being dwells within it, that opens and closes the
flowers and smooths the leaves? When you see a lake, a deep, clear
lake, don't you love it for this reason, that you imagine creatures
living deep, deep down below, that have their own joys and sorrows,
that have their own strange life with strange yearnings? And what, for
instance, is there beautiful about the green hill of Berdbjerg, if you
don't imagine, that inside very tiny creatures swarm and buzz, and
sigh when the sun rises, but begin to dance and play with their
beautiful treasure-troves, as soon as evening comes."
"How wonderfully beautiful that is! And you see that?"
"But you?"
"Yes, I can't explain it, but there is something in the color, in the
movements, and in the shapes, and then in the life which lives in
them; in the sap which rises in trees and flowers, in the sun and rain
that make them grow, in the sand which blows together in hills, and in
the showers of rain that furrow and fissure the hillsides. Oh, I
cannot understand this at all, when I am to explain it."
"And that is enough for you?"
"Oh, more than enough sometimes--much too much! And when shape and
color and movement are so lovely and so fleeting and a strange world
lies behind all this and lives and rejoices and desires and can
express all this in voice and song, then you feel so lonely, that you
cannot come closer to this world, and life grows lusterless and
burdensome."
"No, no, you must not think of your fiancee in that way."
"Oh, I am not thinking of her."
William and his sister came up to them, and together they went into
the house.
* * *
On a morning several days later Mogens and Thora were walking in the
garden. He was to look at the grape-vine nursery, where he had not yet
been. It was a rather long, but not very high hothouse. The sun
sparkled and played over the glass-roof. They entered, the air was
warm and moist, and had a peculiar heavy aromatic odor as of earth
that has just been turned. The beautiful incised leaves and the heavy
dewy grapes were resplendent and luminous under the sunlight. They
spread out beneath the glass-cover in a great green field of
blessedness. Thora stood there and happily looked upward; Mogens was
restless and stared now and then unhappily at her, and then up into
the foliage.
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