Jenny brought her arms out from under the blanket and put them behind her neck. It was icy cold in the room, and dark. No ray of light came through the shutters. She struck a match and looked at her watch—it was nearly seven. She could doze a little longer, and she crept down under the blankets again, with her head deep in the pillow. “Jenny, are you asleep?” Francesca opened the door without[48] knocking, and came close to the bed. She felt for her friend’s face in the dark and stroked it. “Tired?”
“No. I am going to get up now.”
“When did you come home?”
“About three o’clock. I went to Prati for a bath before lunch and ate at the Ripetta, you know, and when I came home I went to bed at once. I am thoroughly rested. I’ll get up now.”
“Wait a moment. It’s very cold; let me light the fire.” Francesca lighted the lamp on the table.
“Why not call the signora? Oh, Cesca, come here, let me look at you.” Jenny sat up in bed.
Francesca placed the lamp on the table by the bed and turned slowly round in the light of it. She had put on a white blouse with her green skirt and thrown a striped scarf about her shoulders. Round her neck she wore a double row of deep red corals, and long, polished drops hung from her ears. She pulled her hair laughingly from her ears to show that the drops were tied to them by means of darning wool.
“Fancy, I got them for sixty-eight lire—a bargain, wasn’t it? Do you think they suit me?”
“Capitally! With that costume, too. I should like to paint you as you are now.”
“Yes, do. I can sit to you if you like—I’m too restless nowadays to work. Oh dear!” She sighed and sat down on the bed. “I had better go and bring the coal.”
She came back carrying an earthenware pot of burning charcoal, and stooped down over the little stove. “Stay in bed, dear, till it gets a little warmer in here. I will make the tea and lay the table. I see you have brought your drawing home. Let me have a look at it.” She placed the board against a chair and held the lamp to it.
“I say! I say!”
“It is not too bad—what do you think? I am going to[49] make a few more sketches out there. I am planning a big picture, you see—don’t you think it is a good subject, with all the working people and the mule-carts in the excavation field?”
“Very good. I am sure you can make something of it. I should like to show it to Gunnar and Ahlin. Oh, you are up! Let me do your hair. What a mass of it you have, child. May I do it in the new fashion?—with curls, you know.” Francesca pulled her fingers through her friend’s long, fair hair. “Sit quite still. There was a letter for you this morning. I brought it up. Did you find it? It was from your little brother, was it not?”
“Yes,” said Jenny.
“Was it nice?—were you pleased?”
“Yes, very nice. You know, Cesca, sometimes—only on a Sunday morning once in a while—I wish I could fly home and go for a stroll in Nordmarken with Kalfatrus. He is such a brick, that boy.”
Francesca looked at Jenny’s smiling face in the glass. She took down her hair and began to brush it again.
“No, Cesca; there is no time for it.”
“Oh yes. If they come too early they can go into my room. It is in a terrible state—a regular pigsty—but never mind. They won’t come so early—not Gunnar, and I don’t mind him if he does, and not Ahlin either for that matter. He has already been to see me this morning; I was in bed, and he sat and talked. I sent him out on to the balcony while I dressed, and then we went out and had a good meal at Tre Re. We have been together the whole afternoon.”
Jenny said nothing.
“We saw Gram at Nazionale. Isn’t he awful? Have you ever seen anything like it?”
“I don’t think he is bad at all. He is awkward, poor boy, exactly as I was at first. He is one of those people who would like to enjoy themselves, but don’t know how to.”
[50]
“I came from Florence this morning,” said Francesca, imitating him, and laughed. “Ugh! If he had come by aeroplane at least.”
“You were exceedingly rude to him, my dear. It won’t do. I should have liked to ask him here tonight, but I dared not because of you. I could not take the risk of your being discourteous to him when he was our guest.”
“No fear of that. You know that quite well.” Francesca was hurt.
“Do you remember that time when Douglas came home with me to tea?”
“Yes, after that model business, but that was quite a different matter.”
“Nonsense. It was no concern of yours.”
“Wasn’t it? When he had proposed to me and I had very nearly accepted him.”
“How could he know?” said Jenny.
“Anyway, I had not quite said no, and the day before I had been with him to Versailles. He kissed me there several times and lay with his head in my lap, and when I told him I didn’t care for him he didn’t believe me.”
“It is not right, Cesca.” Jenny caught her eye in the mirror. “You are the dearest little girl in the world when you use your brains, but sometimes it seems as if you had no idea you are dealing with living beings, with people who have feelings that you must respect. You would respect them if you were not so thoughtless, for I know you only want to be good and kind.”
“Per Bacco. Don’t be too sure of that. But I must show you some roses. Ahlin bought me quite a load this afternoon at a Spanish stairs.” Cesca smiled defiantly.
“You ought to stop that kind of thing, I think—if only because you know he cannot afford it.”
“I don’t care. If he is in love with me, I suppose he likes it.”
[51]
“I won’t talk of reputation after all these doings of yours.”
“No, better not speak about my reputation. You are quite right there. At home, in Christiania, I have spoilt my reputation past mending, once and for all.” She laughed hysterically. “Damn it all! I don’t care.”
“I don’t understand you, Cesca darling. You don’t care for any of those men. Why do you want.... And as to Ahlin, can’t you see he is in earnest? Norman Douglas, too, was in earnest. You don’t know what you are doing. I really do believe, child, that you’ve no instincts at all.”
Francesca put away brush and comb and looked at Jenny’s hairdressing in the glass. She tried to retain her defiant little smile, but it faded away and her eyes filled with tears.
“I had a letter this morning, too.” Her voice trembled. “From Berlin, from Borghild.” Jenny rose from the dressing-table. “Yes, perhaps you had better get ready. Will you put the kettle on, or do you think we’d better cook the artichokes first?” She began to make the bed. “We might call Marietta—but don’t you think we had better do it ourselves?”
“Borghild writes that Hans Hermann was married last week. His wife is already expecting a child.”
Jenny put the matchbox on the table. She glanced at Francesca’s miserable little face and then went quietly up to her.
“It is that singer, Berit Eck, you know, he was engaged to.” Francesca spoke in a faint voice, leaning for an instant against her friend, and then began to arrange the sheets with trembling hands.
“But you knew they were engaged—more than a year ago.”
“Yes—let me do that, Jenny; you lay the table. I know, of course, that you knew all about it.”
Jenny laid the table for four. Francesca put the counterpane on the bed and brought the roses. She stood fumbling with her blouse, then pulled out a letter from inside it and twisted it between her fingers.
[52]
“She met them at the Thiergarten—she writes. She says—oh, she can be brutal sometimes, Borghild.” Francesca went quickly across the room, pulled open the door of the stove, and threw the letter in. Then she sank down in an arm-chair and burst into tears.
Jenny went to her and put one arm round her neck.
“Cesca, dearest little Cesca!”
Francesca pressed her face against Jenny’s arm:
“She looked so miserable, poor thing. She hung on his arm, and he seemed sullen and angry. I can quite imagine it. I am sorry for her—fancy allowing herself to become dependent on him in such a way. He has brought her to her knees, I am sure. How could she be such an idiot, when she knew him? Oh, but think of it, Jenny! He is going to have a child by somebody else—oh, my God! my God!”
Jenny sat on the arm of the chair. Cesca nestled close to her:
“I suppose you are right—I have no instincts. Perhaps I never loved him really, but I should have liked to have a child by him. And yet I could not make up my mind. Sometimes he wanted me to marry him straight off, go to the registry office, but I wouldn’t. They would have been so angry with me at home, and people would have said we were obliged to marry, if we had done it that way. I did not want that either, although I knew they thought the worst of me all the same, but that did not worry me. I knew I was ruining my reputation for his sake, but I did not care, and I don’t care now, I tell you.
“But he thought I refused because I was afraid he would not marry me afterwards. ‘Let’s go to the registry office first, then, you silly girl,’ he said, but I would not go. He thought it was all sham. ‘You cold!’ he said; ‘you are not cold any longer than you choose to be.’ Sometimes I almost thought I wasn’t. Perhaps it was only fright, for he was such a brute;[53] he beat me sometimes—nearly tore the clothes off me. I had to scratch and bite to protect myself—and cry and scream.”
“And yet you went back to him?” said Jenny.
“I did, that is true. The porter’s wife did not want to do his rooms any longer, so I went and tidied up for him. I had a key. I scrubbed the floor and made his bed—Heaven only knows who had been in it.”
Jenny shook her head.
“Borghild was furious about it. She proved to me that he had a mistress. I knew it, but I did not want proof. Borghild said he had given me the key, because he wanted me to take them by surprise, and make me jealous, so that I should give in, as I was compromised anyway. But she was not right, for it was me he loved—in his way—I know he loved me as much as he could love anybody.
“Borghild was angry with me because I pawned the diamond ring I had from our grandmother. I have never told you about it. Hans said he had to have money—a hundred kroner—and I promised to get it. Where I didn’t know. I dared not write to father, for I’d spent more than my allowance already, so I went and pawned my watch and a chain bracelet and that ring—one of those old ones, you know, with a lot of little diamonds on a big shield. Borghild was angry because it had not been given to her, being the eldest, but grandmother had said I should have it, as I was named after her. I went down one morning as soon as they opened; it was hateful, but I got the money and I took it to Hans. He asked where I had got it from, and I told him. Then he kissed me and said: ‘Give me the ticket and the money, puss’—that is what he used to call me—and I did. I thought he meant to redeem it, and said he need not. I was very much moved, you see. ‘I will settle it in another way,’ said Hans, and went out. I stayed in his rooms and waited. I was very excited, for I knew he wanted the money, and I decided to go and pawn[54] the things again the next day. It would not be so horrid a second time—nothing more would be difficult. I would give him everything now. Then he came—and what do you think he had done?” She laughed amidst the tears. “He had redeemed the things from the loan-office and pawned them with his private banker, as he called him, who gave more for them.
“We went about all day together—champagne and all the rest of it—and I went home with him at night. He played to me—my God, how he played! I lay on the floor and cried. Nothing mattered as long as he played like that, and to me alone. You have not heard him play; if you had, you would understand me. But afterwards it was awful. We fought like mad, but I got away at last. Borghild was awake when I came home. My dress was torn to tatters. ‘You look like a street-girl,’ she said. I laughed. It was five o’clock.
“I should have given in in the end, you know, if it hadn’t been for one thing he had said. Sometimes he used to say: ‘You are the only decent girl I have met. There is not a man who could get round you. I respect you, puss.’ Fancy, he respected me for refusing to do what he begged and worried me about constantly. I wanted to give in, for I would have done anything to please him, but I could not get over my scare; he was so brutal, and I knew there were others. If only he had not frightened me so many times, I might have given up the struggle but then, of course, I should have lost his respect. That is why I broke with him at last—for wanting me to act in such a way that he would despise me.”
She nestled close to Jenny, who caressed her.
“Do you love me a little, Jenny?”
“You know I do, darling child.”
“You are so kind. Kiss me once more! Gunnar is kind, too—and Ahlin. I shall be more careful. I don’t wish him any harm. Besides, I may marry him, as he is so fond of me. Ahlin would never be brutal—I know that. Do you think[55] he would worry me? Not much. And I might have children. Some day I will come into money, and he is so poor. We could live abroad and we could both work. There is something refined about all his work, don’t you think? That relief of the boys playing, for instance, and the cast for the Almquist monument. Not very original, perhaps, in composition, but so beautiful, so noble and restful, and the figures so perfectly plastic.”
Jenny smiled a little and stroked the hair from Francesca’s forehead; it was wet with tears.
“I wish I could work like that—always—but I have those eternal pains in my heart and my head. My eyes hurt me too, and I am dead tired always.”
“You know what your doctor says—only nerves—every bit of it. If you only would be sensible!”
“I know. That is what they all say, but I am afraid. You say that I have no instincts—not in the way you mean, but I have them all right in another way. I have been a devil all this week—I know it perfectly well—but I have been waiting all the time for something awful I knew was going to happen. You see, I was right.”
Jenny kissed her again.
“I was down at S. Agostino tonight. You know that image of the Madonna that works miracles; I knelt before it and prayed to the Virgin. I think I should be happier if I turned Catholic. A woman like the Virgin Mary would understand. I ought really never to marry. I ought to go into a convent—Siena, for instance. I might paint copies in the gallery and earn some money for the convent. When I copied that angel for Melozzo da Forli in Florence there was a nun painting every day. It wasn’t so bad.” She laughed. “I mean, it was awful. I hated it. But they all said my copies were so good—and so they were. I believe I should be happy in that way. Oh, Jenny, if I only felt well and were at peace in my mind,[56] but I am so bewildered and frightened. If I were well, I could work, work—always. And I’d be so good and nice—you don’t know how good I could be. I know I am not always good. I give in to every mood when I feel as I do at present. I am going to stop it, if only you will love me, all of you, but you especially. Let us ask that Gram here. Next time I see him I’ll be so nice and sweet to him, you see. We’ll ask him here and take him out, and I will do anything to amuse him. Do you hear, Jenny? Are you pleased with me now?”
“Yes, Cesca dear.”
“Gunnar does not think I can be serious,” she said pensively.
“Oh yes, he does; he only thinks you are very childish. You know what he thinks of your work. Don’t you remember what he said in Paris about your energy and your talent? Great and original, he said. He did not think lightly of you that time.”
“Gunnar is a nice boy, but he was angry with me because of Douglas.”
“Any man would have been angry with you. I was, too.”
Francesca sighed and sat quiet an instant. “How did you get rid of Gram? I thought you would never be able to shake that fellow off. I thought that he would come home with you and sleep here on the sofa.”
Jenny laughed. “Oh no! He went with me to the Aventine and had breakfast; then he went home. I rather like him, you know.”
“Dio mio! Jenny, you are abnormally good. Have you not got enough to mother already, with us? Or have you fallen in love with him?”
Jenny laughed again. “I don’t think there is much chance for me. I suppose he will fall in love with you, like the rest, if you are not careful.”
“They all do, it seems—Heaven only knows why. But[57] they soon get cured, and then they’re angry with me afterwards.” She sighed.
They heard steps on the stairs.
“That is Gunnar. I am going into my room a little. I must bathe my eyes.”
She passed Heggen in the door with a short greeting as she hurried away. He shut the door and came into the room.
“You are all right, I see—but so you always are. You are an extraordinary girl, Jenny. I suppose you have been working all the morning—and she?” He pointed towards Cesca’s room.
“In a bad state, poor little thing.”
“I saw it in the papers when I looked in at the club. Have you finished the study? Show me. It is very good.” Heggen held the picture to the light and looked at it for some time. “This part stands out beautifully. It is powerful work. Is she lying on her bed crying, do you think?”
“I don’t know. She has been crying in here. She had a letter from her sister.”
“If ever I meet that cad,” said Heggen, “I shall find some pretext to give him a sound thrashing.”