Jenny and Helge were running hand in hand down Via Magnanapoli. The street was merely a staircase, leading to the Trajan Forum. On the last step he drew her to him and kissed her. “Are you mad? You mustn’t kiss people in the street here.”
And they both laughed. One evening they had been spoken to by two policemen on the Lateran piazza for walking up and down under the pines along the old wall kissing each other.
The last sunrays brushed the bronze figures on top of the pillar and burned on the walls and on the tree-tops in the gardens. The piazza lay in the shade, with its old, rickety houses round the excavated forum below the street level.
Jenny and Helge leaned over the railing and tried to count the fat, lazy cats which had taken their abode among the stumps of pillars on the grass-covered plot. They seemed to revive a little as the twilight began to fall. A big red one which had been lying on the pedestal of the Trajan pillar stretched himself, sharpened his claws on the masonry, jumped down on to the grass, and ran away.
“I make it twenty-three,” said Helge.
“I counted twenty-five.” She turned round and dismissed a post card seller, who was recommending his wares in fragments of every possible language.
She leaned again over the railing and stared vaguely at the grass, giving way to the pleasant languor of a long sunny day and countless kisses out in the green Campagna. Helge held one of her hands on his arm and patted it—she moved it along his sleeve until it rested between both of his. Helge smiled happily.
“What is it, dear?”
[106]
“I am thinking of those Germans.” She laughed too—quietly and indifferently, as happy people do at trifles that do not concern them. They had passed the Forum in the morning and sat down a moment on the high pedestal of the Focas pillar, talking in whispers. Beneath them lay the crumbled ruins, gilded by the sun, and small black tourists rambled among the stones. A newly married German couple were walking by themselves, seeking solitude in the midst of the crowd of travellers. He was fair and ruddy of face, wore knickerbockers and carried a kodak, and read to his wife out of Baedeker. She was very young, plump, and dark, with the inherited stamp of hausfrau on her smooth, floury face. She sat down on a tumbled pillar, posing to her husband, who took a snapshot of her. And the two who sat above, under the Focas pillar, whispering of their love, laughed, heedless of the fact that they were sitting above the Forum Romanum.
“Are you hungry?” asked Helge.
“No; are you?”
“No—but do you know what I should like to do?”
“Well?”
“I should like to go home with you and have supper. What do you say to that?”
“Yes, of course.”
They walked home arm in arm through small side streets. In her dark staircase he drew her suddenly to him, and kissed her with such force and passion that her heart began to beat violently. She was afraid, and at the same time angry with herself for being so, and whispered in the dark: “My darling,” to prove to herself that she was calm.
“Wait a moment,” whispered Helge, when she was going to light the lamp, and he kissed her again. “Put on the geisha-dress; you look so sweet in it. I will sit on the balcony while you change.”
[107]
Jenny changed her dress in the dark; she put the kettle on and arranged the anemones and the almond sprigs before she called him in and lighted up.
He took her again in his arms and said:
“Oh, Jenny, you are so lovely. Everything about you is lovely; it is heavenly to be with you. I wish I could be with you always.”
She took his face between her two hands.
“Jenny—you wish it—that we could be always together?”
She looked into his beautiful brown eyes:
“Yes, Helge; I do.”
“Do you wish that this spring—our spring—never would end?”
“Yes—oh yes.” She threw herself suddenly into his arms and kissed him; her half-open lips and closed eyes begged for more kisses; his words about their spring, that should never cease, awoke a painful anxiety in her heart that the spring and their dream would come to an end. And yet behind it all was a dread, which she did not try to explain to herself, but it came into existence when he asked if she wished they could always be together.
“I wish I were not going home,” said Helge sadly.
“But I am going home soon too,” she said softly, “and we shall probably come back here together.”
“You are quite determined to go? Are you sorry that I have upset all your plans in this way?”
She gave him a hurried kiss and ran to the kettle, which was boiling over.
“No, you silly boy. I had almost made up my mind before, because mamma wants me badly.” She gave a short laugh. “I am ashamed of myself—she is so pleased that I am coming home to help her, and it is really only to be with my lover. But it is all right. I can live cheaper at home even if I help[108] them a little, and I may be able to earn something. What I can save now, I shall want here later.”
Helge took the cup she gave him and seized her hand:
“But next time you come here you will come with me; for I suppose you will—you mean—that we should marry?”
His face was so young and so anxiously inquiring that she had to kiss him several times, forgetting that she had been afraid of that word, which had not been mentioned between them before.
“I suppose that will be the most practical plan, you dear boy, since we have agreed to be together always.”
Helge kissed her hand, asking quietly: “When?”
“When you like,” she answered as quietly—and firmly.
Again he kissed her hand.
“What a pity we can’t be married out here,” he said a moment after in a different voice.
She did not answer, but stroked his hair softly. Helge sighed:
“But I suppose we ought not to, as we are going home so soon in any case. Your mother would feel hurt, don’t you think, at such a hurried marriage?”
Jenny was silent. It had never occurred to her that she owed her mother any account of her doings—her mother had not consulted her when she had wanted to marry again.
“It would hurt my people, I know. I don’t like to admit it, but it is so, and I should much prefer to write and tell them that I am engaged. As you are going home before me, it would be nice of you to go and see them.”
Jenny bent her head as if to shake off a disagreeable sensation, and said:
“I will, dear, if you wish me to—of course.”
“I don’t like it at all. It has been so lovely here—only you and I, nobody else in all the world. But mother would be so vexed, you see, and I don’t want to make things worse for[109] her than they are already. I don’t care for my mother any longer—she knows it, and is so grieved at it. It is only a formality, I know, but she would suffer if she thought I wanted to keep her out in the cold. She would think it was vengeance for the old story, you know. When we are through with all that, we will get married, and nobody will have anything more to say. I wish so much that it would be soon—don’t you?”
She kissed him in answer.
“I want you,” he whispered, and she made no resistance when he caressed her. But he let her go suddenly and, buttering his biscuit, began to eat.
Afterwards they sat by the stove smoking, she in the easy-chair and he on the floor with his head in her lap.
“Isn’t Cesca coming back tonight either?” he asked suddenly.
“No; she is staying in Tivoli till the end of the week,” Jenny answered a little nervously.
“You have such pretty, slender feet.”
“You are so lovely—oh, so lovely—and I am so fond of you. You don’t know how I love you, Jenny—I should like to lie down on the floor at your feet.”
“Helge! Helge!” His sudden violence frightened her, but then she said to herself: he is my own darling boy. Why should I be afraid of him.
“No, Helge—don’t. Not the shoes I stamp about with in those dirty streets.”
Helge rose—sobered and humble. She tried to laugh the whole matter away. “There may be many dangerous bacilli on those shoes, you know.”
“Ugh! What a pedant you are. And you pretend to be an artist.” He laughed too, and to hide his embarrassment, he went on boisterously: “A nice sweetheart you are. Let me smell: I thought so—you smell of turpentine and paint.”
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