Towards evening of a clear and calm afternoon in May there was a haze over the black sites of the city; the naked walls looked reddish yellow and the factory chimneys a livery brown in the sunlight. Large and small houses, high and low roofs, stood outlined against the greyish-purple air, heavy with dust and smoke and vapours. A little tree by a red wall showed tiny greenish-yellow leaves, transparent in the sunlight. The mould on the board walls of the workshops was bright green and the soot flakes on the factory walls jet black in some places and in others covered, as it were, with a thin, glistening silvery film.
Jenny had been walking about all the morning in the outskirts of the town, where the sky rose dark blue and hot over the olive-golden fir-tops and the amber-coloured buds of the leaf trees, but here in the city over the high houses and the net of telephone wires it was growing pale behind a thin veil of opal-white haze. This was really the prettier sight of the two, though Gert could not see it. To him the city was always ugly, grey, and dirty; it was the city they had cursed, all those young men of the eighties who had been obliged to settle down there to work. He was probably standing at his window this moment, looking out in the sun, and to him the play of light in line and colour was not worth noticing; it was merely a sunray outside his prison window.
She stopped a few steps from his door, looking up and down the street, as usual. There was nobody she knew, only business people on their way home. It was past six o’clock.
[200]
She ran up the stairs—those dreadful iron steps that echoed their movements when they stole down from his rooms late in the winter nights. The naked walls seemed ever to retain the cold, raw air.
She hurried along the corridor and gave the usual three knocks at his door. Gram opened it. He put his arm round her, and locked the door with his other hand as they kissed. Over his shoulder she could see the flowers on the little table, with wine and foreign fruits in a crystal bowl. There was a slight mist of cigarette smoke in the room, and she knew that he had been sitting there since four o’clock waiting for her.
“I could not come before,” she whispered. “I was so sorry to let you wait.” When he released her she went to the table, bending over the flowers. “I will take two and make myself nice, may I? I am getting so spoilt since I have come to you, Gert.” She stretched out her hands to him.
“When must you go?” he asked, kissing her arms tenderly.
Jenny bent her head:
“I promised to be back for supper. Mother always waits up for me, and she is so tired now; she needs me to help her in the evening with one thing or another,” she said quickly. “It is not so easy to get away from home, you see,” she whispered in excuse.
He listened to her many words with bowed head. When she came towards him he took her in his arms so that her face was hidden against his shoulder.
She could not lie, poor little thing, not so well, anyhow, that he would believe it for a single merciful second. In the winter—the very short time of their love—and in the early spring she could always be away from home.
“It is tiresome, Gert, but now I am living at home it is much more difficult to manage; you know I have to be there because mother needs the money as well as the help. You agreed with me, did you not, that I had better move home?”
[201]
Gert nodded assent. They were sitting on the sofa close together, Jenny’s head resting on his shoulder, so that she could not see his face.
“I was in the country this morning, walking where we used to go together. Let us go there again soon—the day after tomorrow if it is fine—will you? You are sorry because I have to go home so early today, are you not?”
“My dear, have I not said that thousands of times already?” She could hear from his voice that he was saying this with his melancholy smile again. “I am grateful for every second of your life that you give me.”
“Don’t speak like that, Gert,” she said, pained.
“Why should I not say it when it is true? Dearest little girl, do you think I will ever forget that all you have given me is as a princely grace, and I can never understand how you came to give it to me at all?”
“When I realized last winter that you were fond of me—how much you really loved me—I said to myself it must stop. But then I understood that I could not be without you, and so I gave myself to you. Was that a grace? When I could not let you go?”
“I call it an inconceivable grace that you ever came to love me.”
She nestled in his arms without speaking.
“My own darling ... so young and sweet you are....”
“I am not young, Gert. When you met me I was already beginning to get old without ever having been young. You seemed young to me, much younger at heart than I, because you still believed in what I called childish dreams and used to laugh at them. You have made me believe in love and tenderness and all such things.”
Gert Gram smiled, and whispered: “Perhaps my heart was not older than yours—for it seemed to me that I had never yet had any youth, and deep down in my soul I still entertained the[202] hope that some day youth would touch me, if only for once, with his wand. But my hair has turned white meanwhile.”
Jenny raised her head and laid her hand caressingly on his head.
“Are you tired, little one? Shall I take off your shoes? Will you not lie down and rest?”
“No, let me stay as I am; it is nicer so.”
She drew her feet up under her and nestled closer in his lap. He laid one arm about her, and with the other hand he poured out some wine, holding the glass to her lips. She drank readily. He dropped cherries into her mouth and took the stones from her lips, putting them on the plate.
“More wine?”
“Thanks. I think I will stay with you. I can send a message home to say I have met Heggen—I believe he is in town—but I must go home before the trams stop.”
“I’ll go and see about it now.” He let her down gently on the sofa. “Lie still there and rest, little one.”
When he was gone she took off her shoes, drank some more wine, and lay down on the sofa with her head deep in the cushions, pulling a rug over herself.
After all, she loved him, and was glad to be with him. Sitting as she had been a moment ago, resting in his arms, she was happy. He was the only one in the world who had taken her on his knee, warming her and hiding her and calling her his little girl. He was the only being who had stood by her really—so why should she not be close to him?
When he held her close to him and hid her so that she saw nothing, but only felt that he had his arms round her and warmed her, she was contented. She could not do without him, so why not give him the little she had to give, when he gave her what she needed most of all?
He could kiss her, do with her what he liked, provided he[203] did not speak, for then they drew so far apart. He spoke of love, but her love was not what he believed it to be, and she could not explain it in words. It was no grace or princely gift—she clung to him with a poor, begging love; she did not want him to thank her for it, only to be fond of her and say nothing.
When he came back she was lying with her eyes wide open, but she closed them under his discreet caresses, smiling a little; then she put her arms round his neck and pressed close to him. The faint scent of violet that he used was mild and agreeable. She nodded slightly when he lifted her up with questioning eyes. He wanted to say something, but she put her hand across his mouth and then kissed him so that he could not speak.
He saw her to the car. She remained an instant standing on the platform, looking after him as he walked down the street in the blue light of a May night. Then she went in and sat down.
Gram had left his wife that Christmas, and lived alone in the office building, where he had taken another room. Jenny understood that he was going to get a separation later on when Rebecca Gram had seen that he was not coming back to her. It was his way of doing it; he had not the strength to break with her at once.
Jenny dared not think of what his plans for the future might be. Did he think they would marry?
She could not deny to herself that she had never for a second thought of binding herself to him for good, and that was why she felt the bitter, hopeless humiliation and shame at the thought of him when she was not with him and could hide in his love. She had deceived him—all the time she had deceived him.
“That you have learnt to love me, Jenny, that is what I call[204] an inconceivable grace”—was it her fault that he looked upon it in that way?
He could not have made her his mistress unless she had wanted it herself or made him feel that she wanted it. She understood that he was longing for her; it worried her every time they were together to know herself desired and to see his efforts to conceal it—he was too proud to let her see it, too proud to beg where he had once offered to give—and too proud to risk refusal. Knowing that she did not want to reject his love and to lose the only being who loved her, what else could she do, if she wished to be honest, but offer him what she had to give when she accepted from him something she could not do without?
But she had been faced with the necessity of saying words stronger and more passionate than her feelings, and he had believed them. And it happened again and again. When she came to him depressed, worried, tired of thinking what the end of it all would be, and saw that he understood, she used again the tender words, feigning more feeling than she had, and he was deceived at once.
He knew no other love than the love which was happiness in itself. Unhappiness in love came from outside, from some relentless fate, or from stern justice as a vengeance for old wrongs. She knew what his fear was—he dreaded that her love would die one day when she saw that he was too old to be her lover, but he never had a suspicion that her love was born a weakling and had in it the germ that would lead to death. It was no good trying to explain this to Gert; he would not understand. She could not tell him that she had sought shelter in his arms because he was the only one who had offered to shelter her when she was weary to death. When he offered her love and warmth she had not the strength to reject, although she knew she ought not to accept it—she was not worthy of it.
No, he was............