Jenny/Part 1, 9
When she awoke in the morning she told herself that he would very likely not come at all, and so much the better—but when he knocked at her door she was pleased all the same.
"I have had nothing to eat yet, Miss Winge. Could you give me a cup of tea and some bread?"
Jenny looked about her in the room.
"Yes, but the room isn't done yet."
"I'll shut my eyes while you lead me on to the balcony," said Gram from behind the door. "I am dying for a cup of tea."
"Very well, half a minute." Jenny covered her bed with the counterpane, tidied the dressing-table, and changed her dressing-jacket for a long kimono. "Come in, and please go and sit on the balcony while I get your tea." She brought out a stool and placed some bread and cheese on it.
Gram looked at her bare, white arms in the long, fluttering sleeves of the dark blue kimono with a pattern of yellow and purple iris.
"What a pretty thing you have on. It looks like a real geisha dress."
"It is real. Cesca and I bought these in Paris to wear at home in the morning."
"It is a capital idea, I think, to go about like that and look pretty when you are alone. I like it."
He lit a cigarette and gazed at the smoke as it rose in the air.
"Ugh! At home the maid and my mother and sister used to look like anything in the morning. Don't you think women ought always to make themselves look as pretty as possible?"
"Yes, but it isn't always possible when you have to do housework."
"Perhaps not, but they might at least do their hair before breakfast and put on a thing like that, don't you think?"
He was just in time to save a cup, which she was on the point of brushing down with her sleeve.
"You see how practical it is. Now, drink your tea; you said you were thirsty."
She discovered suddenly that Cesca's whole stock of coloured stockings were hanging to dry on the balcony, and she removed them a little nervously.
While he was having his tea he explained:
"I lay awake last night thinking, almost until dawn, and then, of course, I overslept, so had no time to stop at the latteria on my way. I think we should go to Via Cassia to that anemone place of yours."
"Anemone place." Jenny laughed. "When you were a boy did you, too, have special places for violets and bluebells, and kept them a secret from the others and went there all alone every year?"
"Of course I had. I know a beech grove by the old road to Holmenkollen, where there are real scented violets."
"I know it too," she interrupted triumphantly, "to the right, just before the road branches off to Sorkedal."
"Exactly. I had some other places too, on Fredriksborg and"
"I must go in and put on my dress," said Jenny.
"Put on the one you had yesterday, please!" he called after her.
"It will get so dusty"—but she changed her mind in the same moment. Why should she not make herself look nice? The old black silk had been her best for a good many years; she need not treat it with such deference any more.
"I don't care! but it fastens at the back, and Cesca's not in."
"Come out here and I'll button it for you. I am an expert at it. It seems to me I have done nothing all my life but fasten mother's and Sophy's buttons at the back."
She could manage all but two, and she allowed Gram to help her with them. As she stood by him in the sunshine while he fastened her dress, he became aware of the faint, mild fragrance of her hair and her body. He noticed one or two small rents in the silk, which were carefully darned, and the sight of it filled his heart with an infinite tenderness towards her.
"Do you think Helge a nice name?" he asked, when they were having lunch at an osteria far out on the Campagna.
"Yes; I like it."
"Do you know that it is my Christian name?"
"Yes; I saw you had written it in the visitors' book at the club." She blushed slightly, thinking he might believe that she had looked it up on purpose.
"I suppose it is nice. On the whole, there are few names that are nice or ugly in themselves; it all depends if you like the people or not. When I was a boy we had a nurse called Jenny; I could not bear her, and ever since I thought the name was hideous and common. It seemed to me preposterous that you should be called Jenny, but now I think it so pretty; it gives one an idea of fairness. Can you not hear how delicately fair it sounds?—Jenny—a dark woman could not be called that, not Miss Jahrman, for instance. Francesca suits her captially, don't you think? It sounds so capricious, but Jenny is nice and bright."
"It is a name we've always had in my father's family," she said, by way of an answer.
"What do you think of Rebecca, for instance?"
"I don't know. Rather harsh and clattering, perhaps, but it is pretty, though."
"My mother's name is Rebecca," said Helge. "I think it sounds hard, too. My sister's name is Sophy. She married only to get away from home, I am sure, and have a place of her own. I wonder mother could be so delighted to get her married, considering the cat-and-dog life she herself has led with my father. But there was no end of a fuss about the Rev. Arnesen, when my sister got engaged to him. I can't stand my brother-in-law, neither can father, I believe, but mother!…
"My fiancée—I was engaged once, you know—her name was Catherine, but she was always called Titti. I saw she had that name put into the papers, too, when her marriage was announced.
"It was a stupid thing altogether. It was three years ago. She was giving some lessons in the school where I was teaching. She was not a bit pretty, but she flirted with everybody, and no woman had ever taken any notice of me—which you can easily understand, when you think of me as I was here at first. She always laughed at everything—she was only nineteen. Heaven knows why she took to me.
"I was jealous, and it amused her. The more jealous she made me, the more in love was I. I suppose it was less love than male vanity, having a sweetheart very much in demand. I was very young then. I wanted her to be exclusively taken up with me—a very difficult proposition as I was then. I have often wondered what she wanted me for.
"My people wanted our engagement to be kept secret, because we were so young. Titti wanted it made public, and when I reproached her for being too much interested in other men, she said she could not spend all her time with me, as our engagement was a secret.
"I took her home, but she could not get on with my mother. They always quarrelled, and Titti simply hated her. I suppose it would have made no difference to mother if I had been engaged to somebody else; the fact that I was going to marry was enough to put her against any woman. Well—Titti broke it off."
"Did it hurt you very much?" Jenny asked quietly.
"Yes, at the time. I did not quite get over it till I came here, but I think it was mostly my pride that suffered. Don't you think that if I had loved her really, I should have wished her to be happy when she married another? But I didn't."
"It would have been almost too unselfish and noble," said Jenny, smiling.
"Oh, I don't know. That is how you ought to feel if you really love. Don't you think it is strange that mothers never care for their sons' sweethearts? They never do."
"I suppose a mother thinks no woman is good enough for her boy."
"When a daughter gets engaged it is quite different. I saw that in the case of my sister and the fat, red-haired cleargyman. There was never much sympathy between my sister and myself, but when I saw that fellow making love to her, and thought that he … Ugh!
"I sometimes think women who have been married some time become more cynical than we men ever are. They don't give themselves away, but you notice it all the same. Marriage to them means merely business. When a daughter marries they are pleased to have her saddled on to some one who can feed and clothe her, and if she has to put up with the shady side of marriage in return, it's not worth making a fuss about. But if a son takes upon himself the same kind of burden for a similar return, they are not so enthusiastic about it. Don't you think there is something in it?"
"Sometimes," said Jenny.
When she came home that evening she lit the lamp and sat down to write to her mother to thank her for the birthday greetings and tell her how she had spent the day.
She laughed at herself for having been so solemn the night before. Heaven knows, she had had difficulties and been lonely, but so had most of the young people she knew. Some of them had been worse off than she. She thought of all the young girls—and the old ones—who had taught at the school; nearly all of them had an old mother to support, or sisters and brothers to help. And Gunnar?—and Gram? Even Cesca, the spoilt child from a rich home, had fought her way, since she had left home at twenty-one and kept herself on the little money left her by her mother.
As to loneliness, she had chosen it herself. All said and done, she had perhaps not been quite sure about her own powers, and to deaden her doubts, had held by the idea that she was different from other people—and they had been repelled. She had made some headway since, had proved to herself that she could do something, and had grown more friendly, less reserved, than before. She was obliged to admit that she had never made any advances, either as a child or since; she had always been too proud to take the first step. All the friends she had—from her stepfather to Gunnar and Cesca—had first stretched out their hands to her. And why had she always imagined that she was passionate? Such nonsense! She who had reached twenty-eight without ever having been the least in love. She believed that she would not be a failure as a woman, if once she were fond of a man, for she was healthy, good looking, and had sound instincts, which her work and outdoor life had developed. And very naturally she longed to love and be loved—longed to live. But to imagine that she would be able, from sheer rebellion of her senses, to fall into the arms of any man who happened to be near at a critical moment was utter nonsense. It was only because she would not admit to herself that she was dull sometimes and wished to make a conquest and flirt a little just like other girls—a pastime which in reality she did not approve of—that she preferred to imagine she was consumed by a thirst for life and clamouring senses. Such high-flown words were only invented by men, poor things, not knowing that women generally are simple and vain, and so stupid that they are bored unless there is a man to entertain them. That is the origin of the legend of the sensual woman—they are as rare as black swans, or disciplined, educated women.
Jenny moved Francesca's portrait on to the easel. The white blouse and the green skirt looked hard and ugly. It would have to be toned down. The face was well drawn, the position good.
This episode with Gram was really nothing to be serious about. It was time she became reasonable. She must do away with those silly notions that she was afraid of every man she met—as with Gunnar in the beginning—afraid of falling in love with him, and almost more of his falling in love with her: a thing she was so unused to that it bewildered her.
Why could one not be friends with a man? If not, the world would be all a muddle. She and Gunnar were friends—a solid, comfortable friendship.
There was much about Gram that would make a friendship between them quite natural. They had had much the same experiences. He was so young and so full of confidence in her; she liked his "Is it not?" and "Don't you think?" He had talked yesterday about being in love with her—he thought at least he was, he said. She smiled to herself. A man would not speak to her as he had done if he had really fallen in love with a woman and wanted to win her.
"He is a dear boy; that's what he is."
Today he had not broached the subject. She liked him when he said that if he had been really fond of the girl he would have wished her happiness with the other man.