Jenny/Part 3, 5
Ten days later Jenny left for Copenhagen. Her mother and Bodil Berner saw her off at the station in the early morning.
"You are a lucky one, Jenny!" said Bodil, smiling all over her little soft brown face. And she yawned till the tears came into her eyes.
"Yes, some must be the lucky ones, I suppose. But I don't think you have anything to complain of either," said Jenny, smiling too; but she was several times on the point of bursting into tears when she kissed her mother farewell. Standing at the compartment window looking at her, it seemed as if she had not really seen her mother for ever so long. She took in with her eyes the slightly stooping, slender figure, the fair hair that scarcely seemed grey at all, and the strangely unaffected girlish expression of her face, despite its wrinkles. Only the years, not life, had made the furrows, in spite of all she had gone through.
How would she take it if she knew? No, she would never have the courage to tell her and see her under the blow—she who knew nothing about it all and would not have understood. If it had been impossible to go away Jenny thought she would rather have taken her life. It was not love—it was cowardice. She would have to tell her sometime, of course, but it would be easier to do that later, from abroad.
As the train began to glide out from the station she saw Gert walking slowly down the platform behind her mother and sister, who were waving their handkerchiefs. He took off his hat, looking very pale.
It was the first of September. Jenny sat by the window looking out. It was a beautiful day, the air clear and cool, the sky dark blue, and the clouds pure white. The morning dew lay heavy on the rich green meadows where late daisies were in bloom. The birches at the edge of the forest were already turning yellow from the summer heat, and the bilberry shrub was copper coloured. The clusters of the rowan were deep red; where the trees stood on richer soil the leaves were still dark green. The colouring was splendid.
On the slopes stood old silver-grey farmhouses or new shining white or yellow ones with red-painted outhouses and crooked old apple trees with yellow or glassy green fruit showing among the foliage.
Time after time tears veiled her eyes; when she came back—if she ever did.…
The fjord became visible near Moss, a town built along the canal, with factory walls and the small wooden houses in gay colours surrounded by gardens. Often when passing it in the train she had thought of going there some day to paint.
The train passed the junction where a branch line turns off to Tegneby. Jenny looked out of the window at the familiar places; there was the drive leading to the house, which lay behind the little fir grove, and there was the church. Dear little Cesca liked to go to church; she felt herself safe and protected there, borne away by a sentiment of supernatural strength. Cesca believed in something—she did not quite know what, but had created some kind of a God for herself.
Jenny was pleased to think that Cesca and her husband seemed to be getting on better. She had written that he had not quite understood her, but had, nevertheless, been so kind and dear and convinced that she would never do anything wrong—on purpose. Strange little Cesca! Everything must come right with her in the end. She was honest and good. But she herself was neither, not to any considerable degree. If only she need not see her mother's tears; she could bear to hurt her—it only meant that she was afraid of scenes.
And Gert? Her heart shrank at the thought of him. A feeling of physical sickness rose in her, a despair and loathing so profound that she felt herself played out—on the point of becoming indifferent to everything.
Those awful last days in Christiania with him. She had given in at last.
He was coming to Copenhagen, and she had to promise to stay somewhere in the country so that he could come and see her. Would she ever be able to get quite free of him?
In the end she would perhaps have to leave the child with him and run away from it all—for it was a lie, all she had told him about being happy about it and the rest. Sometimes at Tegneby she had really felt so, because she only remembered it was her child—not his at all. But if it were to be a link between him and her humiliation she would have nothing to do with it. She would hate it—she hated it already at the memory of the last days before her departure. The morbid desire to cry and sob to her heart's content was gone; she felt dry and hard as if she could never cry again.
A week later Gert Gram arrived. She was so worn out and apathetic that she could pretend to be almost in good spirits, and if he had proposed that she should move into the hotel where he was staying, she would have done so. She made him take her to the theatre, to supper at restaurants, and one day, when the weather was fine, for an excursion to Fredensborg, because she saw that it pleased him if she seemed well and happy. She gave up thinking—it was no sacrifice, for as a matter of fact her brain was tired out.
Jenny had taken rooms with a teacher's widow in a country village. Gram accompanied her there and went back the same evening to Copenhagen. At last she was alone.
She had engaged the rooms without seeing them beforehand. When she had been studying in Copenhagen some years ago she had gone with her fellow-students into the country one day, lunching at an inn and bathing among the rocks, and she remembered it was pretty out there, so when a certain Mrs. Rasmussen, in answer to her advertisement, had offered to house the young lady who was expecting a child, she decided to go there.
The widow lived in a tiny yellow, sadly ugly brick cottage outside the village by the main road, which ran dusty and endless between open tilled fields, but Jenny was pleased on the whole. She liked her bedroom with the blue wall-paper, the etchings on the wall, and the white crochet-work d'oyleys all over the place, on the bed, on the back of the American rocking-chair, and on the chest, where Mrs. Rasmussen had placed a bunch of roses the day she arrived.
From her two little windows she could see the main road winding past the house and the small front garden, where roses, geraniums, and fuchsias grew, heedless of the dust. On the other side of the road was a bare hill at the back of the field. Stone fences, along which the vividly coloured autumn flowers grew between bramble bushes, divided the slope into squares of stubble, greeny-brown meadow, and blue-green turnip field; spriggy wind-blown willow bushes grew along the boundaries. When the evening sun had left Jenny's window the sky was flaming red and golden above the ridge and the meagre twigs of the willows.
At the back of her room was a neat doll's-house kitchen with red brick floor, opening into the back yard, where the widow's chickens were cackling and the pigeons cooing. A small passage ran through the house; on the farther side Mrs. Rasmussen had her parlour, with flower-pots in the window and crochet work everywhere, daguerreotypes and photographs on the walls, and a book-case with religious books in black paper covers, bound volumes of periodicals, and a few novels. At the back was a small room where she slept, and where the air was always heavy with an indefinable odour, though everything in the room was spotlessly clean. She could not hear in there if her boarder on the other side of the passage spent a night now and again in tears.
Mrs. Rasmussen was not so bad, on the whole. Tall and lanky, she pattered about in some kind of felt slippers, always with a worried look on her long yellow face, which was rather like that of a horse and had straggling grey hair combed back from it, forming quaint little wings over the ears. She scarcely ever spoke, save for an anxious question as to whether the lady was pleased with the room or the food, and when Jenny went to sit in the parlour with her needlework they were both perfectly quiet. Jenny was specially grateful to the woman for not mentioning her condition; only once when she went out with her painting paraphernalia did Mrs. Rasmussen ask her anxiously if she did not think it unwise. She had worked hard at first, standing behind a stone fence with her field easel, which threatened to be upset every instant by the wind.
Below the stone fence the stubby rye field sloped towards a swamp where the bog bean round the bluish water pools was whitening, and velvety black peat stacks stood piled on the grass. Beyond the swamp were the chalk-white peasants' huts set in rich dark green groves and surrounded by meadows, stubbed rye fields, and turnip land as far as the water's edge. The beach was cut into tiny bays and points, the sand and the short dried grass making it look a whitish yellow. To the north a heather-brown hill with a windmill on top sloped down towards the bay. Light and shadow flitted alternately over the landscape as the clouds travelled across the wide, ever restless sky.
When Jenny got tired she lay down by the fence, looking up at the sky and out over the bay; she could not stand for long at a time, but it made her only more eager. Two small pictures painted from the fence were finished, and she was pleased with them; a third one she painted in the village, where the low whitewashed houses with thatched roofs almost covering the windows, and climbing roses and dahlias in the gardens, stood along a velvety green ditch, and a red brick church stretched its gabled tower above the foliage of the vicarage garden. But it made her nervous when people came to look at her, and flaxen-haired youngsters clustered round her when she was painting. When the picture was finished she moved with her easel again to the stone fence.
In October the rain came, pouring down for a week or two. Now and again the skies cleared a little, letting out a sickly yellow ray of light between the clouds over the hill with the pitiable willows, and the puddles in the road lay shining a little while before the rain troubled their surface again.
Jenny borrowed Mrs. Rasmussen's books and learnt to knit the kind of lace that bordered her curtains, but neither reading nor knitting came to much. She sat in the rocking-chair by the window all day long, not even caring to dress properly, only wearing her old faded kimono. As her condition became more and more apparent she suffered agonies.
Gert Gram had written to say he was coming to see her, and two days later he arrived, driving up in the early morning in pouring rain. He stayed a week, putting up at the railway hotel two miles from the village, but spending all his time with her. When he left he promised to come again soon—possibly in six weeks.
Jenny lay awake all night with her lamp burning. She knew she could not bear it again; it had been too awful. Everything was unbearable from the moment he arrived—his first worried, compassionate glance when he saw her—dressed in a new navy blue straight frock made by the village dressmaker. "How lovely you are," he said, and declared she was like a madonna. Madonna, indeed! His arm placed cautiously round her waist, his long, guarded kiss on her forehead, made her feel as if she could die of shame. And how he had worried her with his concern about her health and his advice about taking enough exercise. One day when the rain stopped he dragged her for a long walk, insisting that she should hang on his arm for support. One evening he had looked at her needlework—stealthily—expecting probably that she would be hemming baby linen. He meant it all so kindly, and there was no hope of a change for the better when he would come again—more likely the reverse; she simply could not endure it.
One day she had a letter from him in which, among other things, he said she ought to see a doctor, and the same night she wrote to Gunnar Heggen telling him that she was expecting a child in February, and would he let her have the address of a quiet place where she could stay until it was over. Heggen answered by return:
"Dear Jenny,—I have advertised in a couple of papers
and will send you the answers when they come, so you can see
for yourself. If you would like me to go and look at some of
the places before you decide, I will do so with pleasure—you
know that. I am at your disposal in every way. Let me know
when you leave, what way you are coming, and if you want me
to meet you, or if I can help you in any other way. I am
sorry about it, of course, but I know you are comparatively well
equipped to face trouble. Please write and say if there is anything
else I can do for you; you know I am only too pleased
to be of any service. I hear you have a good picture at the
State exhibition—congratulations.
"Kind regards from your sincere friend, G. H."
A few days later came a whole bundle of letters. Jenny
waded through some of the writing, printed in an awful gothic
scrawl, and then wrote to a Mrs. Schlessinger in the vicinity of
Warnemünde, renting a room from the fifteenth of November.
She gave Mrs. Rasmussen notice, and told Gunnar by letter of
her decision.
On the eve of her departure she wrote to Gram:
"Dear Friend,—I have formed a decision which I am
afraid will hurt you, but you must not be angry with me. I
am tired and unnerved; I know I was tiresome and disagreeable
to you when you were here, and I don't want it to happen again,
so have decided not to see you until all is over and I am normal
again. I am leaving here tomorrow early, going abroad. I
am not giving you my address at present, but you can send
your letters via Mrs. Ahlin, Varberg, Sweden, and I will write
you through her. Do not be anxious about me. I am quite well and everything is all right, but I beg of you, dear, not to try to get into communication with me in any other way than the one I have suggested. Do not be vexed with me, for I believe this arrangement to be the best for both of us, and please try not to worry about me more than you can help.—Yours affectionately, Jenny Winge."
So she moved from one widow to another, and into another small cottage—this time a red one with white-washed window-sills and standing in a little garden with flagged paths and shells around the flower-beds, where the dahlias and chysanthemums stood black and rotting. Twenty to thirty similar houses stood along a small street leading from the railway station to the fishing harbour, where the waves foamed against the long stone piers. On the beach, a little away from the village, stood a small hotel with the shutters up. Endless roads, with bare, straggling poplars bending in the wind, led out over interminable plains and swamps past small brick farms with a strip of garden front and a couple of haystacks at the back.
Jenny walked along the road as far as she could manage, returning home to sit in her little room, which this time was overloaded with precious knick-knacks, coloured plaster casts of castles, and merry scenes at country inns in brass frames. She had not the strength to change her wet shoes even, but Mrs. Schlessinger took off the boots and stockings, talking all the time, exhorting her to keep up her courage, telling her about all the other young ladies she had had in the house—how So-and-so had married and was well off and happy now.
When she had been there a month Mrs. Schlessinger came into her room one day, excited and beaming—a gentleman had come to see the young lady. Jenny was paralysed with fright, but managed at last to ask what he looked like. "Quite young," said Mrs. Schlessinger, with a lurking smile—"and very nice looking." It dawned upon her that it might be Gunnar, and she got up, but, suddenly changing her mind, wrapped herself up in a rug and sat down in the deepest of her armchairs.
Mrs. Schlessinger departed, pleased to announce a visitor. Showing Gunnar into the room, she remained an instant smiling by the door before closing it.
He squeezed her hand, almost hurting her, and greeted her with a beaming smile:
"I thought I had better come up here to see what kind of a place you had settled on. It is rather a dull part of the world you have chosen, but it is healthy anyway." He shook the water from his hat as he spoke.
"You must have some tea and something to eat," said Jenny, making a movement as if meaning to rise, but remained sitting, saying with a blush: "Do you mind ringing the bell?"
Heggen ate with excellent appetite, talking all the while. He was delighted with Berlin; he had lived in a workmen's quarter—the Moabit—and spoke with equal enthusiasm about the social democrats and the military, for "there is something grand and manly about it, and the one stimulates the other." He had been over some great factories and had studied night life, having met a Norwegian engineer who was on his honeymoon and a Norwegian couple with two lovely daughters, who were dying to see a little vice at close quarters. They had been to National, Riche, and to Amorsaale, and the ladies had enjoyed it all immensely.
"But I offended them, I'm afraid—asked Miss Paulsen to come home with me late one evening."
"Gunnar, how could you!"
"Well, I was not quite sober, you understand; it was only a joke, you know. If by any chance she had consented, I should have been in an awful fix. Might have had to marry a little girl who amuses herself sniffing at such things—no, thank you. It was great fun to see her so virtuously offended. There was no danger really—little girls of that sort don't give away their treasure without making sure of a fair return."
He blushed suddenly. It struck him that Jenny might think it tactless of him to speak like that before her—now. But she only laughed:
"What mad things you do!"
As Heggen went on talking, the unnatural, painful shyness gradually left her. Once or twice, when she did not notice it, his eyes anxiously scanned her face—heavens! how thin and hollow-eyed she was, and furrowed about the mouth. The sinews of her neck were prominent, and there were a couple of ugly lines across the throat.
The rain had stopped, and she consented to go for a walk with him. They walked in the sea-mist along the deserted road with the scraggy poplars.
"Take my arm," said Gunnar casually, and Jenny took it, feeling heavy and tired.
"It must be awfully dull for you here, Jenny—don't you think it would be much better if you went to Berlin?"
Jenny shook her head.
"You would have the museums there to go to and other things besides—and somebody to be with at times. You don't care to go to National anyway. Won't you come, just for a bit of a change? You must be deadly dull here."
"Oh no, Gunnar—I could not go now, you understand."
"You look quite nice in that ulster," said Gunnar cautiously, after a short pause.
Jenny bent her head.
"Oh, I am a fool," said he suddenly. "Forgive me. You must tell me, Jenny, if I bother you."
"Oh no, you don't bother me. I am glad you came."
"I realize that it must be awful for you, Jenny." His voice had changed completely. "I quite realize it, but I am sure you are making it still worse by going about here all alone. I do think you ought to go somewhere else—somewhere a little less hopeless than this." He was looking at the dark plain and the rows of poplars losing themselves in the distance.
"Mrs. Schlessinger is so very kind," said Jenny evasively.
"Oh yes, good soul; I am sure she is." He smiled. "I think she suspects me of being the culprit."
"Probably," said Jenny, smiling too.
They walked on in silence. After a while Gunnar asked:
"How are you going to arrange matters? Have you made any plans as to the future?"
"I don't know yet. I suppose you mean about the child? I may leave it with Mrs. Schlessinger for a time; she would look after it all right, I dare say. Or I may get some one to adopt it; you know, such children are adopted sometimes. I might call myself Mrs. Winge and never mind what people think."
"You are quite decided, then, to break completely with—er—the man concerned? You wrote me to that effect."
"I am," she said firmly. "It is not the man I was engaged to," she added, after a pause.
"Thank God!" he burst out, so relieved that Jenny could not help smiling a little.
"Well, you know, Jenny, he was not worth reproducing—not by you anyway. I saw in the papers recently that he has got his doctor's degree. Well, it might have been worse—I was afraid …"
"It is his father," she said abruptly.
Heggen came to a dead stop. She fell to crying desperately, and he put his arm round her and laid his hand to her cheek while she went on sobbing with her head on his shoulder.
Standing so, she began to tell him all about it. Once she looked up at his face; it was pale and haggard; and she started crying again. When she stopped, he lifted her head, looking at her:
"My God, Jenny—what you must have suffered! I cannot realize it."
They walked back to the village in silence.
"Come with me to Berlin," he said suddenly. "I cannot bear to think of you here alone and brooding over this."
"I have almost given up thinking," she said, tired.
"Oh, it's too awful!" he burst out, with such violence that she came to a sudden stop. "Always the best of you that get let in for this kind of thing, and we have no idea of what you have to go through. It is dreadful!"
Heggen stayed three days. Jenny could not explain why, but she felt much better after his visit. The unbearable feeling of humiliation was gone; she was able to face her confinement with more composure and confidence.
Mrs. Schlessinger went about smiling slyly in spite of Jenny's declaration that the gentleman was her cousin.
He had offered to send her some of his books, and at Christmas a whole case arrived, besides flowers and chocolates. Every week he wrote her a long letter about all manner of trifles, enclosing cuttings from Norwegian papers. In January he came up for her birthday and stayed two days, leaving behind some of the latest Norwegian books. Shortly after his last visit she fell ill. She was poorly, worried, and sleepless during the remaining weeks. She had never busied her thoughts with the actual confinement or been anxious about it before, but, feeling always wretched now, she was seized by a sudden dread of what she had to go through, and when the time came she was quite worn out with insomnia and anxiety.
It was a nasty case. Jenny was more dead than alive when the doctor, who had been sent for from Warnemünde, at last held her son in his hands.