Minna/Book 5, Chapter 5

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Chapter V

At this moment something happened, that at the time seemed to me supernatural, and does so still when recalling it.

The gravel crunched under light quick steps. I started. The situation reminded me so much of the old days when I had sat there and Minna had come, that I fully and firmly believed it was an hallucination. And really, it sounded exactly as if it was a repetition—a copy I could almost say of those steps. "If this hallucination continues," I thought, "I shall see her, and what will then happen to me? God help me, am I really on the point of going out of my mind, as I said, half jokingly, but yesterday…?"

I jumped down from the table with a cry, and with a cry Minna stopped in front of the grotto—yes, Minna herself, no vision!

We had not yet controlled ourselves, when Stephensen appeared and bowed with an astonished, but at the same time a little ironical smile, that clearly enough said: "This is really a coincidence, which looks like a plan."

The usual exclamations: "You here, Harald? That I call a surprise!" "I thought you were in England, Mr. Fenger." "I imagined you in Copenhagen, Mr. Stephensen," masked for a few moments our painful embarrassment.

After the first nervous rapture, which the sudden sight of one's beloved infallibly produces, had calmed down, I felt a painful disappointment. The lady and her husband on a pleasure-trip together! How little did it harmonise with the relations that I had imagined between them, with the plan that had inspired me!

"I suppose southward bound, to Italy?"

"No, we shall limit ourselves to Saxony."

"I imagine you have business in Dresden, Harald?"

Minna was, strange to say, evidently the first of us to regain her self-control; she only continued to breathe somewhat quickly and irregularly. Her smile and voice—yes, even her movements, expressed the most vivid joy at this meeting.

"Very likely you are going back to Pirna? That's capital, then you can drive with us."

"There is plenty of room," Stephensen said. "It is not a victoria. And besides, I would willingly sit on the box."

He forced his usual polite smile; the lips obeyed, but not the eyes. He was obviously irritated; but Minna either did not notice it, or did not care.

"Very likely our talk will tire you, we have so much to speak of after so many years," she said.

We started at once on the return journey. In a window of the school-building stood the master. He leaned far out and continued to follow us with his eyes. Minna laughed.

"Well, my cousin still exists! Do you remember, when he met us on the forest path? God knows what sort of thoughts he has! I hope he will not stare his eyes out of his head."

She continued laughing and joking, a little hysterically, it seemed to me.

"There we have the dear old saw-mill, where I came with the little girls in the morning to drink new milk. Why were you never there? But at that time of course you slept like a log—like you men."

"But you had never told me that you were there at that hour."

"Are you then to have everything given to you with a spoon?"

"I, for my part, prefer to eat solid food, and with a fork," Stephensen said.

Minna looked astonished, not exactly at him, but in his direction, as if she was surprised that any remarks should come from that quarter. When we began to ascend, the conversation soon ceased. To walk uphill was trying to Minna; palpitation of the heart and shortness of breath compelled her frequently to stop. Stephensen walked a few paces in front; she took my arm and leant on it.

At table the conversation was rather halting and indefinite. But when we were in the carriage, Minna seated herself cosily in the corner and said—

"Well, Harald! Now, you must tell me how life has treated you in these years. Everything, good and bad."

I obeyed her command as well as I could. Minna looked at me constantly, so that at times her eyes stared me out of countenance; she also smiled continuously, but often as if she was thinking of quite different scenes. Sometimes she laughed—yes, she even teased me a little about the English beauties.

"Oh, pooh," I exclaimed, a little annoyed. "Beauties! I have not seen any who came up to you."

Minna threw herself back, and laughed with her handkerchief to her mouth.

"Well, there is a feather in your cap," Stephensen remarked.

He sat on the front seat, and looked most of the time out of the window and lit one cigarette after another. When he threw in a remark or question about art in London or some such thing, Minna regarded him with an astonished and hard look, in the way one looks at a child who has been naughty, and who, without having asked pardon, tries to pretend that nothing has happened and joins in the conversation. It was evident that this treatment annoyed him very much; each time he grew silent as soon as possible. But it also troubled me; however painful it would have been to witness a loving confidence between them, it made my heart ache to see their unhappy condition so openly laid bare, and I did not understand how she could behave in such a way, even before me.

True, I would have concealed my meeting with the German musician, but when it came to the point I told it all the same. Minna said nothing, but gazed out of the window.

"Funny how small the world is!" Stephensen remarked. "One always runs against one another either directly or indirectly."

"And it was then you left?" Minna suddenly asked, turning her head quickly as a bird, and giving me a penetrating look.

This diversion completely threw me off my guard.

"Yes, then—then I left," I stuttered, and turned crimson.

Stephensen looked at us with an intensely ironical expression, as if he said: "Now I suppose it will soon come to a declaration in optima forma. Well, I shan't stand in the way, don't mind me." Minna gave him a short glance, and his smile at once disappeared.

"Do tell me, Harald," she asked, leaning forward on her arm, "why didn't you join us, that evening, in the café?"

"What café?"

"Oh, you know very well—à Porta.… You thought I had not seen you? Yes, indeed I did, but only at the end; you remember when I laughed at Stephensen, and at all the others too."

Stephensen put on a very dignified face and stroked himself between the collar and the neck, a pet gesture of his. Minna turned still more away from him, and looked at me with a rather teasing smile.

"I did not know any others of the party,—and—besides——"

"—besides you didn't wish to meet me in that company, and you were right."

But now Stephensen felt that it was high time to assert himself.

"I must say it is a very queer way in which you speak of the company we have associated with."

"You—not I. I have been obliged to put up with it."

"It is very regrettable that I could not do better for you! However, they were almost all people of the most intellectual set——"

"Anyhow, I did not feel at home in that society, nor, as a matter of fact, would Harald have done so."

Stephensen compressed his lips and glanced maliciously at her.

"You yourself know best where you are at home."

Minna shuddered and pressed her hand on her breast, as if she was suffering acute pain. I suspected that in these words lay a hidden poison. The idea struck me that I sat here like a priest who accompanies a condemned victim to the scaffold, and that it was a police official who sat opposite to me.

I suffered indescribably, but I felt that the conversation must be turned into a peaceful channel at any price. Pirna had just come into view, and I asked whether they would stay the night there, or go on to Dresden.

"No, we shall stay the night; perhaps we shall go for a while to Bohemia," Stephensen answered. Minna, who had been leaning almost bodily out of the window, turned directly afterwards towards me; her face was colourless and drawn.

"Do you remain for some days in Dresden?" But this question was accompanied by a look which altered it to a petition.

My answer did not come immediately. Should I not take the opportunity of showing my hand—just a little? If I meant to do it at all, no more time was to be lost.

"As a matter of fact," I began deliberately, "when I was discovered sitting on the stone table in the 'Sophien-Ruhe grotto,' I had just come to the conclusion that I would leave to-night for Copenhagen."

At the last words Stephensen involuntarily made an uneasy movement, then straightened himself up and set his features in a highly disapproving manner. So the shot had gone home. I saw this perfectly though my eyes were riveted upon hers, which had not for a moment left my face; and in their wonderful greenish brown depths, I beheld a brighter and brighter golden light.

"I s—see," she said or rather breathed, scarcely moving her lips.

"But now I certainly shall alter my plans. I have work enough to detain me in Dresden for a week or two; for many weeks, if it comes to that."

"I am glad," said Minna.

Stephensen took refuge in his pet gesture—his finger between neck and collar—and seemed disposed to say something bitter, perhaps to the effect that I ought not to upset my arrangements for their sakes; but he though better of it.

None of us spoke after that.

I had previously mentioned that I was staying at the Bellevue Hotel. So I knew that Minna could communicate with me, whenever she wanted to. That she would, I had now no doubt whatever. I was at rest on this point, but I was very uneasy about this strange journey of theirs. "What have they come here for?" I thought. "It is evident that they are not going to Bohemia." Why I found it "evident," I do not know.…

"The chariot rolls, the bridge is quaking,
The stream beneath it flows so sadly,
Once more the joys am I forsaking
Of that fond heart I love so madly."

As soon as we had passed the bridge, Stephensen stopped the carriage.

Then I pressed Minna's hand, bowed to Stephensen, and hurried to the railway station.