Two days later, at five o'clock, Minna arrived by the steamer. I was, of course, on the landing-stage to receive her. As we walked together through the streets, it seemed to me there was something that weighed heavily on her mind, but I determined to ask no questions before we reached her home. Besides, I thought it was Hertz's condition that had grown worse.
When Minna had finished her dinner, and her mother had left us alone, my dear one became more and more silent. Sometimes she gave me a long sad look which almost brought tears to my eyes; soon after she began gazing, as if her thoughts were far off, and I felt very distressed.
"Do you fear that it is serious with Hertz?" I asked at last.
"Yes, I think so; you will see that he is going to die. And why not? It was searching for Goethe's manuscript in Prague that made him so ill. It is his hobby that kills him—there is something beautiful in that."
"But his poor wife!"
Minna rose with a sigh, and went to the window.
There she stood for a long time, looking down into the little garden. The setting sun cast its beams on her face, that with its air of seriousness and depression seemed to belong to a much older woman. The front folds of her light blouse rose and fell forcibly and irregularly. The right hand, hanging by her side, grasped tightly a small handkerchief; once or twice she lifted the other hand, shading her eyes as if she was looking for something definite, but just as quickly she forgot it, and either stroked the hair away from her forehead, or drummed upon the window frame.
I went quietly up to her and laid my arm round her shoulder.
"Has anything else troubled you, darling?"
"I have received a letter—from him, an answer to the one I sent off the other evening."
"Well?"
"It has given me pain, it was not at all what I had expected. He does not think of me as a good friend. It is as if he wanted to hurt me. I don't understand it."
"What has he written, Minna?"
"Well, you shall see for yourself."
She went back into the room and knelt down by the little handbag that stood open in the middle of the floor. Taking a letter from a blotter she gave it to me. It was written on very elegant notepaper and had only some unimportant lines as introduction to a poem by Heine, which I did not know. It read as follows:—
"Once more from that fond heart I'm driven
That I so dearly love, so madly;
Once more from that fond heart I'm driven—
Beside it would I linger gladly.
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.
In heaven rush on the starry legions,
As though before my sorrow flying—
Sweet one, farewell! in distant regions
My heart for thee will still be sighing."
"Silly nonsense!" I exclaimed, and involuntarily crumpled the paper between my hands. But Minna, who had again been looking out of the window, turned quickly, and snatching it from my hands began at once to smooth it out.
"I fancy it is a treasure!" I said, with a bitterness which I could not possibly conceal.
She looked at me reproachfully.
"If you ever leave me, even with far bitterer words, I would do as much for your letter, Harald." And she put back the letter in the blotter.
The touching faithfulness to all her heart's remembrances, that breathed from her words and manner, disarmed me, but a sting of ill-feeling was left behind.
"I was wrong, forgive me—but it is a letter which might make an angel swear, there is neither meaning nor sound sense in it."
"No; I do not understand him. It was he, after all, who wished that our intercourse should be friendship only, and who advised me to marry an honest man, and now he reproaches me for doing so."
"And in such a foolish way! Why does he not express his own feelings? A poem by Heine! It would be foolish even if it was appropriate, which it is not, by any means."
"Just so; it was that which also struck me so strangely as a false note. Otherwise, it would have hurt me much more, or perhaps it might have reconciled me. But at this I could not help feeling annoyed."
"His vanity has been hurt by your forgetting him for another, that is all. Therefore, he has nothing to say himself. Most men would have sought refuge in 'The Complete Letter-writer,' being an artist he betook himself to Heine."
"And yet, if he still loved me and suffered!" she exclaimed and clenched her hands.
"Loved? There are so many different ways of loving. Why did he leave you?"
"For the sake of his art. And is not that worth more than I?"
"No, a thousand times no! For the sake of his art? A silly phrase. Such a miserable fellow! How does he think he can produce art worth anything, when he is such a chicken-hearted fool, who does not dare to face life, and how can he expect to put real feeling into his pictures, when he plays with himself and with you?"
"But suppose he had only said so. If for a time he had been obliged to work alone, and therefore wouldn't bind me, but trusted that my love was firm and constant enough to last, and he himself had waited faithfully, and worked, and now had been disappointed?"
I walked irritably up and down the little room. The thought of Mr. Axel Stephensen as a faithful lover, sitting in Denmark, and working in order to be able to unite his life with hers, seemed to me, after all I had heard of him, to be so very far apart from the truth, that I was on the point of laughing ironically; but a look at the beloved girl, whose misplaced belief did so much honour to her soul, disarmed my bitterness, and only a deep painful sigh escaped me.
Minna still stood close to the window with her back turned towards it, leaning on an old-fashioned chest of drawers that was covered with cheap knick-knacks and faded and soiled photographs. She supported herself on the edge with both hands and looked down on the floor.
"I am to be unhappy and to make others unhappy, too," she murmured, as if she was speaking to herself.
"Minna, Minna!" I exclaimed in despair, stopping in front of her and stretching out my arms towards her, "You must not say that, with me and to me you cannot possibly say that."
Without looking up she shook her head very gently.
"But he thinks it is flightiness on my part, and I cannot allow him to think that. He must be able to understand that"
"But you are not going to write to him after this?" I interrupted.
"Indeed, Harald, I shall do so."
"But why, dearest friend? Nothing but pain for all of us can come out of it. Put an end to this correspondence, it has already lasted too long."
"Then one more letter would not hurt, it will be the last one."
"I beg this much of you, Minna! Leave it off for my sake. I cannot explain to you, I myself don't know why, but it alarms me."
"I must," she answered, in a tone of fatalistic assurance.… "He and I cannot part like that."
"I wish you had never met," I exclaimed.
She looked at me for some moments with a strangely puzzled expression, as if she was unable to realise the vastness of this idea. Then she came close to me and put her arms round my neck.
"Yes, I wish to God he and I had never met. Why did you not come in those days? Why did we not come to know each other first? Then everything would have been right."
"It is going to be right all the same, my love," I said, and kissed her forehead.
We sat down at the open window and talked about that dear Rathen. Minna teased me by saying that, in a letter which I had sent to her two or three days before, I had confused one view of the country with another. This I denied, and demanded that we should examine the letter itself.
"Oh, it is not worth the trouble, anybody might make a mistake in writing," she said, and it seemed to me she was rather confused.
"But I am sure that I have not done it. Do let me see the letter."
"Then we will say that I made a mistake in reading it, I do not mind," she said, and turned crimson. It was evident she had a reason for not showing the letter.
The irritation which, during the whole of this conversation, had been lurking within me because she had kept his letter so carefully, now burst out with a jealous suspicion that she had handled mine more carelessly and did not know where to find it. I was not sufficiently generous to spare her, though I knew well enough that even the most precious letter can easily be lost, especially when one travels.
"You cannot possibly be so lazy as that. Your blotter lies there on the table."
"No, it is not there," she answered, getting up. "Obstinate! I must take the trouble to go out in the passage to fetch my travelling-bag."
"No, I brought it in; it hangs there, near the door."
She looked in the bag.
"Then I suppose it is in the trunk," she remarked, with a shrug of her shoulder. "'Tant de bruit pour une omelette!'"
"Thanks!" I said, with an ironical intonation of which she took no notice, for she laughed gaily while she went down upon her knees and started to turn over the things in her trunk. To me this laughter sounded a little unnatural, as the situation was obviously painful.
"You must not look, Harald, do you understand? My trunk is so untidy."
"Very well," I said, and stared irritably out of the window. At last I heard her get up and come towards me. She handed me the letter. The rather stiff paper was crumpled and twisted and bent in a strange way.
"I suppose you have used it for packing," I remarked bitterly, and held it up to her.
She did not answer, but smiled in a very peculiar way, which suited her admirably and both irritated me and made me madly in love.
"It does not seem that you handle my letters with the same care, or keep them as well, as those of Mr. Stephensen!"
Minna bit her lip, and peeped up at me with a teasing but still caressing look. I did not understand how she could take this matter in such a way, and should surely have been as angry as a Turk, had I not had a feeling of uncertainty and a suspicion that I was making a fool of myself.
"But you are quite forgetting to examine it, Harald," she said, as I continued to hold the letter towards her.
"Oh, you are quite right," I decided, without deigning to look at the letter, which I threw upon the floor.
Minna bent down very quietly and picked it up.
She gave me a reproachful glance, which made me ashamed, and I looked away, though I still thought myself right. Then, without withdrawing her eyes from me, but with a more and more tender smile, she unbuttoned the upper part of her blouse, loosened her bodice at the top, and let the letter slide down into her bosom, where it disappeared with the rosy shimmer of the last sunbeams which were glowing through the little room. I took her eagerly into my arms and covered her face and neck with kisses, while I stammered forth excuses for my uncalled-for behaviour, my jealousy, and my foolish suspicion, of which she, in such a touching manner, had made me ashamed. This repentance, and still more the happy feeling of being so sincerely and sweetly loved, caused my tears to flow so freely that Minna jokingly said she feared they would obliterate the writing on the precious letter. Her eyes were also moist as we laughed and cried at the same time, and kissed away the tears from each other's cheeks.
But before we could look round her mother had entered the room. Then we awkwardly released each other, and Minna tried, by a quick turn, to hide her rather disordered toilet. The old woman coughed apologetically, and even her careful steps in her almost worn-out slippers seemed quietly to whisper, as she crept out with the coffee cups: "It doesn't matter, my children, I'm no nun myself. I have also been young. Go on billing and cooing! Dear me, as long as one doesn't do anything wrong!"
It annoyed me that we should be subject to a moral indulgence which we did not need, and especially that an ignoble—and undeserved—construction had been put upon this scene. Minna must have shared my feelings, for, while she buttoned the top of her blouse, she shrugged her shoulders and murmured with a comical resentment—
"The old woman always comes creeping in at the wrong moment."
"Do play a little, Minna," I said. "I have not heard you play at all, and I have looked forward so much to it."
Minna implored me not to insist, but I pulled her to the piano. It was still light enough for her to see the music. She opened a Schubert album and played one of the "Moments Musicaux," not without feeling, but nervously, as if she feared to touch the notes.
"It is awful," she exclaimed, just as she played the final chord. "May I not stop? You cannot pretend that it is a pleasure to listen."
"Yes, I can, and also you ought to be ashamed of being nervous before me."
"Nervous? I am trembling all over!"
"You cannot see properly any longer. I will fetch the lamp."
"No, for God's sake, let me, at any rate, have that excuse."
The exceedingly lively, and at the same time fantastic and deeply-moving, impromptu, which she now started, was treated with much more ease and courage, and though she failed once or twice, I had a sincere pleasure in her really musical rendering. After this I expected that she would want to stop, and I was prepared with persuasions to make her continue. But she had scarcely taken her hands off the notes, before she took down the "Sonatas" of Beethoven from the top of the piano.
"If it has to be, let it be," she exclaimed gaily. "One might just as well be bold. I should like you to fetch the lamp, Harald, so that I can see all my dropped notes lying upon the floor."
I had expected that she would play "The Marche Funèbre," the first movement of "The Moonlight Sonata," or something equally manageable, one of those pieces about which one can say that they are naturalised in the drawing-room; but to my surprise I heard, while I lit the lamp in the passage, that it was the grand Waldstein Sonata she was attacking, and playing with no lack of passion. She had evidently sent me out for the lamp so that she might begin before I returned, with the idea that when one has taken the first plunge and cannot feel one's feet, one is obliged to swim. And she really swam; even the depth and movement of the waves helped to bear her up.
As I came in just at the moment when from wild runs and violent octave passages she reached the calm of the rich chords that sustain the hymn-like melody, I was struck by a strange expression of energy and enthusiasm on her face. This Beethoven glorification of all her features appealed to me so deeply, that a joking encouragement, which I had on my lips, was suppressed. I quietly placed the lamp on the chest of drawers behind her, and as a big piece of the globe was missing, I turned it so that the light shone through the hole on to the music; a necessary action on my part, for surely this lamp had never given an effective light, and it looked as if it had not been cleaned during the whole of the summer. I seated myself far back in the room, where I could not disturb her, but could see the soft, shaded bend of her cheek, and her neck where the knot of hair glittered in the lamplight, while I lost myself in an enjoyment, that perhaps is the noblest of all—to have Beethoven played by one's beloved.
In this mood even the unfinished execution was rather advantageous than otherwise; the very modest surroundings were not in accordance with concert demands, and one enjoyed so much more the conquering of difficulties, even if these victories were not won without loss of men in the note-army. In spite of 'all, her playing was artistic, because she was quite lost in it; she played as a musician who has got a difficult manuscript on the music-stand; now and then she grumbled with disgust at having stumbled, sometimes when she had struck a wrong chord she sent an exclamation after the false note, which was not far from a little oath, and when her hands dragged behind the inspired will, then she loudly sang the melody as if to make the fingers ashamed and force them to follow. In this way she had stormed through the grand Allegro's sunlit mountain-land and descended peacefully to the Adagio's lonely valley, with the deep shadow round the still, shiny water mirror, where the mind searches its inner life, but still with the gaze wistfully uplifted towards a hoped-for glory; then again to soar into the ethereal regions, where the Rondo lives in a heavenly light and undisturbed splendour, joyously warbling and trilling as a blessed spirit of a skylark that dwells not among clouds but between stars.
Minna threw herself back in the chair; I went up to her and pressed a long kiss on her forehead. "Thank you," I whispered.
"What a thing to thank me for!" she said, and looked at me in astonishment, as if she feared I was making fun of her.
"How can you say so! I am absolutely astonished. I knew well that you were musical, but I had not imagined you could play like that."
A sudden heartfelt joy beamed up to me in her eyes; but she lowered them at once, and her lips curled in a good-natured, ironical smile.
"Yes, is it not true! I am quite a Rubinstein in striking wrong notes."
"Why do you mock? I know quite well that it was not perfect, but all the same you played beautifully."
"Oh! That is what almost makes me desperate each time I play, to hear it so beautifully and not be able to produce it. And especially when, as I sometimes think, I might have been able to play fairly well, if I had ever had the chance to work at it constantly."
"Well, it is not too late yet; it seems to me you have your life before you."
"Perhaps, but there is always the same hindrance in the way. I cannot endure the strain—you have no idea how it affects me; I have now at least played away my night's rest. Why am I so feeble? Ah, if you could imagine the melancholy which in these years I have played myself into, each time I touched the piano! It was just like something closing over me, and the more beautiful the music the darker it was around me. Sometimes I could not leave off, but often it was so dreadful that I dared not go on any longer."
"But all this will disappear, dear one! I shall manage to get you sound and strong, and when your playing makes me happy you will also be pleased. I am a grateful listener, even if you never play any better than you do now, and in the future you will be able to devote yourself to music."
My words did not seem to make much impression on her. She placed the lamp on the table, seated herself in the chair I had left, and leant her head on her hand.
"I can feel it in my head; it strains and thumps in there." She laughed as if by a sudden inspiration. "Do you know, if ever I should wish to get rid of the little sense I have, I think I could play it away."
"What an idea!"
"Indeed, that was also a way to commit suicide. It was the mode of Frants Moor, 'to destroy the body through the mind,' applied to suicide."
"Minna, you must not speak like that—it's a bad joke."
"Anyhow, it is a truly "practical joke" when it is put into execution. But one doesn't know what tricks one might need in life. 'It is a trick which deserves you as inventor,'" she recited, with a comical imitation of a fashionable actor. "Have you seen him here in the Court Theatre? How affected he is! Ugh!…" She posed as Frants Moor in the beginning of the second act, and mimicked the face of a scoundrel so funnily that I could not help laughing. Urged on by this applause, she began to imitate the false means of effect which the aforesaid actor had invented for this monologue of meditation: to give questions and answers with two different voices, a high falsetto and a deep ventriloquial voice, while she turned first to the one side then to the other. "What species of sensation should I seek to produce? Anger?—That ravenous wolf is too quickly satiated. Care?—That worm gnaws far too slowly. Grief? That viper creeps too lazily for me. Fear?—Hope destroys its power. What! and are these the only executioners of man? Is the armoury of death so soon exhausted? How? no! Ha! music! Of what is not music capable? It can breathe life into stones; would it not be able to kill a Minna?"
She laughed gaily and embraced me.
"I have been very naughty, Harald, and you were so kind and thanked me so prettily for my music, you dear sweet friend! But I did appreciate it, though I do talk such nonsense. I cannot help it, it often pains me so much; it seems to me it must be so beautiful to be an artist, to be able to make others love and admire what touches one so deeply. But I promise to make you a good wife! And do not mind what I said before; as long as you are with me and care for me I shall not destroy myself with the sweet poison. But, Harald, if you should ever care more for another"
I closed her lips with a kiss—truly not a very logical argument, but in this case, perhaps, more convincing than any other.
Her mother came in with tea and white bread, for which, as a treat, she had bought honey in the comb and fresh butter. When we had finished eating she placed herself in a corner in a queer triangular arm-chair with straight sides. It had originally been the end of a sofa, and the disjecta membra of this piece of furniture were scattered about in the flat. In a very few minutes the old lady was fast asleep.
Minna was also tired after the journey, and when the hideous alabaster-columned clock on the chest of drawers, after a long threatening rumble, had made up its mind to strike four strokes, which echoed in the piano with a long note, thereby calling our attention to the fact that the time was really ten o'clock, I insisted that she should go to bed.
Without waking up her mother, Minna lighted me out. To her great terror I went "with my chin on my back"—as she expressed it down the steep spiral stairs, without being able to take my eyes off her, while she stood bending over the balusters, with a smiling face strongly lit up by the outstretched lamp.
Down below I stood for a long time sending kisses up to her, until she began to scold me, and as that had no effect she suddenly began to make faces and produce such dreadful caricatures à la Wilhelm Busch that at last I broke out into loud laughter and fled.