Read Ebook: Mogens and Other Stories by Jacobsen J P Jens Peter Grabow Anna Translator

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Ebook has 490 lines and 30483 words, and 10 pages

"Do people paint those too? Of course they do, I know that very well."

"You are laughing at me?"

"I? Oh yes, one of us is doing that"

"But aren't you a student?"

"Student? Why should I be? No, I am nothing."

"But you must be something. You must do something?"

"But why?"

"Why, because--everybody does something!"

"Are you doing something?"

"Oh well, but you are not a lady."

"No, heaven be praised."

"Thank you."

He stopped rowing, drew the oars out of the water, looked her into the face and asked:

"What do you mean by that?--No, don't be angry with me; I will tell you something, I am a queer sort of person. You cannot understand it. You think because I wear good clothes, I must be a fine man. My father was a fine man; I have been told that he knew no end of things, and I daresay he did, since he was a district-judge. I know nothing because mother and I were all to each other, and I did not care to learn the things they teach in the schools, and don't care about them now either. Oh, you ought to have seen my mother; she was such a tiny wee lady. When I was no older than thirteen I could carry her down into the garden. She was so light; in recent years I would often carry her on my arm through the whole garden and park. I can still see her in her black gowns with the many wide laces...."

He seized the oars and rowed violently. The councilor became a little uneasy, when the water reached so high at the stern, and suggested, that they had better see about getting home again; so back they went.

"Tell me," said the girl, when the violence of his rowing had decreased a little. "Do you often go to town?"

"I have never been there."

"Never been there? And you only live twelve miles away?"

"I don't always live here, I live at all sorts of places since my mother's death, but the coming winter I shall go to town to study arithmetic."

"Mathematics?"

"No, timber," he said laughingly, "but that is something you don't understand. I'll tell you, when I am of age I shall buy a sloop and sail to Norway, and then I shall have to know how to figure on account of the customs and clearance."

"Would you really like that?"

"Oh, it, is magnificent on the sea, there is such a feeling of being alive in sailing--here we are at the landing-stage!"

He came alongside; the councilor and his daughter stepped ashore after having made him promise to come and see them at Cape Trafalgar. Then they returned to the bailiff's, while he again rowed out on the lake. At the poplar they could still hear the sounds of the oars.

"Listen, Camilla," said the councilor, who had been out to lock the outer door, "tell me," he said, extinguishing his hand-lamp with the bit of his key, "was the rose they had at the Carlsens a Pompadour or Maintenon?"

"Cendrillon," the daughter answered.

"That's right, so it was,--well, I suppose we had better see that we get to bed now; good night, little girl, good night, and sleep well."

When Camilla had entered her room, she pulled up the blind, leaned her brow against the cool pane, and hummed Elizabeth's song from "The Fairy-hill." At sunset a light breeze had begun to blow and a few tiny, white clouds, illumined by the moon, were driven towards Camilla. For a long while she stood regarding them; her eye followed them from a far distance, and she sang louder and louder as they drew nearer, kept silent a few seconds while they disappeared above her, then sought others, and followed them too. With a little sigh she pulled down the blind. She went to the dressing table, rested her elbows against her clasped hands and regarded her own picture in the mirror without really seeing it.

She was thinking of a tall young man, who carried a very delicate, tiny, blackdressed lady in his arms; she was thinking of a tall man, who steered his small ship in between cliffs and rocks in a devastating gale. She heard a whole conversation over again. She blushed: Eugene Carlson might have thought that you were paying court to him! With a little jealous association of ideas she continued: No one would ever run after Clara in a wood in the rainstorm, she would never have invited a stranger--literally asked him--to sail with her. "Lady to her fingertips," Carlson had said of Clara; that really was a reprimand for you, you peasant-girl Camilla! Then she undressed with affected slowness, went to bed, took a small elegantly bound book from the bookshelf near by and opened the first page. She read through a short hand-written poem with a tired, bitter expression on her face, then let the book drop to the floor and burst into tears; afterwards she tenderly picked it up again, put it back in its place and blew out the candle; lay there for a little while gazing disconsolately at the moonlit blind, and finally went to sleep.

A few days later the "rainman" started on his way to Cape Trafalgar. He met a peasant driving a load of rye straw, and received permission to ride with him. Then he lay down on his back in the straw and gazed at the cloudless sky. The first couple of miles he let his thoughts come and go as they listed, besides there wasn't much variety in them. Most of them would come and ask him how a human being possibly could be so wonderfully beautiful, and they marveled that it really could be an entertaining occupation for several days to recall the features of a face, its changes of expression and coloring, the small movements of a head and a pair of hands, and the varying inflections in a voice. But then the peasant pointed with his whip towards the slate-roof about a mile away and said that the councilor lived over there, and the good Mogens rose from the straw and stared anxiously towards the roof. He had a strange feeling of oppression and tried to make himself believe that nobody was at home, but tenaciously came back to the conception that there was a large party, and he could not free himself from that idea, even though he counted how many cows "Country-joy" had on the meadow and how many heaps of gravel he could see along the road. At last the peasant stopped near a small path leading down to the country-house, and Mogens slid down from the cart and began to brush away the bits of straw while the cart slowly creaked away over the gravel on the road.

He approached the garden-gate step by step, saw a red shawl disappear behind the balcony windows, a small deserted white sewing-basket on the edge of the balcony, and the back of a still moving empty rocking-chair. He entered the garden, with his eyes fixed intently on the balcony, heard the councilor say good-day, turned his head toward the sound, and saw him standing there nodding, his arms full of empty flowerpots. They spoke of this and that, and the councilor began to explain, as one might put it, that the old specific distinction between the various kinds of trees had been abolished by grafting, and that for his part he did not like this at all. Then Camilla slowly approached wearing a brilliant glaring blue shawl. Her arms were entirely wrapped up in the shawl, and she greeted him with a slight inclination of the head and a faint welcome. The councilor left with his flower-pots, Camilla stood looking over her shoulders towards the balcony; Mogens looked at her. How had he been since the other day? Thank you, nothing especial had been the matter with him. Done much rowing? Why, yes, as usual, perhaps not quite as much. She turned her head towards him, looked coldly at him, inclined her head to one side and asked with half-closed eyes and a faint smile whether it was the beautiful Magelone who had engrossed his time. He did not know what she meant, but he imagined it was. Then they stood for a while and said nothing. Camilla took a few steps towards a corner, where a bench and a garden-chair stood. She sat down on the bench and asked him, after she was seated, looking at the chair, to be seated; he must be very tired after his long walk. He sat down in the chair.

Did he believe anything would come of the projected royal alliance? Perhaps, he was completely indifferent? Of course, he had no interest in the royal house. Naturally he hated aristocracy? There were very few young men who did not believe that democracy was, heaven only knew what. Probably he was one of those who attributed not the slightest political importance to the family alliances of the royal house? Perhaps he was mistaken. It had been seen.... She stopped suddenly, surprised that Mogens who had at first been somewhat taken aback at all this information, now looked quite pleased. He wasn't to sit there, and laugh at her! She turned quite red.

"Are you very much interested in politics?" she asked timidly.

"Not in the least."

"But why do you let me sit here talking politics eternally?"

"Oh, you say everything so charmingly, that it does not matter what you are talking about."

"That really is no compliment."

"It certainly is," he assured her eagerly, for it seemed to him she looked quite hurt.

Camilla burst out laughing, jumped up, and ran to meet her father, took his arm, and walked back with him to the puzzled Mogens.

When dinner was through and they had drunk their coffee up on the balcony, the councilor suggested a walk. So the three of them went along the small way across the main road, and along a narrow path with stubble of rye on both sides, across the stile, and into the woods. There was the oak and everything else; there even were still convolvuluses on the hedge. Camilla asked Mogens to fetch some for her. He tore them all off, and came back with both hands full.

"Thank you, I don't want so many," she said, selected a few and let the rest fall to the ground. "Then I wish I had let them be," Mogens said earnestly.

Camilla bent down and began to gather them up. She had expected him to help her and looked up at him in surprise, but he stood there quite calm and looked down at her. Now as she had begun, she had to go on, and gathered up they were; but she certainly did not talk to Mogens for a long while. She did not even look to the side where he was. But somehow or other they must have become reconciled, for when on their way back they reached the oak again, Camilla went underneath it and looked up into its crown. She tripped from one side to the other, gesticulated with her hands and sang, and Mogens had to stand near the hazelbushes to see what sort of a figure he had cut. Suddenly Camilla ran towards him, but Mogens lost his cue, and forgot both to shriek and to run away, and then Camilla laughingly declared that she was very dissatisfied with herself and that she would not have had the boldness to remain standing there, when such a horrible creature--and she pointed towards herself--came rushing towards her. But Mogens declared that he was very well satisfied with himself.

When towards sunset he was going home the councilor and Camilla accompanied him a little way. And as they were going home she said to her father that perhaps they ought to invite that lonesome young man rather frequently during the month, while it was still possible to stay in the country. He knew no one here about, and the councilor said "yes," and smiled at being thought so guileless, but Camilla walked along and looked so gentle and serious, that one would not doubt but that she was the very personification of benevolence itself.

The autumn weather remained so mild that the councilor stayed on at Cape Trafalgar for another whole month, and the effect of the benevolence was that Mogens came twice the first week and about every day the third.

It was one of the last days of fair weather.

It had rained early in the morning and had remained overclouded far down into the forenoon; but now the sun had come forth. Its rays were so strong and warm, that the garden-paths, the lawns and the branches of the trees were enveloped in a fine filmy mist. The councilor walked about cutting asters. Mogens and Camilla were in a corner of the garden to take down some late winter apples. He stood on a table with a basket on his arm, she stood on a chair holding out a big white apron by the corners.

"Well, and what happened then?" she called impatiently to Mogens, who had interrupted the fairy-tale he was telling in order to reach an apple which hung high up.

"Then," he continued, "the peasant began to run three times round himself and to sing: 'To Babylon, to Babylon, with an iron ring through my head.' Then he and his calf, his great-grandmother, and his black rooster flew away. They flew across oceans as broad as Arup Vejle, over mountains as high as the church at Jannerup, over Himmerland and through the Holstein lands even to the end of the world. There the kobold sat and ate breakfast; he had just finished when they came.

"'You ought to be a little more god-fearing, little father,' said the peasant, 'otherwise it might happen that you might miss the kingdom of heaven.'"

"Well, he would gladly be god-fearing."

"'Then you must say grace after meals,' said the peasant...."

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