VI

“Mr. Lyhne⁠—Mrs. Boye; Mr. Frithjof Petersen⁠—Mrs. Boye.”

It was Erik who performed the introduction, and it took place in Mikkelsen’s studio, a light, spacious room with a floor of stamped clay and a ceiling twenty-five feet high. At one end of the room two portals led to the yard; at the other, a series of doors opened into the smaller studios within. Everything was gray with the dust of clay and plaster and marble. It had made the cobweb threads overhead as thick as twine and had drawn river maps on the large windowpanes. It filled eyes and nose and mouth and outlined muscles, hair, and draperies on the medley of casts that filled the long shelves running round the room and made them look like a frieze from the destruction of Jerusalem. Even the laurels, high trees planted in big tubs in a corner near one of the portals, were powdered till they became grayer than gray olives.

Erik stood at his modelling in the middle of the studio wearing his blouse and with a paper cap on his dark, wavy hair. He had acquired a moustache and looked quite manly beside his two friends, who had just taken their bachelor’s degree and, still pale and tired from their examinations, looked provincially proper with their too new clothes and their too closely cropped heads in rather large caps.

At a little distance from Erik’s scaffolding, Mrs. Boye sat in a low high-backed chair, holding a richly bound book in one hand and a lump of clay in the other. She was small, quite small, and slightly brunette in coloring, with clear, light brown eyes. Her skin had a luminous whiteness, but in the shadows of the rounded cheek and throat it deepened to a dull golden tone which went well with the burnished hair of a dusky hue changing to a tawny blondness in the high lights.

She was laughing when they came in, as a child laughs⁠—a long, merry peal, gleefully loud, delightfully free. Her eyes, too, had the artless gaze of a child, and the frank smile on her lips seemed all the more childlike because the shortness of her upper lip left the mouth slightly open revealing milk-white teeth.

But she was no child.

Was she a little and thirty? The fullness of the chin did not say “No,” nor the ripe glow of the lower lip. Her figure was well rounded with firm, luxuriant outlines accentuated by the dark blue dress, which fitted snugly as a riding-habit around her waist, arms, and bosom. A dull crimson silk kerchief lay in rich folds around her neck and over her shoulders, its ends tucked into the low pointed neck of her bodice. Carnations of the same color were fastened in her hair.

“I am afraid we interrupted a pleasant reading,” said Frithjof with a glance at the richly bound book.

“No, indeed⁠—not in the least. We had been quarrelling for a full hour about what we read,” replied Mrs. Boye. “Mr. Refstrup is a great idealist in everything that has to do with art, while I think it’s dreadfully tiresome⁠—all this about the crude reality that has to be purified and clarified and regenerated and whatnot until there is just pure nothingness left. Do me the favor of looking at that Bacchante of Mikkelsen’s⁠—the one which deaf Traffelini over there is cutting in marble. If I were to enter her in a descriptive catalogue.⁠ ⁠… Good heavens! Number 77. A young lady in negligee is standing thoughtfully on both her feet and doesn’t know what to do with a bunch of grapes. She should crush those grapes if I had my way⁠—crush them till the red juice ran down her breast⁠—now shouldn’t she? Don’t you agree with me?” and she caught Frithjof by the sleeve, almost shaking him in her childlike eagerness.

“Yes,” Frithjof admitted; “yes, I do think there is something lacking⁠—something of freshness⁠—of spontaneity⁠—”

“It’s simply naturalness that’s lacking, and good heavens! why can’t we be natural? Oh, I know perfectly well; it’s because we lack the courage. Neither the artists nor the poets are brave enough to own up to human nature as it is. Shakespeare was, though.”

“Well, you know,” came from Erik behind the figure he was modelling, “I never could get along very well with Shakespeare. It seems to me he does too much of it; he whirls you round till you don’t know where you are.”

“I shouldn’t go so far as to say that,” Frithjof demurred; “but on the other hand,” he added with an indulgent smile, “I cannot call the berserker ragings of the great English poet by the name of conscious and intelligent artistic courage.”

“Really? Gracious, how funny you are!” and she laughed long and heartily, laughed till she was tired. She had risen and was strolling about the studio, but suddenly she turned, held out her arms toward Frithjof, and cried, “God bless you!” and laughed again till she was almost bent double.

Frithjof was on the verge of getting offended, but it seemed too fussy to go away angry, especially as he knew himself to be in the right, and moreover the lady was very pretty. So he stayed and began to talk to Erik, all the while trying for Mrs. Boye’s benefit to infuse a tone of mature tolerance into his voice.

Meanwhile Mrs. Boye was roaming about at the other end of the studio, thoughtfully humming a tune, which sometimes rose in a few quick, laughing trills, then sank again into a slow, solemn recitative.

A head of the young Augustus was standing on a large packing-case. She began to dust it. Then she found some clay and made moustaches, a pointed beard, and finally earrings, which she fastened on it.

While she was busy with this, Niels managed to stroll in her direction under cover of examining the casts. She had not glanced toward him once, but she must have sensed that he was there, for, without turning, she held out her hand to him and asked him to bring Erik’s hat.

Niels put the hat into her outstretched hand, and she set it on the head of Augustus.

“Good old Shakespeareson,” she said, patting the cheek of the travestied bust, “stupid old fellow who didn’t know what he was doing! Did he just sit there and daub ink till he turned out a Hamlet head without thinking of it⁠—did he?” She lifted the hat from the bust and passed her hand over the forehead in a motherly way as if she would push back its hair. “Lucky old chap, for all that! More than half lucky old poet boy!⁠—For you must admit that he wasn’t at all bad as a writer, this Shakespeare?”

“I confess I have my own opinion of that man,” replied Niels, slightly vexed and blushing.

“Good gracious! Have you too got your own opinion about Shakespeare? Then what is your opinion? Are you for us or against us?” She struck an attitude by the side of the bust and stood there, smiling, with her arm resting on its neck.

“I am unable to say whether the opinion which you are astonished to learn I possess is so fortunate as to acquire significance from the fact of agreeing with your own, but I do think I may say that it is for you and your protégé. At any rate I hold the opinion that he knew what he was doing, weighed what he was doing, and dared it. Many a time he dared in doubt, and the doubt is still apparent. At other times he only half dared, and then he blurred over with new features that which he did not have courage to leave as he first had it.”

And he went on in this strain.

While he was speaking, Mrs. Boye grew more and more restless. She looked nervously first to one side, then to the other, and drummed impatiently with her fingers, while her face was clouded by a troubled look which finally deepened to one of pain.

At last she could contain herself no longer.

“Don’t forget what you were going to say,” she exclaimed, “but I implore you, Mr. Lyhne, stop doing that with your hand⁠—that gesture as if you were pulling teeth! Please do, and don’t let me interrupt you! Now I am all attention again, and I quite agree with you.”

“But then it’s of no use to say any more.”

“Why not?”

“When we agree?”

“When we agree!”

Neither of them meant anything in particular by these last words, but they said them in a significant tone, as if a world of delicate meanings were hidden in them, and looked at each other with a subtle smile, like an afterglow of the wit that had just flashed between them, while each wondered what the other meant and felt slightly annoyed at being so slow of comprehension.

They strolled back to the other end of the room, and Mrs. Boye took her seat on the low chair again.

Erik and Frithjof had talked till they were beginning to be bored with each other and were glad to be joined by the others. Frithjof approached Mrs. Boye and made himself agreeable, while Erik, with the modesty of the host, kept himself in the background.

“If I were curious,” said Frithjof, “I should inquire what the book was that made you and Refstrup quarrel just as we were coming in.”

“Do you inquire?”

“I do.”

“Ergo?”

“Ergo!” replied Frithjof with a humble, acquiescent bow.

She held up the book and solemnly announced: “Helge, Oehlenschläger’s Helge.⁠—And what canto? It was ‘The Mermaid visits King Helge.’⁠—And what verse? It was the lines telling of how Tangkjær lay down by Helge’s side, and how he couldn’t control his curiosity any longer, but turned

—and at his side,
With white arms soft and round,
The greatest beauty he espied
That e’er on earth was found.

The maid had doffed her cloak of gray;
Her lovely limbs were bare,
Save for the robe like silver spray
That veiled her form so fair.

That is all he allows us to see of the mermaid’s charms, and that is what I am dissatisfied with. I want a luxuriant, glowing picture there; I want to see something so dazzling that it takes my breath away. I want to be initiated into the mysterious beauty of such a mermaid body, and I ask of you, what can I make of lovely limbs with a piece of gauze spread over them? Good heavens! No, she should have been naked as a wave and with the wild lure of the sea about her. Her skin should have had something of the phosphorescence of the summer ocean and her hair something of the black, tangled horror of the seaweed. Am I not right? Yes, and a thousand tints of the water should come and go in the changeful glitter of her eyes. Her pale breast must be cool with a voluptuous coolness, and her limbs have the flowing lines of the waves. The power of the maelstrom must be in her kiss, and the yielding softness of the foam in the embrace of her arms.”

She had talked herself into a glow, and stood there still animated by her theme, looking at her young listeners with large, inquiring child-eyes.

But they said nothing. Niels had flushed scarlet, and Erik looked extremely embarrassed. Frithjof was absolutely carried away and stared at her with the most open admiration, though of the three he was the one least aware how entrancingly beautiful she was, as she stood there with the glamor of her words about her.

Not many weeks had passed before Niels and Frithjof were as constant visitors in Mrs. Boye’s home as Erik Refstrup. Besides her pale niece, they met a great many young people, coming poets, painters, actors, and architects, all artists by virtue of their youth rather than their talent, all full of hope, valiant, lusting for battle, and easily moved to enthusiasm. It is true, there were among them some of those quiet dreamers who bleat wistfully toward the faded ideals of the past; but most of them were full of ideas that were modern at the time, drunk with the theories of modernity, wild with its powers, dazzled by its clear morning light. They were modern, belligerently modern, modern to excess, and perhaps not least because in their inmost hearts there was a strange, instinctive longing which had to be stifled, a longing which the new spirit could not satisfy⁠—worldwide, all-embracing, all-powerful, and all-enlightening though it was.

But, for all that, the exultation of the storm was in their young souls. They had faith in the light of the great stars of thought; they had hope fathomless as the ocean. Enthusiasm bore them on the wings of the eagle, and their hearts expanded with the courage of thousands.

No doubt life would in time wear it all out, lull most of it to sleep; worldly wisdom would break down much, and cowardice would sweep away the rest⁠—but what of it? The time that has gone with happiness does not come back with grief, and nothing the future may bring can wither a day or wipe out an hour in the life that has been lived.

To Niels the world, in those days, began to wear a different aspect. He heard his own vaguest, most secret thoughts loudly proclaimed by ten different mouths. He saw his own unique ideas, which to him had been a misty landscape, with lines blurred by fog, with unknown depths and muted notes⁠—he saw this landscape unveiled in the bright, clear, sharp colors of day, revealed in every detail, furrowed everywhere by roads, and with people swarming on the roads. There was something strangely unreal in the very fact that the creations of his fancy had become so real.

He was no longer a lonely child-king, reigning over lands that his own dreams had conjured up. No, he was one of a crowd, a man in an army, a soldier in the service of modern ideas. A sword had been placed in his hand, and a banner waved before him.

What a wonderful time full of promise! And how strange to hear with his ears the indistinct, mysterious whisper of his soul now sounding through the air of reality like wild, challenging trumpet-blasts, like the thunder of battering-rams against temple walls, like the whizzing of David’s pebble against Goliath’s brow, like exultant fanfares. It was as though he heard himself speaking with strange tongues, with a clarity and power not his own, about that which belonged to his deepest, innermost self.

This gospel of modernity, with its message of dissolution and perfection, did not sound only from the lips of his contemporaries. There were older men with names that carried weight whose eyes were likewise open to the glories of new ideas. These men used more pompous words and had more magnificent conceptions; the names of past centuries swept along in their train; history was with them⁠—the history of the world and the human mind, the Odyssey of thought. These were men who in their youth had been moved by the very things that now thrilled the young people and had borne witness to the spirit within them; but when they heard in their own voices the sound which tells a man crying in the wilderness that he is alone, they were silenced. The young people, however, remembered only that these men had spoken, not that they had been silent; they were ready to bring laurel wreaths and martyr crowns, willing to admire and happy in their admiration. Nor did the objects of their homage repel this late-born appreciation; they put on the crowns in good faith, looked at themselves in a large and historic light, and poetized out of their past the less heroic features; as for the old conviction, which ill winds had cooled, they soon talked it into a glow again.

Niels Lyhne’s family in Copenhagen, more particularly the old Councillor Neergaards, were not at all pleased with the circle their young relative had entered. It was not the modern ideas that worried them, but rather the fact that some of the young men found long hair, great hunting-boots, and a slight slovenliness favorable to the growth of such ideas, and though Niels himself was not at all fanatical on this point, it was annoying to meet him, and even more annoying to have their friends meet him, in company with youths who could be thus characterized. These things, however, were trifles compared to his intimacy with Mrs. Boye and his frequenting the theatre in company with her and her pale niece.

Not that there was anything in particular to be said against Mrs. Boye, but people talked about her. They said a great many things.

She was well born, a Konneroy, and the Konneroys were among the oldest, most finely patrician families in town. Yet she had broken with them. Some said it was on account of a dissipated brother, whom they had sent off to the colonies to get rid of him. Certain it was that the break was complete, and there were even whispers that old Konneroy had cursed her, and afterwards had had an attack of his bad spring asthma.

All this had happened after she became a widow.

Mr. Boye, her husband, had been a pharmaceutist, an assessor pharmaciae, and had been knighted. When he died he was sixty and owned a barrel and a half of gold. So far as anyone knew, they had lived quite happily together. In the first three years of their marriage, the elderly husband had been very much in love, but later they had each lived their own life, he busy with his garden and with keeping up his reputation as a great man at stag parties, she with theatres, romantic music, and German poetry.

Then he died.

When the year of mourning was over, the widow went to Italy and lived there for two or three years, spending most of the time in Rome. There was nothing in the rumor that she had smoked opium in the French club, nor in the story that she had allowed herself to be modelled in the same manner as Paulina Borghese; and the little Russian prince who shot himself while she was in Naples did not commit suicide for her sake. It was true, however, that German artists never tired of serenading her; and it was true that one morning she had donned the dress of an Albanian peasant girl and had seated herself on the steps of a church high up in the Via Sistina, where a newly arrived artist had engaged her to stand as a model for him with a pitcher on her head and a little brown boy holding her hand. At least there was such a picture hanging on her wall.

On the way home from Italy she met a countryman, a noted clever critic, who would rather have been a poet. A negative, sceptical nature, people called him, a keen mind, one who dealt harshly and pitilessly with others because he dealt harshly and pitilessly with himself and supposed his brutality to be justified by that fact. Nevertheless, he was not quite what they believed him to be; he was not so repellently uncompromising nor so robustly consistent as he appeared. Although he was always in a state of strife against the idealistic tendencies of the age and called them by more disparaging names, still he felt drawn toward these dreamy, ethereal ideals, this blue-blue mysticism, these unattainable heights and evanescent lights; they appealed to him more than the earthborn opinions for which he did battle and in which, most of the time, he believed.

Rather against his will, he fell in love with Mrs. Boye, but he did not tell her so, for his was not a young and open love, nor a hopeful one. He loved her as a creature of another, a finer and happier race than his own, and there was in his love a rancor, an instinctive rage against everything in her that bore the marks of race.

He looked with hostile, jealous eyes upon her sentiments and opinions, her tastes and views of life. He fought with every weapon he possessed, with subtle eloquence, with heartless logic and harsh authority, with derision wrapped in pity, to bring her over to his side, and he won. But when truth had conquered, and she had become like him, he saw that the victory was too complete, that he had loved her as she was, with her illusions and prejudices, her dreams and her errors, and not as she had now become. Dissatisfied with himself, with her, and with everything in his own country, he went away and did not return. But then she had just begun to love him.

This relationship, of course, gave people food for talk, and they made the most of it. The Councillor’s wife told Niels about it in the tone that aged virtue uses in speaking of young error, but Niels took it in a manner that offended and horrified the old lady. He replied in a high strain about the tyranny of society and the freedom of the individual, about the plebeian respectability of the mob and the nobility of passion.

From that day on he went but seldom to the home of his solicitous relatives, but Mrs. Boye saw him all the more frequently.