Sounds of hoofbeats and shouting rang through the forest. Some young people were out riding, and the Castle horses were glossy and wild. The horsemen came up to the miller’s house, knocked on the door with their whips and wanted to ride in. The door was so low and yet they wanted to ride in.
“Howdy, howdy!” they cried. “We’ve come to say hello.”
The miller laughed humbly at this whim.
Then they dismounted, tied up their horses, and set the mill running.
“The hopper is empty!” screamed the miller. “You’ll destroy the mill.”
But his words were lost in the crashing noise.
“Johannes!” the miller called at the top of his voice, looking up at the quarry.
Johannes came.
“They’re grinding up the mill,” his father cried, pointing.
Johannes walked slowly toward the party. He was terribly pale, and the veins in his temples stood out. He recognized Otto, the chamberlain’s son, who was wearing a midshipman’s uniform; in addition to him there were two others. One of them smiled and bowed, to smooth things over.
Johannes didn’t shout, gave no hint, but went straight on. He makes a beeline for Otto. Just then he sees two horsewomen riding up from the woods; one of them is Victoria. She is wearing a green riding habit, and her horse is the white Castle mare. She does not dismount but sits there observing everybody with quizzical eyes.
Then Johannes alters his course. Turning aside, he climbs up on the dam and opens the sluice gate. The noise gradually diminishes, the mill stops.
“No, let it run!” Otto cried. “What are you doing that for? Let the mill run, I tell you.”
“Was it you who started the mill?” Victoria asked.
“Yes,” he replied, laughing. “Why did it stop? Why can’t it run?”
“Because it’s empty,” Johannes answered breathlessly, looking at him. “Do you understand? The mill is empty.”
“It was empty, can’t you hear?” Victoria said too.
“How was I to know?” Otto said and laughed. “Why was it empty? I ask. Was there no grain in it?”
“Get back on your horse!” one of his comrades cut in, to put an end to it.
They got into their saddles. One of them apologized to Johannes before riding off.
Victoria was the last to leave. After starting to ride away, she turned her horse and came back. “Please ask your father to excuse this,” she said.
“It would make more sense if the cadet himself did so,” Johannes replied.
“Well, naturally, but still. He’s so full of ideas. . . . How long it is since we saw each other, Johannes!”
He looked up at her, wondering if he had heard correctly. Had she forgotten last Sunday, his great day!
“I saw you Sunday on the pier,” he replied.
“Oh yes,” she said quickly. “How lucky that you were able to help the mate with the search. You did find the girl, the two of you, right?”
Hurt, he replied shortly, “Yes, we found the girl.”
“Or was it,” she went on, as if something had occurred to her, “was it you alone . . . ? What’s the difference anyway. Well, I do hope you will put in a good word with your father. Good night.”
Nodding her head and smiling, she gathered up the reins and rode off.
When Victoria was out of sight, Johannes wandered after her into the forest, restless and angry. He found Victoria standing by a tree, quite alone. She was leaning against the tree and sobbing.
Had she been thrown? Had she hurt herself?
He walked up to her and asked, “Have you had an accident?”
She took a step toward him, spread her arms and gave him a radiant look. Then she paused, let her arms fall and replied, “No, I haven’t had an accident. I dismounted and let the mare go on ahead. . . . Johannes, you mustn’t look at me like that. You were standing at the pond looking at me. What do you want?”
“What I want? I don’t understand . . . ,” he stammered.
“You are so broad there,” she said, suddenly putting her hand on his. “You are so broad there, at your wrist. And you are completely brown from the sun, nut-brown. . . .”
He made a move, wanting to take her hand. But she gathered up her dress and said, “No, nothing happened to me. I just felt like going home on foot. Good night.”
III
Johannes went back to the city. And years went by, a long, eventful time of work and dreams, lessons and versifying. He had got a good start, having succeeded in writing a poem about Esther, ‘the Jewish girl who became queen of Persia,’ a work that appeared in print and earned him some money. Another poem, “The Labyrinth of Love,” put into the mouth of Munken Vendt, gave him a name.
What was love? A wind whispering among the roses, no, a yellow phosphorescence in the blood. Love was a hot devil’s music that set even the hearts of old men dancing. It was like the marguerite, which opens wide as night comes on, and it was like the anemone, which closes at a breath and dies at a touch.
Such was love.
It could ruin a man, raise him up again, and then brand him anew; it could fancy me today, you tomorrow, and someone else tomorrow night, that’s how fickle it was. But it could also hold fast like an unbreakable seal and blaze with unquenchable passion until the hour of death, because it was eternal. So, what was the nature of love?
Ah, love is a summer night with stars in the sky and fragrance on earth. But why does it make young men follow secret ways, and old men stand on tiptoe in their lonely rooms? Alas, love turns the human heart into a mildewed garden, a lush and shameless garden in which grow mysterious, obscene toadstools.
Doesn’t it make monks prowl by night through closed gardens and press their eyes to the windows of sleepers? And doesn’t it possess nuns with foolishness and darken the understanding of princesses? It can knock a king’s head in the dust, making his hair sweep the road as he whispers lewd words to himself, laughing and sticking out his tongue.
Such was the nature of love.
No, no, again it was very different, it was like nothing else in the whole world. It came to earth on a spring night when a young man saw two eyes, two eyes. He stared and saw. He kissed two lips—it was as though two flames met in his heart, a sun flashing at a star. He fell into a pair of arms, and he heard and saw no more in the whole wide world.
Love is God’s first word, the first thought that sailed through his brain. When he said, “Let there be light!” there was love. And everything that he made was very good, and no part thereof did he wish undone. And love became the world’s beginning and the world’s ruler; but all its ways are full of flowers and blood, flowers and blood.
A day in September.
This out-of-the-way street was his favorite promenade; here he strolled as in his own room, because he never met anybody, and there were gardens behind both sidewalks, with trees having red and yellow leaves.
How come Victoria is walking here? What can have brought her this way? He was not mistaken, it was she; and perhaps it was she who had walked there also yesterday evening, when he looked out of his window.
His heart was thumping. He knew that Victoria was in town, that he had heard; but she moved in circles the miller’s son never entered. Nor did he associate with Ditlef.
He pulled himself together and walked toward the lady. Didn’t she recognize him? She just walked on, serious and thoughtful, her head carried proudly on her long neck.
He greeted her.
“Good morning,” she answered quite softly.
She didn’t make as if to stop and he walked by in silence. His legs twitched. At the end of the little street he turned around, as he was in the habit of doing. I’ll keep my eyes glued to the sidewalk and not look up, he thought. Only after a dozen steps or so did he look up.
She had stopped by a window.
Should he slip away, into the next street? What was she standing there for? The window was a poor one, a small store window in which could be se
en a few crossed bars of red soap, grits in a glass jar, and some used postage stamps for sale.
Maybe he could continue another dozen steps and then turn back?
At that moment she looked at him, and suddenly she came toward him again. She walked fast, as though she had taken heart, and when she spoke she had difficulty catching her breath. She smiled nervously.
“Good morning. How nice to meet you.”
God, how his heart was struggling; it wasn’t beating, it trembled. He tried to say something but wasn’t able to, only his lips moved. Her clothes gave off a scent, her yellow dress, or perhaps it was her mouth. At that moment he had no clear impression of her face, but he recognized her fine shoulders and saw her long, slender hand on the handle of her parasol. It was her right hand. She was wearing a ring on it.
In the first few seconds he didn’t think about this and had no feeling of distress. Her hand was strangely beautiful.
“I’ve been in town for a whole week,” she went on, “but I haven’t seen you. Well, yes, I did see you once in the street; somebody told me it was you. You’ve grown so tall.”
“I knew you were in town,” he mumbled. “Will you be staying long?”
“A few days. No, not long. I must go home again.”
“Thanks for giving me a chance to say hello to you,” he said.
Pause.
“By the way, I think I’ve lost my way,” she resumed. “I’m staying at the chamberlain’s, which way is that?”
“I’ll take you there, if I may.”
They started walking.
“Is Otto at home?” he asked by way of saying something.
“Yes, he’s home,” she replied shortly.
Some men came out of a gate carrying a piano between them, blocking the sidewalk. Victoria swerved to the left, bringing her entire body into contact with her companion. Johannes looked at her.
“Pardon me,” she said.
A wave of delight flowed through him at this touch, he felt her breath directly on his cheek for a moment.
“I see you’re wearing a ring,” he said. He smiled, assuming an indifferent air. “May I congratulate you?”
What would she answer? He didn’t look at her, holding his breath.
“And you?” she replied, “haven’t you got a ring? Oh, you haven’t. Actually, someone did tell me . . . One hears so much about you these days, it’s all in the papers.”
“I’ve written a few poems,” he said. “But I don’t suppose you have seen them.”
“Wasn’t there a whole book? I seem to—”
“Oh yes, there was also a little book.”
They came to a square. Though expected at the chamberlain’s, she was in no hurry and sat down on a bench. He stood in front of her.
Suddenly she held out her hand to him and said, “You sit down too.”
Only after he had sat down did she let go of his hand.
Now or never! he thought. He tried once more to affect a light-hearted, nonchalant tone, smiling and looking at nothing in particular. Good.
“So you’re engaged and won’t even tell me, is that it? With me being your neighbor back home and all.”
She thought it over. “That isn’t exactly what I wanted to talk to you about today,” she replied.
Turning serious all of a sudden, he said in a low voice, “Oh well, I think I understand anyway.”
Pause.
“I knew all along, of course,” he resumed, “that it was hopeless for me . . . well, that I wouldn’t be the one who . . . I was simply the miller’s son, and you . . . Obviously, that’s the way it is. I don’t even understand how I dare sit here beside you right now and hint at such a thing. Because I ought to stand up before you, or I should be lying over there, on my knees. That would be the correct thing. But I feel as though . . . And all these years I’ve been away have also left their mark. I seem to be bolder now. After all, I know I’m not a child anymore, and I also know that you can’t throw me in prison, even if you wanted to. That’s why I dare say this. But you mustn’t be angry with me for it, or I’d rather keep silent.”
“No, speak out. Say whatever you like.”
“May I? Whatever I like? But then your ring couldn’t forbid me anything either.”
“No,” she said softly, “it forbids you nothing. No.”
“What? But how am I to take it, then? Well, God bless you, Victoria, unless I’m mistaken?” He jumped up and leaned forward to take a good look at her face. “I mean, doesn’t the ring mean anything?”
“Sit down again.”
He sat down.
“Oh, you should know how I’ve been thinking of you; good heavens, has there ever been a thought of someone else in my heart! Of all the people I’ve seen or known about, you were the only person in the world for me. I couldn’t think in any other way: Victoria is the most beautiful and the most magnificent of all, and I know her! Lady Victoria, I always thought. Not that I wasn’t perfectly aware that nobody could be further away from you than I was, but I knew of you—which was anything but a small thing for me—and that you lived in a certain place and perhaps remembered me once in a while. You didn’t, of course; but many an evening I’ve sat on my chair thinking that perhaps you remembered me once in a while. And then, let me tell you, Lady Victoria, it was as though the heavens were opened to me, and I wrote poems to you and spent what money I had on flowers for you, to take home and put in a glass. All my poems are for you; only a few are not, and they aren’t published. But I don’t suppose you have read those that are published either. Now I’ve started on a big book. God, how grateful I am to you! I’m so full of you, and that’s all my joy. I would always see or hear something that reminded me of you, all day, at night too. I’ve written your name on the ceiling, I lie there looking up at it; but the maid who tidies my room can’t see it, I’ve written it very small so I can have it all to myself. It gives me a certain happiness.”
She turned away, opened her bodice and took out a piece of paper.
“Look here!” she said, breathing heavily. “I cut it out and kept it. I don’t mind telling you, I read it at night. It was Papa who first showed it to me, and I went over to the window to read it. ‘Where is it? I can’t find it,’ I said, turning the page of the newspaper. But I found it easily and was already reading it. And I was so happy.”
The paper gave off a fragrance from her breast; she opened it herself and showed it to him, one of his early poems, four brief stanzas to her, to the lady on the white horse. It was a heart’s naïve, fervent confession, eruptions that couldn’t be held back but leaped up from the lines, like stars coming out in the sky.
“Yes,” he said, “I wrote that. It was a long time ago, I wrote it one night when the poplars kept rustling outside my window. Why, you’re really going to keep it? Thank you! You’ve put it away. Ah,” he exclaimed, thrilled, speaking in an undertone, “just think how close you are to me right now, sitting here. I can feel your arm against mine, your body radiates warmth. Many a time when I was alone, I shivered with emotion thinking about you; but now I feel warm. The last time I was home you were lovely too, but you’re lovelier now. It’s your eyes and your eyebrows, your smile—oh, I don’t know, it’s all of it, everything about you.”
She smiled and looked at him with half-closed eyes shining deep blue under her long lashes. Her complexion had a warm glow to it. She seemed overcome by a feeling of intense joy, reaching out to him with an unconscious movement of her hand.
“Thank you!” she said.
“No, Victoria, don’t thank me,” he replied. Borne toward her heart and soul, as on a tide, he wanted to say more, more; there were confused outbursts, as though he were drunk. “But Victoria, if you love me a little . . . I don’t know one way or the other, but tell me you do even if it isn’t true. Please! Oh, I would promise you to make something of myself, something great, something almost unheard of. You have no idea what I could make of myself; sometimes when I think hard about it, I feel I’m
brimful of things waiting to be done. Many a time my cup is filled to overflowing, and I dance about my room at night because I’m full of visions. There is a man in the next room, he can’t sleep and knocks on the wall. At daybreak he comes to my room, furious. That’s all right, I don’t mind him. By then I’ve thought about you for so long that you seem to be there with me. I go up to the window and start singing; there is a hint of daylight already and the poplars are rustling outside. ‘Good night!’ I say, face to face with the morning. That’s for you. She’s still sleeping, I think to myself. Good night, God bless her! Then I turn in. And so it goes, night after night. But I never imagined you were as lovely as you are. This is how I’ll remember you when you’re gone, the way you are now. I’ll remember you so clearly. . . .”
“You won’t be coming home?”
“No. I’m not ready yet. Yes, I’ll come. I’m going away now. I’m not ready, I want to do all sorts of things. Do you still wander about in the garden at home sometimes? Do you ever go out in the evening? I could meet you, say hello to you perhaps, that’s all. But if you love me a little, if you can bear me, put up with me, then say . . . give me the pleasure . . . Do you know, there is a palm tree that flowers only once in its lifetime, and yet it lives till seventy, the talipot palm. But it flowers only once. I’m flowering now. Sure, I’ll get some money and come home. I’ll sell what I’ve written; you see, I’m working on a big book and now I’ll sell it, first thing in the morning, all that is finished. I’ll get quite a bit for it. So you would like me to come home, eh?”
“Yes.”
“Thank you, thank you! Forgive me if I hope for too much, for being too trusting; it’s so sweet to be overly trusting. This is the happiest day of my life. . . .”
He took off his hat and placed it beside him.
Victoria looked about her; a lady was coming down the street and, farther up, a woman with a basket. Victoria became fidgety, she felt for her watch.