III

The real frost had arrived.

The mornings were bright with clear skies, with snow on the road and snow far out over the frozen lake. Ida stepped out confidently on the path – it was as though she asserted her presence more now – as she walked towards the sun, and the Nørrebro steam whistles were sounding and the machines clanking as though they were the bright morning’s pulse, while riders came in their twos and threes, trotting quickly from Østerbro on panting horses.

“Ooh,” said Ida to a boy who had fallen off a slide.

“Ooh,” he replied and then he was up and off again.

Two elderly gentlemen had also been watching.

“Up again,” said one of them, laughing to Ida: “Young people.”

All the elderly gentlemen taking their morning walk had to chat with Ida if there was anything at all to be said; and Ida nodded.

“Yes, Your Honour,” she said. She knew all these elderly gentlemen.

The two old gentlemen continued their walk, and one of them – he was wearing ear muffs – said slowly and clearly:

“You know it is really lovely to see a healthy face.”

The other stood there for a moment and watched Ida as she walked. It was as though there was a certain proud bearing about her, about her hips.

“Indeed, young people look splendid in the sunshine.”

Over by the working-class houses, Ida met Boserup and Kaas, who were wearing large galoshes.

“You are out on your walk rather late today,” said Nurse Kaas as she went past.

“Yes,” said Ida without stopping: “I prefer to go out when the sun is shining.”

“But isn’t it a lovely morning?” she said; she was already a few steps away from them.

“Yes, at minus eight,” shouted Kaas, who was wearing black mittens.

“Oh, the cold warms you up,” shouted Ida back.

“Not to mention the fur coat,” said Boserup, who had not stopped and was already some dozen trees further on. She said something to the effect that one ought to dress a little according to one’s position in life.

“Yes,” said Kaas, who was thinking about Ida as she went. It was as though Ida never had anything to say to her colleagues any more, and that hurt them.

“I must say she’s been putting it on recently.”

When she had almost reached Østerbro Ida turned and raised her veil. Yes, the channel was free of ice; and she went back, with the sun on her back, and dodged round the corner at Rørholm. The toothless old man opened the door to a private compartment as though he had been expecting her.

“It’s warm,” he said.

“Yes, thank you.”

“I think we’ll have the usual.” Ida took off her coat and had the table moved forward and the door of the stove opened to show the coal burning.

The toothless waiter nodded and had closed the door, quietly letting down the flap (when Ellingsen, the waiter, was carrying out his tasks, there was something about him rather reminiscent of a subservient verger during divine service opening the pews for those who rented them) before going off to order the lunch.

Ida laid the table herself and put some violas in Karl’s place, and she unwrapped the cake. How lovely and fresh it was. There came the sound of a walking stick knocking on the door.

“Good morning,” said Karl. “By Gad, you always seem to have something to unwrap.”

“Good morning.”

He kissed her cheek and hung up his overcoat.

“It’s lovely and warm in here,” said Ida, moving her cheek against his, and earnestly looking up at him all the time. She so wanted to stand like this for a moment and look into his eyes.

“It’s jolly nice here,” said Karl, sitting down and setting about the lunch while the fire roasted his legs.

Ida sat there laughing.

“You are all right now,” she said.

“Yes,” said Karl, dipping his toast in his egg and looking across the table at her.

“This is the best meal of the day.”

Ida cut a piece of cake. She made rather a lot of small movements when she was so happy.

“It’s from the court baker’s,” she said, tossing her head, a movement she had really learned from Olivia.

“Good Lord,” Karl took a piece. “Aye, I must say you get around,” he said in a rather soft voice.

“Yes,” laughed Ida with a nod. She had developed the habit of opening her eyes curiously wide when she was happy.

Stretching his long legs out in front of the fire, Karl went on eating, slowly, one piece after the other. But Ida pushed her cup and her plate aside to make room and tell him:

“Oh, you must hear this, it is incredible.”

It was a story, a long story about a bottle of “drinks”.

“Oh, I see,” said Karl. “Aye, you go through a few small glasses over there, I must say.”

“I don’ t,” said Ida, taking his hand across the table.

“No, I suppose you don’t need it. You presumably don’t need to have it both ways.”

“Karl.”

“It was a bottle of Dôm, and Nurse Friis had – incredibly – just put it in the cupboard in the corridor, straight in front of the door and then the prof came while Petersen was standing there…with the cupboard open. And he saw it straight away and oh, how he carried on; you have no idea.”

Karl had finished and now sat puffing great rings of smoke up in the air from his cigarette.

“So I don’t think Friis will be made a sister now,” concluded Ida, with a frightened look in her eyes.

“That’s a pity,” said Karl. “But Friis is probably one who can look after herself.”

“But,” and Ida nodded twice, “she only earns twenty-five kroner a month.”

She had risen and was standing behind Karl, rubbing her chin on his hair, while he seemingly sat there gently humming.

“But the prof damned well ought to have a job in Rome,” he said.

Ida put both her hands round his cheeks.

“Why?”

“Well, because all those round the Pope have faces like that.”

Ida went on laughing, sitting on the floor with her elbow resting on his knee. They were silent for a while until Karl said:

“Do you know what, mamma is going away, probably.”

“Going away? Where?” Ida gave a little start.

“To Geneva.” He clicked his lips.

“Grandma Aline’s jolly well got to be brought back home.”

“Mrs Feddersen? And your mother is going to fetch her?” She looked up and then down again. “That is so kind of her.”

It was as though Ida’s voice had suddenly trembled a little, and Karl nodded thoughtfully as he continued to stare at the fire.

“Yes, that’s what she’s like.”

The coals in the fire collapsed:

“Well, so she doesn’t judge her…so harshly.” She spoke gently, and there was a special ring to the word “judge”, as though she had learned it by heart.

Karl continued to look at the coals.

“I don’t know, damn it, she condemns her like all the others, I suppose, but she’s fetching her.”

Ida did not move; it might almost be thought she suddenly had tears in her eyes.

Karl nodded at the fire again.

“And she’ll get her reinstated in all her old glory,” he said.

Ida made no reply, but she had taken her hands away from his knee.

“What are you thinking about?” he asked.

“Your mother.”

It came from deep down inside her, and she laid her head against his side, while Karl stroked her hair and the coals continued to collapse, little by little.

“You are so nice when you sit there so silently,” he said, still stroking her hair quite gently, but there was nevertheless something about his caresses as though he were stroking a hound.

“And there was so much I wanted to say.”

“What did you want to say?” he said, not taking his hand from her hair.

A moment passed:

“Thank you,” she whispered quite quietly.

There came a slight twitch at the corner of his mouth, and his hand went in under the hair at the back of her head.

“And I’m never allowed to thank you.”

“Yes, you are,” she said, no longer looking at the fire – if you – one day would say thank you…for yourself.”

Karl bent down over her: there was something about his eyes that made them look like velvet.

“Dearest,” he said.

Ida did not answer his caresses, and she did not look up while saying in a voice he could scarcely hear:

“For I always wonder what your mother would think.”

A second passed.

“There’s no point in that, damn it” said Karl, changing his tone.

But Ida had risen and fetched his overcoat (managing to dry her eyes the while) and spread it out to warm the lining by the fire. She sat smoothing the soft silk with her hands. She was very fond of that overcoat.

“The lining is wearing well.”

“Yes.”

“Hm,” and Ida smiled: “You were so pleased when you got it.”

Karl got up and shook his long legs.

“And it was about time, too,” he said, putting on the coat with the aid of Ida, “that I had something warm to wear on these morning walks.”

Ida also put her outdoor clothes on. “Goodbye then,” she said, putting her arms round his neck before ringing for Ellingsen. Mr Ellingsen had a way of coming in through a door as though he were entering by way of a crack. The purse was already over by Karl’s plate (it was a Russia leather gentleman’s purse that Ida had bought), and Karl paid while Ida was putting her fur collar up, and Mr Ellingsen went out to change the large note, while Ida snatched the purse.

“Goodbye, dear,” said Karl again, rocking her gently backward and forward, with his hands round her waist, while Ida smiled.

“Goodbye.”

She stood for a moment.

“Do you know, I’m always so happy when I leave.”

“Really,” laughed Karl, letting go of her.

“Yes,” said Ida, standing close to his shoulder, “for then I know everything – again.”

“Goodbye.”

The door to the corridor closed. Ida always went first, and Karl waited until she had gone a good way ahead. Mr Ellingsen gave the change to Karl, and Eichbaum put it in his pocket, and the toothless old man began to clear up, with his head on one side; two places had been reserved for quarter to eleven.

“You get a lot of people in here, by Gad,” said Karl, who was still waiting.

“Yes, we have quite a number of people here in the mornings,” – Mr Ellingsen pronounced “quite” as “quate” – “during business hours.”

“Good morning.”

Ida walked past ladies and gentlemen and past trees that were truly radiant; she knew that Karl had come round the corner now and was walking on the path some way behind her, sauntering along, with his walking stick over his arm and with Ida’s back in front of him, at a respectable distance: this was by Gad the best cigar he would have all day.

Some horsemen rode by, and some ladies went past: the smoke from a Havana cigar was simply beautiful when the air was as still as this.

A couple of lieutenants rode up alongside Karl and stopped their horses with a “Morning.”

“Morning,” murmured Karl.

“You are walking along looking like some wealthy landowner,” said one of them, a member of the Knuth family.

“Yes, I’m doing some calculations,” said Karl.

The lieutenants laughed and stopped alongside him. They talked about the animals’ croupes and stayed with him until there came the sound of fresh hoofs behind them and the two uniformed men saluted. It was Kate with her servant, and she, too, stopped her horse.

“Good morning. Is your mother leaving tomorrow, then?” she asked, looking down at Karl.

“That was the idea,” said Karl, his eyes on her steed.

“Bon voyage,” said Kate, flicking her whip.

The two lieutenants growled something or other about accompanying the lady, and Kate said:

“Why, of course,” (Knuth had been garrisoned at Aarhus) and they all three rode on, slowly, Kate between the two officers.

“Oh, that was what you were waiting for,” said Karl as he watched them; Kate was now nodding down to Ida.

But she rides damned well, he thought with a nod. He whistled between his teeth; he had a curious whistle that could be heard half a mile away and Ida, who was walking quickly ahead, slowed her pace until he reached her: it was as though he needed to talk to her a little. But all he said was:

“She rides damned well.” And he continued to look at her twenty-year-old waist, there on the horse’s back.

“She’s very pretty,” said Ida. And her eyes shone at Karl’s.

They turned off further down the road while Karl was still watching them. The lieutenants’ bodies had become so flexible as they leaned towards her.

“I suppose the butter profits will benefit the hussars as well now,” said Karl.

They had reached the slide where the boy had fallen off earlier and suddenly – perhaps in sheer joy because Karl had called to her – Ida started to go down the slide. She positioned her legs a little too youthfully apart as she laughed.

“You wouldn’t be particularly elegant on skates, by Gad,” said Karl, and Ida smiled again.

Then they parted on the corner.

Karl went on, thinking that he might really just as well ride with Kate in the mornings, for in any case he was not going to go to that damned office any earlier.

“And it’s a lovely animal,” he said.

When he reached the office, he found Sister Koch there. She had taken her glasses off – she had just met Ida by the middle door – and was watching von Eichbaum.

Karl took his books out and adjusted his office chair.

“Oh, so the cavalry has its eye on the butter,” he thought. He started on the books.

Ida did not fall asleep; she lay in the greenish light and thought of Mrs von Eichbaum, who was to travel all that way. That was so nice of her. She was going to fetch her and was not judging her.

Ida lay there without moving, staring out into the pale green light. Her thoughts took her so far away.

Down below there was the sound of doors being opened and closed.

Ida would send some flowers to Mrs von Eichbaum when she left. Indeed she would send a bouquet out to the station.

∞∞∞

Mrs von Eichbaum and the general’s wife were in the dining room, sitting in front of the closed trunk when Mrs Mourier arrived together with Kate.

“But Emilie,” said Mrs Mourier: “Are you wearing silk for the journey?”

“Good heavens, Vilhelmine, I always do. It’s the only practical thing. You can shake the dust off silk.”

The general’s wife took up the theme while Mrs von Eichbaum called for Julius, and said:

“Oh no, fancy travelling in woollen clothes, we who hate dirt.”

Kate, who had a large folder under her arm and was standing in the dining room with her lips pursed as though she wanted to whistle but was keeping the sound to herself, asked if they would like to see the design for the main building at Ludvigsbakke.

“Dear Kate, just fancy looking at the designs now,” – it was Mrs von Eichbaum speaking – “only minutes before leaving.”

“You are not leaving for another hour,” said Kate.

Mrs von Eichbaum always unfailingly left home at least half an hour early, “as though one knew what could happen at the last minute.”

They all went down to the cab and drove off, with Julius on the box. Mrs Mourier was saying that she would probably also have to leave within a few days, for Aarhus. Mourier had written to say that they were simply obliged to give those two dinners.

It would not matter about the actual farms. But there were the tenant farmers and bailiffs that Mourier thought should be invited as they were accustomed to… “And he is always very dependent on them, of course,” said Mrs Mourier, “these days when there is so much competition.”

“I entirely agree with Mourier in that,” said Mrs von Eichbaum. “There is no point in upsetting that kind of people.”

“Yes, that is exactly what Mourier says,” said Mrs Mourier.

When they arrived in the main hall at the railway station, they found Mrs Schleppegrell waiting together with Fanny, who was wearing a bonnet tied with dark red ribbons under her pointed chin. Mrs Schleppegrell went across and embraced Mrs von Eichbaum, saying: “Oh, thank God it was possible to arrange something, my dear and, how grateful Line must be to you.”

“Dear Anna,” said Mrs von Eichbaum, “it is not really worth talking about the two-day journey when I am travelling on a modern railway train.”

They all sat down by one of the round tables around the pillars, while Mrs von Eichbaum put on her newly washed silk gloves for the journey and Fanny brought a greeting from Miss Juul, the lady-in-waiting.

“Yes,” said Mrs Schleppegrell: “Emma (Emma was Miss Juel’s Christian name) actually said to me yesterday: ‘Dearest friend, it will be a relief for the entire group’.”

But Mrs Mourier had tears in her eyes as she said:

“Seeing you again, Emilie, will nevertheless be awfully difficult for Aline.”

The waiting-room began to fill up as Kate peeled an orange and the general’s wife and Mrs Schleppegrell talked about Geneva chocolate. “Yes, Emilie,” said the admiral’s wife, “if it would not be too much trouble for you to order twenty pounds for me to be sent direct. Geneva chocolate is what Fanny likes best of course.”

Karl appeared among the travellers with his stick under his arm and leaning slightly forward. “Oh,” he said, “I suppose you’ve been here for an hour already.”

He kissed Mrs von Eichbaum on the cheek and gave her a small bottle of eau de Cologne in Russia leather for the journey. “A little present for you,” he said. Karl was managing his money remarkably well recently, and he was really very attentive by nature. He greeted all the others, and Mrs Mourier said with a smile:

“He is an attentive son. I’m sure he will be a good husband.”

“Are you sure of that?” said Karl, who was standing between Mrs Mourier and Kate, and he wrinkled his nose.

“Hm, what are the qualities of a good husband?” said Kate.

“That he is a real man,” said Karl.

Kate looked up, and something appeared in her eyes for a brief moment that made Karl as it were move closer to the back of her chair.

“Yes, Karl is right in that,” said Mrs Mourier.

The door to the waiting-room opened and Julius gathered the smaller pieces of luggage.

“But in Geneva,” Mrs von Eichbaum was heard to say to Mrs Schleppegrell, “one can always attend the Reformed Church.”

Fanny, who was looking at Karl and Kate through her pince-nez, said to the general’s wife: “Yes, they have a new minister now, and he is said to speak in such a beautiful way.”

Mrs Mourier, who was the last to rise, said: “Oh, I am never keen on hearing ministers I do not know.”

They all emerged on to the platform and Mrs von Eichbaum found a compartment. There was something about Mrs von Eichbaum that immediately persuaded conductors and the like to shower her with attention even though she did not exactly give the impression that she would be giving a tip. She got in while all the others except Karl and Kate clustered together around the door, so that Nurse Kjær, who came running up, quite out of breath, with Ida’s bouquet could hardly reach the step.

“There are just a few flowers from Miss Brandt. She could unfortunately not come herself.”

Mrs von Eichbaum took the flowers and expressed her thanks: it was so kind of Miss Brandt. And Nurse Kjær disappeared again just as suddenly and embarrassingly flushed as when she had arrived, while Mrs von Eichbaum, sitting with the bouquet, said:

“My dears, that was really kind of her, but flowers are simply one of the least practical things I can imagine for a journey. Take them home with you, Vilhelmine, and put them in some water.”

And she handed the roses to Mrs Mourier:

“I would only put them in the luggage rack here and find them withered in the morning.”

The flowers were passed to Kate, who stood there holding them.

“They are beautiful,” she said, looking down with supreme indifference at the long La France roses.

“Yes,” said Karl, smiling suddenly and so nicely down at the pink flowers. “She meant well, damn it.”

Then he returned to his theme – they had been talking about Knuth’s riding skill – and he wrinkled his nose at the thought of the count.

“No, he’s a fine jumper, by Jove. Where did you come across him?”

“He has been garrisoned at Aarhus. And you refuse to ride with me.”

“It’s a lovely animal,” was all Karl said with a vague nod.

The conductors closed the doors and the latecomers rushed out of the waiting-rooms, followed by panting hotel porters. Doors were opened and closed again, and suddenly, for a moment, it was as though everyone was quarrelling, porters, conductors and travellers.

“My dear,” said Mrs von Eichbaum, standing bolt upright at the window of her compartment, “I cannot understand that people who are about to embark on a journey can never arrange their time better.”

∞∞∞

The train had left and they only saw Mrs von Eichbaum’s white handkerchief once more before all turned and left.

When they reached the main hall, Karl said:

“I could actually come riding tomorrow.”

“But Knuth’s coming now,” replied Kate.

“Well then, he can come with us,” said Karl.

That was agreed, and Karl left.

Mrs Schleppegrell and Fanny decided to take the tramcar home, while the others took a cab. They spoke about Aline, and the general’s wife said:

“We do not condemn her. But you know there are things one simply does not comprehend.”

“Well,” said Mrs Mourier, staring straight ahead, “there is a little of it in all of us, and when you don’t become closely attached to the one you have.”

“Yes, dear,” replied the general’s wife, “but, there are things, you know, that one has to restrain.”

Kate sat watching the Schleppegrells. They were stepping into the tramcar now. Mrs Schleppegrell always had the conductor take a really firm hold around her waist.

“Fanny,” she said when they were both safely aboard, “I do not think we should tell anyone that we were at the station.”

Mrs Mourier had arrived home and had collapsed in a chair still wearing her outdoor clothes. Her thoughts were with Aline.

“Well,” she said, “the worst is still to come for her.” She was thinking of Aline and her arrival home.

“Kate, will you put those flowers in water.”

Kate looked around.

“I forgot them in the cab,” she said, and went in to Victoria.

Mrs Mourier remained seated with her outdoor clothes on. She smiled: she had thought of Karl. She so liked him. There are no airs and graces about him, she always said to the general’s wife.

∞∞∞

Ida was in the café, by the fire, beside the well-laid table, when the door opened and she rose – flushed right down over her neck – but it was only Mr Ellingsen bringing a note.

Ida opened it and read it, immediately, while standing in the middle or the floor, and there came such a strange sudden pain in her breast.

“I am afraid I shall have to go riding with the butter this morning. Will see you soon. Karl.”

“Is the gentleman ill?” said Ellingsen, very quietly. He had only taken one look at her face.

“Yes,” said Ida, almost without realising it.

She just took a look at the table.

“Let me pay you,” she said, suddenly smiling (it was all so reasonable: it was naturally Mrs von Eichbaum who had arranged it yesterday evening at the station) but she suddenly realised that Ellingsen would recognise the purse, so she said:

“Oh no, it can wait.” And she went on to talk to Ellingsen as he helped her on with her coat and said goodbye to him without turning round.

Ellingsen closed the door and cleared the table and smoothed the serviettes a little. There was something about the movements of his hands as he did this that suggested concern, as though he were distributing black-edged hymn sheets in a choir loft.

Ida walked along the road, erect and quick, smiling once more. It was so reasonable and Karl was so fond of riding. (The thought of Karl’s name brought the smile back to her eyes, which had been as it were round and stiff, although there was plenty of radiance in them.) She continued to smile. Yes, he rode so elegantly.

But – yes – she would walk quickly, for if they were riding and came this way…She was nevertheless reluctant to meet them.

However, for whatever reason, she walked slowly every now and then and it was as though the heads of the old gentlemen who were taking their walk only came into sight suddenly, when they were right upon her, so that she hardly managed to nod to them. But the old judge stopped her and held both her hands tight between his knitted mittens. What lovely weather it was today, he said, and so bright.

“Aye, it’s a wonderful air for those of us who are hard of hearing,” he said. But at that moment Ida heard the sound of horses trotting behind her, and she simply had to leave him: it must be them, though it sounded as though there were three horses…

Ida did not herself know why she took such a deep breath when she had half turned to see Knuth come trotting along – there, on the other side of Kate.

The horses came ever closer, and Ida was about to acknowledge them when Kate Mourier reined in her horse.

“Good morning, Miss Brandt,” she said, up on the animal, and the others stopped like her.

Ida flushed and then turned pale.

“Good morning,” she said, and the stiff expression that had been there before returned to her eyes.

“You can be sure we have been for a long ride,” said Kate, while Karl, who was close to Ida and had been unable to catch her eye, allowed, as though by chance, the furthest tip of his riding whip to touch Ida’s cheek quite lightly, causing Ida, with the speed of lightning, to look up for a second.

“Ugh,” said Kate, looking out across the lake (Knuth did not take his eyes of Ida) “It must be awful to work in the madhouse on a day like this.”

She nodded again and they rode off.

“She’s quite sweet really,” she said as they cantered along.

“Yes,” said Karl slowly: “She’s so lovely when she’s upset.”

Kate laughed, “Good heavens, that’s so like you. Is she not lovely when she’s happy?”

“No,” said Karl.

“Why?”

Karl rode on a little. “I suppose she’s not used to being happy,” he said and nodded.

Knuth had come half a horse length behind the others: he turned around twice in the saddle to look back.

“Come on, Knuth,” Kate called, and Knuth quickened his pace. Shortly afterwards, he asked:

“Is she in the Municipal?”

“Yes,” replied Karl.

“Allez-y.”

They broke into a sharp trot.

During each break in the barracks that morning, Knuth went around in a strange manner, chewing at the knob on his whip.

Brahe stood there with his legs apart, grinning. He knew what was wrong when Knuth chewed at his whip and his eyes took on, as it were, a darker shade.

“Nonsense,” said Knuth. But he continued to chew at his whip. She had had a lovely smile by Gad, as she stood there looking up at that fellow.

Ida was at home. She had nodded to the porter and spoken to Josefine on the stairs – Josefine’s skirts swished wonderfully during these days – and up in her room she had closed her window: she was conscious of only one thing, all the time: the gentle touch of Karl’s whip on her cheek.

∞∞∞

“Blast, oh, I don’t think he saw me.” Karl jumped around the corner of the stairs up to Ida’s room at about five o’ clock just as Dr Quam opened the door on the first floor. He stood by her door for a moment until he heard Quam’s steps die away down the corridor.

Then he knocked twice on the door, as was his custom.

“You looked so lovely this morning,” he kept saying to Ida; and he stayed with her until the very last minute.

But when he came down, Quam was standing outside the ward with the noisy patients, talking to Sister Koch.

“Good evening,” he said softly as he went past.

Sister Koch made no reply, but she gave him such a furious look, and her conversation with Quam came to a halt.

“I really do wonder,” she said suddenly, in the midst of something else: “what people like that are thinking of…”

Dr Quam stood for a moment:

“I suppose there are people who never think very far,” he said. “And things are easier for them when they don’t think further than they want to.”

Sister Koch closed her lips so tightly that they were no more than a line.

After a slight pause, she said:

“Tell me, doctor, what is really to be done with this world?”

Quam whistled.

“I’ve no idea, unless a certain number of men were to be treated in the same way as stallions and turned into work horses quietly pulling a big cart.”

He was silent for a while:

“In that way,” he went on: “The excellent result would be achieved of depopulating the earth as far as possible.”

“You are a sensible man, doctor,” said Sister Koch.

“Well,” said Quam: “God knows. I suppose you become bitter by going around in a lunatic asylum, most of all when you think of those who have not been confined to one.”

∞∞∞

The cab stopped outside the door in Toldbodvejen, and Karl emerged:

“Right, now get the shawl down over your ears.”

Ida was to act the part of the general’s wife as she passed Svendsen, the porter, walking on tiptoe to look the right height and laughing, with the lace scarf covering her face.

“He’s there, damn it,” said Karl, glancing at the porter’s hatch as Ida went past on stretched feet.

“There.”

They were safely inside the courtyard, and they both laughed, quietly. But nodding towards him, Karl said:

“But it was his confounded fault the admiral’s family moved out.”

“Why?”

Karl smacked his lips. “The admiral’s an old rogue,” was all he said. They crept up the stairs, and Ida stumbled and laughed again before they reached the door.

“You’ re trembling,” said Karl as he helped her off with her coat.

“Yes,” said Ida, laughing but trembling nevertheless. But Karl, opening the door to the dining room, simply said: “They’ re in bed,” as though it was for this reason she was trembling. Ida waited for a while in his room until Karl came back.

“They’ re asleep,” he said, and he took Ida, who still walked cautiously, inside to the living room, where the lamps were lit and the wine was on the table.

“Oh, it’s so lovely,” said Ida, laying her head against his shoulder.

“Yes,” said Karl: “You’ re the daughter-in-law this evening.”

For a moment Ida gave him a radiant look while blushing at the same time, and Karl, who had met her eyes drew his shoulder away just a little, something of which he himself was perhaps not aware, but which she nevertheless sensed.

“It’s the navy’s Madeira,” said Karl.

They drank a little until Karl stretched his legs right out in the big chair and Ida brought him a stool, and they heard nothing but the gas hissing.

“It’s nice here,” said Karl.

“Yes.”

Ida lay with her head against his legs, and her voice still trembled a little, but suddenly she became high spirited simply by feeling the tender desire in his fingers against her neck and she looked around, from below, and pointed to the lace pillow, laughing the while, though she did not know why.

“She didn’t take that with her,” she said.

“No,” said Karl, raising her up; but Ida freed herself and took the work from the pillow and started playing with the needles. “Be careful,” said Karl, who had bent down and was blowing at her hair until she came close to him again and stood behind his chair with her chin on his hair. Then, with her eyes closed, she said in a voice so gentle that it was only just audible:

“We’ re going to get married this evening.”

Karl looked up into her eyes, which had opened wide, but his look was different from hers and he had given the same tiny, imperceptible start as before.

“We’ve done that before, love,” he said in a rather louder voice than hers and her chin was lifted from his hair.

“But damn it all, we’ re not drinking anything,” said Karl. They had been silent for a while, and he handed her the glass up above his head; she took it but did not touch it.

“Ah, we’ve got the drawings over there, by Gad.” Karl suddenly caught sight of the parcel on the marble-topped table in the corner.

“What drawings?” Ida asked, scarcely aware of what she had said.

“The ones of Ludvigsbakke,” said Karl, who had risen. “Let’s have a look at the damned things.”

“Good heavens, where have they come from?”

Ida was over there like a shot.

“It’s Kate that has left them around,” said Karl, who had taken the package and pushed the lace pillow aside.

“What a lot,” said Ida. There was sheet after sheet.

“They unrolled the plans and held them down with their elbows while sitting beside each other on the sofa.

“That’s the main building,” said Karl. “Oh, it’s going to be some size.”

“And there are towers on it,” said Ida.

“Yes,” said Karl, nudging her. “All you need to see is a tower.”

It was in the Italian style with towers and flat roofs. Ida lifted the plan up and supported it on the lamp. “But it will be lovely,” she said.

Karl sat and sniffed. “Yes, it will suit the surroundings fine by Gad,” he said and wrinkled his nose. He sat waving one hand in front of the plan while Ida continued to look at the building.

“You know,” she said: “You will be able to see the whole of Brædstrup from that tower.”

“Damn it all, what they want is to see as far as Horsens,” said Karl. He sat nodding in front of the plan. “And there are no terraces, but the fact is that people always build in such a way that it is obvious they don’t really have the money for it after all.”

They went to the next sketch. This was the plan of the first floor. Ida traced the way from room to room with her finger and Karl checked the letters at the bottom of the plan. That was the sitting room – two sitting rooms – and that was the room for tea.

“And all that is the dining room,” said Ida.

“Thirty-six feet long,” said Karl. “There will be a splendid view from there after dinner.”

He started to find it interesting; he followed the letters and measured the rooms, stretched his fingers over them and nodded. Walls had been broken through, and there was plate glass everywhere.

“Yes, she’s got hold of some designs from abroad,” he said.

Ida had let go of the plan; she had never seen such a house.

“What a lot of space they will have,” she said, looking at all the rooms. “But we won’t recognise it.”

Karl continued to measure and study.

“Yes, the inside’s all right.” He clicked his tongue. “It’s damned good.”

“Yes,” – and almost a little shyly she put her head down on his shoulder – “They have the money.”

Karl nodded and looked up from the plan into the lamp.

“Yes,” he said.

He went on looking in the light from the lamp for a moment:

“It was us who should have had the damned place,” he said then.

Ida suddenly smiled.

“Yes,” and she, too, looked into the light from the lamp.

“Because we were born to it,” said Karl.

“Yes, you…”

“You, too, damn it,” said Karl, lowering his voice a little.

He took the next plan. This was of all the bedrooms and bathrooms with tubs and wardrobes. The entire alphabet from A to Z was at the foot of the sketch. Karl sniffed and rubbed his hands.

“Good God,” he said, “she’s furnishing this for when she gets married.”

“And six guest rooms.”

He counted them up:

“With a bathroom to each of them.”

It amused him, almost as though Kate had been studying interior decoration under his direction.”

“It’s English,” he said. “It’s good.” And he scratched his head: “She’s a devil; she’s really got hold of some designs.”

Ida continued to sit with her head against his shoulder, following his hands and looking up into his face: it was as though she was not really able to encompass all those rooms.

“Yes, they are going to have a lovely place.”

“Of course they are going to have a lovely place.” And he shuffled a little in his eagerness: now came the next plan, the stables. “Wonderful, wonderful,” he said. “She’s a devil, she really is.”

The stables were also English (as he explained) with stalls for the animals like they had for the great racehorses in England.

Ida admired it in silence – she knew nothing about stables – and while looking out across the lawn, she suddenly said:

“But it’s a good thing that my father is dead.”

Karl laughed as he bent over the sketch.

“No,” he said, “there wouldn’t have been anything for the old man here.”

And he went on laughing at the thought of seeing old Brandt in Kate’s English stables.

Ida had risen and all of a sudden she said, without knowing why it suddenly occurred to her, for a minute previously she had never thought of it:

“Do you know, I’m going to rent a flat now.”

“What do you say?”

“Well, I’m going to rent a flat.”

She had been thinking for a long time that she would really like to have a flat.

“Where?” was all Karl said.

And suddenly, Ida knew where it was to be, in Ole Suhrsgade, for that was so convenient; and she knew what sort of a flat she wanted: four rooms; she had always had this idea, a flat like the one the Kristensens had.

She stood on the other side of the table and leant forward beneath the lamp so that the shadow of her head fell on the sketch of the stables.

“And the furniture is all standing unused out at Horsens.”

She was so enthusiastic that her cheeks flushed.

“Yes, that’s a good idea,” said Karl; he was still sitting with the sketch in his hand. Ida went over to him and pulled his head down to her.

“And then you will always be able to have lunch at home,” she said.

Her voice had the ring that he loved.

“Tell me, chick,” he said, and she looked up into his face: “How long can you stay?”

Ida merely smiled and closed her eyes.

Karl rolled the plans up while Ida went across to the corner sofa with the stereoscope as though she were here for the first time.

“And we’ll have gentleman’s furniture in the big room,” she said.

Karl was sitting on the sofa with the back of his head against the wall.

“No,” he said: “We are going to sleep in the big room.”

They sat in silence for a time while the gas bubbled, and Karl looked across at Ida sitting right under the light until he suddenly said in a low voice:

“It must be horrible to sit there and keep watch.”

And Ida shook her head and said in the same tone:

“No, not now…”

She was silent for a moment.

“For I can sit there and remember everything,” she said.

There was silence again for a moment until Karl went across to her. He did not make use of pet names, but simply sat and stroked her hands, quite tenderly (thinking to himself: this is going to be difficult one day) until she kissed his cheek.

“Are you going now?” he whispered.

She got up and he heard the door quietly open and close.

“Have you put the light out?” he asked when he came into his room.

“Yes,” she whispered.

And the hands she reached out to him were trembling and cold.

“Are you frightened, chick?”

“I’m going soon,” she said, and she continued to be nervous and cold.

She had to go when morning came.

Karl was in a bad mood.

“You need only to take me down to a cab,” said Ida.

And that was all he did, and when Ida was in the cab, she bent her head down and kissed his hand as it lay on the carriage door.

“I was afraid after all,” she whispered.

“There, chick,” said Karl as though to comfort her. For it was as though she was on the verge of tears.

Karl wandered back.

Shortly afterwards he was stretched out at full length in his French bed. He took a couple of final puffs at his cigarette, while staring up rather dubiously at the ceiling.

“But I mustn’t give her any ideas,” he said, nodding his head on his pillow.

Ida was home and went in through the doorway. Porters and doorkeepers were costing her a great deal in tips. Once up in her room she lay down on her bed.

Yes, she would have that flat and then she would never go over there any more. No, she would never go over there again.

The day had started with rain and sleet. The doctors had been there, cold in their white coats, and the professor’s fingers had been white and dead to the knuckles as he rubbed his hands over the patients’ beds.

Daylight should come now, but it did not come.

The porter turned out those who had jobs to do and moved them towards the door, shouting at them as though they were a herd of cattle. And the keys rattled and the doors were shut.

“Why aren’t I going?” said Bertelsen probably for the tenth time, raising his watchful eyes while the tap water ran down over his hands.

“Because your mother’s coming, Bertelsen,” said Ida.

“Now Bertelsen, you’ re clean, you’ re washed now.”

Bertelsen looked at his hands and every chewed nail before, with his head down, going across and settling near the stove, languid and with his eyes half closed until he again said to Ida as she passed:

“Why wasn’t I going?”

Ida repeated:

“I’ve told you, Bertelsen; it’s because your mother’s coming.”

And as Ida went about her tasks, there was no sound but the groaning of two patients from the Hall and the footsteps of the gentleman in Ward A as he walked about on the floor.

There came the rattle of keys in the door to the women’s ward. It was Quam returning.

“It’s rather dull in here,” he said.

“Yes,” said Ida; it was as though she either could not or did not really dare to wake up.

“And it would really be better if they made a din,” said Quam, “for if they become too lethargic, this place begins to look like the confounded underworld itself.”

He sat down on the table beneath the window while Nurse Petersen called to Ida from the kitchen to see whether she could help with the hem on her dress.

“Do you go out in this weather?” asked Quam.

“Oh,” Nurse Petersen was going to the sales. When there was a doctor present, Nurse Petersen always adopted some strange movements with her arms, not unlike a wader flapping its wings. There was a sale on of table linen.

“Oh,” said Ida, kneeling behind the kitchen door to help with the hem, suddenly adding in a high-pitched, excited voice: “In that case you could perhaps keep an eye open for upholstery material.”

Quam raised his head.

“Are you getting married?” he asked.

“No, but I’m going to rent a flat.” She stood up.

Quam got down from the table.

“Yes,” he said: “That’s probably far more sensible.”

He went across past the kitchen door and nodded back towards Bertelsen.

“Are they his clothes?” he asked in a low voice.

“Yes.”

“Good morning.”

Quam went; but Nurse Petersen sat down. She had to know: where it was going to be and when she had decided.

“Oh, I’ve wanted to for a long time,” said Ida, and she started telling them about the flat and the furniture she was going to have, and the fabrics she would choose, making up all the things she had never thought of and she herself believed she had been thinking of it for a long time.

“And I’m going to have leather upholstery on the furniture in the main room,” she said.

Bertelsen suddenly raised his head.

“What time’s she coming?” he asked.

“Eleven o’ clock, Bertelsen.”

Nurse Petersen had become quite sentimental at the thought of the flat.

“Then you’ll have a whole home of your own,” she said.

Ida smiled at this word and was silent for a moment, though the smile did not leave her.

“Yes,” she said and, silently, stared into the distance.

Nurse Petersen was gone – carrying the news with her for general distribution – and Ida took water to the patients in the main ward and tidied their pillows. Then she sat and crocheted at the table under the window. From the noisy ward there came a subdued groaning, as though the entire building was filled with some secret and subdued complaint.

“When is she coming?” asked Bertelsen again.

“She’ll soon be here, Bertelsen.” And she continued with her work: when she was not talking to anyone about it, it was as though she was edgy and unable really to grasp the ideas relating to her “home”.

There were two hesitant knocks on the door from the corridor and Ida opened it. It was Mrs Bertelsen whose face showed the first signs of tears even on the threshold. “Come in, Mrs Bertelsen,” Ida said, “he’s been expecting you.” And Mrs Bertelsen went across to her son, who did not get up. “Hello, Jakob,” she said in a curious mixture of humility and nervousness, to which he only answered with a grunt. Then he moved across to the table, and his mother went with him. Her face, on which all flesh seemed to have disappeared, and her hat – a summer bonnet covered with some old material – stood out in contrast to the grey wall.

Ida left; from the kitchen she could hear Bertelsen constantly talking in something resembling an irritated and suppressed snarl and his mother’s nervous: “Yes Jakob, but, yes Jakob, but…”

The door to the women’s ward flew open. It was Nurse Kjær, who first looked round the anteroom and then ran out into the kitchen.

“Good Lord, nurse, when is it going to be?” she said. “You’ re going to rent a flat?”

She had to hear it all at breakneck speed, and Ida told all about it again although it was as though her own words encircled her as she spoke; and Bertelsen went on talking, louder and more intensely, scarlet-faced, holding both his clenched fists out in front of him, at the same height all the time, as though they were bound by a chain.

“But Jakob dear, Jakob dear.”

“You’ll be having quite a doll’s house,” said Nurse Kjær out in the kitchen. “My word, how I’m looking forward to it.”

Suddenly, nodding her head and in a different tone, she asked:

“Is she here to say goodbye?”

“Yes, poor thing.”

Bertelsen pushed the chair away and got up; through the doorway they could see his mother grasp his arm, but he shook her off.

“You bloody bitch,” he screamed. From the door to the Hall he continued to pour a stream of abuse at her, while the emaciated mother stood there, motionless in the centre of the ward, trembling a little, like a target in a hail of bullets.

Then she turned round – Nurse Kjær had gone and quietly closed the door – and Ida went across and took her hands.

“Yes, Mrs Bertelsen,” she said, “but it will be better out there.”

Mrs Bertelsen made no reply. What had once been a breast rose just a little, and she started for the hundredth time, for the thousandth time, to tell how it had come over this son in the same way as over his two elder brothers.

“He was in an office, you know, like his brothers. And everything was well until one day he left his office and came home, just like his brothers: he had left; he’ d got up from his chair; he had put all his pens carefully in place (I saw it myself) and the ruler was in its place and his books had been made up (I saw it myself) before he left and came home, and it was all finished for him like it was for his brothers.”

She was unable to weep, but it sounded as though she was weeping.

“Just like his brothers.”

“But it will probably be better out there,” said Ida again.

But Mrs Bertelsen merely shook her head, and with an expression in her eyes as though they were blind, she said:

“And it’s all my fault.”

These words had been Mrs Bertelsen’s first and last thought ever since the day when the consultant had said to her in anger: “Why on earth do people have children when their husband’s a drunk?”

“And it’s all my fault…”

Ida had not heard the door open, but suddenly she turned round and found the gentleman from Ward A standing in the doorway: he was smiling and looking at them both.

Mrs Bertelsen freed her hands from Ida’s and went towards the door to the corridor.

“Aren’t you going to say goodbye?” asked Ida, and Mrs Bertelsen looked into the main ward, where her son was huddled on the edge of a bed.

“No; leave him,” she said. And Ida closed the door to the corridor while Mrs Bertelsen turned round at the last moment with her eyes on the door to the main ward and went.

“Do you want anything, doctor?” Ida asked.

But the gentleman from Ward A merely stood there with the same smile on his face. (Yes, I’m sure he’s mad after all, thought Ida).

“No thank you,” he said, though he did not move.

Dusk fell.

Throughout the day, the ladies had rattled their keys and had been rushing in and out to ask about the flat, and Ida had replied almost hectically, describing everything, first this and then that.

Now Nurse Kjær was sitting at the table with Ida for a moment, and, with interruptions, they were discussing the same subject.

“Hm,” said Nurse Kjær: “Then you’ll get somewhere where you can sleep.”

Ida nodded. Today, she was constantly catching herself sitting with her eyes closed. Now she opened them. Bertelsen was drifting past the door to the main ward, backwards and forwards like a shadow, and suddenly, far inside her head, she heard Mrs Bertelsen’s voice again, a sound that had pursued her all day.

“Poor Mrs Bertelsen,” she said.

They sat in silence for a while. From the noisy ward there came the same dull groaning as had been audible throughout the day like some indeterminate, distant complaint, while Bertelsen continued to glide past the door like a shadow that was being washed away in the darkness.

“Yes, I wonder what a woman like her does with her life?” said Nurse Kjær, thinking of Mrs Bertelsen.

And then she was silent for a while again.

“Oh, she’ll die some day,” she said in reply to her own question.

The gentleman in Ward A went about as usual. It was as though the subdued groans from below were heard in waves coinciding with his steps.

“It’s miserable in here today,” said Nurse Kjær, getting up.

Ida shuddered involuntarily.

“Yes,” she said: “Let’s get some lights on.”

Nurse Kjær went, and the patients from the basement came back, and some time later Josefine hurried in with the food, while Ida knocked on Nurse Petersen’s door to wake her.

Josefine was simply in a bad mood these days. Not so much as a snatch of a melody was heard on the stairs, and now she stood there deep in her own thoughts as she dished the food up.

“No, nurse,” she said: “You ought never to do anything for a man.”

“For they’ re dogs, the lot of them,” she declared, and she set about the unpacking.

When Ida came down to the dining room, Nurse Friis was there alone. She was turning some old black lace into ruches for a silk underskirt. Nurse Friis attached increasing importance to modern, up-to-date underclothing.

While Ida was drinking her tea, Nurse Friis said:

“Oh, I hear you’ re going to have your own home; when are the banns going to be read?”

She started to laugh as she pulled at the ruches.

“Well, I assume it will be from a pulpit.”

Nurse Friis hummed as she went on working with the ruches.

“I must say I hadn’t thought you were so sensible,” she said suddenly, nodding to Ida. Then she said no more. But the cup shook in Ida’s hand.

When Ida was on her way upstairs, she met Nurse Boserup.

“I suppose you’ll be resigning,” said Boserup.

Ida had simply not thought of that.

“Oh,” said Boserup: “Thank goodness, it will be some time before you go. Jørgensen set about furnishing a flat a whole year before she got married as well.”

Ida flushed suddenly. Then she turned quite pale.

“I suppose I can be allowed to furnish my own place to live in,” she said. She had never spoken so harshly before, and she did not herself know why she did so now.

But when Boserup got down into the dining room, she said:

“Good Lord: don’t talk to Brandt about the flat. That little dove has claws as well.”

“But when you can afford to rent a flat and furnish it with leather upholstery, you oughtn’t to do others out of a job.”

Øverud said in her Funen lilt:

“Leather upholstery, that’s what they had in the smoking room at Broholm. It looked so nice and it was so cool to sit on after a meal.”

Ida had lit the lamp up in her room. She did not herself know why all this sense of nervousness and anxiety had come over her. But suddenly, she started to write to Karl:

“But you must not be angry, you hear, you must not because of you know what. I simply became so afraid, as I am sure you can understand. But I only want the same as you do all the time: do you not realise that? And it was only because I felt as though your mother was there all the time. But you must not be angry, my own, own dear, surely you will not?”

Karl was putting his riding breeches on when Julius came with the letter the following morning.

He stood for a moment and looked at it, wrinkling his nose a little before opening and reading it, still with the same expression on his face. Then he dressed. But when he had finished and come down into the street, he smacked his whip against his thigh:

“Women damned well always think about things for such a ridiculously long time.”

Kate was already in the saddle when he arrived.

“Nom d’ un chien,” she said, “vous n’ êtes pas matinal.”

Karl pursed his lips:

“I’ve been reading some business letters,” he said, putting his foot in the stirrup.

Kate waved her whip up at her mother. Mrs Mourier always came to the window in a dressing gown to watch “the two young ones” ride off.

∞∞∞

It was Wednesday after lunch, and the general’s wife wrote to her sister, Mrs von Eichbaum:

Dear Emilie,

I am writing because it is my turn and we have agreed that I should write on Wednesdays. For nothing has happened here apart, naturally, from the fact that we miss you with all our hearts, Mille. Your house has been cleaned throughout and only awaits you and your return (the hyacinths between the windows are in flower; two of them are red, although Asmussen had promised faithfully that they would all be blue, but actually it is quite a pretty colour, as I told him when I ordered flowers for the birthday reception at the Schleppegrells). It was really very pleasant (we were given maraschino mousse, you know, but it was not a success, Anna is always keen to try new recipes), although there were not enough seats for all of us. The young people left when the time came for the desert – Karl was with Kate – and partook of the sweet mousse in the cabinet. Unfortunately, I do not think that Fanny has any good prospects. Miss Juel told me the other day at the Reverend Jørgensen’s lectures (he has finished with Baggesen, and, fancy, he spoke for three quarters of an hour about Sofie Ørsted, something that was rather superfluous for us who are related to her, as we know better) that the princess in all probability is not to have a lady-in-waiting. The fact of the matter is presumably that they expect the Prince of Saxony to marry her soon, which would make it all superfluous. Moreover, it is natural that they wish to economise. Now Anna is talking of the possibility that Fanny might learn massage. It is only a question of strength in her arms, and they say she has that in spite of her stomach, which continues to be a problem to her. The best thing would naturally be if Skeel finally married her. I suppose Karl will have written to you. I do not see much of him, but hear him in the house at his good, regular hours. Dear Mille, it is as I have always said, that if he started on a fixed routine, the family calm would descend on him. We are not, thank God, capricious by nature. He and Kate go for a long ride every morning now across the bridge (it seems to me that she grows quieter and quieter and more and more like Vilhelmine) and converse a great deal in French: they have all their memories in common from Lausanne. We have reached Chateaubriand in the French lectures. It is very interesting, but he must have been a restless creature. Vilhelmine is reading “Attila” now. You know how thorough she is. As soon as the spring puts in an appearance, they are going to start on the main building at Ludvigsbakke. Karl and Kate are for ever changing the plans together, but the house will be lovely (Mr Schmidt from Aarhus, you know, who was here for the birthday, also told me that Mourier earns a couple of barrels of gold each year now) with bathrooms like those in Aix-les-Bains. Little Brandt is said to have been here the other day to ask whether she should see to your flowers. It was very thoughtful of her, but quite superfluous to my mind for that is what we have Ane for. Ane said she looked drawn and strangely old. But I suppose she will soon be at the age when young girls become old maids. There has been some smoke in the kitchen, so I finally sent for Petersen (he had just got a grandson, so I had him inside for a glass of Madeira), but he said it was the weather, so there was nothing to be done about it. Give my love to Aline; it is a pity she has problems with her legs. Bruun (who looks worn out, poor man, he is terribly busy in his practice) says that it must be some sort of paralysis and that is not surprising. Good heavens, my dear, just fancy people of that age exposing themselves to all those emotions. All here send their love.

Your loyal sister

Lotte

P.S. The other day, Vilhelmine brought us a picture of Kate and herself – framed, lovely and with their signatures. For the moment I have put it on the big étagère. Kate is lovely, with her slender figure. It was taken at Hansen’s, as I suggested. For Fanny was taken somewhere else recently, and it was awful. I think Anna is looking forward to the chocolate.

Mrs von Eichbaum answered on the Saturday:

Dear Charlotte,

Thank you for your letter and all that delightful news. All goes fairly well here (I will not deny that I am longing to be home in my quiet surroundings), but for Aline’s sake we shall probably remain here until the end of the month, for I believe after all that it is best she should only come home when she is completely in a state of balance. Her legs are a little better (Dr. Brouardel, a really clever doctor, who has also given me a kind of ointment or something to combat dry hands, to be applied morning and evening, says that it is a weakness in her knees) though not entirely right; it is as though they will not really carry her, although she has become much thinner. When the sun shines, however, we regularly sit on the terrace in the morning to enjoy the fresh air. We naturally never talk about the person concerned or, you will understand, anything at all about how it all happened. That sort of thing is something you have to struggle with on your own. The maid says that madam often weeps in the mornings, something I pretend not to notice. If she is weeping, it is best she should carry on undisturbed. You know I am of the opinion that people often grow tired of weeping if no one sees them. But I imagine we shall be leaving in a fortnight, and after a few days Aline will go home to the estate. And when she has been home for a month or so, she will come to town, quite quietly, just as she usually does in the spring. But it would naturally be best not to talk about all this. Here in the hotel they still think that she is having follow-up treatment after Vichy, as I told them immediately on our arrival. Vilhelmine wrote to me (I also had a letter from Anna, she is often rather a bother when one is travelling with the many tasks she wants one to perform; that Fanny did not become a lady-in-waiting came as no surprise to me, they do not take them so young out of consideration for the impression it would make) and was full of praise for Karl. It gives me great delight that he can be something for Mine and Kate, as she wrote, provided he does not neglect his office. One thing I would ask you is that for heaven’s sake you will make sure the apartment is still well aired. They would never forgive me if they caught as much as bronchitis. You know that when one is away one can get ideas that tend to disturb one’s peace of mind (and being together with Aline every day does not leave one’s nerves untouched) and I can wake up in the night perspiring at the thought that there can have been any infection left after Mary. One can never open a newspaper nowadays without reading something about these bacilli. Karl writes that little Brandt has rented a flat outside the hospital. It is my opinion that she ought to have been content with a room; she has somewhere to live, and she has not been used to more.. But that must be up to her if that is what she wants (she has rented a flat in Ole Suhrsgade; you know the apartments from visits to the adoption society, three rooms with parti-coloured wallpaper on the walls) for one must never interfere in other people’s affairs. It struck me, Lotte, that if you saw her you could perhaps ask her about some effective disinfectant. She must know about such things, as she works in the hospital. And the thought of infection gives me no peace, and I worry in case that healthy family could be struck by any kind of infection. I would like you one day when you have time to take my savings bank book (it is in the desk drawer opposite the window) and draw a hundred and fifty kroner to give to Karl. It naturally costs him something to look after Vilhelmine, who gives no thought to money, and things are not expensive down here if you live reasonably economically. In order to make sure she does not forget, would you ask Ane to cover the furniture in the cabinet with a couple of sheets.. Pressed velvet fades so easily in the sun now that it is beginning to shine on it longer (it is almost spring here with violets in the street) from the south, as it does. Thank Vilhelmine for the picture – indeed, Kate has quite the same figure as her mother did when she was a young woman. Aline sends her best wishes, and I send mine to all.

Your devoted sister

Mille

P.S. If you should see Bruun, perhaps you would ask him whether there could be any question of infection, as the walls are all painted in oil paint. I have been to the Reformed Church. The language was beautiful, but the sermon I thought was bombastic and without the firm, religious train of thought and the solid construction we expect of Petri. Nevertheless, it was a delight, as I say, because of the language. Ask Karl whether he is taking care not to catch cold after riding, as can so easily happen. Anna will be receiving a consignment of the chocolate we drink here every morning. It goes further than that from Cloetta.

∞∞∞

Ida slipped through the corridor in the Rørholm Café; quickly, she dodged into the private room; her shoulders were strangely narrow.

No, he was not there – not yet.

The lady at the counter, still wearing a net over her hair, had seen her come along the corridor:

“Hm, you can bring it all back again now, Ellingsen,” she said.

Mr Ellingsen made no reply. He never indulged in staff conversations, but he had today and for the future decided only to set the table when “the gentleman” had arrived.

“It doesn’t really matter in any case whether he comes or not: we’ re sure of the money,” said the lady at the counter in a shrill voice as Ellingsen went past with a table cloth. In the corridor he encountered a young couple who were fooling around and laughing. The lady, a chubby woman with red cheeks, banged the flap down on the door opposite Ida’s room.

“Occupied,” she shouted.

“Occupied,” said the gentleman, knocking the flap with his walking stick; and the younger waiter, who had already seen them, shouted from the counter:

“Tea, butter, toast, four soft-boiled eggs…”

“Six,” shouted the gentleman, and the door banged shut.

“Six,” the sound was blared out from the counter to the kitchen like a fanfare; while Ellingsen, with a napkin over his arm, opened the door to the private room where Ida hastily hid a couple of small packets under her coat.

“You are busy here today,” she said.

“Yes,” said Ellingsen, laying the cloth on the table and smoothing it with his wrinkled hands so that his celluloid cuffs could clearly be seen: “We must not complain, thank goodness.”

Ida had sat down (it was as though she had felt a kind of stitch recently when entering Rørholm) and Ellingsen said:

“But early spring is always the best time here.”

“Yes,” Ida replied. She seemed not to have heard what he had said, but she had recently talked to all the staff, to Ellingsen and to the lady at the counter, to all of them almost as people involuntarily spoke in hotels when they are frightened of not being able to pay one day.

“It is such lovely weather,” she said.

“It is the season for it,” said Ellingsen. He was about to go when the sound of laughter came from further down the corridor, and Ida said, “They sound happy.”

Ellingsen held his head on one side and smiled. “Yes, it is the young people; they have just started to come here.” He went over to the door and added before gliding out – Mr Ellingsen had a way of opening and closing doors as though all the doorsteps in Rørholm’s were covered with felt:

“We will wait a little, then.”

Ida sat there. Her eyes had taken on a strange stare, and she thought the one thought she had had since arriving: If only he would tell me when he’s not coming. But suddenly she smiled as she envisaged Karl’s ever carefree face.

“But he doesn’t think about it,” she said, continuing to smile.

She started when there came two knocks on the door.

“Is it you?” she said. Her voice broke and there was Karl standing in the doorway.

“So you are here?” he said.

“I have someone with me.” And he stepped aside to make way for Knuth. Ida had stopped and turned scarlet, and Karl said – perhaps a little too suddenly and cheerfully:

“Knuth was hungry as well, you see.”

There was a slight pause and Knuth said: “Yes, I’m sorry for barging in, Miss Brandt,” before Ida held out her hand, mechanically, without knowing that she had tears in her eyes.

“I know you of course, Count Knuth,” she said.

And after another moment’s hesitation, she said, as though she simply had to get away:

“I will go and order some coffee.” And she went.

Neither of the men said anything before the door was closed and they were alone.

“Oh hell,” said Karl, and it was as though he was shaking something off: “She’ll get over it. Take your coat off.”

Ida had gone. For a moment, only very briefly and only with her elbow, she supported herself against the wall. But when she reached the counter and saw the waitress’ rat-like eyes looking at her, she suddenly said in a happy voice:

“There are three of us today, Miss…”

And there she stayed, talking and laughing, without thinking, until Ellingsen started to take the food in and she followed him, into the private room, where Karl and Knuth sat waiting. Sometimes looking up and sometimes with his eyes turned down, Knuth started to talk in a quiet, respectful voice about the lovely mornings and the barracks. “Of course, you also live in a kind of barracks, Miss Brandt,” he said. “Yes,” Ida murmured. Although rather more hesitantly, Knuth continued speaking in the same respectful tone about the theatre, which would soon be closing, and spring, which would soon be coming.

Ida answered yes and no. And no sound was to be heard other than the chinking of their cups as Ellingsen served them and the sound of a silver bracelet that Knuth was turning round his wrist.

“Now let’s see about getting some of this food down us,” said Karl even before Ellingsen had gone.

And they started to eat while Ida held her egg cup up from the table as though she was afraid that her spoon would not reach her mouth, and Knuth continued to sit rather far away from the table, in the same respectful manner. But Karl felt for Ida’s cold hand under the table and pressed it.

“Are there no cakes?” he said, speaking almost as though caressing her and, although not aware of it, he avoided calling her by her Christian name, “Miss Brandt always has cakes with her.”

Ida rose and took the parcels from under her coat.

“Oh, of course there’s a cake by Gad,” he said, and while Ida was cutting it he put his hand on her wrist still in an attempt to be kind to her, but Ida took her hand away.

“Do have a piece,” she said, handing the plate to Knuth, who took it with a sudden rather jerky movement.

“The cake’s lovely,” said Karl, “but we need some port wine with it; it clears the throat.”

Knuth stood up, a little too quickly, to order it. “May I?” he said. Hardly had he gone before Karl rose and stood behind Ida.

“Surely I can bring someone with me,” he said, bending over her.

Ida made no reply. Framed by his hands, her face was as pale as a sheet.

“You don’t need to be so damned upset about it, chick,” he said, continuing to look down on her until he suddenly kissed her behind her ear.

Ida had not made a move, but suddenly she rose and, trembling all over as though she was cold, she clung to him.

“But I’ve given you everything,” she said. There was something about her tone like a shriek that had not been uttered.

“There, there, there.”

The tenderness in his voice was genuine, and there was something in it that almost sounded like pain:

“There, there.”

A smile passed over Ida’s face. “I’m all right again now,” she said, drying her eyes. “It’s all right.”

And she suddenly ran over to her coat and took the purse out and put it down in his pocket.

“I’ve got enough,” he said and seemed almost to shake himself.

But Ida stroked his hair.

“He is very charming,” she said.

Karl laughed:

“He’s one of those who start behaving like a woman when they are in love.”

Karl continued to laugh. “And it’s damned obvious he’s in love,” he said.

Knuth returned with Ellingsen carrying the port wine, and Karl said:

“We’ re laughing at you, Knuth.”

“What for?” said Knuth.

“Cheers,” was all Karl said, and he emptied his glass while Ida, too, said: “Your health, Count Knuth,” and Knuth drank his wine, jerkily as before. “Thank you, Miss Brandt,” he said. Karl laughed again, winking at Ida and stretching his legs out:

“It’s lovely here, by Gad. To hell with the ride.”

Ida poured more coffee, taking the cups and handing them round. The sun fell on the tablecloth and on her hair as she bent down, and she started to talk about Jutland. About Aarhus, where “Count Knuth used to live, of course.”

She had been there the year before last, for two days with Franck and Olivia, during the holidays. Oh, it was so beautiful in Riis Forest.

As she herself started to drink, Ida went on talking about her visit to Aarhus and about the Francks and about the esplanade. She probably did not herself realise that she was perhaps looking to these memories as though for a little social support.

“Yes,” she said, “it was lovely on the esplanade. We used to go there in the evenings, Olivia and I.”

“Oh,” said Karl. “Now we’ve got to Olivia.”

But Knuth, who probably did not hear much apart from the sound of her voice – as his eyes seemed to confirm – and for whom the mention of Aarhus only produced a vision of the dry, sun-drenched cobblestones in front of the cathedral, said quite absent-mindedly:

“Aye, I spent a couple of years in that place.”

Karl, sat rocking astride his chair, in front of the two of them, with his cigarette between his lips, glancing at Knuth and winking at Ida.

Then he said:

“By Gad, you’ re quite one for the ladies, Knuth,” and he laughed in a profound sense of wellbeing.

Ida blushed but managed to smile as she hurried to say:

“But we didn’t get as far as Marselisborg.”

And Knuth, who was perhaps blushing more than she, said:

“Aye, we often went there from the barracks.”

Karl went on rocking on his chair, his eyes directed contentedly across the table at Ida, who was shading herself a little from the sun with her hand; there was always a maidenly beauty about her when she talked about the Francks.

And Karl, suddenly nodding and pursing his lips at the same time as his eyes were smiling, said:

“Mais il n’ a pas tort, monsieur le comte; madame est bien jolie.”

She did not realise it, but a cloud suddenly passed over Ida’s face at the sound of the French words (Karl had been using so many French expressions recently), but then she smiled again, happy in front of Karl’s eyes, which “encompassed” her, and she raised her glass and took a sip with her eyes lost in his.

Until (after all three had been silent for a moment) she spoke again, the final three syllables came suddenly and with an almost melancholy ring:

“But that was so long ago.” She had again been thinking of Aarhus.

Karl, who was also lost in a completely different train of thought, was brought back by the mention of Aarhus and, blowing out his smoke through his nose, said:

“But those Aarhus merchants are a damned clever bunch.”

Ida did not register this, but she turned a pair of radiant eyes towards Karl and said:

“I wonder where the next holiday will be.”

And, as the smile returned to his eyes, Karl replied:

“Aye. God knows.”

But Ida had to go. It was getting far too late. Knuth rose. “Thank you, Miss Brandt,” he said, chinking his glass against Ida’s. There was something strange about Knuth’s movements, almost those of a jumping jack, when he was suddenly called back from whatever was preoccupying him.

Karl, too, rose.

“Oh well, allez-y,” he said, and while he helped Ida on with her coat, he said to Knuth, perhaps continuing the train of thought from Aarhus or perhaps simply because of the French expression:

“Hell, the way she made Beauté jump yesterday in the Deer Park.”

He stood there with his cigarette hanging from his lips.

“Aye, she’s got steel in her back, by Gad.”

Knuth went out into the corridor, and Karl put his overcoat on. He held Ida before him for a moment. “Well, chick,” he said and his voice suddenly became tender when he saw the expression in her eyes: “That was a lovely day.”

“Yes.”

She leant against him.

“If only you come,” she said, and with a smile she whispered, though the corners of her mouth were trembling a little:

“Because it is so difficult to go out of that door when I have been waiting here alone.”

It was almost as though Karl suddenly blushed. But all he said, very gently, was:

“Thank you for a lovely time today, chick.”

And quickly, with the same look of fear in her eyes as before (but perhaps only because they were each going off in their own direction now), Ida flung her arms round his neck.

“Oh Karl…”

Then they went out. In the street they all three walked side by side. Ida was pale, as could clearly be seen now she was out in the open. But Karl, who was whistling gently as he walked, said happily:

“Now we could have a look at the flat.”

Ida blushed and made no reply; but Karl continued in the same tone:

“Miss Brandt has rented a flat. We could go up and have a look at it now.”

“It’s not been done up,” said Ida; her voice so harsh that it broke; Karl looked at her in amazement:

“All right, then we can leave it.”

They separated soon after this.

“Thank you Miss Brandt,” said Knuth as he released her hand.

Karl and he walked along the pavement side by side. Karl was smoking and Knuth was chewing at his walking stick.

“You’ re a fortunate man, Eichbaum,” the lieutenant said.

Karl puffed his cigarette smoke out, but Knuth said in the same dreamy tone:

“You see, it’s the gentle girls one should have.”

Karl went on a bit before saying:

“Aye, they’ re probably the best to have.” He placed a hesitant emphasis on “have” as though he was stopping before some unspoken “but” and they went on a little before he said in that drawling voice of his:

“But damn it all, you’ re a dreamer Knuth and you just worship women.”

“Well, what else is there?” he said.

“There’s life as well,” said Karl, screwing up his nose. “And so we have to work things out, unfortunately.”

Knuth walked on, looking straight ahead.

“Yes,” he said: “We work them out all right but I don’t know, at times I feel almost as though someone else were adding the figures up.”

“Are you a philosopher as well?” asked Karl dully.

But Knuth walked on and continued to stare ahead and, still in the same tone, said:

“But I ought to have gone in the navy.”

And a little later:

“For then I could at least have gone to Siam. And there they fight.”

“Knuth, you’ re drunk, damn it,” said Karl, throwing away his cigarette. And, following his own train of thought, he said as he stopped at the corner:

“You see, you don’t take a girl for all eternity.”

“And that’s that,” he said decisively, waving goodbye with his whip.

Karl arrived at the office far too late, and the bookkeeper had a few unpleasant things to say to him. This he had had plenty of reason to do recently. But Karl made no reply and simply sat at his desk, where he opened his ledger. It was full of designs for the stables in Ludvigsbakke on all the blotting paper:

“Oh hell, he was going dancing again that evening.”

He suddenly smiled. He was thinking of Knuth.

“When he gets near a skirt he looks like that chap who swam across to his girlfriend.”

And suddenly he had a sense of longing, a purely physical longing for Ida, stronger than he had felt for a long time.

Ida had gone up to her flat and taken off her outdoor clothes. All the new furniture was there and the old as well, wrapped in canvas: she would have to set to work. But suddenly, surrounded by the old furniture, the edges of which could be seen protruding from behind canvas and cords, she threw herself down on her new bed and with her face buried in the pillows and her arms outstretched as though they were nailed to this new, wide couch, she wept and wept.

Karl had been with her that day, during the afternoon, up in her room; and now he was to go and he was in love and excited now, too.

Ida stood with her arms around his neck.

“What are you going to do this evening?” she said.

“Stay at home.”

He scarcely knew he was lying before he had said these words.

“Goodbye, chick,” he said, kissing her hair.

And then he went.

Ida remained seated for a long time on the disordered bed.

But when she came down into the tea room, Nurse Kjær said:

“What’s wrong with you? Your eyes are all red.”

From behind the urn, Nurse Helgesen said something about the gentleman in Ward A. Now the professor would surely soon have to make up his mind.

“The patient has now worked out,” said Nurse Helgesen, “that there are just as many people every year who write a T instead of an F.”

And Nurse Friis, who was ostentatiously darning black silk stockings, one of which she had pulled high up on her arm like a glove, said:

“Ugh, that horrible man, he’s just like a ghost.”

Looking into the gas ring on the table, Nurse Kjær said:

“No, that’s not right but there is something about him as though he knew that he would get the better of us after all.”

But Nurse Øverud, who was making sandwiches, said on the subject of the red eyes:

“They are the result of being awake so much at night. I have the same problem. But I have a remedy to use against it.

Ida went to her night duty.

∞∞∞

Julius opened the carriage door at the station, and the general’s wife emerged.

She went through the main hall into the waiting-room, where she found Mrs Mourier sitting on a sofa.

“Good morning,” she said. “Oh it’s dreadfully raw this morning.”

But Mrs Mourier, who every moment had tears in her eyes, said that she had not had a wink of sleep all night. “For just imagine her in that bunk, Lotte, listening to every stroke of that steam engine.”

She was thinking all the time of Aline, whom they had come to meet.

“And then, you know,” she said, “we can’t be too kind to her either.”

“My dear Vilhelmine,” said the general’s wife, sitting down beside Mrs Mourier: “I say the same as Emilie: We will get over that problem mainly by taking things quietly and pretending throughout that nothing has happened.” But, without realising it, the general’s wife smoothed her Randers leather gloves up from her wrists, thereby showing the whole shape of her nails.

“Yes, my dear,” said Mrs Mourier shaking her head a little, “but one thinks of her nevertheless.”

And in a slighter harsher and quite decisive tone, the general’s wife said:

“But, my dear Mine, if she has gone, she will have to come back home.”

She started to talk about the change in climate that Emilie after all would encounter when she heard a slightly out-of-breath Mrs Schleppegrell arriving with Fanny in her wake. “My dears, what dreadful weather. I can feel the damp going right through me in spite of my French vest.”

A torrent of words came from the admiral’s wife as she seated herself: “But as I said to Vilhelm today, we are meeting…”

Fanny had taken up a position by the door to the platform. She was wearing the expression she had when on behalf of the admiral’s wife she made her weekly visit to the welfare association and remained at a distance from the others.

The admiral’s wife started to talk of the chocolate she had received and about Emilie, who was always so considerate, until she suddenly looked around at the walls (perhaps she realised that no one was listening to her) and said:

“My dears, how unpleasant it is in here. It is as though we were waiting in a criminal court of some kind.”

“Yes,” said the general’s wife, “this waiting-room really is a scandal in a city like Copenhagen.”

They fell silent again, and suddenly Kate and Karl, dressed in their riding clothes, were out there on the platform in front of the glass door.

“There we have the young ones,” said the general’s wife, and they all smiled as they nodded out there, while Fanny looked at them through her lorgnette.

Kate nodded back, again with her riding cloak over her arm.

“Voilà l’ église triomphante,” she said, pouting her lips, a habit she had caught from Karl.

“Aye, there we have the aunts, by Gad,” said Karl. He walked with both hands in his riding breeches as they sauntered on.

But suddenly Kate turned back and shook the waiting-room door.

“Hang it all, I’m going in to see them,” she said.

She made to go inside, but the door was locked. “Oh,” she said abandoning the attempt. “The hordes will come out here.” Karl, who was also looking in at the aunts, laughed aloud. The distance and the fact that the two of them were unable to hear the conversation meant that there seemed to be something about the whole group slightly reminiscent of a stage performance.

They continued to look in through the glass doors and, standing close together, they both laughed at the family in happy understanding with each other.

There came symptoms of noise and disturbance, and ladies and gentlemen put their heads in through the doors when the admiral arrived. He had a cold and greeted the ladies before sitting down close to Mrs Mourier and blowing his nose.

“Ah, my dear,” he said, “here we are now, provided with both lifebelts and a gangplank.”

“Oh yes, indeed, admiral,” said Mrs Mourier. It was as though she had expected more response from him. “I’m all of a tremble.”

The heavy baggage trolleys started to rumble along the platform, and unfamiliar ladies and gentlemen congregated by the doors, though not by Fanny’ s: she had an ability to establish an invisible circle around herself creating an empty space in her vicinity when the conductors came and opened the doors.

“There they are,” said the admiral’s wife, leaping up from her chair as though she were leading a charge.

The general’s wife had almost convulsively grasped Mrs Mourier’s arm and said in a voice that was suddenly trembling with emotion and which she was struggling to calm down again:

“Oh heavens above, Mine, this is such a happy occasion.”

They had all gone over to the door.

“Fanny,” said the admiral’s wife: “Are you coming?”

And corpulent and with the energy of someone arranging a party, she said to the general’s wife:

“We ought to be together. Where are the young ones?”

“Here comes the cavalry,” said Karl.

The admiral brought up the rearguard, with a look on his face as though, from some elevated position in Frederiksberg, he was “following” some highly-placed colleague representative of the infantry.

People crowded on to the platform, where the flock herded by the general’s wife was standing, rather nervously watching the locomotive glide forward, while the admiral’s wife twice moved her arms as though she was already opening them to embrace the two who were returning home, and Mrs Mourier made the most of the opportunity to dry her eyes.

“Can you see them?”

“Can you see them?” said the general’s wife as compartment after compartment moved slowly past them. “Are you there, Vilhelm?” said the admiral’s wife.

Kate flicked Karl with her switch. “Just look at the court masseuse,” she whispered. There was not the slightest movement in Fanny’s face as she surveyed the first class compartments through her lorgnette.

“Kate,” called Mrs Mourier, who was quite overcome with emotion and wanted to have her daughter with her.

“There she is,” said the general’s wife and she started to wave, and then they saw Mrs von Eichbaum sitting erect in her compartment.

They were all waiting to see the other face as they waved. Mrs Mourier did not know that two large tears were running down her cheeks.

“Now,” whispered Kate to Karl.

“You are not expecting Aline, surely?” said Mrs von Eichbaum in a loud voice from the compartment. They had all started to move along with the gliding train as though drawn by a string and suddenly they came to a standstill. No one said anything until, after a second’s hesitation, the general’s wife again started to wave her hands and the train came to a standstill.

“She left the train at Ringsted,” (Mrs von Eichbaum’s first glance had sought Karl and found him in his riding clothes alongside Kate) “and went home in the landau with Feddersen.”

Kate had turned on her heel. “Quelle blague,” she said to Karl, “I won!”

“Doesn’t count.”

“Oh? Never mind, wasn’t the bet supposed to be about your mother putting her foot on the ground?”

And suddenly they heard the admiral’s wife, who had required a moment to gather herself, say: “Good heavens, Emilie, it’s for your sake we have come.” And the general’s wife all at once started to weep as she embraced Mrs von Eichbaum, and Mrs Mourier said: “Oh, then she will be at home by now.”

All of a sudden they started to talk in loud voices, quite loud voices, about the journey and the chocolate and the steamship, as though Aline had never existed, while Mrs von Eichbaum stood in front of Kate for a moment holding both her hands in hers.

“My word,” she said almost emotionally, “you look quite radiant.”

The admiral and his wife had already departed. The admiral’s wife and Fanny had had to take a cab. They were going to visit the distinguished Miss Juel.

The admiral’s wife had so far made no pronouncement on the event, but said:

“Kate Mourier is putting on rather a lot of weight.”

Fanny, who was looking at Kate and Karl through the carriage window as they took their horses from the man who had been left in charge of them said, without any explanation: “She is a bitch.”

Fanny had heard Kate’s remark about the court masseuse.

The admiral’s wife did not contradict her daughter. “But,” she said merely, “you’ll see she will get what she wants. That sort of girl always find themselves provided for nowadays.”

“If they can provide for his needs,” said Fanny.

Mrs von Eichbaum and the general’s wife had also taken a carriage; they were on their own on account of all the luggage.

“Oh dear, Emilie,” said the general’s wife: “there was a moment when I ran all cold – when no one saw her – until I recognised the sense in what you had done.”

“My dear Lotte,” said Mrs von Eichbaum, “that was the only right thing to do, provided it could be arranged.”

Mrs von Eichbaum suddenly nodded and smiled: Kate and Karl were trotting past the carriage and waving.

“It suits her so well,” she said, still watching them, and her eyes suddenly became damp. “I just hope Karl is not neglecting the office.”

“My dear, Karl has become as regular as clockwork,” said the general’s wife. And shortly afterwards, she added:

“And besides, I suppose he is not going to be sitting in that office for ever.”

The two sisters sat holding each other by the hand.

They were home, and Mrs von Eichbaum was sitting in her old place on the sofa after having had Ane in to curtsey to her.

“Oh, my dear, it is such bliss to be at home again within my four good walls. For you will understand of course that there are things one does not send by post and, between you and me, it has not been an unalloyed pleasure.”

The general’s wife did understand: “Of course, I admired your letters which said nothing at all.”

“The worst thing, you know, was that she talked to me incessantly, and I believe that one never knows what one does not wish to know. But Aline simply has to bare her soul. Just imagine that last night she was simply overcome by her urge to talk in a cabin on the way over from Kiel, where every word could be heard out in the corridor. I finally gave her some chloral and told her that she was likely to be seasick otherwise.”

Mrs von Eichbaum was silent for a moment, staring into space.

“But,” she said, “the things you are exposed to if you abandon your permanent bulwark.”

Mrs von Eichbaum fell silent again and gazed as though into a far-reaching prospect of the inconceivable. “But,” she said, “a journey abroad always refreshes your languages.”

The general’s wife rose: Mrs von Eichbaum must need some rest. There was a bouquet in the small drawing room. It was from little Brandt. Mrs von Eichbaum looked at it. It was lovely.

“But heavens above, my dear, all this courtesy,” she said, “it is just a little embarrassing.”

The general’s wife said:

“Yes, dear, but it is only quite reasonable that the girl wants to show her appreciation.”

And suddenly a new thought struck her. She said: “On her advice, I thought up some excuse to fumigate the Mouriers’ apartment with sulphur the other day…But, Mille, you need some rest.”

She held out her hand to her sister, and suddenly overcome with emotion, the sisters kissed each other with tears in their eyes.

Karl was in the office. He was thinking about the game of snap. The prize was a riding switch; and it had to be one with a gold knob. He nodded over his ledger. But he would wait until after the first, when his wages had been paid.

Ida had kept a report until the evening. When she arrived, Karl had his overcoat on and was standing beneath the lamp.

“Has your mother come?” she said.

“Yes,” said Karl. He had taken the report and put out the light.

“I’m sorry, chick, but I’m in such a hurry.”

“Do you think I should pay her a visit?” said Ida from in the darkness.

“Yes, why not?” Karl was groping his way in the dark.

“Well, I didn’t know.”

She was speaking so quietly.

“Can you find your way out?” said Karl, opening the door to the lighted corridor.

But on the handle, her hand touched his for a second, briefly, helplessly.

“Good night,” she said.

“Good night, chick.”

The gate out to the street opened, and there was the sound of bells from countless tramcars when Karl went out into the lights illuminating the throngs of people.

It could be seen that Ida had become thin when she reached the light from the lamps on her way back through the silent and almost dark courtyard.

Mrs von Eichbaum was taking a cup of tea together with the general’s wife. The lamps were lit, and they settled down to talk about things both old and new. Mrs von Eichbaum had changed the place for the picture of the Mouriers. She thought she would have it on the writing desk for the sake of the light.

“Do you know,” she said, “I sat there before dinner and looked at Kate’s picture for a really long time. She seems to me to have changed. It is as though she has acquired something more reflective in her expression.”

∞∞∞

Karl and Ida drove out towards Christianshavn. The lights out there had become few in number, and they could hear nothing but the determined trotting of the horse on the uneven cobblestones.

“This is such a dismal place,” said Ida who was quietly following the scant patches of light from lamp post to lamp post.

“And it’s cold,” said Karl. They shrunk each in their own corner.

The carriage rumbled on, and they fell silent again.

“But he’s driving as though he were going to a funeral,” said Karl.

And they sat in silence once more.

“I went to see your mother,” said Ida, from her corner.

“Oh,” murmured Karl.

“But she wasn’t at home.”

Karl chewed at his cigar and – presumably without thinking of it – he said:

“She damned well was at home.”

Ida no longer heard the horse’s hoofs. This was what she had thought and thought about ever since. She was at home; ever since she had stood there as the door closed in front of her, she had known: she was at home.

They heard the sound of some fiddles and wind instruments. “There we’ve got the whole menagerie, by Gad,” said Karl sitting up. There were crowds of people and noise and the light from gas-filled torches.

“Now we’ll have a look at what they’ve got to show us,” said Karl, stretching his legs in the gaslight and seeming to be at home.

“Two.” He handed the money to the girl at the entrance to the tent while – he had again acquired the habit of looking up under every woman’s hat – he looked up at her face.

“What are you sighing about?” he said, turning to Ida.

“Oh, I’m cold,” she said, seeming to give a start.

Karl took her by the arm at the entrance. “Oh,” he said – a lady wearing a flowered skirt was already diving through hoops and all the seats were full of people, some locals and some from Copenhagen – “The air from the stables will soon warm you up for heavens’ sake.”

“There are such a lot of people,” said Ida.

“Yes,” said Karl, shrugging his shoulders as the music blared out. “But it’s always a change.”

“It’s damned good by Gad,” he said after a few minutes, and with a nod and a single glance he scrutinised the nag, the floral-skirted woman, the seven musicians and the audience.

“It’s jolly nice here,” he repeated, rubbing his hands so vigorously that his seat creaked. (After the lone rides in cabs, he was usually overcome by a certain sense of wellbeing when he found himself among other people again).

A couple of clowns were gambolling around while the graceful lady was regaining her breath. They bounced each other on the ground and tumbled all over the place.

“They’ve got cushions on their bums,” said a gentleman behind Karl, and everyone around laughed and sniggered.

“People are out to enjoy themselves here by Gad,” said Karl, rubbing his leg and suddenly knocking his stick up on Ida’s chin (it was as though she was sitting so completely on her own).

She started; then she smiled, and for a moment, with her hand, she held the silver knob firmly against her chin.

“Yes,” she said.

A couple of musical acrobats had started to play “The Last Rose of Summer” on a single violin, and the audience settled and quietened down a little. Karl clamped his cigar between his teeth, rocking it up and down in time with the melancholy song.

“Well,” said Ida suddenly, in a quiet voice: “Perhaps I have been there too often.”

Karl turned to her: “Good God, are you still thinking about that?”

And, suddenly guessing her secret anxiety and thoughts, he tapped her hand cheerfully (he had in general sought to console her a lot recently):

“Mother never understands a damned thing.”

Ida held his hand tight. “Oh, my dear,” she whispered. But Karl sat up in his seat with his legs outstretched.

“Oh, there’s the baron,” he said, waving with his left hand.

The “baron”, the circus manager, led out two horses. They danced a waltz and jumped over an array of barriers; their brown skin was tense and shining as they sprang, and all faces turned towards them and followed them. Then, suddenly, a voice was heard from the back of the tent:

“Damned good, baron.”

And everyone laughed, hilariously, while the men banged their walking sticks against the chairs and a lady over on the other side laughed so much she was turning and twisting in her chair. “Just look, just look,” said Ida. But two burly men over by the side of the tent, mimicking the horses’ least movements, said:

“Wonderful.”

People started to laugh again so much that they shook their heads and laughed at each other because they were laughing at nothing.

“They do jump beautifully,” said Ida, holding her left hand to her breast and supporting her right on Karl’s knee.

Karl, who had been watching the show keenly, to the accompaniment of tiny puffs at his cigar, nodded and said reflectively:

“That’s a horse that would suit Kate.”

Ida had not understood him at first but now Karl rose: “I must just go and have a talk to the boss,” he said, and her hand dropped from his knee, down on to the chair arm.

Then she saw a lady up on a tightrope, a lady all in pink, and she again heard people laughing and saw Karl nodding to her from down by the entrance to the stalls (he never liked it when she was sitting in such a way that she could not move) and she smiled again as he approached her.

“What a wonderful lot they are there,” he said, putting his arm under hers.

Ida sat for a moment with her head against his shoulder: “It’s like at home down by the harbour,” she said in a voice that trembled a little.

“But Schreiber was damned good,” said Karl.

“Oh,” said Ida, “Olivia kept a portrait of him in her workbox.”

The impressive lady was brought back time after time. Finally she was given a flourish by the musicians, for the applause refused to die down.

“Goodnight, dear,” said the gentleman who had spoken before and gently waved the lady off the arena.

But the drums continued to beat as Ida grasped Karl by the arm.

“There’s Nurse Friis,” she said. She had grown as stiff as a corpse.

“Oh, what the hell,” and Karl turned his head rather quickly. “Yes, there she is,” he said.

But Nurse Friis, who was coming straight towards them, simply gave them a cheerful, familiar nod.

“Good evening, so you’ve come out to Amager as well?” she said and went on holding her skirt up. There was something about her carriage and gait as seen from the back that suggested she felt at home and was happy to be here. When she had reached her seat and sat down, she said to the small man with the large nose who had followed her:

“They are childhood friends.”

“Oh,” he said slowly, “then it’s criminal.”

“He’s a nasty piece,” murmured Karl as the couple passed them. He remained in his seat and stared at the tip of his cigar until he said – it was as though his hands had nevertheless shrunk further up into his sleeves – like someone who has just settled an unpleasant account:

“Well, she’ll probably keep her damned mouth shut.”

Nevertheless, he remained silent, sitting with an expression as though the cigar did not suit him.

Idea leaned forward – a gap had grown between their seats – and with a smile she whispered to him (through lips that were trembling slightly):

“Karl,” and this was the first thing she had said, “I don’t like this.”

And she started to talk, a little more eagerly and a little louder, surrounded by a buzz on all sides; the fat women from the tightrope had now entered on a horse.

“Couldn’t you sit a bit more still,” said Karl.

Ida suddenly had tears in her eyes, but she smiled at him again (she understood him so well, of course) and she whispered once more, turning her face to his:

“Karl, I simply don’t like this.”

“I don’t suppose it would be much use,” said Karl, still in the same voice. And suddenly making a move to get up, he added:

“I’m going out to see the boss, damn it.”

“Are you going again?” It came so quickly, and Ida perhaps raised her hand just an inch to stop him (and probably did not realise that it was ultimately also out of vanity).

“Oh, I can stay then,” said Karl.

“Your childhood friends are not enjoying themselves,” said Nurse Friis’ escort, who twice nodded to Ida.

There was a fanfare. “Here comes the jockey,” said Karl, sitting involuntarily up in his seat along with all the others as the rider galloped past. “He rides well.”

Ida was leaning forward and simply nodded – there was something about her reminiscent of a child stuffing its fingers into its ears when it is simply determined to read – and she did not take her eyes off the bare man taking a leap.

People clapped and clapped.

“He jumps well,” said Karl.

And Ida, who involuntarily went on watching the bare figure, said in a quiet voice, blushing before she had finished her sentence:

“He’s not as good-looking as you are.”

Karl suddenly looked down at her face.

“You’ re developing an eye for men by Gad,” he said.

And he laughed and suddenly stretched out his legs.

“Shall we go,” he said when the jockey had finished, and they got up. Not until they were over by the exit did they wave to Nurse Friis.

They drove again in silence. Ida had stolen Karl’s hand, though it was not particularly responsive in its glove:

“Couldn’t we go to the Dagmar today?”

“I suppose so,” said Karl, adding:

“One meets people everywhere in any case.”

And suddenly rubbing his hands, he said in a different tone, like a man who has taken a decision:

“Then we’ll have a proper meal by Gad.”

He said he wanted lobster. “But you’ll have to have a glass of stout along with it,” he said, and he became talkative and exuded a sense of wellbeing as though he was already sitting before the red delicacy and the salad accompanying it.

“We’ll have something to drink this evening,” said Ida.

“We’ll drink to Nurse Friis,” said Karl from his corner; and they fell silent again, each staring out of their own window.

“We’ve reached Højbro now,” said Ida.

“Oh, thank God,” said Karl, and he did not change his position until the carriage stopped and they had reached the restaurant where the waiters were running to and fro in the bright light among a large number of guests, and they were given a separate room.

“It’s the usual one,” said Ida in a strikingly bright voice, and she took off her coat.

“They are all alike, damn it all,” said Karl, already deeply engaged in perusing the menu. But when the dishes came, he woke up and threw his head back in physical wellbeing. “One needs food,” he said, and he started eating with his serviette tied around his neck. He talked about all manner of things. About Knuth: “He’s completely mad,” he said, winking at Ida: “But he’s a great chap.” And as for the admiral: he had gone off the rails again; he simply couldn’t leave women alone. And the bookkeeper: “God help me, he gets worse and worse,” he said, wrinkling his nose and continuing to eat.

But Ida, sitting watching him, said with a smile:

“You look so nice when you are eating.” And she inserted her hand under his cuff and up his sleeve.

“Yes,” said Karl with a laugh, “if I’m having a good meal. And he pressed his arm down on her hand.

Ida sat staring before her. “We’ll soon be able to eat at home now.”

“Yes,” was Karl’s only reply.

But Ida continued to talk about the flat: How lovely it was, now the carpets had come to cover both floors. Oh, the pattern was so beautiful, decorated all over simply with autumn leaves and the door curtains were in the same pattern.

She continued to tell him about the sheer yellows and browns in the pattern in the carpet until she suddenly became aware that Karl was saying nothing. And she wanted more than anything else to go on talking and fell silent.

“But when will all this be ready?” asked Karl in a tone suggesting that he was working something out.

“I don’t know,” said Ida, supporting her head on her hand and in a voice that suddenly trembled.

The Russia leather purse had already appeared at the foot of his glass. He took it without thinking and opened it. There was a letter in the front compartment.

Ida grasped his arm: “That’s not for you.”

But Karl had already opened the letter: “It’s from Franck.” And in a tone as though it were a demand sent to him, he said:

“Of course it’s about the money.”

Ida made no reply and she put the letter away, but Karl said:

“I simply don’t understand what you do to get all that money out of him.”

“I lie,” said Ida, suddenly looking down at the tablecloth (she had blushed scarlet) and in the same breath – as though to say that he should not be so upset about that – she looked up and said:

“I always have done.”

Karl, who was touched and scarcely knew why, murmured:

“But to lie your way to a complete set of furniture isn’t all that easy.”

Ida smiled again, while considering the endless tissue of all her excuses.

“Yes,” she said, almost laughing: “Once you’ve started, you can always go on to lie more.”

“You’ re turning into a fallen woman,” said Karl. It was a long time since he had last grasped her hand so firmly and tenderly.

“But why do we need to talk about it?” said Ida, shaking her head. “Now we’ re going to have a drink.” And she took her glass.

When they had emptied their glasses and put them down, she suddenly, although she did not really want to, said:

“The worst thing they can do is dismiss me.”

“Surely they wouldn’t do that,” Karl exclaimed.

“Well, then that would be the end of it all,” said Ida.

But Karl made no reply until, with the same expression he had had in the circus, he said:

“But for God’s sake, she’ll surely keep her mouth shut.”

He beckoned to the waiter for the bill.

“Are we going already?” said Ida. It was as though she always had a sense of fear when they were to leave; and she looked across the table and the glasses.

“It’s jolly well about time,” said Karl.

He did not himself realise that he sighed a couple of times as he took a fifty kroner note out of the Russia leather purse.

But it was as though he had no wish to leave her, and in the carriage he said:

“Now we’ll go to the flat.”

“But it’s not ready,” said Ida.

“Surely something’s in place,” said Karl, and he called out the street and the house number to the coachman.

“You mustn’t inspect everything,” said Ida who had lit a little lamp in the passageway and now opened the door. But as she raised the lamp up in front of her, she pointed straight at two large rolls leaning against the wall:

“They are the carpet.”

“There’s a lot of it,” said Karl, standing and thinking that the furniture was too big for the living room.

“Yes,” and she nodded to him: “But you can’t see the pattern.”

“I’m dreadfully thirsty,” said Karl, taking off his overcoat.

Ida had some red wine and went to fetch it. Karl walked up and down alone, with a cigar that had gone out; lost in thought he rattled the furniture like the bars in a cage. The empty windows gaped at him like a pair of staring eyes.

Ida came back with the wine. “Thank you,” he said and was about to drain the glass.

But suddenly emotional, or desperate – at that moment he could gladly have smashed all that furniture – he said, and his voice was low:

“Well cheers, chick.”

“Yes,” said Ida, looking up into his face from the sitting room, where the furniture that was not yet in place cast long shadows: “This is our first glass here.”

And she drank the whole glass, her eyes fixed on his face.

Karl had gone.

“Thank you, I’ll stay here a little longer,” Ida had said.

Now she was alone. Her head was devoid of thought. She merely wanted to be alone when she put on her coat and her hat and when she left. But when she reached the street, she almost ran. She thought: supposing she met Nurse Friis at the gate, or outside, and she ran as though this would help her to avoid that.

But she reached her room without meeting anyone.

She took her outdoor clothes off. But she continued to walk up and down the floor. Then she opened the door. She wanted to see Roed and Nurse Petersen, to see them before they got to know about that. She went down. The entire building was silent. The first signs of day could be seen against the window in the corridor, and the patients were asleep. Quietly, she turned the key and went in. Roed and Nurse Petersen were sitting each on their own side of the stove, their eyes stiff with sleep.

“Gott, Gott, is it you?” said Nurse Petersen.

“I wanted a little chloral,” said Ida, and absent-mindedly, or nervously, she smoothed Roed’s hair with her hands.

“Oh, you’ re cold,” said Roed in the strangely indifferent voice of those who have been awake too long.

“Yes.”

Ida left her and went to the door to the Hall. The patient in the nearest bed moved and Ida went in. A bearded man wearing blue glasses lay staring up at her.

“Good evening, nurse,” he said in such a humble tone.

“Good heavens, Lauritzen,” said Ida: “Is it you?”

The patient made no reply. He was a drinker who was here for the third time and merely lay there wringing his hands.

“Yes, it’s me,” he said then and he went on wringing his hands so that his knuckles shone white.

And while he looked up in her face and his arms fell back at his sides, he said with the look a man must have when about to be crucified:

“I can’t help it.”

Ida leant against the bedpost. Quietly, without a sound, she sobbed in desperation.

Karl had arrived home. Half undressed he paced up and down the floor.

“It’s incredible,” he said.

“It’s just damned incredible,” he continued; he stopped his walking up and down and stared into the lamp.

“But damn it all, women are simply blind,” he said, nodding into the light.

Finally, he sat down on his bed.

“Hm.” And he twisted his face as though this was extremely unpleasant for him: and Knuth must naturally have been cooling his heels in the Café Vienna and waiting for him.

At last, he got down under the blankets. He lay on his back, staring at the ceiling.

“It’s strange, but they damned well all end up being simple when you get them into a bed.”

Karl von Eichbaum put out his light. But in the darkness he lay for a long time tossing and turning and shaking his head, and his hands were also curiously restless like those of a man pestered by troublesome flies.

Nor was he in a good mood when he got up, and he failed to part his hair straight as he sat there working away with his comb and the brushes in front of his mirror. But suddenly, raising his face and looking himself straight in the eye in the looking glass, he said just audibly and with a nod:

“Aye, that’s it: a man damned well does what he has to do.”

Ida had waited for a long time up in her room. Now she had to go down to the tea room; she simply must. She went through the noisy ward into the quiet one. Never, she thought, had she ever walked with such an upright gait. All that was left now was the door to be opened, and the threshold to be crossed.

“Good morning.”

She was there now. And for a moment she had listened to her own voice and seen in everyone’s faces that they knew nothing; and she had seen Nurse Friis sitting nearest the door and rising quickly from her chair to embrace her.

“Good morning, pet,” she said.

And as she kissed her, she touched Ida’s cheek lightly with her tongue.

Ida blushed scarlet…

And she heard Nurse Helgesen say:

“Two patients have died during the night.”

∞∞∞

Ida had waited for perhaps half an hour. She would leave now. Perhaps no one was coming, so she could go.

But Ellingsen was at the door to “assist madam”.

He took her coat and hat and she put them on.

“Thank you,” she said. “Goodbye.”

But Ellingsen, standing by the door, with his lips very moist, said:

“You are forgetting your parcels, madam.”

Ida took them, and Ellingsen also opened the street door.

“Goodbye,” she said and went. The outer door was one of those that quietly close of their own accord. Mr Ellingsen returned to the private room. He still had a sympathetic look on his face. He took a serviette to brush away a little dust that he thought had gathered on the tablecloth, after which he used the same serviette to dry his mouth. Mr Ellingsen had really seldom received less that sixteen or eighteen kroner a month from “those people”.

Someone rang from the buffet.

But the business was doing well.

Mr Ellingsen went out. A lady and a gentleman were coming towards him in the corridor.

Ida walked – she probably thought she did not herself know where – along the path, towards Østerbro, further and further out.

There she met them. She saw them a long way off. There they were.

She had to go past them. Her small parcels seemed to hang loose on her limp arm and she did not know how she managed to bend her neck in greeting.

But Kate stopped her horse for a moment.

“Good morning, Miss Brandt,” she said, greeting her with her switch. “Lovely weather.”

“Yes, beautiful,” said Ida, suddenly staring up at her face.

“You can really feel the approach of spring,” said Kate.

Karl stopped a little way from them. It looked as though he was having difficulty controlling his horse.

“Well, allons…Good morning.”

They rode off.

“She had come a long way out of town,” said Kate.

And after a short while, looking out over her horse’s head, she added:

“It doesn’t matter in the least to me, by the way.”

Karl would have liked to ask what, but he was suddenly silent and looked bewildered.

“I’m no match for you by Gad,” he said then after they had trotted for a time.

Ida had turned round. It was as though she had suddenly awakened. She saw every face she met as though it was strangely radiant, and every gateway and every house and every tree, as though everything was in some way sharply defined. And she clearly heard every snatch of conversation and every carriage and every sound as though she had a thousand senses.

But most of all she saw the soil and the yellow crocuses and the rose trees, their cover having been taken off them now. For now spring would soon be coming.

She could have walked ten miles, but nevertheless she turned down by the corner of the lake out of habit.

On the road close to Rørholm, she met Nurse Friis, who started to shout from a great distance and then kissed her, as had recently become her habit. “But,” she said, “I really must see your flat today, love.” Nurse Friis went on pestering Ida to let her see the flat: it was only just round the corner now.

Ida suddenly felt so tired, or perhaps she felt the need to savour one final pain.

“Yes,” she said quietly “we can go up.”

She mounted the steps as though she was climbing a mountain. Nurse Friis went before her, reading all the names on the doors.

“What a lovely quiet building,” she shouted. (The residents were all state employees or minor officials plus a Baptist minister.) She could hardly wait for Ida to open the door and say, as though she had forgotten:

“Oh yes, there are some men working here.”

But Nurse Friis was already in the living room, shouting:

“Oh, my hat, this is nice.” She flew out into the passageway again and had to kiss Ida in sheer enthusiasm before dancing in again. She felt everything and saw everything and she talked until she suddenly sat down on a chair arm.

“But, my dear Brandt, this must have cost you a fortune.”

Ida sat down. Motionless, she sat there and looked at it all, piece by piece: now it was all in place.

She did not hear Nurse Friis or notice that her torrent of words suddenly ceased; she only felt that she was alone, for a moment, and raised her hands from her lap when Nurse Friis appeared in the bedroom door.

“Brandt,” she said, and she spoke the name in a tone (there was a touch of admiration in it) which she had never used before: “You know how to arrange things.”

Ida had suddenly risen, and at the sound of her name her cheeks flushed.

“Well, we’ll go now,” she said and had almost forgotten her pain.

But Nurse Friis was in the bedroom again, bouncing on the big bed.

“We are going now,” Ida repeated.

There was something in her tone that persuaded Nurse Friis to get up rather quickly.

But Ida waited in silence first at the door to the living room and then at the outer door and finally at the street door until Nurse Friis was out. Nor did their conversation really resume out in the street. Nurse Friis was also quiet, thinking her own thoughts as though she had discovered something. But when they reached the hospital entrance, she said before continuing on “an errand”:

“For heaven’s sake, Brandt, do be reasonable, this is only for those of us who are broadminded.”

Ida silently pushed her hand from her arm.

“Goodbye,” nodded Nurse Friis.

When, still carrying the two small parcels, Ida came down the stairs in the Pavilion, she met Nurse Kjær.

“Oh,” she said in her happy voice – she was so used to Ida’s bringing something home with her – “You’ve got some cakes.”

And she ran ahead up to Nurse Petersen: “Miss has some cakes,” she said, and they quickly gathered for a picnic in the kitchen.

Ida sat and watched the cake disappear between Petersen’s teeth.

When the two had had enough, there was still a piece remaining. They offered it to Josefine, who came to fetch the buckets.

“Well, someone’s got to have it,” said Josefine.

But Nurse Petersen said:

“Oh, we ought to have kept them to have with the coffee.”

Ida had risen and left.

∞∞∞

Kate Mourier had developed the most remarkable habit. She wandered up and down through all the rooms followed by both the hounds.

“My dear Kate, why all this marching up and down?” said Mrs Mourier from her sofa.

“I’m thinking,” said Kate and marched on.

“But couldn’t you do it in just one room?” said Mrs Mourier.

Suddenly, Kate had sat down with both dogs in front of her, and then she got up again. Over by the door, she stretched her arms up along the door frame.

“Is it this evening we are going to a concert?” she said, staring up in the air.

“Yes.”

“That’s nice. Because I need some music,” she said; and she went in.

Mrs Mourier continued to sit there. The pages in her “Peters Edition” were left untouched. She was thinking that it was good that Mourier was coming at last. He would be company for Aline.

For Mrs Mourier did not really know what was going on in Kate’s mind.

The bell rang; it was Mrs von Eichbaum. She came merely to ask whether Mourier was also bringing their butler to town with him.

“Because, you see, Mine, it is best to know that,” she said.

Mourier’s butler was to help at the reception that Mrs von Eichbaum was arranging for the recently returned Mrs Feddersen.

They discussed it for a while, and Mrs von Eichbaum said then, in a different tone:

“The children have been riding, you know.”

“Yes,” said Mrs Mourier, staring ahead. She would so much have liked to have a “straight talk”, but she refrained.

Nurse Friis’s “errand” was a minute’s dash across to Svendsen, to find her large-nosed friend having lunch. The nurse was all hot and bothered after what she had seen that morning.

“Heavens above,” she said, “I would never have believed it. It was so splendid.”

Her large-nosed friend viewed his sandwiches.

“It’s always like that with those very gentle girls,” he said.

Nurse Friis sat for a while; she could still picture the bed and the big washbasin and the broad sofa.

“Yes, it must be that,” she said thoughtfully, and then she nodded.

But shortly afterwards she said:

“But, good Lord, it must be lovely to have money.”

“Well,” said her large-nosed friend, “the most important thing, when all is said and done, is to know what you want with each other.”

He offered Nurse Friis a glass of beer, which she lifted her veil to drink.

But, once more quite heatedly, she suddenly said:

“Frederik, she’ d moved the bed right into the middle of the flat.”

“Aye, that’ll probably be left where it is,” said the large-nosed friend.

∞∞∞

Mrs von Eichbaum was sitting with the general’s wife in front of the well-laid table in the latter’s dining room, where Mrs von Eichbaum’s guests were to eat today. All was ready.

Mrs von Eichbaum looked over the decorations, consisting of crocuses from the estate, and said:

“And then little Brandt is coming. I was out there myself this morning.”

And when the general’s wife made no immediate reply, she said:

“There was no sense in leaving the place empty, and she has been here a good deal during the winter. Besides, she will help a little with the tea.”

“But it is quite reasonable to invite her,” said the general’s wife, “as there is an empty place. And precisely,” she said, stopping just a little too suddenly after having said it, “under present circumstances.”

But Mrs von Eichbaum, appeared not to have heard, for she simply rose and said:

“And now all that remains for Julius is to light the lamps.”

The general’s wife also rose, but over by the door Mrs von Eichbaum stopped.

“And then I would also,” she said, rather more slowly, “like Aline to come a little earlier, for Lotte, (Mrs von Eichbaum performed a gesture with her hands as though she were putting something in place) then it would be as though she is really here.”

The general’s wife nodded as Mrs von Eichbaum opened the door.

“But good heavens my dear, the young ones are coming after dinner.”

They went down the corridor to the general’s wife’s kitchen.

“Those screens, Lotte,” said Mrs von Eichbaum as she went through the kitchen, where some grey screens both concealed and adorned the kitchen table and the stove, “those screens are a blessing.”

They separated, and Mrs von Eichbaum went over to her own small corridor where, in a rather commanding voice, she said to Julius, who had his gloves hanging to dry on a cord over by the stove:

“And Julius, I suppose you will take care of the visiting butler.”

Julius appeared, smelling slightly of petrol, and said he would take care of him.

Mrs von Eichbaum went in. She did not speak to Ane before the dinner.

The three rooms made a quietly comfortable impression, and the coal, which had been put on rather sparingly, was burning gently. Mrs von Eichbaum settled down in the sofa. She was going to make lace until it was time to dress. The bed curtain would soon be finished – within a few weeks. But Kate, that dear child, had really also been an eager lace-maker during the evenings and she did it very competently.

It really was as though those beautiful fingers had quietened down.

The lace bobbins slipped out of Mrs von Eichbaum’s hands, and she became lost in thought. The rooms were beginning to grow darker. Mrs von Eichbaum thought of so many things, of this winter and the many winters before it, of Aline and Kate and Karl. And suddenly she thought of one of the sermons preached by the chaplain to the royal household.

The subject had been faithfulness and a day’s work and the peace that was its reward.

Mrs von Eichbaum suddenly became very emotional, and she took out her handkerchief in the half light. Her eyes had alighted on Mr von Eichbaum’s picture above the desk. He was still visible in the half light.

His widow had folded her hands.

Then she was awakened from her thoughts. She had heard Karl. He opened the door from the dining room and came in.

“Have you dressed, mother?” he asked.

“No, I’ve simply been sitting in my corner for a while,” said Mrs von Eichbaum from the darkness: “But everything is ready.”

“Are we having Christensen then?” said Karl, who had collapsed on to a chair.

“Yes.”

They sat for a while in silence, until Mrs von Eichbaum said:

“And I have invited Miss Brandt.”

She had perhaps expected some comment from the gloom, but the word did not come, and all that was heard by either of them was the ticking of the clock.

“She’s been here a good deal during the winter after all,” came the voice from the sofa.

And Mrs von Eichbaum’s tone changed almost imperceptibly: “And so I have thought of this as a kind of final visit.”

The clock went on ticking perhaps for a minute.

“Will you light the lamp in the corner,” said Mrs von Eichbaum.

Karl lit the lap, and Mrs von Eichbaum rose.

“It is probably about time,” she said, and as she went past her son she suddenly laid her arm on his shoulder:

“I have been sitting here looking at the portrait of your father.”

Karl could feel she was trembling.

And suddenly moved, like her, he said:

“You are so kind, mother.” And he kissed her forehead.

“And now we must dress,” said Mrs von Eichbaum: “Julius has put the seating arrangements on your table.”

Karl stood in his room studying the “seating arrangements”. He felt something of a relief: Ida, who was to have the research student next to her at table, had been placed on the same side of the table as he himself.

Over in the dining room, Julius had finished lighting the lamps when Mourier’s Mr Christensen arrived with his dress shirt covered for protection by a velvet cloth. Julius treated the stranger with a great deal of ceremony and said that he “might perhaps be allowed to explain the situation to him”.

He took Mr Christensen into the general’s wife’s guest room beside the dining room, and Mr Christensen divested himself of his outer garments while looking at the two beds.

“This is where we dish up,” said Julius.

Julius had been thinking that Mr Christensen could pour the wine.

Mr Christensen – who wore gold cufflinks and had three square gold buttons on his shirt front, had served in the guards and during Mr Mourier’s annual visit to Karlsbad had zealously trained in the international style – studied the bottles.

“Of white wine,” said Julius,” we usually pour twelve glasses per bottle.”

Mr Christensen, who looked like a man who would not be surprised by anything, started arranging the bottles with a pair of very well-groomed hands. He wore a broad gold ring on the little finger of his left hand.

Mrs von Eichbaum had dressed and now sprinkled the rooms with “just a drop” of eau de Cologne.

The porter had taken up his post in front of the gate so as to give orders to the carriages. They were to stay on in the street. The “courtyard” between the two parts of the building was too narrow to allow them to turn with ease.

But the first guest came on foot. This was the student who was regularly given a meal here. He always came first because of an excessive fear of arriving too late, and as he divested himself of an array of strange garments he said to Julius:

“I suppose no one has arrived.”

Then, his head slightly bowed, he went in to Mrs von Eichbaum. Mrs von Eichbaum rose and said: “How nice to see you, Henrik; I take it you are reasonably well.” The student seated himself and thanked her. When sitting in the middle of a room, he looked as though he had been put in a corner, and he kept his legs curiously close to each other as though he had them in a foot muff. Hearing someone out in the corridor, Mrs von Eichbaum said:

“Yes, spring is a bad time for ailments of that sort.”

The research student’s “ailment” was a stomach upset.

“But have you had a lambskin rug under your table during the winter?”

Mrs von Eichbaum got up without waiting for an answer. The Schleppegrell family was making its entry into the small drawing room.

“Good lord, my dear,” said Mrs Schleppegrell, who was quite out of breath: “Fancy our being so early and I have been rushing around for hours.”

Mrs Schleppegrell had spent four hours of her day in the custom house, as she immediately told everyone.

The admiral had greeted the research student – in roughly the same way as he would have addressed a ship’s cook – and Mrs Schleppegrell moved across to the general’s wife, who usually came when she had heard the first carriage and had perhaps been hoping it was Aline. Karl, who had come in and was going round bowing and clicking his patent leather heels, had stopped before Fanny, who had a lace veil over an older salmon-coloured robe from a court ball, and, as a contribution to the conversation, Mrs von Eichbaum called across the room:

“I suppose you went to Father Dominique this morning, Fanny? What did he talk about?”

The priest had spoken on the subject of authority.

The admiral, who was truly religious every Sunday and attended service in the Naval Church with the Roskilde hymn book in his pocket, said:

“I don’t like all this enthusiasm for Catholic churches…”

“Good Heavens, Schleppegrell,” said the general’s wife – there was a certain staccato quality to the conversation – “for someone so firm in her faith as Fanny, it can only broaden the mind.”

And Mrs von Eichbaum, rising again, said:

“No, Schleppegrell, I can’t agree with you in that either – we are just talking about Catholics, Emmy – after all Catholics have a breadth of vision that is a source of inspiration.”

And hearing the door to the small drawing room open again, the general’s wife added as Fanny armed herself with her lorgnette:

“After all, there is a quality of permanence to Catholicism.”

For a second, while everyone was speaking, all eyes had lighted on Madame Aline, who had appeared in the doorway.

“Good morning, Aline,” said Mrs von Eichbaum, reaching out both her hands to her, and Mrs Feddersen, dressed in silk, without a word and supported by her walking stick, entered the room. Mrs von Eichbaum remained by her side as her friend shook hands with everybody – while shaking hands, Mrs Falkenberg instinctively stuck out her arm like a child learning to waltz – and the admiral (who was still talking about Catholicism) was heard to say:

“Well, damn it all, I don’t think it’s healthy.”

Mrs Schleppegrell had risen to embrace Aline, while over by the étagère Lieutenant Colonel Falkenberg was heard to say to the student: “Yes, that’s as it is, you go out in the sunshine, and then you find a cold wind blowing.” And the general’s wife, taking Mrs Feddersen’s walking stick, said:

“Sit here, Aline.”

While Mrs Feddersen was seating herself it was as though the group closed around her in the corner of the sofa.

But Mrs von Eichbaum, returning to the door to the small drawing room, said with a laugh:

“Yes, of course, the fine folk are the ones to come late.”

The Mouriers and Miss Rosenfeld had arrived together.

“No, Andreas,” Mrs. Mourier had said at home, “I do not wish to be there to see her arrive.”

Now, not having the courage to go in, she stood in the cabinet whence she could see Aline in the corner of the sofa.

“Good Lord, but she has gone grey,” she said to Fanny, who was standing closest to her, and Mrs Mourier had tears in her eyes.

“Who?” asked Fanny.

Karl, going past the end of the table, suddenly found Ida, behind the others, over in the corner by the rubber plant.

“So this is where you are, Miss Brandt?” he said, clicking his heels, slightly pale.

And Mrs von Eichbaum, who had completely forgotten her, but had extremely sharp ears, came towards her. “Good day, dear Miss Brandt,” she said and introduced her to a couple of those closest to her. Mrs Lindholm suddenly sailed into the small drawing room in front of her distinguished husband who was redolent of eau de Lubin, so there was quite a squeeze, while Kate, in a tone suggesting she was standing at the entrance to the Ark, said, as she tapped Karl’s arm with her fan:

“Well, there are eighteen of us now.”

They were already beginning to move out of the living room, while Mourier continued to shake hands heartily with all, and they went out through the doors, couple after couple. The research student bowed to Ida, whom he had never met before, and they were the last to go in.

But as they went in past the screens, Karl, accompanying Mrs Lindholm, scraped past Ida and, as though there were not sufficient room, put a hand on her waist for a moment.

“We are bringing up the rearguard,” he said.

And Mrs Lindholm, who was the daughter of the Purveyor of Glass to His Majesty, said with a glance at the screens:

“It is so convenient that you live in the same house as your aunt.”

“Yes,” said Karl, who had followed her eye: “The screens are one of the family treasures; I think we inherited them.”

Mrs Lindholm laughed and, as they went along the corridor, raised her skirts a little as though crossing a farmyard. When they reached the dining room, Karl cast a host’s eye over the table. It was as though his face suddenly became older and adopted a certain official look.

They were all seated, the mother at the bottom end of the table, the admiral at the top, with his symbol of knighthood around his neck, alongside Madame Aline.

Julius started to serve the soup as solemnly as though he were bearing a pair of sacrificial vessels.

The conversation centred on dining rooms and on seating.

“We have enough room here, thank God,” said Mr Mourier, who was tying his serviette around his ample chest.

The conversation built up, though still on the subject of dining rooms, and, while Mrs Mourier bent forward to hide Madame Aline, whose hands were trembling so that she was spilling her soup when raising her spoon to her mouth, Mrs von Eichbaum said:

“But there is no dining room to rival that at Korsgaard.”

And Madame Aline, speaking as it were in a deeper tone than the others, said:

“It is cool there at least.”

Miss Rosenfeld had for a moment listened to the timbre of Madame Aline’s voice, and she gave an absent-minded answer to a question put to her by Lindholm:

“Yes, we have a hundred pupils in the school now.”

Which gave the admiral’s wife the occasion to raise her bosom in a rather splendidly low-cut dress as she said:

“Yes, it is incredible; everyone has to have something to do nowadays.”

But the general’s wife said:

“Good Lord, it’s just a result of all this impatience. There is no one these days who is calm enough to sit quietly somewhere and knit a sock.”

Mr Mourier declared that it was an excellent halibut, and while Mr Christensen, who had removed the ring from his little finger before serving, poured the white wine, Lieutenant Colonel Falkenberg caught the word “calm” and said:

“Yes, but what is the reason for that madam? We (and the lieutenant colonel’s voice became sharper), we have two opposition newspapers in our house. If it were up to me, they would never be allowed inside the door.”

Mrs Falkenberg, who only ate a little but was constantly looking up at Madame Aline as though staring at a miracle taking place close to her, said:

“But, Falkenberg, we cannot prevent the children from reading.”

“But we don’t have to discuss things with them,” replied the lieutenant colonel.

Almost as though to place herself between the two of them, Mrs von Eichbaum said:

“Well, Emmy, there I agree with Falkenberg: these everlasting discussions give rise to nothing but disagreement.”

Mourier, who was still eating, was of the general opinion that it was necessary to know what those people were thinking: Damn it all, he reads the “Social Democrat”.

“My dear Mourier,” said Mrs von Eichbaum, who now, with some relief, could hear Madame Aline talking in a brighter voice about her home at Sølyst: “I think that wrong…”

Mrs von Eichbaum meant “for the sake of the example it gives”. It was dreadful the way things were going at the moment:

“Just imagine the other day, I discovered that Ane and Julius – just imagine Ane – subscribe to one of those little newspapers. It is difficult to understand where they get it from.”

Mourier laughed, but the conversation on journalists had now reached Lindholm, who said that those people were sometimes seen in the theatre, and he often wondered about it. “For they are really well dressed,” he said in a tone suggesting he had expected that everyone writing in a newspaper would turn up with holes in their jacket elbows.

The admiral told how he had once had a gentleman from a newspaper on board the “Heligoland”, and he had spoken quite sensibly by Gad, but the admiral’s wife, who had continued with her argument that everyone felt a need to do something, said across the table to Mrs Mourier, speaking of the daughter of one in their circle:

“My dear Mine, didn’t you know – yes, she wants to start as a midwife.”

The research student, who had eaten his fish without sauce because of his diet (he was the son of a famous figure from the middle of the century and had for ten years been busy arranging his father’s “Memoirs” while growing ever thinner), said to Ida:

“It must be a very rewarding task to be able to lessen other people’s suffering.”

“Yes,” said Ida, and her partner’s conversation came to an end again. She had acquired two red patches, one over each eyebrow, as though she had just come straight from a frying pan.

Mrs von Eichbaum looked out across the table with her hostess’ eye.

“Oh, Miss Brandt, dear, would you take that dish and pass it on.”

Ida gave a start. She had only heard all the conversation as an alien hum, and now she heard Karl’s voice addressing Miss Mourier again.

“Yes,” she said, and took the dish.

“Thank you,” said Mrs von Eichbaum.

Mrs Lindholm spoke to Fanny Schleppegrell about the princes: one of them had given her a paperknife. And the conversation in general came to centre on the royal family.

As the conversation became increasingly animated and the admiral had approached as it were a little closer to Mrs Feddersen, the general’s wife and Lieutenant Colonel Falkenberg spoke about a family friend who was the prince’s governor and was preparing him for an examination.

“But he is very constrained,” said the general’s wife, “having to sleep in the room front.”

The lieutenant colonel replied with some words on the excellent example this was and turned to Miss Rosenfeld.

“Well,” he said: “You are naturally a radical like my wife.”

“I don’t understand what you mean by that word,” said Miss Rosenfeld, “but I am actually very fond of the king because I consider him a very noble person.”

Karl and Kate started to laugh at the word “person”, and the general’s wife said to Miss Rosenfeld:

“My dear Betty, that is presumably not the only thing about him.”

But Mrs Falkenberg, who had two red patches on her cheeks – she easily acquired them, as though they were the result of a suppressed or secret agitation – said without addressing her words to anyone in particular, though they were probably intended for the lieutenant colonel:

“But people nevertheless think…”

And the lieutenant colonel replied:

“Yes, they think…they think until they are laid in their graves.”

Mourier, who had heard this, laughed and said:

“You’ re damned right,” and he chinked glasses with the lieutenant colonel.

The word “think” suddenly led Mrs von Eichbaum on to the subject of Martensen’s Ethics. She was reading the book at the moment. She was savouring it slowly.

“But,” she said, “he is not difficult to follow, thanks to the clarity of his style.”

Suddenly, the general’s wife said across the table to Ida (She is sitting as though she doesn’t belong anywhere, Her Ladyship had immediately noticed):

“Is there much sickness this year, Miss Brandt?”

“Yes, a considerable amount,” Ida managed to say. All she was hearing was Karl and Kate’s laughter. They were laughing as though far away. And then she sat keeping an eye on the dishes, almost frantically, as though from a long-standing habit that had suddenly recurred – the habit she had had at Ludvigsbakke.

Mourier, sitting surveying the table, let his eye rest on Ida and leant across to Mrs von Eichbaum:

“Who is she?” he asked in a subdued voice, and Ida heard Mrs von Eichbaum in the midst of a longish explanation say:

“And her father was His Lordship’s land agent. A truly estimable man.”

Ida did not perhaps herself realise she was fighting to prevent tears coming to her eyes.

Up at the other end of the table the conversation was rather more light-hearted. They had continued to talk about “Sølyst”, and Mrs von Eichbaum started to join in, while the admiral’s wife had once more reached the subject of customs and the customs authorities, finally saying to Mrs Lindholm:

“But, my dear, I am hoping to get some pieces of silk home with your mother-in-law and Mary…good heavens, when you put them at the bottom of your case…”

The conversation about “Sølyst” also caught her, and she abandoned the subject of “silks”. Mrs Mourier talked so happily and loudly, for she was so truly delighted because things were thawing out completely with regard to Aline; and Mrs Feddersen sat bending forward with her face fully illuminated.

“Yes, it was a lovely time,” said Mrs Mourier. “Do you remember, Mille?” – she was addressing Mrs von Eichbaum – “When we drove to Marienlyst to dance. That was in Brix’s day. It is ages now since I was there.”

Mrs von Eichbaum said something, suddenly with tears in her eyes: that was where she had met Eichbaum for the first time.

And they all continued to talk about those days: about the soirées and the lieutenants from Kronborg barracks and the trips to Gurre and the hours spent bathing when they drove on a hay cart down to the beach at Hellebæk, and the great expeditions into the forest, when they went to Grib Forest, which was so huge and quiet.

All their faces became quite radiant and they all – including Madame Aline – started to speak in almost the same way.

“Oh yes,” said the admiral’s wife: “We were after all far better people in those days.”

But the admiral, whose cross of chivalry was by now a little skewed and who was sitting thinking that it was damned incredible how Aline had kept her good looks, said:

“Yes, I can remember how it was giving you a swing.”

Karl and Kate had started chatting in French, but suddenly Karl bent forward – they were still talking about Grib Forest over there – and raised his glass:

“Miss Brandt,” he said.

Ida started and scarcely raised her eyes. Then she drank.

But Karl sat there for a moment, quite preoccupied. A sad look had come over his eyes.

“Little Miss Brandt” said Mrs von Eichbaum – her words seemed to come rather hastily – “Perhaps you would be so kind as to pass the jam round.”

But it was Miss Rosenfeld, who replied in a rather loud voice.

“I will see to that, Mrs von Eichbaum.”

Everyone joined in the lively conversation, while the light from the candelabra flickered a little in the warm air. Lindholm entertained the student on the subject of memoir literature. He had to say that memoirs as a whole were his favourite reading, especially when they concerned Napoleon.

“While you are reading memoirs you feel so to speak,” said Lindholm, “that we are all human beings.”

Lieutenant Colonel Falkenberg started to talk about Napoleon’s marshals and Marshal Ney’s tomb, which, he said, was simple as befits a soldier’s grave; while Mrs Lindholm asked Fanny whether she knew how much Mrs Verdier had asked for a trimming of old lace.

Almost everyone was talking more or less at the same time. Miss Rosenfeld compelled Ida to join in. Mourier, who was flushed, put his hand down on Mrs von Eichbaum’s and said:

“It’s damned nice here.”

“Dear Mourier,” said Mrs von Eichbaum with a smile: “It is so easy when you only have your own circle around you.”

They were finished with the grouse, which was a present from Mrs Mourier, and Mr Christensen poured the port.

Up at Madame Aline’s end of the table, they were still talking about times at Sølyst, when Mrs Mourier said:

“We must all get together again at Ludvigsbakke.”

And Mourier, hearing this, said happily:

“Aye, that’s right, damn it, you’ re all welcome when we get it built. I think the last wall in the old place is due to come down today.”

The word Ludvigsbakke had awakened Ida, but she did not realise that, leaning forward, pale, she was staring directly into Mr Mourier’s face.

“The old walls have otherwise been tough,” said Mourier. “But now we’ll be able to use the old bricks for the new stables.”

“But the old house was nice after all,” said Mrs von Eichbaum.

“Of course it was nice,” said Mourier quietly. “But the younger generation are never satisfied.”

“But you spoil Kate,” said the general’s wife.

“No,” Kate suddenly broke in with a kind of vulgar emphasis on the word: “One could not possibly have moved into those old buildings.”

Kate suddenly became the central figure at the table as they talked about the new rooms, the staircase, the billiard room and the bathrooms and the gazebo and the terraces, for which the granite vases were to be carved in Italy.

Mrs Lindholm was extremely interested and bent forward over the table to ask a question while Fanny withdrew her thin bust and looked as though she were smelling at concentrated vinegar, and Kate continued to talk about banisters and parquet floors and a room in which to drink tea as they did in England.

The conversation grew in intensity and Mrs Mourier said to the general’s wife: “Yes, people want more, you know,” looking with loving admiration down at her daughter while Karl started telling Lindholm all about the stables, eagerly and deeply engaged, explaining that they were being constructed to the English pattern, with the horses free in their stalls, large rooms, with marble floors and water conduits.

“Wonderful, you know,” said Karl. “I have done the drawings myself.”

But Kate told Mrs Lindholm about the bedrooms, all of which were to face north, for you had to be able to sleep in a cool room.

Ida was not aware that Julius had offered her ice cream and that she had some on her plate.

But the two young people were speaking ever more eagerly because Kate’s father was teasing her, and Colonel Falkenberg started to criticise the stalls in the stables. Somewhat excited by the heat and the wine, they both spoke at the same time, each in a different direction, Kate down to her father and Karl up to the colonel concerning bedrooms and horses and central heating and stalls, so much so that it sounded like a duet. Even Mrs Feddersen became caught by the conversation and leaned forward, and some brief, quick glints came into her grey eyes at the mention of all that comfort and the marble bathtubs.

And suddenly Mrs Mourier nodded to Mrs von Eichbaum with tears in her kind eyes.

But Mourier took off his napkin and said:

“Aye, the young ones must have their fling.”

When things had quietened down a little, Miss Rosenfeld said in a low voice:

“But, you know, there were so many lovely memories from the old house.”

Karl heard the words and suddenly he stopped his explanations and made no reply to Lindholm.

Mrs Falkenberg sat trying to catch Falkenberg’s eye, but the lieutenant colonel was enjoying a biscuit and talking to the admiral about remounts.

Mrs von Eichbaum said that she thought it was time to leave the table now.

Ida had not heard this, and she did not rise until the research student offered her his arm. As though only half awake she sat for a moment and surveyed the table with the remains of the meal and the slightly smoking candelabra and then her own plate at the table. The blood red ice cream had melted and turned into some coloured, dirty water in her bowl.

The admiral made to hand Mrs Aline Feddersen her stick. But Madame Aline thought she could manage without it. And, supported by the admiral, whose enamel cross shone in the light from the Eichbaum candelabra, she walked, with some difficulty but nevertheless upright among the other couples, past the screens over to Mrs von Eichbaum’s apartment, where Mr Christensen started to offer them coffee.

Ladies and gentlemen were speaking in loud voices in groups here and there. Mrs Mourier was standing with Mrs von Eichbaum and holding her dry hands in her own.

“That was delightful,” she said: “I don’t know anyone who understands the art as you do.”

Mrs Mourier omitted to explain what she really meant by the art, or perhaps she was not even aware of it herself.

But Mrs von Eichbaum replied:

“My dear Vilhelmine, it all takes care of itself.”

“Yes, when you understand these things,” said Mrs Mourier.

Ida had quite mechanically – or perhaps as a kind of unconscious defence – taken sugar and cream and was gliding around offering them to the guests. Now she reached Mrs Mourier.

“Ah, Miss Brandt, you are going around as though you were the daughter in the house.”

“Yes,” said Ida, and glided on.

“I think she is rather nice, you know,” said Mrs Mourier, who had an indeterminate feeling of sympathy, perhaps on account of the strangely old-maidish quality that had come over Ida’s personality. It was as though the yellow dress was too big for her so that there was no real living body in it, and her waved hair over her small forehead looked strangely like a wig or as though it had been glued on.

“Good Lord, my dear, wonderful,” said Mrs von Eichbaum: “And one of those rare people who always know their place.”

The gentlemen had gone into Karl’s room to smoke, all except the admiral, who was taking care of his health by going for his usual walk up the road. Lindholm said something to the effect that Copenhagen was a damned fine capital city, a city in which it was impossible to get a decent shirt in the entire place.

But Mourier had met Karl in the entrance hall.

“I have really been going to write to you for some time but, you see, well, I know what it costs for a young man to accompany young ladies throughout the winter. But now (Mr. Mourier was quite embarrassed) we are going to make a deposit in the local branch and that is all settled, so you need only go across and draw it.”

“Oh, don’t mention it,” he concluded brusquely. Karl had turned blood red, and Mr Mourier turned away, much relieved.

“Should we not rather move into the dining room?” he said: “The air’s a damned sight better in there, and it’s nice to be away from the ladies while we have coffee. ”

Before long, the gentlemen broke up and went into the general’s wife’s dining room, where Mr Christensen and Julius were clearing the table.

Mr Christensen had acquired something of a twitch in his nose on reaching Mrs Feddersen’s place, where her perfume could still be detected.

“I must say she is still an imposing lady,” he had said to Julius.

A certain silence had come over the ladies after the coffee and now the gentlemen had gone. The admiral’s wife was half asleep on the sofa after the morning’s exertions (and in addition she always ate a great deal when she was out), but in the corner beneath the gas light there was a group talking about books and reading. Mrs Falkenberg, who was nervously rubbing one cheek with her clenched fist while looking up in the air, said:

“But reading so often makes one restless.”

At which, Mrs Eichbaum, over by the étagère, speaking to Mrs Lindholm about Mary, said:

“My dear Emmy, one reads in order to rest.”

But Mrs Falkenberg, still rubbing her cheek, said quietly:

“But surely also to get to know life?”

“I do not think that is often what one finds in books,” said Miss Rosenfeld.

The general’s wife, who had persuaded Ida to sit on the edge of a sofa, seemed to interrupt and said:

“Dear Miss Brandt, you have a task to fulfil.” And she gently raised Ida’s arm. It was so strangely lifeless as it fell back on the marble table, or perhaps it was as though it had been crushed or was out of joint, that the general’s wife suddenly looked at her.

“But of course, it makes demands on you,” she said in a different voice.

The admiral’s wife, who had awaken and heard they were talking about reading, said from over in the sofa:

“But, my dears, you have to go through the lot to keep up. Fanny and I read ourselves to sleep every evening.”

In the small drawing room, Mrs Feddersen had settled down for a moment. Perhaps she was rather tired, for she had closed her eyes and was supporting her head against the wall. She was directly in the light, and the red links of pearls falling down on her bosom almost looked like blood flowing down into her lap. She had not noticed Mrs Mourier coming and sitting down beside her.

“I have been thinking such a lot about you,” said Mrs Mourier, quietly taking hold of Madame Aline’s hand.

Mrs von Eichbaum had the windows in the dining room opened as they already were over in the general’s wife’s apartment. The gentlemen’s laughter and Mr Mourier’s voice could be heard over in Mrs von Eichbaum’s rooms, as though the entire house was one single source of festivity harmonising with the brightly lit courtyard. The front-door bell rang and Julius went to open it. It was the younger members of the family who were starting to arrive, girls in bright dresses and young gentlemen in freshly starched shirts, bowing in turn to the older guests.

A small pianist, beardless and slightly flustered and asking for a cushion for his chair, finally sat down at the piano, and a couple of young people started to dance on the dining room floor, while the gentlemen’s laughter mingled with the music.

Mrs von Eichbaum went to and fro. Now she came from over in the gentlemen’s room into her own kitchen:

“Julius.”

Julius came, followed by Mr Christensen, who was in his shirt sleeves with stiff cuffs.

“Julius, would you please put the screens in place,” said Mrs von Eichbaum as she passed by.

Mr Mourier had overturned one of them on his way through the kitchen.

Just at the door to her own dining room Mrs von Eichbaum met Ida.

“My dear Miss Brandt,” she said, rather flustered: “I am so worried about cups, whether there are sufficient, because the young people need to have some tea. Would you be so kind as to make sure…”

Ida’s words were lost in the happy music, and Mrs von Eichbaum only saw that she bowed her head and went.

Out in the kitchen, she took an apron (there are drunken people who do nothing but sensible things in this way, quite quietly, and afterwards are unable to remember what they have done) and she tied it on. In the gaslight, she washed cup after cup.

Mrs Mourier was standing in the doorway to the living room, watching the young people dancing. Now Karl, who had actually been drinking rather heavily, had come over into these rooms and was dancing with Kate.

“Oh it is lovely to see so much happiness,” said Mrs Mourier, putting her arm in under Mrs von Eichbaum’s. And standing side by side, they watched their children.

There came sounds of laughter and noise from the gentlemen’s room when the music stopped. The admiral had come home, and a couple of the young people had also gone over there unnoticed.

At the middle of the table, the colonel was talking about a sense of morality and the defence forces.

Lindholm had asked the research student who the little lady really was that he had sat next to at table, and the student had explained and said:

“Actually, I think she is a very cultured young lady. But – ” and the student made some strange movements with his hands – “one sits there, sir, and says to oneself that such a person could be a source of infection.”

The lieutenant colonel remained standing at the middle of the table, speaking ever more loudly about His Excellency the Minister of War as the central figure in the entire patriotic movement when the admiral, who along with Mr Mourier had sat looking as though he were listening, and who perhaps was a little tired of his colleague, said to Mourier:

“But why did you refuse the opportunity of going into parliament?”

“Well,” said Mourier, wriggling slightly: “I don’t really know, damn it. I’m a natural conservative of course,” he repeated. “But you see, admiral, I lack the ability to be outraged, confound it, and that ability is necessary in public life in this country.”

“Ah,” said the admiral: “Thank God there is not so much outrage at sea.”

And laughing merrily as they drank a glass of liqueur, the two gentlemen started walking up and down the floor, talking about Madame Aline.

“Aye,” said Mourier,” I agree with my wife that that kind of thing doesn’t happen provided the husband remains strong and healthy.”

But the admiral scratched his head and said:

“We-ell, but I remember up at Sølyst when I used to give them a swing as little girls, she had a way of getting up in the swing and gasping for breath.”

“No,” and the admiral looked almost satisfied, “she’s one of the restless kind.”

Over in Mrs von Eichbaum’s apartment the piano could be heard again, and Lindholm, standing by the window looking at the dancers, said to Karl von Eichbaum, who had come across for a fresh glass of liqueur:

“I say, Eichbaum, shouldn’t we go for a stroll?”

But the lieutenant colonel suddenly said to Mr Mourier:

“But, my dear Mourier, how is it you have never been given a decoration?”

“Because my wife refuses,” said Mourier.

Ida had returned and was sitting beside Miss Rosenfeld when Karl came over to her. He was flushed and his voice was rather unsteady.

“Miss Brandt,” he said, “we must have a dance.”

Ida made no reply, and she rose with difficulty. Karl thought she felt quite thin in his arms.

They only danced round the room a single time. “Thank you,” said Ida, and her lifeless hands failed to sense the almost desperate pressure with which he held them.

“She ought to go in and smooth her hair down,” said young Falkenberg when Karl took Ida back inside.

Miss Rosenfeld had risen and Ida stood beside her.

Then Miss Rosenfeld took her hand:

“My dear Ida, what on earth do you want here?”

Perhaps Ida did not understand these words, but nevertheless she said:

“I am going home now.”

She saw no one as she went through the rooms, where the music had ceased, and she did not know that she suddenly curtsied to Mrs von Eichbaum almost as though she were a child, and she managed to say:

“I have to get up early.”

There was no one in the corridor, and she took her own coat. Nothing hurt her except the light. That hurt her eyes. She took a couple of steps until she was standing on the threshold of Karl’s room.

Then she turned and left.

It was blowing and raining, but she did not notice. She quickly made her way against the wind. She had not heard a voice addressing her.

It was Knuth, who came along with another officer in uniform.

“Hello, is it you, Miss Brandt,” he said. “Are you walking home in this weather?”

And when he suddenly saw her pale face, he said:

“Are you not well? I’ll get a carriage for you.”

Ida made no reply, but Knuth simply ran while Ida remained standing there. There was something in his voice that softened the blood around her congealed heart.

The carriage came and Knuth helped her in.

“Thank you,” she said, and they exchanged no further words.

∞∞∞

Karl had reached the general’s wife’s dining room. He took another glass of liqueur, while Lindholm preferred a mineral water.

Karl sat staring into the almost finished candles in a candelabrum.

“Living’s damned expensive,” he said suddenly.

Lindholm laughed and said:

“Well, but you’ll be able to afford it, Eichbaum.”

But Karl probably did not hear this, for he went on staring into the candles until he clicked his tongue and said:

“But I suppose one is of benefit to society.”

The admiral and Mr Mourier broke up and went down through the corridor and the kitchen, where the admiral chanced to knock over a screen.

“What rubbish to have in the kitchen,” he said.

“But they hide the stove,” laughed Mr Mourier.

Over in the living room, the rather tired older ladies had settled down around Mrs von Eichbaum’s bed curtain.

“Yes,” said Mrs von Eichbaum: “all that is needed now are the bows. But Kate has promised me to tie them.”

The young people were dancing a quadrille, and the ladies and gentlemen wound almost wildly around. The lieutenant colonel’s voice could once be heard over the music. He was talking about tradition.

∞∞∞

Ida opened and closed gates and doors so quietly.

But as she passed the door on the first floor, Dr Quam was just opening it.

“Is it you?” he said. “Oh, what a night, two attempted suicides, and they have both had to be pumped out.”

Petersen had heard Dr Quam speaking to Ida, and she put her head out:

“Och, have you had a good time?” she said, pulling Ida into the ward, where Nurse Roed was sitting under the gas lamp eating her dinner.

There were loud voices from in the women’s ward, and from the main ward came the sound of the patients’ groans.

“Ach, ach,” said Nurse Petersen, who had to run back and forth: “They are restless tonight.”

Dr Quam looked in the direction of Ward A and asked Nurse Roed:

“Is he not in bed?”

“No.”

“And he’s being sent off tomorrow?”

“Yes.”

Dr Quam opened the door leading in.

The gentleman in Ward A was sitting up on the windowsill, with the window open, and looking out into the gale. The rain had passed and the stars were out again.

“Are you sitting there?” said Dr Quam. “That is rather against the rules.”

The gentleman in Ward A turned his head half way, stared at the doctor through his heavy eyelids and said:

“I am sitting here in defiance of the regulations.”

And as though he was talking to himself, he said in that strange voice of his that always sounded as though it was laden with sympathy:

“I am looking at the stars. The stars that are so high in the heavens.”

He was silent for a moment.

“When I was young, I looked at them because I wanted to pull them down. Now I look at them to learn patience.”

Dr Quam had come closer. From where he was, down on the floor, he looked up at the gentleman from Ward A: this face registered something of great sorrow.

Then the sick man looked down from the windowsill:

“But let us bow to the laws,” he said and closed the shutters.

Quam remained standing there.

“Yes, but who wrote the laws?”

The gentleman from Ward A smiled:

“Was it not the prof?” he said.

But his fleeting smile disappeared, and he asked:

“Am I to go tomorrow?”

“Yes, tomorrow morning.”

The gentleman from Ward A stared ahead for a moment.

Then he shrugged his shoulders:

“Well, perhaps that is a good thing, doctor.”

And as he fixed his eyes on Quam, he said with a new smile that had the character of a farewell:

“Your world does not tempt me.”

Quam was suddenly moved and said in a rather gentler voice:

“But life has to be lived.”

“Yes,” said the gentleman from Ward A, “by those they don’t lock up.”

“Let me say goodbye now,” he said, opening the door.

Outside, Sister Koch from the women’s ward had come in to fetch Dr Quam.

Ida was standing on the same spot, near the door, leaning against a wall. Her waved hair had been ruined by the rain.

The gentleman from Ward A shook hands with each of them.

“Goodbye,” he said.

Finally, he took Ida’s hand, and then he raised his eyes.

“Goodbye.”

Then he went in again and closed his door.

There was silence for a moment after he had gone. Then Nurse Koch looked at Ida who was standing on the same spot.

“So the party is over, I suppose.”

And Quam, suddenly looking at her, said:

“Yes, Nurse Brandt. I think you need to sleep it off.”

The keys could be heard rattling in the door. Dr Quam and Sister Koch went in to the women’s ward.

“Good night,” said Ida gently.

There was the rattle of keys again. Ida Brandt was going up to her room.

The cries from the restless patients could be heard coming up through the pavilion, as though they were coming from far, far down, from under the ground.