THE OLD ROOM

BY CARL EWALD AUTHOR OF “MY LITTLE BOY,” “TWO-LEGS,” “THE SPIDER AND OTHER TALES,” ETC.

TRANSLATED FROM THE DANISH BY ALEXANDER TEIXEIRA DE MATTOS

CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS NEW YORK :: :: :: :: :: 1908

Copyright, 1908, by CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS Sole Authorized Translation Published March, 1908

THE AUTHOR’S DEDICATION OF THE SECOND EDITION

NOW THAT I AM PUBLISHING, UNDER MY OWN NAME, A NEW EDITION OF THIS BOOK, THE FIRST TO WIN ME FRIENDS IN ANY NUMBER, I DEDICATE IT, GRATEFULLY AND RESPECTFULLY, TO FRU AGNES HENNINGSEN, TO WHOM MY ART OWES MORE THAN TO ANY.

[vi]

TRANSLATOR’S NOTE

The two parts forming this story are published separately in Denmark; and Part I, which I have called Cordt, was first issued anonymously as The Old Room, with a preface intended to convey the idea that the work had been written by the heroine of the story. When Part II appeared, under the title of Cordt’s Son, in which Fru Adelheid has returned to the old house and the old room, Carl Ewald suppressed this preface. It is so beautiful that it were unfair to deprive the author’s American readers of the joy of it. The German translator prints it at the end of his version, by way of an appendix; I prefer to give it here:

[x]

PREFACE TO THE FIRST (ANONYMOUS) DANISH EDITION I who write this book am still young and fair to look upon and rich and very sad. My youth and my beauty fill me with horror and I know not what to do with the wealth which I possess. Daily my sorrow sings the same song in my ears. It rustles in the folds of my train; it sighs in the fragrant flowers at my breast. Through the long nights I sit on the edge of my bed thrusting away the dream that comes with glaring eyes. Now what I have written is a lie. When I wrote it, it was the truth: now, it is a lie. When I saw it set down on paper, I knew that my youth was my strength and my right; that, if I were ugly, I could not live; and that, if I were poor, I should die. And now I am glad; and there is nothing on earth but my gladness. I am in this case. But I let the words stand as I wrote them, for I know that the time will come—and that soon—when all of them will be true again ... until they once more become a lie. [xi]And so my book will grow, through still and stormy times, until the day comes when I am again what I now am.

But that, too, is itself a lie. For I was always the same. But there came a moment at which HE saw me as I am; and there my book will end. For after that there was but little that differed from the stories in other books and less still that I remember. Be that as it may, it is true that the world contains a room in which the radiant light of happiness flamed up before my eyes. And the light went out and the door closed upon me. And, if any one, from what I have here written, comes to think me a great and abject sinner, then he is indeed right. But, if he thinks that I have been cast off by the world, then he is at fault. For I go with head erect and peacefully along the road that others go; and I am welcome among the best. The lights in the high hall stream down upon my hair; the men honour me with their desire, the women with their ill-will. There lives only one who knows my guilt and he has condemned me. [xii]For it was HE that stayed in the room where the light burns. And she that went out into the street was I.

I am indebted to the collaboration of my friend Mr. Osman Edwards—one of the foremost linguists in Europe—for his translation of the six songs, in which he has carefully preserved both the sense and the exquisite rhythm, and also for many suggestions regarding the accurate solution of such difficulties as occurred in the prose text.

Alexander Teixeira de Mattos.

Chelsea, England, 10 December, 1907.

PART I CORDT

[2]

PART I CORDT

CHAPTER I

THE room looks out upon the square, which is so big and so fashionable that there is no business done in it.

By day there is a sound of carriages, but at a distance; for the house that contains the room is thrust a long way back and its walls are as thick as the walls of a castle. In the evening, the square shines with a thousand lights; at night, you can hear the rippling of the fountain, which never begins and never stops, cries, no one knowing what they are, and solitary steps that approach and retreat again.

[4]The room is built high over the square. Its window is a door and leads to a balcony filled with red flowers. When the wind lashes them, their petals fly right over into the basin of the fountain and rock upon the water.

The room is long and deep.

Where the window is, the light streams in through the wide, stained-glass panes; but, inside, where the fireplace rises to the ceiling, it is always dark.

No one has ever seen the curtain drawn before the window. But, even if the sun could shine right into the room, it would never have seen a human being there. By day, the room is dead.

It is placed so strangely in the house that it seems to form no part of it. The life of every day passes outside it; and, even when the whole house is lighted up and the horses paw the ground in the gateway and glasses clink and music sounds[5] in the great drawing-room, the door of the room remains constantly closed.

No one has ever crossed its threshold but the master of the house and his wife and the oldest servant in their employ.

For the room is the soul of the house and its tradition and its secret chamber.

It was destined for this purpose long ago by the man who built the house; and so cunningly did he contrive it that no one could guess that it was there, unless he knew of it. Then, when the work was ended, he sealed the architect’s tongue with a solemn oath and a heavy fee and the man kept his sworn word.

And the builder of the house decorated the room as richly as was possible according to the means of those days, with gilt and figured leather hangings and stained-glass window-panes and costly carpets from the East. But he placed no furniture in it until the very last.[6] Then he brought two splendid armchairs which he had had made for him in Milan.

They were odd-looking chairs. They glided so smoothly over the floor that a child could move them, and were so large that people became quite small when they sat in them. Their woodwork was carved into birds and animals, whose faces grinned strangely in the dark but ceased to do so when the lights were lit.

When everything was thus ordered for the best, he called an old servant, who had been in the house since he was a child, gave him a key of the room and told him to care for it faithfully. Every evening, when it grew dusk, he was to light the candles on the mantelpiece and he was to do this even if he knew that his master was travelling in distant lands. Every morning, he was to adjust the room with his own hands.[7] None but himself was ever to cross the threshold.

On the evening of the day when he took possession of his house, the master, having first shown her all its other beauties, brought his wife to the room.

She looked round in wonder. But he made her sit in one of the great chairs, seated himself in the other and spoke to her in these words:

“Sweetheart, this room is for you and me and for none other in the world. I have placed it in the most secluded part of the house, far from the counting-house, where we work, from the passages, along which our servants go, and from the drawing-room, where we receive our guests, ay, even from our marriage-bed, where you will sleep by my side.”

She took his hand and kissed it and looked at him.

“It shall be the temple of our marriage,[8] hallowed by our love, which is greater than anything that we know. Here we will pray to Him Who gave us to each other. Here we will talk gladly and earnestly every evening when our hearts impel us to. And, when we come to die, our son shall bring his wife here and they shall do as we did.”

Thereupon he wrote down in a document how all this had happened and they both sealed it with their names. He hid the document in a secret recess in the wall. And, when all this was accomplished, they fell upon their knees and, folding their hands together, offered a simple prayer to God before they went to rest.

These two are long since dead. But their son complied with their will and his son after him and so on and so forth until the present day.

And, however riches might increase or diminish with the varying fortunes of the[9] times, the old house in the square continued in the possession of the family. For he who was its head always lived in such a way that he kept his ancestral home.

The room stood untouched, as was appointed, and the document grew old and yellow in the secret recess in the wall. Once only in the time of each master of the house was it taken out; and that was on the evening when he first brought his young wife to the secret chamber. Then they wrote their names upon it and put it away again.

But it became the custom for each of them that took lawful possession of the room to adorn it with a piece of furniture after his own taste and heart. And they were strange objects that, in the course of time, gathered round the two great, strange chairs.

There was one of the owners of the house who was kindly and cheerful to the[10] end. He placed in the room, in his wife’s honor, a costly spinning-wheel, richly inlaid, which whirred merrily every evening for many a good year and which stood as it was, with thread upon the spindle.

There was one whose thoughts were always roaming and never at rest and whose intellect was obscured before he died. He presented the room with an ingenious representation of the heavenly system. When a spring was pressed, the spheres lit up and ran their eternal courses; and he sat and played with the stars to his last day.

There was another whose wife dreaded the deep silence of the room and never entered it but once. He waited for five years and then had a doll made, a woman, life-size and beautifully dressed. He put it on a chair in the window, so that the light fell on its vacant face. But his son, who loved his mother, drew the doll back, so that it was hidden in the curtain.

[11]There was one whose wife was in the habit of singing when she was sad, as she often was. She brought a spinet, with slender, beautiful notes, which sang like a mother singing her child to sleep. In time, its sound grew very thin. When it was played upon in the room at night, it sounded over the silent square like a humming in the air; and none that passed knew what it was.

There was also one who had his wife’s portrait painted and hung the picture on the wall. He broke his wedding-vows and his grandson took the picture down. But, where it had been, a light stain remained that could not be removed.

The man who was master of the house at the time when that happened which is related in this book had brought nothing as yet. But his wife had set up a thing that had caught her eye more than all that she had seen in the way of art on her[12] long travels. This was a jar of a preposterous shape, large and bright and of a pale tint. On one side was the figure of a naked man writhing through thorns. It stood on a stone pedestal hewn from a rock near Jerusalem.

That was how the room was.

Each evening, when it grew dark, the oldest servant in the house lit the candles on the mantelpiece. Each morning, before any one was awake, he cleaned the room with his own hands and watered the red flowers on the balcony. When winter came, he strewed bread-crumbs for the sparrows that gathered on the baluster and twittered.

But the name of him that owned the house was Cordt. And his wife was Fru Adelheid.

CHAPTER II

Cordt sat in one of the armchairs by the chimney, reading.

He was in evening clothes and held his crush-hat and his gloves on his knees. He turned the pages quickly. Every moment, he swept his thick hair from his forehead; every moment, he looked at Fru Adelheid, who was walking up and down the floor with her hands behind her back.

She was very tall and slender. Her face was as white as her white gown. Her mouth was very red, her eyes looked large and strange. She wore flowers in her hair and at her waist.

“You are not reading, Cordt,” she said; but she passed with her back to him.

He closed the book and laid it aside.[14] Then he moved the chair so as to turn his face towards her. His eyes were larger than hers and steadier, his mouth firmer.

“How beautiful you are!” he said.

She laughed softly and took his hand and kissed it:

“How charming of you!” she said.

She began to walk again. He stretched out his legs and lay with his head back in the chair, but followed her all the time with his eyes. Now and again, she stopped, smoothed her gown, let her fingers stray over the keys of the spinet and then went out on the balcony through the open door. He could not see her from where he was sitting, but the white train of her dress lay inside the room and he looked at that.

Then she returned, sat on the arm of the other chair and swung her foot to and fro.

“I do not like you to be in good spirits, Adelheid,” he said.

[15]Her eyes shone. She looked at the fireplace, where a log lay glowing:

“You should drink a glass of wine, Cordt.”

“I do not care for wine.”

“No more do I. But I like its exhilaration. It makes one so light-hearted. Then everything becomes so charming.”

“Have you been drinking?”

“But, Cordt ... what makes you ask that?”

“Because you are so light-hearted and I so charming.”

She went up to him and laid her cheek against his hair:

“Now don’t spoil it for me,” she said. “You can, with a single word, and that would be a great, great sin. You say I am pretty; and I am glad because you think so and because I am going out with you and because you are handsome and belong to me. We shall be far from each[16] other and close together for all that. We shall nod to each other, as we always do, and know what we know.”

He released himself from her gently:

“Sit down a little,” he said, “and talk to me.”

She kissed him and sat down in the chair and then and there forgot her despondency. Her eyes shone as before. He raked out the embers and threw a log upon them. They sat and watched it catch fire and saw the smoke surround it and rise up. Her foot tapped the carpet; he shaded his eyes with his hand and pursued his thoughts:

“In my first year at the university,” he said, “there were five of us who were chums and we used to meet every Saturday evening. It was generally at my rooms, for I could best afford it. We used to sit and drink wine until bright daylight and then take one another home.”

[17]“You must have drunk a great deal.”

“I don’t know. Perhaps we did. We talked so loud and deep. The wine made us feel bigger, braver and cleverer. Next day, we were quite different, more reserved and cool. But we could look one another boldly in the face, for we had nothing to repent of. It did not matter if we had allowed ourselves to be carried away. We knew one another so well and trusted one another.”

She sat and looked at him as he spoke, but said nothing. Lost in thought, he continued to throw logs on the fire until she took one out of his hand and put it aside:

“You’ll set the house on fire!”

“One should never drink wine with strangers,” he said. “You see, it is so degrading to be stripped bare. And that is just what happens.”

[18]“You say that as if it meant getting drunk.”

He paid no attention to her words, but went on:

“One unbuttons one’s self, one reveals one’s self. Look at your eyes and your smile. I have felt it in my own eyes: hundreds of times, I have suddenly seen them all naked together round the table.”

“In good company, Cordt?”

“Where else?”

“I don’t understand that,” she said.

“I do not know the people whom you speak of.”

“You will be with them this evening, Adelheid.”

She shrugged her shoulders discontentedly and tapped her foot on the carpet.

“Adelheid.”

She looked at him and her eyes were dark and angry. He took her hand and held it fast in his:

“I have seen it in eyes that were looking at you, Adelheid.”

[19]She drew her hand away:

“This is hideous, Cordt!”

She rose and went to the balcony-door. He looked after her and his eyes gleamed:

“Adelheid.”

She stood with her back to him, leaning against the window-frame, and buttoned her gloves. He leant forward and gripped the arms of his chair with his hands:

“I have seen it in your eyes, Adelheid.”

She did not move, uttered not a word. When she had finished buttoning her gloves, she gathered up her train and went out on the balcony.

The May air was cold and she shivered in her thin gown. The lamps shone dimly through the mist; many carriages drove across the square. She could hear the tinkling of the harness-bells in the gateway; the footman was tramping up and down below.

[20]She turned and stood at the window and looked at Cordt. He had moved his chair round towards the fireplace. She could see nothing of him but one shoulder and arm, his thick hair and his legs.

“The carriage is there,” she said.

He rose and went to her.

“You must not be angry with me,” he said, gently. “I am out of sorts.”

“Are you ill?”

“Yes ... perhaps.... No, not that.”

“Well, for all that I care, we can stay at home. You have spoilt my pleasure.”

“Have I?”

“Of course you have. It was for you I made myself look so nice ... it was with you I wanted to go out.”

“Was it?”

He took her hand and drew her to the fire:

“Sit down, Adelheid ... there ... only for a minute. Shall we stay at home to-night[21] ... get some wine ... have a party of our own...?”

“Yes ... you’re in such a festive mood!”

“Now be good, Adelheid. You are my only dissipation.... You know you are ... there have been hundreds of delightful days to prove it. If you are of my mind to-night, we will do this. And you will be beautiful for me and I for you and our eyes will sparkle together.”

She did not look at him, but shook her head:

“I will stay at home, if you wish it,” she said.

They sat silent. The candles on the mantelpiece flickered and guttered in the draught.

“It is strange,” he said. “Do you remember the evening in London, Adelheid, when we were to go to that great[22] ball? Then I begged you to stay at home and you did and you were glad.”

She lay far back in her chair, with her arms behind her neck:

“I was not glad that evening,” she said.

He raised his head and listened.

“I submitted, Cordt, but I was not glad to. I was acting a part, for your sake.”

She met his eyes. Hers were still and sad and she did not remove them while she spoke:

“I was wicked, Cordt. I hated you. I told you a lie. I was dancing at the ball, hour after hour, while I sat and held your hand and laughed so gaily.”

She slipped from her chair and crouched before him, with her hands folded round his knee and her eyes fixed humbly on his face:

“Do not look at me so strangely, Cordt.[23] That is how I am. I love you. But I cannot live without the others ... without having them to see it, to see my happiness. I want to be pretty and I want them to fall in love with me and I want to belong to you. I only care to be pretty if I am loved. Don’t look like that, Cordt.”

She clung to him with eyes of entreaty.

“I am not really wicked, Cordt ... am I? I was with our little baby day and night when he was ill ... wasn’t I, Cordt?”

“Yes,” he said.

“Yes ... I was. But I cannot always be quiet.”

He lifted her from her chair and crossed the room with his arm round her waist. They went out on the balcony. A carriage came across the square at a brisk trot, followed soon after by a multitude of others. They came from the streets[24] all round, but drove away in the same direction and disappeared round a street-corner. The horses’ hoofs clattered against the pavement, the lamps shone on the glittering carriages, coachmen and footmen sat stiff and black on their boxes.