heggen was sitting at the outer side of the marble table, taking no part in the conversation; now and then he cast a glance at jenny, who sat pressed into the corner, with a whisky and soda before her. she was chatting very merrily with a young swedish lady across the table, without taking the slightest notice of her neighbours, dr. broager and the little danish artist loulou schulin, who both tried to draw her attention. heggen saw that she had had too much to drink again. a company of scandinavians and a couple of germans had met in a wine shop, and were finishing the night in the inmost corner of a somewhat dingy café. they were all of them more or less affected by what they had drunk, and very much opposed to the request of the landlord that they should leave, as it was past time for locking up and he would be fined two hundred lire.
[257]
gunnar heggen was the only one who would have liked the symposium to come to an end; he was the only sober one, and in a bad temper.
dr. broager was constantly applying his black moustache to jenny’s hand; when she pulled it away he tried to kiss her bare arm. he had succeeded in placing his arm behind her and they were squeezed so tight in the corner that it was useless to try and get away from him. her resistance was, to tell the truth, somewhat lame, and she laughed without offence at his boldness.
“ugh!” said loulou, shrugging her shoulders. “how can you stand it? don’t you think he is disgusting, jenny?”
“yes, i do, but don’t you see that he is exactly like a blue-bottle?—it is useless trying to drive him away. ugh! stop it, doctor!”
“ugh!” said loulou again. “how can you stand that man?”
“never mind. i can wash myself with soap when i get home.”
loulou schulin leaned against jenny, stroking her arms. “now i will take care of these poor, beautiful hands. look!” she lifted one of them to be admired by the company round the table. “isn’t it lovely?” and, loosening the green motor veil from her hat, she wrapped it round jenny’s arms and hands. “in a mosquito net, you see,” she said, thrusting out a small tongue swiftly at broager.
jenny sat an instant with her arms and hands enveloped in the green veil before undoing it and putting on her coat and gloves.
broager leaned back with eyes half closed, and miss schulin raised her glass: “your health, mr. heggen.”
he pretended not to hear, but when she repeated her words he seized his glass: “pardon—i did not see”—and, after taking a sip, looked away again.
[258]
one or two people in the company smiled. heggen and miss winge lived next door to each other on the top floor of a house somewhere between babuino and corso; intimate relations between them seemed therefore to be a matter of course. as to miss schulin, she had been married to a norwegian author, but after a year or so of married bliss had left him and the child, gone out into the world under her maiden name as “miss,” and calling herself an artist.
the landlord came up once more to the company, urgently soliciting their departure; the two waiters put out the gas at the farther end of the room and stood waiting by the table, so there was nothing else to be done but pay and leave the place.
heggen was one of the last as they came out into the square. by the light of the moon he saw miss schulin taking jenny’s arm, both running towards a cab, which some of the others were storming. he ran in the same direction and heard jenny calling out: “you know, the one in via paneperna,” just as she jumped into the already filled cab and fell into somebody’s lap.
but some ladies wanted to get out and others to get in—people kept on jumping out from one door and in at another, while the driver sat motionless on his seat waiting, and the horse slept with its head drooping against the stone bridge.
jenny was in the street again now, but miss schulin reached out her hand—there was plenty of room.
“i’m sorry for the horse,” said heggen curtly, and jenny started to walk at his side behind the cab, the last among those who had not got room in the vehicle, which rolled on ahead.
“you don’t mean to say you want to be with these people any longer—to walk as far as paneperna for that?” said heggen.
“we might meet an empty cab on the way.”
[259]
“how can you be bothered with them?—they are all drunk,” he added.
jenny laughed in a languid way.
“so am i, i suppose.”
heggen did not answer. they had reached the piazza di spagna when she stopped:
“you are not coming with us, then, gunnar?”
“yes, if you absolutely insist on going on—otherwise not.”
“you need not come for my sake. i can get home all right, you know.”
“if you go, i go—i am not going to let you walk about alone with those people in that state.”
she laughed—the same limp, indifferent laugh.
“you will be too tired to sit to me tomorrow.”
“oh, i shall be able to sit all right.”
“you won’t; and anyhow, i shan’t be able to work properly if i have to walk about all night.”
jenny shrugged her shoulders, but started to walk in the direction of babuina—the opposite way to the rest of the party.
two policemen passed them; otherwise there was not a living soul to be seen. the fountain was playing in front of the strada di spagna, lying white with moonlight and bordered by black and silver glittering evergreen shrubs.
suddenly jenny spoke in a hard and scornful voice:
“i know you mean it kindly, gunnar. it is good of you to try and take care of me, but it is not worth while.”
he walked on in silence.
“no, not if you have no will of your own,” he said after a while.
“will”—imitating him.
“yes; i said will.”
her breath came quick and sharp, as if she wanted to answer,[260] but she checked herself. she was suddenly filled with disgust—she knew that she was half drunk, but she would not accentuate it by beginning to shout, moan, and explain—perhaps cry, before gunnar. she set her teeth.
they reached their own entrance. heggen opened the door and struck a match to light her up the endless flight of dark stone steps. their two small rooms were on the half-landing at the end of the stairs; a small passage outside their doors ended in a marble staircase leading to the flat roof of the house.
at her door she shook hands with him, saying in a low voice:
“good-night, gunnar—thanks for tonight.”
“thank you. sleep well.”
“same to you.”
gunnar opened the window in his room. the moon shone on an ochre-yellow wall opposite, with closed shutters and black iron balconies. behind it rose pincio, with sharply outlined dark masses of foliage against the blue moonlit sky. below him were old moss-covered roofs, and where the dark shadow of the house ended some washing was hung out to dry on a terrace farther down. he was leaning on the windowsill, disgusted and sad. he was not very particular in general, but to see jenny in such a state. ugh! and it was more or less his own fault; she had been so melancholy the first months of her return—like a wounded bird—and to cheer her up a little he had persuaded her to join the party, thinking of course that he and she would amuse themselves by watching the others only, never for a moment suspecting that it would have such an effect on her. he heard her come out from her room and go on to the roof. he hesitated a moment, then followed her.
she was sitting in the only chair, behind the little corrugated-iron summer-house. the pigeons cooed sleepily in the dovecot above.
[261]
“why have you not gone to bed? you will be cold up here.” he fetched her shawl from the summer-house and handed it to her, sitting down between the flower-pots on the top of the wall. they sat quietly staring at the city and the church domes that seemed floating in the moonlit mist. the outlines of distant hills were completely obliterated.
jenny was smoking. gunnar lit a cigarette.
“i can hardly stand anything now, it seems—in the way of drink, i mean. it affects me at once,” she said apologetically.
he understood that she was quite herself again.
“i think you might leave it off altogether for a time, and not smoke—at least not so much. you know you have complained of your heart.”
she did not answer.
“i know that you agree with me about those people, and i cannot think how you could condescend to associate with them—in the way you did.”
“one is sometimes in need of—well, of a narcotic,” she said quietly. “and as to condescending....” he looked into her white face; her fair fluffy hair shone in the moonlight. “sometimes i think it does not matter, though now—at this moment—i feel ashamed, but then i am extraordinarily sober just now, you see,” she said, smiling. “i am not always, although i have not taken anything, and in those moments i feel ready for any kind of revels.”
“it is dangerous, jenny,” he said, and again after a pause: “i think it was disgusting tonight—i cannot call it anything else. i have seen something of life; i know what it leads to. i would not like to see you come down and end as something like loulou.”
“you can be quite easy in your mind about me, gunnar. i am not going to end that way. i don’t really like it, and i know where to stop.”
[262]
he sat looking at her.
“i know what you mean,” he said at last. “other women have thought as you, but when one has been gliding downward for a time one ceases to care about where to stop, as you call it.” stepping down from the wall, he went towards her and took her hand:
“jenny, you will stop now, will you not?”
she rose, smiling:
“for the present, anyway. i think i am cured for a long time of that sort of thing.” she shook his hand firmly: “good-night; i’ll sit for you in the morning,” she said, going down the stairs.
“all right, thanks.”
he remained on the roof for some time smoking, shivering a little, and thinking, before going down to his room.
