Chapter III: Part 3

You made a speech in my honour. It was so natural that you should. You led me to the table, and it was my birthday. For me it was a sacred miracle. The words you spoke have gone to sleep in my heart. When I die one day in my coffin, and my children weep over me, they will arise and whisper and sing as your yellow flowers sang when I was ill.

I hold so fast to my happiness. But my hands are weak, and it slips through them like running sand.

The hours go as they came.

Why do you rend my dream in twain? Why do you thrust a knife in my heart? I have never thought of being your mistress. I only grant you every delight there is. But why in this night, in this night, when I woke and clung to my happiness! When Magna Wellmann telephoned me to-day, I knew everything. She said nothing and I asked no questions.

My yellow orchids hang on their stalks like dead butterflies. I have forgotten to give them water.

Forgive me! I am not. I won’t be like this, and now it is over. It hurts no longer. I am well, like the little boy who was run over the day before yesterday. He cried and moaned that he was going to die, and all the time was quite unhurt.

You walked over my heart, and I thought it must die, but there is nothing the matter with it.

* * * * *

It is months since I wrote to you last; I simply felt I couldn’t. I have been like one scared. Why do people speak so often without thinking? One lets fall a word quite indifferently, that stabs the heart of another like a poisoned arrow. I have been half distracted by anxiety. I have listened to all the gossip. I am sick from disquietude. My youngest child has been ill, days and nights. I have watched beside him, expecting every hour that death would come, and yet in the middle of my fear of death my thoughts have been incessantly with you.

I wouldn’t believe it.... But if it is true.... Beloved, I am so saddened, I don’t know whether I ought to tell you why, or whether you would tolerate my intruding into the habits of your daily life. But I am not only depressed, for if that was all I could bear it in silence. No, I am frightened, frightened, frightened. I cannot sleep for anxiety.

You wrote last year to tell me yourself that your doctor had forbidden you to resort to the strong remedy which had become a necessity to you; that you were obeying, but suffering horrible pain in consequence. That first awakened my anxiety. Many, many times I felt as if I were running my head against the blank wall which separates life from death.... And yet, it seemed to me that there was strength in the touch of your hands, strength that could grapple with any illness, strength in your hands, your glance, your smile. Then one day something happened that it took weeks to get out of my head. I sat with you and between us was built the usual bridge of kindness and confidence. Your smile came over the bridge and met mine. We played with words as children in a meadow play with flowers. Your hand lay on mine so firmly and tenderly. I grasped at that moment why men honour so much the idea of a foundation stone. I felt my hand, too, was the corner-stone in an eternal building. So proud was I that your hand rested on mine, so sure, firmly and tenderly, and then suddenly, with such terrible suddenness, that my heart nearly stopped beating, your smile froze and died; your eyes became vacant, glazed; your face was not only strange—would it had only been that—it was so changed that you wouldn’t have recognised it yourself in the looking-glass.

In that moment—I can’t say whether they were moments or minutes—you were not master of your body, neither were you ruler of your soul. And then you came to yourself. But I left you and cried. My tears were cold and made me freeze. Soon after I had to go away on a journey. Beloved, beloved, how full of pain love is! Every day, every hour when I strolled in the garden among my flowers which I planted there myself, which stand there mysteriously waiting and watching for your coming, I saw before me a shadow that proceeded from my own distraught mind ... your dear face with the relaxed expression, and the glazed, fixed eye.

The pain which I experienced then has been carried about in my heart for years, and was day by day increased and nourished by my anxiety.

But then your letters came, like stars dropping from the sky in the still, dark night ... and once more I gained strength and courage to look life in the face. _Life_—that is what _you_ are for me.

I could fancy every one dying round me, even my own darling children, all that was near and dear to me; all that peoples the earth, and I could fancy the houses falling, day and night ceasing—but I cannot picture life without you.

I cannot, and I _will not_....

* * * * *

The summer passed, and with the falling leaves I returned to your neighbourhood. You were, to all appearances the same, only rather paler, rather softer in your manner. Your hands were the same, your lips sought mine. I asked you no questions. Dare any one call to the man walking on a rope over the abyss, whether he feels giddy? I asked you nothing. But others talked about you to me. And all, all said the same. Don’t you see how changed he is? And they spoke of the strong remedy that had become indispensable to you, of the remedy by the help of which you maintain your mask of mental equilibrium, a mask through whose holes your own tormented soul stares out into vacancy.

Now I have come to it. I have come to it. Please do not be angry, or hurt, but let me say what I can no longer carry about with me unsaid. Try if you cannot, slowly and by degrees, break yourself of the habit of resorting to means which, instead of strengthening, undermine your health. In the name of my love I ask you to do this, and you must not think that I ask for my sake alone. Then if it happened that I was going to die, and knew that I was going to die to-day, so that I should never see you, or hear your voice again, I should still make the same request. Why will you be kind to every one but to yourself? A doctor said to me about you—No, those are words that may not be repeated....

Now say with a smile that I am conjuring up bogies, that my feelings have got the better of me, and perhaps you are right, but, beloved, death is not the worst. Do you understand me now?

I sit here and write in the bright sunshine. My children play round my skirts, and chatter and ask me why I am crying....

Well, now it is said, and now that I have said it, I dare not let you read what I have written.

But I will keep this letter with the rest of _your_ letters, with the letters which you have never received. Should the day ever come when I have sufficient courage you shall read it.

Only this one, of all the letters.

AN UNSENT LETTER FROM LILI ROTHE TO PROFESSOR ROTHE.

Henry, I had on my mind to write to you and, for the last time, ask you to forgive me, but I know that it is no use. Perhaps your forgiveness could do me no good now. It is too late. I have suffered so much. I cannot bear more. But this letter contains nothing but the truth, and it is the last letter that I shall write.

Henry, I have never denied my love for you. I have never forgotten you, and never deceived you. If I am to die now, because I long for the sleep, which while I live, cannot mercifully be granted to me, you must believe my poor last words.

I don’t know whither I am going, but even if I knew for certain that I should reach the open gates of Paradise, I could not cross the threshold. So long as you had not forgiven me in your heart, eternal peace would not encompass me. And if I knew, he for whose sake I have caused you such great trouble that it casts a shadow behind and dims all that was once radiant and happy, if I knew that he was standing ready to receive me with those words which up till this hour I have never heard him utter, “Welcome, my beloved,” it would be impossible for me to follow him into everlasting bliss. Consciousness of guilt would prevent it.

In the years when I loved you alone, I was happy; when he came into my life and I loved you both, my happiness increased with my love, and I did not feel guilty. I was so unspeakably happy. I loved you, and I loved him. You are a doctor, and when women are ill you can make them well, but for my sickness you had no panacea to prescribe.

And I cannot do what you desire of me; I cannot say that my love for him is dead. Love cannot die, when once it has lived.

Henry, when you took me back, I entreated you to ask me no questions, and you asked none. But your eyes asked and the walls asked, and everything round me asked questions. I do not wish to have any more secrets from you. Yet you never can understand what I am now going to say.

He did not know me when I came to him, and he died without having recognised me. But it made me happy to be with him. When the others were asleep, and it was all quiet, I heard him mention a name. Not my name. He did not love me, you see. Every time he mentioned that other name I felt I was expiating some of my guilt towards you. I sat and listened, the nights were so long, but my name never came. The name of the one he loved, the names of others, but mine never.

One night I fell asleep and dreamed that he called me. I awoke, and he lay dead. And now I shall never find out whether that was only a dream or something more.

I have thought so much over the question whether other women are the same as I am. Were I strong enough I would go about and look till I found one who could tell me truthfully that she had loved two men, loved both with her whole heart and soul. I would then beg her to go to you and explain how that is something one cannot help, cannot fight against, and cannot kill.

My nun has espoused a husband, and I have been to call on the young couple. He has only one eye, is superannuated, and has warts in his ears. He is a hod carrier. When she contemplates him she feels as if heaven were opening before her.

She comes from a good family, and has had a good education; he is ignorant and stupid, but he seems to appreciate her adoration. I had a ticket for “Lohengrin” this evening, but I am not inclined to go.

After all, I can understand it. Once I should have thought it silly, but my ideas have undergone a change. When I reflect on it there is really only one condition that can be called unhappy, and that is loneliness. Loneliness on a desert island, loneliness in a great city, loneliness in married life.... Loneliness.

For this reason all living beings crowd together. The animals seek each other. The faded leaves, as they flutter down from the trees, wed in the hour of their destruction.

She feels that she has been cheated for all the years of her convent life, has loved without an object. She has cast off her shackles, and achieved her liberty. The thought of a joint life with some one, that she may have pined for vaguely in the convent, became, out in the world, the highest thing to aim at. In her excessive modesty she humbly accepted the first thing that offered. Surely there is nothing ridiculous in that.

But I am alone. I am solitary.

* * * * *

God in heaven, what have I done? There he lies asleep, as if he were never going to wake. Such a little gnome. But I couldn’t do anything else, and behind all my anxiety and fidgetting I have a feeling that for the first time in my life I have done what is right.

For it was not unpremeditated, or was it? Do I know? A transformation has been going on lately within me. But when did it begin, and where will it lead me? If I only had some one whom I could consult, but there is no one. I have broken all my old ties. I stand quite alone. Even Jeanne.... Jeanne must be told as soon as possible, but, of course, she will think it is nothing except one of my whims in which I indulge to kill time.

When I ask myself deep down in my heart why I did it, there is no answer, and, meanwhile, the boy is lying in my bed. I have slept an hour or two here on this chair without knowing it. The windows are wide open, yet every minute I inhale a horrible smell of spirits ... a little boy of seven! How am I to know whether he is seven, five, or nine?

I must collect myself. This hour may decide the whole course of my life. I have only to hold the telephone receiver to my ear, and directly the house-porter will call in the police. Before noon the boy will be gone, and I shall never see him again.

* * * * *

Why should it concern me? It would be sheer folly if I gave way to a sickly sentimentality and wished to keep this small tramp. Small as he is, he seems to be endowed with every vice.

I feel as if I had dreamed it all, and not seen it with my eyes.... And it all comes of my freak of using the subway under the river instead of taking a motor. What induced me to waste time in that fashion? I who, of all others, detest subterranean zigzagging?

Was it a presentment? Did I expect a sensation, and wish to gloat over the sight of roofless night-wanderers, who for five cents travel backwards and forwards by this route all day? One’s way of living and thinking is different in New York from what it is in great European capitals. We don’t follow each other like sheep. We think more for ourselves.

I felt so tired inwardly on the journey, so utterly without an anchor. I tried to fall asleep before we reached the river to escape hearing the ghastly rushing sound in the air behind. The boy had seen me at once. I believe I inspired him with a certain awe. My clothes probably were too smart for him.

He hurled himself past me without calling out rude words, or making grimaces. I could not take my eyes off him. At first I thought it was one of the dwarfs out of the Hippodrome, and I squirmed with disgust. Then I saw that it was a child. A child sick with a fever which his senses could not master. I, like the other passengers, thought him mad, till we grasped what was the matter with him.

He jumped on ladies’ laps, and spat in their faces; he kicked gentlemen’s legs violently with his heels. When the guard caught hold of his wrists and commanded him to be quiet, he bit the man so hard he was obliged to let him go. At the next station he was ejected. But directly the train was in motion again, he swung himself on to the car, and this process was repeated at every station. No one knew how to cope with him; no one knew where he came from, or to whom he belonged. Suddenly he began to sing, what, I couldn’t understand, but from the expression on the faces of the men present, and from his own gestures, I gathered that it was something indecent.

How shall I describe my feelings? Were they prompted by horror, repulsion, or compassion? I must try to analyse them clearly.... I felt as if I had brought this wretched creature into the world, as if I were responsible for him. I experienced a mother’s agony and a mother’s boundless tenderness.

Directly it became plain to me that the child was not speaking in the delirium of fever, but of drunkenness, I had to bite my lips till they bled, so as not to cry out. Then the boy came to me, and threw himself across my lap. There he stayed, nestling his head against me, and went to sleep.

* * * * *

Were I to act now sensibly and as common reason demanded, I should send the child back whence he came, though I don’t know in the least where that is.... The child who has awakened the most sacred feeling in my poor, withered heart.... The child who is to blame for my having shed, for the first time in my life, tears of joy.

When I offered to take Jeanne’s child, I had my reasons at my fingers’ ends, but they were not honourable ones. I wanted to start for myself an interest in life. I started from the hypothesis that what filled the lives of so many women might equally well fill mine. I wanted to take Jeanne’s child, in the same way as five years before I had taken her ... as an experiment, a distraction.

But it was not so to-night. This small boy had kissed my hands, and I had blessed him.

I have heard somewhere of a holy man who met once a little child who was tired. He lifted him on to his shoulders and carried him over a river, but on the way the child grew and became heavier and heavier, while the man sank deeper and deeper.... All that, however, doesn’t matter.

I took him home with me. Here you can do what you like. My proceeding excited no remark. A stranger asked if he should fetch me a carriage, and we drove home.

I must, of course, make inquiries about his antecedents. He says nothing himself. He woke up when I struck a light, but he wouldn’t tell me his name even. The people in the train thought he was one of those outcast children without parents who live from hand to mouth by selling newspapers, and stealing from the banana carts, and who pass the night on the river’s bank or in empty wagons.

I haven’t succeeded yet in getting his boots off. Though they have evidently once belonged to a grown-up, they are so tightly laced on his little legs that they can only be moved by cutting. He must have worn them day and night for months.

* * * * *

What will be the end of it? I daren’t think, and I daren’t act. I keep saying to myself without ceasing, the same thing, “Suppose he is taken away from me?” and I seem to see into the future, his life ending in crime, his death taking place in prison.

I intend to sacrifice my own life for this child’s ... but is that sufficient? Can that avert his fate?

My beautiful, beautiful boy! He is asleep. I have locked both doors and sit with the key in my pocket. Every quarter of an hour I look in at him; he smiles in his sleep as only innocent children smile. Then suddenly he clenches his little fists and his mouth becomes so distorted and ugly that I have to turn away. What can he be dreaming about?

Help me, help! To whom am I praying? I, who am without faith, and without hope. But I am not without love. No longer without love; for I love this poor, miserable child.

Could I but give him back his innocence!... Has he never been innocent like other children? Was he contaminated from the first by the two creatures who gave him life? Is it in my power to atone for others’ sins against him?

I wonder why he tried to run away to-day? Where did he want to go, and what was in his mind? If I had not got him back, God knows, I could not have faced another day.

* * * * *

I sat with him on my lap, and he looked up at me as if he would ask, “What are you going to do with me?”

His childish gaze was so suspicious and hard. I told him that I wanted to be his mother and to live for nothing else but to make him happy. All the time his little hands were feeling about to find my pocket. I pretended not to see, and smiling angelically, he plunged his hand after my purse, and began to fidget with it till it opened. My heart beat so that I could hear it distinctly resound in my ears.

Is it to be wondered at that he steals? He has known what it is to starve. But now I give him everything that heart can desire. I have bought him a little purse of his own, and filled it with money. Yet still his tiny face retains its expression of desperate greed when he sees me take out money. When will this alter?

And he asks me if I have bought him. Or have been given money to keep him. He does not remember that blessed, thousandfold blessed, night when he took my heart by storm, and transformed me into a real human being....

I wanted to test him, so to-day I went without lunch, explaining to him that I had no more money, but he was to eat, I could go without it. He nodded, and without troubling about me at all, ate up his lunch.

* * * * *

Kelly. That’s his name. Kelly! or he says it’s his name. He has been with me now for six days, and only to-day he told me what he was called. Well, it is at least a beginning. I am thankful for little.

I dare not hesitate any longer. If I could, I would travel off with him like a thief with his booty, even if somewhere a mother sat and wept for him. No, no! I wouldn’t rob a mother of her child. But I needn’t be afraid. Kelly’s whole bearing tells me that he has been for a long, long time alone in the world. Enquiries will be only a matter of form, and then I can adopt him properly. He will be mine by law.

* * * * *

It is quite a matter of indifference to me if people shake their heads at my insane action. How should they know that Kelly alone, only this boy with the vicious little face and criminal glance is the source of all my bliss and riches in this life? But it distresses me when people talk about it in his presence, and I cannot prevent them shaking their heads. Kelly understands what they mean. He seems conscious that his brow is branded with the mark of Cain.

* * * * *

To-morrow we are going to the Children’s Court; I have written to Mr. Rander. He is said to be one of the cleverest child-psychologists in America.

He has replied that I need cherish no fears. So long as my love is sufficiently great ... my love.... Yes, my love is great enough to bear the strain.

* * * * *

Why had that to happen just to-day, when I was feeling in such good heart? It’s only a trifle, certainly. He may not have thought what he was doing.

It’s a necessity of children’s nature to be destructive. They are cruel without being conscious of it. What, after all, do I care about the stupid cacti? I would have made him a present of all of them. But it was the glance of his! The sly, uncanny glance when I said, “But, Kelly, why have you cut my flowers in pieces?”

* * * * *

I am doing it entirely on my own responsibility. I should do it, even if the whole world cried out, “Leave it alone, it will prove your ruin!” I should do it. Even if I could see into the future, and behold my boy a full-fledged criminal sentenced to death.... I consecrate my life to him, my poor, squandered life. But it isn’t poor now. I am rich. I am a mother!

* * * * *

Mr. Rander meant well, I daresay, when he said, “Don’t do it. Take any of them, only not him!” And he related what he knew.

As if a single spoken phrase could dissolve the bond my heart has entered into voluntarily.

“Born, double-dyed criminal.” Nevertheless, I will educate myself to be a worthy mother to him.

DEAR MAGNA WELLMANN,

“From earth thou comest, to earth thou shalt return....” These words of Scripture occurred to me when I read your letter. That is the eternal circle ... in this case the circle of your family. Your grandfather was a renegade from the calling of his forefathers when he became a townsman. Your father degenerated, and now you have gone back to the land.

Magna, Magna, I admire you. Of course, I am heart and soul for the enterprise. In this manner my money will become a breathing, living entity, doing its own work, and reaping its own reward. Don’t talk about being cautious. I am running no risks. I know what I am about. Your lawyer’s letter informs me in business language that the undertaking is “sound,” besides I am not giving the whole or even half the capital.

I need no assurances that you will carry the thing through. But read before you begin a little book by Flaubert. I don’t mind betting you have never heard of it. It is called, “Bouvard et Pécuchet.” A prospective agriculturist can learn a good deal from it. It’s splendid that Jarl is so keen on farming. But you won’t surely let him put his hand to the plough, and work in the fields from the start, will you? The boy is only seventeen, and I hope, too, that his mother isn’t going to begin at once digging turnips and milking cows. I should not care to set foot in a cow-shed—it’s a thing I have never done. But all the same I shall enjoy having letters yards long about all your first experiments and blunders.

You mustn’t take it too much to heart that Agnete is cool towards you. The poor child has a dash of prudishness in her, inherited from her mother! When she has children of her own she will be different.

Your account of the scandal was rich! Especially do I like that remark of a friend, “She might at least have had the tact to say that it was an adopted child.” I read between the lines that you have not passed through this humiliation without it’s having left scars behind. But, Magna, nothing is in vain. You can afford to pay the cost of your happiness. I am reminded of a little story about you which used to be told in our “set.” It related to the way in which you conquered Professor Wellmann’s heart. You were at a party, and had been so bored you had spoken to no one. There was something to drink in big, tall glasses. Suddenly in an ebullition of superfluous strength you bit the glass with your teeth and bit a piece out of it. Professor Wellmann sat with distended eyes and open mouth, and watched you.

And on his way out of the house he remarked to a not very discreet friend, “She, the girl who bit the glass, shall be my wife!”

The story may or may not be true, but it is characteristic of you all the same.

I can see you in hobnail boots, and a smock, tramping over the fields, superintending the plough and the breeding of cattle.

I have very little to tell about myself. Since I linked my fate to Kelly’s I live in a new world. Every day that goes by I come nearer to myself, but I cannot write about it. It is too sacred a subject. Troubles which were unknown to me before have taken up their continued abode within me, but joys which were equally strange keep watch over me with drawn swords. Magna, I ask you, can the woman who has brought her own child into the world experience greater bliss and greater torment than I, to whom my boy was given by chance?

With a thousand loving remembrances,

Your

ELSIE LINDTNER.

THE WHITE VILLA.

DEAR JEANNE,

As you will see from this heading, we are now at home again.

_We_, and at _home_ again!

My home is where Kelly is, and Denmark was never his home. But for his sake, I have uprooted once more. I did not think such a big, big town was good for him. The island here is certainly small enough.

Oh, if you could see how it looks now! I was determined to be the first with Kelly to enter the house, since you and I left it together, how many years ago?

The carpets were in tatters. The window panes were beaten in, either by the wind or vagabonds. Dead leaves and dead flies lay about the floors. My beautiful pieces of furniture were mildewed from damp ... one or two of the chairs had collapsed; the chintz coverings were moth-eaten. My bedroom—my ridiculous bedroom—was the most deplorable of all. It must have been struck by lightning, otherwise I don’t understand how the mirrors got smashed, and the rain and snow lay congealed on my bed.

Kelly laughed, and rushed from room to room, and in the end I laughed, too. Then Kelly got hold of the mad idea that instead of putting up at the inn, we should turn in here the first night. I half think he contemplated a sort of burglarious attempt on the deserted house. I yielded, of course. Never in my life have I seen any one more industrious and handy than this boy when he likes. He ran about pumping water and sweeping floors, and made all straight, God knows how. Tea was prepared! ante-diluvian sugar and a canister of Albert biscuits. He ushered me into the large parlour where my piano, my poor, wretched, beautiful piano, had been standing all these years, the prey of wind and rain, till it hasn’t a sound left in its body from hoarseness—and then he brought in the tea. I won’t go so far as to say that it tasted clean or nice, and the biscuits were musty, but Kelly’s hand had prepared it.

And we slept together in the same bed, in your bed, Jeanne, in yours! It was the only one in which the blankets were dry. I wanted to lie on a sofa with a rug, but Kelly would cuddle up beside me.

Jeanne, I—really I, your fond, old travelling companion, am now once more “at home,” and I lay awake the whole night thinking over my happiness.

Kelly slept in my arm, and my arm, of course, went to sleep, but no other part of me slept ... and Kelly woke with my arm round him.

Then we went to “The Jug,” and put up there for a fortnight till the whole place was made habitable. I have no Jeanne—I do my own hair, and make myself beautiful for my boy. Alack! it is hard work to inspire him with any desire to make himself presentable.

I am thinking of finding a tutor for him. He ought not to be allowed to run wild and devour sensational American novelettes—of which there are none in Denmark—and remain ignorant of all other subjects.

Forgive me, Jeanne, but I have only one thought, and that is Kelly. He fills my life at all points, so that everything else now has to give way to him.

He has a craze for collecting snails and slugs, which he brings into the house and lets crawl about on the white window-sills. I must own it makes a horrible mess, but Kelly may do anything. Only I draw the line at helping him to collect his snails, for, much as I should like to oblige him, it is too disgusting.

Now in exchange for these confidences, tell me all your news. It was indeed a piece of good fortune that Malthe’s design took the prize. And in Paris, too! You will, I suppose, stay there the two years. Or are you still the incorrigible nomads who prefer to travel about with your houses on your backs, with your trunks and perambulator—to settling down quietly in a refined, comfortable home. Don’t work yourself to shreds, Jeanne. Remember that life is long, and that you mustn’t grow old and ugly. I concluded that you are doing everything in your power fairly to spoil your excellent husband. You go to market. You pack the boxes, take the tickets, and accompany your husband to the museums where you make drawings for him, and you look after the children. Jeanne! Jeanne! take thought for your hair, and be careful of your hands.

And don’t forget your happy _home_-flown friend,

ELSIE LINDTNER.

* * * * *

DEAR GOOD MAGNA,

That this notion should have occurred to you, and that you should have the courage to carry it out—. But ought I to offer up this sacrifice to you, and can I relinquish Kelly? The last few nights have been long and sleepless; only when dawn begins to glimmer can I bring my confused thoughts into any order, and then it seems as if I had found a solution which is the right one. I fall asleep, and when I wake up again, everything is as unsettled as ever.

I don’t know my way in or out. Magna, it’s not selfishness which makes me dread letting Kelly out of my hands—the day does not seem far off when I shall be forced to live under another roof from that which shelters him, and that is why I don’t want to die.

My every thought is dedicated to him for whom and with whom I now live, and so I will continue to live without complaint so long as life is granted me. I have looked it all in the face, and have recoiled, shuddering, at the petrifying horror of impossibilities, but I have made my resolve. So long as I inhabit the earth Kelly has a human being who stands in the place of mother to him.

I am not afraid to make any sacrifices. I shrink only from the thought of shirking the responsibility. From the day Kelly came into my life I have made myself answerable for his actions and conduct. Would it not be cowardice and treachery if I now said, “The yoke has become too burdensome, now I will shunt it on to the shoulders of another”?

And yet, Magna, your plan seems to me the one possibility of salvation.

Before I express my hearty thanks, and confide my boy to your care, I must tell you something which I have been compelled to keep to myself till now. Kelly has before been taken care of by others. By force of circumstances. He tried—remember he was only nine years old—to burn me. Of course no one suspected him, otherwise the police would not have been asked to investigate the affair, but then it was brought to light, and he was taken away from me. I could have murdered them for taking him.... It is hard, even now, years after, to talk about it. My one idea was to find a means of getting him back. In America everything possible is done to save children whose feet are set on the downward path to crime. And it is done with a tenderness and love which is marvellous, but I didn’t know it. I thought of what I had read in the papers at home about reformatories for children, about floggings and starvation, and lockings-up in dark cellars. I was ready to help Kelly to escape till the first time that they gave me permission to visit him.

There was no wall round the institution, not even a railing. The main building abutted on the high road, and from there you could see the heaps of smaller red houses resembling a town of villas.

As I came up to the inspector’s dwelling, I was almost run down by a crowd of boys headed by a small negro, who were having a race.

Just as I entered the door, I heard an outcry which made my heart stand still. I thought it was one of the boys being punished. But the inspector showed me from the window what the noise meant. The boys were playing at fire, and at that moment they were letting the hose play on the inspector’s house. My little Kelly—in oilskins and a helmet on his head—held the hose.

And I was told that of the six hundred boys who are in the reformatory many of them on account of gross misconduct, for which but for their tender years, they would have been sentenced to a long period of imprisonment, not a single one had been guilty of doing anything wrong during his detention here. Punishments such as thrashing and being put on bread and water and under arrest, simply do not exist. The boys live in their little villas, twelve in a batch, under the supervision of a pair of foster-parents. The only punishment is that a boy who has been disobedient or lazy gets no cake at five o’clock tea, and is not given permission to sit with the others at the large flower-decked table, but has to sit alone at a small table. And he mayn’t lie before the fire at dusk and listen to fairy-tales.

No mother could have had more delightful letters from her child than I had from Kelly during that year. If I had only been as wise then as I am now, I should have let him stay there as long as the inspector would have kept him.

All the small “prisoners” were taught in succession various industries which they might choose themselves. I saw them baking, ironing, washing, carving, carpentering, binding books, making clothes, and toys, and I saw them planting trees, ploughing, and, Magna, I saw them milking cows. But I was a foolish mother. I didn’t want my boy brought up to a trade; I imagined it was my duty to develop his great gifts in a different direction.

So after a year he was sent back to me. But the inspector warned me that there would be a lapse. In two months it came. Kelly disappeared. I tore about like a maniac hunting for him everywhere. I don’t believe there was a beer-cellar, a common lodging-house, or a thieves’ kitchen that I didn’t search. He was traced through the scar on his forehead, and I recovered him. But how?

The Kelly who for twelve months had been living a model life among six hundred little abandoned chaps, had plotted with a group of homeless playmates to commit a crime so diabolical and remorseless that at first I refused to believe his brain could have hatched it. By the train between Philadelphia and New York travels every day a crowd of millionaires who come to do their business on the Stock Exchange. The other boys were, through all sorts of tricks, to distract the attention of the signalman while Kelly was to switch on the signals so that another train would come into collision with the train from Philadelphia. After the collision they meant to plunder the dead bodies!

It’s true, Magna; now say, no! you dare not take Kelly under your roof to associate with Oluf. I can’t help it, it was my duty to tell you all. My friend, Judge Rander, in Children’s Court, helped me in every way. He procured for me leave to travel with Kelly out of the country on a verbal and written oath that I would never bring him back. That is why I lived two years, summer and winter, in my White Villa with Kelly and a tutor. I was afraid to let him come near the town, and yet the child needed companions. So at last I ventured to migrate to a town, with the result that Kelly in two years was expelled from three schools. Can you still have the courage, Magna, to let the innocent child, offspring of your heart, become Kelly’s playfellow? And if you are so courageous, how shall I be able to exonerate myself if you come to me one day and say, “Kelly has corrupted my boy”?

I put the words into your mouth, Magna.

Say no, while there is still time. You are strong, stronger than any other woman I know, since you have found yourself again through strenuous exertion and labour. But there are powers that the strongest cannot conquer.

Behind my fears about your saying yes, lies the burning wish that you will, but how shall I ever find words to thank you?

Of course, I realise what it will mean if Kelly from now onwards takes up his abode with you, and directly after his confirmation leaves off school. It’s not what Kelly is to be, but _how_ he becomes what he is, that is going to be for me the main question. I fold my hands in my lap, and I confess my powerlessness.

Make Kelly a man. Make Kelly a good man.

You will understand, Magna, that I could not say all this if we stood face to face. While I have been writing Kelly has been several times to the door. He wants to know what I am doing. Every time I feel tempted to lay down my pen to enjoy his society. He asked me the other day, “Mother, do you believe that people’s fate is pre-ordained?” What could he have meant by it? I dared not ask him. He went on his knees, buried his head in my lap, and cried bitterly.

Magna, don’t keep me long in uncertainty. At least promise me that.

Your

ELSIE LINDTNER.

* * * * *

I have begun to darn Kelly’s stockings. Why did I never think of it before?

He was whitewashing the attic with Magna, and I saw that one of his stockings was without a heel. I actually blushed, I felt so ashamed. The boy, of course, doesn’t trouble about such trifles, and Magna, splendid creature, has enough to do. I don’t believe she would mind a bit going about with holes in her own stockings.

In the country it doesn’t matter so much, but still—

She simply laughed at me when I asked to be allowed to look after his clothes, and I didn’t quite know how to explain why I wanted to do it. But Magna is so clever, and when I was seated comfortably she brought me out a whole bundle. She has done the same for her own children. I am convinced that she would not let any one else darn Oluf’s stockings.

I don’t find it easy. I have quite forgotten the proper way of doing it, which I learnt at school. And I haven’t thought anything about darning stockings since.

But I take no end of trouble, and it is a wonderful feeling to sit out here on the balcony with a whole pile of big, big stockings in front of me—Kelly has positively a gigantic foot. My dear little balcony. It’s to me what an airship is for young, impatient folks. I sit so serenely in my charming, soft seat, between sweet-peas and nasturtiums, and beneath me streams by the current of life with its men and beasts.

* * * * *

It amuses me to see how skilfully Richard’s eldest can drive an automobile. If only he can avoid accidents.

Richard himself is aging, but his little wife sits so upright in the car. She wears well.

Since Richard caught sight of me one day by chance he always looks up and bows, and then we all bow, ... I overhear the lanky youth say, “Papa, we are passing your old wife,” and then they laugh.

Yes, I should like to see the home in the old Market Place once more. Probably I should hardly recognise it, or perhaps Richard, from long habit, has kept things much the same.

The eldest son is to succeed to the business, of course, but the second looks to me so dandified. I know this for certain that none of Richard’s sons will ever work out in the fields in clogs and woollen shirts. And their mother will never have the joy of darning stockings with holes in them as big as goose’s eggs. While I sit with a pair of these coarse, huge, manly socks in which my hand is absolutely drowned, I feel to the full extent a mother’s glorious rights. I only wish the holes were double the size, so that the time they take to mend lasted longer.

I have been and bought the pan for cooking oxeyes in, and I have promised Kelly and Oluf that every time they come they shall have oxeyes baked in butter. Magna requires nothing but her horrid nut-suet which has no flavour. She alone can eat it. Dear, dear boys.

* * * * *

DEAR AGNETE,

It was well that you wrote to me this time, and not to your mother. You are not to trouble her with your unhappy affairs, do you understand? Every time that she gets a letter from you she shuts herself up and cries. Lately I have read quite a number of your letters, and I must confess that I was not pleased with them.

At one time you presumed to sit in judgment on your mother’s life, and now you blame her because yours is a failure. You have no right to do it.

You cannot justly lay your married wretchedness at either your mother’s or your husband’s door. Its origin is to be sought in a train of circumstances. You must know, though you seem to have forgotten it, that it was not your mother who gave in to your desire to go to the French Convent School. It was my doing that you went. I sent you for her peace of mind’s sake.

That you have married a Catholic while you yourself are a Protestant is no one’s fault but your own, as you did not ask anybody’s permission. Unfortunately you have inherited from your mother a hysterical temperament, and from your father a certain matter-of-factness which prevents your enjoying life.

I feel compelled to act like a surgeon who undertakes a necessary operation, in spite of the patient’s objection to scars.

The only time your husband was here on a visit I was able to get a certain impression of his character. You are right in saying that he is “dangerous to women through the animal magnetism which radiates from his person, attracting to him adults and children alike.” And you might add, “through his natural amiability and his kindliness.” He makes no disguise of his vanity, but when you plume yourself on being his only chick because you alone resist him, you are adopting a dangerous line. The man who wishes to be worshipped will not be discouraged by superior airs, especially when these are put on, and you merely feign opposition in order to annoy him, and to conceal how much you are in love.

Owing to the position he holds he is the centre of much attention. He is unable, like most men, to diverge from the high road. Every movement of his is noticed, and may cause him unpleasantness. Thus his position forces him to be cautious. Yet you as his loving wife accuse him of giving to every woman what ought to be your position alone.

Your want of trust puts him on the rack. You pluck his nerves to pieces, and dissect his secret thoughts. You hate him for not being unfaithful to you in deed in that you suspect continually that he is unfaithful to you in thought. You hurt him by telling him constantly that your mutual life is animal and savage, that he lacks soul, and does not comprehend what it is to love with the soul as you do. He retorts by calling you hysterical.

Then a young girl comes to stay in your house. She falls in love with your husband, and he is in love with her. You say, “She made a dead set at him.” Instead of deciding to remove her immediately you watch for proofs of the criminal relations which you suspect. I don’t condemn you for getting hold of your husband’s letters by any means honourable or the reverse, because jealous wives are as irresponsible for their actions as patients with a temperature of a hundred and six. You triumph and cause yourself diabolical torments by revelling in the stolen love-letters. You find in them the “psychological” impulse that you have missed in your husband’s love.

What ought you to do now? Either you must go, as you cannot stay with a man who is in love with another; or you must remain and leave him and his feelings in peace. Nonsense! Instead you thrust a dagger into his heart and turn it in the wound. If he moans, you ask, “Do you still love her?”

You think that love can be wrenched out of a man’s life as easily as a tooth is drawn, root and all.

Agony brings your husband to reason and his senses, he belies what he feels and cries, “I love no one but you!” But even then can you leave him alone? Certainly not. You now insist on his telling everything, betraying and deceiving. You know, as a Catholic, he cannot claim a divorce, and yet you ask if he will marry her in the case of your retiring? Not a word of this offer do you intend seriously. You want to humiliate and torment him.

Next you make a scene with the girl, pervert his words about her, misapply your knowledge, and use such expressions as “Impurity, lies, vulgarity.” But she only answers, “I love him, I cannot do anything else.” And you find this exasperating.

Not once has it occurred to you to set your husband free. He belongs to you, he is in your power. You begin all over again. You haven’t an hour’s rest because you must spy on all his actions. You reproach him for being a Catholic. His baseness is trebled because he is Catholic—as if lies had anything to do with articles of faith.

You are leading a pretty life! Then your husband falls ill. For a long time he has complained of a tumour in his chest. “If it grows it’ll have to be removed for it may be cancer.” This is a trifling matter, or you inwardly triumph over it as “a judgment.”

One morning he leaves the house on business. He takes leave of you tenderly and comes back over and over again to kiss you with emotion. You at once suspect deceit, and heap reproaches on him for intending to do something behind your back. He smiles sadly and says, “If that is so you will soon hear what it is.”

At mid-day you have a “vision,” if what you write is true. You see him lying on the operating table. You telephone to the hospital and learn that the operation has taken place. You hurry there and meet the girl.

To you he has not spoken of the serious ordeal in store for him. But he has sent for her.

This is the last drop that overflows your cup of anguish. You take your sick husband home. You torture him till he says, “Death would be better than this.”

And now you ask me what you ought to do.

It would be much simpler to tell you what you ought not to have done.