PAGE 17
Dreaming Child
by
"When he asked me," said Emilie, "I stood for a moment in great danger. For I had never talked with a man of these matters. Only with Aunt Malvina and with my old governess. And women, for some reason, I do not know why, will have it that such a demand is a base and selfish thing in a man, and an insult to a woman. Why do you allow us to think that of you? You, who are a man, will know that he asked me out of his love and out of his great heart, from magnanimity. He had more life in him than he himself needed. He meant to give that to me. It was life itself, yes, it was eternity that he offered me.
"And I, who had been taught so wrong, I might easily have rejected him. Even now, when I think of it, I am afraid, as of death. Still I need not be so, for I know for certain that if I were back at that moment again, I should behave in the same way as I did then. And I was saved out of the danger. I did not send him away. I let him walk back with me, through the garden—for we were down by the garden-gate—and stay with me that night till, in the morning, he was to go so far away. "
She again made a long pause, and went on: "All the same, because of the doubt and the fear of other people that I had in my heart, I and the child had to go through much. If I had been a poor girl, with only a hundred rixdollars in all the world, it would have been better, for then we should have remained together. Yes, we went through much. "
"When I found Jens again, and he came home with me," she took up hernarrative after a silence, "I did not love him. You all loved him, only I myself did not. It was Charlie that I loved. Still I was more with Jens than any of you, he told me many things, which none of you heard. I saw that we could not find another such as he, that there was none so wise. " She did not know that she was quoting the Scripture, any more than the old shipowner had been aware of doing so when he ordained Jens to be buried in the field of his fathers and the cave that was therein—this was a small trick peculiar to the magic of the dead child.
"I learned much from him. He was always truthful, like Charlie. He wasso truthful that he made me ashamed of myself. Sometimes I thought itwrong in me to teach him to call you Papa. "
"At the time when he was ill," she said, "what I thought of was this:that if he died I might, at last, go into mourning for Charlie. " Shelifted up her bonnet, gazed at it and again dropped it. "And then, after all," she said, "I could not do it. " She made a pause. "Still, if I had told Jens about it, it would have pleased him, it would have made him laugh. He would have told me to buy grand, black clothes, and long veils. "
It was a lucky thing, Jakob reflected, that he had promised her not tointerrupt her tale. For had she wanted him to speak he would not havefound a word to say. As now she came to this point in her story shesat in silence for a long time, so that for a moment he believed thatshe had finished, and at that a choking sensation came upon him, as ifall words must needs stick in his throat.