PAGE 19
One Day
by
“But now you will have no dream, Ella!”
At first she did not know what to reply to this, it seemed but too true, too terribly true, and the toupet showed itself again.
It was here that Aaroe had sung the old winter song, and as the tinkle of the sledge-bells had accompanied it, so now her tears were unceasingly accompanied by two little voices: “Mamma, mamma!” It was not strange, for it was towards the children that she was hurrying, but now they seemed to demand that she should dream about them. No, no! “You have something real there,” Aaroe’s voice seemed to say. She remembered his saying it, she remembered his sadness as he did so. Had he really thought of himself and her, or of the children and her? Had he compared his own weakness with their health, with their future? Her thoughts wandered far away from the boys, and she was once more immersed in all his words and looks, trying by them to solve this enigma. But these, with the yearning and pain, came back as they had never done before. Her whole life was over; her dream was of too long standing, too strong, too clear, the roots could not be pulled up; it was impossible. Were they not round everything which, next day, she should see, or touch, or use? As a last stroke she remembered that the boys were not at home; she would come to an empty house.
But she resisted still; for when she got home and had bathed and gone to bed, and again the moonlight shone in on her and reminded her of her thoughts the night before, she turned away and cried aloud like a child. None could enter, none could hear her; her heart was young, as though she were but seventeen; it could not, it would not give up!
What was it, in fact, that she had wished for to-day? She did not know–no, she did not! She only knew that her happiness was there–and so she had let it remain. Now she was disappointed and deluded in a way that certainly few had been.
She could not bear to desecrate him further. Then the winter song swept past in his voice, sweet, full, sorrowful, as if it wished to make all clear to her; and, tractable as a child, she composed herself and listened. What did it say? That her dreams united two summers, the one which had been and the one which was slowly struggling up anew. Thanks be to the dreams which had awakened it. It said, too, that the dreams were something in themselves often of greater truth than reality itself. She had felt this when she was tending her flowers.
In her uneasy tossing in her bed, her plait had come close to her hand. Sadly she drew it forward; he had kissed it again to-day. And so she lay on her side, and took it between her hands, and cried.
“Mamma, mamma!” she heard whispered, and thus she slept.