Jenny | Page 9

himself; he would learn nothing that he did not already know. And when he met living beings he conjured up in his mind the dead forms of poetry that he knew, to see if one of them were represented, for he knew nothing of the living, he who had never lived. Heggen with the full, red mouth would hardly - he supposed - dream of romantic adventure, like those one reads of in the popular novelettes, if he fell in with a girl one evening in the streets of Rome.
He began to feel conscious of having drunk wine.
"You will have a headache tomorrow if you go home now," said Miss Winge to him, when they stood outside in the street. The other three walked ahead; he followed with her.
"I am sure you think me an awful bore to take out of an evening."
"Not at all, but you do not know us well enough yet, and we don't know you."
"I am slow at making acquaintances - in fact, I never really get to know people. I ought not to have come tonight, when you were kind enough to ask me. Perhaps one needs training to enjoy oneself too," he said, with a short laugh.
"Of course one does." Ho could hear from her voice that she was smiling.
"I was twenty-five when I started and, you can take it from me, I had no easy time at first."
"You? I thought that you artists always. . . . For that matter, I did not think you were twenty-five or near it."
"I am, thank goodness, and considerably more."
"Do you thank Heaven for that? And I, a man, for every year that drops from me as it were into eternity, without having brought me anything but the humiliation of finding that nobody has any use for me - I - " He stopped suddenly, terrified. He heard that his voice trembled, and he concluded that the wine had gone to his head, since he could speak like that to a woman he did not even know. But in spite of his shyness he went on: "It seems quite hopeless. My father has told me about the young men of his time, about their eager discussions and their great illusions. I have never had a single illusion to talk about all these years, that now are gone, lost, never to return."
"You have no right to say that, Mr. Gram. Not one year of one's life is wasted, as long as you have not reached a point where suicide is the only way out. I don't believe that the old generation, those from the time of the great illusions, were better off than we. The dreams of their youth stripped life bare for them. We young people, most of the ones I know, have started life without illusions. We were thrown into the struggle for existence almost before we were grown up, and from the first we have looked at life with open eyes, expecting the worst. And then one day we understood that we could manage to get something good out of it ourselves. Something happens, perhaps, that makes you think: if you can stand this, you can stand anything. Once you have got self-reliance in that way, there are no illusions that any one or anything can rob you of."
"But circumstances and opportunities may be such that one's self-reliance is not much use when they are stronger than oneself."
"True," she said. "When a ship sets sail, circumstances may cause it to be wrecked - a collision or a mistake in the construction of a wheel - but it does not start with that presumption. Besides, one must try and conquer circumstances; there is nearly always a way out of them."
"You are very optimistic, Miss Winge."
"I am," she said, and after a while: "I have become an optimist since I have seen how much people really can stand without losing courage to struggle on, and without being degraded."
"That is exactly what I think they are - reduced in value, anyway."
"Not all. And even to find one who does not allow life to abase or reduce him is enough to make you optimistic. We are going in here."
"This looks more like a Montmartre caf�� don't you think?" said Helge, looking around.
Along the walls of the small room were plush-covered forms; small iron tables with marble tops stood in front of them, and the steam rose from two nickel boilers on the counter.
"These places are the same everywhere. Do you know Paris?"
"No, but I thought. . . ." He felt suddenly irritated with this young girl artist who went about the world as she pleased - and God knows where she got the money from. It seemed to her quite as natural for him to have been in Paris