Mogens and Other Stories | Page 6

know nothing because
mother and I were all to each other, and I did not care to learn the
things they teach in the schools, and don't care about them now either.
Oh, you ought to have seen my mother; she was such a tiny wee lady.
When I was no older than thirteen I could carry her down into the
garden. She was so light; in recent years I would often carry her on my
arm through the whole garden and park. I can still see her in her black
gowns with the many wide laces. . . ."
He seized the oars and rowed violently. The councilor became a little
uneasy, when the water reached so high at the stern, and suggested, that
they had better see about getting home again; so back they went.
"Tell me," said the girl, when the violence of his rowing had decreased
a little. "Do you often go to town?"
"I have never been there."
"Never been there? And you only live twelve miles away?"
"I don't always live here, I live at all sorts of places since my mother's
death, but the coming winter I shall go to town to study arithmetic."
"Mathematics?"
"No, timber," he said laughingly, "but that is something you don't

understand. I'll tell you, when I am of age I shall buy a sloop and sail to
Norway, and then I shall have to know how to figure on account of the
customs and clearance."
"Would you really like that?"
"Oh, it, is magnificent on the sea, there is such a feeling of being alive
in sailing--here we are at the landing-stage!"
He came alongside; the councilor and his daughter stepped ashore after
having made him promise to come and see them at Cape Trafalgar.
Then they returned to the bailiff's, while he again rowed out on the lake.
At the poplar they could still hear the sounds of the oars.
"Listen, Camilla," said the councilor, who had been out to lock the
outer door, "tell me," he said, extinguishing his hand-lamp with the bit
of his key, "was the rose they had at the Carlsens a Pompadour or
Maintenon?"
"Cendrillon," the daughter answered.
"That's right, so it was,--well, I suppose we had better see that we get to
bed now; good night, little girl, good night, and sleep well."
When Camilla had entered her room, she pulled up the blind, leaned
her brow against the cool pane, and hummed Elizabeth's song from
"The Fairy-hill." At sunset a light breeze had begun to blow and a few
tiny, white clouds, illumined by the moon, were driven towards
Camilla. For a long while she stood regarding them; her eye followed
them from a far distance, and she sang louder and louder as they drew
nearer, kept silent a few seconds while they disappeared above her,
then sought others, and followed them too. With a little sigh she pulled
down the blind. She went to the dressing table, rested her elbows
against her clasped hands and regarded her own picture in the mirror
without really seeing it.
She was thinking of a tall young man, who carried a very delicate, tiny,
blackdressed lady in his arms; she was thinking of a tall man, who
steered his small ship in between cliffs and rocks in a devastating gale.
She heard a whole conversation over again. She blushed: Eugene
Carlson might have thought that you were paying court to him! With a
little jealous association of ideas she continued: No one would ever run
after Clara in a wood in the rainstorm, she would never have invited a
stranger--literally asked him--to sail with her. "Lady to her fingertips,"
Carlson had said of Clara; that really was a reprimand for you, you

peasant-girl Camilla! Then she undressed with affected slowness, went
to bed, took a small elegantly bound book from the bookshelf near by
and opened the first page. She read through a short hand-written poem
with a tired, bitter expression on her face, then let the book drop to the
floor and burst into tears; afterwards she tenderly picked it up again,
put it back in its place and blew out the candle; lay there for a little
while gazing disconsolately at the moonlit blind, and finally went to
sleep.
A few days later the "rainman" started on his way to Cape Trafalgar.
He met a peasant driving a load of rye straw, and received permission
to ride with him. Then he lay down on his back in the straw and gazed
at the cloudless sky. The first couple of miles he let his thoughts come
and go as they listed, besides there wasn't much variety in them. Most
of them would come and ask him how a human being possibly could be