Madam Neoteric

Thus he lay. In the course of a little while, he noticed that there was something standing beside him and touching him. It was a fireman who had thrown the girder aside, and was about to carry him out of the house. With a strong feeling of annoyance, Mogens noticed that he was lifted up and led away. The man carried him to the opening, and then Mogens had a clear perception that a wrong was being committed against him, and that the man who was carrying him had designs on his life. He tore himself out of his arms, seized a lathe that lay on the floor, struck the man over the head with it so that he staggered backward; he himself issued from the opening and ran erect down the ladder, holding the lathe above his head. Through the tumult, the smoke, the crowd of people, through empty streets, across desolate squares, out into the fields. Deep snow everywhere, at a little distance a black spot, it was a gravel-heap, that jutted out above the snow. He struck at it with the lathe, struck again and again, continued to strike at it; he wished to strike it dead, so that it might disappear; he wanted to run far away, and ran round about the heap and struck at it as if possessed. It would not, would not disappear; he hurled the lathe far away and flung himself upon the black heap to give it the finishing stroke. He got his hands full of small stones, it was gravel, it was a black heap of gravel. Why was he out here in the field burrowing in a black gravel-heap?—­He smelled the smoke, the flames flashed round him, he saw Camilla sink down into them, he cried out aloud and rushed wildly across the field. He could not rid himself of the sight of the flames, he held his eyes shut: Flames, flames! He threw himself on the ground and pressed his face down into the snow: Flames! He leaped up, ran backward, ran forward, turned aside: Flames everywhere! He rushed further across the snow, past houses, past trees, past a terror-struck face, that stared out through a window-pane, round stacks of grain and through farm-yards, where dogs howled and tore at their chains. He ran round the front wing of a building and stood suddenly before a brightly, restlessly lighted window. The light did him good, the flames yielded to it; he went to the window and looked in. It was a brew-room, a girl stood at the hearth and stirred the kettle. The light which she held in her hand had a slightly reddish sheen on account of the dense fumes. Another girl was sitting down, plucking poultry, and a third was singeing it over a blazing straw-fire. When the flames grew weaker, new straw was put on, and they flared up again; then they again became weaker and still weaker; they went out. Mogens angrily broke a pane with his elbow, and slowly walked away. The girls inside screamed. Then he ran again for a long time with a low moaning. Scattered flashes of memory of happy days came to him, and when they had passed the darkness was twice as black. He could not bear to think of what had happened. It was impossible for it to have happened. He threw himself down on his knees and raised his hands toward heaven, the while he pleaded that that which had happened might be as though it had not occurred. For a long time he dragged himself along on his knees with his eyes steadfastly fixed on the sky, as if afraid it might slip away from him to escape his pleas, provided he did not keep it incessantly in his eye. Then pictures of his happy time came floating toward him, more and more in mist-like ranks. There were also pictures that rose in a sudden glamor round about him, and others flitted by so indefinite, so distant, that they were gone before he really knew what they were. He sat silently in the snow, overcome by light and color, by light and happiness, and the dark fear which he had had at first that something would come and extinguish all this had gone. It was very still round about him, a great peace was within him, the pictures had disappeared, but happiness was here. A deep silence! There was not a sound, but sounds were in the air. And there came laughter and song and low words came and light and footsteps and dull sobbing of the beats of the pumps. Moaning he ran away, ran long and far, came to the lake, followed the shore, until he stumbled over the root of a tree, and then he was so tired that he remained lying.

With a soft clucking sound the water ran over the small stones; spasmodically there was a soft soughing among the barren limbs; now and then a crow cawed above the lake; and morning threw its sharp bluish gleam over forest and sea, over the snow, and over the pallid face.

At sunrise he was found by the ranger from the neighboring forest, and carried up to the forester Nicolai; there he lay for weeks and days between life and death.

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About the time when Mogens was being carried up to Nicolai’s, a crowd collected around a carriage at the end of the street where the councilor lived. The driver could not understand why the policeman wanted to prevent him from carrying out his legitimate order, and on that account they had an argument. It was the carriage which was to take Camilla to her aunt’s.

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