Free Victoria by Knut Hamsun

provided a surrogate. Hey, you folks, go and tie the knot! Spring is in bloom, the sun is shining; open the windows if you like, there is perfume in the garden, and the starlings are pairing off in the birch-tops. Why don’t you talk to each other? Laugh, won’t you!
    “Yes, we know each other,” Camilla said candidly. “It was here you fished me out of the water that time.”
    She was young and fair, lively, dressed in pink, in her seventeenth year. Johannes clenched his teeth and laughed and joked. Gradually her cheerful words really began to revive him; they talked for a long time, his palpitation calmed down. She had kept from her childhood the charming habit of tilting her head and listening expectantly when he said something. He recognized her, all right; she was no surprise to him.
    Victoria came in again; taking the Lieutenant’s arm, she pulled him along and said to Johannes, “Do you know Otto—my fiancé? I suppose you remember him.”
    The gentlemen remembered each other. They speak the necessary words, make the necessary bows, and part company. Johannes and Victoria are left by themselves. “Was that the surprise?” he says.
    “Yes,” she replies, pained and impatient. “I did the best I could, I didn’t know what else to do. Now, don’t be unreasonable, rather say thank you; I could see you were pleased.”
    “Thank you. Yes, I was pleased.”
    A hopeless despair descended on him, his face turned deathly pale. If she had ever hurt him, he was now amply compensated and comforted. He was sincerely grateful to her.
    “And I notice you’re wearing your ring today,” he said in a muffled voice. “Now, don’t take it off again.”
    Pause.
    “No, now I’m not likely to take it off again,” she replied.
    Their eyes met. His lips quivering, he turned his head in the direction of the Lieutenant and said, in a hoarse, gruff voice, “You have good taste, Victoria. He’s a handsome man. His epaulets give him a pair of shoulders.”
    She retorted with great composure, “No, he’s not handsome. But he is a well-bred man. That counts for something too.”
    “That was for me. Thank you!” Laughing aloud, he added rudely, “And he’s got money in his pockets, that counts for even more.”
    She abruptly walked away.
    He drifted about from wall to wall like an outcast. Camilla spoke to him, asking him about something, but he neither heard nor answered. She said something again, touching his arm as she repeated her question, but to no avail. “Ah, he’s busy thinking,” she cried, laughing. “He’s thinking, he’s thinking!”
    Victoria heard her and said, “He wants to be left alone. He sent me away too.” But suddenly she stepped right up to him and said aloud, “No doubt you’re trying to dream up an apology. Don’t trouble yourself. On the contrary, I owe you an apology for sending you the invitation so late. It showed great negligence on my part. I forgot about you till the very last moment, I nearly forgot about you altogether. But I hope you will forgive me, I had so many things on my mind.”
    He stared at her, speechless. Even Camilla seemed amazed as she looked from one to the other. Victoria was standing directly in front of them, a satisfied look on her cold, pale face. She had had her revenge.
    “That’s our young gallants for you,” she said to Camilla. “We mustn’t expect too much of them. Over there sits my fiancé talking about moose hunting, and here stands the poet absorbed in thought. . . . Say something, poet!”
    He gave a start; the veins in his temples turned blue.
    “Very well. You are asking me to say something? Very well.”
    “Oh, don’t strain yourself.”
    She made as if to leave.
    “To come straight to the point,” he said slowly, with a smile, though his voice trembled, “to start with the crux of the matter: Have you been in love recently, Miss Victoria?”
    For a few seconds there was total silence; all three of them could hear their hearts