Last Tales (35 page)

At the moment the group was discussing progress. The idea of evolution was in the air: Professor Darwin had made the air of England vibrate, and sent waves of echo across the North Sea. The nobility of Denmark was stirred and intrigued by his doctrine—shocked by the assumption that one’s ancestors were no better than oneself, attracted by the statement that a high rank in the universe was in itself the proof of genuine fitness for that rank.

“I am with you, Eulalia, my pet,” said the artist, speaking as ever very slowly, in a small creaking voice and with a series of small grimaces to make up for his lack of expression. “The world is progressing; we are all progressing and in a hundred years will be nearer a state of perfection than we are now. Still, I tell you, while we march on so gaily, improving all over, certain little traits in our nature will, so to say on their own, reach the acme of perfection to be again shed and dropped and to be gone forever. I shall name to you the one part of us, which at this very moment has reached its climax and is about to become a rudiment. We may in times to come witness wonders of scientific and social improvement. But we shall never again set eyes on a gathering of such noses as the ones which we see round us. There is not one of them that has not taken five hundred years to produce. You realize, in this salon, that the nose is the
pointe
of the whole human personality, and that the true mission of our legs, lungs and hearts is to carry about our noses.”

A pretty lady of the circle here, with a glance at the speaker’s own diminutive nose, burst into a little laughter, was embarrassed and held her handkerchief to her mouth.

“There are here,” the artist unconcernedly continued, “muzzles of antelopes and gazelles and snouts of panthers and foxes. And as to beaks, my dear, as to beaks! There are eagles’ beaks and cockatoos’, small strong owls’ beaks almost hidden in the soft fullness of the cheeks, pelicans’ beaks with provident pouches beneath them, and long beaks of gentle, inquisitive snipes.

“Contemplate, now, the nose of our eminent hostess. There is none more delicate or refined in all Copenhagen; it will take in everything within sniffing distance with the accuracy of a seismograph. At the same time it has the strength of an elephant’s trunk, which lifts up the heaviest timber of the jungle. It has lifted up the lady’s own imposing purple velvet bust to the level of her chin, and is holding it there. It may at its pleasure lift up the obscurest among us into the full glare of social limelight, or it may—God help us—if disapproving of our individual smell, heave up any of us from her own shining floors, swing us about and drop us into the abyss of social darkness. And all the time,” he concluded, “nobly immovable.”

“But shall we really,” asked a stout lady in magnificent magenta, “come to drop our good noses like so many autumn leaves? I feel my own to be quite safely nailed on.” She pensively touched her nose with a short plump finger.

“It may look so,” said the old man. “But it is an easy thing to drop a nose, and I have got the Punchinellos of all ages with me. Or what other particular of its anatomy has humanity to such an extent agreed to view as a detachable part?”

“Dear Master,” said a thin lady in gray, “you have made me feel sinister, like a kind of werewolf running about, in
the morning light of civilization, with the nose of a carnivore of the dark past. Your characterization of our noses was hardly complimentary.”

“It was meant to be complimentary,” said the old artist dejectedly. “Only, as you all know, I am sadly poor in words. Had I my brush here I should touch all the tips of your delicate noses with it and make myself clear in a moment. But let me tell you, in my few sorry words, that the five senses—and among them the sense of smell surely holds a high rank—make up the
savoir vivre
of wild animals and primitive people. When, in the course of progress, these innocents are blessed with a bit of security and comfort, and with a bit of education, nosing out things becomes an extravagant undertaking, noses will deteriorate and grow blunt, and with them good manners. Our domestic animals, which are used in the progress of civilization and so are procured for and somewhat educated, have lost the keenness of their senses, and our pigsties and duck yards display but little manners. The middle classes of our civilization have obtained security and a bit of education—and where, my dears, are now their noses? With them the word of smell, even, has become an unseemly word. It is only when one gets up to your own lofty social level that one will again meet with keenness of the senses as with
savoir vivre
. For what is the end of all higher education? Regained naïveté. Therefore, also, among all our domestic animals the one which comes nearest to the wild animal is the one most highly bred and educated: the thoroughbred, our
édition de luxe
of the horse.

“And look now,” he went on, “at that almost luminous blonde in olive-green velvet who is talking to Count Leopold. Her knees and thighs, and that gallant back of hers, all very frankly and candidly express her nature. But is not her nose the true
pointe
of it? Alive, piquant, with a brave little tilt to it and almost circular nostrils, it can be traced back directly to the audacious and loyal profile of the Arab
mare. She will not fail her rider. But one will have ‘to look round well to find a horseman worthy of her.”

“She is Drude Angel,” said a lady in a toupee. “A cousin of Leopold’s and Adelaide’s. It has been much discussed this season whether she or Adelaide is the better-looking. And she is one of those Angel children for whom once, at Ballegaard, you predicted a future of tragedy.”

The old artist at these words gave the young girl a long, deep glance, then said no more about her.

“Count Leopold,” the stout lady commented, taking up her lorgnette, “in the competition seems to me to be backing his cousin.”

“Ah, tragedy,” said a lady who was taking a fresh cup of tea from a footman. She was a little hard of hearing and like most such people was in the habit of sticking to a particular word in the conversation after others had left it behind. “Who among us escapes tragedy? As I was getting into my carriage to go here I was handed a telegram that my poor niece at Lolland has been delivered of her ninth daughter. Tragedies of the stage are but half as exacting as those of real life. My unfortunate Anna—you all know her husband—will now have to start on the tenth act of hers.”

“But surely, Charlotte,” the thin lady said admonishingly, “you will keep in mind that tragedy is the outcome of the fall of man, and thus cannot possibly be easy to do away with. Our great-grandchildren will have obtained many things, but they will have no more hope than we ourselves of eliminating tragedy from human existence.”

“Alas, no,” said the lady who was hard of hearing.

“Alas, yes!” said the artist. “Tragedy will be an easy thing to do away with, as easy almost as the nose. I close my eyes,” he went on, and actually closed his little lashless eyes, “and I see before me in a hundred years from now a gathering, just like ours, of your great-grandchildren. They will be very pleasant people, justly proud of having achieved great things in science and social conditions and, except for their noses,
very nice people to look at. They will be able to fly to the moon. But not one of them, to save his life, will be able to write a tragedy.

“For tragedy,” he continued, “far from being the outcome of the fall of man is on the contrary the countermeasure taken by man against the sordid and dull conditions brought upon him by his fall. Flung from heavenly glory and enjoyment into necessity and routine, in one supreme effort of his humanity he created tragedy. How pleasantly surprised was not then the Lord. This creature,’ He exclaimed, ‘was indeed worthy of being created. I have done well in making him, for he can make things for me which without him I cannot make.’ ”

“Preserve me!” the stout lady exclaimed. “You are very mysterious—or is it mystical? for I have never been able quite to distinguish the two words from each other—and we beg you to express yourself in plainer words. In my young days I have created a sensation on my entrance into a ballroom, and this last season, God help me, by the aid of various rare spices I have created the recipe for a Cumberland sauce. But how does one create a tragedy?”

The old man sat for a while in silence, stirring a little in his chair as if he were, in accordance with his pupils’ theory, now thoughtfully and gently scratching his forehead.

“Not being good at direct answers,” he said at length, “I shall answer you in riddles:

“What is it that man has not got and would on no account accept if it was offered him, and that is still the object of his adoration and desire? The divine female bust, Mesdames.

“And what is it,” he asked again, “that old Professor Sivertsen has not got, and would not accept if it was offered him for himself, and that yet to him is the most picturesque attribute of a human being? What is it that to him is an absurd and preposterous thing, a ridiculous thing to carry about with you in life, and which is at the same time the rare spice by the aid of which tragedy is created? I shall give
you the answer such as you want it, in plain words. It is named honor, Madame, the idea of honor.

“All tragedies,” he said slowly, “from
Phaedra
and
Antigone
to
Kabale und Liebe
and
Hernani
, and to that promising work of a young Norwegian author,
Maria Stuart in Scotland
, which we saw together the other day, are determined by the idea of honor. The idea of honor does not save humanity from suffering, but it enables it to write a tragedy. An age which can prove the wounds of the hero on the battlefield to be equally painful, whether in the breast or in the back, may produce great scientists and statisticians. But a tragedy it cannot write.

“Those very pleasant people, your grandchildren,” he went on, “at their tea party in a hundred years will have their troubles, but they will have no tragedy. They will have debts—troublesome things—but no debt of honor, on life and death. They will have suicides—troublesome things—but the hara-kiri will be forgotten, or smiled at. But they will be able to fly to the moon. They will be sitting round their tea table discussing their routes and tickets for the moon.”

He was silent for a moment, then took up his theme again, gravely.

“I am an artist,” he said, “I will not exchange the idea of honor for a flying ticket to the moon. I, who alone in society have no nose”—he shot a glance at the lady who had laughed when he talked about noses, a glance familiar to his pupils, who had even a name for it and called it: that Jehovah was putting out his tongue at one—“can yet speak with connoisseurship about noses, for, being an artist, I am myself the nose of society. And I thank God that the people whose portraits I paint have still got noses to their faces. I am an artist, I have no honor of my own, and can yet speak with connoisseurship about honor. In Paradise there was no idea of honor. (‘And they saw that they were naked’—that comes in later, and would by no means have been an objectionable
sight to the eye of an artist.) And I thank God that the people whose portraits I paint have still in their hearts the idea of honor, by which tragedy is created.

“Or where—” he at last concluded his long lecture, in the small, plaintive voice of a child addressing grown-up people. Two of the ladies round him by this time had got up, smiled to him and joined another group of conversationalists. “—where, this being different, would I get the black for my pictures? The
noir d’ivoire
, the
noir de fumée
, the blessed, deep
noir de pêche?
Look at my latest still life, the finest picture I ever painted”—so was always to him his latest picture the finest he had ever painted—“and tell me whether I should possibly have got any black into the crimson and scarlet of my lobster shells, or into the greenish-gray of my oysters, if I had not seen tragedy going on all round me?”

At this moment the hostess, who had by now taken leave of the Prince, released Ib and served him. She had always liked the boy; moreover it had been reported to her that his adversary of the Swedish Legation had made a remark on her figure; all the same she felt that she ought not to let Ib’s irregularities pass unpunished.

“This is a young friend of mine,” she said to other, more worthy friends round her, “who is doing penance for his deeds of blood by coming to see a fat old woman. But ought he not to give a thought to the reputation of the woman herself? It actually makes me jump to see him enter my door. Tell me, Ib Angel, when did you last see the sun rise without seeing it double?”

“I saw it rise quite respectably single this morning, Aunt Alvilda,” he answered, addressing her in the manner used in noble circles toward one’s mother’s and grandmother’s friends, “as I was making Bella jump in the riding ground.” Bella was the mount of the old lady’s granddaughter, which he had undertaken to exercise while its young mistress was in Paris on her wedding trip.

“I made her take the stone wall five times,” he continued, “and she did it awfully nicely, because I was thinking of you all the time, and in my mind had you on my pommel. I feel that she does now deserve a lump of sugar from your own hand, if you will so far honor her and me.”

As the old lady handed him the bit of sugar in her two fingers, he kissed her hand. In her young days she had been the greatest horsewoman of the country. Now the touch of the young lips against her fingers was like the touch of a long-gone, dear muzzle; for a moment she felt that in the midst of her lively talking salon she and this boy belonged to each other, and she drew a little sigh, wishing that his duel had been fought for her.

Ib’s ear here caught the well-known rustle of a frock and the stir in the room generally accompanying it. Adelaide, slim as a reed in a new brown-and-white-striped silk frock draped, brailed up and frogged, and a small neat brown hat with ostrich feathers, had entered the room with her magnificent mother all in mauve, still crinolined and in a lace-trimmed bonnet. The art of upholstery at this period had been brought almost to perfection and had gone a little to the head of the fashionable world; the rich, symmetrical curves of all sofas, chairs and
causeuses
were smoothly and tightly enclosed in silks and satins, and ladies were made to look as much as possible like masterpieces of the craft. Adelaide was bright-eyed, with a rose in each cheek from her drive in the fresh air, filled to the brim with two equally strong emotions: the sad anticipation of the end of the season and the intoxicating consciousness of approaching spring.