"Yer, he has been a sea cadet, they say, you know, and now he would learn fishing as his father is rich, they say, you know."
The commissioner had placed himself at the window, when the conversation commenced, and witnessed now how Miss Mary and the assistant were playing lawn tennis. He had even seen how her gown had lifted in the front every time she leaned backwards to serve the other's ball. Now he saw how the assistant jokingly bent down when the skirt drew up, just as though by gesture and mien to indicate that he saw something.
"Listen now," he said, "I have long thought that it would be of great service for the people's best economy, if there was a provision store, so that the people need not row to the city for their purchases, and it might even be possible, that the merchant could advance them provisions, and sell their fish. What does Mr. Olsson say about it?"
The preacher stroked his long chin whiskers, while his face expressed a mass of shifting desires and changes of mind.
The commissioner now saw through the window, how the assistant had climbed the pole of the lookout and swung horizontally out by his arms, while Miss Mary clapped her hands below him.
"Yes, say, Mr. Olsson, if one could get a provision store here, it would only do good."
"But see, the commonwealth will hardly permit it, unless one could get a storekeeper that could be relied on, I mean a person who...."
"We will take a religious man and let a share in the benefit go to the chapel fund; thus we get both the commonwealth and the home mission on our side."
The face of the preacher now cleared up.
"Yes, in such a way it may work!"
"Yes, think of the subject and try to get a suitable person, who will not fleece the people nor wrong the church. Think of it awhile. Now to another subject: I think I have observed that morality stands somewhat low here on the skerry. Has Mr. Olsson seen or suspected, that matters are not as they ought to be down at Vestman's?"
"Hm! Yes, they say, of course, that there is something, but that one does not know! And I do not believe that one need to mix in it!"
"Do you say that! But I wonder, if one ought not to interfere in time, before they betray themselves, for such things generally end ill out here!"
The preacher did not seem at all willing to stir in the case; either he did not find it worth talking about, or he would not offend the people. Besides, his sickly looks seemed to absorb all his thoughts in his own suffering, so that he with a thwart turn took up his real errand.
"Yes, and so I should like to ask if the commissioner had something to give me, for I think I have got the fever and ague out here in the dampness."
"Ague? Let me see!"
On the impulse of the moment and without forgetting for an instant, that it was a foe who challenged, the commissioner examined the patient's pulse, looked at his tongue and the whites of his eyes and was ready with his prescription.
"Have you poor board at Oman's?"
"Yes, it is wretched," answered the preacher.
"You have malnutrition and shall have food from my table. Have you sworn off all strong drinks?"
"Oh, yes; however, I take a glass of beer...."
"Yes, here you have a preparation of china to commence with, which you are to take three times a day. When it is gone let me know."
Therewith he gave him a bottle of china bitters, after which he took the preacher's hand and said:
"You shall not hate me, Mr. Olsson, for we have great common interests, although we go different ways. If I can be of any service to you, I am ready whenever you wish it."
Such a simple manner as a little plausible good will was enough to pervert the sight of the simple man, so that he believed he had found a friend. With sincere feeling he reached out his hand and stammered:
"You have done me ill once, but God has turned it to good, and now I say thanks for everything and beg the commissioner not to forget about the provision store and the commonwealth."
"I shall not forget that!" finished the commissioner and made a gesture for him to go.
After having collected himself for a moment he went down on the hill to search for the assistant, whom he found engaged in a fencing exercise with Miss Mary, whose wrist and upper arm he took great pains to render as flexible as necessary for a nice guard position.
The commissioner after having complimented them begged to apologize for having troubled them, but he must speak with the assistant about his lodging.
"There does not exist any vacant chamber on the whole skerry except the attic room over the ladies' rooms," said he with a daring, as though he had made every effort to find another.
"No, that won't do!" cried Miss Mary.
"Why not?" argued the commissioner. "What is the obstacle? There is only that room; in case Mr. Blom should have mine, then I must live in the same house as the ladies, and that would not do at all."
As there was no other choice, the matter was settled, and the assistant's baggage was carried up.
"Now to duty!" continued the commissioner, after it had become calm again. "The stromling have come, and in eight days the fishing will commence. Therefore the assistant must at once, preferably to-night, while this wind continues, go out and try the drifting nets, as he already knows how."
"May I go too?" begged Miss Mary, imitating a child's squeaking voice.
"Certainly you may do that, my angel," answered the commissioner, "if Mr. Blom has nothing against it. But you must excuse me that I leave you alone now, for I must write reports the whole night. At one o'clock you must be out. You can take the coffeepot with you."
"Oh, won't that be fun, such fun!" exulted the girl, who seemed to have become ten years younger.
"And now I go to order a boat equipped and get the nets ready. Look out and go to bed early to-night, so that you will not oversleep."
Therewith he went away, surprised over the incredulous surety, with which he forced his own will, since he had left an impossible defense and gone over to the offensive.
For the first time he entered the cottage of the hostile fisherman Oman.
He noticed at once that there was a coldness and repugnance, but he was so precise in his questions and orders, that everything bent before him. He threw in some kindly questions about the children; promised that there would soon be better times on the skerry, and he would undertake all the risk himself, threw in a word about the provision store, and reminded the people to keep barrels and salt in readiness, and if they had not the money to buy with, they could have it advanced. He left as a friend to all and must promise at once to send down some strong medicine to the father who had taken cold.
Thereafter he went down to the boat houses and selected nets with strong floats and strings. Examined the best boat, and ordered out two able boys.
When he had finished the preparatory work, the bell rang for supper in the ladies' cottage.
At the supper table he spoke with the mother, while the young people, as he now called them, were devouring each other with their eyes; squabbling and pushing, as if their bodies were irresistibly attracted towards each other.
"Should you leave the two alone like that?" whispered the mother to him, when he had said good night to retire.
"Why not? If I show myself dissatisfied, then I become ridiculous, and if I do not show dissatisfaction..."
"So you will be still more ridiculous!"
"Thus; in either case. It is immaterial consequently what stand I take! Good night, mama!"
It had rained for eight days after the first trial with the drifting nets, which had passed without other results than a little scene between the engaged pair. The commissioner, who very well knew that there were no fish to get, as he had purposely led the young folks astray, had gone down to the beach to receive the home-coming fishers and had then been called idiot by his betrothed, who was entirely worn out by being up all night. When the boatmen snickered at this secretly, the commissioner, who feared a storm, had come between with a joke. At the dinner table the sport at the new method of fishing had taken wider range, and the commissioner had played deep humiliation so that Mr. Blom had several times regarded it his duty to defend him in a manner extremely wounding.
The rainy days following this had kept the company in doors, whereby an extremely intimate intercourse had formed down in the ladies' cottage, where the assistant had introduced the habit of reading aloud from the Swedish poets. The commissioner had at the beginning listened to it, but finally left with the explanation that Swedish poesy was written for confirmation classes and ladies and that he would wait, until there came a poet, who would write for men. He had then by common vote been declared unpoetical, at which he was satisfied, as it relieved him from the duty of being present at the seances.
The rainy weather had caused even the work on the chapel to stop, and the laborers were sitting in the cottages and furnishing the gin to what coffee they could get.
The colporteur, who could not gather the people out on the slope, passed the first days in the kitchen and would have read out of the Bible, but was received with indifference and fell into dispute with the laborers, who were mostly free thinkers. Whereupon he had withdrawn to his chamber, explaining that he was sick and he sent to the commissioner for the china preparation, as his bottle was emptied. Suddenly he had disappeared and it was said that he had gone with a steamer to the city.
He had now returned, the evening before, to the skerry, accompanied by a man, whom he called his brother and who brought a boat load of divers articles, mostly beer, which was packed up in a boat house, in the open door of which a plank on two barrels served as a counter, as the commonwealth wealth had permitted the opening of a provision store.
During the past few days fishing folks had commenced to gather from the islands near the mainland. And now the boat houses were opened where whole families were harbored, the cottages were filled with relations and acquaintances, and on the whole skerry there was a life, which strangely contrasted with the usual solitude.
As the skerry and the fishing waters belonged to a private individual in on the mainland, every boat paid a certain duty which was collected by an overseer who was sent here. With this overseer the commissioner had at once got on a bad footing, when he would speak about fishing with drifting nets, which would be followed by the abandoning of the shoals, and thereby the water tax would cease. But even this apparently unfavorable circumstance he had known how to turn to his benefit; for the overseer, when opposing the new method, was urged to propagate the old system by means of gin and would thereby against his will form the dark background, against which the effects of fishing with drifting nets would stand out in bolder magnificence. And the commissioner was perfectly sure of his victory, as night and day he had been sampling the water, dredging, fishing, and with his water telescope investigating the depths to find out where the shoals of fish were moving.
All these details, however, had no other interest to him, than that they served to exercise his energy for coming battles, to restore in him that feeling of power, without which nobody can endure, who has unusual abilities, which are easily lost, unless used.
And during the time, which had passed since the arrival of the assistant, the daily hectoring from the side of the young folks had by and by accustomed him to the role of an inferior, so that he was on the way to live this role himself, especially as he himself did not wish to break the engagement but found it necessary to cause the break to be made by her. Between the two young people there existed a complete sympathy on all subjects, and he had witnessed how the ripe woman was at once on a level with the unripe man, all of whose immature thoughts, all improvised notions she accepted as the height of wisdom. And each of his attempts to refute a stupidity stranded against their inability to keep together the threads of a discourse, because they were thinking exclusively under the influence of the desire to own each other. To take up some competition in acrobatic dexterity or praise of the lower sex he would not, for it was his exact purpose to be erased and make a capital end to the tie, which threatened his whole future existence. And this biandri, in which he was living, when he, for an occasional moment alone with his betrothed, only received reflexes from the other man, felt, as it were, his spirit on her lips, heard his childishness reëchoed from her mouth, all this had ended in giving him loathing for a state, which reminded of aménage à trois.
The young man's conceit had no limit, and he had fallen into the ridiculous idea that he was superior to the commissioner, because he wasal pariwith Miss Mary, who also gave the illusion of being above the commissioner; according to the perfectly correct formula: if A is greater than B, and C is equal to A, then C is also greater than B,—without, however, first examining whether A really was greater than B.
He had never before expected to find youth's secret so openly exposed as he got it here gratuitously presented on a waiter, and how well he recognized himself from a past stage.
How had he not cried of hunger and rut? Experienced Weltschmerz of envy for elders, who had already gained what he was struggling for and who then made him feel dejected, whereby also his sympathy for all oppressed and small had been aroused. This inability to judge one's powers, based on anticipation of that, which it would be possible to accomplish in this long life, if thought of as concentrated in a single act! All this sentimentality, caused only by unsatisfied desires. This over-estimating of woman, while memories from the nursery and of the mother were still fresh. These lax half-thoughts of the still soft brain under pressure from blood vessels and testicles.
He even recognized these faint signs of good sense, which under the form of primitive, animal slyness and discrimination of means so often believed themselves to be the highest prudence, but were only the fox's simple attempt to be shrewd, and which therefore wonderfully resembled the reputed women's artifice, priest shrewdness, and lawyers' trickery.
The young man had even tried mind reading on the commissioner, thereby betraying that he suspected the latter of carrying some dangerous secrets as he was unlike other beings. But in this he had acted so clumsily, that the commissioner had found out all that was thought and said about him by the ladies; instead of giving any information he had by his answers so mystified the young man, that he began to doubt whether his rival was a blockhead or of a demoniac nature. By demoniac he meant a conscious person, who under pretext of the greatest naivete acted with full calculation, always awake and leading the fates of other beings according to his plans. And as the idea of calculation, which was a virtue, always had a bad significance to the young, who could not calculate the consequences of an act, so his envy assumed the inferior's passionate desire to tear down and trample under the feet.
Thus matters stood, when the great day came that was to decide the fishermen's whole existence for the coming winter.
The August evening was hanging bed warm over the skerry, all of whose cliffs and stones were still warm after the sun had gone down, so warm, that the dew could not fall on them. The sea outside spread itself smooth and lavender gray where the full moon copper red slowly emerged and was just now half hidden by a brig, which seemed to sail right on the satellite'smare serenitatis. Nearer the strand were seen all the floats of the laid out nets lying in rows like flocks of sea birds floating on the swell.
And while the people were awaiting the break of day to look at the nets, they had camped on the strands around campfires with coffeepots and gin bottles; in the boat house, where the provision dealer was selling beer, the preacher had taken place beside his brother to assist him with the lively traffic, and with a blue apron round his hips he was seen opening beer bottles like an old expert saloon keeper.
The commissioner, who had come out to observe the direction of the currents, the temperature and barometric pressure, now wandered on the sandy beach to rest from his thoughts. Here and there he surprised a couple, who had sought solitude. Their unintelligible naivete in behavior made him only turn his back on them with a sneer and loathing. Coming further out on the point, he climbed out on the cliffs to find his seat, where he used to meditate. It was one of the arm chairs which had been perfectly polished by the waves, and was still warm as a stove from the burning sun of the day.
He had been sitting a moment half asleep lulled by the sighing of the surf, when he heard the sand creak below on the edge of the beach. There was a rustle in the dry wrack, and he saw the assistant and his betrothed coming slowly walking with their arms around each other's waist. They halted between the invisible beholder and the moonlight's street on the water, so that he could see their figures outlined as sharply, as though he had had them between the objective of a microscope and the reflecting mirror. And he saw now with antipathy's sharpened glance her profile like that of a bird of prey leaning towards the other's big ape's head with the enormous cheeks, useless to all but buglers, and the narrow tapering skull without a forehead. He observed now the superfluous mass of flesh in the man's figure, whose ignoble outlines with too large hips reminded of a woman like the Farnesian Hercules. A manly ideal of the period of the semi-brutes, when the fist still ruled over the big brain, which was not completed.
Disgraced, as though he had been engaged to a centaur, he felt that his soul through marriage with a retrogressive type, was standing before the beginning of a crime, which, completed, would falsify his lineage for all time to come, which should allure him to offer his only life for another's child, on which he should squander his best feelings and, after a time grown fast to it, drag his humiliation as a block about his feet unable to free himself. Jealousy "this dirty vice," what else is it than the healthy, strong fear of the tribal instinct lest it should be hindered in its praiseworthy egotism to perpetuate the best in the individual? And who lacks in this sound passion but the sterile family sustainer, the wife panderer, the weak fool, the cicisbeo, the gynecolater, who believes in platonic love?
He was jealous, but when the first anger over the affront had subsided, there awoke an unrestrained desire to possess this woman without wedlock. The gauntlet was thrown, the liberty in choice was proclaimed, and he felt a desire to take up the battle, break the band and appear as the lover in order that he with gained victory should be able to go calmly onwards, conscious that he was not the one who had been neglected by nature, who had been pushed aside in the battle of love. Here was no longer a question of honest contest with loyal means, it was an insidious battle between burglars. The challenger had selected the simple weapon, skeleton keys, and the combat was about stealing! With a woman as the prize all hesitation disappeared. The animal had awakened, and the wild instincts, which hid themselves under the great name of love, were as furious as the powers of nature let loose.
He arose from the rock unobserved and turned his steps homewards to arrange his fate, as he called it.
There was a gloomy silence on the skerry about seven o'clock the next morning, for the fishing on the shoals had been a failure on account of the reasons stated by the commissioner. The fishermen were sitting dejectedly in their boats and straightening out their nets, and now and then picking out a solitary stromling, which was thrown on shore.
The traffic at the provision store had become less with the sinking credit, and the preacher had laid aside his blue apron and with book in hand had gathered a little group of despairing women around him in a cottage. With an incomprehensible, but not unusual, logic among his class he spoke of how Jesus fed five thousand men with five loaves and two fishes. There was an approximateà proposfor so far as this case was concerned there were many mouths and few fishes, but how these few fishes could fill so many, that he could not indicate. Now that there was no help, he must try and explain, why the miracle could not be done again, and he found the reason in the prevailing unbelief. If they only had faith as a grain of mustard seed, the miracle would be repeated. And faith could only be gained by prayer.
Therefore he exhorted the community to pray.
Although none of those present believed in the miracle of the two fishes, while the most of them had never heard of it, because they had not read that story, they followed the example and repeated the Lord's Prayer, which they had learned passably for the first holy communion.
But when they were half through, they were suddenly disturbed by a noise from the harbor. Those who were sitting nearest the window now saw a fishing boat, which had just furled its mainsail, and come up to the pier. In the bow stood Miss Mary with fluttering hair beneath the blue Scotch cap, and at the tiller sat the assistant waving his hat as a sign of success. The boat was overloaded with nets, through the dark meshes of which glittered fish upon fish.
"Come here, you shall have stromling," cried the girl with the conqueror's munificence.
"If I am only permitted to measure them first, the people shall have them," interposed the commissioner, who from his window had observed the return of the boat and had therefore come down to see the result of his labors.
"What good will that do?" said Miss Mary over-bearingly.
"It is for the statistics, my gracious lady," answered the commissioner with no sign of discomposure, for he knew that the result of the fishing had depended upon the information he had given, founded on current, depth, temperature of the water and the condition of the bottom.
"You with your statistics," joked Miss Mary with an expression of deepest disgust.
"Take it, then, but only let me know afterwards how much there was," the commissioner finished the discussion with and went home.
"He is envious of us," remarked Miss Mary to the assistant.
"Perhaps jealous?" said he.
"That he surely cannot be," replied the girl half aloud as to herself, thereby betraying that which she had hidden for several days, namely her being provoked at her betrothed's incredible indifference towards his rival which she had taken as an offending over-confidence in his power to charm.
The prayer meeting had been broken up, and all the islanders gathered around the returned fishing boat.
"Yes, see Miss Mary, you are a perfect man!" flatteringly said the preacher, getting the chance of sowing a little seed of variance as he believed.
"A sitting crow gets nothing," joked the custom house surveyor.
"One who lies on his sofa, he means," whispered the assistant to Miss Mary.
The girl swelled at the praise, and distributed the fish with full hands to those who stood on the pier, who never tired of breaking forth in praise and blessings over the angel rescuer.
But it was not gratitude for benevolence received, which called forth this beautiful emotion, it was a hearty desire to evade confessing themselves wrong towards the commissioner, whose way of fishing they had joked about. It was the reverse side of a hatred towards their real benefactor, for whom they would not bow in gratitude.
When the fish was taken from the nets and distributed between the poorest, there proved to be ten barrels, which were at once bought by the provision dealer and salted down. The money was transferred at once into coffee, sugar and beer. For they felt sure they could take their own stromling for the winter out of the sea, since Miss Mary had given them all the information regarding the new way of fishing with drifting nets.
When the commissioner reached his room, he found a letter, which had been brought by a coast guardsman returning home. It contained an invitation for the commissioner and his betrothed to honor the ball of the officers on board the corvetteLoke, which would anchor beside the skerry at eight o'clock of the same day.
He saw at once that the moment had come in which to make an end to the engagement, for now to take the mistress of another into society and introduce her as his future wife, naturally he would not. Therefore he pulled off his engagement ring, and put it in a letter, which he had composed the night before to the widow of the exchequer officer, and in which he with the strongest expressions of despair regretted that his engagement with Miss Mary must come to an end, because of a former liaison, which he had recklessly entered into with a woman, who had borne him children, and who now appeared with a lawful claim which, if it could not compel him into a marriage with the plaintiff, still had the power to prevent his union with another. As a gentleman, but without intending to offend, he explained that he was prepared to assist the innocently injured girl who was perhaps placed in distress, both as far as the saving of her honor and her subsistence were concerned.
This fiction he had found to be the only possible way to make a final ending, as it protected the honor of both parties, but mostly that of the girl, and must be irrevocable without the hope of reparation, being an inevitable fate.
When he had sealed the letter, he whistled to his orderly, and gave it to him telling him to carry it to the widow of the officer of the exchequer.
Thereafter he lighted a cigarette and placed himself at the window to see how the shot would strike. On the porch stood the old lady shaking a mat, when the man stopped to deliver the letter. She received it with some astonishment, which increased, when she with her left hand squeezed the envelope to feel what it contained. Thereupon she turned round and went into the cottage.
A moment thereafter Miss Mary's figure was seen to move to and fro behind the lace curtains in the dining room. She seemed to walk vehemently backwards and forwards, sometimes stopping and gesticulating with her arms, as though she would defend herself against reproaches, which were thrown at her.
This lasted about an hour, after which she was seen out on the porch, throwing a revengeful glance up towards the commissioner's window. After which she beckoned to the assistant, who was coming from the harbor.
When they had both gone into the cottage and been invisible for half an hour, they appeared again and went into the woodshed, from whence they brought out a trunk and a knapsack.
So, they had considered it, and found that to tarry on the skerry longer was impossible.
After a moment the assistant again appeared, this time carrying with him his own trunk, which the commissioner recognized by its trimmings of brass.
Thus he also intended to go.
Soon the owners of the cottage appeared with servants, and the whole house seemed to be turned upside down.
Towards noon, after the commissioner had passed away the time with reading, he saw the assistant and Miss Mary step out onto the porch, and engage in a lively conversation, which became more so and was followed by gestures, indicating a controversy.
"They must know each other pretty well, as they are quarreling already," thought the commissioner.
In the afternoon the old lady and the assistant were on the pilot's boat being taken out to an inward bound steamer. Why Miss Mary stayed, he could not understand clearly. Perhaps with the hope of a renewal, perhaps with a desire to show her spite or may be something else.
However, she placed herself at the window, so that she could be seen from the custom house cottage. And there she sat most of the time, sometimes drumming on the window pane, sometimes reading a book and now and then raising her handkerchief to her face.
About seven o'clock in the evening the corvette was seen stealing from Landsort's passage and going to anchor at once between Norsten and East Skerries. When it signaled with the steam whistle for pilots, the girl arose and came out to see what was going on; and as she now stood on the slope, regarding the fine vessel, which was adorned for a feast with flags on all stays and with colored awnings amidships, the commissioner could see how she became fascinated by the alluring sight. She stood with her hands behind her back in an unbecoming attitude, until the wind brought to the skerry the tunes of a festival march, when her feet began to move on the spot. Slowly the slender body bent forwards, as if it was attracted by the tones of music, and then, at once, the whole figure collapsed, the hands covered the face and the girl rushed precipitately into the cottage, in despair like a child, who had lost an expected pleasure.
The commissioner now dressed for the ball; on the black dress coat with the doctor's insignia embroidered in black silk on the velvet collar, he hung his six decorations of knighthood on a chain and put on his bracelet, which he had not worn since the day of his engagement.
When he had finished his toilet and had still an hour left, before the boat would come for him, he decided to make a farewell visit to Miss Mary, mostly because he would not be suspected of cowardice, but also because he was longing to test his power over his own feelings. As he came into the hall he made a noise to give the girl time to pose in order that he from this pose might learn the reason of her stay and what her intentions were.
After knocking he entered and found Miss Mary sitting with sewing work, something he had never seen in her hands before. Her face expressed humiliation, regret and submission, although with an effort to look indifferent and aristocratic.
"Will you see me, Miss Mary, or shall I go?" commenced the commissioner. And he felt again the inexplicable desire to lift her above himself as a woman, when she appeared with a woman's attributes and leaned towards him, just as he otherwise felt an irresistible desire to push her down, when she came with manly pretensions and manners. At this moment she seemed more beautiful to him than he had seen her for a long time, so that he gave way to his feelings, and without making resistance he became approachable.
"I have caused you grief, Miss Mary...."
When she heard the softness in his voice she at once straightened up and snapped:
"But you were too cowardly to come and tell me, yourself."
"Considerate, Miss Mary! It is not so easy for me as it is for you to slap people's faces. And you see now, that I have the courage to show myself, as well as you to receive me."
The last was ambiguous, with the purpose of hearing whether she believed in his motive for breaking the engagement.
"Did you believe that I feared you?" asked she and took a stitch with her needle.
"I did not know how you would take my explanation, although I thought I knew that the sorrow which it might cause you would be easily consoled."
There lay something in the words "easily consoled," which seemed to cut the girl as an allusion to the young consoler, but neither of them seemed to have the desire to betray themselves; one feared to show jealousy, and the other was anxious to learn, if he had seen anything.
The girl, who had sat at her work, now looked up to read the expression in the face of her opponent and observed with a wonder which she could not hide the many orders on the lapel of his dress coat. And with a childish pettishness, which only hides envy, she sneered:
"How fine you are!"
"I shall be so at the ball!"
The girl's face twitched, twitched so terribly that the commissioner felt the reflection of her pain and took hold of her hand at the same moment that she broke out with a terrible cry. And when he leaned towards her, she drew her head towards his chest and cried, so that she shook as in a fever.
"Child!" the commissioner said soothingly.
"Yes, I am a child! Therefore you should have indulgence with me!" sobbed the girl.
"Listen! How far shall one have indulgence with a child?"
"Infinitely!"
"No! I have never heard that! There is a perfectly determined limit, where dissoluteness approaches criminal action."
"What do you mean?"
And now she jumped up.
"You know what I mean, I see that," answered the commissioner, who was again free from the enchantment, for as soon as she became hard, at the same moment she became ugly.
"Jealous, thus!" sneered the girl, who believed she had caught him.
"No, for jealousy is an uncalled for suspicion, sometimes a measure of prudence, but my apprehensions have proved to be well founded. Therefore I am not jealous!"
"And of a boy! A whelp, that you are standing so far above," continued the girl without taking the explanation into consideration.
"So much the more ignominious for yourself!"
"Thus the whole story was a falsehood," she threw between to escape being hit by the affront.
"From beginning to end! But I would not cause your mother sorrow and yourself shame! Do you understand the delicacy?"
"Yes, I understand it! But I do not understand myself!"
"That I should be able to do, if you gave me a part of your past life!"
"My past life! What do you mean?"
"There exists then a past in your life! It was this I always suspected."
"You allow yourself to make insinuations...."
"As I have nothing further to do, with who you are or what you have been, so ... Now I must say farewell!" the commissioner broke off, as he saw a gunner out on the hill coming for him.
"Don't go away yet!" begged the girl and grasped his hand, looking into his eyes with drowning glances. "Do not go away, for then I do not know what I might do."
"Why torment ourselves longer, when separation is inevitable?"
"We will not torment ourselves! You shall stay with me this evening, so that we can talk before we separate; I will narrate to you all that you wish to know, and after that you will judge me differently."
The commissioner, who from this utterance believed he knew all and was sure that he had escaped the misfortune of binding himself to the mistress of one or more, now came to a decision. He went to the window, and dismissed the gunner, saying that he would come later in his own boat.
When this was done, he sat down on the sofa for the starting of a conversation.
But after the girl was relieved of her uneasiness, she relaxed and became almost speechless, so that finally there was perfect silence. They had nothing to say to each other, and the fear of stirring up storm birds oppressed more and more the feelings, so that tiresomeness faced them.
The commissioner began to thumb the books, which were left on the center table, and caught sight of one on which the assistant's name was written.
"The story of a young woman, I believe I Have you read it?" asked he.
"No, I haven't had time yet. What is there about the book?"
"Well, it is remarkable because it was written by a woman and yet is sincere."
"So! What is its contents then?"
"Its contents are about free love. There is a young scientist, who becomes engaged to a girl free from prejudice; and while he is on an expedition, she lends herself to an artist, while expecting later to marry her betrothed."
"So? What does the authoress say about that?"
"She only laughs at that, of course."
"Fie!" said the girl and rose to go after a bottle of wine.
"Why so? No right of ownership in love! And, besides, her betrothed was tiresome, at least in her company, to judge by the delineation in the book."
"Now we are beginning to be tiresome, also," interrupted Miss Mary, as she filled the glasses.
"What shall we amuse ourselves with then?" asked the lover with an amorous smile, which could not be misunderstood. "Come now and sit down here by me."
Instead of being offended at the coarse tone and gesture, which accompanied the invitation, the girl seemed to look up to the man with a certain admiration where before she had almost despised him for his over-respectful manners.
The twilight had fallen, and the moon in its last quarter threw only a yellow-green stripe in onto the floor, silhouetting the shadow of the balsam.
Through the open window came the subdued tones of the first waltz, "The Queen of the Ball," as a reproach, a greeting from the lost Paradise, and at the same time sustained the hope that all was not ended.
And in the hope of binding him by a memory of the highest bliss she made the last concession after a stormy explanation of love on his side.
Three days later the commissioner landed on East Skerries after having been to Dalaro. When he learned that the young lady had left never to return, he felt an inexpressible easiness, as though the air was rarefied and purer. Going up to his room, he rested before the open window to smoke, and in memory pass through the changeful sensations of the past days.
When he at midnight had torn himself from the girl's embrace, he had placed himself in the boat with a certain satisfaction; as though he had fulfilled a pressing duty. It was now as though the equilibrium had been replaced. His rights had been violated in such a case, where the law did not give redress, and therefore he must procure right for himself, and he had acted only upon the principles which the opponents themselves had promulgated.
Afterwards when he had gone aboard the corvette and met people, with whom he could converse in a cultured language, and had discussed with the surgeon learned subjects, it at first acted as an intoxicant. He did not need to suppress his brain for childish talk, nor make himself semi-stupid in order to be understood; and when he only expressed himself by inference or with hints, he was understood at once. Then he felt that he had been living three months in barbarism, which by and by had imperceptibly drawn him down into trifling battles, which had placed his thought life beneath the effective and vegetative; had elevated the act of reproduction to be the main thing, and allured him to enter as a competitor in a strife as between stallions, from which very likely he would have come out victorious. And so he understood why the guardians of the universal Christian church, who were sent to carry civilization out to the savages of all nations, were once forbidden to found a family, or to bind themselves to woman or children, and he understood that there could lay a rational significance in fasting and renunciation, for those who would live a higher spiritual life. It was not for self-gratification that the anchorite sought solitude, for just as when dropped at random on fallow ground, the solitary grain of wheat could raise sixty spears, while that in the wheat field only gave two, where the seed was crowded between millions on fertilized ground, so could that individual, who struggled for a richer development over others, only grow in the desert.
Three days' experience had corroborated this, for when he on board the corvette and at the bathing resort was dragged from circle to circle, he had observed every night when he went to bed, that during the course of the day he had ground off his edges, whereby he had, like a precious stone, gained in appearance but lost in carats. This subserviency, developed by common sympathy for the human being and by the tendency of adaption in society had deluded him to such a degree, that the opinions which he had improvised in society stuck to him and were subsequently recollected by him with the claim of being his inner-most thoughts. And he had finally become loath and felt himself at last a false being, who said one thing and thought another; he began to blush for himself and observed that with increasing esteem he gained in society for his affable manners, he lost all esteem for himself.
To avoid sinking he isolated himself again, and the regained solitude acted upon his spirit as a steam bath, or a swim in the sea, where liberty from all pressure, all contact with solid material had ceased; and he decided to stay on the skerry through the winter.
For this purpose he rented for his own use the cottage, where the ladies had dwelt, and began to install himself the same day. The one big room he took for a library and laboratory, the other for dining room and parlor; the attic he fixed up for a bedroom.
When he awoke the next morning in his new domicile, after a dreamless sleep, he found a new pleasure in having a house alone to himself, where he need not have forced upon him suggestions from others, nor receive other impressions than those he himself determined on.
When he had drunk his coffee, he sat down in the library, after having given orders that he would not receive visitors before three o'clock in the afternoon.
Now he took up an old plan of exploring Europe's present ethnography, in a way that would save all useless travel. On printed circulars, issued in a fictitious name, he now filled in the addresses, and professional titles and put them into stamped envelopes. To get the most complete record of the measurements of the craniums and the dimensions of the body he had decided that circulars sent to hat makers, makers of coffins, shirt and hosiery manufacturers in Europe's principal cities asking for information as to the sizes mostly called for in the respective countries, would procure for him the desired results. The circulars pretended to be Issued with the view of exportation of said stuffs at wholesale with high profits. In addition to this another circular was sent to the great as well as the smaller book dealers in the capitals of Europe and other cities, with a request for photographs of all kinds. These were to be paid for in advance at the highest price by postal order. He also placed himself in communication with a technicist, who bought photographs to utilize the silver in them. With this and the thousand of portraits, which he had cut out of foreign illustrated papers, he intended to commence his explorations.
When he had finished this work, it was dinner time. He went out of doors to eat it, and he observed that a letter was in the mail box on the door. The writing was familiar to him, and when he had assured himself it was from Miss Mary, he did not open it, he let it lay beside him on the table; meantime he ate his simple dinner in great haste. That the letter did not contain anything agreeable, that he understood as he had broken his promise to come back the next day to say good-by, and now because he would save himself all disagreeable impressions he laid the letter aside in the table drawer without opening it.
But when he had slept an hour after his dinner and the heat from labor and food had disappeared, he observed, that his thoughts did not turn to books, they turned towards that table drawer. And now he began to wander up and down the floor, the prey of vehement and fatiguing battle.
It was as though he had a part of her soul locked up in this drawer; she existed in the room, and the spirit of her power of attraction lay under the white envelope, on which a red seal lightened as a kiss. He saw her sitting there on the same sofa, heard her whisperings, felt her eyes glowing in the dusk, and his flesh began to burn again. How stupid, he thought, to let life's highest bliss go out of one's hands. When love was a mutual deceit, why not deceive then! Nothing for nothing I And when a perfect happiness did not exist, why then not be content with the imperfect?
Now he felt that he would have crawled to her, lied that he was her slave and acknowledged himself vanquished. He could have frightened away the rival; and with her alone in perfect union it would have been easy to have bound her with the band of habit and interest, and finally she would not take the enjoyment from someone else.
But so came the fear, that this letter would disperse his last hope, which still was better than nothing, and he would not read it. He had placed himself at his laboratory table, and almost without thinking of what he did, he opened an iron retort, put in the letter and lit the blast lamp under it. After a moment the smoke puffed out through the neck of the retort, and when it ceased he lighted the gas with a match. A little blue-yellow flame burned for a few minutes with a whistling sound like a bat's cry.
The spirit of the letter, as an alchemist would have said! A mass of paper which was consumed and gave the same products of combustion, carbon and hydrogen, as a burning soul in a living body. Carbon and hydrogen! It was all, and the same!
The flame fluttered, decreased, disappeared in the neck, and it was dark again in the room!
It had again grown cloudy out over the sea, and the waves were going before the east wind, beating towards the strand, sighing, hissing, and the wind split at the corners like the waves against the stem of a boat; but through all these sounds of lamentation was heard the whistling buoy's crying out on the sea, rhythmetic as a tragic comedian, when he recites, and with pauses, just as though to recover his breath or let the last word die out; before he lets a new one stream forth. It was a solo for Titan with the storm for an accompaniment, a giant organ, where the east wind tread the bellows.
The room became too sultry for him, and he took his cloak to go out into the storm and let his mood blow away. Attracted against his will by the light of a lantern in the provision store, he steered his steps thither. As the fishing with drifting nets had been remunerative, the store had a lively patronage, and hidden by darkness he could come close to the talking fishermen without being seen.
"And so the assistant swiped the girl from him," said old Oman; "and so she got a real man instead of that one...."
"Yes, he is not as a human being should be," threw in the unmarried Vestman, "for to-day he wrote as good as hundreds of letters for the mail. And what he is boiling in there and is busy with, no mortal can tell, but I think, what I think! And we must have our eyes open, for such ones as lock themselves in and boil, we know them."
"Oh, the devil!" the married Vestman followed with. "Let him brew his drop himself; it cannot turn out worse with him than old Soderlund, who mashed out on the rocks and lost his still! This here I think we won't meddle with."
"Yes, if it is only that," replied Oman, "then let him go on with it, but see I never can forget that he would have taken the net from me that time, and if I catch him by the fin, I don't let him slip until I have him in the cauf...."
"Yes, a wicked man is he who has no God!" ended the colporteur. "That is sure!"
Without having the slightest trace of an illusion in regard to their thankfulness, the commissioner could not help feeling an uneasiness at being surrounded in the desert by downright enemies and the most dangerous of the dangerous, who believed that they saw in him an idiot or a criminal. They believed that he was distilling gin to save twenty cents on a gallon! They suspected him of mixing poisons for them. If any misfortunes happened here, he would be blamed for it. And if they used their unlawful nets, he would not dare to seize them without himself dreading a more or less scandalous charge, or something worse than that—their revenge.
It was a dangerous company, dangerous to life as stupidity. And although he knew that at any moment he would he could gain all of them for his friends, if he treated them to a gallon of gin and stayed with them himself and helped drink it, he never thought to do this for one moment. Their enmity kept him free; their friendship would have dragged him down into their filth. Their hate could only act as an annunciator for his power, but their affections would have neutralized it, even if their spirits never could enter into contact with his. And the very danger had its pleasure, because it kept his spirit awake and elastic, gave him something to counteract, for exercise. Besides the danger out here among these savages was not less than that in the upper circles, which he had lately left, and where the power to do real harm was greater. Had not the surgeon on board the corvette regarded him as sick, when he spoke of the necessity of finding a method to utilize the enormous quantity of nitrous oxide, which was wasted in the manufacture of commercial sulphuric acid, while at the same time the expensive saltpeter is imported from Chile to compensate for the soil's losses of nitrogen. Or when he projected something about utilizing the smoke from the chimneys for technical purposes, had not this friend advised him to take a sojourn at a watering place and reside among human beings.
Rather stay in absolute solitude and pass for an idiot among redskins than be condemned to a civil death by equals with authority and decision without appeal.
After he had wandered a moment in the darkness, he returned to his cottage and lighted the candles and lamps in his two rooms and opened the doors onto the porch, whereby he lessened the impression of being locked in.
When he now looked at his watch it was only eight o'clock. The long evening and night which were coming frightened him, for his head was too tired to work, but not sufficiently so to enable him to sleep. The wind blew fiercely round the house corners, the din of the waves and the roaring of the whistling buoy made him nervous. To free himself from the suggestions of these sounds, to which he would not be a slave, he placed in "sleeping bullets" which were small steel balls he had bought in Germany, which when placed in the ears, prevented every sound from penetrating and being perceived.
But when he thus had shut off perhaps the greatest line of communication with the outer world, his fantasy began to labor at a higher pressure. A mad curiosity to know what the burned letter could have contained, gripped him irresistibly, so that he opened the retort to try to read in the ashes. But even the ink was destroyed by fire, and there was no trace to be seen of the writing. Now the field was open for all kinds of doubts and guesses. Sometimes he believed he could draw conclusions as to what the letter had contained from all that had passed, sometimes he rejected this, remembering the girl's illogical way to think and act.
So finally he stopped at the decision that it was impossible to reason it out, and he decided not to worry over it any more. But his brain had become unrestrainable and was worrying on its own account, grinding and sifting, until he became completely exhausted, without being able to sleep. And with the increasing feebleness in the organ of thought the lower propensities awoke.
Enraged that his soul could not hold out in the battle with a fragile body, he finally undressed and took a dose of potassium bromide, and at once the brain stopped in its wild career, fantasies banished, the consciousness was stunned, and he fell asleep as heavily as though dead.
The autumn had advanced, but on the skerry could not be seen that the summer had gone, for there was not a deciduous tree to turn yellow, and the lichens on the rocks had become more luxuriant, and swelled by the moisture, the heath and the crowberry vines had taken on a new verdure, the juniper and the dwarf pines, the eternally green trees of the north, were freshened and freed from dust by rain.
The fishermen had flown, as their labor for the fall was ended; the silence had again returned, and the provision store was closed. The wooden frame of the chapel became more naked, as the boards had been picked off for firewood and carpenter's lumber, so that there was only the studdings to be seen, which resembled a complex of gibbets.
The preacher was seldom seen now, for since he had become an abstainer, he had misused the china wine, which was a compound containing brandy, and he already had buzzings in his ears, palpitation of the heart and was sleeping most of the time.
The commissioner after a month of labor had succeeded in curing his soul of the shot wound he had received at the game of love. With potassium iodide and low diet he had subdued the desires, and when the tristesse of the solitude took him, he generated a portion of laughing gas from ammonium nitrate, for he had found a long time previous that intoxication from alcohol was vile and succeeded by greater dejection with mania for suicide. At first the wonderous nitrous oxide had cheered him up and made him laugh, but the banal giggle had dissolved all his great thoughts and struggles into a nothing, at which he laughed, but when he had found himself down among the gigglers, who had giggled at him, he felt the need of raising himself up again above his former self, and he missed his sorrows and his griefs.
But when he had isolated himself completely, so that the chambermaid was only permitted to clean the room and bring in food, while he locked himself up in the attic room, all the memories from the summer commenced to haunt him. He remembered now without wishing it, every word that had been said. And now the appearance of the preacher in the mist on the islet appeared as something that had been planned. The words which he had uttered concerning his father and his circumstances compared with those of Miss Mary, that she knew who he was, now took root, grew and became big. There must exist some secret in his life, which everybody knew except himself. And soon he saw in the appearance of the preacher that of a planned spying, sustained by someone who wished to persecute him. He did not believe this in calmer moments, for he knew very well that the mania of persecution was the first symptom of that infirmity, which accompanies isolation. Human beings formed a great electrical battery of many elements, and when an element is isolated, it loses its power. The induction coil of copper wire was lame at the same moment the soft iron rod was taken out, and he was on the way to be lame, since his iron rod had become tempered steel.
Yes, but that was not that sickly mania of persecution, which comes from bodily infirmity, for he had in fact been persecuted, opposed from the very moment, that he in the school bespoke that he would be a power, a former of a species, that would be able to break from its kindred and like the differentiating herb beget for itself a name of its own, perhaps the name of a new genus. He had been persecuted, instinctively from below by inferiors and above by the mediocre, which latter sat as gauges and determined the standard, by which greatness should be judged. He had been hated and picked at as the yellow high-bred bird of the Canary islands, when it had flown out of its cage and come among green-finches out in the forest, where its too splendid attire provoked the wild birds.
But nature, in which he had sought company before, now became dead to him, for the intermediary, the human being, was wanting. The sea, which he had worshiped and which he sought as the only grandeur in his paltry country with its petty, trivial summer cottage landscapes seemed to him to become narrow, as his ego swelled. This blue, turpentine-green, gray circle enclosed him as a prison yard, and the uniformity of the little landscape brought the same pain, as prison cells might cause, by their want of variety. To travel away from the whole he could not, for he sat with his roots In the earth, in his little impressions, his diet, and he could not be removed with the root. It was the Norseman's tragic, which uttered itself in longing for the south.
It was then that he commenced to think out a plan for connecting the country, the island country,—for that it had a connection by Lapland did not change the case—with the mainland. First there should be a six hours' lightning train to Helsingborg and communication with a steam ferry boat across the sound making the capital of Denmark the center of the North. Ice free harbors on Djuro and Nynas with ice breakers should keep commerce and navigation alive the whole year round; the northern winter sleep would thereby be retrenched, and the national character, unsteadiness, which is said to be owing to that six months interruption of all activity, should change nature. The Russian commerce to England should go through Stockholm and Gothenborg, and the old scheme of Charles XI and Charles XII, to get the Persia and India trade over Russia and Sweden would be realized.
Sweden should become a country for tourists, and foreigners would be allured to her. He would change Stockholm to a seaport by closing the lake Mälar at the North Bridge and the Sluice, and give it another outlet through a system of canals leading to the cove of Trosa. Thereby the salt water would come up to Stockholm, which would change the atmosphere conditions and consequently the inhabitants.
But he remembered the time when Sweden, still belonging to the great, universal Christian church, stood in direct communication with Rome and thereby was of some account to Europe. He would, if it was shown that religion could not be abandoned by the multitude, again introduce this our forefathers' faith, which we with fire and sword had been urged to abjure, and whose martyrs, Hans Brask, Olaus and Johannes Magnus, Nils Dacke, and Ture Jonsson have become so shamefully soiled in history. And Catholicism, the Roman legacy, the first promulgator of the idea of Europeism had conquered all Europe. Bismarck had fallen in the combat of culture, gone to Canossa and selected the Pope for an arbitrator, as he had commenced to believe in arbitrations without steel cannons. Denmark had built Catholic cathedrals, and the young Danes had already lent their pens to the cause. The germanization of the North like that of North Germany was only a relapse into barbarism after the Hun battles of 1870 the consequences of which have become manifest in persecution against Latin, and in French hate, which is uttered in wars of extermination against French literature, in North Germany family politics and Lutheran inquisition with prisons for heretics and a general lowering of the level of intelligence.
Lutherism, that was the foe! Teutonic culture; bourgeois religion in black pants, sectaristic narrowness, particularism, sundering, intrenchment and spiritual death!
No, Europe should be one again, and the peoples' way be over Rome, the way of intelligence over Paris!
The Swedish peasant should again feel himself as cosmopolitan and leave his position in the under class, again get that glimpse of the culture of beauty which the church formerly offered in pictures and tunes; his divine service should be a true hymn in the Roman language, composed by poets, and not compounded by hymn book makers and of which he should understand exactly as little, as would awaken his highest ideas about that which he nevertheless would not comprehend. His high mass should be performed by real ministers, who devoted their life to religion and the care of souls, and not to agriculture, dairy business, whist playing and office work; and then the peasant's wife would get a guardian of her soul, to whom she at confession could intrust her sorrows instead of running into the kitchen of the parsonage and gossiping about it to the servants.
And with the re-installment of Latin every Upsala student's dissertation could be read as of old by the learned of Europe and every Swedish investigator feel himself a member of the great universal corporation of the intelligence under the pontificate in Paris.
This and other thoughts he put down on paper and laid it in the table drawer, for he had not a newspaper, that would print them, least of all the patriots who "from envy had no desire to receive projects for the elevation of the country."
He had now got the answers to his circulars and had the attic room filled with materials for his European ethnography. But now the subject had lost its interest, and his soul had become sick in earnest, so that he did not even dare go out. The aspect of a human being awoke such a loathing, that he turned back home, if he only saw one. At the same time grew the contemporary need of hearing his own voice and to unload his over-productive brain by contact with another being, to feel himself exerting influence on the life of others and to have company. He had thought for a moment to get a dog, but to lay down deposits from his soul and his feelings in an animal body was to graft grapes onto thistles and he had never been allured by the sympathy of dirty, food courting animals.
There was only one man for whom he felt a certain attraction, and that was the married man of the custom house, Vestman, whose wife was living in bigamy, without her husband's knowing it. He had an honest look and an awakened intellect, and with him the commissioner had bound the companionship by presenting him with a salmon trawl with hooks. He had at the beginning of the summer lent him books and taught him how to write after a copy, but since the fishing had been in force and navigation had become lively, their paths had separated.
But in order to get the man to really place out the trawl the commissioner would not tell him that it was for salmon, for then the conservative fisherman would never concern himself with what was according to his idea an absurd exploit without reward; therefore he was left in the belief that the question was about a new remunerative cod fishing; where the biggest fishes should be caught.
When the commissioner now after a month of isolation rowed out on the sea with Vestman and he heard his own voice again, he observed that from lack of use it had changed its tone and become thinner, so that he fancied he heard a stranger talk. And now he intoxicated himself with talking. His brain, which had only labored and produced by hand and pen, broke now through the sluices of the windpipe, and all his thoughts flowed out as in a stream, giving new births on the way, and when he had got the chance to speak to a human being's ear for a sounding board without being interrupted, without being questioned, it was to him as though he had a comprehending listener before him. And after their first outing he felt sure that Vestman was the most intelligent person he had met for a long time.
Now he kept on for eight days and narrated during their excursions about all the secrets of nature, explained the influence of the moon on the surface of the water, and warned him not to believe that all that the eyes saw was as it looked to be. Narrated, for example, that the moon was pear shaped, although it looked like a bowl, and that one, therefore, had no surety that the earth was ball shaped....
Here Vestman made a face and dared to raise an objection for the first time.
"Yes, but it says so in my almanac anyhow."
The commissioner found that he had gone out too far and must return, but it was too late, because to give a demonstration of the latest investigations regarding the shape of the earth as being a three axled ellipsoid, required knowledge in the listener, and therefore he must change to another subject. He spoke of the mirage and used the occasion to ask if they had visited Sword Island and seen what he had done there.
"Surely we have seen that something has been going on there, but nobody lands there more, and both the draughting of nets and the pasturing of sheep are spoiled," answered Vestman perfectly in accordance with truth.
After this confession the commissioner drew back, ashamed at having been the victim of the delusion that his listener had understood what he said. Fie had spoken against a wall and taken his own echo for the other's voice.
Eight days later there was a great stir on the skerry, for Vestman had caught a salmon of twenty-six pounds. And as he believed he was the discoverer of this method of fishing, there was soon a notice in the newspaper about a new livelihood for fishermen, now that the stromling had begun to decrease. The happy fisherman, Eric Vestman of the custom house service, had thereby made himself deserving of the esteem and gratitude of his fellow citizens....
Shortly afterwards there occurred in a periodical for the people a defamatory article about fish commissioners, who understand nothing, but believe they have everything to teach.
Hereafter a writing soon followed from the Academy of Agriculture to the commissioner with the request for a complete report of the management of the fishing, especially the salmon fishing, to which the commissioner only answered by handing in his resignation.
Without further interest for the population and without that little support, which his former official position had given him, he soon learned how the savages, who thought that he had "been discharged," commenced a perfect war of extermination against him. First they began to cast his boat loose, under the pretense that there was no place on the bridge, and it drifted to land and was broken to pieces.
During the next rainy weather he observed, that the rain came into the attic room. And after he had complained to Oman it began to rain into the other rooms, without his discovering a failing rooftile.
Shortly after this, one night, a burglary occurred in the cellar, and the offenders were said to be Esthonians.
That their purpose was to drive him away was perfectly clear, but now it amused him to defy them, and this he did by not making any further remarks, and bearing everything.
But now when he was surrounded by real enemies and had in earnest stepped out of the community, the fear of the banished came over him with double force.
He slept poorly nights, notwithstanding he sought to regulate his dreams by giving himself strong suggestions before sleeping. But when he awoke, he had dreamed that he was a whistling buoy that had torn lose, and drifted and drifted seeking a strand upon which to be thrown. And in his sleep he had unconsciously sought support against the sideboard of the bed to feel contact with some object, even if a dead one. Sometimes he dreamed, that he fluttered in the air and could neither go up nor down; and when he finally awoke after a fainting attack he had grasped his hands round the pillow on which he had lain his head. Now the memory of his dead mother began to come up, and he awoke often from dreaming that he had lain as a child on her breast. His soul was plainly in retrogression, and the memory of the mother the source, the link between unconscious and conscious life, the consoler, the interceder, came forth. Childhood's thoughts of meeting again in another world came up, and his first plan of suicide expressed itself as an irresistible longing to find again his mother somewhere in another world, which he did not believe in.
All science was useless to a spirit going downwards, and which had lost all interest in life; the brain had battled, until tired, and the fantasy labored without a regulator.
Still he kept up until it was near Christmas; but he ate little and took only ether at night. The whole life disgusted him, and he smiled now at his former ambitions. The rain had destroyed his books and papers; the apparatus had corroded and rusted.
The care of his own person had lessened, so that his whiskers had grown, his hair remained unkempt, and he shunned water. He had not sent his linen to be laundried for a long time, and he had lost the ability to see dirt.
His clothes lacked buttons, and his coat was always spotted in front from things spilt, for the hand that managed knife and fork no longer obeyed the will.
When he went out sometimes, the children stood and made faces at him and called him nicknames.
One morning he had the whole swarm of children around him. They pulled his coat, and when he turned back, a stone was thrown, which hit his chin so that the blood ran. Then he began to weep and begged them not to be cross with him.
"Yes, you shall go away, you devilish fool," cried a boy of twelve years, "lest we shall get you to the almshouse."
And so they all threw stones. But then Oman's maid came out and took the boy by the hair, and when she had chastised him, she went to the assailed and wiped the blood from his face with her apron.
"Poor little man!" said she.
Then he leaned his head towards her full bosom and said:
"I will sleep with you."
"Oh, shame!" snubbed the maid and pushed him away from her.
He replied, "How coarse your thoughts are! Fie!"
One evening some days later Vestman's maid ran down and begged the Doctor to come up and see Vestman's wife, who was dying. The request seemed somewhat unexpected to the commissioner, but with the clear-sightedness which during intervals of light accompanied his sickness, he perceived that here a murder had been committed and that they would use his name and title instead of a legal medical examination. The case was immaterial to him, but it aroused him for a moment. Something had happened, and the unusual had made a long needed impression. He therefore went up to the custom house cottage and was received by both brothers, who showed him into the sick room with a politeness, which seemed to the commissioner extremely suspicious. But he said nothing, asked nothing, for he would draw out the vague confession by constraining the husband to speak first, sure that he would betray himself at the first word.
By a tallow candle sat the child eating a cookie, which had not been given her without an object, and she was dressed in her best clothes, probably so that she should feel solemn and appear in a constrained manner.
After the commissioner had looked around the room and observed that Vestman's brother had sneaked out, he stepped up to the bed where the woman lay.
He saw at once that she was dead, and by the contracted muscles of her face he understood that some violence had been committed, and when he also observed that her hair was carefully combed over the top of her head, he understood at once that the old, good way with the nail had been used.