But now he must win her, therefore he pocketed all of his reflections; he saw in an instant that through this medium he could pass his ideas and schemes down to the horde, that through this conductor he could move the masses and force upon them his benefactions, make them his vassals, and that he could afterwards sit and smile like a God at their foolishness, when they believed that they themselves had created their happiness, but were only pregnant with his thoughts, his schemes, were eating the dregs from his great brewage, the strong malt drink which would never reach their lips. For what did he care if these deserted skerries supported a half starving, superfluous population or not. What compassion could he feel for his natural enemies who represented the inert mass, that had lain smothering his life, impeding his growth, who were themselves lacking in every trace of pity for each other, and who with the fury of wild beasts persecuted their benefactors whose only revenge was new benedictions.
It would be his great and strong enjoyment to sit unobserved, regarded as an idiot, and guide these peoples' fates, while they believed that they had subdued him, cut off his connections, tied his hands. He would strike them with blindness, pervert the vision of the fools, that they should believe themselves to be his superiors and he their servant.
While these thoughts gathered and grew into a strong decision, there was a knock at the door, and at the Commissioner's "come in," the surveyor appeared to deliver an invitation to tea from the ladies.
The commissioner accepted it, and sent his thanks.
After he had arranged his toilet and thought over what to say and what not to say, he went down.
On the porch he was met by Miss Mary, who with an excessive warmth took his hands and pressed them, saying with emotion: "Thanks for what you did for the poor woman! It was noble, it was grand!"
"No, madam, it was neither," replied the commissioner hastily; "for on my side it was a bad action which I regret and it was dictated only from politeness to you."
"You malign yourself from pure politeness, and I should appreciate much more a little sincerity," replied the lady, and at the same moment the mother appeared.
"Oh! You are a good child," interrupted the mother in a tone of the most immovable conviction, and bade the commissioner step into the best room where tea was ready to serve.
To avoid engaging in an endless conversation he went in. He saw at a glance how the plain furniture of the fisherman's cottage had been mixed with remnants of worn city luxury. On the bureau had been placed alabaster vases yellowish from age, photographs in the windows between the flowers; on one side of the fireplace stood an arm chair with figured cretonne and brass tacks, a few books on a center table round a parlor lamp.
It was neatly arranged, but with a careful mathematical exactness, everything symmetrical but still a little awry and askance where it was intended to be straight. The tea set of old Saxony china with gold edges and cherry red monograms was cracked here and there and the teapot cover had been mended with clasps. After he had studied the portrait of the deceased father of the family without daring to ask what position he had held, he saw that he had been a government official, and he understood that here waspauvres honteux. In further looking around the room, he noticed a knapsack left under a table and bearing a tag which indicated that the old lady was the widow of a councilor of the exchequer.
At first the conversation touched the objects that presented themselves to the eyes, and then passed on to the event of the day, coming finally to the people. The commissioner saw at once that the ladies were interested in the affairs of other people and lived in a morbid uneasiness for the welfare of the lower classes. As he had observed that his sincerity had offended and the purpose of his visit was not to hurt their feelings by giving them his ideas, he laid to and let himself drift. Sometimes his resentment was aroused and he would venture a little remark or information, but he felt at once as though soft hands were placed on his mouth, and round arms wound about his neck, so that the words were smothered. Besides, the views here were so rooted, everything so fixed, and all questions settled, that they only smiled in a friendly way, with mild forbearings, when they read a doubt in him regarding their axioms. Then the conversation turned to the moral and spiritual condition of the population, and here the commissioner perfectly agreed with them. He delineated with fervor the rudeness of the forenoon with its drunkenness and fray, pitying the want of enlightenment, and finally narrating scenes which betrayed complete paganism. He spoke of how the fishermen cast offerings on stones, loaded their guns with lead from church windows, how they talked about Thor's bucks when it thundered, and of Oden's wild hunt when the gray geese came in the spring, and how those on the inner islands let the magpies destroy the chickens for the people did not dare to tear down the nests from fear of unknown avengers.
"Yes," completed the old lady, "it isn't their fault, and if they were not so far from the church, it would be entirely different."
Thither the commissioner's thoughts had not gone, but in an instant he saw what a great power he would get as an ally, and developing the seed of thought he had got in the morning from observing the divine service on board the navy steamer, he burst out with real rapture:
"Well, but one can build a meeting house at small cost. Just think of it, if I should address a letter to the Home Mission Institute."
The ladies embraced the subject with the greatest ardor and promised themselves to write to that institution and some societies and projected a fair, but recollected that here was no dancing public.
The commissioner removed all difficulties by offering to advance the money and provide the building, which could be bought ready made at the factory, if the ladies would only find a preacher. "Yet," added he, "one ought to select for this place now at the beginning, one of the stern kind, who can lay hold of the people and produce a revival movement of the most earnest nature, for no half measures will do here."
The ladies made mild objections and recommended charitable means, but the commissioner showed, how fear was the elementary foundation on which to build a first education; afterwards one could come with love.
A great common interest had welded these souls together, while they overheated themselves at the great fire of love, and worked themselves up to an overflowing omni-benevolence towards every living thing, pressed each other's hands and separated with blessings and congratulations that fate had brought together three good people, who would work unanimously for the good of humanity.
When the commissioner came out, he shook himself, as though to clear off some dust, and felt as when he had visited a flour mill, and taken delight in seeing all objects coated with the soft, white tone of flour, which harmonized Iron, wood, linen and glass in one accord, and the same feeling of subdued pleasure as in touching locks, banisters and sacks powdered with a soft dust of flour, but had at the same time found it hard to breathe, obliged to cough and to take out a handkerchief.
Nevertheless it had been a pleasant evening. This imperceptible radiation of warmth from the mother which thawed the frigid thoughts, this atmosphere of cordiality and childishness in the young woman, which made him grow young again, this childish belief in that which in his youth was the naïve idea of the day to lift up that which was cast down, to protect what was dwarfed, sick and frail, all of which he now knew was directly against everything that could promote humanity's happiness and increase, and which he hated from instinct, when he saw how all strength, every burst of originality was persecuted by the unfortunate. And now he would form an alliance with them against himself, work to his own destruction, lower himself to their level, dissemble feeling for the enemy, bestow the war cash on the antagonists. The thought of the enjoyment these proofs of power would give intoxicated him, and he turned his footsteps towards the beach that in the solitude he might recall himself. And when he now in the still, mild summer night wandered on the sand, where he recognized his own footsteps from previous days, where he knew every stone and could tell where this or that herb grew, he noticed that everything looked differently, had assumed a new form and gave entirely different impressions than when he had walked there the day before. A change had occurred, something new had intervened. He could no longer evolve the great feeling of solitude, where he had felt as though alone before nature and humanity, for somebody stood at his side or behind him. The isolation was abolished, and he was soldered to the little banal life, threads had been spun round his soul, considerations began to bind his thoughts, and the cowardly fear of harboring other thoughts than those his friends harbored clutched him. To build happiness on a false foundation he dared not, for if he had it all hewn even to the ridge pole it might sometime tumble, and then the fall would be greater, the grief deeper, and still it must come to pass if he would own her, and that he would do with all the mighty power of a mature man. Lift her up to him? But how to do it? Not that he could make her from woman to man, or redeem her from the uncurable propensities her sex had given her. Not that he could give her his own education which had taken him thirty years to acquire, nor could he give her the same evolution he had passed through, the experiences and the knowledge he had battled for and won. Therefore he must sink down to her, but the thought of this sinking tormented him as the greatest possible evil, as sinking, going down, beginning over again, which besides was impossible. It only remained for him to make himself double, split himself in two, create a personality, intelligible and easy of access to her, play the duped lover, learn to admire her inferiority, get used to a role as she liked to have it, and so in silence live the other half of his life in secret and to himself, sleep with one eye and keep the other open.
He had mounted the skerry without observing it. And now he saw the lights down in the fishing village and heard wild shrieks, the cries of jubilee over the beaten foe, who would raise their children and their children's children from poverty, save them labor, give them new enjoyments. Once again there awoke in him the desire to see these savages tamed, to see these worshipers of Thor kneeling for the white Christ, the giants falling before the pale Asas. The barbarian must pass through Christianity as a purgatory, learn veneration for the power of the spirit in the frail bundles of muscles, the remainder of the wandering tribes must have their middle age before they can reach the renaissance of thinking and revolution of action.
Here should the chapel be raised on the highest ridge of the skerry and its little spire point upwards over the look-out and flag pole to greet the sailors at long distance as a reminder of.... Here he stopped and reflected. With a look of scorn on his pale face, he bent over and picked up four gneiss scales, which he laid in a rectangle from east to west, after having measured thirty steps in length and twenty in breadth.
"What an excellent landmark for the sailors!" he thought as he descended the hill and went home to bed.
The commissioner had confined himself to his room two days to work, and when on the morning of the third day he went out for a stroll on the beach, he met by chance the widow of the deceased officer of the exchequer. She had an anxious look, and when the commissioner inquired after her daughter's health, he learned that she was indisposed.
"It is lack of entertainment," said he at random.
"Yes, but what shall one do in this solitude?" responded the anxious mother.
"The lady must go out to sea, fishing and yachting and get exercise," prescribed he without thinking of what he said.
"Oh, yes," continued the mother; "but my poor Mary cannot go alone."
As there was only one reply, he answered:
"If it would please the ladies to have my company I shall be glad to be of service to you."
The mother found him very good and accepted the offer, saying that she would at once tell Mary to dress.
The commissioner went down to the harbor to outfit the boat, and on the way his steps began to falter, as though going down hill, where the weight pushed him faster than he would go. He felt reluctant at having been so suddenly put in motion by an outside power, before he had had time for deliberation, and now he would make resistance but could not. It was too late and he let himself drift, conscious that nevertheless he would always tend the rudder and determine the course.
He had hoisted the jib on his Bleking boat, shipped the rudder and loosened the bowline ready to be cast off, when Mademoiselle and her mother appeared on the beach. The girl was dressed in an ultra-marine blue gown with white trimmings and wore a blue scotch woolen cap which was very becoming and gave her something of a boyish, brisk expression, totally unlike the angelic one she had shown a few days before.
As the commissioner greeted her and asked after her health, he offered his hand to help them on board. The girl took the outstretched hand and with a light bound was in the boat, where she was placed in the stern at the tiller, but when afterwards the same hand was reached to the mother, she explained that she could not accompany them as she must prepare the dinner. The commissioner, who was suddenly surprised, felt again the desire to make resistance against this soft power which led him where he would not go, but was kept from doing so by the fear of seeming ill-bred; so after a short regret that he must spare the agreeable company of the mother, he threw off the bowline and commanding Miss Mary to throw over the tiller, he put the main sheet in her hand and hoisted the sail.
"But I cannot manage a boat," cried the girl; "I have never had my hand on a tiller!"
"It is no art! Do only as I tell you and you will at once be able to navigate a boat," replied the commissioner as he placed himself in front of the girl and helped her with the maneuvering.
A light soft breeze was blowing and the boat glided out of the harbor with the wind abeam.
The commissioner held the jib sheet and began by instructing the beautiful navigator, grasping every now and then her wrists and pressing the tiller to windward, until they were clear of land, had speedway and were lying on the tack they were to keep to until they reached the skerries.
The responsibility, the effort and the feeling of controlling the boat which held two lives, awoke the numb powers in the woman's frail form, and her eyes which attentively followed the position of the sails were glowing with courage and reliance, when she saw how the boat obeyed the slightest pressure of the hand. If she committed a fault, he corrected it with a kind word, gave her courage to continue by praising her watchfulness, removed difficulties through explaining the whole proceeding as something that clears itself.
She was radiant with happiness, and commenced to talk of the past, of her thirty-four years of life, how she had believed life and the desire of living was past, how she felt herself young again, how she had always dreamed of a life of activity, of manly activity above all else, and to devote her powers to humanity, to others. She knew that she as a woman was a pariah....
The commissioner listened to the whole as to well-known secrets, formulas of an absurd struggle to make that equal which nature had made purposely as unequal as possible, to spare humanity labor, but to answer this now he regarded as without reward and he stuck to his role as an appreciative listener, allowing her to give vent to her diseased imaginations which the fresh wind would blow away. Instead of taking out a knife and cutting off the tangled skeins which her confused thoughts offered to him, he would simply pretend not to notice them, but tuck them under and through gathering impressions which he purposely developed, wind on the old tangles and use them as bobbins, which should only serve as an underlayer for the new yarn, spun out from his rich distaff.
In haste he improvised a scheme, how using the material which the skerries afforded for object lessons, he would in living pictures, without her observing it, in a few hours let her pass through sensations which she should believe came from without, and in such a manner he would smuggle his soul's net over her, and tune her strings in harmony to his instrument. With a movement of the head he now signified that the boat should tack, he slacked the sheet a little, and the boat cleared land and dashed out on the open sea. The wide horizon, the infinite sea of light where no object intervened, threw a light over her beautiful face, the small lineaments were as magnified, half perceptible wrinkles were smoothed out, the whole expression assumed the character of freedom from daily cares, paltry thoughts, and the eye that in one moment could overlook such a big part of the earth's body seemed to see on a grand scale, so that the little self swelled and felt its relative power, and when now the long sea waves slowly raised and lowered the boat in powerful rhythm, he saw how transport was mixed with a grain of fear, which kept it in check.
The commissioner, who observed that the grand scenery did not fail in its impression, concluded now to place the text under the frail music of the swells of the senses, and guide her dawning thoughts out on the great highway, he would loosen the tegument on the swelling seed, so that the plantlet would push out.
"It has the effect of a planet!" improvised he. "The earth, the banal, the tiresome, the moldy, becomes a celestial body. Do we not feel as though we were already participants of heaven, when the opposition is dissolved, the false opposition between heaven and earth, which are one, like the part and the whole. Don't you observe how you grow instead of shrink when you outwit the wind and make it take you to the right when it wants to go to the left? Don't you feel what great power is within you, as you ride upon a wave, when it with a thousand pounds of weight would press you down into its depth? He, who is supposed to have created the wings of the birds, and who needed fifty thousand years to make a flyer out of a creeper, was less quick than he who for the first time put canvas on a pole and instantly invented navigation.
"Is it then so strange if man created God out of his own image, conceiving from his ingenuity one still more ingenious?"
The girl having listened attentively to his effusion, regarded his face uninterruptedly as if she had turned her own towards a fire to warm it. The unusual words she heard seemed to have sunk into her mind and acted as a leaven. Benumbed, lulled by the soft, persuading intonation, she received without deliberation the new views he gave to her previously lifeless and monotonous landscape, of the origin of life and its meaning, and without seeing that her own religious conviction was buried before dissolution, she took up the new and piled it upon the old.
"I never before heard anyone speak as you do," she said dreamily; "speak more!"
He kept silent and with a new motion he gave the boat another course.
They approached Svartbodan's sinister volcanic formation. The black sparkling diorite with its death-white landmark, called "the white mare," looked still more strikingly awful in the sun's rays, which in vain tried to lighten the extreme tones of its black and white.
A cloud passed over the girl's face, her expression shrunk, the eyebrows contracted in rolls as though they would drop down and shut out the depressing picture. A visible movement on the tiller signified that she would fall off from the skerry, but he gave the boat its course forwards, and with the wind's compressed power sped it into the ravine between the black cliffs where the sighing waves sucked it forwards.
It became silent in the boat, and the commissioner would not try to guess at the gloomy recollection that awoke in his companion, but limited himself to pointing to the bleached white skeleton of a long tailed duck, which was still left on the black ledge.
And the wind took the sails again, filled them and wafted the boat out onto the open sea.
They passed the rock with its single mountain ash and its wagtail and approached Sword Island where he for the first time had seen her. There they landed and he guided her the same way that he had passed that Sunday morning, and let her receive the same impressions that he had felt, led her down into the blooming field and showed her where, looking between the wild buckthorns, he had seen her for the first time.
She was now in a wanton mood because all these small observations, even the details of the circumstances, had remained in his memory and must signify that he was smitten. She laughed when he spoke of the first time he had heard her cough, and in a playful humor she told him to go down to the same place and speak and she would guess who it was that spoke.
He obeyed, and jumping down from the rocky footstool placed himself behind the white beam trees and imitated the bellowing of a bull.
"Nay, how beautiful he can sing," joked the girl. "It is surely a Hottentot actor."
The commissioner, who found pleasure in her childishness and had not played with children for many years, continued the role and stepping out on the green field with his coat turned inside out and the lorgnette hanging on one ear, he improvised a savage dance accompanied by a song that he had heard Hottentots sing in the Jardin d'Acclimatation.
The girl seemed both surprised and amused.
"Do you know," said she, "I much prefer you like that when I see that you can be human for a moment and put aside that philosophical face?"
"Is a Hottentot then more of a human being in your eyes than a philosopher?" let fall the commissioner, but at once regretting that he had aroused her to consciousness, he broke a branch from the white beam tree, and wove a wreath and gave it to the girl who had become sober when she saw she had betrayed herself by committing such extreme stupidity.
"Now you shall wreathe the victim, Miss Mary," said the commissioner as a cover. "I wish instead of one I were a hundred and permitted to go as a hecatomb to the slaughter for you."
Kneeling he received the wreath from the pacified beauty, whereupon he started on a run towards the beach with the girl after him.
Down at the water's edge they stopped.
"Shall we throw skipping stones?" proposed she.
"If you please," answered he and selected a flat stone.
They threw stones out over the water a few moments until they became warm.
"Shall we take a bath?" suddenly exclaimed the girl, as if she had for a long time hatched the thought which must now come out.
The commissioner did not know where He was, whether it was a joke or a project coming in earnest, with the mental reservation of keeping on part of the clothing, or for one of the parties to withdraw.
"You take a bath and I will go on farther," he found this the only thing to answer.
"Don't you bathe then?" asked the girl.
"No, I have no bathing suit with me," answered the commissioner; "and besides, I do not bathe in cold water."
"Ha, ha, ha!" rang a cold, disagreeable, scornful laugh from the girl's throat. "You, afraid of cold water," sneered she; "perhaps you cannot swim?"
"Cold water is too coarse for my fine nerves. If you will take a cold bath here I will go to the northern point and take a warm one."
The girl had already pushed off her shoes and throwing a look of disdain and injured vanity at him, she said:
"I suppose you cannot see me from there?"
"Not unless you swim out too far," answered the commissioner and went away.
When he had reached the northern slope of the islet, he searched for a cleft in the rock, which was protected from the northern wind by a rocky wall about fifty feet high. The black hornblende gneiss was as polished as agate by the waves and curved in frail delicate rolls which resembled the muscles of the human body and clung to the bare feet soft as a bolster. No breath of wind reached here, and the sun had burned six hours against the dark ledge so that the air was heated several degrees above body temperature, and the stones almost burned beneath his feet. He had been down to the boat and brought an ax with which he now cut oft the driest heath and sand oats and made up a blazing fire on the rock; in the meantime he undressed. When the fire had quickly burned out he swept the ledge clean as a baker's oven, and with a bailer poured the crystal sea water over the heated stones and let the vapors lap his nude body. Then he placed himself in one of the arm chairs which the sea had sculptured from the cliffs, wrapped a blanket round him and with his knees crouched under his chin shut his eyes and seemed to fall asleep. But he did not sleep; he used this method as he called it to wind himself up and for a few moments let his brain rest and resume its elasticity. For it was too much of an effort to fit himself into companionship with the confused thoughts of others. His mechanism of thought suffered by contact with others, so that it wavered and became unreliable as the compass needle in the presence of iron. Each time he would think clearly about something or form a conclusion, he placed his soul in harmonious numbness by a warm bath, extinguished consciousness in a half slumber for a brief moment by not thinking, during which time all the received observation material seemed to become melted, and afterwards when he extinguished the fire and awoke himself to consciousness the alloy welled up.
When he had sat a moment and the sun had warmed him through, he suddenly arose and stood as though awakened after having slept a whole night. His thoughts labored again, and he looked happy, just as though he had solved a problem.
"She is thirty-four years," he thought; "this I had forgotten under the impression of her youthful beauty, therefore this chaos of past stages, these parts of roles she has successively played in life, this mass of shifting reflexes from men that she had tried to win and fit herself to. Now lately she must have been wrecked in some love affair.He, who had held together all these rag pieces of a soul, had turned aside, the sack had rent and now the whole thing lay as a pile of ragpicker's rubbish. She had shown sample pieces of the romantic parsonage of 1850 with a regurgitation from the beginning of the century for saving humanity, zealous faith from 'The Dove's Voice,' and 'The Pietist's' streams of conjuncture, cynicisms from George Sand and the androgynal period. To search the bottom of this sieve through which so many soups had passed, to solve the enigma which was not one, he was too prudent to spend time on. Here only remained to pick out of the heap of bones that which was suitable to form the skeleton, which he would afterwards cover with living flesh and blow his breath into. But this she must not observe for then she would not permit it. She must never see how she was held by him for that would only raise hate and resistance. He would grow underneath the ground as the rhizome, and graft her on himself that she would shoot up, show herself to the world and bear the flower which humanity should admire."
Now he heard the mew's cry and understood that she had swam out from shore. Therefore he dressed quickly and after he had gathered up his belongings he took from under the sheets of the boat material for a small breakfast and laid it out on the moss under an arborescent pine which resembled an Italian stone pine.
There was not a great variety, but everything was costly, choice and served on the remnants of a collection of porcelain which he at one time had begun to gather. The butter shone egg yellow in a serpentine dish with screw cover that stood in a fragment of Henry II faience filled with ice, the crackers lay on a lattice-braided dish of Marieberg and the sardels were on a saucer of blue mottled Nevers. Fear of the general banality breaking forth in arts, industry and daily life, had urged the owner to the modern search after the unusual, the dreadful triviality of the present age and its hate of originality had forced him like so many others into superrefinement to try to save his personality from being ground among the bowlders in the big glacial flow. His finely developed senses did not search after frugal beauty in shape and color, which so easily grows old; he would see history and memories of exploits from the world in that which surrounded him. This fragment of Henry II faience, with its cream white pipe-clay incrusted with red, black and yellow, aroused memories of the beautiful Loire landscape with its renaissance castles, while its ornamental bookbinding style reminded of Madame Hélène de Genlis and her librarian, who together with a potter pressed out a style, purely personal, which still could not escape the coloring of the century of chivalry, when beauty in life was venerated and even the trade was subordinate to science and art, realizing the advantageousness of a system of intellectual rank.
When he had spread breakfast and looked at his work it was to him as though he had placed a piece of culture up here in this semi-arctic wilderness, sardels from Brittany, chestnuts from Andalusia, caviare from Volga, cheese from the Gruyère alps, wurst from Thuringia, crackers from Britain and oranges from Asia Minor. There was a flask in basket work of Chianti wine from Tuscany to be served in goblets with Frederick I's monogram in gold. All were topsy-turvy without a savor of collector or museum; there were slight touches of color thrown in here and there, like flowers pressed as souvenirs between the leaves of a guide book but not in a herbarium.
Now hearing the voice of the girl cry from her bathing place a halloo, he answered, and immediately she stepped out of the shrubs, straight, brisk and radiating with health and the joy of living. When she saw the breakfast spread she raised her cap jokingly with a bow, impressed against her will by the aristocratic in the arrangement.
"You are a wizard," said she; "permit me to bow!"
"Not for so little," answered the commissioner.
"Yes, you indicate that you can do more, but to rule nature as you lately chattered about, that will be beyond you," opposed the girl in a superior motherly tone.
"My lady! I did not express myself so categorically; I only reminded you that we have partly learned how to subdue the powers of nature, by which we are partly controlled—observe the little important word partly—and that it is in our power to both change a landscape's character and the whole soul life of its inhabitants."
"Good! Conjure up an Italian landscape, with marble cottages and stone pines, out of this dreadful granitepaysage!"
"I am certainly no juggler, but if you challenge me I promise you by your birthday, in three weeks to transform this fresh piece of nature, whose equal you may search after through all Europe, to a treeless, scorched cabbage landscape to your taste."
"Well! Let us wager! And if after three weeks I lose, what then?"
"Then I win—but what?"
"We will see then!"
"We will see! But will you attend to my duty during that time?"
"Your duty! What is that? To lie on the sofa and smoke cigarettes?"
"Yes, if you can as I attend to my duty on the sofa,—with pleasure. But you cannot do that and now you shall learn the reason and meaning of my stay on this skerry! But first take a glass of wine with your wurst!"
He poured a glass of the dark red Chianti wine and passed it to the girl who emptied it at a draught.
"You know," began the commissioner, "that my official commission here at this fishing port is to teach the population how to fish."
"It must be a nice one, you who brag that you have never had a tackle in your hand."
"Don't interrupt me—I shall not teach them how to fish with tackle. You see, things are thus, that these lingerers are conservative as all rabble—"
"What language is this?" interrupted the girl again.
"Plain language! However! From indiscretion and conservatism these aboriginals go on undermining their own interests as fish eating mammals, and therefore the state must place them under guardians. The stromling—God bless the fish!—that constitutes the most important livelihood of these autochthones, threatens to come to an end. Certainly I don't care at all, if a few hundred ichthyophageus more or less increase or diminish a superfluous horde of people, it is completely Immaterial. But now they shall live since the Academy of Agriculture wishes it, and therefore I shall hinder them from fishing their scanty supply. Is this acknowledged logic?"
"It is inhuman, but you are made of material for a hangman!"
"For this reason I have on my own accord, without asking for the decoration of Vasa or any kind of thanks, found out a new means of sustenance which shall replace the old, for even if the stromling should shoal for half a man's age after the fishermen have emigrated, still this means of sustenance is threatened by a competition, which after a hundred years of rest has again arisen more formidable than ever. Do you know that the herring will return to the coast of Bohus in the fall?"
"No, I haven't had any letter from them for a long time!"
"They do so at any rate. Therefore we must stop the stromling fishing and fish for salmon instead."
"Salmon? In the depth of the sea?"
"Yes! It shall be found there, although I haven't seen it. Yet you shall find it out!"
"But if it isn't there?"
"I told you that it was there! You shall only catch the first one and then salmon fishing is open."
"But how do you know salmon exists when you haven't seen it?" argued the girl.
"By a mass of investigations too complicated to explain in conversation, partly done at sea....
"Only once!"
"I work as quickly as twenty, thanks to my superior intelligence—partly on my sofa but mostly in books. Anyway, will you insist to destroy the people, first with salmon and afterwards with a mission house which you have forgotten?"
"You are a demon, a devil!" exclaimed the girl between scorn and earnestness.
The commissioner, who only from a caprice had turned into skepticism, and now saw that just this made the most impression, found it best to continue this role.
"Surely you do not believe in God?" asked the girl with an air, as though she would eternally despise him if he answered in the negative.
"No, I do not."
"And you would be an Ansgarius and introduce Christianity on the skerry?"
"And the salmon! Yes, I will be a demoniac Ansgarius! But will you also let down the salmon trawl and be blessed by the revisors of the Reichstag?"
"Yes, I shall work for these people whom I believe in, I shall devote my feeble powers for the oppressed, and I shall show you that you are a blasé, a roué and a scorner.... No, you are not, but you make yourself out worse than you are for you are a good child anyway, I saw that last Sunday...."
She said a good child, as if with a sure calculation that he would snap at the bait, and place himself under her care as the child, no matter whether a good or bad one. But now he had already formed a fancy for the demon as being superior and more interesting, therefore he held to the more grateful task. Surely he knew from experience that the easiest way to insinuate oneself into a woman's favor was to let her play the mother with all the freedom changed to intimacy, but it was a worn-out play and could so easily lead to an inextirpable hectoring on her part. Better then to give her the more grateful part of a redeemer, where nothing that was absolutely superior entered, only the mother of God's intervening purpose, where she was mediator between two equally strong powers.
But the transition was not easily found, and in a moment of loathing at the whole play, which was still necessary if he would win her, and that he would, he pretended to go down and see if the boat was safely moored, as a breeze was beginning to blow.
Upon reaching the beach he drew a long breath as though he had been exerting himself beyond his strength. He unbuttoned his vest as though he had been wearing a coat of iron, and cooling his head he threw a longing glance out over the free water. Now he would have given much to have been alone, to shake off the chaff which had fallen upon his soul during his contact with a lower spirit. In this moment he hated her, would be free from her, own himself again, but it was too late! Cobwebs had fastened to his face, soft as silk, slimy, invisible and impossible to remove. At the same time—when he turned back and saw her as she sat peeling a chestnut with her long fingers and sharp teeth—he was reminded of a mandrill he had seen in a menagerie, and was seized with an infinite compassion, and a wave of sadness, such as the more fortunate feels when he looks upon the lowly. He immediately thought of her delight at seeing him as a Hottentot, and became vexed again, but calming himself with the self-possession of a man of the world he approached her, and to speak the first cloaked word he reminded her that it was time to go, as the wind had risen. However she had observed the tired and absent-minded look upon his face and with a sharpness, which completely calmed his feeling for an instant, she responded:
"You are tired of my company! Let us go."
When he did not answer with a courtesy, she resumed with feeling, which it was difficult to judge whether real or pretended.
"Excuse me, I am naughty! I have grown so, and I am ungrateful! Never mind it!"
She wiped her eyes and began with a house-wife's trained care to put the dishes together.
And now, when she bowed down, leaning over the remainder of the unwashed dishes with the tablecloth tied round her waist for an apron and started to carry the service to the beach to wash it, he hastened to relieve her of the load, urged by an irresistible desire not to see her in a servant's place, and feeling the sting of being served by one whom he would raise far above himself at the same time she was to look up to him as one that had granted her the power over him.
At this pretended combat that arose over which one should serve the other, the girl dropped the dishes. She gave a cry, but when she looked at the pieces, her face cleared up.
"Fortunately they were all old! My God, I was so frightened!"
He suppressed his paltry thoughts of the loss by at once placing himself on the side of her who had had the misfortune, and glad to have a noisy ending to the various feelings that rent him, he threw the shivers of porcelain like skipping stones out over the bay and rounded off the pointed situation with a jocose,
"Now we do not need to wash dishes, Miss Mary!"
Whereupon he reached her his hand and helped her into the boat, which was already pulling at the painter under the increasing dash of the waves.
A bright, sunny summer morning the commissioner is sitting with his pupil up in the wooden pavilion, which he has had set up on the highest point of the skerry close to the newly laid foundation of the mission house. Down in the harbor lies a schooner, from which the frame for the new building is being unloaded and carried up to its place to be joined together by the foreman and his laborers. Therefore it has been unusually lively on the skerry for some time and small skirmishes have already arisen between the fishermen and the city workmen, in which the latter have treated the former with insolence, which has given rise to a series of feasts of atonement followed by drunkenness and new frays, attacks of immorality and appropriation of other's property. Therefore the commissioner and the elderly lady have a momentary regret at having undertaken the civilization of these people, when the first steps already showed such a sad result; so much more so as the nightly noises, singing, crying and complaining disturbed all work and all rest for them, who had come out here solely for the purpose of seeking quiet. The commissioner, who had lost all reputation by once yielding a little of his authority, could not restore the peace, but Miss Mary on the other hand succeeded better and understood how by a prompt appearance, and a good word now and then, to suppress the storm. This she would not impute to her beauty and agreeable manner; she had credited herself with a higher degree of strength and understanding than she possessed, and thus imbued herself in the belief of having an unusual faculty of mind, so that even now, when she sat as a pupil with her teacher, she received his instruction as though she were already acquainted with them, and answered with remarks more pointed than sagacious, seeming to correct and explain rather than to learn.
The mother, who was sitting beside her embroidering an altar cloth for the new mission house, seemed occasionally amazed at her daughter's penetrating insight and great knowledge, as she with a simple question nonplussed her teacher.
"See here, Miss Mary," lectured the commissioner, always deceiving himself with the hope of being able to educate her; "the untrained eye has a propensity to see everything simple; the untrained ear to hear everything simple. You see here around you only gray granite, and the painter and the poet see the same. Therefore they paint and depict everything so monotonously; therefore they find the skerries so monotonous. And yet, look at this geological map of the surroundings and then throw a glance out over the landscape. We are sitting on the red gneiss region. Look at this stone you call granite, how rich is the variety; it is the baking together of the black mica, the white quartz and the pinkish feldspar."
He had taken a sample from the pile which the foundation layers had blasted from the skerry and laid in a heap for the building's foundation.
"And look, here is another. It is called eurite! See what fine shades of color, from salmon red towards flint blue. And here is white marble of primeval limestone."
"Is there marble here?" asked the girl, her imagination stirred at the mention of this valuable stone.
"Yes, there exists marble here, although it looks gray on the surface without being gray. For, if you observe it closer you will find what an infinite variety of color there is in the lichens. What a scale of the finest colors from the ramaline lichen India-ink black to the crottle's ash-gray, the ground liverwort's leather-brown, the parmelia lichen seal-green, the tree lungwort's spotted copper-green and the wall moss egg-yellow. Look closer out over the skerries as they are now lit by the sun, you will see that the rocks have different colors, and that the people who are used to seeing them, even give them names after the scale of colors, which they are acquainted with without knowing it. Do you see that the Black Rock is darker than the others, because it consists of the dark: hornblende; that the Red Rock is red, because it is composed of red gneiss, and the white skerries of clean washed eurite? Is it not more to know why, than to know that a thing is so; and still less to see nothing but an even gray, as the painter, who paints all the skerries with a mixing of black and white? Hear now the roaring of the waves, as the poets summarily call this symphony of sound. Close your eyes for a moment and you will hear better while I analyze this harmony in simple notes. You at first hear a buzzing which resembles the noise heard in a machine shop or a big city. It is the masses of water dashing against each other; next you hear a hissing; it is the lighter, smaller water particles which are lashed to foam. And now a grating as of a knife against a grindstone; it is the wave tearing against the sand. And now a rattling like the dumping of a load of gravel; it is the sea heaving up small stones. Then a muffled thud as when you clap the hollow of your hand to the ear, it is the wave which presses the air before it into a cavern; and lastly this murmuring as from distant thunder, it is big bowlders, rolling on the stony bottom."
"Yes, but this is to spoil nature for us!" said the girl.
"It is to make nature intimate with us! It gives me composure to know it, and thereby frees me from the poet's half-hidden fear of the unknown, which is nothing else than memories from the time of savage fiction, when explanations were sought but could not be found quickly; and in the emergency the fable of the mermaids and the giants was caught at. But now we pass on to the fishing, which shall be retrieved, leaving the salmon for some other time, and try new methods for stromling fishing. In two months the great fishing begins, and if I have not calculated wrongly it is going to be a failure in the autumn."
"How can you foretell that from your sofa?" asked the girl more cuttingly than inquisitive.
"I foretell it by the facts that I have seen—from my sofa—how the drifting ice in the spring scraped the shoals clear of kelp and other algæ, in which the stromling go to spawn. I foretell it by the scientific fact that the small crustaceans—no matter what they are called—on which the stromling feed, have stayed away from the banks since the seaweed was scraped away. What shall we do then? We shall try to fish in the deep water I If the fish don't come to me then I must go to the fish. And therefore we shall try with nets drifting after a floating boat. It is simple!"
"It is grand!" said Miss Mary.
"It is old," protested the commissioner, "and it isn't my discovery! But now we shall as prudent beings think of a last resort, for even if we get stromling and don't get a price for it on account of herring being caught again on the west coast, we must have something else In readiness."
"It is the salmon?"
"It is the salmon, which must be found here, but I haven't seen it."
"You have told me this much before, but now I should like to know how you can know it."
"I shall reduce the fraction and in a few words tell the reason of my stay here. The salmon wander as do the other migrating birds."
"The salmon a bird?"
"Certainly, a perfect migratory bird. It is to be found near the rivers of Norrland, and has been caught twice in nets round the islands of the north passage. It has been taken near Gotland and in the whole southward passage; therefore it must pass by here. Now it is your task to trace it out with floating trails. Have you the desire to do it, in the capacity of my assistant, to obtain my salary?"
The last word came suddenly, but with calculation, and did not fail in its intent.
"I shall make money, mamma," cried Miss Mary in a playful tone, intended to hide the joy she really felt. "But," added she, "what will you do then?"
"I shall lie on my sofa, and spoil nature for you."
"What are you going to do?" asked the mother, who believed she had not heard aright.
"I shall make an Italian landscape for Miss Mary," answered the commissioner, "and now I will leave you, my ladies, and make the sketch."
Therewith he arose and making a polite bow walked down to the beach.
"He is an odd being," said the mother, when the commissioner was out of hearing.
"An unusual being at the least," answered the girl; "but I don't believe he is perfectly sane. He seems to have principles, and on the whole is a kind man. What have you to say about him?"
"Hand me my yarn, child," said the mother.
"No, but say something ... tell me whether you like him or not," continued the girl.
The mother only answered with a half sad and half resigned glance, which expressed indifference.
Meanwhile the commissioner had gone down to the harbor and taken his boat to row out among the skerries. The summer heat had lasted out here a month, so that the air was hot; but drifting ice still coming from the north, where an unusually severe winter on the coast had caused bottom freezing, was now drifting southward, cooling the water, so that the lower air strata had greater density than the upper ones. The consequent refraction disfigured the aspect of the skerries and had caused the most magnificent mirages during the past few days. This scenery had given rise to long continued disputes between the commissioner and the ladies in which the fishing population had been summoned as judges, being the most competent because they had seen these phenomena of nature from childhood. And when on a morning the light red gneiss skerries through refraction stretched upwards and by the varying density in the strata of air seemed stratified as the cliffs of Normandy, Miss Mary argued that it really was those limestone cliffs, which were reflected as far up as the Baltic Sea, through a law of nature still unsolved by science. At the same time the white swell of the breakers in the strand stones was magnified and multiplied through refraction so that it really looked as though a flotilla of Normandy fishing boats were beating the wind under the cliffs. The commissioner, who had tried in vain to give the only correct explanation, in order to take away the supernatural, the more so as the people saw in the phenomena predictions, of course, of coming misfortunes; belief In ill luck, which acted as a damper on their enterprise, now found himself obliged to appear first as a wizard to win the ear of the populace, with the intention, however, to subsequently remove the mystery by telling them how he made his magic.
Therefore he asked the believers, whether they would also believe themselves to see a mirage of Italy, if they should see an Italian landscape, and when they answered, "Yes," he decided to combine the useful with the pleasant and by a few small changes fulfil his promise to form an exotic landscape for Miss Mary's birthday, so that by the next mirage it would loom up against the horizon on a grand scale when seen through the colossal magnifying glass, that the different density of the air strata afforded.
Sitting in his boat, he aimed towards the Sword-islet with his diopter, the lenses of which he had considerably increased in power. Now the first question was how to get the most characteristic features of the formation, viz., the stratified rocks, to come forth, and this nature had partly done. After this he needed a stone pine, a cypress, a marble palace and a terrace with oranges on espaliers.
After scanning and outlining the skerry, he had the scheme clear and soon landed with his boat in which was stowed a crow bar, a ship scraper, a roll of zinc wire and a bucket of yellow ocher with a big tar brush, besides an ax, a saw, nails and a stock of dynamite cartridges.
When he had landed and packed up his belongings, he felt himself a Robinson Crusoe, who had taken up a battle with nature, but much sharper and surer of victory as he had brought along the means of culture. After he had placed the plane table on a tripod and upon this the alidade, he started to work.
The mountain ridge, whose tilted folds happily imitated the southern sedimentary strata, needed only to be scraped so as to remove the lichens, where there were any, leaving some horizontal stripes darker than the folds. It was not heavy work; the ship scraper glided over the smooth surface as a retouching brush on the scene painter's big canvas.
Sometimes he felt with disgust that he was throwing time and power away on childish things, but the bodily exertion sent the blood to his head, so that he saw small things bigger than they were; felt something of a Titan, who stormed the universe, corrected our Maker's mistakes, and wriggled the earth's axis so that the south came a little northward.
After he had striped the rocky wall, for a few meters, which was all that was needed as it was to be multiplied by the air strata, he went to manufacture the stone pine. On the hillock's crest stood a group of low arborescent pines, which together only miraged as the border of a forest. The thing was to cut down half a dozen trees to isolate the best one which would be silhouetted against the sky.
To saw down the supernumerary trees was the work of half an hour. The one that was left was slender with all its vegetative energy gathered at the top, because the others standing so close had hindered the formation of branches on the trunk. But now he must thin the crown with an ax so that the characteristic umbrella frame with its ribs came out. It was easily done, but when he afterwards looked at his creation with the diopter he still saw that the style was not perfect and that the top branches must be stretched upwards with zinc wire and the side branches somewhat downwards and outwards. When the stone pine was completed, he took a glass of wine and selected the material for the cypresses. This soon presented itself in the form of a pair of pointed junipers, which he only needed to select so that they rose against the sky, and trim them with an ax and the knife. But as they were somewhat too light, he took a pail of water and stirred some ivory-black in it and sprinkled them with the wash until they had a perfect churchyard green.
When he contemplated his work, he became dejected, and recollected a dark story of the girl who stepped on the loaf of bread; and when the white mews gave forth dreadful cries above his head, he thought of the two black ravens which came from heaven to take her soul down to hell.
After he had sat a moment and the blood had returned to his brain, he smiled at his work and at his childish fear. If nature herself had not gone exactly so hastily to work with the origin of species it was not lack of good will, only lack of ability.
Now to make a marble palace; and as that had been his starting point and he had planned it all at home on his sofa, this work was not more difficult than the other.
The limestone ledge stood perfectly vertical, ready for a facade; true there were only a few square meters of it but no more was needed, and it was only to loosen the eurite slabs, which from weathering had cracked from the limestone. The crowbar proved sufficient at first, but at the base he found it necessary to use a dynamite cartridge in the crack.
At the report of the cartridge and the raining down of shivers he felt something of the poet's longing to dump all at once the ammunition of the standing armies into a volcano and relieve humanity of the pain of existence and the trouble of development.
Now the marble slab was cleared and the crystals of the limestone sparkled like loaf sugar in the sunbeams. With his paint buckets he marked out a rustic base and outlined two small quadrangular windows. On the rocky ledge above he drove two poles and laid a third one across, tying them so that the whole formed a pergola. Afterwards he needed only to lift up the bearberry vines, which were a couple of yards long, and twine them round the poles; thus the grapevine was in place, and hanging down in festoons.
At last he retouched the soil with a gallon of muriatic acid diluted with as much water, whereby a brilliant variegation of colors was produced on the grassy carpet, to represent patches of Bellis or Galanthus which flowers he had found characteristic of the Roman Campagna at the coming of the "second spring" in October after the wine harvest has ended.
And therewith his work was completed!
But it had taken him until evening. In order that the miracle should have a proper effect there remained, however, to announce its appearance in advance and best if he could predetermine the day. He knew that there had been great heat in the south of Europe, and therefore it would not be long before a north wind would come. It had been from the east for some time now, while the barometric pressure in the North Sea had been low. According to reports, drifting ice lay off Arholma, and as soon as the wind would veer a few points to northward the ice drift must follow the current which passes to the west of Aland, where the Gulf of Bothnia empties into the Baltic Sea. If he could only get a north wind in the evening of some day then he was sure it would last a couple of days, and as it is always accompanied by clear air he would be able to foretell the appearance of the phenomenon at least one day in advance, and if he got that far it would be an easy matter to tell the hour, for the mirage only appeared a few hours after sunrise, usually between ten and twelve o'clock.
As he entered his chamber, he locked the door to devote himself to his work, his great work, which he had been planning for the last ten years and expected to complete when he was fifty; this was the goal, which had inspired his life and which he carried as his secret. He enjoyed the thought of owning himself for a few hours, for during the weeks which had passed since the arrival of the two ladies, he had been occupied every evening with keeping them company, and that, which should have been a rest and a pleasure, had become a constraint, a labor. He loved the young girl and would live with her in wedlock, in complete unification, when leisure moments would afford unpremeditated confidences and rest; but this state of semi-familiarity where he at fixed hours must appear whether he was disposed to converse or not, pained him as a duty. She had caught hold of him and never tired of receiving as he possessed the ability to be always new and entertaining; but he who never received anything, could in time find the need of renewing himself. But when he then stayed away, she became uneasy, nervous and tortured him with questions whether she was too importunate, to which he as a well-bred man could not answer in the affirmative.
Now he opened his manuscript case, where the cartons lay arranged with notes, small slips of paper with improvised thoughts on observations, stuck on half sheets as in a herbarium, and which it amused him to arrange and rearrange after new classifications in order to find out whether the phenomena could be arranged in as many ways as the brain willed, or they really could be arranged according to only one classification, viz., as nature had placed them, if indeed nature in its operations had followed any particular law and order. This occupation awakened in him the idea that he was the real arranger of chaos, who separated light from darkness; and that the chaos first ceased with the evolution of the discriminating organ of self-consciousness, at a time when light and darkness in reality were not yet separated. He intoxicated himself with this thought, felt how his ego was growing, how the brain cells germinated, burst their capsules, multiplied and formed new species of concepts, which should in time crop out in thoughts, and fall into the brain substance of others as yeast plants and cause millions after his death, if not before, to serve as hot beds for his seeds of thought....
There was a knock at the door, and with an excited voice, as though he had been disturbed in a secret meeting, he asked who it was.
It was a greeting from the ladies and an inquiry if the commissioner would come down.
This he answered by returning his regards, but he had no time this evening because he must work, unless some urgent circumstances required his presence.
There was silence for a moment. As he thought he surely knew what would follow he left his interrupted work and placed his manuscript in order; he had just completed this when he heard the mother's step on the staircase. Instead of waiting for her to knock he opened the door and greeted her with the question, "Miss Mary is sick?"
The mother started, but recovered herself at once and asked the doctor to come down and see her as it was impossible to get a physician.
The commissioner was not a physician but he had acquired the elements of pathology and therapeutics; had observed himself and all the sick that had come within his circle; had philosophized over the nature of diseases and their remedies, and finally, made up a therapy, that he applied to himself. Therefore he promised to come in about half an hour and bring the medicine with him as he heard the girl lay in convulsions.
It certainly was not difficult for him to guess the nature of her sickness. As the first messenger had said nothing about illness, it must have occurred between the two messages and had been caused by his refusal to go. It was a psychical indisposition, which he so well recognized and which passed under the yet undefined name of hysteria. A little pressure on the will, a thwarted wish, a cross plan, and at once followed a general depression under which the soul tried to place the pains within the body without being able to localize them. He had so often seen in the pharmacodynamics beside the names of remedies and their action small cautious remarks as "acts in a yet unexplained way," or "action not yet fully known," and he believed that he had found by observation and speculation, that just because of the unity of mind and matter the remedy acted both chemico-dynamically and psychically at the same time. Recent medical ideas had left out the medicine or the material basis and assumed in hypnotism a purely psychical, or in diet and physical exercise a vulgar and often detrimental mechanical method. These exaggerations he regarded as necessary and beneficial transition forms, although their trial had demanded its victims as, for instance, when one with cold water excites a nervous person instead of soothing them with warm baths, or tired out the weak with violent exercises in the raw air.
He believed he had found that the old remedies could still be of service as a kind of instruction material, to use the popular expression, in order to awaken and change impressions, and just as the group of astringents really cause a contracting of the stomach, just so do they cause a concentrating of the soul's scattered powers, which the dissipated drinker knows from experience when he in the morning winds up his run down movement with an "Angostura."
This woman felt herself bodily indisposed without directly being so. Therefore he now composed a series of remedies, of which the first would cause a real physical ailment whereby the patient should be urged to leave the sickly condition of the soul and localize it definitely in the body. To this purpose he took from his family medicine case the most nauseating of all drugs, asafœtida, which could best develop a condition of general illness, and in such great doses that actual convulsions would result; that means, the whole physique with the senses of smell and taste should rise in revolt against this strange substance in the body, and all the functions of the soul should direct their attention to its removal. Thereby the imaginary pains would be forgotten, and it would only remain then to cause in succession transitions from the one nauseating sensation down through less unpleasant ones, until finally the release from the last stage, by means of an upward grade of cooling, covering, softening, mitigating remedies, should awaken a complete sensation of vivacity as after having passed through troubles and dangers, which are delightful to recollect.
After having dressed himself in a white sack coat of cashmere and tied on a cream colored necktie with pale amethyst stripes, he for the first time since the arrival of the ladies put on his bracelet. Why all this he could not explain, but he did it under the influence of an impression, brought from the sick bed he was to visit, and which he produced in himself. And when he looked in the mirror without observing his face, he noticed that his exterior gave a mild sympathetic impression, but also with a touch of the unusual and that it would attract attention, without exciting a nervous person.
After this he collected his requisites like a magician who is going to perform, and went to the sick bed.
When he was shown into the chamber, he saw the girl lying on the sofa, with disheveled hair and dressed in a Persian morning-gown. Her eyes were unnaturally big and stared contemptuously at the intruder.
The commissioner felt for a moment embarrassed, but only for a moment, and then he stepped forwards and grasped her hand.
"How is it with you, Miss Mary?" asked he sympathetically.
She looked at him piercingly, as though she would penetrate him, but did not answer.
He took out his watch and, counting her pulse, said:
"You have fever."
Here he lied, but he must gain her confidence, that was part of the cure.
The expression on the girl's face changed immediately.
"If I have fever! Oh, I believe I shall burn up!"
She was allowed to complain, and the hostile mood against the visitor had passed so that contact closing the current could occur.
"Do you promise to obey my orders? If so, I will cure you," the commissioner began, meantime laying his hand on her forehead.
At the word obey he felt how the patient twitched as though she would not obey at all, but at the same moment his bracelet slipped below the cuff and the resistance of the imaginary sick ceased.
"Do with me as you please," answered she submissively; meanwhile her eyes were fastened on the golden serpent which fascinated her and aroused her fears of something unknown.
"I am no physician by profession, as you know, but I have studied the art, and know all that is necessary for this occasion. Here I have a drug which is very diagreeable to take, but is infallible in its action. It is no secret and I shall tell you what I am giving you. This is a resinous gum which is prepared from the root of a perennial herb which grows in stony Arabia."
At the word Arabia the girl listened, for it probably aroused some thoughts of incense, which could not hide Lady Macbeth's foul crimes.
Therefore she took the spoon and smelt of its contents; but at the same moment she threw her head backwards and cried: "I cannot take it!"
He placed his arm round her neck, firmly and gently, and reached the spoon to her once more and coaxingly said:
"Show now that you are a good child!" Thereupon he poured the drug into her mouth, before she could make resistance.
She fell backwards upon the sofa pillows and her body writhed under the pains and nauseating effects which the resin with its smell of white onion had produced, and her face expressed a horror as though all things bad and disgusting in this world had piled upon her. With a supplicating voice she beseeched him for a glass of water to free her from her agony.
This he would not give her; she must lie down and, whether she would or not, submit to the disagreeable feelings the remedy caused.
Now when he saw her melted by disgust, he took up his drug number two.
"Now, Miss Mary, the wandering in stony Arabia's desert is ended and you shall go up on the Alps and inhale the mountain air, concentrated in the vigorous gentian's bitter root, yellow as sum light," said the commissioner in an encouraging, manly voice.
The girl received the bitter drug unresistingly and shrank as though stabbed with a knife; but directly after she aroused as though her scattered powers had rushed together and her energy had returned. The violent remedy had taken away the previous obnoxious taste but irritated the mucous membranes of the stomach by its sharpness, and increased the pulse.
"Now we shall put out the fire with quilts," continued the commissioner. "And let us go to Brittany's seashore to fetch balsam in the mild Carrageen alga. Do you feel how soft the mucilage lays itself protectingly over the irritated lining of the stomach and do you notice the odor of the sea salts?"
A quiet calm spread over the patient's heated face, and as the physician now considered her strong enough to listen to him, he began with reminiscences of the coast of Brittany, the yachting on the Atlantic, the life with the fishermen in Quimper, and the hunting for seabirds at Sarzeau.
She followed his narrative, but still seemed somewhat tired, so he broke off and gave her a symphony, as he called it, which was composed of the classical route, well known as the wine spice of bridal parties in the Middle Ages; the heavenly Angelica, the spearmint with its household odor and a little touch ofCarbenia benedictato preserve vigor, and a grain of juniper oil to tell of the forest.
It was as though he rubbed her with impressions, snatched her away from sickly thoughts by letting her travel in fancy from place to place; make the tour of the whole old and new world, get visions of all kinds of landscapes, all races of people, all climates. When she seemed tired he gave her a spoonful of lemon juice with a little sugar, which cooled and eased her, so that after a dreadful half-hour passed she received this simple refreshment as a great enjoyment, that made her smile.
"Turn now towards the wall," said the commissioner, "and pretend to sleep for five minutes while I go out and speak to your mother."
The commissioner, who felt his powers failing, was obliged to go out into the fresh air to recover. And now he need only to throw a glance out over the half lighted evening sky, out over the steel blue sea, shut his eyes and try not to think, to feel, how the disordered, brain regained its place again and continued its accelerating motion forwards, after having been turned backwards awhile.
While he stood thus with his arms on his chest, half asleep, he heard a thought still buzzing in one ear: a child of thirty-four years!
Thus he awoke and went into the cottage again.
Miss Mary was sitting on the sofa with her hair loosened and thrown gracefully around her, but otherwise looked perfectly well and cheerful.
The commissioner took from his basket a bottle of Syracuse wine and a package of Russian cigarettes.
"Now you shall pretend you are well," said he, "and that we have met after a long journey, upon which you shall drink a glass of sweet Sicilian wine and smoke a cigarette, for it is part of the cure."
The girl seemed to make an effort to hide her secret suffering, and drank the wine while she kept her eyes on the bracelet.
The commissioner broke the silence with, "You look at my bracelet?"
"No, I did not," denied the girl.
"I got it from a woman who of course is dead, as I have not returned it."
"Have you been in love?" asked the girl with a strong doubt.
"Yes, but with open eyes! When one usually considers it commendable to use sense, why quench it when one is going to take one of the most important steps in life?"
"So, one should be calculating in love?"
"Strongly, incredibly calculating when it is to let loose one of the wildest propensities!"