CHAPTER IITHEparsonage was not far from Norby Farm. The day before the inquiry Pastor Borring began to wonder whether he could not bring about some reasonable agreement in this wicked and foolish case between two honest men.No one knew that Pastor Borring had a secret trouble that caused him continual suffering. He believed neither in the atonement nor in the utility of the sacraments; and yet as pastor he had to say and do what was pure and true. He felt that he was too old to resign his living and start again in life; and with his present good stipend, he could help on his numerous children in the world.But this faithlessness to his convictions had made a very good man of Pastor Borring. He knew himself sufficiently well to judge others leniently. He took no interest in gossip, for he thought that the evil that could be said about others was not nearly so bad as that which could be said about himself. Many came to him with their troubles, and it was easy for him to comfort them, because their misfortunes seemed to him small in comparison with hisown. People thought him a good pastor and a noble man; and perhaps he was both of these, because he was always burning with a secret despair.“I’m going a drive to-day,” he said to his wife.“Is any one ill?” she asked.“Yes.”“Where?”“Out at the brickfields,” said the pastor.Enveloped in his grey ulster, with a red scarf round his waist, he seated himself in the sledge, and the little bay fjord horse set off in its usual trot.It was a sad sight that met him out at the red factory buildings, where there was no smoke ascending from the chimneys, and the shop stood with locked doors and shuttered windows. “Poor man!” thought the pastor. “If he is guilty, all this trouble is too great for him to bear; and if he is innocent, this will be the worst evidence against him. He must be encouraged.”Wangen still lived in his pretty house, and after taking off his coat in the cheerful hall, the pastor went into the drawing-room. A servant was occupied in dusting, and she went at once to tell Wangen.Tick! tick! went a little clock in its polished case on the wall. There was a sound of children crying in the adjoining room, and Wangen’s voice hushing them.The door opened and Wangen entered. He had grown very thin, his eyes wore an expression of suffering, and he was almost unrecognisable.“Our little baby died last night,” he said, when he had seated himself. “It was undoubtedly because of his mother’s milk. She has had too much to bear lately.”“He means by that that Norby is to blame for this too,” thought the pastor. “It is high time I talked to him. Dear Wangen,” he said aloud, “will you do an old pastor a favour? Will you get up on my sledge, and drive over with me to Norby?”Wangen started up involuntarily, and put his hand to his head. “To Norby?” he said in astonishment.“Yes. We’ll try and put an end to this matter, dear Wangen.”Wangen smiled and his eyes began to glow. “He’s afraid at last, is he?” he said. “And so he sends you.”The pastor shook his head. “I’ve come on my own account, my friend,” he said. “Let me tell you that it is easiest for the innocent one to forgive. Show this now. Come with me to Norby, and there I’ll say: ‘Knut, I want to talk to you a little, and Wangen is going to hear what I say.’ Then we three’ll go into a room by ourselves, and I shall say: ‘You two, who want to send one another to prison, you’re both guilty. Shake hands! Sign a declaration that henceforward neither of you will ever mention the matter again’; and when we go into the other room, I shall say to the others: ‘There won’t be any inquiry; for Wangen and Norby thinkthat this has nothing to do with either the authorities or any one else; they have arranged the matter between themselves.’ In a couple of days, people will have found something else to talk about, and in a month’s time the whole thing will be forgotten. Now put on your things, Wangen, and come with me!”But instead of this, Wangen sat down, and smiled a little uncertainly.“And who is to pay the two thousand krones that Norby is responsible for?” he asked.The pastor was a little perplexed. He had not thought of that, and involuntarily he stroked his nose with his thumb and forefinger.“We-ell—But dear me! Peace between people is worth more than two thousand, especially when it’s a case of going to prison. I’ll say to Norby—let me see—I’ll say: ‘If you haven’t given security for Wangen before, then do it now! Pay this! You’ll never miss it!’ I’m sure my friend Norby will be reasonable.”But Wangen started up again.“No,” he cried, “not for the world! Shall I beg him for the help that he’s given once, but backed out of? Good heavens, no! No! Do you really think, Pastor Borring, that when first Norby has ruined me, then dishonoured me, then driven my wife to the verge of madness, I am going to Norby to ask him to be friends? No! That would be a little too much!”“I don’t know who is guilty,” said the pastor sadly. “Let the guilty one settle the matter with God.”Wangen laughed scornfully. “That sounds very nice, Hr. Borring, but what have we got law and justice for? You should feel what it is like to be in my place. I spent my wife’s and my own fortune in creating an industry here, and it succeeded as long as it wasn’t in Norby’s way. He has traduced me until I was refused credit; he has managed to prevent my compounding; and it is not even enough for him to know that I am destitute! No, I’m not to keep my good name either; I’m to go to prison too. And you want me to forget all this? If Norby were to come here himself and ask me—but it’s too late for that too now.”The pastor sat for a while with his lips compressed.“Tell me, Wangen! Have you never caused suffering to any one else in this world?” he said.The question startled Wangen, and he again forced a laugh.“All I know is,” he said after a short pause, “that I’m innocent in this instance. And Norby has now tortured and worried me so long that he shall go to the prison that he intended for me. If he is so rich too he shall be made to pay. I won’t take a small compensation.”“Ah! it’s all very well suffering when you get paid for it,” thought the pastor. “That man is theguilty one.” Aloud he said: “God help us that we find it so difficult to forgive one another! And yet we expect Him to be always ready to forgive us.”“Do you think we shouldn’t have courts of law to help us to obtain justice, Hr. Borring?”“Judicial proceedings of that kind, dear Wangen, are a bad means of bringing right to light. They may perhaps get hold of the fruit but never of the root. Just you notice when the witnesses stand forward. They lie without knowing it; they raise a dust, and the court passes judgment from the dust. It is human; but God deliver us both from the sentence and its consequences!”All this time Wangen was in the belief that the pastor had been sent by Norby, and that he wanted to entice him with fair words. He had therefore become impatient and wished to put an end to the interview. He rose with an impetuous movement, and began to pace the floor.“The only thing I’m afraid of,” he said demonstratively—for he was quite willing that Norby should hear this—“is that he’ll get off too easily. After thinking it over, I don’t think he ought to come out of prison any more.”The pastor felt as if he had received a blow, and rose quickly. “If he is in the right,” he thought, “then Heaven help the right that has fallen into such hands! Can being in the right make a man so coarse and bad? No! He is guilty!”He sighed and took his leave despondently.Wangen went to the door with him, and on the steps remarked:“This is much more than a question between Norby and me. It most concerns the working men, who are left without bread. It is a social question.”“Indeed?” said the pastor, seating himself in his sledge, and gathering up the reins, thinking as he did so: “Of course! If a man only has toothache nowadays, he tries to make it into a social question. People are too cowardly to bear anything alone.”“Yes,” continued Wangen, “I don’t stand so much alone now, thank goodness, as Norby thinks.”“Then he’s not so much to be pitied after all,” thought the pastor, adding aloud: “Yes, I hear you’ve started a new working-men’s union, and that you’ve often given lectures there lately.”“Yes,” answered Wangen; “a man must be blind if he doesn’t see that Norby has a number of rich men behind him, and that the end and aim of this matter is to do away with the eight-hours’ working day in this part of the country.”The pastor smiled and said good-bye, and cracked his whip over the bay.“That was a very unsuccessful visit,” thought the pastor, and sighed. “People are only amenable to reason when they are dying; and even then it is in order to gain something.”Wangen had returned to the drawing-room, and stood at the window watching the pastor as he droveaway. He could not at once regain his mental equilibrium, for, in spite of everything, the old man had left a good impression upon him, although at the same time this was something he was unwilling to acknowledge; for it might disturb the calculation respecting man’s wickedness, to which Wangen daily added fresh amounts, thereby strengthening his righteous anger.“How strange it is,” he thought with some agitation, “that the priests always play into the hands of the rich!” The thought had half unconsciously been admitted, in order to get rid of the good impression. “And they try with texts and solemn faces to make the poor man give up his rights. I dare say!”As he stood and followed the pastor’s sledge with his eyes, he gradually let loose a whole series of such reflections, and little by little felt the irritation that made him believe in what he said; and little by little the old pastor driving along the road seemed to him to be a theological messenger in the service of wealth, like so many other priests in this world.“Has there ever been an affair too rotten for some priest or other to lend himself, his God, and his church in defence of it? Look at war, for instance! And the doctrine of eternal punishment! A nice thing indeed!”Wangen had nothing to do all day now, so he was always busy with this affair with Norby, and it grew and grew in his imagination. At the sametime he constantly had to witness fresh sad consequences of his failure. If he only met the old tailor who had entrusted his small savings to him, he involuntarily went another way; for he thought the tailor stared at him with wild eyes.From his early youth Henry Wangen had been intelligent and warmly interested in questions and ideas; but these ideas had always been aimed at what others should do, and how others should be helped. When finally an extraordinary responsibility had brought him to the last extremity, he was in despair at having to stand alone; he felt the duty of expiating and suffering to be a burden beyond the power of man to bear, and he involuntarily tried even now to turn the matter into a social question. He had at first, therefore, half unconsciously wished and hoped that this forgery matter was only the expression of a conspiracy against his business. Now he felt quite sure, and every time he could suspect some one fresh of being the rich men’s accomplice, he became more comfortably certain.When he really thought about it, he had long seen signs of something brewing among his connections outside as well as inside the district. Rich men were rich men, whether they called themselves farmers or merchants. They were all afraid of him because of his eight-hours’ working day. And they not only wanted to force him into bankruptcy in order to be able to say “That’s how things go with such a short working day.” No, they wantedrevenge. They wanted to send him to prison. They wanted to dishonour him so greatly that he would henceforth be harmless. He understood it now. Like many others, he had fallen a victim to the demoniacal brutality that wealth and capital breed.For this very reason the work-people began to be unspeakably dear to him. He no longer feared them in consequence of having deceived them; they had become his brothers and fellow sufferers; it was in fact for their sakes that he was now being persecuted.In this way the recollection of his regrets and resolutions in the dark railway carriage became less and less frequent, and in their place rose anger against the social powers, whose the blame really was. Nor was the oppressive sense of duty to expiate and become better himself, any longer any concern of his; in this matter, too, he could leave himself out of consideration, and look at society.He turned from the window, and began to pace the floor. “So he was willing to let himself be used too, was he?” he thought, and the more he thought about it, the more excited he became. “Fancy! that lazy priest, who perhaps lies in bed until ten o’clock in the morning, grudges the working men a little ease!”He bit his lip. By Jove, the working men ought to hear this! It would be a good thing if they could hear it all over the country. Priests werepriests all the world over. He would have it in the newspapers in some form or other.And Norby? He might send out as many priests as ever he liked. He should go to prison anyhow. Wait till the day after to-morrow!
THEparsonage was not far from Norby Farm. The day before the inquiry Pastor Borring began to wonder whether he could not bring about some reasonable agreement in this wicked and foolish case between two honest men.
No one knew that Pastor Borring had a secret trouble that caused him continual suffering. He believed neither in the atonement nor in the utility of the sacraments; and yet as pastor he had to say and do what was pure and true. He felt that he was too old to resign his living and start again in life; and with his present good stipend, he could help on his numerous children in the world.
But this faithlessness to his convictions had made a very good man of Pastor Borring. He knew himself sufficiently well to judge others leniently. He took no interest in gossip, for he thought that the evil that could be said about others was not nearly so bad as that which could be said about himself. Many came to him with their troubles, and it was easy for him to comfort them, because their misfortunes seemed to him small in comparison with hisown. People thought him a good pastor and a noble man; and perhaps he was both of these, because he was always burning with a secret despair.
“I’m going a drive to-day,” he said to his wife.
“Is any one ill?” she asked.
“Yes.”
“Where?”
“Out at the brickfields,” said the pastor.
Enveloped in his grey ulster, with a red scarf round his waist, he seated himself in the sledge, and the little bay fjord horse set off in its usual trot.
It was a sad sight that met him out at the red factory buildings, where there was no smoke ascending from the chimneys, and the shop stood with locked doors and shuttered windows. “Poor man!” thought the pastor. “If he is guilty, all this trouble is too great for him to bear; and if he is innocent, this will be the worst evidence against him. He must be encouraged.”
Wangen still lived in his pretty house, and after taking off his coat in the cheerful hall, the pastor went into the drawing-room. A servant was occupied in dusting, and she went at once to tell Wangen.
Tick! tick! went a little clock in its polished case on the wall. There was a sound of children crying in the adjoining room, and Wangen’s voice hushing them.
The door opened and Wangen entered. He had grown very thin, his eyes wore an expression of suffering, and he was almost unrecognisable.
“Our little baby died last night,” he said, when he had seated himself. “It was undoubtedly because of his mother’s milk. She has had too much to bear lately.”
“He means by that that Norby is to blame for this too,” thought the pastor. “It is high time I talked to him. Dear Wangen,” he said aloud, “will you do an old pastor a favour? Will you get up on my sledge, and drive over with me to Norby?”
Wangen started up involuntarily, and put his hand to his head. “To Norby?” he said in astonishment.
“Yes. We’ll try and put an end to this matter, dear Wangen.”
Wangen smiled and his eyes began to glow. “He’s afraid at last, is he?” he said. “And so he sends you.”
The pastor shook his head. “I’ve come on my own account, my friend,” he said. “Let me tell you that it is easiest for the innocent one to forgive. Show this now. Come with me to Norby, and there I’ll say: ‘Knut, I want to talk to you a little, and Wangen is going to hear what I say.’ Then we three’ll go into a room by ourselves, and I shall say: ‘You two, who want to send one another to prison, you’re both guilty. Shake hands! Sign a declaration that henceforward neither of you will ever mention the matter again’; and when we go into the other room, I shall say to the others: ‘There won’t be any inquiry; for Wangen and Norby thinkthat this has nothing to do with either the authorities or any one else; they have arranged the matter between themselves.’ In a couple of days, people will have found something else to talk about, and in a month’s time the whole thing will be forgotten. Now put on your things, Wangen, and come with me!”
But instead of this, Wangen sat down, and smiled a little uncertainly.
“And who is to pay the two thousand krones that Norby is responsible for?” he asked.
The pastor was a little perplexed. He had not thought of that, and involuntarily he stroked his nose with his thumb and forefinger.
“We-ell—But dear me! Peace between people is worth more than two thousand, especially when it’s a case of going to prison. I’ll say to Norby—let me see—I’ll say: ‘If you haven’t given security for Wangen before, then do it now! Pay this! You’ll never miss it!’ I’m sure my friend Norby will be reasonable.”
But Wangen started up again.
“No,” he cried, “not for the world! Shall I beg him for the help that he’s given once, but backed out of? Good heavens, no! No! Do you really think, Pastor Borring, that when first Norby has ruined me, then dishonoured me, then driven my wife to the verge of madness, I am going to Norby to ask him to be friends? No! That would be a little too much!”
“I don’t know who is guilty,” said the pastor sadly. “Let the guilty one settle the matter with God.”
Wangen laughed scornfully. “That sounds very nice, Hr. Borring, but what have we got law and justice for? You should feel what it is like to be in my place. I spent my wife’s and my own fortune in creating an industry here, and it succeeded as long as it wasn’t in Norby’s way. He has traduced me until I was refused credit; he has managed to prevent my compounding; and it is not even enough for him to know that I am destitute! No, I’m not to keep my good name either; I’m to go to prison too. And you want me to forget all this? If Norby were to come here himself and ask me—but it’s too late for that too now.”
The pastor sat for a while with his lips compressed.
“Tell me, Wangen! Have you never caused suffering to any one else in this world?” he said.
The question startled Wangen, and he again forced a laugh.
“All I know is,” he said after a short pause, “that I’m innocent in this instance. And Norby has now tortured and worried me so long that he shall go to the prison that he intended for me. If he is so rich too he shall be made to pay. I won’t take a small compensation.”
“Ah! it’s all very well suffering when you get paid for it,” thought the pastor. “That man is theguilty one.” Aloud he said: “God help us that we find it so difficult to forgive one another! And yet we expect Him to be always ready to forgive us.”
“Do you think we shouldn’t have courts of law to help us to obtain justice, Hr. Borring?”
“Judicial proceedings of that kind, dear Wangen, are a bad means of bringing right to light. They may perhaps get hold of the fruit but never of the root. Just you notice when the witnesses stand forward. They lie without knowing it; they raise a dust, and the court passes judgment from the dust. It is human; but God deliver us both from the sentence and its consequences!”
All this time Wangen was in the belief that the pastor had been sent by Norby, and that he wanted to entice him with fair words. He had therefore become impatient and wished to put an end to the interview. He rose with an impetuous movement, and began to pace the floor.
“The only thing I’m afraid of,” he said demonstratively—for he was quite willing that Norby should hear this—“is that he’ll get off too easily. After thinking it over, I don’t think he ought to come out of prison any more.”
The pastor felt as if he had received a blow, and rose quickly. “If he is in the right,” he thought, “then Heaven help the right that has fallen into such hands! Can being in the right make a man so coarse and bad? No! He is guilty!”
He sighed and took his leave despondently.Wangen went to the door with him, and on the steps remarked:
“This is much more than a question between Norby and me. It most concerns the working men, who are left without bread. It is a social question.”
“Indeed?” said the pastor, seating himself in his sledge, and gathering up the reins, thinking as he did so: “Of course! If a man only has toothache nowadays, he tries to make it into a social question. People are too cowardly to bear anything alone.”
“Yes,” continued Wangen, “I don’t stand so much alone now, thank goodness, as Norby thinks.”
“Then he’s not so much to be pitied after all,” thought the pastor, adding aloud: “Yes, I hear you’ve started a new working-men’s union, and that you’ve often given lectures there lately.”
“Yes,” answered Wangen; “a man must be blind if he doesn’t see that Norby has a number of rich men behind him, and that the end and aim of this matter is to do away with the eight-hours’ working day in this part of the country.”
The pastor smiled and said good-bye, and cracked his whip over the bay.
“That was a very unsuccessful visit,” thought the pastor, and sighed. “People are only amenable to reason when they are dying; and even then it is in order to gain something.”
Wangen had returned to the drawing-room, and stood at the window watching the pastor as he droveaway. He could not at once regain his mental equilibrium, for, in spite of everything, the old man had left a good impression upon him, although at the same time this was something he was unwilling to acknowledge; for it might disturb the calculation respecting man’s wickedness, to which Wangen daily added fresh amounts, thereby strengthening his righteous anger.
“How strange it is,” he thought with some agitation, “that the priests always play into the hands of the rich!” The thought had half unconsciously been admitted, in order to get rid of the good impression. “And they try with texts and solemn faces to make the poor man give up his rights. I dare say!”
As he stood and followed the pastor’s sledge with his eyes, he gradually let loose a whole series of such reflections, and little by little felt the irritation that made him believe in what he said; and little by little the old pastor driving along the road seemed to him to be a theological messenger in the service of wealth, like so many other priests in this world.
“Has there ever been an affair too rotten for some priest or other to lend himself, his God, and his church in defence of it? Look at war, for instance! And the doctrine of eternal punishment! A nice thing indeed!”
Wangen had nothing to do all day now, so he was always busy with this affair with Norby, and it grew and grew in his imagination. At the sametime he constantly had to witness fresh sad consequences of his failure. If he only met the old tailor who had entrusted his small savings to him, he involuntarily went another way; for he thought the tailor stared at him with wild eyes.
From his early youth Henry Wangen had been intelligent and warmly interested in questions and ideas; but these ideas had always been aimed at what others should do, and how others should be helped. When finally an extraordinary responsibility had brought him to the last extremity, he was in despair at having to stand alone; he felt the duty of expiating and suffering to be a burden beyond the power of man to bear, and he involuntarily tried even now to turn the matter into a social question. He had at first, therefore, half unconsciously wished and hoped that this forgery matter was only the expression of a conspiracy against his business. Now he felt quite sure, and every time he could suspect some one fresh of being the rich men’s accomplice, he became more comfortably certain.
When he really thought about it, he had long seen signs of something brewing among his connections outside as well as inside the district. Rich men were rich men, whether they called themselves farmers or merchants. They were all afraid of him because of his eight-hours’ working day. And they not only wanted to force him into bankruptcy in order to be able to say “That’s how things go with such a short working day.” No, they wantedrevenge. They wanted to send him to prison. They wanted to dishonour him so greatly that he would henceforth be harmless. He understood it now. Like many others, he had fallen a victim to the demoniacal brutality that wealth and capital breed.
For this very reason the work-people began to be unspeakably dear to him. He no longer feared them in consequence of having deceived them; they had become his brothers and fellow sufferers; it was in fact for their sakes that he was now being persecuted.
In this way the recollection of his regrets and resolutions in the dark railway carriage became less and less frequent, and in their place rose anger against the social powers, whose the blame really was. Nor was the oppressive sense of duty to expiate and become better himself, any longer any concern of his; in this matter, too, he could leave himself out of consideration, and look at society.
He turned from the window, and began to pace the floor. “So he was willing to let himself be used too, was he?” he thought, and the more he thought about it, the more excited he became. “Fancy! that lazy priest, who perhaps lies in bed until ten o’clock in the morning, grudges the working men a little ease!”
He bit his lip. By Jove, the working men ought to hear this! It would be a good thing if they could hear it all over the country. Priests werepriests all the world over. He would have it in the newspapers in some form or other.
And Norby? He might send out as many priests as ever he liked. He should go to prison anyhow. Wait till the day after to-morrow!