In the midst of his terribly mysterious school life, in which the boy could discover no essential connection between Latin grammar and real life, a new mysterious factor appeared for a short time and then disappeared again. The nine-year-old daughter of the headmaster came to the French lessons. She was purposely put on the last bench, in order not to be seen, and to look round was held to be a great misdemeanour. Her presence, however, was felt in the class-room. The boy, and probably the whole class, fell in love. The lessons always went well when she was present; their ambition was spurred, and none of them wanted to be humiliated or flogged before her. She was, it is true, ugly, but well dressed. Her gentle voice vibrated among the breaking voices of the boys, and even the teacher had a smile on his severe face when he spoke to her. How beautifully her name sounded when he called it out—one Christian name among all the surnames.
John's love found expression in a silent melancholy. He never spoke to her, and would never have dared to do it. He feared and longed for her. But if anyone had asked him what he wanted from her, he could not have told them. He wanted nothing from her. A kiss? No; in his family there was no kissing. To hold her? No! Still less to possess her. Possess? What should he do with her? He felt that he had a secret. This plagued him so that he suffered under it, and his whole life was overclouded. One day at home he seized a knife and said, "I will cut my throat." His mother thought he was ill. He could not tell her. He was then about nine years old.
Perhaps if there had been as many girls as boys in the school present in all the classes, probably innocent friendships would have been formed, the electricity would have been carried off, the Madonna-worship brought within its proper limits, and wrong ideas of woman would not have followed him and his companions through life.
His father's contemplative turn of mind, his dislike of meeting people after his bankruptcy, the unfriendly verdict of public opinion regarding his originally illegal union with his wife, had induced him to retire to the Norrtullsgata. Here he had rented a house with a large garden, wide-stretching fields, with a pasture, stables, farmyard, and conservatory. He had always liked the occupations of a country life and agriculture. Before this he had possessed a piece of land outside the town, but could not look after it. Now he rented a garden for his own sake and the children's, whose education a little resembled that described in Rousseau'sEmile. The house was separated from its neighbours by a long fence. The Norrtullsgata was an avenue lined with trees which as yet had no pavement, and had been but little built upon. The principal traffic consisted of peasants and milk-carts on their way to the hay market. Besides these there were also funerals moving slowly along to the "New Churchyard," sledging parties to Brunnsvik, and young people on their way to Norrbucka or Stallmastergarden.
The garden which surrounded the little one-storied house was very spacious. Long alleys with at least a hundred apple-trees and berry-bearing bushes crossed each other. Here and there were thick bowers of lilac and jasmine, and a huge aged oak still stood in a corner. There was plenty of shade and space, and enough decay to make the place romantic. East of the garden rose a gravel-hill covered with maples, beeches, and ash-trees; on the summit of it stood a temple belonging to the last century. The back of the hill had been dug away in parts in an unsuccessful attempt to take away gravel, but it had picturesque little dells filled with osier and thorn bushes. From this side neither the street nor the house was visible. From here one obtained a view over Bellevue, Cedardalsberg, and Lilljanskog. One saw only single scattered houses in the far distance, but on the other hand numberless gardens and drying-houses for tobacco.
Thus all the year round they enjoyed a country life, to which they had no objection. Now the boy could study at first-hand the beauty and secrets of plant life, and his first spring there was a period of wonderful surprises. When the freshly turned earth lay black under the apple-tree's white and pink canopy, when the tulips blazed in oriental pomp of colour, it seemed to him as he went about in the garden as if he were assisting at a solemnity more even than at the school examination, or in church, the Christmas festival itself not excepted.
But he had also plenty of hard bodily exercise. The boys were sent with ships' scrapers to clear the moss from the trees; they weeded the ground, swept the paths, watered and hoed. In the stable there was a cow with calves; the hay-loft became a swimming school where they sprang from the beams, and they rode the horses to water.
They had lively games on the hill, rolled down blocks of stone, climbed to the tops of the trees, and made expeditions. They explored the woods and bushes in the Haga Park, climbed up young trees in the ruins, caught bats, discovered edible wood-sorrel and ferns, and plundered birds' nests. Soon they laid their bows and arrows aside, discovered gunpowder, and shot little birds on the hills. They came to be somewhat uncivilised. They found school more distasteful and the streets more hateful than ever. Boys' books also helped in this process.Robinson Crusoeformed an epoch in his life; theDiscovery of America, theScalp-Hunter, and others aroused in him a sincere dislike of school-books.
During the long summer holidays their wildness increased so much that their mother could no longer control the unruly boys. As an experiment they were sent at first to the swimming school in Riddarholm, but it was so far that they wasted half the day on the road thither. Finally, their father resolved to send the three eldest to a boarding-school in the country, to spend the rest of the summer there.
Now he stands on the deck of a steamer far out at sea. He has had so much to look at on the journey that he has not felt any tedium. But now it is afternoon, which is always melancholy, like the beginning of old age. The shadows of the sun fall and alter everything without hiding everything, like the night. He begins to miss something. He has a feeling of emptiness, of being deserted, broken off. He wants to go home, but the consciousness that he cannot do so at once fills him with terror and despair and he weeps. When his brothers ask him why, he says he wants to go home to his mother. They laugh at him, but her image recurs to his mind, serious, mild, and smiling. He hears her last words at parting: "Be obedient and respectful to all, take care of your clothes, and don't forget your evening prayer." He thinks how disobedient he has been to her, and wonders whether she may be ill. Her image seems glorified, and draws him with unbreakable cords of longing. This feeling of loneliness and longing after his mother followed him all through his life. Had he come perhaps too early and incomplete into the world? What held him so closely bound to his mother?
To this question he found no answer either in books or in life. But the fact remained: he never became himself, was never liberated, never a complete individuality. He remained, as it were, a mistletoe, which could not grow except upon a tree; he was a climbing plant which must seek a support. He was naturally weak and timid, but he took part in all physical exercises; he was a good gymnast, could mount a horse when on the run, was skilled in the use of all sorts of weapons, was a bold shot, swimmer, and sailor, but only in order not to appear inferior to others. If no one watched him when bathing, he merely slipped into the water; but if anyonewaswatching, he plunged into it, head-over-heels, from the roof of the bathing-shed. He was conscious of his timidity, and wished to conceal it. He never attacked his school-fellows, but if anyone attacked him, he would strike back even a stronger boy than himself. He seemed to have been born frightened, and lived in continual fear of life and of men.
The ship steams out of the bay and there opens before them a blue stretch of sea without a shore. The novelty of the spectacle, the fresh wind, the liveliness of his brothers, cheer him up. It has just occurred to him that they have come eighteen miles by sea when the steamboat turns into the Nykopingså river.
When the gangway has been run out, there appears a middle-aged man with blond whiskers, who, after a short conversation with the captain, takes over charge of the boys. He looks friendly, and is cheerful. It is the parish clerk of Vidala. On the shore there stands a waggon with a black mare, and soon they are above in the town and stop at a shopkeeper's house which is also an inn for the country people. It smells of herrings and small beer, and they get weary of waiting. The boy cries again. At last Herr Linden comes in a country cart with their baggage, and after many handshakes and a few glasses of beer they leave the town. Fallow fields and hedges stretch in a long desolate perspective, and over some red roofs there rises the edge of a wood in the distance. The sun sets, and they have to drive for three miles through the dark wood. Herr Linden talks briskly in order to keep up their spirits. He tells them about their future school-fellows, the bathing-places, and strawberry-picking. John sleeps till they have reached an inn where there are drunken peasants. The horses are taken out and watered. Then they continue their journey through dark woods. In one place they have to get down and climb up a hill. The horses steam with perspiration and snort, the peasants on the baggage-cart joke and drink, the parish clerk chats with them and tells funny stories. Still they go on sleeping and waking, getting down and resting alternately. Still there are more woods, which used to be haunted by robbers, black pine woods under the starry sky, cottages and hedges. The boy is quite alarmed, and approaches the unknown with trembling.
At last they are on a level road; the day dawns, and the waggon stops before a red house. Opposite it is a tall dark building—a church—once more a church. An old woman, as she appears to him, tall and thin, comes out, receives the boys, and conducts them into a large room on the ground-floor, where there is a cover-table. She has a sharp voice which does not sound friendly, and John is afraid. They eat in the gloom, but do not relish the unusual food, and one of them has to choke down tears. Then they are led in the dark into an attic. No lamp is lit. The room is narrow; pallets and beds are laid across chairs and on the floor, and there is a terrible odor. There is a stirring in the beds, and one head rises, and then another. There are whispers and murmurs, but the new-comers can see no faces. The eldest brother gets a bed to himself, but John and the second brother lie foot to foot. It is a new thing for them, but they creep into bed and draw the blankets over them. His elder brother stretches himself out at his ease, but John protests against this encroachment. They push each other with their feet, and John is struck. He weeps at once. The eldest brother is already asleep. Then there comes a voice from a corner on the ground: "Lie still, you young devils, and don't fight!"
"What do you say?" answers his brother, who is inclined to be impudent.
The bass voice answers, "What do I say? I say—Leave the youngster alone."
"What have you to do with that?"
"A good deal. Come here, and I'll thrash you."
"Youthrashme!"
His brother stands up in his night-shirt. The owner of the bass voice comes towards him. All that one can see is a short sturdy figure with broad shoulders. A number of spectators sit upright in their beds.
They fight, and the elder brother gets the worst of it.
"No! don't hit him! don't hit him!"
The small brother throws himself between the combatants. He could not see anyone of his own flesh and blood being beaten or suffering without feeling it in all his nerves. It was another instance of his want of independence and consciousness of the closeness of the blood-tie.
Then there is silence and dreamless sleep, which Death is said to resemble, and therefore entices so many to premature rest.
Now there begins a new little section of life—an education without his parents, for the boy is out in the world among strangers. He is timid, and carefully avoids every occasion of being blamed. He attacks no one, but defends himself against bullies. There are, however, too many of them for the equilibrium to be maintained. Justice is administered by the broad-shouldered boy mentioned above, who is humpbacked, and always takes the weaker one's part when unrighteously attacked.
In the morning they do their lessons, bathe before dinner, and do manual labour in the afternoon. They weed the garden, fetch water from the spring, and keep the stable clean. It is their father's wish that the boys should do physical work, although they pay the usual fees.
But John's obedience and conscientiousness do not suffice to render his life tolerable. His brothers incur all kinds of reprimands, and under them he also suffers much. He is keenly conscious of their solidarity, and is in this summer only as it were the third part of a person. There are no other punishments except detention, but even the reprimands disquiet him. Manual labour makes him physically strong, but his nerves are just as sensitive as before. Sometimes he pines for his mother, sometimes he is in extremely high spirits and indulges in risky amusements, such as piling up stones in a limestone quarry and lighting a fire at the bottom of it, or sliding down steep hills on a board. He is alternately timid and daring, overflowing with spirits or brooding, but without proper balance.
The church stands on the opposite side of the way, and with its black roof and white walls throws a shadow across the summer-like picture. Daily from his window he sees monumental crosses which rise above the churchyard wall. The church clock does not strike day and night as that in the Clara Church did, but in the evenings at six o'clock one of the boys is allowed to pull the bell-rope which hangs in the tower. It was a solemn moment when, for the first time, his turn came. He felt like a church official, and when he counted three times the three bell-strokes, he thought that God, the pastor, and the congregation would suffer harm if he rang one too many. On Sundays the bigger boys were allowed to ring the bells. Then John stood on the dark wooden staircase and wondered.
In the course of the summer there arrived a black-bordered proclamation which caused great commotion when read aloud in church. King Oscar was dead. Many good things were reported of him, even if no one mourned him. And now the bells rang daily between twelve and one o'clock. In fact, church-bells seemed to follow him.
The boys played in the churchyard among the graves and soon grew familiar with the church. On Sundays they were all assembled in the organ-loft. When the parish clerk struck up the psalm, they took their places by the organ-stops, and when he gave them a sign, all the stops were drawn out and they marched into the choir. That always made a great impression on the congregation.
But the fact of his having to come in such proximity to holy things, and of his handling the requisites of worship, etc., made him familiar with them, and his respect for them diminished. For instance, he did not find the Lord's Supper edifying when on Saturday evening he had eaten some of the holy bread in the parish clerk's kitchen, where it was baked and stamped with the impression of a crucifix. The boys ate these pieces of bread, and called them wafers. Once after the Holy Communion he and the churchwarden were offered the rest of the wine in the vestry.
Nevertheless, after he had been parted from his mother, and felt himself surrounded by unknown threatening powers, he felt a profound need of having recourse to some refuge and of keeping watch. He prayed his evening prayer with a fair amount of devotion; in the morning, when the sun shone, and he was well rested, he did not feel the need of it.
One day when the church was being aired the boys were playing in it. In an access of high spirits they stormed the altar. But John, who was egged on to something more daring, ran up into the pulpit, reversed the hour-glass, and began to preach out of the Bible. This made a great sensation. Then he descended, and ran along the tops of the pews through the whole church. When he had reached the pew next to the altar, which belonged to a count's family, he stepped too heavily on the reading-desk, which fell with a crash to the ground. There was a panic, and all the boys rushed out of church. He stood alone and desolate. In other circumstances he would have run to his mother, acknowledged his fault, and implored her help. But she was not there. Then he thought of God; he fell on his knees before the altar, and prayed through the Paternoster. Then, as though inspired with a thought from above, he arose calmed and strengthened, examined the desk, and found that its joints were not broken. He took a clamp, dovetailed the joints together, and, using his boot as a hammer, with a few well-directed blows repaired the desk. He tried it, and found it firm. Then he went greatly relieved out of the church. "How simple!" he thought to himself, and felt ashamed of having prayed the Lord's Prayer. Why? Perhaps he felt dimly that in this obscure complex which we call the soul there lives a power which, summoned to self-defence at the hour of need, possesses a considerable power of extricating itself. He did not fall on his knees and thank God, and this showed that he did not believe it was He who had helped him. That obscure feeling of shame probably arose from the fact of his perceiving that he had crossed a river to fetch water,i.e., that his prayer had been superfluous.
But this was only a passing moment of self-consciousness. He continued to be variable and capricious. Moodiness, caprice, ordiables noirs,as the French call it, is a not completely explained phenomenon. The victim of them is like one possessed; he wants something, but does the opposite; he suffers from the desire to do himself an injury, and finds almost a pleasure in self-torment. It is a sickness of the soul and of the will, and former psychologists tried to explain it by the hypothesis of a duality in the brain, the two hemispheres of which, they thought, under certain conditions could operate independently each for itself and against the other. But this explanation has been rejected. Many have observed the phenomenon of duplex personality, and Goethe has handled this theme inFaust. In capricious children who "do not know what they want," as the saying is, the nerve-tension ends in tears. They "beg for a whipping," and it is strange that on such occasions a slight chastisement restores the nervous equilibrium and is almost welcomed by the child, who is at once pacified, appeased, and not at all embittered by the punishment, which in its view must have been unjust. It really had asked for a beating as a medicine. But there is also another way of expelling the "black dog." One takes the child in one's arms so that it feels the magnetism of friendship and is quieted. That is the best way of all.
John suffered from similar attacks of caprice. When some treat was proposed to him, a strawberry-picking expedition for example, he asked to be allowed to remain at home, though he knew he would be bored to death there. He would have gladly gone, but he insisted on remaining at home. Another will stronger than his own commanded him to do so. The more they tried to persuade him, the stronger was his resistance. But then if someone came along jovially and with a jest seized him by the collar, and threw him into the haycart, he obeyed and was relieved to be thus liberated from the mysterious will that mastered him. Generally speaking, he obeyed gladly and never wished to put himself forward or be prominent. So much of the slave was in his nature. His mother had served and obeyed in her youth, and as a waitress had been polite towards everyone.
One Sunday they were in the parsonage, where there were young girls. He liked them, but he feared them. All the children went out to pluck strawberries. Someone suggested that they should collect the berries without eating them, in order to eat them at home with sugar. John plucked diligently and kept the agreement; he did not eat one, but honestly delivered up his share, though he saw others cheating. On their return home the berries were divided by the pastor's daughter, and the children pressed round her in order that each might get a full spoonful. John kept as far away as possible; he was forgotten and berryless.
He had been passed over! Full of the bitter consciousness of this, he went into the garden and concealed himself in an arbour. He felt himself to be the last and meanest. He did not weep, however, but was conscious of something hard and cold rising within, like a skeleton of steel. After he had passed the whole company under critical review, he found that he was the most honest, because he had not eaten a single strawberry outside; and then came the false inference—he had been passed over because he was better than the rest. The result was that he really regarded himself as such, and felt a deep satisfaction at having been overlooked.
He had also a special skill in making himself invisible, or keeping concealed so as to be passed over. One evening his father brought home a peach. Each child received a slice of the rare fruit, with the exception of John, and his otherwise just father did not notice it. He felt so proud at this new reminder of his gloomy destiny that later in the evening he boasted of it to his brothers. They did not believe him, regarding his story as improbable. The more improbable the better, he thought. He was also plagued by antipathies. One Sunday in the country a cart full of boys came to the parish clerk's. A brown-complexioned boy with a mischievous and impudent face alighted from it. John ran away at the first sight of him, and hid himself in the attic. They found him out: the parish clerk cajoled him, but he remained sitting in his corner and listened to the children playing till the brown-complexioned boy had gone away.
Neither cold baths, wild games, nor hard physical labour could harden his sensitive nerves, which at certain moments became strung up to the highest possible pitch. He had a good memory, and learned his lessons well, especially practical subjects such as geography and natural science. He liked arithmetic, but hated geometry; a science which seemed to deal with unrealities disquieted him. It was not till later, when a book of land mensuration came into his hands and he had obtained an insight into the practical value of geometry, that the subject interested him. He then measured trees and houses, the garden and its avenues, and constructed cardboard models.
He was now entering his tenth year. He was broad-shouldered, with a sunburnt complexion; his hair was fair, and hung over a sickly looking high and prominent forehead, which often formed a subject of conversation and caused his relatives to give him the nickname of "the professor." He was no more an automaton, but began to make his own observations and to draw inferences. He was approaching the time when he would be severed from his surroundings and go alone. Solitude had to take for him the place of desert-wandering, for he had not a strong enough individuality to go his own way. His sympathies for men were doomed not to be reciprocated, because their thoughts did not keep pace with his. He was destined to go about and offer his heart to the first comer; but no one would take it, because it was strange to them, and so he would retire into himself, wounded, humbled, overlooked, and passed by.
The summer came to an end, and when the school-term began he returned to Stockholm. The gloomy house by the Clara churchyard seemed doubly depressing to him now, and when he saw the long row of class-rooms through which he must work his way in a fixed number of years in order to do laboriously the same through another row of class-rooms in the High School, life did not seem to him particularly inviting. At the same time his self-opinionatedness began to revolt against the lessons, and consequently he got bad reports. A term later, when he had been placed lower in his class, his father took him from the Clara School and placed him in the Jacob School. At the same time they left the Norrtullsgata and took a suburban house in the Stora Grabergsgata near the Sabbatsberg.
Christinenberg, so we will call the house, had a still more lonely situation than that in the Norrtullsgata.[1]The Grabergsgata had no pavement. Often for hours at a time one never saw more than a single pedestrian in it, and the noise of a passing cart was an event which brought people to their windows. The house stood in a courtyard with many trees, and resembled a country parsonage. It was surrounded by gardens and tobacco plantations; extensive fields with ponds stretched away to Sabbatsberg. But their father rented no land here, so that the boys spent their time in loafing about. Their playfellows now consisted of the children of poorer people, such as the miller's and the milkman's. Their chief playground was the hill on which the mill stood, and the wings of the windmill were their playthings.
The Jacob School was attended by the poorer class of children. Here John came in contact with the lower orders. The boys were ill dressed; they had sores on their noses, ugly features, and smelt bad. His own leather breeches and greased boots produced no bad effect here. In these surroundings, which pleased him, he felt more at his ease. He could be on more confidential terms with these boys than with the proud ones in the Clara School. But many of these children were very good at their lessons, and the genius of the school was a peasant boy. At the same time there were so-called "louts" in the lower classes, and these generally did not get beyond the second class. He was now in the third, and did not come into contact with them, nor did they with those in the higher classes. These boys worked out of school, had black hands, and were as old as fourteen or fifteen. Many of them were employed during the summer on the brigCarl Johann, and then appeared in autumn with tarry trousers, belts, and knives. They fought with chimney-sweeps and tobacco-binders, took drams, and visited restaurants and coffee-houses. These boys were liable to ceaseless examinations and expulsions and were generally regarded, but with great injustice, as a bad lot. Many of them grew up to be respectable citizens, and one who had served on the "louts' brig" finally became an officer of the Guard. He never ventured to talk of his sea voyages, but said that he used to shudder when he led the watch to relieve guard at Nybrohanm, and saw the notorious brig lying there.
One day John met a former school-fellow from the Clara School, and tried to avoid him. But the latter came directly towards him, and asked him what school he was attending. "Ah, yes," he said, on being told, "you are going to the louts' school."
John felt that he had come down, but he had himself wished it. He did not stand above his companions, but felt himself at home with them, on friendly terms, and more comfortable than in the Clara School, for here there was no pressure on him from above. He himself did not wish to climb up and press down others, but he suffered himself from being pressed down. He himself did not wish to ascend, but he felt a need that there should be none above him. But it annoyed him to feel that his old school-fellows thought that he had gone down. When at gymnastic displays he appeared among the grimy-looking troop of the Jacobites, and met the bright files of the Clara School in their handsome uniforms and clean faces, then he was conscious of a class difference, and when from the opposite camp the word "louts" was heard, then there was war in the air. The two schools fought sometimes, but John took no part in these encounters. He did not wish to see his old friends, and to show how he had come down.
The examination day in the Jacob School made a very different impression from that in the Clara School. Artisans, poorly clad old women, restaurant-keepers dressed up for the occasion, coach-men, and publicans formed the audience. And the speech of the school inspector was quite other than the flowery one of the Archbishop. He read out the names of the idle and the stupid, scolded the parents because their children came too late or did not turn up at all, and the hall reechoed the sobs of poor mothers who were probably not at all to blame for the easily explained non-attendances, and who in their simplicity believed that they had bad sons. It was always the well-to-do citizens' sons who had had the leisure to devote themselves exclusively to their tasks, who were now greeted as patterns of virtue.
In the moral teaching which the boy received he heard nothing of his rights, only of his duties. Everything he was taught to regard as a favour; he lived by favour, ate by favour, and went as a favour to school. And in this poor children's school more and more was demanded of them. It was demanded from them, for instance, that they should have untorn clothes—but from whence were they to get them?
Remarks were made upon their hands because they had been blackened by contact with tar and pitch. There was demanded of them attention, good morals, politeness,i.e., mere impossibilities. The æsthetic susceptibilities of the teachers often led them to commit acts of injustice. Near John sat a boy whose hair was never combed, who had a sore under his nose, and an evil-smelling flux from his ears. His hands were dirty, his clothes spotted and torn. He rarely knew his lessons, and was scolded and caned on the palms of his hands. One day a school-fellow accused him of bringing vermin into the class. He was then made to sit apart in a special place. He wept bitterly, ah! so bitterly, and then kept away from school.
John was sent to look him up at his house. He lived in the Undertakers' street. The painter's family lived with the grandmother and many small children in one room. When John went there he found George, the boy in question, holding on his knee, a little sister, who screamed violently. The grandmother carried a little one on her arm. The father and mother were away at work. In this room, which no one had time to clean, and which could not be cleaned, there was a smell of sulphur fumes from the coals and from the uncleanliness of the children. Here the clothes were dried, food was cooked, oil-colours were rubbed, putty was kneaded. Here were laid bare the grounds of George's immorality. "But," perhaps a moralist may object, "one is never so poor that one cannot keep oneself clean and tidy."Sancta simplicitas!As if to pay for sewing (when there was anything whole to sew), soap, clothes-washing, and time cost nothing. Complete cleanliness and tidiness is the highest point to which the poor can attain; George could not, and was therefore cast out.
Some younger moralists believe they have made the discovery that the lower classes are more immoral than the higher. By "immoral" they mean that they do not keep social contracts so well as the upper classes. That is a mistake, if not something worse. In all cases, in which the lower classes are not compelled by necessity, they are more conscientious than the upper ones. They are more merciful towards their fellows, gentler to children, and especially more patient. How long have they allowed their toil to be exploited by the upper classes, till at last they begin to be impatient!
Moreover, the social laws have been kept as long as possible in a state of instability and uncertainty. Why are they not clearly defined and printed like civil and divine laws? Perhaps because an honestly written moral law would have to take some cognizance of rights as well as duties.
John's revolt against the school-teaching increased. At home he learned all he could, but he neglected the school-lessons. The principal subjects taught in the school were now Latin and Greek, but the method of teaching was absurd. Half a year was spent in explaining a campaign inCornelius. The teacher had a special method of confusing the subject by making the scholar analyse the "grammatical construction" of the sentence. But he never explained what this meant. It consisted in reading the words of the text in a certain order, but he did not say in which. It did not agree with the Swedish translation, and when John had tried to grasp the connection, but failed, he preferred to be silent. He was obstinate, and when he was called upon to explain something he was silent, even when he knew his lesson. For as soon as he began to read, he was assailed with a storm of reproaches for the accent he put on the words, the pace at which he read, his voice, everything.
"Cannot you, do not you understand?" the teacher shouted, beside himself.
The boy was silent, and looked at the pedant contemptuously.
"Are you dumb?"
He remained silent. He was too old to be beaten; besides, this form of punishment was gradually being disused. He was therefore told to sit down.
He could translate the text into Swedish, but not in the way the teacher wished. That the teacher only permitted one way of translating seemed to him silly. He had already rushed throughCorneliusin a few weeks, and this deliberate, unreasonable crawling when one could run, depressed him. He saw no sense in it.
The same kind of thing happened in the history lessons. "Now, John," the teacher would say, "tell me what you know about Gustav I."
The boy stands up, and his vagrant thoughts express themselves as follows: "What I know about Gustav I. Oh! a good deal. But I knew that when I was in the lowest class (he is now in the fourth), and the master knows it too. What is the good of repeating it all again?"
"Well! is that all you know?"
He had not said a word about Gustav I., and his school-fellows laughed. Now he felt angry, and tried to speak, but the words stuck in his throat. How should he begin? Gustav was born at Lindholm, in the province of Roslagen. Yes, but he and the teacher knew that long ago. How stupid to oblige him to repeat it.
"Ah, well!" continues the teacher, "you don't know your lesson, you know nothing of Gustav I." Now he opens his mouth, and says curtly and decidedly: "Yes, I know his history well."
"If you do, why don't you answer?"
The master's question seems to him a very stupid one, and now he will not answer. He drives away all thoughts about Gustav I. and forces himself to think of other things, the maps on the wall, the lamp hanging from the ceiling. He pretends to be deaf.
"Sit down, you don't know your lesson," says the master. He sits down, and lets his thoughts wander where they will, after he has settled in his own mind that the master has told a falsehood.
In this there was a kind of aphasia, an incapability or unwillingness to speak, which followed him for a long time through life till the reaction set in in the form of garrulousness, of incapacity to shut one's mouth, of an impulse to speak whatever came into his mind. He felt attracted to the natural sciences, and during the hour when the teacher showed coloured pictures of plants and trees the gloomy class-room seemed to be lighted up; and when the teacher read out of Nilsson'sLectures on Animal Life, he listened and impressed all on his memory. But his father observed that he was backward in his other subjects, especially in Latin. Still, John had to learn Latin and Greek. Why? He was destined for a scholar's career. His father made inquiries into the matter. After hearing from the teacher of Latin that the latter regarded his son as an idiot, hisamour propremust have been hurt, for he determined to send his son to a private school, where more practical methods of instruction were employed. Indeed, he was so annoyed that he went so far in private as to praise John's intelligence and to say some severe things regarding his teacher.
Meanwhile, contact with the lower classes had aroused in the boy a decided dislike to the higher ones. In the Jacob School a democratic spirit prevailed, at any rate among those of the same age. None of them avoided each other's society except from feelings of personal dislike. In the Clara School, on the other hand, there were marked distinctions of class and birth. Though in the Jacob School the possession of money might have formed an aristocratic class, as a matter of fact none of them were rich. Those who were obviously poor were treated by their companions sympathetically without condescension, although the beribboned school inspector and the academically educated teacher showed their aversion to them.
John felt himself identified and friendly with his school-fellows; he sympathised with them, but was reserved towards those of the higher class. He avoided the main thoroughfares, and always went through the empty Hollandergata or the poverty stricken Badstugata. But his school-fellows' influence made him despise the peasants who lived here. That was the aristocratism of town-people, with which even the meanest and poorest city children are imbued.
These angular figures in grey coats which swayed about on milk-carts or hay-waggons were regarded as fair butts for jests, as inferior beings whom to snowball was no injustice. To mount behind on their sledges was regarded as the boys' inherent privilege. A standing joke was to shout to them that their waggon-wheels were going round, and to make them get down to contemplate the wonder.
But how should children, who see only the motley confusion of society, where the heaviest sinks and the lightest lies on the top, avoid regarding that which sinks as the worse of the two? Some say we are all aristocrats by instinct. That is partly true, but it is none the less an evil tendency, and we should avoid giving way to it. The lower classes are really more democratic than the higher ones, for they do not want to mount up to them, but only to attain to a certain level; whence the assertion is commonly made that they wish to elevate themselves.
Since there was now no longer physical work to do at home, John lived exclusively an inner, unpractical life of imagination. He read everything which fell into his hands.
On Wednesday or Saturday afternoon the eleven-year-old boy could be seen in a dressing-gown and cap which his father had given him, with a long tobacco-pipe in his mouth, his fingers stuck in his ears, and buried in a book, preferably one about Indians. He had already read five different versions ofRobinson Crusoe, and derived an incredible amount of delight from them. But in reading Campe's edition he had, like all children, skipped the moralisings. Why do all children hate moral applications? Are they immoral by nature? "Yes," answer modern moralists, "for they are still animals, and do not recognise social conventions." That is true, but the social law as taught to children informs them only of their duties, not of their rights; it is therefore unjust towards the child, and children hate injustice. Besides this, he had arranged an herbarium, and made collections of insects and minerals. He had also read Liljenblad'sFlora, which he had found in his father's bookcase. He liked this book better than the school botany, because it contained a quantity of information regarding the use of various plants, while the other spoke only of stamens and pistils.
When his brothers deliberately disturbed him in reading, he would run at them and threaten to strike them. They said his nerves were overstrained. He dissolved the ties which bound him to the realities of life, he lived a dream-life in foreign lands and in his own thoughts, and was discontented with the grey monotony of everyday life and of his surroundings, which ever became more uncongenial to him. His father, however, would not leave him entirely to his own fancies, but gave him little commissions to perform, such as fetching the paper and carrying letters. These he looked upon as encroachments on his private life, and always performed them unwillingly.
In the present day much is said about truth and truth-speaking as though it were a difficult matter, which deserved praise. But, apart from the question of praise, it is undoubtedly difficult to find out the real facts about anything.
A person is not always what rumour reports him or her to be; a whole mass of public opinion may be false; behind each thought there lurks a passion; each judgment is coloured by prejudice. But the art of separating fact from fancy is extremely difficult,e.g., six newspaper reporters will describe a king's coronation robe as being of six different colours. New ideas do not find ready entrance into brains which work in a groove; elderly people believe only themselves, and the uneducated believe that they can trust their own eyes. This, however, owing to the frequency of optical illusions, is not the case.
In John's home truth was revered. His father was in the habit of saying, "Tell the truth, happen what may," and used at the same time to tell a story about himself. He had once promised a customer to send home a certain piece of goods by a given day. He forgot it, but must have had means of exculpating himself, for when the furious customer came into the office and overwhelmed him with reproaches, John's father humbly acknowledged his forgetfulness, asked for forgiveness, and declared himself ready to make good the loss. The result was that the customer was astonished, reached him his hand, and expressed his regard for him. People engaged in trade, he said, must not expect too much of each other.
Well! his father had a sound intelligence, and as an elderly man felt sure of his conclusions.
John, who could never be without some occupation, had discovered that one could profitably spend some time in loitering on the high-road which led to and from school. He had once upon the Hollandergata, which had no pavement, found an iron screw-nut. That pleased him, for it made an excellent sling-stone when tied to a string. After that he always walked in the middle of the street and picked up all the pieces of iron which he saw. Since the streets were ill-paved and rapid driving was forbidden, the vehicles which passed through them had a great deal of rough usage. Accordingly an observant passer-by could be sure of finding every day a couple of horse-shoe nails, a waggon-pin, or at any rate a screw-nut, and sometimes a horse-shoe. John's favourite find was screw-nuts which he had made his specialty. In the course of two months he had collected a considerable quantity of them.
One evening he was playing with them when his father entered the room.
"What have you there?" he asked in astonishment.
"Screw-nuts," John answered confidently.
"Where did you get them from?"
"I found them."
"Found them? Where?"
"On the street."
"In one place?"
"No, in several—by walking down the middle of the street and looking about."
"Look here! I don't believe that. You are lying. Come in here. I have something to say to you." The something was a caning.
"Will you confess now?"
"I have found them on the street."
The cane was again plied in order to make him "confess." What should he confess? Pain, and fear that the scene would continue indefinitely, forced the following lie from him:
"I have stolen them."
"Where?"
Now he did not know to which part of a carriage the screw-nuts belonged, but he guessed it was the under part.
"Under the carriages."
"Where?"
His fancy suggested a place, where many carriages used to stand together. "By the timber-yard opposite the lane by the smith's."
This specification of the place lent an air of probability to his story. His father was now certain that he had elicited the truth from him. He continued:
"And how could you get them off merely with your fingers?"
He had not expected this question, but his eye fell on his father's tool-box.
"With a screw-driver."
Now one cannot take hold of nuts with a screw-driver, but his father was excited, and let himself be deceived.
"But that is abominable! You are really a thief. Suppose a policeman had come by."
John thought for a moment of quieting him by telling him that the whole affair was made up, but the prospect of getting another caning and no supper held him mute. When he had gone to bed in the evening, and his mother had come and told him to say his evening prayer, he said in a pathetic tone and raising his hand:
"May the deuce take me, if I have stolen the screw-nuts."
His mother looked long at him, and then she said, "You should not swear so."
The corporal punishment had sickened and humbled him; he was angry with God, his parents, and especially his brothers, who had not spoken up for him, though they knew the real state of the case. That evening he did not say his prayers, but he wished that the house would take fire without his having to light it. And then to be called a thief!
From that time he was suspected, or rather his bad reputation was confirmed, and he felt long the sting of the memory of a charge of theft which he had not committed. Another time he caught himself in a lie, but through an inadvertency which for a long time he could not explain. This incident is related for the consideration of parents. A school-fellow with his sister came one Sunday morning in the early part of the year to him and asked him whether he would accompany them to the Haga Park. He said, "Yes," but he must first ask his mother's permission. His father had gone out.
"Well, hurry up!" said his friend.
He wanted to show his herbarium, but the other said, "Let us go now."
"Very well, but I must first ask mother."
His little brother then came in and wanted to play with his herbarium. He stopped the interruption and showed his friend his minerals. In the meantime he changed his blouse. Then he took a piece of bread out of the cupboard. His mother came and greeted his friends, and talked of this and that domestic matter. John was in a hurry, begged his mother's permission, and took his friends into the garden to see the frog-pond.
At last they went to the Haga Park. He felt quite sure that he had asked his mother's leave to do so.
When his father came home, he asked John on his return, "Where have you been?"
"With friends to the Haga Park."
"Did you have leave from mother?"
"Yes."
His mother denied it. John was dumb with astonishment.
"Ah, you are beginning to lie again."
He was speechless. He was quite sure he had asked his mother's leave, especially as there was no reason to fear a refusal. He had fully meant to do it, but other matters had intervened; he had forgotten, but was willing to die, if he had told a lie. Children as a rule are afraid to lie, but their memory is short, their impressions change quickly, and they confuse wishes and resolves with completed acts. Meanwhile the boy long continued to believe that his mother had told a falsehood. But later, after frequent reflections on the incident, he came to think she had forgotten or not heard his request. Later on still he began to suspect that his memory might have played him a trick. But he had been so often praised for his good memory, and there was only an interval of two or three hours between his going to the Haga Park and his return.
His suspicions regarding his mother's truthfulness (and why should she not tell an untruth, since women so easily confuse fancies and facts?) were shortly afterwards confirmed. The family had bought a set of furniture—a great event. The boys just then happened to be going to their aunt's. Their mother still wished to keep the novelty a secret and to surprise her sister on her next visit. Therefore she asked the children not to speak of the matter. On their arrival at their aunt's, the latter asked at once:
"Has your mother bought the yellow furniture?"
His brothers were silent, but John answered cheerfully, "No."
On their return, as they sat at table, their mother asked, "Well, did aunt ask about the furniture?"
"Yes."
"What did you say?"
"I said 'No,'" answered John.
"So, then, you dared to lie," interrupted his father.
"Yes, mother said so," the boy answered.
His mother turned pale, and his father was silent. This in itself was harmless enough, but, taken in connection with other things, not without significance. Slight suspicions regarding the truthfulness of "others" woke in the boy's mind and made him begin to carry on a silent siege of adverse criticism. His coldness towards his father increased, he began to have a keen eye for instances of oppression, and to make small attempts at revolt.
The children were marched to church every Sunday; and the family had a key to their pew. The absurdly long services and incomprehensible sermons soon ceased to make any impression. Before a system of heating was introduced, it was a perfect torture to sit in the pew in winter for two hours at a stretch with one's feet freezing; but still they were obliged to go, whether for their souls' good, or for the sake of discipline, or in order to have quiet in the house—who knows? His father personally was a theist, and preferred to read Wallin's sermons to going to church. His mother began to incline towards pietism.
One Sunday the idea occurred to John, possibly in consequence of an imprudent Bible exposition at school, which had touched upon freedom of the spirit, or something of the sort, not to go to church. He simply remained at home. At dinner, before his father came home, he declared to his brothers and sisters and aunts that no one could compel the conscience of another, and that therefore he did not go to church. This seemed original, and therefore for this once he escaped a caning, but was sent to church as before.
The social intercourse of the family, except with relatives, could not be large, because of the defective form of his father's marriage. But companions in misfortune draw together, and so intercourse was kept up with an old friend of their father's who also had contracted amésalliance, and had therefore been repudiated by his family. He was a legal official. With him they met another family in the same circumstances owing to an irregular marriage. The children naturally knew nothing of the tragedy below the surface. There were children in both the other families, but John did not feel attracted to them. After the sufferings he had undergone at home and school, his shyness and unsociability had increased, and his residence on the outside of the town and in the country had given him a distaste for domestic life. He did not wish to learn dancing, and thought the boys silly who showed off before the girls. When his mother on one occasion told him to be polite to the latter, he asked, "Why?" He had become critical, and asked this question about everything. During a country excursion he tried to rouse to rebellion the boys who carried the girls' shawls and parasols. "Why should we be these girls' servants?" he said; but they did not listen to him. Finally, he took such a dislike to going out that he pretended to be ill, or dirtied his clothes in order to be obliged to stay at home as a punishment. He was no longer a child, and therefore did not feel comfortable among the other children, but his elders still saw in him only a child. He remained solitary.
When he was twelve years old, he was sent in the summer to another school kept by a parish clerk at Mariefred. Here there were many boarders, all of so-called illegitimate birth. Since the parish clerk himself did not know much, he was not able to hear John his lessons. At the first examination in geometry, he found that John was sufficiently advanced to study best by himself. Now he felt himself a grandee, and did his lessons alone. The parish clerk's garden adjoined the park of the lord of the manor, and here he took his walks free from imposed tasks and free from oversight. His wings grew, and he began to feel himself a man.
In the course of the summer he fell in love with the twenty-year-old daughter of the inspector who often came to the parish clerk's. He never spoke to her, but used to spy out her walks, and often went near her house. The whole affair was only a silent worship of her beauty from a distance, without desire, and without hope. His feeling resembled a kind of secret trouble, and might as well have been directed towards anyone else, if girls had been numerous there. It was a Madonna-worship which demanded nothing except to bring the object of his worship some great sacrifice, such as drowning himself in the water under her eyes. It was an obscure consciousness of his own inadequacy as a half man, who did not wish to live without being completed by his "better half."
He continued to attend church-services, but they made no impression on him; he found them merely tedious.
This summer formed an important stage in his development, for it broke the links with his home. None of his brothers were with him. He had accordingly no intermediary bond of flesh and blood with his mother. This made him more complete in himself, and hardened his nerves; but not all at once, for sometimes he had severe attacks of homesickness. His mother's image rose up in his mind in its usual ideal shape of protectiveness and mildness, as the source of warmth and the preserver.
In summer, at the beginning of August, his eldest brother Gustav was going to a school in Paris, in order to complete his business studies and to learn the language. But previous to that, he was to spend a month in the country and say good-bye to his brother. The thought of the approaching parting, the reflected glory of the great town to which his brother was going, the memory of his brother's many heroic feats, the longing for home and the joy to see again someone of his own flesh and blood,—all combined to set John's emotion and imagination at work. During the week in which he expected his brother, he described him to a friend as a sort of superman to whom he looked up. And Gustav certainly was, as a man, superior to him. He was a plucky, lively youth, two years older than John, with strong, dark features; he did not brood, and had an active temperament; he was sagacious, could keep silence when necessary, and strike when occasion demanded it. He understood economy, and was sparing of his money. "He was very wise," thought the dreaming John. He learned his lessons imperfectly, for he despised them, but he understood the art of life.
John needed a hero to worship, and wished to form an ideal out of some other material than his own weak clay, round which his own aspirations might gather, and now he exercised his art for eight days. He prepared for his brother's arrival by painting him in glowing colours before his friends, praised him to the teacher, sought out playing-places with little surprises, contrived a spring-board at the bathing-place, and so on.
On the day before his brother's arrival he went into the wood and plucked cloud-berries and blue-berries for him. He covered a table with white paper, on which he spread out the berries, yellow and blue alternately, and in the centre he arranged them in the shape of a large G, and surrounded the whole with flowers.
His brother arrived, cast a hasty look at the design and ate the berries, but either did not notice the dexterously-contrived initial, or thought it a piece of childishness. As a matter of fact, in their family every ebullition of feeling was regarded as childish.
Then they went to bathe. The minute after Gustav had taken off his shirt, he was in the water, and swam immediately out to the buoy. John admired him and would have gladly followed him, but this time it gave him more pleasure to think that his brother obtained the reputation of being a good swimmer, and that he was only second-best. At dinner Gustav left a fat piece of bacon on his plate—a thing which no one before had ever dared to do. But he dared everything. In the evening, when the time came to ring the bells for church, John gave up his turn of ringing to Gustav, who rang violently. John was frightened, as though the parish had been exposed to danger thereby, and half in alarm and half laughing, begged him to stop.
"What the deuce does it matter?" said Gustav.
Then he introduced him to his friend the big son of the carpenter, who was about fifteen. An intimacy at once sprang up between the two of equal age, and John's friend abandoned him as being too small. But John felt no bitterness, although the two elder ones jested at him, and went out alone together with their guns in their hands. He only wished to give, and he would have given his betrothed away, had he possessed one. He did actually inform his brother about the inspector's daughter, and the latter was pleased with her. But, instead of sighing behind the trees like John, Gustav went straight up to her and spoke to her in an innocent boyish way. This was the most daring thing which John had ever seen done in his life, and he felt as if it had added a foot to his own stature. He became visibly greater, his weak soul caught a contagion of strength from his brother's strong nerves, and he identified himself with him. He felt as happy as if he had spoken with the girl himself. He made suggestions for excursions and boating expeditions and his brother carried them out. He discovered birds' nests and his brother climbed the trees and plundered them.
But this lasted only for a week. On the last day before they were to leave, John said to Gustav: "Let us buy a fine bouquet for mother."
"Very well," replied his brother.
They went to the nursery-man, and Gustav gave the order that the bouquet should be a fine one. While it was being made up, he went into the garden and plucked fruit quite openly. John did not venture to touch anything.
"Eat," said his brother. No, he could not. When the bouquet was ready, John paid twenty-four shillings for it. Not a sign came from Gustav. Then they parted.
When John came home, he gave his mother the bouquet as from Gustav, and she was touched. At supper-time the flowers attracted his father's attention. "Gustav sent me those," said his mother. "He is always a kind boy," and John received a sad look because he was so cold-hearted. His father's eyes gleamed behind his glasses.
John felt no bitterness. His youthful, enthusiastic love of sacrifice had found vent, the struggle against injustice had made him a self-tormentor, and he kept silent. He also said nothing when his father sent Gustav a present of money, and with unusual warmth of expression said how deeply he had been touched by this graceful expression of affection.
In fact, he kept silence regarding this incident during his whole life, even when he had occasion to feel bitterness. Not till he had been over-powered and fallen in the dirty sand of life's arena, with a brutal foot placed upon his chest and not a hand raised to plead in his behalf, did he say anything about it. Even then, it was not mentioned from a feeling of revenge, but as the self-defence of a dying man.