AUGUST STRINDBERG (continued 2)

Yes, surely it concerned only how to make one's own will valid, and the whole driving power behind the vindication of opinions were interest and passion. Interest, it was nothing else than need, a need of food and love, and to gain these required a certain amount of power. Whoever did not strive for power was a weak one, whose desire of life was attenuated, therefore the weak was always heard to demand rights, the rights of the weak, while there was only a mathematical justice given, an arithmetical truth, for the calculating of which was required a strong mind capable of emancipating itself from the delusions of interest and passions. When he searched his inner self and compared himself with a great many others, he found that through a strict self-education he had freed his judgment to a high degree, and that in him was a specially developed thrift to seek abstract justice, that truth which consists in the actual conditions, the pith of fact, why he called himself a friend of truth in the highest sense, although not prompted thereby to tell all his thoughts abroad nor prevented from replying to importunate questions, when need be, with a prevarication.

In order to trace more closely the organization of the man-brute he designed a special study of the mental faculties of all the lower animals and thus guided himself up to man. He then made a ledger over all the individuals that came in his way, from relatives, nurses, maids, to schoolmates, university comrades, society friends and superiors, in one word all who came within the circle of his observation. This he completed through a collection of personalia, baptismal certificates, and the testimonies of their acquaintances; he wrote down their equation and tried a solution of the problem of their life. It was an incredible amount of working material. When he had straightened out the confusion he saw that the human beings could be divided just as the animals and plants into large classes, orders and families according to the basis chosen. By taking several bases he came pretty near to the truth and threw the fullest illumination upon the object of his observation.

Among other things he made a diagram of the human beings, with three subdivisions, conscious, self-deceivers and unconscious. The conscious or initiated stood highest, had discerned the deceit and believed in nothing and nobody, and were usually called skeptics, feared and hated by the self-deceivers, but recognized each other at once and usually parted with the word rascal, and reciprocal accusations of bad motives. As self-deceivers he counted all religious believers, hypnotic mediums, prophets, party chiefs, politicians, charity spirits, and the whole swarm of weak ambitious ones who pretend to live for others. To the unconscious belonged children, most criminals, most women and some idiots, all of whom still live on the semi-mammalian plane without the ability to distinguish between subject and object.

Proceeding from another basis, or by ontogenesis from the fœtus up to the highest standard of man, he got as the result, children, youths, women and men.

He also used to search among his countrymen for ancestral race marks, distinguished the central Swedes from the southern Swedes, could see the Norwegian in the Vermlanders and Bohus-landers, pointed out the Finn in some of the Norrlanders, kept record of immigrated Germans, Wallons, Shemites and gypsies, which often gave him the key to various traits in otherwise inexplicable characters.

He also had another basis for a division of characters according to the dominant, as he called it, and he got the nutritive as the lowest group including epicures, drunkards and the avaricious, the sexualic or licentious, the affective or sensitive, and the intellectual or thinkers who stood highest.

This science he developed to a high degree, and after some time acquired the ability to judge human beings and give their equations. To verify the truth of his observations he used himself as a psychological preparation, cut himself up bodily, experimented with himself and grafted fistulas and fontanelles, subjecting himself to unnatural and often repulsive spiritual diet, but carefully guarded faults of observation, and avoided forming a norm for others by his own sayings and doings.

When he had finally become weary of traveling abroad, and his soul was longing for its milieu, he returned home to seek a sphere of activity. As it was immaterial to him what his occupation might be he applied for the position of fish commissioner. As they were not anxious to have him too near he was appointed as the first man of the inlet to Stockholm.

Here he awoke from the review of his evolution, from which he used to regenerate himself by hastily living his life over again, thereby tracing, as it were, his standpoint and, calculating his resources, he cleared his course onward to his probable destiny and his prospects of succeeding in his enterprises.

The pilot, who in the meantime had rowed the boat behind the rocks and in lee of the ice cakes, had already decided that the Doctor, who was sitting with introverted, expressionless eyes, was a little freaky, took the occasion to ask if they should turn toward the harbor, whereto the commissioner nodded consent.

Once more he glanced at the magnificent panorama yonder, where the ice floes were driven onward, rent asunder, packed themselves, crowded together, pushed over each other, turned on edge, changed their horizontal position to big upheavals and tilting of the strata, forming mountains, dales and hills. It seemed to him as though he beheld the earth's crust being born, when on the incandescent sea the first hard cake was broken to pieces, driven forward, pushed on edge, piled in heaps to form the primitive mountains, skerries, rocks, islets, which were but enormous packs of ice, icebergs, although formed from another mineral than water. Over this repetition of the history of creation vibrated the primitive, undivided white light of the ice beside the deep blue of air and water, the first breaking of the darkness, and here the God of the saga of creation who separated light from darkness, came forth as a sensible explanation to his investigating mind. Once again the first attempt at harmonious sounds of the reptiles, now transformed into birds, rang out over the watery circle, the limitation of himself, which must be the center wherever he went....

The boat floated into harbor, the smoke was rising from the chimneys, it was dinner time.

CHAPTER FOURTH

One Sunday forenoon the fish commissioner sat at his open window; the early summer had just come, there was a light blue color on the water and a faint verdure in the crevices of the rocks, on the insignificant remains of lichens and mosses. The flocks of birds had gone north and only segregated pairs of eider ducks were swimming, two by two, in the coves. The great solitude, as he called the Baltic Sea, impressed him this day as he saw one vessel after another steering southward under foreign flags with lively colors, perhaps coming accidentally, perhaps regularly, all of these flags more luminous than the poor blue and tawny yellow which is so easily soiled. He saw the exciting tricolor on a brig which was lumber laden from Norrland, where it had recently been with wine and oranges and was now passing down to more sunny and populous coasts. The enfeebled dannebrog on a butter schooner lay in the wake of a great German mail steamer carrying white bunting with mourning border and the Crown mark like the ace of spades, above something of red color. England's blood red standard, the Spanish awning cloth, America's King cotton ticking, each of these was a greeting from so many foreign nations to which he felt more affianced than to those strangers whom he was condemned to call countrymen, for he had a right to carry all of these colors on his gala coat but not his own country's. And to-day, it seemed, these reminders of his cosmopolitan citizenship came to him more invigorating than usual, as during the last few days of his exile in this place he had been surrounded by a full and open enmity. He had recently undertaken to enforce a law adopted several years ago, though never applied, about a certain measure of the meshes in nets and seines, and had thereby encountered an opposition and open defiance which finally forced him to send for the sheriff who confiscated the nets. He had, however, first shown thoroughly how the interference of the government was only prompted by concern for the welfare of the people, he had held before them how they, while not wishing to divide a farm, preferring to have one son prosperous and the family maintainer, still contrived, by indiscriminate fishing, to make their children dependent of the almshouse for their support. All to no avail. All these measures and steps were regarded as the evil contrivance of a pack of idle officers who were salaried with the people's money, for the special purpose of tormenting them. He retorted in vain, that it was the farmers in the Reichstag who had voted this law, whereupon the fishermen turned their hate towards the farmers and government alike.

He observed that these fishing people really represent a remnant of the aboriginal community, careless and inconsiderate, without the peasant's forethought for the morrow and next year. They were like the savage who hunts two days and sleeps eight, and like the savage they possessed certain negative faculties to do without, and endure, but lacked the positive ability to improve their situation through investigation, having a decided and instinctive dislike for innovation, thereby betraying their inability to adapt themselves to a higher stage of culture. All these fishermen were bottom sediments of the country's population; when the battle over fertile river valleys and lake margins was going on they could not maintain their own, and fled or were pressed out to the headlands where the soil ceased and only the uncertain water left its winnings. Like gamblers they were as unreliable as fortune, unscrupulous in their dealings, drawing small advances beforehand from the ever expected great fishing, which a lucky shipwreck might bring them. Therefore their hate immediately kindled towards the new comer, and in their blindness they could not see how he would if from ambition only improve their condition and free them from labor. For instance, one duty of the head pilot was to make meteorological reports; for him he had constructed a self-regulating wind measure from cleft sardine boxes, which, however, was not accepted but placed in the garret. He had offered to assist in cases of sickness but had been rejected. He had offered to teach the wives how to prevent the stoves from smoking, by the application of a stromling barrel as a flue at the top of the chimney, but they had made grimaces at him and continued to lament over the irremediable smoke. He would teach a fisherman, who had tried to raise potatoes unsuccessfully, how to fertilize the sandy strand with seaweed and the refuse from fish, as he had seen the people on the coast of England do with marked success; all was in vain. When he saw how the surplus of the big stromling fishing of the spring lay decaying for lack of salt, he would teach them the Faroe-islanders' method of salting with the ashes of seaweed in case of necessity and for domestic use, this same preservative being always used by said islanders in the manufacture of cheese.

The result of all his endeavors to teach them useful things, was that he received the nickname of Doctor Know-all, was regarded as a fool, and became the laughing stock of the coffee gatherings, and drinking bouts. Even the children made faces as he passed by.

The incongruity between what he was, and what he was taken to be, impressed him at the beginning as comical, but afterwards when the hostilities succeeded the coldness he marked an unfavorable influence on his mental state. It was as though a thundercloud of unequal electricities hung over him, irritating his nerve current, trying to annihilate it through neutralization. He felt as though the thoughts directed towards him from these many would have the power to gradually drag him down, cramp his opinion of his own value, so that the moment would come when he could no longer rely upon himself and his mental superiority, and finally their views that he was the idiot and they the sound would grasp his brain and force him to agree with them.

Meanwhile as his thoughts wandered here and there a new object came within the forty-five degrees of the horizon, which he commanded at a glance from his window. A gunboat came to lee of the rock at half speed, clewed up its sails and dropped anchor. Through the marine glass he saw the sailors move about apparently in a hurly-burly, but without crowding; each one hurried to his belaying pin, his line, and his halyard, when the executive officer's whistle sounded. The vessel's straight sides, the extended stem where the iron plates seemed to sprawl asunder but combined their concentrated force In a forward direction, radiating out as it were at the bowsprit, the exhaust pipe and the smokestack's energetic smoking, the masts striving with stay and shroud, the round circle of the cannon's mouth, everything indicated an array of forces, regulated, curbing each other, reacting and cooperating, the contemplation of which put him into a harmonic state of mind. It was to him as though power and order streamed forth from the wedge-shaped iron hull, where purpose, limitation and measure, united into a unit of beauty, and conveyed a deeper enjoyment by reflection than a handsome work of art commonly affords the superficial observer by the way of feeling.

Something else came to him through reflecting on this little floating community surrounded by water. He felt strengthened, as though he had a support in this symbol of power, that was authorized by the people's assembly and the royal government, with the appliance of all the means of culture and science, and which protected the higher developed against the pressure of barbarism from beneath; he saw with satisfaction how a couple of the most knowing, who had been qualified by due examinations, guided with a whistle this hundred of half savages, who did not dare to pretend to understand, that which they did not understand. He had never been beguiled to commit the modern fault of observation of believing that the lower classes suffered from their subordinate position and coarse food. He knew well that they were precisely on the plane they should be, and that they suffered just as little from their station as the fishes beneath would suffer from not having been developed into amphibians, and as far as their coarse food was concerned he knew from experience when he had invited a few fishermen to dinner how they rejected all but that which filled the belly; yes, he had seen them select the poor rye in the bread basket, instead of the fine wheat. He had never believed in the talk about lack of food excepting when misfortune came and then only accidentally, for there existed state laws for the poor which are so often misused by sluggards and the shrewd, who feign sickness and force the community to support them. He had never adored the small, never needed to kneel to the insignificant, notwithstanding that he himself was cast out from the upper camp which during the common period of decay tricked itself up with stolen reputations and lay pressing down that which should grow. He did not even now let this induce him to overestimate this approximate picture of the upper stratum, which in the shape of a man-of-war inspired his admiration from a certain point of view, but on the other hand was a reminder of a system of state, which executed outrages on the minds with compressed gas and Bessemer cylinders.

Downstairs his host's door banged, and the tongues began to wag at the entrance of Oman, whose net had been confiscated. The gin glasses rang and the clamor rose at the repetition of yesterday's drunken spree.

"Idiots and destroyers of the people, who believe they know more than sensible fishermen and who lie on the sofa and read books, and get two thousand a year, snots, who would teach their father how to fish, a pack of thieves and cigarette heroes who go about with sow's tails under their noses...."

And now a wave broke against Vestman's elucidation of facts that he had gleaned on board the "Jacob Bagge" about the commissioner's extraction, his father's irregular sexual relations, his mother's low descent, and he alluded to the commissioner's discharge from his first office and so forth.

The listener tried to make himself deaf, and indifferent as usual, but the words cut him, soiled him, hurt him against his will. Old doubts about his father's integrity began to awaken, doubts of his own value were aroused and fears as to the possibility of keeping himself dry in this rain of mud, and to avoid a fight where he perhaps would fail from nicety in choice of weapons.

Now struck the bell on the man-of-war, a drum whir rolled, and the summer wind carried the tunes of a hymn from a hundred throats out over the water, solemn, rhythmically arranged, submissive, all while the clamor and threats from downstairs rumbled as from the cages in a menagerie, and in the psalm's ferment rose to a howl, for a quarrel had arisen between the parties, at the question of taking back the net by force.

The commissioner, who regarded churches as archaeological collections or interesting pagoda buildings from past times was reminded involuntarily of the utterance which a young clergyman let fall one night when at a discussion of the Christian cult.

"I do not believe in Christ's divinity and all that, but believe me, the mob must be scared!" "The mob must be scared," repeated he to himself silently, but dropped the thread immediately when he heard the fray break out downstairs. Chairs were knocked over, heels were braced and kicked against the furniture and roaring as from cattle was mixed with hissing as from reptiles while during all this a woman's voice sputtered and produced several hundred words a minute.

At this instant the steamer whistled, weighed anchor and hoisted sail, the smokestack sent a soot cloud toward the blue summer sky. It was with a feeling of regret and anxiety that he saw the steamer and its beautiful cannon disappear southward; he felt as though he had lost a support and as if the hate closed round him like a sack, he would flee, out, anywhere.

Now a child cried, if from fear or pain he could not hear, for under the tumult he had stolen down the staircase and reached the harbor, cast off his painter and rowed out from the land as quickly as he could.

The rock he was in quest of was the eastern-most of a little archipelago, which he had never paid attention to before, but now for the first time when in need to be alone, he sought it. A hater of strong body movements, which he found partly superfluous while there existed locomotion by machinery, and partly detrimental to his nerve and thought life for the fine tool which the brain capsule enclosed could just as little stand jars as the house where the astronomer's instruments of precision are kept. He had never learned how to row but his sense of time and his well-weighed motion centers made him at once a clever oarsman, and his studies of physics taught him how to improve the old invention so that by raising the seat he economized arm power.

As he now saw the skerries receding from the stern of his boat he began to breathe easier, and when he shortly landed on the first rock he was seized by an irrepressible feeling of happiness. It was a sunny, long, low islet whose strand rocks of gray gneiss formed a little harbor into which the boat sped. The water near the beach was transparent as condensed limpid air, and the soft color of the kelp shone at the bottom as though molten into a mass of glass. The stones on the beach lay washed, dried and polished, offering a variation in colors that never tired, for there were no two alike, while between them the velvet grass and sedges had sought hold for their tufts. Slowly the ledge rose upward and in depressions in the moss lay the mews' eggs, three by three, coffee brown with black spots, while their owners cried and cawed above his head. He climbed higher up to where a pile of stones had been laid up by marine surveyors, and were whitewashed by the gulls, mews and terns. A few juniper bushes spread out as carpets and beneath them a profusion of the white, subtle star flower had improvised its bed, a connection of Middle Europe's highlands and the shade of northern forests.

The little turnstone daring and gay fluttered uneasily around the disturber of the peace to mislead him from her nest.

Not a shrub, not a tree pointed over the half naked ledges, and this absence of shadows from coverts, gave the visitor a lighter and gayer mood. Everything was open, overlooked at once, sunlit on this ledge of rock, and the water which separated him from his lately left home among the savages, seemed to surround him with an insurmountable limit of pure transparency. The half arctic, half alpine landscape with its primeval formation refreshed and rested him. When he had become rested, he took the boat and rowed on further. He passed three polished rocks, resembling three petrified waves, naked as a hand, without a trace of organic life and which only aroused a scientific, geological interest concerning their origin; he grazed a flat rock of reddish gneiss; on its lee side stood a hundred years' mountain ash, solitary, moss bedecked, gnarled, and in its ragged trunk a white wagtail hatched its brood for lack of rooftile or stone wall. The little charming bird dove down among the strand stones and would make the foe believe that in no wise there existed a nest or gray white eggs there.

The solitary mountain ash stood on a grassy carpet of a few square feet and looked so lonely, but so unusually strong in lack of competition, and could better defy storm, salt water and cold than with jealous equals wrangling over earth crumbs. He felt attracted to the lonely veteran and longed, during a transitory moment, to raise a hut at its feet, but he passed on and the feeling blew away.

A dark cliff came to view behind the last point, it was coal black from the volcanic mineral diorite, and, as he approached it, he became depressed. The black crystallized mass seemed to have been cast up from the sea bottom, and after hardening had come into a terrible fight with water or a thundercloud and had cracked into eight parts, which had afterwards been carried away by the sea and ice or dragged down into the depth. Steep, perpendicular stood the black glittering wall out along the little harbor, and when the boat landed below it he felt as though he was down in a coal mine or a sooty blacksmith's shop. It depressed and awed him, he climbed up on the cliff, there rose as a landmark a pole with a white painted keg at the top. This trace of human beings out here where no people were to be seen, was a mixed reminder of gibbet, shipwreck, coal, a crude contrast between the unmixed colorless colors, black and white, of barren violent nature devoid of organic life, there being no lichens or moss on the whole body of the rock; further, this carpentry work without vegetable transition between primeval nature and human hand work, was irritating, disquieting and brutal. In the great Sunday stillness he heard beneath his feet, where stones had rattled down and formed a roof over a crevice, how the long breakers sucked in half way under the point, and pressed the air forward with muffled sound, then drew back again with a hissing and hollow sighing.

He stood a moment enjoying the oppression, while his thoughts wandered back to old memories which always brought him loathing. He smelt coal gas, saw manufactories, sooty, discontented people, heard machinery, city rumbling and human voices, which spoke words that would eat their way through his ears into his brain and sow seeds that would spring up as weeds smothering his own sowing; transforming the field he had cultivated with so much pains to a wild meadow like those of the others.

He climbed into his boat and turned his back on the gloomy sight; again he enjoyed the infinite purity of the waters, the empty blue which like an unwritten slate lay soothingly before him, for it did not raise any memories, develop any inspirations, or call forth any strong sensations. And now when he approached a larger island, he greeted it as a new acquaintance who should tell him something else and efface the recent impressions. New points and rocks were passed, each offering its surprise, its special physiognomy, often with such small differences that it required a sharply trained eye to see them. These small cliffs, which seemed so naked, so tiresomely alike when viewed from a passing boat, offered at nearer view the most changeable scenery, just as variance of the same coins only to the numismatist betray their secrets.

He now landed on a somewhat larger islet whose irregular jagged appearance had allured him, especially when he saw protruding over the tops of the rocks the crowns of trees with dense foliage. When he had climbed up on the northern point, the black base of which was polished smooth by the waves, he saw that the island was a cluster of at least four others, that seemed to have been drifted together by different winds, and by the congestion of different geological formations, forming a whole conglomerate of landscape pictures, brought from every zone. The northern part was composed of a cone of hornblende schist which, down on the strand, was cleft in enormous blocks that had fallen from the rocky wall, and was as yet unpolished by the water, while between these cubes grew strangely, as though allured by secret sympathy, an immense number of black currant shrubs, dusky in color and harmonizing in tone with the black sparkling stones. It was so unexpected to find these cultured deserters from the garden out here in the wilderness that it appeared as a joke of nature, perhaps laid in the bill of a wounded black-cock that had flown out here to die, carrying the seeds of dawning culture. Farther up in the rock pile stood a grove of deciduous trees with light verdure, but with cut tops and white trunks, as though whitewashed with lime by fostering human hand. He tried from a distance to guess their species, but they were so different from all others he had seen in this latitude that his thoughts revolved between acacias, beeches and Japan varnish trees, so common in southern Europe, and when he finally heard the well known rustle of the common aspen he would not believe his ears. He quickly shunned a viper, which ran down between two stones like a stream of water, and coming nearer, he saw that he had heard aright. It was the slender and trim aspen of the groves and pastures, that the northern wind, stony ground, drifting ice and salt water had pruned and trained to this unrecognizable variety, and which in the battle against tempest and cold had turned gray and lost its top, and therefore only consisted of frozen sprouts that were continually shooting out indefatigably renewing themselves, while the goats had peeled off the protecting bark and let the sap run out. There was eternal youth in those soft light green shoots on the gray whiskered branchless trunk, old age without maturity, an abnormality which was refreshing because it was new and transcended the banal.

When he had climbed up between the sharp stones and reached the height it was as if he had ascended a field in ten minutes. The region of deciduous trees lay below him, and upon the plateau appeared already the alpine flora, with the field form of the juniper, and close by the veritable northern cloud berry in the white moss of the moist crevices, and here and there the little civilized cornel, perhaps the only Swedish shrub on the seaboard. He slowly descended the southern slope, through cowberry and bearberry vines, hair grass, sedges, cotton grass and springy mosses, until suddenly he stood on a ravine, where the islet had cracked and formed a channel between the black rocky walls.

With wild shrieks the saucy auks flew up as he stepped on a natural stone bridge across the shallow channel, climbed another cliff of lighter formations, and reached a new section of this wonderful islet.

The light elegant eurite, in which faint rose-colored feldspar was mingled with a delicate blue-green quartz while mica was only betrayed through a glistening like microscopical hoar frost, gave the little landscape a gay aspect, and being cleft infinitely, it offered sofas and real armchairs at every step. A compact vein of granular white limestone passed as a belt straight through the rocky mass, and the fertile gravel from this which had crumbled from rain and frost, was amassed below between the rocky walls. And here a ravine began to present such an enchanting view that he stopped amazed and sat down on one of the stone stools to enjoy the surprising fairy scenery.

Before him, between the perpendicular walls whose bases disappeared in the soil, there unfolded a grassy carpet interwoven with endless flowers, choicer and more thrifty than those on the mainland. The blood red geranium had stepped from the rock and sought moisture down here, the honey white grass of Parnassus from the wet sedgy mead had here met with the forest's blue yellow lily of the valley, and the southern orchids, perhaps wind driven from the vineland Gotland, had fled here, the hyacinth like orchis-sambucina, the pompous orchis militaris, the stately cephalanthera, a kind of embellished lily of the valley, had sought their nursery here in the forcing lime and moist sea air between protecting walls in the most luxurious grass.

And far in the distance the walls of the cliffs were hidden by birch and alder trees, which rose modestly in the air without daring to raise their tops to the wind; self-sown here and there stood the cranberry trees in the midst of the grassy carpet, with their white snowballs hanging to the grapelike leaf; the dark green buckthorn leaned like an espalier against the precipice and its glossy leaves faintly reminded of the orange so famed in song, but were more juicy, more varied in color, finer in design and more delicate structure.

It was a park with the characteristics of the mainland floating out here, and when through a rent or depression in the rocks he saw a blue horizontal streak of the sea, the contrast in the wonderful scenery struck him.

After he had sat a moment and listened to the chaffinch's spring time song, which was interrupted by the gulls' and guillemots' caws and shrieks, and he felt the solitude enwrap him like a slumber, and when the birds for a moment were hushed and only the faint sea breeze rustled in the birch tops without reaching farther down, he heard unexpectedly a cough. He started and looked around but saw no trace of man.

The painful hollow sound from the chest of a human being in the midst of this quiet nature awoke him suddenly and brought a disagreeable feeling of loathing. Was it a lonely one like himself who sought rest, or a nest plunderer? In either case he would free himself from uneasiness, and find out who this was that disturbed him. Therefore he climbed the rocky wall on natural steps in the limestone dyke and he beheld now the third section of this polyp-like islet. Over a low stone wall, apparently to protect the blooming field from grazing cattle, he passed to a pine tree region on gneiss, walked under the branches, trampled knee deep in ferns which formed an underbrush beneath the pine trees and resembled dwarf palms but of fresher green and more elegant foliage, while at their feet were seen the blushing strawberries.

When he came up out of the ravine he saw a cove with rushes where some abandoned pole hooks were driven in the mud. He stopped to listen, and soon he heard a voice which came from the other side of the knoll. It rang high and soft as a child's and sank again so that he thought it was some young yachtsman who had ventured out here. But the words fell so passively, attractively, winningly, and invitingly, and he was surprised to hear a boy expressing himself in so careful language. The vocabulary was small and the language was that of ordinary conservation in cultured society, but without force or diversity of expression, and the objects spoken of were called by incorrect terms. The speaker talked about the verdure of the trees without naming them, called the mews gulls, the chaffinch a bird, gneiss granite and the bulrush a reed.

It might be a youth that insisted upon being heard and spoke so long without allowing himself to be interrupted by the slow mumbling voice of an old man, who every now and then muttered an objection or information. Now the youthful voice laughed, a laughter without cause, to judge from the conversation, a laughter to let the beautiful voice be heard or show a set of white teeth, a laughter without merriment, a succession of ringing sounds without other meaning than to jealously divert the attention from something real, which would come between. A signal, a bird call! There was no doubt, it was a young woman's voice.

He stepped unresistingly up onto the last knoll after having felt of his necktie and hat, and he now saw beneath him a picture, whose details ever after remained in his memory. On a little upland meadow, under a group of old white beam trees around a white linen damask tablecloth, in the center of which was a butter dish of Kolmord marble, surrounded by the contents of a lunch basket, sat an old lady with beautiful gray hair and a well fitting gown, and close beside her stood a fisherman in his shirt sleeves with a sandwich in his hand, while before him stood a young lady holding in her hand a glass of beer, which she with a merry curtesy and the ripples of a dying laughter on her lips, reached to the embarrassed boatman.

He was captivated at once by the young woman's looks, and although his reflection at once whispered that she coquetted with the churl, he felt an irresistible attraction in the dark olive complexion, the black eyes, and the stately figure. It certainly was not the first woman which had attracted him at once, but she belonged to that class of women which never failed to attract him to them. The solitude and absence of others was not the reason of the quick selection, because he felt exactly the same as when he sought a color for a necktie and after walking dejectedly from store to store without experiencing the pleasant feeling that the article sought after would give, he finally stopped before a show window where the right one was, and in the same moment felt free from pressure as he quietly said to himself, this is the one!

After having hesitated a moment whether to step forward and introduce himself, or turn back, he made a movement which betrayed him. The girl observed him first, her arms fell to her sides and she looked with the expression of a frightened child at the unexpected appearance, which at once gave the intruder courage to step forward and reassure the group with an explanation.

Raising his hat with a low bow he stepped up to them.

CHAPTER FIFTH

Half an hour later the commissioner sat in the little company's sailboat with his own dory in tow, he was already installed in the position of guide to the two ladies, who had for their health sought a resort for the summer on Fish Skerry and would consequently be his neighbors. The conversation ran agreeably between the three new acquaintances with a somewhat precipitate ardor to compete and show their readiness and best side which is called forth in all who meet for the first time. The one who made the least effort was the elderly lady, who had introduced herself as mother of the young beauty. She seemed to have reached a perfect harmony and resignation, worn off all corners and was living in her memories and semi-indifferently regarding what was going on around her, expecting nothing from others, prepared for everything that life could offer her of good or ill and charming with her even mild disposition.

An affinity had already arisen between the young man and the young woman, and she seemed to enjoy receiving, and he, who had so long waited to give, felt his powers growing now that the long-accumulated surplus had found an outlet. And he gave for half an hour with lavish hand from all he had stored of information that could be of interest to them who were unacquainted with the conditions which would surround them for awhile. He delineated all the resources of the skerry and its deficiencies, depicted the life very alluringly as it at this moment appeared to him to become, now when he was no longer alone. And the young woman, who had never seen the skerry, received her first actual impression of the same from his description. In imagination she saw the red cottage where she was going to live with her mother, so neat and cosy just as he wished that she would see it in order to feel at home and tarry there. While he spoke it seemed to him as though he received in return something good and strong, as though he heard new thoughts, new points of view spoken by her lips which stood half open, not as though to swallow what he reached her, but as though they spoke themselves, and when her two big, faithful eyes looked admiringly and surprisedly up to him he believed that all he said was true and felt with rising esteem for himself new powers awakened, and old ones growing in strength and tenacity. He felt so really thankful when the boat touched land, just as after having received benefices when in need, that he involuntarily thanked them heartily as he helped the ladies out of the boat and carried their heavy valises on shore.

The young girl returned the politeness with "not at all," but as though out of her treasures she had really given a trifle compared with what she had in reserve.

When the commissioner had escorted the ladies to their new home which turned out to be Oman's cottage, the young girl broke out into a flow of rapture, being still under the influence of Borg's enchanting description. The dilapidated house had something unusually picturesque in its exterior, for there was not a single straight line. Storms, salt water, frost and rain had destroyed every straight outline, and since the mortar had fallen from the chimney it looked like a big tufa. Still more agreeably surprising was the really homelike interior with its old-fashioned comfort. The two rooms were located one on each side of the hall, with a kitchen between them at the end; the best room was spacious, with dark brown paper, which from smoke and age had assumed a pleasing, quiet, even brown tone with which every color harmonized. The low ceiling, which left no vacant space to be peopled by fancies, showed the beams on which rested the attic floor. Two small windows, with panes about half a foot square discolored by age, allowed a view of the harbor and the sea, and the mass of light from outside was pleasantly subdued by the white lace curtains which protected against glances from outside without shutting out the daylight, and hung like light summer clouds down over balsam and geraniums in English faience mugs with Queen Victoria and Lord Nelson in yellow and green. The furniture comprising a big white folding table, a Gustavian bedstead on which were piled numerous eiderdown beds, a white painted wooden sofa, a clock of Mora make that struck the hours, a bureau of birch with its mirror frame veneered with the root of the alder, draped with a bridal veil and loaded with porcelain knickknacks. On the bureau stood a mounted parrot under a glass case, and on the wall hung colored lithographic pictures from the Old Testament, among which the two over the bed seemed to have been placed with questionable purpose, one representing Samson and Delilah in a very unveiled delineation, the other was Joseph and Potiphar's wife. In one corner was an open fireplace which occupied considerable space and would have been dreadful had not the black gap been covered by a white draw curtain.

It was homelike, idyllic and cleanly.

The other chamber was like the first, but had two beds and a commode; the floor was covered with a rag carpet which with its variegated colors formed an album of memories, from grandfather's jacket, grandmother's blouse, mother's cotton gown and father's pilot uniform. There were the red garters of the girls and the yellow gallows of the land-wehr boys, blue bathing suits of the summer guests, beaver and corduroy, cotton and baize, wool and crash, from all fashions and wardrobes, poor men's and rich men's.

In this room stood a big white cupboard with fancy paintings on the door panels, framed in ivy, wreaths painted with mosaic bronze, wonderful small landscapes with dark blue coves, banks of rushes and sailboats, trees of unknown species, from paradise or the carboniferous age, turbulent seas with waves straight as furrows in a potato field, a lighthouse like a column on a rocky ledge, everything as naïve as a child's simple comprehension of rich nature's infinite variety of shapes and colors, which only the highly trained eye can discern.

In all this old-fashioned simplicity lay the essential part of the cure for a tired brain, which would seek rest in the past. The worn movement of the watch would lay unwound awhile and let the spring be relieved of tension to regain its spent powers. The association with the lower classes which did not entice to battle for the morsel of power, but themselves involuntarily every day and hour reminded those of the upper class of their dearly earned position, would diminish the stimulus and quiet those desirous of power by the thought that there already existed passed by periods.

The commissioner had already prepared the minds of the visitors to see and know all this, and neither of the ladies tired of expressing their satisfaction with the new quarters and were so occupied by investigating the location that they did not observe that their guide had retreated to leave them undisturbed.

The commissioner sat at his window on this Sunday afternoon and watched the two ladies put things in order down in their cottage. When he followed with his eyes their soft, but irregular movements, it was to him as though he heard music. The same modulations that a series of harmonizing tones develop on the ear drum and communicate to the nerve system, the same mild vibrations were now produced through the eye, and rang through the white strings which stretched from the cranium shell out over the sounding board of the chest and transmitted the vibrations through the foundation of his soul. A feeling of general pleasure streamed through his being, when he saw these women's hands moving in waving lines, as they picked trifles from their trunks and laid them on the table and chairs, the rising and sinking of the hips and shoulders imperceptible to the untrained eye, but still so elastic. And when the young woman passed through the room, there arose no straight line, no corners or edges when she turned, no angles when she bent over.

He was perfectly captivated in regarding this, so that for a moment he did not notice the noise in the garret and the creaking of the stairs and the raising of latches.

He was deeply occupied regarding the young lady whose exterior seemed to him perfectly beautiful except in one point, which deficiency he would try and accustom his eyes not to see. Her chin was a few lines too big and indicated a lower jaw unnecessarily developed in one who had ceased to catch, hold and tear uncooked meat, and when he saw it in profile he could picture the coming witch physiognomy, when the time came that the old woman's teeth loosened, the lips sunk and formed an obtuse angle and the nose dropped down over the prominent chin. But he must overcome this reminder of a beast of prey, and he pursued her face with his glance and reshaped it in his fancy, forced his eyes when they were fixed upon her face to see it in its entirety.

Now he heard footsteps and shouts down on the hill, and in a wild rage Oman's wife appeared with a swarm of women, who were carrying in triumph the rescued net down to the beach.

He instantly felt his authority infringed on, and taking his hat went down to the surveyor to demand his help as he was in the Crown's service and in duty bound to assist him.

In the room sat the custom house man at the coffee table, and as usual, when Vestman was out fishing, he had his arm around the waist of his sister-in-law. At the entrance of the commissioner he dropped his hold and under influence of the fear of being discovered he showed a greater officiousness than he otherwise would have done. He put on his uniform cap and went out and in a hasty desire to be a just man he stormed against the women and caught hold of the net.

"Damned old women, don't you know it is penitentiary to break the Crown's lock and seal!"

The women answered in a chorus of imputations, which alluded to both the commissioner and surveyor, the principal ones being that they did not care and that the devil might take the Crown's lock and seal, and that both gentlemen were of such characters that they could be put in penitentiary at any time.

Whereupon the surveyor became enraged and cried to a subordinate to bring the sheriff.

At the word sheriff the people gathered, crawled out of every hole and corner like ants, when one scratches in an ant-hill.

The people seemed ready at once to take part with the women, threatening words were uttered. The commissioner found it time for him to interfere to avoid coming under a subordinate's protection. Therefore he went up to the crowd and asked what they wanted.

But he received no answer, and turning to the women he spoke to them in a polite but stern manner, saying:

"As I before informed you, the Reichstag or your own elected representatives decided for the sake of your children and descendants that the fishing must be protected through prohibiting the use of such implements as spoil it without bringing you any advantage, and when you have had three years to wear out your old nets, but are still making new ones against the law, I have in the name of the Crown been forced to confiscate the unlawful implements. Nevertheless and in spite of the statute law you have broken the Crown's lock and seal, which can be punished with penitentiary. Still I will use clemency instead of justice if you comply and obey, therefore I ask you for the last time, if you will willingly give back the nets."

To this the women answered with new shriek and a new shower of epithets.

"Well," finished the commissioner, "as I am not a policeman, and you are the multitude, I beg the custom house surveyor to send for the sheriff and his assistants and at the same time I will solicit an order from the provincial governor to arrest Oman's wife."

As he spoke the last word, he felt two soft, warm hands grasp his right hand, and two big childish eyes looked into his, while a falling voice like that of a mother who begged for the life of her child, said:

"In the name of Heaven have compassion on a poor unhappy woman and don't do her any ill;" it was the supplication of the young girl who had at the beginning of the scene come out of the cottage.

The commissioner would free himself and turned away from the big eyes, whose glance he could not endure, but he felt his hand clasped harder and finally pressed against a soft bosom, heard words in melting tones, and, completely vanquished, he whispered to the beauty, "Let me go and I will drop the whole affair."

The girl loosened her hold, and the commissioner who made his plan in half a minute caught the surveyor by his arm and led him up to the custom house cottage, just as though he would give him some orders. When they reached the door, the commissioner said shortly and decisively as though he had come to a new conclusion.

"I shall communicate with the provincial governor myself in writing. However, I thank you for your assistance."

Thereupon he went up to his room.

When he was alone and had collected his thoughts, he was obliged to acknowledge that his last act had been dictated by lower motives, as his sexual impulses had prevailed to such a high degree that he had been fooled into an act contrary to the law, for one could not speak of pity, for people who were comparatively well off, as they were owners of houses, fishing grounds, boats and implements valued at many hundreds of dollars, also owners of seal rookeries and bird islets, and, besides, paid taxes on capital and a few small places that they rented out. The false idea that a woman had vanquished him, however, did not hold a place in his thoughts, for he knew very well, conscious as he was in all points that he had fallen by his own propensity or interest to gain something from this woman. But before the throng of people his authority was ended, his reputation shaken and hereafter there would not be an old woman or a boy but felt themselves above him. This, to be sure, might be immaterial for it made no difference to him whether he had power or not over these poor wretches. What seemed worse to him was that this woman whom he now felt he must be bound to in order to be happy, should from the first moment inure herself in the belief that she had gained a conquest of him and thus the equilibrium in a future union would be disturbed.

He had had many fancies for and engagements with women before, but his distinct consciousness of man's superiority over the intermediate form between man and child, which is called woman, had made it impossible for him to conceal it long, and therefore his engagements had had but short duration. He would be loved by a woman, who should look up to him as the stronger, he would be the adored, not the adorer, he would be the main trunk on which the frail shoot should be grafted, but he was born at a period which was full of spiritual pestilence, when womankind was devastated by an epidemic mania for greatness, produced by degenerated, sickly men, and by political pygmies, who were in need of the masses to vote. Therefore he had been obliged to live alone. Well he knew that in love, man must give, must let himself be fooled and that the only way to approach a woman was on all fours. And he had crawled at intervals, and as long as he crawled everything had gone well, but when he had finally straightened up, that was the end of it, always with a multitude of reproaches that he had been false, that he had dissembled submission, that he had never loved, and so on.

Moreover, as a possessor of the highest intellectual enjoyments, and feeling himself an exceptional being, he had not harbored a lively desire after the lower affections, never desired to be the supporter of a parasite, never longed to feed competitors, and his stronger self had rebelled against being the instrument of propagation for a woman's lineage, the rôle he had seen most men of his age play.

But now he stood in just such a dilemma again, to assimilate a woman by allowing himself to be assimilated. To dissemble or let his exterior express what he did not feel, he could not, but he had a great ability for adapting himself to his associations, and comprehending other people's way of thinking and suffering, for he had never found in the lives of others anything but past stages that he himself had lived through, and consequently he had only to draw from memory or experience, letting go his hold, and diminishing the tension onward. He had always found pleasure in woman's company as a rest and diversion on exactly the same ground and from the same reason that keeping company with children makes one grow younger and is a strengthening amusement, when it is not continued too long or becomes an effort.

Now he had felt the desire growing in him to own this woman, but notwithstanding he was an investigator and knew that man was a mammal, it was perfectly clear to him that human love had developed as everything else, and has taken up the elements of a higher spiritual quality without leaving the sensual foundation. He knew precisely how much of unsound heavenliness sneaked in with the reaction of Christianity against the purely brutish, should be eliminated, and he did not believe in a primness which conceded matters that could not be shown, just as little as he admitted that the only purpose of the conjugal state was the bedfellowship. He wished for an intimate, complete union as to body and soul, where he as the stronger acid would neutralize the passive base, but not as in chemistry form a new neutral body, but, on the contrary, would leave a surplus of free acid, which would always give the union its character and lie in readiness to neutralize any attempt of the combination to liberate itself, for human love was not a chemical union, but a physical and organic, which resembled the former in certain respects without being identical with the same. He did not expect any augmentation of his own self, no addition to his strength, only an increase of his vitality, and instead of searching for a support he offered himself as a support to learn his strength and feel the enjoyment of measuring out his power, strewing with open hands his soul without being weakened thereby or made destitute.

During these thoughts he glanced out of the window and saw at once what he sought, for the young girl was standing on the door stoop receiving hand shakings from women and men, patting the children on their heads and seemed overcome by feelings, which so much public sympathy had aroused.

"What a peculiar sympathy for criminals," thought the commissioner; "what a love for the mentally poor! And how well they understood each other's propensities, which they boasted of as feelings and which they believed to be something more than clear, mature thoughts."

The whole scene was such a tangle of absurdities, that it could not be cleared, reflecting the chaotic in the first weak attempt at reasoning, by these brains and spinal cords.

There stood she who had fooled him into violating the law, and received worship like an angel. Even now if his violation of the law was from their point of view a fine noble action, then he who gave pardon instead of justice ought to have the thanks. The opinion of the horde was that he should not, for they well knew that the motive for his action was not kindness towards them, but perhaps tender feelings for a young girl, gallantry, or the hope of winning her. Yes, but the motive for her appearance might then be to gain the good will of the crowd, to become beloved and popular, and receive hand shakes; the horde here played the same role as the society of the ballroom, the promenaders on the street or in the square. And she had fooled him through personal contact, innocently, perhaps, possibly with calculations, probably half of each, to commit a weak action, for which she was worshiped.

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 was pauvres 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.

CHAPTER SIXTH

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 granite paysage!"

"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...."