AUGUST STRINDBERG (continued 3)

She said a good child, as if with a sure calculation that he would snap at the bait, and place himself under her care as the child, no matter whether a good or bad one. But now he had already formed a fancy for the demon as being superior and more interesting, therefore he held to the more grateful task. Surely he knew from experience that the easiest way to insinuate oneself into a woman's favor was to let her play the mother with all the freedom changed to intimacy, but it was a worn-out play and could so easily lead to an inextirpable hectoring on her part. Better then to give her the more grateful part of a redeemer, where nothing that was absolutely superior entered, only the mother of God's intervening purpose, where she was mediator between two equally strong powers.

But the transition was not easily found, and in a moment of loathing at the whole play, which was still necessary if he would win her, and that he would, he pretended to go down and see if the boat was safely moored, as a breeze was beginning to blow.

Upon reaching the beach he drew a long breath as though he had been exerting himself beyond his strength. He unbuttoned his vest as though he had been wearing a coat of iron, and cooling his head he threw a longing glance out over the free water. Now he would have given much to have been alone, to shake off the chaff which had fallen upon his soul during his contact with a lower spirit. In this moment he hated her, would be free from her, own himself again, but it was too late! Cobwebs had fastened to his face, soft as silk, slimy, invisible and impossible to remove. At the same time—when he turned back and saw her as she sat peeling a chestnut with her long fingers and sharp teeth—he was reminded of a mandrill he had seen in a menagerie, and was seized with an infinite compassion, and a wave of sadness, such as the more fortunate feels when he looks upon the lowly. He immediately thought of her delight at seeing him as a Hottentot, and became vexed again, but calming himself with the self-possession of a man of the world he approached her, and to speak the first cloaked word he reminded her that it was time to go, as the wind had risen. However she had observed the tired and absent-minded look upon his face and with a sharpness, which completely calmed his feeling for an instant, she responded:

"You are tired of my company! Let us go."

When he did not answer with a courtesy, she resumed with feeling, which it was difficult to judge whether real or pretended.

"Excuse me, I am naughty! I have grown so, and I am ungrateful! Never mind it!"

She wiped her eyes and began with a house-wife's trained care to put the dishes together.

And now, when she bowed down, leaning over the remainder of the unwashed dishes with the tablecloth tied round her waist for an apron and started to carry the service to the beach to wash it, he hastened to relieve her of the load, urged by an irresistible desire not to see her in a servant's place, and feeling the sting of being served by one whom he would raise far above himself at the same time she was to look up to him as one that had granted her the power over him.

At this pretended combat that arose over which one should serve the other, the girl dropped the dishes. She gave a cry, but when she looked at the pieces, her face cleared up.

"Fortunately they were all old! My God, I was so frightened!"

He suppressed his paltry thoughts of the loss by at once placing himself on the side of her who had had the misfortune, and glad to have a noisy ending to the various feelings that rent him, he threw the shivers of porcelain like skipping stones out over the bay and rounded off the pointed situation with a jocose,

"Now we do not need to wash dishes, Miss Mary!"

Whereupon he reached her his hand and helped her into the boat, which was already pulling at the painter under the increasing dash of the waves.

CHAPTER SEVENTH

A bright, sunny summer morning the commissioner is sitting with his pupil up in the wooden pavilion, which he has had set up on the highest point of the skerry close to the newly laid foundation of the mission house. Down in the harbor lies a schooner, from which the frame for the new building is being unloaded and carried up to its place to be joined together by the foreman and his laborers. Therefore it has been unusually lively on the skerry for some time and small skirmishes have already arisen between the fishermen and the city workmen, in which the latter have treated the former with insolence, which has given rise to a series of feasts of atonement followed by drunkenness and new frays, attacks of immorality and appropriation of other's property. Therefore the commissioner and the elderly lady have a momentary regret at having undertaken the civilization of these people, when the first steps already showed such a sad result; so much more so as the nightly noises, singing, crying and complaining disturbed all work and all rest for them, who had come out here solely for the purpose of seeking quiet. The commissioner, who had lost all reputation by once yielding a little of his authority, could not restore the peace, but Miss Mary on the other hand succeeded better and understood how by a prompt appearance, and a good word now and then, to suppress the storm. This she would not impute to her beauty and agreeable manner; she had credited herself with a higher degree of strength and understanding than she possessed, and thus imbued herself in the belief of having an unusual faculty of mind, so that even now, when she sat as a pupil with her teacher, she received his instruction as though she were already acquainted with them, and answered with remarks more pointed than sagacious, seeming to correct and explain rather than to learn.

The mother, who was sitting beside her embroidering an altar cloth for the new mission house, seemed occasionally amazed at her daughter's penetrating insight and great knowledge, as she with a simple question nonplussed her teacher.

"See here, Miss Mary," lectured the commissioner, always deceiving himself with the hope of being able to educate her; "the untrained eye has a propensity to see everything simple; the untrained ear to hear everything simple. You see here around you only gray granite, and the painter and the poet see the same. Therefore they paint and depict everything so monotonously; therefore they find the skerries so monotonous. And yet, look at this geological map of the surroundings and then throw a glance out over the landscape. We are sitting on the red gneiss region. Look at this stone you call granite, how rich is the variety; it is the baking together of the black mica, the white quartz and the pinkish feldspar."

He had taken a sample from the pile which the foundation layers had blasted from the skerry and laid in a heap for the building's foundation.

"And look, here is another. It is called eurite! See what fine shades of color, from salmon red towards flint blue. And here is white marble of primeval limestone."

"Is there marble here?" asked the girl, her imagination stirred at the mention of this valuable stone.

"Yes, there exists marble here, although it looks gray on the surface without being gray. For, if you observe it closer you will find what an infinite variety of color there is in the lichens. What a scale of the finest colors from the ramaline lichen India-ink black to the crottle's ash-gray, the ground liverwort's leather-brown, the parmelia lichen seal-green, the tree lungwort's spotted copper-green and the wall moss egg-yellow. Look closer out over the skerries as they are now lit by the sun, you will see that the rocks have different colors, and that the people who are used to seeing them, even give them names after the scale of colors, which they are acquainted with without knowing it. Do you see that the Black Rock is darker than the others, because it consists of the dark: hornblende; that the Red Rock is red, because it is composed of red gneiss, and the white skerries of clean washed eurite? Is it not more to know why, than to know that a thing is so; and still less to see nothing but an even gray, as the painter, who paints all the skerries with a mixing of black and white? Hear now the roaring of the waves, as the poets summarily call this symphony of sound. Close your eyes for a moment and you will hear better while I analyze this harmony in simple notes. You at first hear a buzzing which resembles the noise heard in a machine shop or a big city. It is the masses of water dashing against each other; next you hear a hissing; it is the lighter, smaller water particles which are lashed to foam. And now a grating as of a knife against a grindstone; it is the wave tearing against the sand. And now a rattling like the dumping of a load of gravel; it is the sea heaving up small stones. Then a muffled thud as when you clap the hollow of your hand to the ear, it is the wave which presses the air before it into a cavern; and lastly this murmuring as from distant thunder, it is big bowlders, rolling on the stony bottom."

"Yes, but this is to spoil nature for us!" said the girl.

"It is to make nature intimate with us! It gives me composure to know it, and thereby frees me from the poet's half-hidden fear of the unknown, which is nothing else than memories from the time of savage fiction, when explanations were sought but could not be found quickly; and in the emergency the fable of the mermaids and the giants was caught at. But now we pass on to the fishing, which shall be retrieved, leaving the salmon for some other time, and try new methods for stromling fishing. In two months the great fishing begins, and if I have not calculated wrongly it is going to be a failure in the autumn."

"How can you foretell that from your sofa?" asked the girl more cuttingly than inquisitive.

"I foretell it by the facts that I have seen—from my sofa—how the drifting ice in the spring scraped the shoals clear of kelp and other algæ, in which the stromling go to spawn. I foretell it by the scientific fact that the small crustaceans—no matter what they are called—on which the stromling feed, have stayed away from the banks since the seaweed was scraped away. What shall we do then? We shall try to fish in the deep water I If the fish don't come to me then I must go to the fish. And therefore we shall try with nets drifting after a floating boat. It is simple!"

"It is grand!" said Miss Mary.

"It is old," protested the commissioner, "and it isn't my discovery! But now we shall as prudent beings think of a last resort, for even if we get stromling and don't get a price for it on account of herring being caught again on the west coast, we must have something else In readiness."

"It is the salmon?"

"It is the salmon, which must be found here, but I haven't seen it."

"You have told me this much before, but now I should like to know how you can know it."

"I shall reduce the fraction and in a few words tell the reason of my stay here. The salmon wander as do the other migrating birds."

"The salmon a bird?"

"Certainly, a perfect migratory bird. It is to be found near the rivers of Norrland, and has been caught twice in nets round the islands of the north passage. It has been taken near Gotland and in the whole southward passage; therefore it must pass by here. Now it is your task to trace it out with floating trails. Have you the desire to do it, in the capacity of my assistant, to obtain my salary?"

The last word came suddenly, but with calculation, and did not fail in its intent.

"I shall make money, mamma," cried Miss Mary in a playful tone, intended to hide the joy she really felt. "But," added she, "what will you do then?"

"I shall lie on my sofa, and spoil nature for you."

"What are you going to do?" asked the mother, who believed she had not heard aright.

"I shall make an Italian landscape for Miss Mary," answered the commissioner, "and now I will leave you, my ladies, and make the sketch."

Therewith he arose and making a polite bow walked down to the beach.

"He is an odd being," said the mother, when the commissioner was out of hearing.

"An unusual being at the least," answered the girl; "but I don't believe he is perfectly sane. He seems to have principles, and on the whole is a kind man. What have you to say about him?"

"Hand me my yarn, child," said the mother.

"No, but say something ... tell me whether you like him or not," continued the girl.

The mother only answered with a half sad and half resigned glance, which expressed indifference.

Meanwhile the commissioner had gone down to the harbor and taken his boat to row out among the skerries. The summer heat had lasted out here a month, so that the air was hot; but drifting ice still coming from the north, where an unusually severe winter on the coast had caused bottom freezing, was now drifting southward, cooling the water, so that the lower air strata had greater density than the upper ones. The consequent refraction disfigured the aspect of the skerries and had caused the most magnificent mirages during the past few days. This scenery had given rise to long continued disputes between the commissioner and the ladies in which the fishing population had been summoned as judges, being the most competent because they had seen these phenomena of nature from childhood. And when on a morning the light red gneiss skerries through refraction stretched upwards and by the varying density in the strata of air seemed stratified as the cliffs of Normandy, Miss Mary argued that it really was those limestone cliffs, which were reflected as far up as the Baltic Sea, through a law of nature still unsolved by science. At the same time the white swell of the breakers in the strand stones was magnified and multiplied through refraction so that it really looked as though a flotilla of Normandy fishing boats were beating the wind under the cliffs. The commissioner, who had tried in vain to give the only correct explanation, in order to take away the supernatural, the more so as the people saw in the phenomena predictions, of course, of coming misfortunes; belief In ill luck, which acted as a damper on their enterprise, now found himself obliged to appear first as a wizard to win the ear of the populace, with the intention, however, to subsequently remove the mystery by telling them how he made his magic.

Therefore he asked the believers, whether they would also believe themselves to see a mirage of Italy, if they should see an Italian landscape, and when they answered, "Yes," he decided to combine the useful with the pleasant and by a few small changes fulfil his promise to form an exotic landscape for Miss Mary's birthday, so that by the next mirage it would loom up against the horizon on a grand scale when seen through the colossal magnifying glass, that the different density of the air strata afforded.

Sitting in his boat, he aimed towards the Sword-islet with his diopter, the lenses of which he had considerably increased in power. Now the first question was how to get the most characteristic features of the formation, viz., the stratified rocks, to come forth, and this nature had partly done. After this he needed a stone pine, a cypress, a marble palace and a terrace with oranges on espaliers.

After scanning and outlining the skerry, he had the scheme clear and soon landed with his boat in which was stowed a crow bar, a ship scraper, a roll of zinc wire and a bucket of yellow ocher with a big tar brush, besides an ax, a saw, nails and a stock of dynamite cartridges.

When he had landed and packed up his belongings, he felt himself a Robinson Crusoe, who had taken up a battle with nature, but much sharper and surer of victory as he had brought along the means of culture. After he had placed the plane table on a tripod and upon this the alidade, he started to work.

The mountain ridge, whose tilted folds happily imitated the southern sedimentary strata, needed only to be scraped so as to remove the lichens, where there were any, leaving some horizontal stripes darker than the folds. It was not heavy work; the ship scraper glided over the smooth surface as a retouching brush on the scene painter's big canvas.

Sometimes he felt with disgust that he was throwing time and power away on childish things, but the bodily exertion sent the blood to his head, so that he saw small things bigger than they were; felt something of a Titan, who stormed the universe, corrected our Maker's mistakes, and wriggled the earth's axis so that the south came a little northward.

After he had striped the rocky wall, for a few meters, which was all that was needed as it was to be multiplied by the air strata, he went to manufacture the stone pine. On the hillock's crest stood a group of low arborescent pines, which together only miraged as the border of a forest. The thing was to cut down half a dozen trees to isolate the best one which would be silhouetted against the sky.

To saw down the supernumerary trees was the work of half an hour. The one that was left was slender with all its vegetative energy gathered at the top, because the others standing so close had hindered the formation of branches on the trunk. But now he must thin the crown with an ax so that the characteristic umbrella frame with its ribs came out. It was easily done, but when he afterwards looked at his creation with the diopter he still saw that the style was not perfect and that the top branches must be stretched upwards with zinc wire and the side branches somewhat downwards and outwards. When the stone pine was completed, he took a glass of wine and selected the material for the cypresses. This soon presented itself in the form of a pair of pointed junipers, which he only needed to select so that they rose against the sky, and trim them with an ax and the knife. But as they were somewhat too light, he took a pail of water and stirred some ivory-black in it and sprinkled them with the wash until they had a perfect churchyard green.

When he contemplated his work, he became dejected, and recollected a dark story of the girl who stepped on the loaf of bread; and when the white mews gave forth dreadful cries above his head, he thought of the two black ravens which came from heaven to take her soul down to hell.

After he had sat a moment and the blood had returned to his brain, he smiled at his work and at his childish fear. If nature herself had not gone exactly so hastily to work with the origin of species it was not lack of good will, only lack of ability.

Now to make a marble palace; and as that had been his starting point and he had planned it all at home on his sofa, this work was not more difficult than the other.

The limestone ledge stood perfectly vertical, ready for a facade; true there were only a few square meters of it but no more was needed, and it was only to loosen the eurite slabs, which from weathering had cracked from the limestone. The crowbar proved sufficient at first, but at the base he found it necessary to use a dynamite cartridge in the crack.

At the report of the cartridge and the raining down of shivers he felt something of the poet's longing to dump all at once the ammunition of the standing armies into a volcano and relieve humanity of the pain of existence and the trouble of development.

Now the marble slab was cleared and the crystals of the limestone sparkled like loaf sugar in the sunbeams. With his paint buckets he marked out a rustic base and outlined two small quadrangular windows. On the rocky ledge above he drove two poles and laid a third one across, tying them so that the whole formed a pergola. Afterwards he needed only to lift up the bearberry vines, which were a couple of yards long, and twine them round the poles; thus the grapevine was in place, and hanging down in festoons.

At last he retouched the soil with a gallon of muriatic acid diluted with as much water, whereby a brilliant variegation of colors was produced on the grassy carpet, to represent patches of Bellis or Galanthus which flowers he had found characteristic of the Roman Campagna at the coming of the "second spring" in October after the wine harvest has ended.

And therewith his work was completed!

But it had taken him until evening. In order that the miracle should have a proper effect there remained, however, to announce its appearance in advance and best if he could predetermine the day. He knew that there had been great heat in the south of Europe, and therefore it would not be long before a north wind would come. It had been from the east for some time now, while the barometric pressure in the North Sea had been low. According to reports, drifting ice lay off Arholma, and as soon as the wind would veer a few points to northward the ice drift must follow the current which passes to the west of Aland, where the Gulf of Bothnia empties into the Baltic Sea. If he could only get a north wind in the evening of some day then he was sure it would last a couple of days, and as it is always accompanied by clear air he would be able to foretell the appearance of the phenomenon at least one day in advance, and if he got that far it would be an easy matter to tell the hour, for the mirage only appeared a few hours after sunrise, usually between ten and twelve o'clock.

As he entered his chamber, he locked the door to devote himself to his work, his great work, which he had been planning for the last ten years and expected to complete when he was fifty; this was the goal, which had inspired his life and which he carried as his secret. He enjoyed the thought of owning himself for a few hours, for during the weeks which had passed since the arrival of the two ladies, he had been occupied every evening with keeping them company, and that, which should have been a rest and a pleasure, had become a constraint, a labor. He loved the young girl and would live with her in wedlock, in complete unification, when leisure moments would afford unpremeditated confidences and rest; but this state of semi-familiarity where he at fixed hours must appear whether he was disposed to converse or not, pained him as a duty. She had caught hold of him and never tired of receiving as he possessed the ability to be always new and entertaining; but he who never received anything, could in time find the need of renewing himself. But when he then stayed away, she became uneasy, nervous and tortured him with questions whether she was too importunate, to which he as a well-bred man could not answer in the affirmative.

Now he opened his manuscript case, where the cartons lay arranged with notes, small slips of paper with improvised thoughts on observations, stuck on half sheets as in a herbarium, and which it amused him to arrange and rearrange after new classifications in order to find out whether the phenomena could be arranged in as many ways as the brain willed, or they really could be arranged according to only one classification, viz., as nature had placed them, if indeed nature in its operations had followed any particular law and order. This occupation awakened in him the idea that he was the real arranger of chaos, who separated light from darkness; and that the chaos first ceased with the evolution of the discriminating organ of self-consciousness, at a time when light and darkness in reality were not yet separated. He intoxicated himself with this thought, felt how his ego was growing, how the brain cells germinated, burst their capsules, multiplied and formed new species of concepts, which should in time crop out in thoughts, and fall into the brain substance of others as yeast plants and cause millions after his death, if not before, to serve as hot beds for his seeds of thought....

There was a knock at the door, and with an excited voice, as though he had been disturbed in a secret meeting, he asked who it was.

It was a greeting from the ladies and an inquiry if the commissioner would come down.

This he answered by returning his regards, but he had no time this evening because he must work, unless some urgent circumstances required his presence.

There was silence for a moment. As he thought he surely knew what would follow he left his interrupted work and placed his manuscript in order; he had just completed this when he heard the mother's step on the staircase. Instead of waiting for her to knock he opened the door and greeted her with the question, "Miss Mary is sick?"

The mother started, but recovered herself at once and asked the doctor to come down and see her as it was impossible to get a physician.

The commissioner was not a physician but he had acquired the elements of pathology and therapeutics; had observed himself and all the sick that had come within his circle; had philosophized over the nature of diseases and their remedies, and finally, made up a therapy, that he applied to himself. Therefore he promised to come in about half an hour and bring the medicine with him as he heard the girl lay in convulsions.

It certainly was not difficult for him to guess the nature of her sickness. As the first messenger had said nothing about illness, it must have occurred between the two messages and had been caused by his refusal to go. It was a psychical indisposition, which he so well recognized and which passed under the yet undefined name of hysteria. A little pressure on the will, a thwarted wish, a cross plan, and at once followed a general depression under which the soul tried to place the pains within the body without being able to localize them. He had so often seen in the pharmacodynamics beside the names of remedies and their action small cautious remarks as "acts in a yet unexplained way," or "action not yet fully known," and he believed that he had found by observation and speculation, that just because of the unity of mind and matter the remedy acted both chemico-dynamically and psychically at the same time. Recent medical ideas had left out the medicine or the material basis and assumed in hypnotism a purely psychical, or in diet and physical exercise a vulgar and often detrimental mechanical method. These exaggerations he regarded as necessary and beneficial transition forms, although their trial had demanded its victims as, for instance, when one with cold water excites a nervous person instead of soothing them with warm baths, or tired out the weak with violent exercises in the raw air.

He believed he had found that the old remedies could still be of service as a kind of instruction material, to use the popular expression, in order to awaken and change impressions, and just as the group of astringents really cause a contracting of the stomach, just so do they cause a concentrating of the soul's scattered powers, which the dissipated drinker knows from experience when he in the morning winds up his run down movement with an "Angostura."

This woman felt herself bodily indisposed without directly being so. Therefore he now composed a series of remedies, of which the first would cause a real physical ailment whereby the patient should be urged to leave the sickly condition of the soul and localize it definitely in the body. To this purpose he took from his family medicine case the most nauseating of all drugs, asafœtida, which could best develop a condition of general illness, and in such great doses that actual convulsions would result; that means, the whole physique with the senses of smell and taste should rise in revolt against this strange substance in the body, and all the functions of the soul should direct their attention to its removal. Thereby the imaginary pains would be forgotten, and it would only remain then to cause in succession transitions from the one nauseating sensation down through less unpleasant ones, until finally the release from the last stage, by means of an upward grade of cooling, covering, softening, mitigating remedies, should awaken a complete sensation of vivacity as after having passed through troubles and dangers, which are delightful to recollect.

After having dressed himself in a white sack coat of cashmere and tied on a cream colored necktie with pale amethyst stripes, he for the first time since the arrival of the ladies put on his bracelet. Why all this he could not explain, but he did it under the influence of an impression, brought from the sick bed he was to visit, and which he produced in himself. And when he looked in the mirror without observing his face, he noticed that his exterior gave a mild sympathetic impression, but also with a touch of the unusual and that it would attract attention, without exciting a nervous person.

After this he collected his requisites like a magician who is going to perform, and went to the sick bed.

When he was shown into the chamber, he saw the girl lying on the sofa, with disheveled hair and dressed in a Persian morning-gown. Her eyes were unnaturally big and stared contemptuously at the intruder.

The commissioner felt for a moment embarrassed, but only for a moment, and then he stepped forwards and grasped her hand.

"How is it with you, Miss Mary?" asked he sympathetically.

She looked at him piercingly, as though she would penetrate him, but did not answer.

He took out his watch and, counting her pulse, said:

"You have fever."

Here he lied, but he must gain her confidence, that was part of the cure.

The expression on the girl's face changed immediately.

"If I have fever! Oh, I believe I shall burn up!"

She was allowed to complain, and the hostile mood against the visitor had passed so that contact closing the current could occur.

"Do you promise to obey my orders? If so, I will cure you," the commissioner began, meantime laying his hand on her forehead.

At the word obey he felt how the patient twitched as though she would not obey at all, but at the same moment his bracelet slipped below the cuff and the resistance of the imaginary sick ceased.

"Do with me as you please," answered she submissively; meanwhile her eyes were fastened on the golden serpent which fascinated her and aroused her fears of something unknown.

"I am no physician by profession, as you know, but I have studied the art, and know all that is necessary for this occasion. Here I have a drug which is very diagreeable to take, but is infallible in its action. It is no secret and I shall tell you what I am giving you. This is a resinous gum which is prepared from the root of a perennial herb which grows in stony Arabia."

At the word Arabia the girl listened, for it probably aroused some thoughts of incense, which could not hide Lady Macbeth's foul crimes.

Therefore she took the spoon and smelt of its contents; but at the same moment she threw her head backwards and cried: "I cannot take it!"

He placed his arm round her neck, firmly and gently, and reached the spoon to her once more and coaxingly said:

"Show now that you are a good child!" Thereupon he poured the drug into her mouth, before she could make resistance.

She fell backwards upon the sofa pillows and her body writhed under the pains and nauseating effects which the resin with its smell of white onion had produced, and her face expressed a horror as though all things bad and disgusting in this world had piled upon her. With a supplicating voice she beseeched him for a glass of water to free her from her agony.

This he would not give her; she must lie down and, whether she would or not, submit to the disagreeable feelings the remedy caused.

Now when he saw her melted by disgust, he took up his drug number two.

"Now, Miss Mary, the wandering in stony Arabia's desert is ended and you shall go up on the Alps and inhale the mountain air, concentrated in the vigorous gentian's bitter root, yellow as sum light," said the commissioner in an encouraging, manly voice.

The girl received the bitter drug unresistingly and shrank as though stabbed with a knife; but directly after she aroused as though her scattered powers had rushed together and her energy had returned. The violent remedy had taken away the previous obnoxious taste but irritated the mucous membranes of the stomach by its sharpness, and increased the pulse.

"Now we shall put out the fire with quilts," continued the commissioner. "And let us go to Brittany's seashore to fetch balsam in the mild Carrageen alga. Do you feel how soft the mucilage lays itself protectingly over the irritated lining of the stomach and do you notice the odor of the sea salts?"

A quiet calm spread over the patient's heated face, and as the physician now considered her strong enough to listen to him, he began with reminiscences of the coast of Brittany, the yachting on the Atlantic, the life with the fishermen in Quimper, and the hunting for seabirds at Sarzeau.

She followed his narrative, but still seemed somewhat tired, so he broke off and gave her a symphony, as he called it, which was composed of the classical route, well known as the wine spice of bridal parties in the Middle Ages; the heavenly Angelica, the spearmint with its household odor and a little touch of Carbenia benedicta to preserve vigor, and a grain of juniper oil to tell of the forest.

It was as though he rubbed her with impressions, snatched her away from sickly thoughts by letting her travel in fancy from place to place; make the tour of the whole old and new world, get visions of all kinds of landscapes, all races of people, all climates. When she seemed tired he gave her a spoonful of lemon juice with a little sugar, which cooled and eased her, so that after a dreadful half-hour passed she received this simple refreshment as a great enjoyment, that made her smile.

"Turn now towards the wall," said the commissioner, "and pretend to sleep for five minutes while I go out and speak to your mother."

The commissioner, who felt his powers failing, was obliged to go out into the fresh air to recover. And now he need only to throw a glance out over the half lighted evening sky, out over the steel blue sea, shut his eyes and try not to think, to feel, how the disordered, brain regained its place again and continued its accelerating motion forwards, after having been turned backwards awhile.

While he stood thus with his arms on his chest, half asleep, he heard a thought still buzzing in one ear: a child of thirty-four years!

Thus he awoke and went into the cottage again.

Miss Mary was sitting on the sofa with her hair loosened and thrown gracefully around her, but otherwise looked perfectly well and cheerful.

The commissioner took from his basket a bottle of Syracuse wine and a package of Russian cigarettes.

"Now you shall pretend you are well," said he, "and that we have met after a long journey, upon which you shall drink a glass of sweet Sicilian wine and smoke a cigarette, for it is part of the cure."

The girl seemed to make an effort to hide her secret suffering, and drank the wine while she kept her eyes on the bracelet.

The commissioner broke the silence with, "You look at my bracelet?"

"No, I did not," denied the girl.

"I got it from a woman who of course is dead, as I have not returned it."

"Have you been in love?" asked the girl with a strong doubt.

"Yes, but with open eyes! When one usually considers it commendable to use sense, why quench it when one is going to take one of the most important steps in life?"

"So, one should be calculating in love?"

"Strongly, incredibly calculating when it is to let loose one of the wildest propensities!"

"Propensities?"

"Propensities! Yes!"

"You don't believe In love?"

"You propose questions which have no answer! Believe in love in general? What do you mean by that? There exists a mass of species of love, as much contrasted as black and white! I cannot believe in two of them at the same time, or all of them at once."

"And the highest species?"

"The intellectual; in three stories but as the English house. Above is the study, beneath the sleeping room and in the basement the kitchen."

"So practical! But love, a great love, is not calculating, that I have imagined as the highest, as a storm, a lightning stroke, a cataract!"

"As a rude, uncurbed power of nature? So it appears to the animals and the lower varieties of human beings...."

"Lower? Are not all human beings alike?"

"Oh, yes! All beings are alike as two berries, youths and old men, men and women, Hottentots and Frenchmen, certainly they are alike! Look at us two only! Perfectly alike, the only difference is that I have a beard! Pardon, my lady, now I see that you have recovered I will leave you. A pleasant sleep!"

He had arisen and taken his hat, but the next moment the girl stood at his side with both his hands clasped in hers and with the same glances with which she for the first time had vanquished him, she begged him to stay!

Under these burning glances and hand pressures he felt something as he thought a young girl might feel when she stood under the influence of a seducer's passionate attack. He became perturbed and inwardly there arose a feeling of violated bashfulness, and injured manliness. He freed his hands, drew himself back and said in a calm voice, cutting in its affected coldness:

"Consider!"

"Stay, or I shall seek you in your room!" rang the excited voice of the girl, which seemed to imply a threat from which there was no appeal.

"Then I shall lock my door!"

"Are you a man, you?" rang the challenge with a hard laugh.

"Yes, in such a high degree that I will be both the selector and attacker, and I do not like to be seduced!"

With this he went out and heard behind him a noise as from a human body falling and striking against furniture.

After he was out he felt like turning back, for through mental strain he was in a condition of weakness that made him susceptible to impressions of the sufferings of others. But after having been alone for a few seconds and collected himself, so that his powers returned, he firmly decided to break this engagement, which threatened to usurp his whole soul-life; and in time cut off all relation with a woman, who had showed so plainly that it was only his body she desired, while she ejected his soul, which he would pour into this lifeless image of flesh. She enjoyed the sound of his voice, but the thoughts she did not receive only in such cases as when they were of direct benefit. He had often caught her looking at the lines of his figure, and she used sometimes thoughtlessly to grasp his arm whose swelling muscles formed a ridge beneath the soft cloth. He remembered now these many overtures at the bath, on yachting; on going up to the lookout, which he never visited because it upset his nerve system to stand on a bluff without sufficient support. And now this evening, when he had seen this eruption of uncontrollable passion, he saw with fear that this woman was not of the developed race, which could individualize its love to a certain one, and that he to her only played the role of the indispensable opposite sex in general.

He had strolled down to the strand for a breeze, but the night was sultry. The sea had ceased to roll, and in the northwest the heaven was a faint melon color, while out in the east over the water rested the night. The strand cliffs were still warm, and he placed himself down on one of the many arm chairs, that the cold had blasted out and the waves had polished smooth.

The events he had just lived through passed before him, and now, when his senses were cooled off, he saw them in another light. His dream had always been that he should awaken a woman's love to such a degree that she should come begging, crawling to him, saying, "I love you, deign to love me!" Such was the order of nature, that the weaker approach the stronger with a submissive mind and not vice versa, although the latter still was the case with those who were living with a trace of superstitious ideas about something supernaturally exalted in woman, notwithstanding that investigation had made it manifest that the mysterious was only confusion and the exalted only a collection of poems by the suppressed desires of male propensity.

Now she had come as he had dreamed it, the woman of the new time free from prejudice, had shown all her inward incandescent nature, and he had recoiled! Why? Perhaps tradition and conventional habits still governed him! For there was nothing bold in her effusion, no trace of the harlot offering, no immodest behavior or impudent mien! She loved him in her way. What more could he desire, and with such a love he could safely bind himself to her, for perhaps not many men could boast of having lighted such a flame. But he felt no pride over having gained her, for he felt his own value, and rather a pressing responsibility which he would get rid of; and therefore he must depart from the island.

In thought now he sat and packed his belongings. He gathered the things from the writing table and saw the green empty spread, took away the lamp that shed light in the evening and sparkled colors in the daytime, and there was a vacuum. Stripped the walls of their pictures and draperies, and the white, sad, mathematical figure came forth. He took the books from their shelves, and the dreadful solitude faced him, monotony, nudeness, poverty!

And then came the fatigue from bodily efforts, fear of traveling and its tiring effects; anxiety of the unknown where he now might be cast, deprived of his accustomed surroundings and her company. And he saw the young girl in her childish but still majestic beauty; heard her complain, saw her whitened cheeks, which another would cause to blush again as time passed.

Thus he suffered all the pangs of separation through a whole quarter of an hour, which had seemed to him as long as hours, when in the dusk of the summer night, he saw a woman's figure up on the rock outlined against the light sky. The splendid contours, that he knew so well, assumed still nobler proportions against the now pale yellow sky, which could just as well be the end of a sunset as the beginning of sunrise. She seemed to have come from the custom house cottage, and to be searching for someone. Bareheaded and with her hair still hanging over her shoulders, turning her head to spy, she seemed suddenly to discover what she sought, and with brisk steps she hurried down to the beach where the object of her search was sitting, immovable, without the power to flee, without the will to proclaim himself. And when she reached him she fell down and laid her head in his lap and talked wildly, modestly, beseechingly, as though she was annihilated with shame without being able to hold her tongue in check.

"Don't go away," sobbed she. "Despise me, but have mercy! Love me, love me or I will go where I shall never return!"

There now awoke in him the mature man's intense longing for love. And when he saw the woman at his feet, it aroused the inherent chivalry of man, who would see in its mate the mistress not the slave; and he arose, lifted her up, placed his arm round her waist and pressed her to him.

"At my side, Mary, not at my feet," said he. "You love me, for you knew that I loved you, and now you belong to me for life. And you will never leave me alive, do you hear! For our whole life long. And now I place you on my throne and give you the power over me and my belongings, my name and my property, my honor and my actions, but if you forget that it is I who gave you the power, and if you misuse or give it away, then as a tyrant I will overthrow you to such a depth that you shall never see the sunlight more! But you cannot do it, for you love me, is it not true that you love me?"

He had placed her on the stone stool, and kneeling he laid his head in her bosom.

"I lay my head in your lap," continued he, "but do not cut off my hair meanwhile I sleep on your bosom. Let me uplift you but do not drag me down. Become better than I am, for you can when I protect you from contact with the world's corruption and misery, in which I must delve. Ennoble yourself with great faculties which I do not possess, so that we together shall become a perfect whole."

His feelings began to take the cooler tone of reason and seemed to quench her exaltation, so that she interrupted him by placing her glowing face to his, and when he did not answer her caress, she pressed a burning kiss on his lips.

"You child," said she, "don't you dare to kiss when nobody can see it?"

Then he sprang up, clasped her round the neck and kissed her throat repeatedly until she freed herself from him with a laugh and stood erect before him.

"You are a perfect little savage," scolded she.

"The savage is there, be careful!" answered he, and grasping her round the waist they wandered onwards on the warm sands which whispered round their feet.

And now the lighthouse in the distance blinked, as the air had cooled off and the dew had fallen. Out from the rookeries they heard the cries of the seals as from the shipwrecked.

They wandered an hour or more, and spoke of their first meeting, about their secret thoughts from time to time; about the future, about the coming winter; about traveling in foreign countries; meantime they came out on the point where the pile of stones with a cross was selected in memory of a shipwreck with loss of life.

Suddenly they caught a glimpse of two shadows that sneaked away and disappeared.

"It is Vestman and his sister-in-law," said Borg. "Fie! If I were her husband I would sink her!"

"Not him?" came from the girl more hastily than she intended.

"He is not married!" answered Borg shortly; "that is the difference!"

There was a silence, a disagreeable silence, such as makes one seek for a topic for conversation; and meantime whispered the thoughts, now untied from the enchantment: and he already longed for the enchantment again, for the intoxication, which blinded him, which turned gray to rose color, which built pedestals; which placed gilded edges on cracked china.

At this they turned from the rocky wall to go home. The wind which had been quite asleep, now began to waft against them and in his anxiety the awakened lover felt how freshly it blew. It was the north wind which he had waited for, and which he now greeted as a rescuer. For in a second when the girl's contradiction in a serious matter had just as though broken something in him, so that he felt that her being could only be soldered to his, not melted together with it, unless he gave up resisting and delivered himself to her wholly and fully, he now grasped the opportunity to raise himself again without treading upon her.

"Why do the people hate me?" asked he suddenly.

"Because you are superior to them," slipped from the girl without her observing the confession she made.

"I do not believe it," answered he, "for their intellect is not sufficient to value my superiority."

"Their hate can pervert their vision!"

"Superbly answered! But if they should see the miracle, would their eyes open?"

"Perhaps! If the wonder aroused fear."

"Well, they shall have the miracle! To-morrow at ten o'clock it will appear!"

"What?"

"That which I have promised you!"

The girl looked into his face with amazement as though she did not believe what he said. After which she laughingly interposed:

"If it should be cloudy weather then?"

"But it won't be," answered the commissioner with decision. "However, now we have already come so far as to speak about weather, we can even think of what your mother will say about us."

"She won't trouble herself about it," answered the girl at once.

"It is astonishing that a mother does not pay any attention to what man her daughter is to bind herself in relationship, and whose name she is to carry! Can that be immaterial to her?"

"Good night, now!" interrupted Miss Mary and reached her mouth for a kiss. "To-morrow morning you will come and visit us! Is it not so?"

"Certainly," answered he, "certainly!"

She walked away.

But he still stood on the same place and saw her slender figure rise against the now sulphur yellow sky as she stepped upwards on the hillock, and when she came to the highest point she turned back and threw a kiss to him, and then she seemed to sink behind the slope until he only saw her head with its loose hair which fluttered in the northern wind.

CHAPTER EIGHTH

When the commissioner sat the following morning at breakfast with his betrothed, after having been received without comment as the future son-in-law, he felt again the combined impression of a great calm at having been received in a little circle, where common interests formed a tie to unbounded confidence; and at the same time an anxiety over the necessity of giving himself up for these manifold considerations which sympathy and relationship bring. The past evening had rushed into his life mixing great and small, as life offers it, his whole history of love, which he had dreamed of with open eyes, had passed with his eyes purposely blindfolded. He had closed his eyes to the girl's pretended or imaginary illness; closed them completely, so that he had deceived himself into taking it seriously; for if he had not done so, and instead had said plainly from the first moment: rise up and be well, you are only sick in imagination, then she would have hated him for life; and his aim was to win her love. Now he had gained her love, perhaps because she believed that she had deluded him; therefore his love stood in direct relation to his credulity; and when now in the morning he repeated to himself again and again the question: Do you believe in your Mary? his rested reason translated it thus: Am I sure I can delude you? No, there does not exist a love with open eyes; and to gain a woman by frankness is impossible; to approach her with raised head, and with plain words is to drive her away. He had begun with lies and must go on with dissembling. However, now while the conversation drifted between trifling things and effusive expressions of feelings, it gave no time for worry, and the pleasure of being in a home between two women made everything so bright and soft, that he delivered himself up to the enjoyment of being the petted one, the child, the little one, the son of the mother-in-law; and he did not observe that the daughter, who had already outgrown her mother, treating her as though she the mother was her child, by simple syllogism gradually took authority over him, who called her equal "mother-in-law." It amused him, this reversing of nature's order, and he had always before him the image of the giant, who let the children pull out three hairs from his beard, but only three. As they were sitting at their coffee and chatting, there was heard a murmuring from the people down on the beach.

From the window they saw them gathered on the landings, sometimes standing immovable, with hands shading their eyes: sometimes rocking on both feet, as though the ground was burning beneath them, or as if they could not stand still from fear.

"It is the miracle!" cried the girl, and hastened out accompanied by her mother and her betrothed.

Coming out on the slope the ladies stopped as though struck by fright, when on this clear sunny morning, they saw a corpse-white colossal moon rising above a graveyard with black cypress, floating on the sea.

The commissioner, who had not calculated the effect at this point of view, did not see quickly enough the relation of things, and stood deathly pale from the shock which follows something monstrous and unexpected in the otherwise law-bound nature. He hastened past the ladies who stood petrified and unable to move, and came down to the strand where the people were gathered. In a moment he found the solution of the riddle. His intended marble palace had become involuntarily framed between a projecting, rounded cliff on one side and a pine top on the other, so that the limestone slab showed as a round circle and, with the two windows which were too faintly painted, it imitated the map of the moon's disk.

The people who had been posted as to the exact hour when the miracle would appear, as promised by the commissioner, regarded the approaching man with frightened but venerating glances and the men contrary to what had been their habit to him raised their hats and caps.

"Now what do you say about my mirage?" asked he jokingly.

Nobody answered, but the head pilot, who was the most courageous, pointed northwest towards the heavens, where the real moon was hanging pale in its first quarter.

The miracle thus was crushing, and the strong impressions which the two moons had already produced was too deep to be effaced with an explanation. And when the commissioner made an attempt to the beginning of which nobody listened and the people stood infatuated just as though enamored of the fear of the inexplicable, he ceased trying to remove their belief. He had wished to give them a proof that neither he nor nature could break laws, and, nevertheless, chance had made him a wizard.

When he turned back he found his betrothed in an ecstatic state restrained by her mother, but when he appeared, she freed herself and falling on her knees she cried with half insane gestures, and words which seemed to have been borrowed from some spiritualistic circle.

"Mighty spirit, we fear thee! Take away our fear, that we may love thee!"

The case had already assumed a hazardous turn and the commissioner tried with all his art to explain the involuntary miracle, but in vain. The enjoyment of being infatuated, the numbness of fear and, behind it, the lurking feeling of ambition not to admit the confusion of senses, had so taken possession of the young girl's mind that no remonstrances or assurances availed. The mother with her unchanging, even temperament did not seem to know where she was and had forgotten the whole phenomenon of nature through her daughter's disquieting behavior.

But now the mass of people on the beach had, through Miss Mary's cries and gesticulations, turned their attention from the performance out on the sea towards her, and when they saw the young woman on her knees before the white dressed man, with his deep dark glances and bare head, out here on the rock, there must have passed before them some reminiscences from the Bible history about a young man who did miracles; for they crowded together in haste and began to whisper, while at the exhortation of the head pilot one of the women hastened into the nearest cottage and returned with a three-years-old child which had a foul ulcer on its cheek.

With the ability to call forth a mirage there should also follow a supernatural knowledge of healing.

The role which was thrown on the commissioner, began to trouble him beyond measure, and when he saw the fishing population, pilots and custom house men, leave their work, and carpenters and finishers leave the building of the chapel to listen to his words as to prophesies with miraculous power, he became afraid as though before a power of nature that he had conjured up, but could not check. The moment, however, had come when he must express himself exactly, plainly, and turn them away.

"Good people," commenced he. But silently the reflection came: how to go on, what words to use, when each expression required an explanation which again presupposed foreknowledge, which was lacking. And during the second he meditated over the distance that lay between him and them, he heard steps approaching, and turning around, he saw a man who resembled an old sailor on his leave.

The man lifted a round felt hat and looked somewhat timorous at first, but coming nearer he straightened himself up and was just going to say something, when the commissioner relieved him from his embarrassment by the question:

"Perhaps you are the Home Mission preacher whom we expect?"

"I am the same!" answered the newcomer.

"Will you not say a few words to the people here, who are in a state of tumult on account of a phenomenon of nature which they do not wish to have explained and which I at this moment cannot elucidate"—the commissioner grasped at this in his eagerness to get out of his false position.

The preacher at once declared himself prepared. Stroking his long chin whiskers he took a Bible from his pocket.

When the people saw the black book a tremor passed through them and some of the men uncovered their heads.

The preacher turned the pages a moment and finally stopped, cleared his throat and began to read.

"And I beheld when he had opened the sixth seal, and, lo, there was a great earthquake; and the sun became black as sack cloth of hair, and the moon became as blood. And the stars of heaven fell unto the earth, even as a fig tree casteth her untimely figs, when she is shaken of a mighty wind. And the heavens departed as a scroll when it is rolled together; and every mountain and island were moved out of their places. And the kings of the earth, and the great men, and the rich men, and the chief captains, and the mighty men, and every bond man, and every free man, hid themselves in the dens and in the rocks of the mountains. And said to the mountains and rocks, Fall on us, and hide us from the face of Him that sitteth on the throne, and from the wrath of the Lamb. For the great day of His wrath has come; and who shall be able to stand?"

The commissioner, who at once observed the dangerous turn the affair had taken, had drawn his betrothed half forcibly from the dangerous neighborhood, and got her down to the beach so that he could give her the right views and show, that it was no moon which had fallen from the heaven, that it was only the Italian landscape he had promised to arrange for her birthday.

But now it was too late. The girl's inner eye had already seen the vision in its first form, and the preacher's exciting interpretation had etched in that first delusion. He had toyed with the spirits of nature, conjured a foe to help him, as he believed, and then all had gone over to the foe so that he now stood alone.

While Mary's glances were still riveted to the preacher on the rock, he turned, as a trial, to the mother and whispered:

"Help us out of this. Follow me out to the skerry and see that it is only a plaything, a birthday joke."

"I cannot judge in these things," answered the mother, "and will not judge. But I believe ... that you should be married soon."

It was an advice, sober, prosaic, but from this old lady, who was herself a mother, it sounded so prudent, especially as it agreed with his own sharp understanding, he found, however, the explanation somewhat simplified. And after the hint he had received he went straight to the girl, and placing his arm round her waist, looked into her eyes with a smile, which she could not fail to understand, and kissed her lips.

At the same moment the girl seemed released from the wizard up on the rock, and without resistance she clung to her friend's arm and followed him almost dancing to her mother's cottage.

"Thanks," whispered she as she glanced into his eyes, "I thank you that you—how shall I say it?"

"Delivered you from the hobgoblin," filled in Borg.

"Yes, from the goblins!"

And she turned to look at the passed danger.

"Do not look back!" warned her betrothed as he pulled Mary through the cottage door, while fragments from the preacher's flow of words were wafted down to him by the wind.

CHAPTER NINTH

When the commissioner awoke one morning eight days later after a night of perfect rest, his first clear thought was that he must leave the skerry, go anywhere to be alone, collect himself, find himself again. The preacher's arrival had the desired effect in one way, namely to "scare the mob," so that the tumult and rudeness ceased; but on the other hand the commissioner had not been able to enjoy the newly gained peace, for the exalted condition of his betrothed obliged him to keep her always in his sight. So he had accompanied her, and formally guarded her from morning to night; and by endless talk upon the questions of religion tried to keep her aloof from the preacher's seducing talk. All these matters which he had fought through in his youth, he now had to fight over again; and as new counter-proofs had been brought forth since then, he must reedit his whole apology. He improvised psychological explanations of God, faith, miracles, eternity and prayer; and he imagined that the girl understood him. But when after three days he found that she held the same position and that this matter of feeling lay outside the conversation, he dropped the whole subject and sought by awakening the erratical with its new sphere of feeling to drive away the first. But this he must soon give up, for to speak of that which should be lived only excited the girl's feelings still more, and he soon observed that there existed secret bridges between the religious ecstasy and the sensual one. From the love of Christ she ran so easily over to love of the man on that broad drawbridge the love of one's neighbor, and from abstinence one could trip over the footbridge renunciation to its neighbor penance; a little contention awakened the disagreeable feeling of debt which must be resolved in a lustful feeling—the reconciliation.

In his need he must first tear up the bridges, place her face to face with carnal desire, awake her avidity for the temporal, which he delineated in glowing colors. But when he had so succeeded and retreated at the last moment, there arose the coldness of disappointment in her, and when he then tried to cultivate her feelings, and lead them out to the thoughts of offspring and family, she withdrew and explained to him with determination, that she would not have any children. She could even use a phraseology which is current among a certain group of women, saying that she would not be the womb which he lacked; or carry his heirs, whom she must with danger to her life bring to the world for him.

Then he felt that nature had placed something between them which he did not yet understand. He consoled himself by imagining that it was only the butterfly's fear to lay its eggs and die, the flower's suspicion that its beauty would fade away with the setting of its seed.

But he had worn himself out in these eight days; his fine wheels of thought had begun to halt in their pivot holes, and the spring in the movement had become relaxed.

After such a day of exertion, when he would have worked for a couple of hours, his head was filled with trifles. Small words repeated themselves almost audibly to his ear; gesticulations and mannerisms, that she had used in their conversation, miraged themselves, suggestions how he ought to have answered now and then, and the recollection of an appropriate repartee which he had made gave him a momentary pleasure. In a word, his head was full of bagatelles, and now he observed that he had tried to straighten out a chaos; that he had conversed as a schoolboy instead of exchanging thoughts with a mature woman; that he had given out from himself masses of power without getting anything in return; that he had placed a dry sponge in the center of his soul, and that the sponge had swelled, while he himself had become dry.

He loathed everything; was tired, and longed to get out for a moment; for be free forever he could not.

When he now looked out through the window, about five o'clock in the morning, he saw only a dense fog which stood immovable notwithstanding a light breeze from the south. But far from being discouraged thereby, he felt attracted by this light, white obscurity, which would hide him and seclude him from the little fragment of the earth, where he now felt himself tied down.

The barometer and weather vane told him that there would be sunshine later in the day, and therefore he stepped into his boat without long preparations; only provided with chart and compass, on which, however, he did not intend to rely, as he could hear the whistling buoy three miles out at sea, just in the direction in which he would seek a landing.

He therefore put full sail on and was soon in the fog. Here, where the eyes were free from all impressions of color and form, he felt first the pleasure of isolation from the medley of an outer world. He had as it were his own atmosphere around him, soaring onwards alone as on another celestial body, in a medium, which was not air but water vapors, more agreeable and more refreshing to inhale than the exsiccating air with its superfluous seventy-nine per cent of nitrogen, which had remained without evident purpose, when the elements of the earth emerged from the chaos of gases.

It was not an obscure, smoke colored mist, through which the sunlight shone. It was light, like newly melted silver. Warm as wadding it lay healingly round his tired ego, protecting it from jars and pressure. He enjoyed for a moment this fully-awake rest of the senses, without sound, without color, without smell, and he felt how his pained head was soothed by this safety from contact with others. He was sure of not being questioned; needed not to answer, nor talk. The apparatus was standing still a moment, now that all conducts had been cut off; and so he began again to think clearly, systematically over all that had passed. But what he had just gone through was so inferior, so trifling, that he must first let the bilge water run off before the fresh came in.

In the distance he heard the whistling buoy cry at intervals of several minutes, and guided by the sound he steered his course right into the mist.

It became silent again, and only the splashing of the boat at the bow and the purling aft in the wake made him conscious that he was moving forwards. Immediately after he heard a sea gull cry in the fog, and at the same time it seemed to him that he heard the dashing and rustle about the prow of a boat coming abaft, and when he shouted to avoid the danger, he received no answer, but heard only the hissing of the water as when a boat is falling off.

After a moment of sailing he observed to windward the top of a mast with mainsail and jib, but nothing was to be seen of the hull or helmsman for they were hidden by the high swells of the sea.

This occurrence under other circumstances would not have disturbed his thought, but now it made an impression which was momentarily inexplicable, and which caused a fear, which was only one step removed from thoughts of persecution. The newly awakened suspicions were further aroused, when he shortly after caught sight of the haunting boat which shot by him on the lee side, as though painted on the mist, without his being able to get sight of the helmsman who was hidden by the mainsail.

He now hailed again, but instead of an answer he saw only the boat fall off so much that he observed that the stern sheet was empty; and then the apparition vanished in the all devouring mist.

Accustomed to free himself from fear of the unknown, he at once formed suggestions to explain it, but stopped finally at the question, why the helmsman hid himself, for that there must be a helmsman on a sailboat, which did not drift, he had no doubt. Why did he not want to be seen? In usual cases one does not want to be seen when going on a bad errand, wishing to be by oneself, or intending to frighten somebody. That the unknown sailor did not seek solitude was probable, as he held the same course, and if he would frighten an intrepid person, who was not susceptible to superstition, he could find some better way. However he held his course onward towards the buoy, incessantly, doggedly pursued by the haunting boat to the leaward, still at such a distance, that it appeared only as condensed fog.

Upon coming farther out where the wind was stronger the mist seemed to grow somewhat thinner, and like long silver bullion lay the fog-silvered sunlight on the crests of the waves. With the rising of the wind the crying of the buoy increased, and now he steered straight into the sunlight where the mist had parted, and ran at highest speed towards the buoy. There it lay swinging on the wave, cinnabar-red and shining, moist as a taken-out lung with its great black windpipe pointed slanting upwards into the air. And when the wave next time compressed the air, it raised a cry, as though the sea roared after the sun, the bottom chain clinked until it had run out, and now when the waves sank and sucked back the air, there arose a roaring out of the depth as from the giant proboscis of a drowning mastodon.

It was the first mighty impression he had had after a month of prattle and trivialities.

He admired the genius of man, that had hung this buoy on the insidious wolf, the sea, that it should itself caution its defenseless victims. He envied this hermit, who was permitted to lie fettered to a bottom rock in the middle of the sea and with its roaring to beat the wind and wave day and night so that it could be heard miles around; to be the first to give the voyager a welcome to his land; and to wail forth its pain and be heard.

The sight was quickly passed, and the demi-darkness again closed round the boat, which now fell off towards the skerry for which he had started to rest. For half an hour he lay on the same tack until he heard the breakers beating on the strand; then he fell off to leeward and soon sped into a cove where he could land.

It was the last skerry outside the channel and consisted of a couple of acres of red gneiss without any vegetation other than a few lichens on places where the drifting ice had not scraped the rocks perfectly clean. Only sea gulls and mews had their resting place here, and now as the commissioner moored his boat and stepped up on the highest point of the skerry they gave forth cries of alarm. Here he wrapped himself in his blanket, and placed himself in a well-polished crevice, which made him a comfortable arm chair. Here, without witness, without auditors, he gave himself up to thoughts and let them loose, confessed himself, scrutinized himself inwardly and heard his own voice from within. Only two months of rubbing against other beings, and he had through the law of accommodation lost the better part of himself, had become used to acquiescing to avoid disputes, drilled himself to yield to avoid a break, and developed into a characterless, malleable, sociable fellow; with his head full of bagatelles and being urged to speak in an abbreviated, simplified vocabulary, he felt that his scale of language had lost its semi-tones, and that his thoughts had been switching in on old worn rails, which led back to the ballast place. Old lax sophisms about respecting others' belief, that everybody will be happy in his grime, had crept back into him, and he had from pure politeness performed as a wizard and finally got a dangerous competitor on his hands, who every moment threatened to liberate the only soul he would unite with his own.

A smile crossed his lips when he thought of how he had fooled these people, who believed they had fooled him: and with a subdued voice he involuntarily ejaculated, "asses," which made him start, frightened at the thought that somebody might have heard him.

And so the silent thoughts continued: They believed they had caught his soul, and he had caught them! They imagined that he went their errands, and they did not know that he used them as a gymnastical exercise for his soul and to feel the enjoyment of power.

But these thoughts, which he had not dared to acknowledge before as his own, proclaimed themselves now as the children of his soul, big, healthy children, whom he acknowledged as his own. And what had he done otherwise than the others had willed to do, but could not! And this young woman, who believed she had turned a hand organ for herself, did not suspect that she was selected to the sounding board of his soul....

At this moment he jumped up, and interrupted the course of his dangerous thoughts, for he plainly heard footsteps on the flat rocks in the fog, and although he at once guessed that it was an error of hearing, caused by the solitude and fear of being taken unawares, he turned his steps towards his boat. But when he found it in good condition, he decided to go around the skerry to search for the other boat, for there must be one here, since another being had come over. He climbed on the strand bowlders and soon found behind the next point on the lee side a boat with the same sprit sail rig, as he had seen out on the sea. It was thus evident that the sailor must be on the skerry, and now the commissioner began a razzia in the fog, but always kept in the neighborhood of the boats, so that he could cut off retreat. When after having cried out several times without getting an answer he finally saw that he must leave the boats in order to catch the mysterious being, he went down to the boats, and took off the tillers to make every escape impossible, and so he went into the mist again. He heard steps before him and followed them by the sound, but soon heard them in an entirely other direction. Tired of the hunt and provoked by the fruitlessness of the endeavors, he decided to make a short ending to the scene, as he had no mind to wait until the fog had disappeared.

With as loud a voice as he could command, he cried:

"If there is anybody there, answer, for I am going to shoot."

"Lord Jesus! Do not shoot!" was heard in the fog.

The commissioner seemed to have heard this voice before, but a very long time ago, perhaps in his youth. And now when he approached the place, where the unknown stood, and saw its silhouette outlines gray to gray, there awoke old memories of these contours of a human being. The inward bowed knees, the arms all too long and the deformed left shoulder had a counterpart picture in memory's storage of a schoolmate in the third class in the high school. But when he caught sight of the colporteur's American whiskers appearing through the mist, the picture did not correspond longer, and he only saw the man upon the rock, who had applied the Revelation to the mirage.

With a raised cap and a frightened look he approached the commissioner, who did not feel himself safe with this sneaking pursuer, for in reality he carried no firearms. To disguise his uncertainty he assumed a sharp tone, when he asked:

"Why do you hide from me?"

"I have not hidden myself, the mist did it," answered the preacher softly and insinuatingly.

"But why were you not sitting at the tiller in your boat?"

"Hm, I did not know that one was obliged to sit on the stern sheet and therefore I sat to windward to keep the boat buoyant! For you see I had a sheet on the end of the tiller such as we use up in Roslagen."

The explanations were acceptable, but still did not answer the question, why he followed the commissioner out here. And he felt now, that here must be a close fight of souls, for it was not by chance that they had met out here.

"What do you seek out here so early in the morning?" the commissioner took up the broken thread.

"Yes, how shall I say it, I feel sometimes, as though I am in need of being alone with myself." The answer found a certain echo in the questioner, and at the expression of sympathy, which the preacher could read in his face, he added:

"For, you see, when I search myself in meditation and prayer and find myself, even so I find my God."

A naïve confession lay in these words, but the commissioner would not translate the involuntary heresy and draw such conclusions as: God is thus my own self or in my own self, because he held a certain esteem for this man, who could be alone with a fiction, and thus to a certain degree alone.

While the commissioner regarded the preacher's face, which was overgrown with long brown whiskers except on the upper lip as sailors and colporteurs usually wear them, probably to let out the spoken word and still resemble an apostle, he seemed to perceive a face behind this face, and annoyed by this labor which his memory had unconsciously undertaken, he asked bluntly:

"Have we not met each other before?"

"Yes, certainly we have," answered the preacher; "and you, sir commissioner, have, perhaps without knowing it, had such a great influence on my life, that it might be said you determined my path."

"Oh, no! Tell me about it, for I do not remember it!" said the commissioner, and placing himself on the rock, he invited the other to sit down.

"Yes, it is certainly about twenty-five years ago that we were together in the third class at school ...

"What was your name then?" interrupted the commissioner.

"At that time I was called Olsson and nick-named Ox-Olle, because my father was a farmer and I was dressed in homespun clothes."

"Olsson? Wait a moment! You could reckon best of us all."

"Yes, so it was! But there came a day, and it was the principal's fiftieth birthday. We had dressed the school with leaves and flowers, and after the lessons were ended someone proposed that the boys in our class should take the bouquets and carry them home to the principal's wife and daughter. I remember that you thought it unnecessary as the family of the principal had nothing to do with the school, but often encroached on its affairs in a disturbing manner. However, you went—and so did I. As I walked up the steps, you caught sight of my homespun clothes I presume, and noticing that I carried the nicest bouquet, you burst out: 'Is Saul also among the prophets!'"

"That I have entirely forgotten," said the commissioner very shortly.

"But I never forgot it," responded the preacher with trembling voice. "I had had it thrown in my face, that I was the scabby sheep, the intruder, who could never seriously extend homage to a woman of station. I quit school in order to devote myself to business and thereby gain money and fine clothes quickly, and learn manners and refined language. But I never gained a first class position. My exterior, my language, my appearance were against me. Then I began to go alone by myself, and in the solitude I found powers growing in me which I had never suspected. Clergy-man I had first thought to be, but now it was too late. The solitude gave me fears of human beings, and these fears of human beings made me entirely alone, so alone that I must search for my only acquaintance in God, and in the Saviour of the neglected, the scabby, the outcasts, Our Lord and Master Jesus Christ. This I have to thank you for!"

The last words were spoken with a certain bitterness, and the commissioner found it prudent to have fair play and broke out.

"Then you have gone on hating me for twenty-five years?"

"Excessively! But no longer since I have left the revenge to God."

"So, you have a God who revenges! Do you believe that He selects you for an implement, or do you think that he will let His electric spark strike me, or that He is going to blow over my boat or mark me with the smallpox?"

"The ways of the Lord are past knowing, but the ways of iniquity are manifest to everybody!"

"Do you see such gross iniquity in a boy's thoughtless talk, that God should persecute him a whole man's age? I wonder if that revenging God is not in your heart, where you lately insisted that you made appointments with Him?"

Snared by his own words the preacher could not longer control himself.

"You blaspheme! Now I know who you are! The apple does not fall far from the tree! Now I understand the whole craft of Satan. You build the Lord a house for a brothel as an offering to a harlot! You play wizard and magician to get people to fall down and worship the denier. But the Lord says: 'Blessed are they that do His commandments, that they may have right to the tree of life, and may enter in through the gates into the city. For without are dogs, and sorcerers, and whoremongers, and murderers, and idolators, and whosoever loveth and maketh a lie!'"

The last words he had thrown out with an incredible volubility and exaltation, without seeking for them elsewhere than on his lips, and just as though he feared a crushing answer which would weaken their impression, he turned his back and went down to his boat.

Meantime the mist had lifted, and the sea spread its pure blue water soothingly and acquittingly.

The commissioner remained awhile in his rocky chair, and meditated on the subjection of the soul under the same laws that govern the physical forces. The wind tore up a wave down on Esthonia; that wave chased another, and the last which transmitted the motion to the Swedish coast, removed a small pebble, which had afforded support to a rock; and after a man's age the results would be shown in the tumbling down of the rock; and this would be followed by a new undermining of the uncovered rock which now lay exposed.

His brain twenty-five years ago had thrown out what was to him a meaningless word, that word had penetrated an ear and put a brain into such a strong agitation that it still vibrated after having given direction to the whole life of a human being. And who knows, if this innervation current had not again been reënforced by contact and friction, so that it once more with invigorated force would unload itself and bring other counter forces into action, producing disturbances and destruction in the lives of others!

Now when the preacher's boat sped into sight round the point, bearing down to East Skerry, the commissioner got such a sure feeling that there sat a foe who was marching down to his forts, that he arose and went to his boat, to go home and place himself on the defensive.

When he was well seated in the boat and calmed by the gentle rocking of the waves, he was seized by a strong desire to still tarry a few hours on the sea in perfect solitude and let the last disquieting impressions blow away.

Why should he even fear this man's influence on his betrothed, as she would still show herself unsuited to a union for life, if she sunk back to a level with the uneducated. But nevertheless it grieved him that there existed this fear. It reminded of the behavior of those men, who were living in the fear of losses and which is stamped with the name jealousy. Was it the feeling of an inability to keep, which betrayed a frailness in him? Or was it not rather a frailness in her not to be able to retain a hold, when the balloon should ascend, leaving the sheet anchor religion, and throwing away the sacks of ballast, the feelings? Certainly the latter would have been the better way, notwithstanding they had got a certain authority with those, who had nothing to lose.

He now tacked and lay oft the skerry to south-east, a point from which he had not seen his prison before. Highest up on the hill he saw the skeleton of the unfinished chapel with its staging, but he did not see any laborers, although the morning was far advanced. He did not even notice any boats out fishing. There was on the whole a great stillness on the skerry, and no people were to be seen even by the custom house cottage or the pilots' outlook. He turned and stood on another tack to sail round the skerry. But when he came outside of the same, the sea became higher and he gained only a little by the tack, so it took a whole hour before he could scud down to the harbor. Now he saw the cottage where the ladles lived, and as soon as he had sped by the point of the harbor, he observed all the inhabitants of the island gathered round the house, on the porch of which the preacher stood bare-headed, speaking.

With a clear insight, that here impended a battle, he landed, furled the sail and went up to his chamber.

Through the open window he heard the people singing a hymn.

He would have liked now to sit down to his work, but the thought that maybe he would soon be interrupted, hindered him from beginning it.

A painful half hour passed during which he learned more plainly than ever before, that he did not own himself longer, did not rule over two square meters, on which he could lock himself up to avoid the touch of souls, which like barnacles on the whale's hide fastened themselves there to finally by their mass impede his motion.

The door opened now after a short knock, and Miss Mary stood before him, with a new expression in her face, resembling pained reproach and superior compassion.

She came besides with the feeling of being backed by the universal opinion of the people, and therefore felt strong against this solitary man.

He let her speak first so as to have a point to start from.

"Where have you been?" commenced she with an attempt not to sound too arrogant.

"I have been out for a sail!"

"Without inviting me?"

"I did not know that you were particular about that!"

"Yes, you did know it, but surely you would be alone with your dark thoughts!"

"Perhaps!"

"Certainly! Don't you think that I have observed it? Don't you believe that I have seen how you are becoming tired of me?"

"Have I proved tired of you, I who follow you day in and day out, though on a morning, when you usually are asleep, I took the liberty to sail for a couple of hours? But maybe you have become tired of learning to fish, for I have not seen you once out at sea."

"It is not the time to fish now as you well know," answered Miss Mary fully persuaded that she spoke the truth.

"No, I see that!" interposed the commissioner with the purpose of approaching the very mine, with the risk of an explosion. "I see how the people abandon their work to listen to sermons...."

Now an eruption was ready.

"Was it not you, who wished to have a church out here?"

"Yes, Sundays. Six days shall work be done, but on the seventh go to church. Here no work is done any day, but there is preaching every day. And instead of making themselves and families an honest income here on this earth, they all race after such an uncertain thing as heaven. The very laborers on the chapel have left their work, so that we shall never see a roof on that church, and I expect every moment to hear that poverty has broken out, so that we must be prepared for charity...."

"That is just what I was going to speak about," interrupted Miss Mary, glad to have avoided taking up the subject herself, still overlooking that it was exhausted in advance by the commissioner.

"I have not come here to exercise charity; I am here to teach the people how to get along without charity."

"You are at the bottom a heartless person, although you appear to be otherwise."

"And you would show your big heart at my expense without being willing to offer a yard of the trimming from your gown."

"I hate you! I hate you!" burst out the girl with a hideous expression on her face. "Surely I know who you are, I know all, all, all!"

"Well, why not leave me then?" asked the commissioner in a steel cold tone.

"I shall leave you! I shall!" cried she and approached the door, but without going.

The commissioner, who had taken a seat at the table, took up a pen and began to write to avoid all temptation of taking up a conversation, which was ended, as everything had been said.

He heard, as in a dream, sobbing and how the door closed, how steps sounded in the hall, and squeakings of the stairs.

When he awoke and read the paper, over which his pen had been flying, he saw that the word Pandora was written there so many times, that he could calculate that a long while had passed since the scene was ended.

But the word struck him, and his inquisitiveness awoke as to its meaning, which he during the lapse of years had forgotten, although he had a faint memory about it from the mythology. He took his dictionary from the table, opened it and read:

"Pandora, the Eve of the ancients, the earth's first woman. Sent by the gods for revenge on account of Prometheus having stolen the fire, and given it to human beings, with all its misfortunes, after which they inhabitated the earth. Represented in poesy under the form of something good, which is an evil illusion, a creation, intended for deceit and surprise."

This was mythology like the tale of Eve, who debarred human beings from Paradise. But when the tale was confirmed from century to century and he had learned himself, how the presence of a woman on this little piece of earth out in the sea had already made dusk, where he would spread light, then there must have lain an idea in the Hellenic and Jewish poet's figurative style.

That she hated him, that he felt and knew, as she took sides with the low crowd down there, but, nevertheless he would not doubt her love, even if this love only consisted of the dandelion's attraction to the sun to borrow beams of light for a poor imitation of the yellow disk. But there existed besides something low as in that which is base, something evil with the desire to injure, a battle for power, which was out of place, as his aim was a victory over the irrational. To tell her this, yes, that would be to break the relation when this depended on his submission or at least his acknowledging her superiority, and this would be to build a life on a white lie, which would grow, wax and perhaps smother all possibility of an honest cohabitation. Just in this lay the deepest reason of all the relative misfortunes of marriage, that the man goes into the union sometimes with a willful lie, often the prey of an hallucination, when he fancies his ego into the being whom he would assimulate. Of this illusion; second sight, Mill had become infatuated to such a degree, that he believed he got all his sharp thoughts from the simple woman whom he had lifted up to himself.