WITH STRANGERS
One of his bold dreams had been fulfilled: he had found a situation for the summer. Why had he not found one sooner? He had not dared to hope for it, and, therefore, had never sought it, from fear of meeting with a refusal. A disappointed hope was the worst thing he could imagine. But now, all at once, Fortune shook her cornucopia over him; the post he had obtained was in the finest situation that he knew—the Stockholm archipelago—on the most beautiful of all the islands, Sotaskär. He now liked aristocrats. His step-mother's ill-treatment of him, his relations' perpetual watching to discover arrogance in him, where there was only superiority of intelligence, generosity, and self-sacrifice, the attempts of his volunteer comrades to oppress him, had driven him out of the class to which he naturally belonged. He did not think or feel any more as they did; he had another religion, and another view of life. The well-regulated behaviour and confident bearing of his aristocratic friends satisfied his æsthetic sense; his education had brought him nearer to them, and alienated him from the lower classes. The aristocrats seemed to him less proud than the middle class. They did not oppress, but prized culture and talent; they were democratic in their behaviour towards him, for they treated him as an equal, whereas his own relatives regarded him as a subordinate and inferior. Fritz, for example, who was the son of a miller in the country, visited at the house of a lord-in-waiting, and played in a comedy with his sons before the director of the Theatre Royal, who offered him an engagement. No one asked whose son he was. But when Fritz came to a dance at John's house, he was carefully inspected behind and before, and great satisfaction was caused when some relative imparted the information that his father had once been a miller's servant.
John had become aristocratic in his views, without, however, ceasing to sympathise with the lower classes, and since about the year 1865 the nobility were fairly liberal in politics, condescending and popular for the time, he let himself be duped.
Fritz began to give him instructions how he should behave. One should not be cringing, he said, but be yielding; should not say all that one thought, for no one wished to know that; it was good if one could say polite things, without indulging in too gross flattery; one should converse, but not argue, above all things not dispute, for one never got the best of it. Fritz was certainly a wise youth. John thought the advice terribly hard, but stored it up in his mind. What he wanted to get was a salary, and perhaps the chance of a tour abroad to Rome or Paris with his pupils; that was the most he hoped for from his noble friends, and what he intended to aim at.
One Sunday he visited the wife of the baron, his future employer, as she was in the town. She seemed like the portrait of a mediæval lady; she had an aquiline nose, great brown eyes, and curled hair, which hung over her temples. She was somewhat sentimental, talked in a drawling manner, and with a nasal twang. John did not think her aristocratic, and the house was a poorer one than his own home, but they had, besides, an estate and a castle. However, she pleased him, for she had a certain resemblance to his mother. She examined him, talked with him, and let her ball of wool fall. John sprang up and gave it to her, with a self-satisfied air which seemed to say, "I can do that, for I have often picked up ladies' handkerchiefs." Her opinion of him after the examination was a favourable one, and he was engaged. On the morning of the day on which they were to leave the city he called again. The royal secretary, for so the gentleman of the house was called, was standing in his shirt-sleeves before the mirror and tying his cravat. He looked proud and melancholy, and his greeting was curt and cold. John took a seat uninvited, and tried to commence a conversation, but was not particularly successful in keeping it up, especially as the secretary turned his back to him, and gave only short answers.
"He is not an aristocrat," thought John; "he is a boor."
The two were antipathetic to each other, as two members of the lower class, who looked askance at each other in their clamber laboriously upwards.
The carriage was before the door; the coachman was in livery, and stood with his hat in his hand. The secretary asked John whether he would sit in the carriage or on the box, but in such a tone that John determined to be polite and to accept the invitation to sit on the box. So he sat next the coachman. As the whip cracked, and the horses started, he had only one thought, "Away from home! Out into the world!"
At the first halting-place John got down from the box and went to the carriage window. He asked in an easy, polite, perhaps somewhat confidential tone, how his employers were. The baron answered curtly, in a tone in a way which cut off all attempts at a nearer approach. What did that mean?
They took their seats again. John lighted a cigar, and offered the coachman one. The latter, however, whispered in reply that he dared not smoke on the box. He then pumped the coachman, but cautiously, regarding the baron's friends, and so on. Towards evening they reached the estate. The house stood on a wooded hill, and was a white stone building with outside blinds. The roof was flat, and its rounded comers gave the building a somewhat Italian aspect, but the blinds, with their white and red borders, were elegance itself. John, with his three pupils, was installed in one wing, which consisted of an isolated building with two rooms; the other of which was occupied by the coachman.
After eight days John discovered that he was a servant, and in a very unpleasant position. His father's man-servant had a better room all to himself; and for several hours of the day was master of his own person and thoughts. But John was not. Night and day he had to be with the boys, teach them, and play and bathe with them. If he allowed himself a moment's liberty, and was seen about, he was at once asked, "Where are the children?" He lived in perpetual anxiety lest some accident should happen to them. He was responsible for the behaviour of four persons—his own and that of his three pupils. Every criticism of them struck him. He had no companion of his own age with whom he could converse. The steward was almost the whole day at work, and hardly ever visible.
But there were two compensations: the scenery and the sense of being free from the bondage in his parent's house. The baroness treated him confidentially, almost in a motherly way; she liked discussing literature with him. At such times he felt on the same level with her, and superior to her in point of erudition, but as soon as the secretary came home he sank to the position of children's nurse again.
The scenery of the islands had for him a greater charm than the banks of the Mälar, and his magic recollections of Drottningholm faded. In the past year he had climbed up a hill in Tyreso with the volunteer sharpshooters. It was covered with a thick fir-wood. They crawled through bilberry and juniper bushes till they reached a steep, rocky plateau. From this they viewed a panorama which thrilled him with delight: water and islands, water and islands stretched away into infinite distance. Although born in Stockholm he had never seen the islands, and did not know where he was. The view made a deep impression on him, as if he had rediscovered a land which had appeared to him in his fairest dreams or in a former existence—in which he believed, but about which he knew nothing. The troop of sharpshooters drew off into the wood, but John remained upon the height and worshipped—that is the right word. The attacking troop approached and fired; the bullets whistled about his ears; he hid himself, but he could not go away. That was his land-scape and proper environment—barren, rugged gray rocks surrounding wide stormy bays, and the endless sea in the distance as a background. He remained faithful to this love, which could not be explained by the fact that it was his first love. Neither the Alps of Switzerland, nor the olive groves of the Mediterranean, nor the steep coast of Normandy, could dethrone this rival from his heart.
Now he was in Paradise, though rather too deep in it; the shore of Sotaskär consisted of green pasturage overshadowed by oaks, and the bay opened out to the fjord in the far distance. The water was pure and salt; that was something new. In one of his excursions with his rifle, the dogs, and the boys, he came one fine sunny day down to the water's edge. On the other side of the bay stood a castle, a large, old-fashioned stone edifice. He had discovered that his employer only rented the estate.
"Who lives in the castle?" he asked the boys.
"Uncle Wilhelm," they answered.
"What is his title?"
"Baron X."
"Do you never go there?"
"Oh, yes; sometimes."
So there was a castle here with a baron! John's walks now regularly took the direction of the shore, from which he could see the castle. It was surrounded by a park and garden. At home they had no garden.
One fine day the baroness told him that he must accompany the boys on the morrow to the baron's, and remain there for the day. She and her husband would stay at home; "he would therefore represent the house," she added jestingly.
Then he asked what he was to wear. He could go in his summer suit, she said, take his black coat on his arm, and change for dinner in the little tapestry-room on the ground floor. He asked whether he should wear gloves. She laughed, "No, he needed no gloves." He dreamt the whole night about the baron, the castle, and the tapestry-room. In the morning a hay-waggon came to the house to fetch them. He did not like this; it reminded him of the parish clerk's school.
And so they went off. They came to a long avenue of lime trees, drove into the courtyard, and stopped before the castle. It was a real castle, and looked as if it had been built in the Middle Ages. From an arbour there came the well-known click of a draught-board. A middle-aged gentleman in an ill-fitting, holland suit came out. His face was not aristocratic, but rather of the middle-class type, with a seaman's beard of a gray-yellow colour. He also wore earrings. John held his hat in his hand and introduced himself. The baron greeted him in a friendly way, and bade him enter the arbour. Here stood a table with a draught-board, by which sat a little old man who was very amiable in his manner. He was introduced as the pastor of a small town. John was given a glass of brandy, and asked about the Stockholm news. Since he was familiar with theatrical gossip and similar things, he was listened to with greater attention. "There it is," he thought, "the real aristocrats are much more democratic than the sham ones."
"Oh!" said the Baron. "Pardon me, Mr.——, I did not catch the name. Yes, that is it. Are you related to Oscar Strindberg?"
"He is my father."
"Good heavens! is it possible? He is an old friend of mine from my youthful days, when I was pilot on the Strengnas."
John did not believe his ears. The baron had been pilot on a steamer! Yes, indeed, he had. But he wished to hear about his friend Oscar. John looked around him, and asked himself if this really was the baron. The baroness now appeared; she was as simple and friendly as the baron. The bell rang for dinner. "Now we will get something to drink," said the baron. "Come along."
John at first made a vain attempt to put on his frock-coat behind a door in the hall, but finally succeeded, as the baroness had said that he ought to wear it. Then they entered the dining-hall. Yes, that was a real castle; the floor was paved with stone, the ceiling was of carved wood; the window-niches were so deep that they seemed to form little rooms; the fire place could hold a barrow-load of wood; there was a three-footed piano, and the walls were covered with dark paintings.
John felt quite at home during dinner. In the afternoon he played with the baron, and drank toddy. All the courteous usages he had expected were in evidence, and he was well pleased with the day when it was over. As he went down the long avenue, he turned round and contemplated the castle. It looked now less stately and almost poverty stricken. It pleased him all the better, though it had been more romantic to look at it as a fairy-tale castle from the other shore. Now he had nothing more to which he could look up. But he himself, on the other hand, was no more below. Perhaps, after all, it is better to have something to which one can look up.
When he came home, he was examined by the baroness. "How did he like the baron?" John answered that he was pleasant and condescending. He was also prudent enough to say nothing of the baron's friendship with his father. "They will learn it anyhow," he thought. Meanwhile he already felt more at home, and was no more so timid. One day he borrowed a horse, but he rode it so roughly that he was not allowed to borrow one again. Then he hired one from a peasant. It looked so fine to sit high on a horse and gallop; he felt his strength grow at the same time.
His illusions were dispelled, but to feel on the same level with those about him, without wishing to pull anyone down, that had something soothing about it. He wrote a boasting letter to his brother at home, but received an answer calculated to set him down. Since he was quite alone, and had no one with whom he could talk, he wrote letters in diary-form to his friend Fritz. The latter had obtained a post with a merchant by the Mälar Lake, where there were young girls, music, and good eating. John sometimes wished to be in his place. In his diary-letter he tried to idealise the realities around him, and succeeded in arousing his friend's envy.
The story of the baron's acquaintance with John's father spread, and the baroness felt herself bound to speak ill of her brother. John had, nevertheless, intelligence enough to perceive that here there was something to do with the tragedy of an estate in tail. Since he had nothing to do with the matter, he took no trouble to inquire into it.
During a visit which John paid to the pastor's house, the assistant pastor happened to hear of his idea of being a pastor himself. Since the senior pastor, on account of old age and weakness, no longer preached, his assistant was John's only acquaintance. The assistant found the work heavy, so he was very glad to come across young students who wished to make their debuts as preachers. He asked John whether he would preach. Upon John's objecting that he was not a student yet, he answered, "No matter." John said he would consider.
The assistant did not let him consider long. He said that many students and collegians had preached here before, and that the church had a certain fame since the actor Knut Almlöf had preached here in his youth. John had seen him act as Menelaus in The Beautiful Helen, and admired him. He consented to his friend's request, began to search for a text, borrowed some homilies, and promised to have his trial sermon ready by Friday. So, then, only a year after his Confirmation, he would preach in the pulpit, and the baron and the ladies and gentlemen would sit as devout hearers! So soon at the goal, without a clerical examination—yes, even without his final college examination! They would lend him a gown and bands; he would pray the Lord's Prayer and read the Commandments! His head began to swell, and he walked home feeling a foot taller, with the full consciousness that he was no longer a boy.
But as he came home he began to think seriously. He was a free-thinker. Is it honourable to play the hypocrite? No, no. But must he then give up the sermon? That would be too great a sacrifice. He felt ambitious, and perhaps he would be able to sow some seeds of free-thought, which would spring up later. Yes, but it was dishonest. With his old egotistic morality he always regarded the motive of the actor, not the beneficial or injurious effect of the action. It was profitable for him to preach; it would not hurt others to hear something new and true. But it was not honest. He could not get away from that objection. He took the baroness into his confidence.
"Do you believe that preachers believe all they say?" she asked.
That was the preachers' affair, but John could not act a double part. Finally, he walked to the assistant pastor's house, and consulted him. It vexed the assistant to have to hear about it.
"Well," he said, "but you believe in God, I suppose?"
"Yes, certainly I do."
"Very well! don't speak of Christ. Bishop Wallin never mentioned the name of Christ in his sermons. But don't bother any more. I don't want to hear about it."
"I will do my best," said John, glad to have saved his honesty and his prospect of distinction at the same time. They had a glass of wine, and the matter was settled.
There was something intoxicating for him in sitting over his books and homilies, and in hearing the baron ask for him, and the servant answer: "The tutor is writing his sermon."
He had to expound the text: "Jesus said, Now is the son of man glorified, and God is glorified in him. If God be glorified in him, God shall glorify him in himself, and shall straightway glorify him."
That was all. He turned the sentence this way and that, but could find no meaning in it. "It is obscure," he thought. But it touched the most delicate point—the Deity of Christ. If he had the courage to explain away that, he would certainly have done something important. The prospect enticed him, and with Theodore Parker's help he composed a prose poem on Christ as the Son of God, and then put forward very cautiously the assertion that we are all God's sons, but that Christ is His chosen and beloved Son, whose teaching we must obey. But that was only the introduction, and the gospel is read after the introduction. About what, then, should he preach? He had already pacified his conscience by plainly stating his views regarding the Deity of Christ. He glowed with excitement, his courage grew, and he felt that he had a mission to fulfil. He would draw his sword against dogmas, against the doctrine of election and pietism.
When he came to the place where, after reading the text, he ought to have said, "The text we have read gives us occasion for a short time to consider the following subject," he wrote: "Since the text of the day gives no further occasion for remark, we will, for a short time, consider what is of greater importance." And so he dealt with God's work in conversion. He made two attacks: one on the custom of preaching from the text, and the second against the Church's teaching on the subject of grace.
First he spoke of conversion as a serious matter, which required a sacrifice, and depended on the free-will of man (he was not quite clear about that). He ignored the doctrine of election, and finally flung open for all the doors of the kingdom of heaven: "Come unto me all ye that are weary and heavy laden." "To-day shalt thou be with me in Paradise." That is the gospel of Christ for all, and no one is to believe that the key of heaven is committed to him (that was a hit at the pietists), but that the doors of grace are open for all without exception.
He was very much in earnest, and felt like a missionary. On Friday he betook himself to the church, and read certain passages of his sermon from the pulpit. He chose the most harmless ones. Then he repeated the prayers, while the assistant pastor stood under the choir gallery and called to him, "Louder! Slower!" He was approved, and they had a glass of wine together.
On Sunday the church was full of people. John put on his gown and bands in the vestry. For a moment he felt it comical, but then was seized with anxiety. He prayed to the only true God for help, now that he was to draw the sword against age-long error, and when the last notes of the organ were silent, he entered the pulpit with confidence.
Everything went well. But when he came to the place, "Since the text of the day gives no occasion for remark," and saw a movement among the faces of the congregation, which looked like so many white blurs, he trembled. But only for a moment. Then he plucked up courage and read his sermon in a fairly strong and confident voice. When he neared the end, he was so moved by the beautiful truths which he proclaimed, that he could scarcely see the writing on the paper for tears. He took a long breath, and read through all the prayers, till the organ began and he left the pulpit. The pastor thanked him, but said one should not wander from the text; it would be a bad look-out if the Church Consistory heard of it. But he hoped no one had noticed it. He had no fault to find with the contents of the sermon. They had dinner at the pastor's house, played and danced with the girls, and John was the hero of the day. The girls said, "It was a very fine sermon, for it was so short." He had read much too fast, and had left out a prayer.
In the autumn John returned with the boys to the town, in order to live with them and look after their school-work. They went to the Clara School, so that, like a crab, he felt he was going backwards. The same school, the same headmaster, the same malicious Latin teacher. John worked conscientiously with his pupils, heard their lessons, and could swear that they had been properly learned. None the less, in the report books which they took home, and which their father read, it was stated that such and such lessons had not been learned.
"That is a lie," said John.
"Well, but it is written here," answered the boys' father.
It was hard work, and he was preparing at the same time for his own examination. In the autumn holidays they went back to the country. They sat by the stove and cracked nuts, a whole sackful, and read the Frithiof Saga, Axel, and Children of the Lord's Supper.[1] The evenings were intolerably long. But John discovered a new steward, who was treated almost like a servant. This provoked John to make friends with him, and in his room they brewed punch and played cards. The baroness ventured to remark that the steward was not a suitable friend for John.
"Why not?" asked the latter.
"He has no education."
"That is not so dangerous."
She also said that she preferred that the tutor should spend his time with the family in the evening, or, at any rate, stay in the boys' room. He chose the latter, for it was very stuffy in the drawing-room, and he was tired of the reading aloud and the conversation. He now stayed in his own and the boys' room. The steward came there, and they played their game of cards. The boys asked to be allowed to take a hand. Why should they not? John had played whist at home with his father and brothers, and the innocent recreation had been regarded as a means of education for teaching self-discipline, carefulness, attention, and fairness; he had never played for money; each dishonest trick was immediately exposed, untimely exultation at a victory silenced, sulkiness at a defeat ridiculed.
At that time the boys' parents made no objections, for they were glad that the youngsters were occupied. But they did not like their being on intimate terms with the steward. John had, in the summer, formed a little military troop from his pupils and the workmen's children, and drilled them in the open air. But the baroness forbade this close intercourse with the latter. "Each class should keep to itself," she said.
But John could not understand why that should be, since in the year 1865 class distinctions had been done away with.
In the meantime a storm was brewing, and a mere trifle was the occasion of its outbreak.
One morning the baron was storming about a pair of his driving-gloves which had disappeared. He suspected his eldest boy. The latter denied having taken them, and accused the steward, specifying the time when he said he had taken them. The steward was called.
"You have taken my driving-gloves, sir! What is the meaning of this?" said the baron.
"No, sir, I have not."
"What! Hugo says you did."
John, who happened to be present, stepped forward unsolicited, and said, "Then Hugo lies. He himself has had the gloves."
"What do you say?" said the baron, motioning to the steward to go.
"I say the truth."
"What do you mean, sir, by accusing my son in the presence of a servant?"
"Mr. X. is not a servant, and, besides, he is innocent."
"Yes, very innocent—playing cards together and drinking with the boys! That's a nice business, eh?"
"Why did you not mention it before? Then you would have found out that I do not drink with the boys."
"'You,' you d—d hobbledehoy! What do you mean by calling me 'you.'"
"Mr. Secretary can look for another 'hobbledehoy' to teach his boys, since Mr. Secretary is too covetous to engage a grown person." So saying, John departed.
On the next day they were to return to the town, for the Christmas holidays were at an end. So he would have to go home again—back into hell, to be despised and oppressed, and it would be a thousand times worse after he had boasted of his new situation, and compared it with his parents' house to the disadvantage of the latter. He wept for anger, but after such an insult there was no retreat.
He was summoned to the baroness, but said she must wait awhile. Then a messenger came again for him. In a sullen mood he went up to her. She was quite mild, and asked him to stay some days with them till they had found another tutor. He promised, since she had asked him so pressingly. She said she would drive with the boys into the town.
The sleigh came to the door, and the baron stood by, and said, "You can sit on the box."
"I know my place," said John. At the first halting-place the baroness asked him to get into the sleigh, but he would not.
They stayed in the town eight days. In the meanwhile John had written a somewhat arrogant letter, in an independent tone, home, which did not please his father, although he had flattered him in it. "I think you should have first asked if you could come home," he said. In that he was right. But John had never thought otherwise of his parents' house than of an hotel, where he could get board and lodging without paying.
So he was home again. Through an incomprehensible simplicity he had let himself be persuaded to continue to go through his former pupils' school-work with them, though he received nothing for it. One evening Fitz wanted to take him to a café.
"No," said John, "I must give some lessons."
"Where?"
"To the Secretary's boys."
"What! haven't you done with them yet?"
"No, I have promised to help them till they get a new teacher."
"What do you get for it?"
"What do I get? I have had board and lodging."
"Yes, but what do you get now, when you don't board and lodge with them?"
"Hm! I didn't think of that."
"You are a lunatic—teaching rich peoples' children gratis. Well, you come along with me, and don't cross their threshold again."
John had a struggle with himself on the pavement. "But I promised them."
"You should not promise. Come now and write a letter withdrawing your offer."
"I must go and take leave of them."
"It is not necessary. They promised you a present at Christmas, but you got nothing; and now you let yourself be treated like a servant. Come now and write."
He was dragged to the café. The waitress brought paper and ink, and, at his friend's dictation, he wrote a letter to the effect that, in consequence of his approaching examination, he would have no more leisure for teaching.
He was free! "But I feel ashamed," he said.
"Why?"
"Because I have been impolite."
"Rubbish! Waitress, bring half a punch."
[1] Three poems by Tegner—the last translated by Longfellow.