Half an hour later the commissioner sat in the little company's sailboat with his own dory in tow, he was already installed in the position of guide to the two ladies, who had for their health sought a resort for the summer on Fish Skerry and would consequently be his neighbors. The conversation ran agreeably between the three new acquaintances with a somewhat precipitate ardor to compete and show their readiness and best side which is called forth in all who meet for the first time. The one who made the least effort was the elderly lady, who had introduced herself as mother of the young beauty. She seemed to have reached a perfect harmony and resignation, worn off all corners and was living in her memories and semi-indifferently regarding what was going on around her, expecting nothing from others, prepared for everything that life could offer her of good or ill and charming with her even mild disposition.
An affinity had already arisen between the young man and the young woman, and she seemed to enjoy receiving, and he, who had so long waited to give, felt his powers growing now that the long-accumulated surplus had found an outlet. And he gave for half an hour with lavish hand from all he had stored of information that could be of interest to them who were unacquainted with the conditions which would surround them for awhile. He delineated all the resources of the skerry and its deficiencies, depicted the life very alluringly as it at this moment appeared to him to become, now when he was no longer alone. And the young woman, who had never seen the skerry, received her first actual impression of the same from his description. In imagination she saw the red cottage where she was going to live with her mother, so neat and cosy just as he wished that she would see it in order to feel at home and tarry there. While he spoke it seemed to him as though he received in return something good and strong, as though he heard new thoughts, new points of view spoken by her lips which stood half open, not as though to swallow what he reached her, but as though they spoke themselves, and when her two big, faithful eyes looked admiringly and surprisedly up to him he believed that all he said was true and felt with rising esteem for himself new powers awakened, and old ones growing in strength and tenacity. He felt so really thankful when the boat touched land, just as after having received benefices when in need, that he involuntarily thanked them heartily as he helped the ladies out of the boat and carried their heavy valises on shore.
The young girl returned the politeness with "not at all," but as though out of her treasures she had really given a trifle compared with what she had in reserve.
When the commissioner had escorted the ladies to their new home which turned out to be Oman's cottage, the young girl broke out into a flow of rapture, being still under the influence of Borg's enchanting description. The dilapidated house had something unusually picturesque in its exterior, for there was not a single straight line. Storms, salt water, frost and rain had destroyed every straight outline, and since the mortar had fallen from the chimney it looked like a big tufa. Still more agreeably surprising was the really homelike interior with its old-fashioned comfort. The two rooms were located one on each side of the hall, with a kitchen between them at the end; the best room was spacious, with dark brown paper, which from smoke and age had assumed a pleasing, quiet, even brown tone with which every color harmonized. The low ceiling, which left no vacant space to be peopled by fancies, showed the beams on which rested the attic floor. Two small windows, with panes about half a foot square discolored by age, allowed a view of the harbor and the sea, and the mass of light from outside was pleasantly subdued by the white lace curtains which protected against glances from outside without shutting out the daylight, and hung like light summer clouds down over balsam and geraniums in English faience mugs with Queen Victoria and Lord Nelson in yellow and green. The furniture comprising a big white folding table, a Gustavian bedstead on which were piled numerous eiderdown beds, a white painted wooden sofa, a clock of Mora make that struck the hours, a bureau of birch with its mirror frame veneered with the root of the alder, draped with a bridal veil and loaded with porcelain knickknacks. On the bureau stood a mounted parrot under a glass case, and on the wall hung colored lithographic pictures from the Old Testament, among which the two over the bed seemed to have been placed with questionable purpose, one representing Samson and Delilah in a very unveiled delineation, the other was Joseph and Potiphar's wife. In one corner was an open fireplace which occupied considerable space and would have been dreadful had not the black gap been covered by a white draw curtain.
It was homelike, idyllic and cleanly.
The other chamber was like the first, but had two beds and a commode; the floor was covered with a rag carpet which with its variegated colors formed an album of memories, from grandfather's jacket, grandmother's blouse, mother's cotton gown and father's pilot uniform. There were the red garters of the girls and the yellow gallows of the land-wehr boys, blue bathing suits of the summer guests, beaver and corduroy, cotton and baize, wool and crash, from all fashions and wardrobes, poor men's and rich men's.
In this room stood a big white cupboard with fancy paintings on the door panels, framed in ivy, wreaths painted with mosaic bronze, wonderful small landscapes with dark blue coves, banks of rushes and sailboats, trees of unknown species, from paradise or the carboniferous age, turbulent seas with waves straight as furrows in a potato field, a lighthouse like a column on a rocky ledge, everything as naïve as a child's simple comprehension of rich nature's infinite variety of shapes and colors, which only the highly trained eye can discern.
In all this old-fashioned simplicity lay the essential part of the cure for a tired brain, which would seek rest in the past. The worn movement of the watch would lay unwound awhile and let the spring be relieved of tension to regain its spent powers. The association with the lower classes which did not entice to battle for the morsel of power, but themselves involuntarily every day and hour reminded those of the upper class of their dearly earned position, would diminish the stimulus and quiet those desirous of power by the thought that there already existed passed by periods.
The commissioner had already prepared the minds of the visitors to see and know all this, and neither of the ladies tired of expressing their satisfaction with the new quarters and were so occupied by investigating the location that they did not observe that their guide had retreated to leave them undisturbed.