The Son of a Servant

by August Strindberg

At home they had also stereoscopic pictures from Paris to show, and they now seemed to live in Paris. They were as familiar with the Tuileries and the Arc de Triomphe as with the castle and statue of Gustavus Adolphus. The proverb that a father "lives in his children" really seemed to be justified. Life now lay open before the youth; the pressure he had formerly been subjected to had diminished, and perhaps he would have traversed a smooth and easy path through life if a change of circumstances had not thrown him back.

His mother had passed through twelve confinements, and consequently had become weak. Now she was obliged to keep her bed, and only rose occasionally. She was more given to moods than before, and contradictions would set her cheek aflame. The previous Christmas she had fallen into a violent altercation with her brother regarding the pietist preachers. While sitting at the dinner-table, the latter had expressed his preference for Fredman's Epistles as exhibiting deeper powers of thought than the sermons of the pietists. John's mother took fire at this, and had an attack of hysteria. That was only a symptom.

Now, during the intervals when she got up, she began to mend the children's linen and clothes, and to clear out all the drawers. She often talked to John about religion and other high matters. One day she showed him some gold rings. "You boys will get these, when Mamma is dead," she said. "Which is mine?" asked John, without stopping to think about death. She showed him a plaited girl's ring with a heart. It made a deep impression on the boy, who had never possessed anything of gold, and he often thought of the ring.

About that time a nurse was hired for the children. She was young and good-looking, taciturn, and smiled in a critical sort of way. She had served in a count's mansion in the Tradgardsgatan, and probably thought that she had come into a poverty-stricken house. She was supposed to look after the children and the servant-maids, but was on almost intimate terms with the latter. There were now three servants—a housekeeper, a man-servant, and a girl from Dalecarlia. The girls had their lovers, and a cheerful life went on in the great kitchen, where polished copper and tin vessels shone brightly. There was eating and drinking, and the boys were invited in. They were called "sir," and their health was drunk. Only the man-servant was not there; he thought it was "vulgar" to live like that, while the mistress of the house was ill. The home seemed to be undergoing a process of dissolution, and John's father had had many difficulties with the servants since his mother had been obliged to keep her bed. But she remained the servants' friend till death, and took their side by instinct, but they abused her partiality. It was strictly forbidden to excite the patient, but the servants intrigued against each other, and against their master. One day John had melted lead in a silver spoon. The cook blabbed of it to his mother, who was excited and told his father. But his father was only-annoyed with the tell-tale. He went to John and said in a friendly way, as though he were compelled to make a complaint: "You should not melt lead in silver spoons. I don't care about the spoon; that can be repaired; but this devil of a cook has excited mother. Don't tell the girls when you have done something stupid, but tell me, and we will put it right."

He and his father were now friends for the first time, and he loved him for his condescension.

One night his father's voice awoke him from sleep. He started up, and found it dark in the room. Through the darkness he heard a deep trembling voice, "Come to mother's death-bed!" It went through him like a flash of lightning. He froze and shivered while he dressed, the skin of his head felt ice-cold, his eyes were wide-open and streaming with tears, so that the flame of the lamp looked like a red bladder.

Then they stood round the sick-bed and wept for one, two, three hours. The night crept slowly onward. His mother was unconscious and knew no one. The death-struggle, with rattling in the throat, and cries for help, had commenced. The little ones were not aroused. John thought of all the sins which he had committed, and found no good deeds to counterbalance them. After three hours his tears ceased, and his thoughts began to take various directions. The process of dying was over. "How will it be," he asked himself, "when mother is no longer there?" Nothing but emptiness and desolation, without comfort or compensation—a deep gloom of wretchedness in which he searched for some point of light. His eye fell on his mother's chest of drawers, on which stood a plaster statuette of Linnæus with a flower in his hand. There was the only advantage which this boundless misfortune brought with it—he would get the ring. He saw it in imagination on his hand. "That is in memory of my mother," he would be able to say, and he would weep at the recollection of her, but he could not suppress the thought, "A gold ring looks fine after all." Shame! Who could entertain such thoughts at his mother's death-bed? A brain that was drunk with sleep? A child which had wept itself out? Oh, no, an heir. Was he more avaricious than others? Had he a natural tendency to greed? No, for then he would never have related the matter, but he bore it in memory his whole life long; it kept on turning up, and when he thought of it in sleepless nights, and hours of weariness, he felt the flush mount into his cheeks. Then he instituted an examination of himself and his conduct, and blamed himself as the meanest of all men. It was not till he was older and had come to know a great number of men, and studied the processes of thought, that he came to the conclusion that the brain is a strange thing which goes its own way, and there is a great similarity among men in the double life which they lead, the outward and the inward, the life of speech and that of thought.

John was a compound of romanticism, pietism, realism, and naturalism. Therefore he was never anything but a patchwork. He certainly did not exclusively think about the wretched ornament. The whole matter was only a momentary distraction of two minutes' duration after months of sorrow, and when at last there was stillness in the room, and his father said, "Mother is dead," he was not to be comforted. He shrieked like one drowning. How can death bring such profound despair to those who hope to meet again? It must needs press hard on faith when the annihilation of personality takes place with such inflexible consistency before our eyes. John's father, who generally had the outward imperturbability of the Icelander, was now softened. He took his sons by the hands and said: "God has visited us; we will now hold together like friends. Men go about in their self-sufficiency, and believe they are enough for themselves; then comes a blow, and we see how we all need one another. We will be sincere and considerate with each other."

The boy's sorrow was for a moment relieved. He had found a friend, a strong, wise, manly friend whom he admired.

White sheets were now hung up at the windows of the house in sign of mourning. "You need not go to school, if you don't want to," said his father. "If you don't want"—that was acknowledgment that he had a will of his own. Then came aunts, cousins, relations, nurses, old servants, and all called down blessings on the dead. All offered their help in making the mourning clothes—there were four small and three elder children. Young girls sat by the sickly light that fell through the sheeted windows and sewed, while they conversed in undertones. That was melancholy, and the period of mourning brought a whole chain of peculiar experiences with it. Never had the boy been the object of so much sympathy, never had he felt so many warm hands stretched out, nor heard so many friendly words.