Besides books about Indians and the Thousand and One Nights, John had hitherto no acquaintance with pure literature. He had looked into some romances and found them tedious, especially as they had no illustrations. But after he had floundered about chemistry and natural science, he one day paid a visit to the bookcase. He looked into the poets; here he felt as though he were floating in the air and did not know where he was. He did not understand it. Then he took Frederika Bremer's Pictures from Daily Life. Here he found domesticity and didacticism, and put them back. Then he seized hold of a collection of tales and fairy stories called Der Jungfrauenturm. These dealt with unhappy love, and moved him. But most important of all was the circumstance that he felt himself an adult with these adult characters. He understood what they said, and observed that he was no longer a child. He, too, had been unhappy in love, had suffered and fought, but he was kept back in the prison of childhood. And now he first became aware that his soul was in prison. It had long been fledged, but they had clipped its wings and put it in a cage. Now he sought his father and wished to talk with him as a comrade, but his father was reserved and brooded over his sorrow.
In the autumn there came a new throw-back and check for him. He was ripe for the highest class, but was kept back in the school because he was too young. He was infuriated. For the second time he was held fast by the coat when he wished to jump. He felt like an omnibus-horse continually pressing forward and being as constantly held back. This lacerated his nerves, weakened his will-power, and laid the foundation for lack of courage in the future. He never dared to wish anything very keenly, for he had seen how often his wishes were checked. He wanted to be industrious and press on, but industry did not help him; he was too young. No, the school course was too long. It showed the goal in the distance, but set obstacles in the way of the runners. He had reckoned on being a student when he was fifteen, but had to wait till he was eighteen. In his last year, when he saw escape from his prison so near, another year of punishment was imposed upon him by a rule being passed that they were to remain in the highest class for two years.
His childhood and youth had been extremely painful; the whole of life was spoiled for him, and he sought comfort in heaven.
[1] An artificial fountain of water, worked by pressure of air.
[VI.]
THE SCHOOL OF THE CROSS
Sorrow has the fortunate peculiarity that it preys upon itself. It dies of starvation. Since it is essentially an interruption of habits, it can be replaced by new habits. Constituting, as it does, a void, it is soon filled up by a real "horror vacui."
A twenty-years' marriage had come to an end. A comrade in the battle against the difficulties of life was lost; a wife, at whose side her husband had lived, had gone and left behind an old celibate; the manager of the house had quitted her post. Everything was in confusion. The small, black-dressed creatures, who moved everywhere like dark blots in the rooms and in the garden, kept the feeling of loss fresh. Their father thought they felt forlorn and believed them defenceless. He often came home from his work in the afternoon and sat alone in a lime-tree arbour, which looked towards the street. He had his eldest daughter, a child of seven, on his knee, and the others played at his feet. John often watched the grey-haired man, with his melancholy, handsome features, sitting in the green twilight of the arbour. He could not comfort him, and did not seek his company any more. He saw the softening of the old man's nature, which he would not have thought possible before. He watched how his fixed gaze lingered on his little daughter as though in the childish lines of her face he would reconstruct in imagination the features of the dead. From his window John often watched this picture between the stems of the trees down the long vista of the avenue; it touched him deeply, but he began to fear for his father, who no longer seemed to be himself.
Six months had passed, when his father one autumn evening came home with a stranger. He was an elderly man of unusually cheerful aspect. He joked good-naturedly, was friendly and kindly towards children and servants, and had an irresistible way of making people laugh. He was an accountant, had been a school friend of John's father, and was now discovered to be living in a house close by. The two old men talked of their youthful recollections, which afforded material to fill the painful void John's father felt. His stern, set features relaxed, as he was obliged to laugh at his friend's witty and humorous remarks. After a week he and the whole family were laughing as only those can who have wept for a long time. Their friend was a wit of the first water, and more, could play the violin and guitar, and sing Bellman's[1] songs. A new atmosphere seemed to pervade the house, new views of things sprang up, and the melancholy phantoms of the mourning period were dissipated. The accountant had also known trouble; he had lost his betrothed, and since then remained a bachelor. Life had not been child's play for him, but he had taken things as they came.