"Beside this, although the collection of school apparatus is no doubt very considerable, it can hardly be too much so. The labour in teaching is lessened in exact proportion as these apparatus are augmented.
"I am not ashamed to declare that my mother, who has spent a fortune on this, is unable to go any further. I have, perhaps, already overtaxed her resources. I therefore confidently turn to all at this meeting, especially to the women, and say to them: If you know by experience the value of a highly cultivated woman who has learned to control herself, and rely on herself, then come to my help! Do so for your children's sake, do it for the sake of a good example! For myself, I will live and die for the cause in our native town."
He spoke these last words with a suddenly rising emotion, it came over him with such overwhelming force that he forgot about the opening of the gymnasium. He had to leave the tribune without even a bow; he disappeared through the door of the little ante-room, and from thence ran across the courtyard into the house. The audience remained seated as though he had not finished, the end came so suddenly upon them, was so startling, and his agitation had such an electrical force about it, that it touched them. They must have time to reflect. Some of ruder nature down by the door rose meanwhile, the rest following their example. And now a moment came for Fru Rendalen full of the greatest surprise.
She did not see well, not far even with her spectacles, and besides during the whole time she had looked at no one but her son. The muscles of the right side of her neck ached from sitting with her head turned in his direction; when the lecture was half over, therefore, she moved her chair and sat completely turned towards him.
The subject itself was known to her clause by clause, but his energetic delivery, his personal power, his boldness, were entirely new to her; they did not cause her any apprehension, but rather the contrary; she was naturally courageous, and she knew that if openness were necessary on any subject, this was the one. She knew the actual state of things and the indifference displayed. She wanted them to be made to listen for once in their lives. And he did it so nobly, it seemed to her. She followed and felt all his inward agitation; she knew that if he did not keep a watch on himself he would be overcome.
When, therefore, the three or four words to the meeting suddenly fired it, she was as much upset as he. Those closing words dimmed her spectacles, she was obliged to dry them, and while doing so saw nothing and thought of nothing outside herself. But she roused herself and hastily prepared to rise when the others did so; she wished to be ready to receive any who might desire to congratulate her, and perhaps send a message to her son.
And after all no one came. Ah yes, the two Frökener Jensens came, the two crooked little milliners--quiet, cordial, and smiling as they always were; they expressed their thanks and sent so many messages to the "School Director;" if they had been allowed they would have liked to have gone in to thank him themselves. But the Frökener Jensens were the only ones. Nils Hansen did not come, nor Laura; not one of her old pupils, not even Emilie Engel, poor dear Emilie of whom she had been thinking the whole time; no one came. If any one had come up to Fru Rendalen, and in the name of the meeting given her a box on the ear, the worthy lady could not have been more astonished. Gracious Powers! What did it mean? For her his lecture expressed their mutual life, thought for thought, what they had learned and experienced, and had confirmed from each other's lives. But it was more, it was her whole work with him first and last, from his birth till now, when he stood there bright, cultivated, eager, full of one great aim; the lecture was the expression of this work, this development in full flower, which was now about to bear fruit.
How she loved him, how she admired him; she knew what he had fought through and effected, in these eight-and-twenty years. She knew what was woven into every thought to which he now gave utterance.
She had had visions of all this, but with no clearness; it was he who had brought that; she could never have expressed it clearly, but he did. Was it not like a fairy tale, in spite of all their work?
The dim idea she had had at first of ousting the Kurt inheritance by her own, and that she had afterwards daringly begun when she renovated the gloomy ancestral house, and made it clean and bright, devoting herself to bringing "confiding childish laughter" into it, was now complete. She had begun it confused, stupid, but stouthearted; and now it was accomplished by him, the child: was it not a fairy tale?