Then, with a kindly shake of the hand, Frithiof found himself dismissed; and somewhat cheered by the interview, he made his way to the address which had been given him.
Herr Sivertsen’s rooms were of the gloomiest: they reeked of tobacco, they were ill-lighted, and it seemed to Frithiof that the window could not have been opened for a week. An oblique view of Mudie’s library was the only object of interest to be seen without, though, by craning one’s neck, one could get just a glimpse of the traffic in Oxford Street. He waited for some minutes, wondering to himself how a successful author could tolerate such a den, and trying to imagine from the room what sort of being was the inhabiter thereof. At length the door opened, and a gray-haired man of five and fifty, with a huge forehead and somewhat stern, square-jawed face, entered.
“I have read the consul’s letter,” he said, greeting Frithiof, and motioning him to a chair. “You want what is very hard to get. Are you aware that thousands of men are seeking employment and are unable to meet with it?”
“I know it is hard,” said Frithiof. “Still I have more chance here than in Norway, and anyhow I mean to get it.” The emphatic way in which he uttered these last words made the author look at him more attentively.
“I am tired to death of young men coming to me and wanting help,” he remarked frankly. “You are an altogether degenerate race, you young men of this generation; in my opinion you don’t know what work means. It’s money that you want, not work.”
“Yes,” said Frithiof dryly, “you are perfectly right. It is money that I want.”
Now Herr Sivertsen had never before met with this honest avowal. In reply to the speech which he had made to many other applicants he had always received an eager protestation that the speaker was devoted to work, that he was deeply interested in languages, that Herr Sivertsen’s greatest hobbies were his hobbies too. He liked this bold avowal in his secret heart, though he had no intention of letting this be seen. “Just what I said!” he exclaimed. “A pleasure-seeking, money-grubbing generation. What is the result? I give work to be done, and as long as you can get gold you don’t care how the thing is scamped. Look here!” He took up a manuscript from the table. “I have paid the fellow who did this. He is not only behind time, but when at last the work is sent in it’s a miserable performance, bungled, patched, scamped, even the handwriting a disgrace to civilization. It’s because the man takes no pride in the work itself, because he has not a spark of interest in his subject. It just means to him so many shillings, that is all.”
“I can at least write a clear hand,” said Frithiof.
“That may be; but will you put any heart into your work? Do you care for culture? for literature? Do you interest yourself in progress? do you desire to help on your generation?”
“As far as I am concerned,” said Frithiof bitterly, “the generation will have to take care of itself. As for literature, I know little of it and care less; all I want is to make money.”