“Did I not tell you so?” roared Herr Sivertsen. “It is the accursed gold which you are all seeking after. You care only for money to spend on your own selfish indulgences. You are all alike! All! A worthless generation!”
Frithiof rose.
“However worthless, we unluckily have to live,” he said coldly. “And as I can’t pretend to be interested in ‘culture,’ I must waste no more time in discussion.”
He bowed and made for the door.
“Stay,” said Herr Sivertsen: “it will do no harm if you leave your address.”
“Thank you, but at present I have none to give,” said Frithiof. “Good-morning.”
He felt very angry and very sore-hearted as he made his way down Museum Street. To have met with such a rebuff from a fellow-countryman seemed to him hard, specially in this time of his trouble. He had not enough insight into character to understand the eccentric old author, and he forgot that Herr Sivertsen knew nothing of his circumstances. He was too abrupt, too independent, perhaps also too refined to push his way as an unknown foreigner in a huge metropolis. He was utterly unable to draw a picturesque description of the plight he was in, he could only rely on a sort of dogged perseverance, a fixed resolve that he must and would find work; and in spite of constant failures this never left him.
He tramped down to Vauxhall and began to search for lodgings, looked at some half-dozen sets, and finally lighted on a clean little house in a new-looking street a few hundred yards from Vauxhall Station. There was a card up in the window advertising rooms to let. He rang the bell and was a little surprised to find the door opened to him by a middle-aged woman who was unmistakably a lady, though her deeply lined face told of privation and care, possibly also of ill-temper. He asked the price of the rooms.
“A sitting-room and bedroom at fifteen shillings a week,” was the reply.
“It is too much, and besides I only need one room,” he said.