Out of the whole list there were only two situations for which he could even inquire, and he soon found that for each of these there were hundreds of applicants. At first his natural hopefulness reasserted itself, and each morning he would set out briskly, resolving to leave no stone unturned, but when days and weeks had passed by in the monotonous search, his heart began to fail him; he used to start from the little back street in Vauxhall doggedly, dull despair eating at his heart, and a sickening, ever-present consciousness that he was only an insignificant unit struggling to find standing room in a world where selfishness and money-grubbing reigned supreme.
Each week brought him of course letters from Norway, his uncle sent him letters of introduction to various London firms, but each letter brought him only fresh disappointment. As the consul had told him, the market was already overcrowded, and though very possibly he might have met with work in the previous summer when all was well with him, no one seemed inclined to befriend this son of a bankrupt, with his bitter tone and proud bearing; the impression he gave every one was that he was an Ishmaelite with his hand against every man, and it certainly did seem that at present every man’s hand was against him.
People write so much about the dangers of success and prosperity, and the hardening effects of wealth, that they sometimes forget the other side of the picture. Failure is always supposed to make a man patient and humble and good; it rarely does so, unless to begin with his spirit has been wakened from sleep. The man whose faith has been a mere conventionality, or the man who like Frithiof has professed to believe in life, becomes inevitably bitter and hard when all things are against him. It is just then when a man is hard and bitter, just then when everything else has failed him, that the devil comes to the fore offering pleasures which in happier times would have had no attraction.
At first certain aspects of London life had startled Frithiof; but he speedily became accustomed to them; if he thought of them at all it was with indifference rather than disgust. One day however, he passed with seeming abruptness into a new state of mind. Sick with disappointment after the failure of a rather promising scheme suggested to him by one of the men to whom his uncle had written, he walked through the crowded streets too hopeless and wretched even to notice the direction he had taken, and with a miserable perception that his last good card was played, and that all hope of success was over. His future was an absolute blank, his present a keen distress, his past too bright in contrast to bear thinking of.
After all, had he not been a fool to struggle so long against his fate? Clearly every one was against him. He would fight no longer; he would give up that notion—that high-flown, unpractical notion of paying off his father’s debts. To gain an honest living was apparently impossible, the world afforded him no facilities for that, but it afforded him countless opportunities of leading another sort of life. Why should he not take what he could get? Life was miserable and worthless enough, but at least he might put an end to the hideous monotony of the search after work, at least he might plunge into a phase of life which would have at any rate the charm of novelty.
It was one of those autumn days when shadow and sun alternate quickly; a gleam of sunshine now flooded the street with brightness. It seemed to him that a gleam of light had also broken the dreariness of his life. Possibly it might be a fleeting pleasure, but why should he not seize upon it? His nature, however, was not one to be hurried thoughtlessly into vice. If he sinned he would do so deliberately. He looked the two lives fairly in the face now, and in his heart he knew which attracted him most. The discovery startled him. “The pleasing veil which serves to hide self from itself” was suddenly torn down, and he was seized with the sort of terror which we most of us have experienced:
“As that bright moment’s unexpected glare
Shows us the best and worst of what we are.”
“Why not? why not?” urged the tempter. And the vague shrinking seemed to grow less; nothing in heaven or earth seemed real to him; he felt that nothing mattered a straw. As well that way as any other. Why not?
It was the critical moment of his life; just as in old pictures one sees an angel and a devil struggling hard to turn the balance, so now it seemed that his fate rested with the first influence he happened to come across.