“Yes,” answered Wangen; “a man must be blind if he doesn’t see that Norby has a number of rich men behind him, and that the end and aim of this matter is to do away with the eight-hours’ working day in this part of the country.”
The pastor smiled and said good-bye, and cracked his whip over the bay.
“That was a very unsuccessful visit,” thought the pastor, and sighed. “People are only amenable to reason when they are dying; and even then it is in order to gain something.”
Wangen had returned to the drawing-room, and stood at the window watching the pastor as he drove away. He could not at once regain his mental equilibrium, for, in spite of everything, the old man had left a good impression upon him, although at the same time this was something he was unwilling to acknowledge; for it might disturb the calculation respecting man’s wickedness, to which Wangen daily added fresh amounts, thereby strengthening his righteous anger.
“How strange it is,” he thought with some agitation, “that the priests always play into the hands of the rich!” The thought had half unconsciously been admitted, in order to get rid of the good impression. “And they try with texts and solemn faces to make the poor man give up his rights. I dare say!”
As he stood and followed the pastor’s sledge with his eyes, he gradually let loose a whole series of such reflections, and little by little felt the irritation that made him believe in what he said; and little by little the old pastor driving along the road seemed to him to be a theological messenger in the service of wealth, like so many other priests in this world.
“Has there ever been an affair too rotten for some priest or other to lend himself, his God, and his church in defence of it? Look at war, for instance! And the doctrine of eternal punishment! A nice thing indeed!”
Wangen had nothing to do all day now, so he was always busy with this affair with Norby, and it grew and grew in his imagination. At the same time he constantly had to witness fresh sad consequences of his failure. If he only met the old tailor who had entrusted his small savings to him, he involuntarily went another way; for he thought the tailor stared at him with wild eyes.
From his early youth Henry Wangen had been intelligent and warmly interested in questions and ideas; but these ideas had always been aimed at what others should do, and how others should be helped. When finally an extraordinary responsibility had brought him to the last extremity, he was in despair at having to stand alone; he felt the duty of expiating and suffering to be a burden beyond the power of man to bear, and he involuntarily tried even now to turn the matter into a social question. He had at first, therefore, half unconsciously wished and hoped that this forgery matter was only the expression of a conspiracy against his business. Now he felt quite sure, and every time he could suspect some one fresh of being the rich men’s accomplice, he became more comfortably certain.
When he really thought about it, he had long seen signs of something brewing among his connections outside as well as inside the district. Rich men were rich men, whether they called themselves farmers or merchants. They were all afraid of him because of his eight-hours’ working day. And they not only wanted to force him into bankruptcy in order to be able to say “That’s how things go with such a short working day.” No, they wanted revenge. They wanted to send him to prison. They wanted to dishonour him so greatly that he would henceforth be harmless. He understood it now. Like many others, he had fallen a victim to the demoniacal brutality that wealth and capital breed.