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MOTHWISE

Original Title: “Sværmere.”

Translated from the Norwegian by W. Worster, M.A.

MOTHWISE

BY
KNUT HAMSUN
AUTHOR OF “GROWTH OF THE SOIL” “PAN” ETC. ETC.

GYLDENDAL
11 BURLEIGH STREET, COVENT GARDEN
LONDON, W.C.2
COPENHAGEN. CHRISTIANIA.

INTRODUCTORY NOTE

The publication of Growth of the Soil in the spring of last year (1920) set critics and readers asking for information about the author and his works. Later in the year further interest was aroused by the news that Hamsun had been awarded the Nobel Prize for literature. In December, an article on Hamsun, giving a brief general survey of his works, appeared in The Fortnightly Review. This article, with some slight alteration, is now reprinted here, the proprietors of that journal having very kindly granted their permission, an act of courtesy which is the more to be appreciated considering the brief time which has elapsed since the original publication.

Knut Hamsun is now sixty. For years past he has been regarded as the greatest of living Norwegian writers, and one or two attempts have been made previously to introduce his work into this country, but it was not until this year (1920), with the publication of Growth of the Soil, that he achieved any real success, or became at all generally known, among English readers.

Growth of the Soil is very far indeed from Hamsun’s earliest beginnings: far even from the books of his early middle period, which made his name. It is the life story of a man in the wilds, the genesis and gradual development of a homestead, the unit of humanity, in the untilled, uncleared tracts that still remain in the Norwegian Highlands. It is an epic of earth; the history of a microcosm. Its dominant note is one of patient strength and simplicity; the mainstay of its working is the tacit, stern, yet loving alliance between Nature and the Man who faces her himself, trusting to himself and her for the physical means of life, and the spiritual contentment with life which she must grant if he be worthy. Modern man faces Nature only by proxy, or as proxy, through others or for others, and the intimacy is lost. In the wilds the contact is direct and immediate; it is the foothold upon earth, the touch of the soil itself, that gives strength.

The story is epic in its magnitude, in its calm, steady progress and unhurrying rhythm, in its vast and intimate humanity. The author looks upon his characters with a great, all-tolerant sympathy, aloof yet kindly, as a god. A more objective work of fiction it would be hard to find.

Hamsun’s early work was subjective in the extreme; so much so, indeed, as almost to lie outside the limits of æsthetic composition. As a boy he wrote verse under difficulties—he was born in Gudbrandsdalen, but came as a child to Bodø in Lofoten, and worked with a shoemaker there for some years, saving up money for the publication of his juvenile efforts. He had little education to speak of, and after a period of varying casual occupations, mostly of the humblest sort, he came to Christiania with the object of studying there, but failed to make his way. Twice he essayed his fortune in America, but without success. For three years he worked as a fisherman on the Newfoundland Banks.

His Nordland origin is in itself significant; it means an environment of month-long nights and concentrated summers, in which all feelings are intensified, and love and dread and gratitude and longing are nearer and deeper than in milder and more temperate regions, where elemental opposites are, as it were, reciprocally diluted.

In 1890, at the age of thirty, Hamsun attracted attention by the publication of Sult (Hunger). Sult is a record of weeks of starvation in a city; the semi-delirious confession of a man whose physical and mental faculties have slipped beyond control. He speaks and acts irrationally, and knows it; watches himself at his mental antics and takes himself to task for the same. And he asks himself: Is it a sign of madness?

It might seem so. The extraordinary associations, the weird fancies and bizarre impulses that are here laid bare give an air of convincing verisimilitude to the supposed confessions of a starving journalist. But, as a matter of fact, Hamsun has no need of extraneous influences to invest his characters with originality. Starving or fed, they can be equally erratic. This is seen in his next book, Mysterier.

Here we have actions and reactions as fantastic as in Sult, though the hero has here no such excuse as in the former case. The “mysteries,” or mystifications of Nagel, a stranger who comes, for no particular reason apparent, to stay in a little Norwegian town, arise entirely out of Nagel’s own personality.

Mysterier is one of the most exasperating books that a publisher’s reader, or a conscientious reviewer, could be given to deal with. An analysis of the principal character is a most baffling task. One is tempted to call him mad, and have done with it. But, as a matter of fact, he is uncompromisingly, unrestrainedly human; he goes about constantly saying and doing things that we, ordinary and respectable people, are trained and accustomed to refrain from saying or doing at all. He has the self-consciousness of a sensitive child; he is for ever thinking of what people think of him, and trying to create an impression. Then, with a paradoxical sincerity, he confesses that the motive of this or that action was simply to create an impression, and thereby destroys the impression. Sometimes he caps this by wilfully letting it appear that the double move was carefully designed to produce the reverse impression of the first—until the person concerned is utterly bewildered, and the reader likewise.

Mysterier appeared in 1893. In the following year Hamsun astonished his critics with two books, Ny Jord (New Ground) and Redaktør Lynge, both equally unlike his previous work. With these he passes at a bound from one-man stories, portrait studies of eccentric characters in a remote or restricted environment, to group subjects, chosen from centres of life and culture in Christiania. Redaktør Lynge—redaktør, of course, means “editor”—deals largely with political manœuvres and intrigues, the bitterly controversial politics of Norway prior to the dissolution of the Union with Sweden. Ny Jord gives an unflattering picture of the academic, literary, and artistic youth of the capital, idlers for the most part, arrogant, unscrupulous, self-important, and full of disdain for the mere citizens and merchants whose simple honesty and kindliness are laughed at or exploited by the newly dominant representatives of culture.

Both these books are technically superior to the first two, inasmuch as they show mastery of a more difficult form. But their appeal is not so great; there is lacking a something that might be inspiration, personal sympathy—some indefinable essential that the author himself has taught us to expect. They are less hamsunsk than most of Hamsun’s work. Hamsun is at his best among the scenes and characters he loves; tenderness and sympathy make up so great a part of his charm that he is hardly recognisable in surroundings or society uncongenial to himself.

It would almost seem as if he realised something of this. For in his next work he turns from the capital to the Nordland coast, reverting also, in some degree, to the subjective, keenly sensitive manner of Sult, though now with more restraint and concentration.

Pan (1894) is probably Hamsun’s best-known work. It is a love-story, but of an extraordinary type, and is, moreover, important from the fact that we are here introduced to some of the characters and types that are destined to reappear again and again in his later works.

Nagel, the exasperating irresponsible of Mysterier, is at his maddest in his behaviour towards the woman he loves. It is natural that this should be so. When a man is intoxicated, his essential qualities are emphasised. If he have wit, he will be witty; if a brutal nature, he will be a brute; if he be of a melancholy temper, he will be disposed to sit upon the ground and tell sad stories of the death of kings.

We see this in Pan. The love-making of the hero is characterised by the same irrational impulses, the same extravagant actions, as in Sult and Mysterier. But they are now less frequent, and less involved. The book as a whole is toned down, so to speak, from the bewildering tangle of unrestraint in the first two. There is quite sufficient of the erratic and unusual in the character of Glahn, the hero, but the tone is more subdued. The madcap youth of genius has realised that the world looks frigidly at its vagaries, and the secretly proud “au moins je suis autre”—more a boast than a confession—gives place to a wistful, apologetic admission of the difference as a fault. Here already we have something of that resignation which comes later to its fulness in the story of the Wanderer with the Mute.

The love-story in Pan takes the form of a conflict; it is one of those battles between the sexes, duels of wit and esprit, such as one finds in the plays of Marivaux. But Hamsun sets his battle in the sign of the heart, not of the head; it is a marivaudage of feeling, none the less deep for its erratic utterance. Moreover, the scene is laid, not in salons and ante-chambers, but in a landscape such as Hamsun loves, the forest-clad hills above a little fishing village, between the højfjeld and the sea. And interwoven with the story, like an eerie breathing from the dark of woods at dusk and dawn, is the haunting presence of Iselin, la belle dame sans merci.

Pan is a book that offends against all sorts of rules; as a literary product it is eminently calculated to elicit, especially in England, the Olympian “this will never do.” To begin with, it is not so much a novel as a novelle—a form of art little cultivated in this country, but which lends itself excellently to delicate artistic handling, and the creation of that subtle influence which Hamsun’s countrymen call stemning, poorly rendered by the English “atmosphere.” The epilogue is disproportionately long; the portion written as by another hand is all too recognisably in the style of the rest. And with all his chivalrous sacrifice and violent end, Glahn is at best a quixotic hero. Men, as men, would think him rather a fool, and women, as women, might flush at the thought of a cavalier so embarrassingly unrestrained. He is not to be idolised as a cinema star, or the literally gymnastic hero of a perennial Earl’s Court Exhibition set to music on the stage. He could not be truthfully portrayed on a flamboyant wrapper as at all seductively masculine. In a word, he is neither a man’s man nor a woman’s man. But he is a human being, keenly susceptible to influences which most of us have felt in some degree.

Closely allied to Pan is Victoria, likewise a story of conflict between two lovers. The actual plot can only be described as hackneyed. Girl and boy, the rich man’s daughter and the poor man’s son, playmates in youth, then separated by the barriers of social standing—few but the most hardened of “best-sellers” catering for semi-detached suburbia would venture nowadays to handle such a theme. Yet Hamsun dares, and so insistently unlike all else is the impress of his personality that the mechanical structure of the story is forgotten. It is interspersed with irrelevant fancies, visions and imaginings, a chain of tied notes heard as an undertone through the action on the surface. The effect is that of something straining towards an impossible realisation; a beating of wings in the void; a striving for utterance of things beyond speech.

Victoria is the swan-song of Hamsun’s subjective period. Already, in the three plays which appeared during the years immediately following Pan, he faces the merciless law of change; the unrelenting “forward” which means leaving loved things behind. Kareno, student of life, begins his career in resolute opposition to the old men, the established authorities who stand for compromise and resignation. For twenty years he remains obstinately faithful to his creed, that the old men must step aside or be thrust aside, to make way for the youth that will be served. “What has age that youth has not? Experience. Experience, in all its poor and withered nakedness. And what use is their experience to us, who must make our own in every single happening of life?” In Aftenrøde, the “Sunset” of the trilogy, Kareno himself deserts the cause of youth, and allies himself to the party in power. And the final scene shows him telling a story to a child: “There was once a man who never would give way....”

The madness of Sult is excused as being delirium, due to physical suffering. Nagel, in Mysterier, is shown as a fool, an eccentric intolerable in ordinary society, though he is disconcertingly human, paradoxically sane. Glahn, in Pan, apologises for his uncouth straightforwardness by confessing that he is more at home in the woods, where he can say and do what he pleases without offence. Johannes, in Victoria, is of humble birth, which counts in extenuation of his unmannerly frankness in early years. Later he becomes a poet, and as such is exempt in some degree from the conventional restraint imposed on those who aspire to polite society. All these well-chosen characters are made to serve the author’s purpose as channels for poetic utterance that might otherwise seem irrelevant. The extent to which this is done may be seen from the way in which Hamsun lets a character in one book enter upon a theme which later becomes the subject of an independent work by the author himself. Thus Glahn is haunted by visions of Diderik and Iselin; Johannes writes fragments supposed to be spoken by one Vendt the Monk. Five years after Victoria, Hamsun gives us the romantic drama of Munken Vendt, in which Diderik and Iselin appear.

Throughout these early works, Hamsun is striving to find expression for his own sensitive personality; a form and degree of expression sufficient to relieve his own tension of feeling, without fusing the medium; adequate to his own needs, yet understandable and tolerable to ordinary human beings, to the readers of books. The process, in effect, is simply this: Hamsun is a poet, with a poet’s deep and unusual feeling, and a poet’s need of utterance. To gain a hearing, he chooses figures whom he can conveniently represent as fools. Secretly, he loves them, for they are himself. But to the world he can present them with a polite apology, a plea for kindly indulgence.

It is not infrequent in literature to find the wisest and most poignant utterances thus laid in the mouths of poor men clad in motley. Some of the most daring things in Shakespeare, the newest heresies of the Renaissance, are voiced by irresponsibles. Of all dramatic figures, that of the fool is most suited to the expression of concentrated feeling. There is an arresting question in a play of recent years, which runs something like this: “Do you think that the things people make fools of themselves about are any less real and true than the things they behave sensibly about?”

Most of us have at some time or another felt that uncomfortable, almost indecently denuding question which comes to us at rare moments from the stage where some great drama is being played: What is higher, what is more real: this, or the life we live? In that sudden flash, the matters of to-day’s and to-morrow’s reality in our minds appear as vulgar trifles, things of which we are ashamed. The feeling lasts but a moment; for a moment we have been something higher than ourselves, in the mere desire so to be. Then we fall back to ourselves once more, to the lower levels upon which alone we can exist. And yet it is by such potentials that we judge the highest art; by its power to give us, if only for a moment, something of that which the divinity of our aspiring minds finds wanting in the confines of reality.

The richness of this quality is one of the most endearing things in Hamsun’s characters. Their sensitiveness is a thing we have been trained, for self-defence, to repress. It is well for us, no doubt, that this is so. But we are grateful for their showing that such things are, we feel the richer for a momentary glimpse of that susceptibility we dare not encourage in ourselves. The figures Hamsun sets before us as confessedly unsuited to the realities of life, his vagabonds, his failures, his fools, have power at times to make us question whether our world of comfort, luxury, success, is what we thought; if it were not well lost in exchange for the power to feel as they.

It has been said that life is a comedy to those who think, a tragedy to those who feel. Humanly speaking, it is one of the greatest merits of Hamsun’s works that he shows otherwise. His attitude towards life is throughout one of feeling, yet he makes of life no tragedy, but a beautiful story.

“I will be young until I die,” says Kareno in Aftenrøde. The words are not so much a challenge to fate as a denial of fact; he is not fighting, only refusing to acknowledge the power that is already hard upon him.

Kareno is an intellectual character. He is a philosopher, a man whose perceptions and activity lie predominantly in the sphere of thought, not of feeling. His attempt to carry the fire of youth beyond the grave of youth ends in disaster; an unnecessary débâcle due to his gratuitously attempting the impossible.

Hamsun’s poet-personality, the spirit we have seen striving for expression through the figures of Nagel, Glahn, Johannes, and the rest, is a creature of feeling. And here the development proceeds on altogether different lines. The emotion which fails to find adequate outlet, even in such works as Sult, Mysterier, Victoria, and Pan, might well seem more of a peril than the quixotic stubbornness of Kareno’s philosophy. Such a flood, in its tempestuous unrest, might seem to threaten destruction, or at best the vain dispersal of its own power into chaos. But by some rare guidance it is led, after the storm of Munken Vendt, into channels of beneficent fertility.

In 1904, after an interval of short stories, letters of travel, and poems, came the story entitled Sværmere. The word means “Moths.” It also stands for something else; something for which we English, as a sensible people, have no word. Something pleasantly futile, deliciously unprofitable—foolish lovers, hovering like moths about a lamp.

But there is more than this that is untranslatable in the title. As a title it suggests an attitude of gentleness, tenderness, sympathy, towards whomsoever it describes. It is a new note in Hamsun; the opening of a new motif.

The main thread of the story bears a certain similarity to that of Mysterier, Victoria, and Pan, being a love affair of mazy windings, a tangled skein of loves-me-loves-me-not. But it is pure comedy throughout. Rolandsen, the telegraph operator in love with Elise Mack, is no poet; he has not even any pretensions to education or social standing. He is a cheerful, riotous “blade,” who sports with the girls of the village, gets drunk at times, and serenades the parson’s wife at night with his guitar. Sværmere is the slightest of little stories in itself, but full of delightful vagaries and the most winning humour. It is the first of Hamsun’s stories with a happy ending.

The story of Benoni, with its continuation Rosa, is in like vein; a tenderly humorous portrayal of love below stairs, the principal characters being chosen from the class who appear as supers in Pan; subjects or retainers of the all-powerful Trader Mack. It is as if the sub-plot in one of Shakespeare’s plays had been taken out for separate presentment, and the clown promoted to be hero in a play of his own. The cast is increased, the milieu lightly drawn in Pan is now shown more comprehensively and in detail, making us gradually acquainted with a whole little community, a village world, knowing little of any world beyond, and forming a microcosm in itself.

Hamsun has returned, as it were, to the scene of his passionate youth, but in altered guise. He plays no part himself now, but is an onlooker, a stander-by, chronicling, as from a cloistered aloofness, yet with kindly wisdom always, the little things that matter in the lives of those around him. Wisdom and kindliness, sympathy and humour and understanding, these are the dominant notes of the new phase. Sværmere ends happily—for it is a story of other people’s lives. So also with Benoni and Rosa at the last. And so surely has the author established his foothold on the new ground that he can even bring in Edvarda, the “Iselin” figure from Pan, once more, thus linking up his brave and lusty comedies of middle age with the romantic tragedies of his youth, making a comprehensive pageant-play of large-hearted humanity.

Meantime, the effect upon himself is seen—and avowed. Between Sværmere and Benoni comes the frankly first-personal narrative of a vagabond who describes himself, upon interrogation, as “Knut Pedersen”—which is two-thirds of Knut Pedersen Hamsun—and hailing from Nordland—which embraces Lofoten.

It does not need any showing of papers, however, to establish the identity of Knut Pedersen, vagabond, with the author of Pan. The opening words of the book (Under Høststjærnen) are enough. “Indian summer, mild and warm ... it is many years now since I knew such peace. Twenty or thirty years maybe—or maybe it was in another life. But I have felt it some time, surely, since I go about now humming a little tune; go about rejoicing, loving every straw and every stone, and feeling as if they cared for me in return....”

This is the Hamsun of Pan. But Hamsun now is a greater soul than in the days when Glahn, the solitary dweller in the woods, picked up a broken twig from the ground and held it lovingly, because it looked poor and forsaken; or thanked the hillock of stone outside his hut because it stood there faithfully, as a friend that waited his return. He is stronger now, but no less delicate; he loves not Nature less, but the world more. He has learned to love his fellow-men. Knut Pedersen, vagabond, wanders about the country with his tramp companions, Grindhusen, the painter who can ditch and delve at a pinch, or Falkenberg, farm-labourer in harvest-time, and piano-tuner where pianos are. Here is brave comradeship, the sharing of adventures, the ready wit of jovial vagrants. The book is a harmless picaresque, a geste of innocent rogue-errantry; its place is with Lavengro and The Cloister and the Hearth, in that ancient, endless order of tales which link up age with age and land with land in the unaltering, unfrontiered fellowship of the road that kept the spirit of poetry alive through the Dark Ages.

The vagabond from Nordland has his own adventures, his bonnes fortunes. There is a touch of Sterne about the book; not the exaggerated super-Sterne of Tristram Shandy, with eighteenth-century-futurist blanks and marbled pages, but the fluent, casual, follow-your-fancy Sterne of the Sentimental Journey. Yet the vagabond himself is unobtrusive, ready to step back and be a chronicler the moment other figures enter into constellation. He moves among youth, himself no longer young, and among gentlefolk, as one making no claim to equal rank.

Both these features are accentuated further in the story of the Wanderer with the Mute. It is a continuation of Under Høststjærnen, and forms the culmination, the acquiescent close, of the self-expressional series that began with Sult. The discords of tortured loveliness are now resolved into an ultimate harmony of comely resignation and rich content. “A Wanderer may come to fifty years; he plays more softly then. Plays with muted strings.” This is the keynote of the book. The Wanderer is no longer young; it is for youth to make the stories old men tell. Tragedy is reserved for those of high estate; a wanderer in corduroy, “such as labourers wear here in the south,” can tell the story of his chatelaine and her lovers with the self-repression of a humbler Henry Esmond, winning nothing for himself even at the last, yet feeling he is still in Nature’s debt.

Hamsun’s next work is Den Siste Glæde (literally “The Last Joy”). The title as it stands is expressive. The substantive is “joy”—but it is so qualified by the preceding “last,” a word of overwhelming influence in any combination, that the total effect is one of sadness. And the book itself is a masterly presentment of gloom. Masterly—or most natural: it is often hard to say how much of Hamsun’s effect is due to superlative technique and how much to the inspired disregard of all technique. Den Siste Glæde is a diary of wearisome days, spent for the most part among unattractive, insignificant people at a holiday resort; the only “action” in it is an altogether pitiful love affair, in which the narrator is involved to the slightest possible degree. The writer is throughout despondent; he feels himself out of the race; his day is past. Solitude and quiet, Nature, and his own foolish feelings—these are the “last joys” left him now.

The book might have seemed a fitting, if pathetic, ending to the literary career of the author of Pan. Certainly it holds out no promise of further energy or interest in life or work. The closing words amount to a personal farewell.

Then, without warning, Hamsun enters upon a new phase of power. Børn av Tiden (Children of the Age) is an objective study, its main theme being the “marriage” conflict touched upon in the Wanderer stories, and here developed in a different setting and with fuller individuality. Hamsun has here moved up a step in the social scale, from villagers of the Benoni type to the land-owning class. There is the same conflict of temperaments that we have seen before, but less violent now; the poet’s late-won calm of mind, and the level of culture from which his characters now are drawn—perhaps by instinctive selection—make for restraint. Still a romantic at heart, he becomes more classic in form.

Børn av Tiden is also the story of Segelfoss, in its passing from the tranquil dignity of a semi-feudal estate to the complex and ruthless modernity of an industrial centre. Segelfoss By (1915) treats of the fortunes of the succeeding generation, and the further development of Segelfoss into a township (By).

Then, with Growth of the Soil, Hamsun achieves his greatest triumph. Setting aside all that mattered most to himself, he turns with the experience of a lifetime rich in conflict, to the things that matter to us all. Deliberately shorn of all that makes for mere effects, Isak stands out as an elemental figure, the symbol of Man at his best, face to face with nature and life. There is no greater human character—reverently said—in the Bible itself.

These, then, are the steps of Hamsun’s progress as an author, from the passionate chaos of Sult to the Miltonic, monumental calm of Growth of the Soil. The stages in themselves are full of beauty; the wistfulness of Pan and Victoria, the kindly humour of Sværmere and Benoni, the autumn-tinted resignation of the Wanderer with the Mute—they follow as the seasons do, each with a charm of its own, yet all deriving from one source. His muse at first is Iselin, the embodiment of adolescent longing, the dream of those “whom delight flies because they give her chase.” The hopelessness of his own pursuit fills him with pity for mortals under the same spell, and he steps aside to be a brave, encouraging chorus, or a kindly chronicler of others’ lives. And his reward is the love of a greater divinity, the goddess of field and homestead. No will-o’-the-wisp, but a presence of wisdom and calm.

W. W. WORSTER.

I

Marie van Loos, housekeeper at the Vicarage, stands by the kitchen window looking out far up the road. She knows the couple there by the fence—knows them indeed, seeing ’tis no other than Telegraph-Rolandsen, her own betrothed, and Olga the parish clerk’s daughter. It is the second time she has seen those two together this spring—now what does it mean? Save that Jomfru van Loos had a host of things to do just now, she would have gone straight up to them that moment and demanded an explanation.

As it was, how could she? There was no time for anything now, with the whole place upside down, and the new priest and his lady expected any minute. Young Ferdinand is already posted at an upstairs window to keep a look-out to seaward, and give warning as soon as the boat is in sight, so that the coffee can be ready the moment the travellers arrive. And they would need it, after coming all the way from Rosengaard, four miles off. Rosengaard is the nearest place at which the steamer calls, and from there they come on by boat.

There is still a trifle of snow and ice about, but it is May now, and the weather fine, with long, bright days over Nordland. The crows are getting on fast with their nests, and the new green grass is sprouting on the bare hummocks. In the garden, the sallows were in bud already, for all they were standing in snow.

The great question now was what the new priest would be like. All the village was burning to know. True, he was only coming as chaplain for the time being, till a permanent incumbent was appointed; but such temporary chaplains might often remain for a considerable time in a place like this, with its poor fisher population, and a heavy journey to the annex church every fourth Sunday. It was by no means the sort of living anyone would grasp at for a permanency.

It was rumoured that the newcomers to the Vicarage were wealthy folk, who did not need to think twice about every skilling they spent. They had already engaged a housekeeper and two maids in advance; and they had not been sparing of help for the field work either, but taken on two farm-hands, besides young Ferdinand, who was to be smart and obliging, and make himself generally useful. All felt it was a blessing to the congregation to have a pastor so comfortably off. Such a man, of course, would not be over-strict in the matter of tithes and other dues; far from it; he would doubtless reach out a helping hand to those in need. Altogether, there was a great deal of excitement. The lay-helpers and other fishermen had turned out in readiness, and were down at the boat-sheds now, tramping up and down in their heavy boots, chewing tobacco, spitting, and exchanging observations.

Here comes Big Rolandsen at last, striding down the road. He had left Olga behind, and Jomfru van Loos withdrew from her kitchen window once more. Oh, but she would have a word with him about it, never fear; it was no uncommon thing for her to have matters outstanding with Ove Rolandsen. Jomfru van Loos was of Dutch extraction, she spoke with a Bergen accent, and was so hasty of speech at times that Rolandsen himself had been driven to give her the nickname of Jomfru Fan los.[1] Big Rolandsen was always witty, and very often improper.

And where was he off to now? Was it his quite remarkable intention to go down and meet the Vicarage people himself? Likely as not he was no more sober now than many a time before. There he was, walking down, with a twig of budding sallow in his buttonhole, and his hat a thought on one side—going to meet them like that! The lay-helpers down at the waterside were by no means glad of his company at the moment—at this particular, highly important moment.

Was it right or proper, now, for a man to look like that? His red nose had an air of pride ill-suited to his humble station; and, more than that, it was his habit to let his hair grow all through the winter, till his head grew more and more artistic. Jomfru van Loos, who owed him a sharp word or so, declared that he looked like a painter who had come down in the world, and ended as a photographer. Four-and-thirty was Rolandsen now, a student, and a bachelor; he played the guitar, trolled out the local songs with a deep voice, and laughed till the tears flowed at all the touching parts. That was his lordly way. He was in charge of the telegraph station, and had been here now for ten years in the same place. A tall fellow, powerfully built, and ready enough to lend a hand in a brawl.

Suddenly young Ferdinand gives a start. From his attic window he catches sight of Trader Mack’s white houseboat hurrying round the point; next moment he is down the stairs in three break-neck strides, shouting through to the kitchen, “Here they come!”

Then he hurries out to tell the farm-hands. The men drop the things they are holding, slip on their Sunday jackets with all speed, and hasten down to the waterside to help, if needed. That made ten in all to welcome the new arrivals.

“Goddag!” says the chaplain from the stern, smiling a little, and doffing his soft hat. All those on shore bare their heads respectfully, and the lay-helpers bow till their long hair falls over their eyes. Big Rolandsen is less obsequious than the others; he stands upright as ever, but takes off his hat and holds it low down.

The chaplain is a youngish man, with reddish whiskers and a spring crop of freckles; his nostrils seem to be choked with a growth of fair hair. His lady is lying down in the deck-house, sea-sick and miserable.

“We’re there now,” says her husband in through the doorway, and helps her out. Both of them are curiously dressed, in thick, old clothes that look far from elegant. Still, these, no doubt, are just some odd over-things they have borrowed for the journey; their own rich clothes will be inside, of course. The lady has her hat thrust back, and a pale face with large eyes looks out at the men. Lay-helper Levion wades out and carries her ashore; the priest manages by himself.

“I’m Rolandsen, of the Telegraph,” says Big Rolandsen, stepping forward. He was not a little drunk, and his eyes glared stiffly, but being a man of the world, there was no hesitation in his manner. Ho, that Rolandsen, a deuce of a fellow! No one had ever seen him at a loss when it came to mixing with grand folk, and throwing out elegant bits of speech. “Now if only I knew enough,” he went on, addressing the priest, “I might introduce us all. Those two there, I fancy, are the lay-helpers. These two are your farm-hands. And this is Ferdinand.”

And the priest and his wife nod round to all. Goddag! Goddag! They would soon learn to know one another. Well ... the next thing would be to get their things on shore.

But Lay-helper Levion looks hard at the deck-house, and stands ready to wade out once more. “Aren’t there any little ones?” he asks.

No answer; all turn towards the priest and his wife.

“If there won’t be any children?” asks the lay-helper again.

“No,” says the boatman.

The lady flushed a little. The chaplain said:

“There are only ourselves.... You men had better come up and I’ll settle with you now.”

Oh, a rich man, of course. A man who would not withhold his due from the poor. The former priest never “settled” with people at all; he only said thanks, and that would be all “for now.”

They walked up from the quay, Rolandsen leading the way. He walked by the side of the road, in the snow, to leave place for the others; he wore light shoes, in his vain and showy way, but it did not seem to hurt him; he even walked with his coat unbuttoned, for all it was only May and the wind cold.

“Ah, there’s the church,” says the priest.

“It looks old,” says his wife. “I suppose there’s no stove inside?” she asks.

“Why, I can’t say for certain,” answers Rolandsen. “But I don’t think so.”

The priest started. This man, then, was no church-goer, but one who made little distinction between week-day and Sabbath. And he grew more reserved thenceforward.

Jomfru van Loos is standing on the steps; Rolandsen introduces her as well. And, having done so, he takes off his hat and turns to go.

“Ove! Wait a minute!” whispered Jomfru van Loos.

But Rolandsen did not wait a minute; he took off his hat once more and retired backwards down the steps. Rather a curious person, thought the priest.

Fruen[2] had gone inside at once. She was feeling a little better now, and began taking stock of the place. The nicest and lightest room she assigned to her husband as a study, and reserved to herself the bedroom Jomfru van Loos had occupied before.

II

No, Rolandsen did not wait a minute; he knew his Jomfru van Loos, and had no doubt as to what she wanted. Rolandsen was not easily persuaded to anything he did not care about himself.

A little way along the road he met a fisherman who had come out too late to be present at the arrival. This was Enok, a pious, inoffensive man, who always walked with downcast eyes and wore a kerchief tied round his head for earache.

“You’re too late,” said Rolandsen as he passed.

“Has he come?”

“He has. I shook hands with him.” Rolandsen passed on, and called back over his shoulder, “Enok, mark what I say. I envy that man his wife!”

Now saying a foolish and most improper thing like that to Enok was choosing the very man of all men. Enok would be sure to bring it about.

Rolandsen walked farther and farther along by the wood, and came to the river. Here was the fish-glue factory, owned by Trader Mack; some girls were employed on the place, and it was Rolandsen’s way to chaff them as often as he passed. He was a very firebrand for that, and none could deny it. Moreover, he was in high spirits to-day, and stayed longer than usual. The girls saw at once that he was splendidly in drink.

“You, Ragna, what d’you think it is makes me come up here every day?” says Rolandsen.

“I don’t know, I’m sure,” says Ragna.

“Oh, you think, of course, it’s old Mick.”

The girls laughed at that. “Old Mick, ha, ha! Old Nick, he means.”

“It’s for your salvation,” says Rolandsen. “You’d better take care of yourself with the fisher-lads about here; they’re a wicked lot.”

“Wicked, indeed! And what about yourself, then?” says another girl. “With two children of your own already. You ought to be ashamed of yourself.”

“Ah, Nicoline, now how can you say such a thing? You’ve been a thorn in my heart and near the death of me for more than I can say, and that you know. But as for you, Ragna, I’m going to see you saved, and that without mercy.”

“You go and talk to Jomfru van Loos,” says Ragna.

“But you’ve desperate little sense,” Rolandsen went on. “Now those fish-heads, for instance. How long do you steam them before you screw down the valve?”

“Two hours,” says Ragna.

Rolandsen nods to himself. He had reckoned that up and worked it out before. Ho, that firebrand Rolandsen, he knew well enough what it was took him up to the factory every day, chaffing the girls and sniffing about all the time.

“Don’t take that lid off, Pernille,” he cried suddenly. “Are you out of your senses, girl?”

Pernille flushes red. “Frederik he said I was to stir it round,” she says.

“Every time you lift the lid, some of the heat goes out,” says Rolandsen.

But a moment later, when Frederik Mack, the trader’s son, came up, Rolandsen turned off into his usual jesting tone once more.

“Wasn’t it you, Pernille, that was in service at the Lensmand’s one year, and bullied the life out of everyone in the place? Smashing everything to bits in a rage—all barring the bedclothes, perhaps.”

The other girls laughed; Pernille was the gentlest creature that ever lived, and weakly to boot. Moreover, her father was organ-blower at the church, which gave her a sort of godliness, as it were.

Coming down on to the road again, Rolandsen caught sight of Olga once more—coming from the store, no doubt. She quickened her pace, hurrying to avoid him; it would never do for Rolandsen to think she had been waiting about for him. But Rolandsen had no such idea; he knew that if he did not catch this young maid face to face she would always hurry away and disappear. And it did not trouble him in the least that he made no progress with her; far from it. It was not Olga by any means that filled his mind.

He comes home to the telegraph station, and walks in with his lordliest air, to ward off his assistant, who wanted to gossip. Rolandsen was not an easy man to work with just at present. He shut himself up in a little room apart, that no one ever entered save himself and one old woman. Here he lived and slept.

This room is Rolandsen’s world. Rolandsen is not all foolishness and drink, but a great thinker and inventor. There is a smell of acids and chemicals and medicine in that room of his; the smell oozed out into the passage and forced every stranger to notice it. Rolandsen made no secret of the fact that he kept all these medicaments about solely to mask the smell of the quantities of brændevin he was always drinking. But that again was Ove Rolandsen’s unfathomable artfulness....

The truth of the matter was that he used those liquids in bottles and jars for his experiments. He had discovered a chemical process for the manufacture of fish-glue—a new method that would leave Trader Mack and his factory simply nowhere. Mack had set up his plant at considerable expense; his means of transport were inadequate, and his supplies of raw material restricted to the fishing season. Moreover, the business was superintended by his son Frederik, who was by no means an expert. Rolandsen could manufacture fish-glue from a host of other materials than fish heads, and also from the waste products of Mack’s own factory. Furthermore, from the last residue of all he could extract a remarkable dye.

Save for his weight of poverty and helplessness, Rolandsen of the Telegraphs would have made his invention famous by this time. But no one in the place could come by ready money except through the agency of Trader Mack, and, for excellent reasons, it was impossible to go to him in this case. He had once ventured to suggest that the fish-glue from the factory was over-costly to produce, but Mack had merely waved his hand in his lordly, careless way, and said that the factory was a gold-mine, nothing less. Rolandsen himself was burning to show forth the results of his work. He had sent samples of his product to chemists at home and abroad, and satisfied himself that it was good enough so far. But he got no farther. He had yet to give the pure, finished liquid to the world, and take out patents in all countries.

So that it was not without motive and vainly that Rolandsen had turned out that day to receive the new chaplain and his family. Rolandsen, the wily one, had a little plan of his own. For if the priest were a wealthy man, he could, no doubt, invest a little in a safe and important invention. “If no one else will do it, I will”—that was the thing he would say, no doubt. Rolandsen had hopes.

Alas, Rolandsen was always having hopes—a very little was enough to fire him. On the other hand he took his disappointments bravely; none could say otherwise than that he bore himself stiffly and proudly, and was not to be crushed. There was Mack’s daughter Elise, for instance, even she had not crushed him. A tall, handsome girl, with a brown skin and red lips, and twenty-three years of age. It was whispered that Captain Henriksen, of the coasting steamer, worshipped her in secret; but years came and years passed, and nothing happened. What could be the matter? Rolandsen had already made an eternal fool of himself three years back; when she was only twenty he had laid his heart at her feet. And she had been kind enough not to understand him. That was where Rolandsen ought to have stopped and drawn back, but he went forward instead, and now, last year, he had begun to speak openly. Elise Mack had been forced to laugh in his face, to make this presumptuous telegraph person realise the gulf between them. Was she not a lady, who had kept no less than Captain Henriksen waiting years for her consent?

And then it was that Rolandsen went off and got engaged to Jomfru van Loos. Ho, he was not the man to take his death of a refusal from high quarters!

But now it was spring again. And the spring was a thing well-nigh intolerable to a great heart. It drove creation to its uttermost limit; ay, it blew with spiced winds into innocent nostrils.

III

The herring are moving in from the sea. The master seiners lie out in their boats, peering through glasses at the water all day long. Where the birds hover in flocks, swooping down now and then to snap at the water, there are the herring to be found; already they can be taken in deep water with the nets. But now comes the question whether they will move up into shallower water, into the creeks and fjords where they can be cut off from retreat by the seine. It is then that the bustle and movement begins in earnest, with shouting and swarming and crowding up of men and ships. And there is money to be made, a harvest in plenty as the sands of the sea.

The fisherman is a gambler. He lays out his nets or his lines, and waits for the haul; he casts his seine and leaves the rest to fate. Often he meets with only loss and loss again, his gear is carried out to sea, or sunk, or ruined by storms, but he furnishes himself anew and tries again. Sometimes he ventures farther off, to some grounds where he has heard of others finding luck, rowing and toiling for weeks over stubborn seas, only to find he has come too late; the fishing is at an end. But now and again the prize may lie waiting for him on his way, and stop him and fill his boat with money. No one can say whom luck will favour next; all have like grounds, or hope....

Trader Mack had everything in readiness; his seine was in the boat, his master seiner swept the offing with his glass. Mack had a schooner and a couple of coasting-boats in the bay, emptied and cleaned after their voyage to Bergen with dried fish; he would load them up with herring now if the herring came; his store-loft was bursting with empty barrels. He was a buyer himself as well, in the market for herrings to any quantity, and he had provided himself with a stock of ready money, to take all he could before the price went up.

Half-way through May, Mack’s seine made its first haul. Nothing to speak of, only some fifty barrels, but the catch was noised abroad, and, a few days later, a stranger crew appeared in the bay. Things looked like business.

Then one night there was a burglary at Mack’s office in the factory. It was a bold misdemeanour indeed; the nights now were shining bright from evening to morning, and everything could be seen far off. The thief had broken open two doors and stolen two hundred Daler.

It was an altogether unprecedented happening in the village, and a thing beyond understanding. To break in and steal from Mack—from Mack himself—even aged folk declared they had never heard the like in their days. The village folk might do a little pilfering and cheating in accordance with their humble station, but burglary on a grand scale was more than they would ever attempt. And suspicion fell at once on the stranger crew, who were questioned closely.

But the stranger crew were able to prove that they had been out, with every man on board, four miles away, on the night.

This was a terrible blow to Trader Mack. It meant that the thief was someone in the village itself.

Trader Mack cared little for the money; he said openly that the thief must have been a fool not to take more. But that any of his own people should steal from him—the idea cut him to the quick, mighty man as he was, and the protector of them all. Did he not furnish half the entire communal budget with the taxes he paid on his various undertakings?—and had any deserving case ever been turned away from his door without relief?

Mack offered a reward for information leading to discovery. Something had to be done. There were strange boats coming in now almost every day, and a nice idea they would gain of the relations between Trader Mack and his people when it was found that they robbed and stole his money. Like the open-handed merchant prince he was, Mack fixed the reward at four hundred Daler. Then all could see he was not afraid of putting up a round sum.

The story came to the ears of the new priest, and, on Trinity Sunday, when the sermon was to be about Nicodemus who came to Jesus in the night, he made use of the opportunity to deliver an attack upon the culprit. “Here they come to us by night,” he said, “and break open our doors and steal away our means of life. Nicodemus did no wrong; he was a timorous man, and chose the night for his going, but he went on his soul’s errand. But what did men do now? Alas, the world had grown in evil-doing, the night was used for plundering and stealing. Let the guilty be punished; bring him forth!”

The new priest was found to be a fighting cock. This was the third time he had preached, and already he had persuaded many of the sinners in the parish to mend their ways. When he stood up in the pulpit, he was so pale and strange that he looked like a madman. Some of the congregation found the first Sunday quite enough, and did not venture to come again. Even Jomfru van Loos was shaken, and that was no little thing. Rough and hard as a rasp was Jomfru van Loos, and had been all her days till now. The two maids under her noted the change with much content.

There was a considerable gathering in the place now. And there were some who were not displeased at the discomfiture of Trader Mack. Mack was getting too mighty a man altogether, with his two trading stations, his seines, his factory, and his numerous vessels; the fisherfolk from other stations held by their own traders, who were condescending and easy to get on with, and who did not affect white collars or deerskin gloves as did Mack. The burglary was no more than he deserved for his high-and-mightiness. And as for offering rewards of so-and-so many hundred Daler for this, that, and the other—Mack would be better advised to keep his ready cash for buying herring, if the herring came. After all, his money was not beyond counting; not like the stars in the sky. Who could say but that the whole thing might have been cleverly contrived by himself, or his son Frederik: a sham burglary, to make it appear that he could afford to lose money like grass, while all the time he was in sore need of cash? So the gossip ran among the boats and on shore.

Mack realised that he must make a good impression. Here were folk from five different parishes who would carry back word of what sort of man he was to traders and relatives in other parts. Again and again it must be seen what manner of man was Trader Mack of Rosengaard.

Next time he had occasion to go up to the factory Mack hired a steamer for the journey. It was four miles from the stopping-place, and it cost a deal of money, but Mack took no heed of that. There was a great to-do about the place when the steamer came bustling in with Mack and his daughter Elise on board. He was lord of the vessel, so to speak, and stood there on board with his red sash round his waist, for all it was a summer’s day. As soon as father and daughter had landed, the steamer put about and went off at once; all could see that it had come for their sake only. And in face of this, some even of the stranger folk bowed to the power of Mack.

But Mack did more. He could not forget the disgrace of that burglary affair. He put up a new placard, promising that the reward of four hundred Daler would be paid even to the thief himself if he came forward. Surely this was unequalled as a piece of chivalrous generosity? All must admit after this that it was not the money, a few miserable Daler, that troubled him. But the gossip was not stilled even now. There were still whisperings: “If the thief’s the man I think, you’ll see he’ll not own up to it now any more than before. But never a word that I said so!”

Mack the all-powerful was in an intolerable position. His reputation was being undermined. For twenty years past he had been the great man of the place, and all had made way for him respectfully; now there seemed to be less of respect in their greetings. And this despite the fact that he had been decorated with a Royal Order. A great man indeed he had been. He was the spokesman of the village, the fishermen worshipped him, the little traders of the outlying stations imitated his ways. Mack had stomach trouble, brought on, no doubt, by his royal table and splendid living, and he wore a broad red sash round his waist as soon as it began to be at all cold. Soon the little traders of the outlying stations began to wear red sashes too, for all they were but insignificant folk—upstarts whom Mack graciously allowed to live. They too would have it appear that they were great men living in luxury, with stomach troubles due to extravagant over-feeding. Mack went to church in shoes that creaked, and walked up the aisle with supercilious noises; but even his creaky shoes were copied by others after him. There were some, indeed, who set their shoes in water and dried them hard for Sundays, to creak emphatically among the congregation. Mack had been the great example in every way.

IV

Rolandsen sits in his laboratory, hard at work. Looking out from the window he marks how a certain branch of a certain tree in the wood moves up and down. Somebody must be shaking it, but the leaves are too thick for him to see more. Rolandsen goes back to his work.

But somehow the work seemed to clog to-day. He took his guitar and tried singing one of his joyful laments, but even that failed to please him. The spring was come, and Rolandsen was troubled.

Elise Mack was come; he had met her the evening before. Proud and haughty she was, and carried herself like a lady; it seemed as if she would have tried to please him a little with a touch of kindliness here and there, but he would have none of it.

“I saw the telegraph people at Rosengaard before I left,” she said.

But Rolandsen had no wish to claim friendship with the telegraph people; he was no colleague of theirs. She was trying to emphasise the distance between herself and him once more—ho-ho! He would pay her out for that!

“You must teach me the guitar some day,” she said.

Now this was a thing to start at and to accept with thanks. But Rolandsen would have none of it. On the contrary, he would pay her out on the spot. He said:

“Very pleased, I’m sure. Whenever you like. You can have my guitar.”

Yes, that was the way he treated her. As if she were any but Elise Mack, a lady worth ten thousand guitars.

“No, thank you,” she said. “But we might use it to practise on.”

“I’ll make you a present of it.”

But at that she tossed her head, and said:

“Thank you; I’d rather be excused.”

The wily Rolandsen had touched her there. And then all at once he forgot every thought of paying her out, and murmured:

“I only meant to give you the only thing I had.”

And with that he raised his hat and bowed deeply, and walked away.

He walked away to the parish clerk’s in search of Olga. The spring was come, and Rolandsen must have a lady-love; ’twas no light thing to rule such a big heart. But apart from that he was paying attention to Olga with a purpose. There was some talk about Frederik Mack, how he had an eye to Olga himself. And Rolandsen meant to cut him out, no less. Frederik was brother to Elise herself, and it would do the family good if one of them were jilted. But anyhow, Olga was attractive enough in herself. Rolandsen had seen her grow up from a slip of a child; there was little money to spare in the home, and she had to wear her clothes as far as they would go before getting new things; but she was a bright, pretty girl, and her shyness was charming.

Rolandsen had met her two days in succession. The only way to manage it was by going straight up to the house and lending her father a book every day. He had to force these books on the old man, who had never asked for them and could not understand them. Rolandsen had to speak up for his books and plead their cause. They were the most useful books in the world, he said, and he, Rolandsen, was bent on making them known, on spreading them abroad. Værsaagod![3]

He asked the old man if he could cut hair. But the parish clerk had never cut hair in his life; Olga did all the hair-cutting in the house. Whereupon Rolandsen addressed himself to Olga, with prayers and eloquent entreaties, to cut his hair. Olga blushed and hid herself. “I couldn’t,” she said. But Rolandsen routed her out again, and overwhelmed her with irresistible words until she agreed.

“How do you like it done?” she asked.

“Just as you like,” he answered. “As if I could think of having it otherwise.”

Then, turning to her father, he tangled him up in a maze of intricate questions, until the old man could stand no more, and at last withdrew to the kitchen.

Rolandsen, elated, grew more extravagant than ever. He turned to Olga and said:

“When you go out in the dark on a winter evening and come into a lighted room, then all the light comes hurrying from everywhere to gather in your eyes.”

Olga did not understand a word of all this, but said, “Yes.”

“Yes,” said Rolandsen, “and it’s the same with me when I come in and see you.”

“Is it short enough here now?” asked Olga.

“No, not nearly. Just keep on. Do it just the way you like. Ah, you thought you could slip away and hide—didn’t you?—but you couldn’t. It was like the lightning putting out a spark.”

Of all the mad talk....

“I could manage better if you’d keep your head still,” said she.

“Then I can’t look at you. Say, Olga, have you a sweetheart?”

Olga was all unprepared for this. She was not so old and experienced as yet but that some things could put her out of countenance.

“Me? No,” was all she said. “Now I think it’ll have to do as it is. I’ll just round it off a little.” She spoke gently, having some idea he must be drunk.

But Rolandsen was not drunk at all; he was sober. He had been working hard of late; the gathering of strangers in the place had kept the telegraph busy.

“No, don’t stop yet,” he urged. “Cut it round once more—once or twice more—yes, do.”

Olga laughed.

“Oh, there’s no sense in that!”

“Oh, but your eyes are like twin stars,” he said. “And when you smile, it’s sunlight all round and all over me.”

She took away the cloth, and brushed him down, and swept up the hair from the floor. Rolandsen bent down to help her, and their hands met. She was a maid, he felt the breath of her lips close to, and it thrilled him warmly. He took her hand. Her dress, he saw, was fastened at the throat with just an ordinary pin. It looked wretchedly poor.

“Oh—what did you do that for?” she stammered.

“Nothing. I mean, thank you for doing my hair. If it wasn’t for being firmly and everlastingly promised to another, I’d be in love with you this minute.”

She stood up with the clippings of hair in her hands, and he leaned back.

“Now your clothes’ll be all in a mess,” she said, and left the room.

When her father came in, Rolandsen had to be jovial once more; he stretched out his shorn head, and drew his hat down over his ears to show it was too big for him now. Then suddenly he looked at the time, said he must get back to the station, and went off.

Rolandsen went to the store. He asked to look at some brooches and pins—the most expensive sort. He picked out an imitation cameo, and said he would pay for it later, if that would do. But that would not do; Rolandsen owed too much already. Consequently, he was reduced to taking a cheap little glass thing, coloured to look like agate—this being all his few small coins would run to. And Rolandsen went off with his treasure.

That was the evening before....

And now, here sits Rolandsen in his room, and cannot get on with his work. He puts on his hat and goes out to see who it might be waving branches in the wood. And walks straight into the lion’s jaws. Jomfru van Loos it was had made that sign, and she stands there waiting for him. Better have curbed his curiosity.

“Goddag!” says Jomfru van Loos. “What on earth have you been doing with your hair?”

“I always have it cut in the spring,” said he.

“I cut it for you last year. I wasn’t good enough this, it seems.”

“I’m not going to have any quarrels with you,” says he.

“Oh, aren’t you?”

“No, I’m not. And you’ve no call to stand here pulling up all the forest by the roots for everyone to see.”

“You’ve no call to stand there being funny,” says she.

“Why don’t you stand out down on the road and wave an olive branch?” says Rolandsen.

“Did you cut your hair yourself?”

“Olga cut my hair, if you want to know.”

Yes, Olga, who might one day be the wife of Frederik Mack; she had cut his hair. Rolandsen was not inclined to hide the fact; on the contrary, it was a thing to be blazoned abroad.

“Olga, did you say?”

“Well, and why not? Her father couldn’t.”

“I’m tired of your goings-on,” said Jomfru van Loos. “Don’t you be surprised if you find it’s all over between us one fine day.”

Rolandsen stood thinking for a moment.

“Why, perhaps that would be best,” he said.

“What!” cried Jomfru van Loos. “What’s that you say?”

“I say you’re clean out of your senses in the spring. Look at me now; did you ever see the least little restlessness about me in the spring?”

“Oh, you’re a man,” she answered carelessly. “But, anyhow, I won’t put up with this nonsense about Olga.”

“This new priest—is he rich?” asked Rolandsen.

Jomfru van Loos wiped her eyes and turned sharp and sensible all at once.

“Rich? As far as I can see he’s as poor as can be.”

Rolandsen’s hope was shattered.

“You should see his clothes,” she went on. “And her’s. Why, some of her petticoats.... But he’s a wonderful preacher. Have you heard him?”

“No.”

“One of the wonderfullest preachers I’ve ever heard,” says Jomfru van Loos in her Bergen dialect.

“And you’re quite sure he’s not rich?”

“I know this much; he’s been up to the store, and asked them to let him have things on credit from there.”

For a moment Rolandsen’s world was darkened, and he turned to go.

“Are you going?” asked Jomfru van Loos.

“Why, yes. What did you want with me, anyway?”

So that was the way he took it! Well, now ... Jomfru van Loos was already some way converted by the new priest, and strove to be meek and mild, but her nature would break out now and again.

“You mark my words,” she said. “You’re going too far.”

“All right!” said Rolandsen.

“You’re doing me a cruel wrong.”

“Maybe,” said Rolandsen coolly as ever.

“I can’t bear it any longer; I’ll have to give you up.”

Rolandsen thought this over once more. And then he said:

“I thought it would come to this. But seeing I’m not God, I can’t help it. Do as you please.”

“Right, then,” said she furiously.

“That first evening up here in the wood—you weren’t in such a temper then. I kissed you, and never a sound you made then but the loveliest little squeak.”

“I didn’t squeak,” said Jomfru van Loos indignantly.

“And I loved you for ever and ever, and thought you were going to be a fine particular joy. Ho, indeed!”

“Never you mind about me,” she said bitterly. “But what’s it to come to with you now?”

“Me? Oh, I don’t know. I don’t care now, anyway.”

“For you needn’t imagine it’ll ever come to anything with you and Olga. She’s to have Frederik Mack.”

Was she? thought Rolandsen. So it was common talk already. He walked away thoughtfully, and Jomfru van Loos went with him. They came down on to the road and walked on.

“You look nice with your hair short,” she said. “But it’s badly cut, wretchedly badly cut.”

“Can you lend me three hundred Daler?” he asked.

“Three hundred Daler?”

“For six months.”

“I wouldn’t lend you the money anyway. It’s all over between us now.”

Rolandsen nodded, and said, “Right, then, that’s agreed.”

But when they reached the Vicarage gate, where Rolandsen had to turn off, she said, “I haven’t the money. I wish I had.” She gave him her hand, and said, “I can’t stand here any longer now; good-bye for the present.” And when she had gone a few steps, she turned round and said, “Isn’t there anything else you’d like me to say?”

“No; what should there be?” said Rolandsen. “I’ve nothing that I know of.”

She went. And Rolandsen felt a sense of relief, and hoped in his heart it might be for the last time.

There was a bill stuck up on the fence, and he stopped to read it; it was Trader Mack’s latest announcement about the burglary: Four hundred Speciedaler for information. The reward would be paid even to the thief himself if he came forward and confessed.

Four hundred Speciedaler! thought Rolandsen to himself.

V

No, the new priest was not a rich man, far from it. It was only his poor little wife who was full of thoughtless, luxurious fancies she had been brought up with, and wanted a host of servants and such. There was nothing for her to do herself in the house; they had no children, and she had never learned housekeeping, and that was why she was for ever hatching childish ideas out of her little head. A sweet and lovely torment in the house she was.

Heavens alive, how the good priest had fought his comical battles with his wife again and again, trying to teach her a scrap of sense and thought and order! For four years he had striven with her in vain. He picked up threads and bits of paper from the floor, put odds and ends of things in their proper places, closed the door after her, tended the stoves, and screwed the ventilators as was needed. When his wife went out, he would make a tour of the rooms and see the state she had left them in: hairpins here, there, and everywhere; combs full of combings; handkerchiefs lying about; chairs piled up with garments. And he shuddered and put things straight again. In his bachelor days, when he lived by himself in an attic, he had felt less homeless than he did now.

He had scolded and entreated at first, with some effect; his wife admitted he was right, and promised to improve. And then she would get up early the next morning and set about putting things in order high and low, like a child in a sudden fit of earnestness, playing “grown-up peoples,” and overdoing it. But the fit never lasted; a few days after all was as before. It never occurred to her to wonder at the disorder when it appeared once more; on the contrary, she could not understand why her husband should begin again with his constant discontent. “I knocked over that dish and it smashed,” she would say. “It was only a cheap thing, so it doesn’t matter.”—“But the pieces have been lying about ever since this morning,” he answered.

One day she came in and told him that Oline the maid would have to go. Oline the maid had been rude enough to complain about her mistress’s way of taking things out of the kitchen and leaving them about all over the place.

And so, after a time, the priest grew hardened to it all, and gave up his daily protest; he still went on setting in order and putting things straight, but it was with compressed lips and as few words as might be. And his wife made no remark; she was used to having someone to clear up after her. Her husband, indeed, really felt at times that she was to be pitied. There she was, going about so pleasantly, a trifle thin, and poorly dressed, yet never uttering a sigh at her poverty, though she had been brought up to lack for nothing. She would sit and sew, altering her dresses that had been altered so many times already, humming over her work as cheerfully as a young girl. Then suddenly her childishness would break out; the mistress of the house would throw down her work, leave everything strewed as it fell, and go off for a walk. And chairs and tables might be left for days strewn with tacked sleeves and unpicked skirts. Where did she go? It was an old habit of hers from her youth at home to go fluttering about among the shops; she delighted in buying things. She could always find some use for remnants of material, bits of ribbon, combs and perfumes and toilet trifles, odd little metal things, matchboxes, and the like. Much better buy a big thing and have done with it, thought her husband; never mind if it were expensive and brought him into debt. He might try to write a book, a popular Church history, or something, and pay for it that way.

And so the years passed. There were frequent little quarrels; but the two were fond of each other none the less, and as long as the priest did not interfere too much, they managed well enough. But he had a troublesome way of keeping an eye on some little thing or other even from a distance, even from his office window; only yesterday he had noticed a couple of blankets left out in the rain. Should he tell someone? Then suddenly he saw his wife coming back from her walk, hurrying in out of the rain. She would notice them herself, no doubt. But she went straight up to her room. He called out into the kitchen; there was no one there, and he could hear Jomfru van Loos out in the dairy. So he went out himself and brought the blankets in.

And so the matter might have passed off, and no more said. But the priest could not keep his peace, foolish man. In the evening his wife asked for the blankets. They were brought. “They’re wet,” said she.—“They would have been wetter if I hadn’t fetched them in out of the rain,” said her husband. But at that she turned on him. “Was it you that fetched them in? There was no need for you to do anything of the sort; I would have told the maids myself to fetch them in.” He smiled bitterly at that; if he had left it till she told the maids, the blankets would have been hanging out now.

But his wife was offended. Was there any need to make such a fuss about a drop of rain or so? “Oh, but you’re unreasonable,” she said; “always bothering about all sorts of things.”—“I wish I were not obliged to bother about such things,” said he. “Just look at your washing-basin now; what’s it doing on the bed?”—“I put it there because there was no room anywhere else.”—“If you had another wash-stand, it would be all the same,” said he. “You’d have that loaded up with other things too in no time.” Then she lost patience, and said, “Oh, how can you be so unreasonable; really, I think you must be ill. I can’t bear any more of it, I can’t!” And she sat down, staring before her.

But she bore it all the same. A moment after it was all forgotten, and her kind heart forgave him the wrong. Careless and happy she was; it was her nature.

And the priest kept more and more to his study, where the general disorder of the house rarely penetrated. He was a big, sturdy man, and worked like a horse. He had inquired of his lay-helpers as to the moral tone of the village, and what he learned was by no means satisfactory. Wherefore he wrote letters of reprimand and warning to one and another of his flock, and where that did not avail, he went in person to visit the delinquents, till he came to be looked on with respect and awe. He spared none. He had himself ascertained that one of his helpers, Levion, had a sister who was far too easy and accommodating towards the fisher-lads; she too received a letter. He sent for her brother, and gave him the letter to deliver. “Give her that. And tell her I shall watch her goings about with an observant eye!”

Trader Mack came to call one day, and was shown into the parlour. It was a brief but important visit. Mack came to offer his assistance if any should be needed in helping the poor of the village. The priest thanked him, glad at heart. If he had not been sure of it before, at least he knew now, that Mack of Rosengaard was the protector of them all. An elegant, authoritative old gentleman; even Fruen herself, town-bred as she was, could not but feel impressed. A great man, beyond doubt—and those must be real stones in the pin he wore in his shirt-front.

“The fishery’s doing well,” said Mack. “I’ve made another haul. Nothing to speak of, only some twenty barrels, but it all helps, you know. And then it occurred to me that we ought not to forget our duty towards our neighbours.”

“Just so!” said the priest delightedly. “That’s as it should be. And twenty barrels, is that what you would call a little haul? I’ve no knowledge of these matters myself.”