MAN'S BREAST IS LIKE THE OCEAN
John passed an excellent matriculation, whereupon he took a fancy to
become a cadet, to which his father at once gave his consent,
considering that at the Military Academy he would learn order and
discipline, though, as a matter of fact, if what is meant by
discipline, is obedience to orders, he had no need to learn it, and he
had never been disorderly in his habits. Other faults, however, he did
possess, and he was twice nearly expelled from the Academy. The only
thing which saved him was his behaviour to his teachers, which was
always ingratiating. From the Academy he again passed a creditable
examination, and became absolutely enthusiastic for his profession. He
showed himself particularly good in drill. All was life, movement, and
story-telling where he was, and swearing into the bargain, for by
degrees he had brought swearing to a fine art. All the officers in the
brigade put together, did not swear as much in the course of a year, as
he did in a week. He could begin a string of oaths at one flank of the
company, as they stood on parade, and keep it up till he arrived at the
other. If he had used all the powers of imagination which he squandered
on swearing, in painting, he could have stocked a museum; or if he had
been a poet or composer, his shelves would have been full. But
unfortunately his oaths will not bear repeating, for they were
generally used when only men were present.
For common every-day use he was content with ordinary oaths, though,
even then, his way of using them was that of a master. As an indication
of the first-named description--those, namely, of his own invention--I
will give one example a little toned down. On one occasion, when the
company was assembled for prayers, the chaplain had wearied them by
preaching an excessively long discourse, which John Kurt declared he
had once read in an old book of sermons. He therefore asked for a
blessing on the chaplain in the following terms: "May Satan inwardly
illuminate all through his inside with burning sermon books."
He had an unending supply of stories, which were served up in a
seething sauce of imagery and cursing. His stories had this advantage
in them, that everybody did not believe them.
John Kurt was tall, thin, bony, and as supple as a willow. He wore
beard and moustache, but they did not grow well. The hair was ragged,
and there were patches where none grew. This gave his face a look of
being torn in two. When his wild eyes flashed out he was actually ugly.
But his brow was clear, with the fair skin which was hereditary in his
family; and sometimes, when he was at his best, a gleam would pass over
it which quite redeemed his plainness. His feelings were extremely
strong, and he could make others feel with him.
The finest thing in the world for a grown man, he considered, was
without doubt to be a soldier and officer. He thundered out his
assurances to the whole world, that no one could be a man who had not
gone through his drill. "Drill and discipline," he would exclaim, using
by preference the commonest expressions, for book language was not
strong enough; "drill and discipline. That was women-folks' greatest
loss that they never had discipline or tact in their commonplace
lives--the swine!" The whole country ought to be arranged as one vast
"Drill-hall." There would be no more cranky bodies then: "No, there
would be--devil take me--order and sense; the whole _Storting_--devil
plague them--ought to go to the parade ground and be drilled." Till
that day came there would be ne'er a bit of sense in the whole crew.
"The king--devil stare at me--ought to be drilled, if not the whole
place would be like a pigstye, where the strongest snout shoves t'other
one's out of the trough. Some one must stand over them with a whip."
How then can one possibly paint the astonishment of his comrades, his
friends, and, above all, of his father, when one fine day it was
announced that First Lieutenant John Kurt had applied for a discharge,
which had been granted him. He came storming home again, and whenever
he was asked why he had left, he replied that the whole military system
was--"devil pickle him--the most miserable buffoonery. No honourable
man ought to lend himself to it. The officers were nothing but
dressed-up, well-trained monkeys, who trained strong lusty lads to be
monkeys as well. The generals were big monkeys with feathers in their
caps, and the king was the chief monkey of all."
What was he going to do? "Why, dig the ground like his father. The
earth--that was the only solid thing there was in creation, and so it
was the only thing worth a rush, or that produced anything worth
having. To get out of it all that tasted best, and smelt best, that
was--may the devil quarter him--the finest thing an independent lad
could turn his hand to." He dressed himself in the most slovenly way,
and worked among the other labourers for his living.
That was all very well during the summer, but the harvest was
hardly over before he discovered that--may the devil fly off with
him--gardening was simply muck. It consisted in using this sort of
muck, and then so much muck, and muck in that fashion. It seemed to him
at last that "all the world was naught but a great muck-heap. They were
the luckiest who owned the biggest. What--devil butcher him--was war
other than that each one killed t'other for his own muck-heap? Poets
and poetry were the flies in spring when the muck began to work."
He went off in a ship, bound for the South Sea, and was absent for
several years, nor, when one beautiful spring day he returned home,
could any one gain a clue as to where he had been. If he were to be
believed, he had traversed the whole globe, for from that time no
country or nation could be mentioned, nor anything remarkable in
natural history, no ocean, no well-known building, which he had not
seen, nor a single famous person with whom he was not on terms of the
greatest intimacy, or, at the very least, well known to. It was evident
that they were not all inventions. He had a great deal of information
which could only have been acquired on the spot. He had undoubtedly
some notable acquaintance, for his correspondence proved it. Later on
in the summer an English nobleman and his friends sought him out to
accompany them on a mountain hunting expedition.
Why had he come home? "To see his father before he died," he said;
though, to confess the truth, his father was in the best of health, and
not more pleased to welcome his son home, than he had been to see him
depart.
John, however, declared all the same, that for his part, Heaven help
him, he could not bear any longer to think that his father might be
dying, and he not by his side.
From the time he returned he was all solicitude and affection for his
father. He was now an old man, and allowed his son to do anything with
him that he chose, and strange fancies he took at times. Such as, when
he suddenly determined that his father should not eat anything. Or when
he, all at once, hit on the plan of putting him into a warm bath, while
he turned the cold douche on to him. Another idea was to lay him under
a number of large eider-down coverlids, in order to make him sweat,
although his father had not the slightest need for such treatment.
He would give a side glance at his son, and a very speaking one it
was; there was neither confidence, nor fear in it, still less any
good-humour, but a certain cold inquisitiveness, as though he just
wished to know what next; and sometimes he seemed to ask, "Is this
John, or is it not John?"