Solem was being discussed at dinner; I don't know who began it, but some
of the ladies thought he was good-looking, and they nodded and said, Yes,
he was the right sort.
"What do you mean by the right sort?" Associate Master Höy asked, looking
up from his plate.
No one answered.
Then Associate Master Höy could not help smiling broadly, and said:
"Well, well! I must have a look at this Solem some time. I've never paid
any attention to him."
Associate Master Höy might look at Solem all he pleased; he would grow no
bigger for that, nor Solem smaller. The good Mr. Höy was annoyed, and that
was the truth. It is catching for a woman to discover that a man is "the
right sort"; the other women grow curious, and stick their noses into it:
"So-o-o, is he?" And a few days later the whole flock of them are of one
opinion: "Yes, indeed, he's the right sort!"
Pity the poor, left-over associate masters then!
Poor Mr. Höy; there was Mrs. Molie, too, nodding her head for Solem. To
tell the truth, she had no appearance of knowing much about the matter,
but she could not lag behind the others.
"So, Mrs. Molie is nodding, too!" said Mr. Höy, and smiled again. He was
intensely annoyed. Mrs. Molie turned pink and pretty.
At the next meal, Mr. Höy could contain himself no longer.
"Ladies," he said, "mine eyes have now beheld Master Solem."
"Well?"
"Common sneak-thief!"
"Oh, shame!"
"You must admit he has a brazen look on his face. No beard. Blue chin, a
perfect horse-face...."
"There's no harm in that," said Mrs. Molie.
Mrs. Molie doesn't seem to have gone quite out of circulation after all, I
thought. In fact, she had lately been developing quite a little cushion
over her chest, and no longer looked so hunched up. She had eaten well and
slept well, and improved at this resort. Mrs. Molie, I suspect, still has
plenty of life left in her.
This proved true a few days later. Once again: poor Associate Master Höy!
For now we had a new visitor at the farm, a gay dog of a lawyer, and he
talked more to Mrs. Molie than to anyone else. Had there been anything
between her and Mr. Höy? True, he was not much to look at, but then
neither was she.
The young lawyer was a sportsman, yet he was learned in the social
sciences, too, had been in Switzerland and studied the principle of the
referendum. At first he had worked a few years in an architect's office,
he told us, but then he had changed to the law instead, which in its turn
had led him into social problems. No doubt he was a rich and unselfish man
to be able to change his vocation and to travel in this way. "Ah,
Switzerland!" he said, and his eyes watered. None of us could understand
his fervor.
"Yes, it must be a wonderful country," Mrs. Molie said.
The Associate Master looked ready to burst, and was quite incapable of
restraining himself.
Speaking of Solem, he said suddenly, "I've changed my mind about him
lately. He's ten times better than many another."
"There, you see!"
"Yes, he is. And he doesn't pretend to be anything more than he is. And
what he is, is of some use. I saw him slaughter the lame goat."
"Did you stop to watch that?"
"I happened to be passing. It was the work of a moment for him. And later
I saw him in the woodshed. He knows his job, that fellow. I can well
understand that the ladies see something in him."
How the Associate Master clowned! He finished by imploring the wife of the
captain who was sailing the China seas to be sure and remain faithful to
her Chinaman.
"Do be quiet and let the lawyer tell us about Switzerland," said Mrs.
Molie.
Witch! Did she want to drive her fellow-being the Associate Master into
jumping off the highest peak of the Tore tonight?
But then Mrs. Brede took a hand. She understood Mr. Höy's torment and
wanted to help him. Had not this same Mr. Höy just expressed himself
kindly about Solem, and was not Solem the lad who one fine evening had
caused her to tear down her window blind? There is cause and effect in all
things.
"Switzerland," said Mrs. Brede in her gentle fashion, and then she
reddened and laughed a little. "I don't know anything about Switzerland;
but once I bought some dress material that was Swiss, and I've never in my
life been so cheated."
The lawyer only smiled at this.
Schoolmistress Johnsen talked about what she had learned, watchmakers and
the Alps and Calvin--
"Yes, those are the only three things in a thousand years," said the
Associate Master, his face quite altered and pale with suppressed rage.
"Really, really, Associate Höy!" exclaimed Schoolmistress Palm with a
smile.
But the lawyer focused everyone's admiration on himself by telling them
all about Switzerland, that wonderful country, that model for all small
countries of the world. What social conditions, what a referendum, what
planning in the exploitation of the country's natural wonders! There they
had sanatoriums; there they knew how to deal with tourists! Tremendous!
"Yes, and what Swiss cheese," said the Associate Master. "It smells like
tourists' feet."
Dead silence. So Associate Master Höy was prepared to go to such lengths!
"Well, what about Norwegian old-milk cheese?" said a Danish voice mildly.
"Yes, that's filthy stuff, too," Mr. Höy replied. "Just the thing for
Schoolmaster Staur pontificating in his armchair."
Laughter.
Since matters were now smoothed over again, the lawyer could safely
continue:
"If we could only make such Swiss cheese here," he said, "we should not be
so poor. Generally speaking, I found after my modest investigations in
that country that they are ahead of us in every respect. We have
everything to learn from them: their frugality, their diligence, their
long working hours, the small home industries--"
"And so on," interrupted Associate Master Höy. "All trifles, nothingness,
negativity! A country that exists thanks only to the mercy of its
neighbors ought not to be a model for any other country on earth. We must
try to rise above the wretched stench of it, which only makes us ill. The
big countries and big circumstances should be our model. Everything grows,
even the small things, unless they're predestined to a Lilliput existence.
A child can learn from another child, of course, but the model is the
adult. Some day the child will be an adult itself. A pretty state of
affairs it would be if an eternal child, a born pygmy, were to be its
model! But that's what all this rubbish about Switzerland really amounts
to. Why on earth should we, of all people, take the smallest and meanest
country as our model? Things are small enough here anyhow. Switzerland is
the serf of Europe. Have you ever heard of a young South American country
of Norway's size trying to be on a level with Switzerland? Why do you
think Sweden is taking such great strides forward now? Not because it
looks to Switzerland, or to Norway, but to Germany! Honor to Sweden for
that! But what about us? We don't want to be a piddling little nation
stuck up in our mountains, a nation that brings forth peace conferences,
ski-runners, and an Ibsen once every thousand years; we have
potentialities for a thousand times more--"
The lawyer had for some time been holding up his hand to indicate that he
wanted to reply; now he shouted at the top of his voice:
"Just a moment!"
The Associate Master stopped.
"Just one question--a small, trifling question," said the lawyer,
preparing his ground well. "Have you ever once set foot in the country you
speak of?"
"I should think I have," replied the Associate Master.
There! The lawyer got nothing for his trifling question. And then it all
came out what a heartless jilt Mrs. Molie was. She had known all the time
that Mr. Höy had been on a traveling scholarship in Switzerland, but she
had never mentioned it. What a snake in the grass! She had even encouraged
the lawyer, but no one else, to talk about Switzerland.
"Oh, yes, of course Associate Master Höy has been in Switzerland" she
said, as though to clinch the matter.
"In that case, the Associate Master and I have looked on the country with
different eyes; that's all," said the lawyer, suddenly anxious to end the
controversy.
"They haven't even folk tales there," said the Associate Master, who
seemed unable to stop. "There they sit, generation after generation,
filing watch springs and piloting Englishmen up their mountains. But it's
a country without folk music or folk tales. I suppose you think we ought
to work hard to resemble the Swiss in that, too?"
"What about William Tell?" asked Miss Johnsen.
Several of the ladies nodded, or at any rate Miss Palm did.
At this point Mrs. Molie turned her head and looked out of the window as
she said:
"You really had a very different opinion about Switzerland before, Mr.
Associate Master."
This was a hit below the belt. He wanted to reply, wanted to annihilate
her, but he restrained himself and remained silent.
"Don't you remember?" she asked, goading him.
"No," he replied. "You mistook my meaning. Really, I can't understand it,
I usually make myself quite clear; after all, I'm accustomed to explaining
to children."
Another foul. Mrs. Molie said no more, merely smiling patiently.
"I can only say that my opinion is diametrically opposed to yours," the
lawyer repeated. "But I did think," he went on, "that this was one thing I
knew something about, however...."
Mrs. Molie got up and went out with her head bent, seemingly on the point
of bursting into tears. The Associate Master sat still for a moment, and
then followed her, whistling and putting on as brave a manner as though he
felt quite easy in his mind.
"What's your opinion?" asked Mrs. Brede, turning to the doyen of the
company, namely myself.
And as becomes a man of settled years, I replied:
"Probably there has been a little exaggeration on both sides."
Everybody agreed with this. But I could never have acted as a mediator,
for I thought the Associate Master was right. In one's early seventies,
one still has many pathetically young ideas.
The lawyer rounded off the discussion thus:
"Well, when all's said and done we have Switzerland to thank for being
able to sit here at our ease in this comfortable mountain resort. We get
tourists into the country on the Swiss model, and earn money and pay off
our debts. Ask this man if he would have been willing to do without all we
have learned from Switzerland...."
That evening Mrs. Brede asked,
"Why did you make Mr. Höy look so unreasonable today, Mrs. Molie?"
"I?" said Mrs., Molie innocently. "Well, really--!"
As a matter of fact, it seemed as though Mrs. Molie had really been
innocent, for the very next morning she and the Associate Master set off
up the fjeld together in a very gay mood, and remained away till midday.
If they had the matter out between them, then no doubt the lady spoke to
her much-tried friend as follows:
"Surely you can see I'm not interested in that lawyer-person! What an
idea! I only drew him out so you'd have the chance to give him a good
dressing down--don't you understand that? Really, you're the silliest,
sweetest--come here, let me kiss you...."