Transcriber's Note
Italics are indicated by _underscores_, and bold text by =equals signs=.
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.
[Illustration]
GYLDENDAL
11 BURLEIGH STREET, COVENT GARDEN
LONDON, W.C.2
COPENHAGEN. CHRISTIANIA.
[Illustration]
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.
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
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.
[1] The devil run loose.
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.
[2] The mistress--_i.e._, the priest’s wife. A married lady is often
referred to as _Fruen_, or addressed as _Frue_. In the present book,
the name of the priest is not stated; he is referred to throughout as
_Præsten_, and his wife as _Præstefruen_, or _Fruen_ simply.
[Illustration]
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.
[Illustration]
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?