A bright, sunny summer morning the commissioner is sitting with his
pupil up in the wooden pavilion, which he has had set up on the highest
point of the skerry close to the newly laid foundation of the mission
house. Down in the harbor lies a schooner, from which the frame for
the new building is being unloaded and carried up to its place to be
joined together by the foreman and his laborers. Therefore it has been
unusually lively on the skerry for some time and small skirmishes have
already arisen between the fishermen and the city workmen, in which the
latter have treated the former with insolence, which has given rise
to a series of feasts of atonement followed by drunkenness and new
frays, attacks of immorality and appropriation of other's property.
Therefore the commissioner and the elderly lady have a momentary
regret at having undertaken the civilization of these people, when the
first steps already showed such a sad result; so much more so as the
nightly noises, singing, crying and complaining disturbed all work and
all rest for them, who had come out here solely for the purpose of
seeking quiet. The commissioner, who had lost all reputation by once
yielding a little of his authority, could not restore the peace, but
Miss Mary on the other hand succeeded better and understood how by a
prompt appearance, and a good word now and then, to suppress the storm.
This she would not impute to her beauty and agreeable manner; she had
credited herself with a higher degree of strength and understanding
than she possessed, and thus imbued herself in the belief of having an
unusual faculty of mind, so that even now, when she sat as a pupil with
her teacher, she received his instruction as though she were already
acquainted with them, and answered with remarks more pointed than
sagacious, seeming to correct and explain rather than to learn.
The mother, who was sitting beside her embroidering an altar cloth for
the new mission house, seemed occasionally amazed at her daughter's
penetrating insight and great knowledge, as she with a simple question
nonplussed her teacher.
"See here, Miss Mary," lectured the commissioner, always deceiving
himself with the hope of being able to educate her; "the untrained
eye has a propensity to see everything simple; the untrained ear to
hear everything simple. You see here around you only gray granite,
and the painter and the poet see the same. Therefore they paint and
depict everything so monotonously; therefore they find the skerries so
monotonous. And yet, look at this geological map of the surroundings
and then throw a glance out over the landscape. We are sitting on the
red gneiss region. Look at this stone you call granite, how rich is the
variety; it is the baking together of the black mica, the white quartz
and the pinkish feldspar."
He had taken a sample from the pile which the foundation layers
had blasted from the skerry and laid in a heap for the building's
foundation.
"And look, here is another. It is called eurite! See what fine shades
of color, from salmon red towards flint blue. And here is white marble
of primeval limestone."
"Is there marble here?" asked the girl, her imagination stirred at the
mention of this valuable stone.
"Yes, there exists marble here, although it looks gray on the surface
without being gray. For, if you observe it closer you will find what an
infinite variety of color there is in the lichens. What a scale of the
finest colors from the ramaline lichen India-ink black to the crottle's
ash-gray, the ground liverwort's leather-brown, the parmelia lichen
seal-green, the tree lungwort's spotted copper-green and the wall moss
egg-yellow. Look closer out over the skerries as they are now lit by
the sun, you will see that the rocks have different colors, and that
the people who are used to seeing them, even give them names after
the scale of colors, which they are acquainted with without knowing
it. Do you see that the Black Rock is darker than the others, because
it consists of the dark: hornblende; that the Red Rock is red, because
it is composed of red gneiss, and the white skerries of clean washed
eurite? Is it not more to know why, than to know that a thing is so;
and still less to see nothing but an even gray, as the painter, who
paints all the skerries with a mixing of black and white? Hear now the
roaring of the waves, as the poets summarily call this symphony of
sound. Close your eyes for a moment and you will hear better while I
analyze this harmony in simple notes. You at first hear a buzzing which
resembles the noise heard in a machine shop or a big city. It is the
masses of water dashing against each other; next you hear a hissing;
it is the lighter, smaller water particles which are lashed to foam.
And now a grating as of a knife against a grindstone; it is the wave
tearing against the sand. And now a rattling like the dumping of a
load of gravel; it is the sea heaving up small stones. Then a muffled
thud as when you clap the hollow of your hand to the ear, it is the
wave which presses the air before it into a cavern; and lastly this
murmuring as from distant thunder, it is big bowlders, rolling on the
stony bottom."
"Yes, but this is to spoil nature for us!" said the girl.
"It is to make nature intimate with us! It gives me composure to know
it, and thereby frees me from the poet's half-hidden fear of the
unknown, which is nothing else than memories from the time of savage
fiction, when explanations were sought but could not be found quickly;
and in the emergency the fable of the mermaids and the giants was
caught at. But now we pass on to the fishing, which shall be retrieved,
leaving the salmon for some other time, and try new methods for
stromling fishing. In two months the great fishing begins, and if I
have not calculated wrongly it is going to be a failure in the autumn."
"How can you foretell that from your sofa?" asked the girl more
cuttingly than inquisitive.
"I foretell it by the facts that I have seen--from my sofa--how the
drifting ice in the spring scraped the shoals clear of kelp and
other algæ, in which the stromling go to spawn. I foretell it by the
scientific fact that the small crustaceans--no matter what they are
called--on which the stromling feed, have stayed away from the banks
since the seaweed was scraped away. What shall we do then? We shall try
to fish in the deep water I If the fish don't come to me then I must
go to the fish. And therefore we shall try with nets drifting after a
floating boat. It is simple!"
"It is grand!" said Miss Mary.
"It is old," protested the commissioner, "and it isn't my discovery!
But now we shall as prudent beings think of a last resort, for even if
we get stromling and don't get a price for it on account of herring
being caught again on the west coast, we must have something else In
readiness."
"It is the salmon?"
"It is the salmon, which must be found here, but I haven't seen it."
"You have told me this much before, but now I should like to know how
you can know it."
"I shall reduce the fraction and in a few words tell the reason of my
stay here. The salmon wander as do the other migrating birds."
"The salmon a bird?"
"Certainly, a perfect migratory bird. It is to be found near the rivers
of Norrland, and has been caught twice in nets round the islands of
the north passage. It has been taken near Gotland and in the whole
southward passage; therefore it must pass by here. Now it is your task
to trace it out with floating trails. Have you the desire to do it, in
the capacity of my assistant, to obtain my salary?"
The last word came suddenly, but with calculation, and did not fail in
its intent.
"I shall make money, mamma," cried Miss Mary in a playful tone,
intended to hide the joy she really felt. "But," added she, "what will
you do then?"
"I shall lie on my sofa, and spoil nature for you."
"What are you going to do?" asked the mother, who believed she had not
heard aright.
"I shall make an Italian landscape for Miss Mary," answered the
commissioner, "and now I will leave you, my ladies, and make the
sketch."
Therewith he arose and making a polite bow walked down to the beach.
"He is an odd being," said the mother, when the commissioner was out of
hearing.
"An unusual being at the least," answered the girl; "but I don't
believe he is perfectly sane. He seems to have principles, and on the
whole is a kind man. What have you to say about him?"
"Hand me my yarn, child," said the mother.
"No, but say something ... tell me whether you like him or not,"
continued the girl.
The mother only answered with a half sad and half resigned glance,
which expressed indifference.
* * * * *
Meanwhile the commissioner had gone down to the harbor and taken his
boat to row out among the skerries. The summer heat had lasted out here
a month, so that the air was hot; but drifting ice still coming from
the north, where an unusually severe winter on the coast had caused
bottom freezing, was now drifting southward, cooling the water, so
that the lower air strata had greater density than the upper ones.
The consequent refraction disfigured the aspect of the skerries and
had caused the most magnificent mirages during the past few days.
This scenery had given rise to long continued disputes between the
commissioner and the ladies in which the fishing population had been
summoned as judges, being the most competent because they had seen
these phenomena of nature from childhood. And when on a morning the
light red gneiss skerries through refraction stretched upwards and
by the varying density in the strata of air seemed stratified as
the cliffs of Normandy, Miss Mary argued that it really was those
limestone cliffs, which were reflected as far up as the Baltic Sea,
through a law of nature still unsolved by science. At the same time
the white swell of the breakers in the strand stones was magnified
and multiplied through refraction so that it really looked as though
a flotilla of Normandy fishing boats were beating the wind under the
cliffs. The commissioner, who had tried in vain to give the only
correct explanation, in order to take away the supernatural, the
more so as the people saw in the phenomena predictions, of course,
of coming misfortunes; belief In ill luck, which acted as a damper
on their enterprise, now found himself obliged to appear first as a
wizard to win the ear of the populace, with the intention, however, to
subsequently remove the mystery by telling them how he made his magic.
Therefore he asked the believers, whether they would also believe
themselves to see a mirage of Italy, if they should see an Italian
landscape, and when they answered, "Yes," he decided to combine the
useful with the pleasant and by a few small changes fulfil his promise
to form an exotic landscape for Miss Mary's birthday, so that by the
next mirage it would loom up against the horizon on a grand scale when
seen through the colossal magnifying glass, that the different density
of the air strata afforded.
Sitting in his boat, he aimed towards the Sword-islet with his diopter,
the lenses of which he had considerably increased in power. Now the
first question was how to get the most characteristic features of the
formation, viz., the stratified rocks, to come forth, and this nature
had partly done. After this he needed a stone pine, a cypress, a marble
palace and a terrace with oranges on espaliers.
After scanning and outlining the skerry, he had the scheme clear and
soon landed with his boat in which was stowed a crow bar, a ship
scraper, a roll of zinc wire and a bucket of yellow ocher with a
big tar brush, besides an ax, a saw, nails and a stock of dynamite
cartridges.
When he had landed and packed up his belongings, he felt himself a
Robinson Crusoe, who had taken up a battle with nature, but much
sharper and surer of victory as he had brought along the means of
culture. After he had placed the plane table on a tripod and upon this
the alidade, he started to work.
The mountain ridge, whose tilted folds happily imitated the southern
sedimentary strata, needed only to be scraped so as to remove the
lichens, where there were any, leaving some horizontal stripes darker
than the folds. It was not heavy work; the ship scraper glided over the
smooth surface as a retouching brush on the scene painter's big canvas.
Sometimes he felt with disgust that he was throwing time and power away
on childish things, but the bodily exertion sent the blood to his head,
so that he saw small things bigger than they were; felt something of a
Titan, who stormed the universe, corrected our Maker's mistakes, and
wriggled the earth's axis so that the south came a little northward.
After he had striped the rocky wall, for a few meters, which was all
that was needed as it was to be multiplied by the air strata, he went
to manufacture the stone pine. On the hillock's crest stood a group of
low arborescent pines, which together only miraged as the border of a
forest. The thing was to cut down half a dozen trees to isolate the
best one which would be silhouetted against the sky.
To saw down the supernumerary trees was the work of half an hour. The
one that was left was slender with all its vegetative energy gathered
at the top, because the others standing so close had hindered the
formation of branches on the trunk. But now he must thin the crown with
an ax so that the characteristic umbrella frame with its ribs came
out. It was easily done, but when he afterwards looked at his creation
with the diopter he still saw that the style was not perfect and that
the top branches must be stretched upwards with zinc wire and the side
branches somewhat downwards and outwards. When the stone pine was
completed, he took a glass of wine and selected the material for the
cypresses. This soon presented itself in the form of a pair of pointed
junipers, which he only needed to select so that they rose against the
sky, and trim them with an ax and the knife. But as they were somewhat
too light, he took a pail of water and stirred some ivory-black in it
and sprinkled them with the wash until they had a perfect churchyard
green.
When he contemplated his work, he became dejected, and recollected a
dark story of the girl who stepped on the loaf of bread; and when the
white mews gave forth dreadful cries above his head, he thought of the
two black ravens which came from heaven to take her soul down to hell.
After he had sat a moment and the blood had returned to his brain, he
smiled at his work and at his childish fear. If nature herself had not
gone exactly so hastily to work with the origin of species it was not
lack of good will, only lack of ability.
Now to make a marble palace; and as that had been his starting point
and he had planned it all at home on his sofa, this work was not more
difficult than the other.
The limestone ledge stood perfectly vertical, ready for a facade; true
there were only a few square meters of it but no more was needed, and
it was only to loosen the eurite slabs, which from weathering had
cracked from the limestone. The crowbar proved sufficient at first, but
at the base he found it necessary to use a dynamite cartridge in the
crack.
At the report of the cartridge and the raining down of shivers he felt
something of the poet's longing to dump all at once the ammunition of
the standing armies into a volcano and relieve humanity of the pain of
existence and the trouble of development.
Now the marble slab was cleared and the crystals of the limestone
sparkled like loaf sugar in the sunbeams. With his paint buckets he
marked out a rustic base and outlined two small quadrangular windows.
On the rocky ledge above he drove two poles and laid a third one
across, tying them so that the whole formed a pergola. Afterwards he
needed only to lift up the bearberry vines, which were a couple of
yards long, and twine them round the poles; thus the grapevine was in
place, and hanging down in festoons.
At last he retouched the soil with a gallon of muriatic acid diluted
with as much water, whereby a brilliant variegation of colors was
produced on the grassy carpet, to represent patches of Bellis or
Galanthus which flowers he had found characteristic of the Roman
Campagna at the coming of the "second spring" in October after the wine
harvest has ended.
And therewith his work was completed!
But it had taken him until evening. In order that the miracle should
have a proper effect there remained, however, to announce its
appearance in advance and best if he could predetermine the day.
He knew that there had been great heat in the south of Europe, and
therefore it would not be long before a north wind would come. It had
been from the east for some time now, while the barometric pressure in
the North Sea had been low. According to reports, drifting ice lay off
Arholma, and as soon as the wind would veer a few points to northward
the ice drift must follow the current which passes to the west of
Aland, where the Gulf of Bothnia empties into the Baltic Sea. If he
could only get a north wind in the evening of some day then he was sure
it would last a couple of days, and as it is always accompanied by
clear air he would be able to foretell the appearance of the phenomenon
at least one day in advance, and if he got that far it would be an easy
matter to tell the hour, for the mirage only appeared a few hours after
sunrise, usually between ten and twelve o'clock.
As he entered his chamber, he locked the door to devote himself to
his work, his great work, which he had been planning for the last ten
years and expected to complete when he was fifty; this was the goal,
which had inspired his life and which he carried as his secret. He
enjoyed the thought of owning himself for a few hours, for during the
weeks which had passed since the arrival of the two ladies, he had
been occupied every evening with keeping them company, and that, which
should have been a rest and a pleasure, had become a constraint, a
labor. He loved the young girl and would live with her in wedlock, in
complete unification, when leisure moments would afford unpremeditated
confidences and rest; but this state of semi-familiarity where he
at fixed hours must appear whether he was disposed to converse or
not, pained him as a duty. She had caught hold of him and never
tired of receiving as he possessed the ability to be always new and
entertaining; but he who never received anything, could in time find
the need of renewing himself. But when he then stayed away, she became
uneasy, nervous and tortured him with questions whether she was too
importunate, to which he as a well-bred man could not answer in the
affirmative.
Now he opened his manuscript case, where the cartons lay arranged with
notes, small slips of paper with improvised thoughts on observations,
stuck on half sheets as in a herbarium, and which it amused him to
arrange and rearrange after new classifications in order to find
out whether the phenomena could be arranged in as many ways as the
brain willed, or they really could be arranged according to only one
classification, viz., as nature had placed them, if indeed nature
in its operations had followed any particular law and order. This
occupation awakened in him the idea that he was the real arranger
of chaos, who separated light from darkness; and that the chaos
first ceased with the evolution of the discriminating organ of
self-consciousness, at a time when light and darkness in reality were
not yet separated. He intoxicated himself with this thought, felt
how his ego was growing, how the brain cells germinated, burst their
capsules, multiplied and formed new species of concepts, which should
in time crop out in thoughts, and fall into the brain substance of
others as yeast plants and cause millions after his death, if not
before, to serve as hot beds for his seeds of thought....
There was a knock at the door, and with an excited voice, as though he
had been disturbed in a secret meeting, he asked who it was.
It was a greeting from the ladies and an inquiry if the commissioner
would come down.
This he answered by returning his regards, but he had no time this
evening because he must work, unless some urgent circumstances required
his presence.
There was silence for a moment. As he thought he surely knew what would
follow he left his interrupted work and placed his manuscript in order;
he had just completed this when he heard the mother's step on the
staircase. Instead of waiting for her to knock he opened the door and
greeted her with the question, "Miss Mary is sick?"
The mother started, but recovered herself at once and asked the doctor
to come down and see her as it was impossible to get a physician.
The commissioner was not a physician but he had acquired the elements
of pathology and therapeutics; had observed himself and all the sick
that had come within his circle; had philosophized over the nature of
diseases and their remedies, and finally, made up a therapy, that he
applied to himself. Therefore he promised to come in about half an hour
and bring the medicine with him as he heard the girl lay in convulsions.
It certainly was not difficult for him to guess the nature of her
sickness. As the first messenger had said nothing about illness, it
must have occurred between the two messages and had been caused by
his refusal to go. It was a psychical indisposition, which he so well
recognized and which passed under the yet undefined name of hysteria.
A little pressure on the will, a thwarted wish, a cross plan, and at
once followed a general depression under which the soul tried to place
the pains within the body without being able to localize them. He had
so often seen in the pharmacodynamics beside the names of remedies and
their action small cautious remarks as "acts in a yet unexplained way,"
or "action not yet fully known," and he believed that he had found by
observation and speculation, that just because of the unity of mind and
matter the remedy acted both chemico-dynamically and psychically at
the same time. Recent medical ideas had left out the medicine or the
material basis and assumed in hypnotism a purely psychical, or in diet
and physical exercise a vulgar and often detrimental mechanical method.
These exaggerations he regarded as necessary and beneficial transition
forms, although their trial had demanded its victims as, for instance,
when one with cold water excites a nervous person instead of soothing
them with warm baths, or tired out the weak with violent exercises in
the raw air.
He believed he had found that the old remedies could still be of
service as a kind of instruction material, to use the popular
expression, in order to awaken and change impressions, and just as the
group of astringents really cause a contracting of the stomach, just so
do they cause a concentrating of the soul's scattered powers, which the
dissipated drinker knows from experience when he in the morning winds
up his run down movement with an "Angostura."
This woman felt herself bodily indisposed without directly being so.
Therefore he now composed a series of remedies, of which the first
would cause a real physical ailment whereby the patient should be urged
to leave the sickly condition of the soul and localize it definitely
in the body. To this purpose he took from his family medicine case
the most nauseating of all drugs, asafœtida, which could best develop
a condition of general illness, and in such great doses that actual
convulsions would result; that means, the whole physique with the
senses of smell and taste should rise in revolt against this strange
substance in the body, and all the functions of the soul should direct
their attention to its removal. Thereby the imaginary pains would
be forgotten, and it would only remain then to cause in succession
transitions from the one nauseating sensation down through less
unpleasant ones, until finally the release from the last stage, by
means of an upward grade of cooling, covering, softening, mitigating
remedies, should awaken a complete sensation of vivacity as after
having passed through troubles and dangers, which are delightful to
recollect.
After having dressed himself in a white sack coat of cashmere and tied
on a cream colored necktie with pale amethyst stripes, he for the
first time since the arrival of the ladies put on his bracelet. Why
all this he could not explain, but he did it under the influence of an
impression, brought from the sick bed he was to visit, and which he
produced in himself. And when he looked in the mirror without observing
his face, he noticed that his exterior gave a mild sympathetic
impression, but also with a touch of the unusual and that it would
attract attention, without exciting a nervous person.
After this he collected his requisites like a magician who is going to
perform, and went to the sick bed.
When he was shown into the chamber, he saw the girl lying on the sofa,
with disheveled hair and dressed in a Persian morning-gown. Her eyes
were unnaturally big and stared contemptuously at the intruder.
The commissioner felt for a moment embarrassed, but only for a moment,
and then he stepped forwards and grasped her hand.
"How is it with you, Miss Mary?" asked he sympathetically.
She looked at him piercingly, as though she would penetrate him, but
did not answer.
He took out his watch and, counting her pulse, said:
"You have fever."
Here he lied, but he must gain her confidence, that was part of the
cure.
The expression on the girl's face changed immediately.
"If I have fever! Oh, I believe I shall burn up!"
She was allowed to complain, and the hostile mood against the visitor
had passed so that contact closing the current could occur.
"Do you promise to obey my orders? If so, I will cure you," the
commissioner began, meantime laying his hand on her forehead.
At the word obey he felt how the patient twitched as though she would
not obey at all, but at the same moment his bracelet slipped below the
cuff and the resistance of the imaginary sick ceased.
"Do with me as you please," answered she submissively; meanwhile her
eyes were fastened on the golden serpent which fascinated her and
aroused her fears of something unknown.
"I am no physician by profession, as you know, but I have studied the
art, and know all that is necessary for this occasion. Here I have
a drug which is very diagreeable to take, but is infallible in its
action. It is no secret and I shall tell you what I am giving you. This
is a resinous gum which is prepared from the root of a perennial herb
which grows in stony Arabia."
At the word Arabia the girl listened, for it probably aroused some
thoughts of incense, which could not hide Lady Macbeth's foul crimes.
Therefore she took the spoon and smelt of its contents; but at the same
moment she threw her head backwards and cried: "I cannot take it!"
He placed his arm round her neck, firmly and gently, and reached the
spoon to her once more and coaxingly said:
"Show now that you are a good child!" Thereupon he poured the drug into
her mouth, before she could make resistance.
She fell backwards upon the sofa pillows and her body writhed under
the pains and nauseating effects which the resin with its smell of
white onion had produced, and her face expressed a horror as though
all things bad and disgusting in this world had piled upon her. With a
supplicating voice she beseeched him for a glass of water to free her
from her agony.
This he would not give her; she must lie down and, whether she would or
not, submit to the disagreeable feelings the remedy caused.
Now when he saw her melted by disgust, he took up his drug number two.
"Now, Miss Mary, the wandering in stony Arabia's desert is ended and
you shall go up on the Alps and inhale the mountain air, concentrated
in the vigorous gentian's bitter root, yellow as sum light," said the
commissioner in an encouraging, manly voice.
The girl received the bitter drug unresistingly and shrank as though
stabbed with a knife; but directly after she aroused as though her
scattered powers had rushed together and her energy had returned.
The violent remedy had taken away the previous obnoxious taste but
irritated the mucous membranes of the stomach by its sharpness, and
increased the pulse.
"Now we shall put out the fire with quilts," continued the
commissioner. "And let us go to Brittany's seashore to fetch balsam in
the mild Carrageen alga. Do you feel how soft the mucilage lays itself
protectingly over the irritated lining of the stomach and do you notice
the odor of the sea salts?"
A quiet calm spread over the patient's heated face, and as the
physician now considered her strong enough to listen to him, he began
with reminiscences of the coast of Brittany, the yachting on the
Atlantic, the life with the fishermen in Quimper, and the hunting for
seabirds at Sarzeau.
She followed his narrative, but still seemed somewhat tired, so he
broke off and gave her a symphony, as he called it, which was composed
of the classical route, well known as the wine spice of bridal parties
in the Middle Ages; the heavenly Angelica, the spearmint with its
household odor and a little touch of _Carbenia benedicta_ to preserve
vigor, and a grain of juniper oil to tell of the forest.
It was as though he rubbed her with impressions, snatched her away from
sickly thoughts by letting her travel in fancy from place to place;
make the tour of the whole old and new world, get visions of all kinds
of landscapes, all races of people, all climates. When she seemed tired
he gave her a spoonful of lemon juice with a little sugar, which cooled
and eased her, so that after a dreadful half-hour passed she received
this simple refreshment as a great enjoyment, that made her smile.
"Turn now towards the wall," said the commissioner, "and pretend to
sleep for five minutes while I go out and speak to your mother."
The commissioner, who felt his powers failing, was obliged to go out
into the fresh air to recover. And now he need only to throw a glance
out over the half lighted evening sky, out over the steel blue sea,
shut his eyes and try not to think, to feel, how the disordered,
brain regained its place again and continued its accelerating motion
forwards, after having been turned backwards awhile.
While he stood thus with his arms on his chest, half asleep, he heard a
thought still buzzing in one ear: a child of thirty-four years!
Thus he awoke and went into the cottage again.
Miss Mary was sitting on the sofa with her hair loosened and thrown
gracefully around her, but otherwise looked perfectly well and cheerful.
The commissioner took from his basket a bottle of Syracuse wine and a
package of Russian cigarettes.
"Now you shall pretend you are well," said he, "and that we have met
after a long journey, upon which you shall drink a glass of sweet
Sicilian wine and smoke a cigarette, for it is part of the cure."
The girl seemed to make an effort to hide her secret suffering, and
drank the wine while she kept her eyes on the bracelet.