Three days later the commissioner landed on East Skerries after having
been to Dalaro. When he learned that the young lady had left never
to return, he felt an inexpressible easiness, as though the air was
rarefied and purer. Going up to his room, he rested before the open
window to smoke, and in memory pass through the changeful sensations of
the past days.
When he at midnight had torn himself from the girl's embrace, he had
placed himself in the boat with a certain satisfaction; as though he
had fulfilled a pressing duty. It was now as though the equilibrium
had been replaced. His rights had been violated in such a case, where
the law did not give redress, and therefore he must procure right for
himself, and he had acted only upon the principles which the opponents
themselves had promulgated.
Afterwards when he had gone aboard the corvette and met people, with
whom he could converse in a cultured language, and had discussed with
the surgeon learned subjects, it at first acted as an intoxicant. He
did not need to suppress his brain for childish talk, nor make himself
semi-stupid in order to be understood; and when he only expressed
himself by inference or with hints, he was understood at once. Then
he felt that he had been living three months in barbarism, which by
and by had imperceptibly drawn him down into trifling battles, which
had placed his thought life beneath the effective and vegetative; had
elevated the act of reproduction to be the main thing, and allured him
to enter as a competitor in a strife as between stallions, from which
very likely he would have come out victorious. And so he understood why
the guardians of the universal Christian church, who were sent to carry
civilization out to the savages of all nations, were once forbidden
to found a family, or to bind themselves to woman or children, and he
understood that there could lay a rational significance in fasting and
renunciation, for those who would live a higher spiritual life. It was
not for self-gratification that the anchorite sought solitude, for
just as when dropped at random on fallow ground, the solitary grain of
wheat could raise sixty spears, while that in the wheat field only gave
two, where the seed was crowded between millions on fertilized ground,
so could that individual, who struggled for a richer development over
others, only grow in the desert.
Three days' experience had corroborated this, for when he on board the
corvette and at the bathing resort was dragged from circle to circle,
he had observed every night when he went to bed, that during the course
of the day he had ground off his edges, whereby he had, like a precious
stone, gained in appearance but lost in carats. This subserviency,
developed by common sympathy for the human being and by the tendency of
adaption in society had deluded him to such a degree, that the opinions
which he had improvised in society stuck to him and were subsequently
recollected by him with the claim of being his inner-most thoughts. And
he had finally become loath and felt himself at last a false being,
who said one thing and thought another; he began to blush for himself
and observed that with increasing esteem he gained in society for his
affable manners, he lost all esteem for himself.
To avoid sinking he isolated himself again, and the regained solitude
acted upon his spirit as a steam bath, or a swim in the sea, where
liberty from all pressure, all contact with solid material had ceased;
and he decided to stay on the skerry through the winter.
For this purpose he rented for his own use the cottage, where the
ladies had dwelt, and began to install himself the same day. The one
big room he took for a library and laboratory, the other for dining
room and parlor; the attic he fixed up for a bedroom.
When he awoke the next morning in his new domicile, after a dreamless
sleep, he found a new pleasure in having a house alone to himself,
where he need not have forced upon him suggestions from others, nor
receive other impressions than those he himself determined on.
When he had drunk his coffee, he sat down in the library, after having
given orders that he would not receive visitors before three o'clock in
the afternoon.
Now he took up an old plan of exploring Europe's present ethnography,
in a way that would save all useless travel. On printed circulars,
issued in a fictitious name, he now filled in the addresses, and
professional titles and put them into stamped envelopes. To get
the most complete record of the measurements of the craniums and
the dimensions of the body he had decided that circulars sent to
hat makers, makers of coffins, shirt and hosiery manufacturers in
Europe's principal cities asking for information as to the sizes
mostly called for in the respective countries, would procure for him
the desired results. The circulars pretended to be Issued with the
view of exportation of said stuffs at wholesale with high profits. In
addition to this another circular was sent to the great as well as the
smaller book dealers in the capitals of Europe and other cities, with
a request for photographs of all kinds. These were to be paid for in
advance at the highest price by postal order. He also placed himself
in communication with a technicist, who bought photographs to utilize
the silver in them. With this and the thousand of portraits, which he
had cut out of foreign illustrated papers, he intended to commence his
explorations.
When he had finished this work, it was dinner time. He went out of
doors to eat it, and he observed that a letter was in the mail box on
the door. The writing was familiar to him, and when he had assured
himself it was from Miss Mary, he did not open it, he let it lay beside
him on the table; meantime he ate his simple dinner in great haste.
That the letter did not contain anything agreeable, that he understood
as he had broken his promise to come back the next day to say good-by,
and now because he would save himself all disagreeable impressions he
laid the letter aside in the table drawer without opening it.
But when he had slept an hour after his dinner and the heat from labor
and food had disappeared, he observed, that his thoughts did not turn
to books, they turned towards that table drawer. And now he began
to wander up and down the floor, the prey of vehement and fatiguing
battle.
It was as though he had a part of her soul locked up in this drawer;
she existed in the room, and the spirit of her power of attraction lay
under the white envelope, on which a red seal lightened as a kiss. He
saw her sitting there on the same sofa, heard her whisperings, felt
her eyes glowing in the dusk, and his flesh began to burn again. How
stupid, he thought, to let life's highest bliss go out of one's hands.
When love was a mutual deceit, why not deceive then! Nothing for
nothing I And when a perfect happiness did not exist, why then not be
content with the imperfect?
Now he felt that he would have crawled to her, lied that he was her
slave and acknowledged himself vanquished. He could have frightened
away the rival; and with her alone in perfect union it would have been
easy to have bound her with the band of habit and interest, and finally
she would not take the enjoyment from someone else.
But so came the fear, that this letter would disperse his last hope,
which still was better than nothing, and he would not read it. He had
placed himself at his laboratory table, and almost without thinking of
what he did, he opened an iron retort, put in the letter and lit the
blast lamp under it. After a moment the smoke puffed out through the
neck of the retort, and when it ceased he lighted the gas with a match.
A little blue-yellow flame burned for a few minutes with a whistling
sound like a bat's cry.
The spirit of the letter, as an alchemist would have said! A mass of
paper which was consumed and gave the same products of combustion,
carbon and hydrogen, as a burning soul in a living body. Carbon and
hydrogen! It was all, and the same!
The flame fluttered, decreased, disappeared in the neck, and it was
dark again in the room!
It had again grown cloudy out over the sea, and the waves were
going before the east wind, beating towards the strand, sighing,
hissing, and the wind split at the corners like the waves against
the stem of a boat; but through all these sounds of lamentation was
heard the whistling buoy's crying out on the sea, rhythmetic as a
tragic comedian, when he recites, and with pauses, just as though to
recover his breath or let the last word die out; before he lets a
new one stream forth. It was a solo for Titan with the storm for an
accompaniment, a giant organ, where the east wind tread the bellows.
The room became too sultry for him, and he took his cloak to go out
into the storm and let his mood blow away. Attracted against his will
by the light of a lantern in the provision store, he steered his steps
thither. As the fishing with drifting nets had been remunerative, the
store had a lively patronage, and hidden by darkness he could come
close to the talking fishermen without being seen.
"And so the assistant swiped the girl from him," said old Oman; "and so
she got a real man instead of that one...."
"Yes, he is not as a human being should be," threw in the unmarried
Vestman, "for to-day he wrote as good as hundreds of letters for the
mail. And what he is boiling in there and is busy with, no mortal can
tell, but I think, what I think! And we must have our eyes open, for
such ones as lock themselves in and boil, we know them."
"Oh, the devil!" the married Vestman followed with. "Let him brew his
drop himself; it cannot turn out worse with him than old Soderlund, who
mashed out on the rocks and lost his still! This here I think we won't
meddle with."
"Yes, if it is only that," replied Oman, "then let him go on with it,
but see I never can forget that he would have taken the net from me
that time, and if I catch him by the fin, I don't let him slip until I
have him in the cauf...."
"Yes, a wicked man is he who has no God!" ended the colporteur. "That
is sure!"
Without having the slightest trace of an illusion in regard to their
thankfulness, the commissioner could not help feeling an uneasiness
at being surrounded in the desert by downright enemies and the most
dangerous of the dangerous, who believed that they saw in him an idiot
or a criminal. They believed that he was distilling gin to save twenty
cents on a gallon! They suspected him of mixing poisons for them. If
any misfortunes happened here, he would be blamed for it. And if they
used their unlawful nets, he would not dare to seize them without
himself dreading a more or less scandalous charge, or something worse
than that--their revenge.
It was a dangerous company, dangerous to life as stupidity. And
although he knew that at any moment he would he could gain all of them
for his friends, if he treated them to a gallon of gin and stayed with
them himself and helped drink it, he never thought to do this for one
moment. Their enmity kept him free; their friendship would have dragged
him down into their filth. Their hate could only act as an annunciator
for his power, but their affections would have neutralized it, even if
their spirits never could enter into contact with his. And the very
danger had its pleasure, because it kept his spirit awake and elastic,
gave him something to counteract, for exercise. Besides the danger out
here among these savages was not less than that in the upper circles,
which he had lately left, and where the power to do real harm was
greater. Had not the surgeon on board the corvette regarded him as
sick, when he spoke of the necessity of finding a method to utilize
the enormous quantity of nitrous oxide, which was wasted in the
manufacture of commercial sulphuric acid, while at the same time the
expensive saltpeter is imported from Chile to compensate for the soil's
losses of nitrogen. Or when he projected something about utilizing the
smoke from the chimneys for technical purposes, had not this friend
advised him to take a sojourn at a watering place and reside among
human beings.
Rather stay in absolute solitude and pass for an idiot among redskins
than be condemned to a civil death by equals with authority and
decision without appeal.
After he had wandered a moment in the darkness, he returned to his
cottage and lighted the candles and lamps in his two rooms and opened
the doors onto the porch, whereby he lessened the impression of being
locked in.
When he now looked at his watch it was only eight o'clock. The long
evening and night which were coming frightened him, for his head was
too tired to work, but not sufficiently so to enable him to sleep. The
wind blew fiercely round the house corners, the din of the waves and
the roaring of the whistling buoy made him nervous. To free himself
from the suggestions of these sounds, to which he would not be a slave,
he placed in "sleeping bullets" which were small steel balls he had
bought in Germany, which when placed in the ears, prevented every
sound from penetrating and being perceived.
But when he thus had shut off perhaps the greatest line of
communication with the outer world, his fantasy began to labor at a
higher pressure. A mad curiosity to know what the burned letter could
have contained, gripped him irresistibly, so that he opened the retort
to try to read in the ashes. But even the ink was destroyed by fire,
and there was no trace to be seen of the writing. Now the field was
open for all kinds of doubts and guesses. Sometimes he believed he
could draw conclusions as to what the letter had contained from all
that had passed, sometimes he rejected this, remembering the girl's
illogical way to think and act.
So finally he stopped at the decision that it was impossible to reason
it out, and he decided not to worry over it any more. But his brain had
become unrestrainable and was worrying on its own account, grinding and
sifting, until he became completely exhausted, without being able to
sleep. And with the increasing feebleness in the organ of thought the
lower propensities awoke.
Enraged that his soul could not hold out in the battle with a fragile
body, he finally undressed and took a dose of potassium bromide, and
at once the brain stopped in its wild career, fantasies banished, the
consciousness was stunned, and he fell asleep as heavily as though
dead.