and seemed to serve the same purpose: that is to say, it was a place
where one met one’s friends and showed off. The verandah was occupied
by officers, blue in the face with eating and drinking; with them were
representatives of the foreign Powers, grown old and grey in their
strenuous efforts to protect fellow-countrymen who had got mixed up
with sailors and fishermen in drunken brawls, or assist at Gala
performances, christenings, weddings and funerals. So much for the
aristocracy. In the centre of a large space Mr. Blom suddenly discovered
the chimney sweep of his quarter, the proprietor of a small inn, the
chemist’s assistant and others of the same standing. He watched the
game-keeper in his green coat and silver lace, with his gilt staff,
walking up and down and casting contemptuous glances at the assembled
crowd, as if he were wondering why they were here? The schoolmaster felt
self-conscious under the stare of all those eyes which seemed to say:
“Look at him! there he goes, wondering how to get dinner!” But there was
nothing else for it. He went on to the verandah where the people sat
eating perch and asparagus, and drinking Sauternes and Champagne.
All of a sudden he felt the pressure of a friendly hand on his shoulder,
and as he turned round, he found himself face to face with Gustav, the
waiter, who seized his hand and exclaimed with undisguised pleasure:
“Is that really you, Mr. Blom? How are you?”
But Gustav, the waiter, who was so pleased to find himself for a few
moments the equal of his master, held a piece of wood in his warm hand
and met a pair of eyes which pierced his soul like gimlets. And yet
this same hand had given him ten crowns only yesterday, and the owner
of it had thanked him for six months’ service and attention in the way
one thanks a friend. The waiter went back to his companions and sat
down amongst them, embarrassed and snubbed. But Mr. Blom left the
verandah with bitter thoughts and pushed his way through the crowd; he
fancied that he could hear a mocking: “He hasn’t been able to get
dinner, after all!”
He came to a large open space. There was a puppet-show, and Jasper was
being beaten by his wife. A little further off a sailor was showing
servant girls, soldiers and apprentices their future husband or wife
in a wheel of fortune. They all had had dinner and were enjoying
themselves; for a moment he believed himself their inferior, but only
for a moment; then he remembered that they had not the vaguest idea of
how an Egyptian camp was fortified. The thought gave him back his
self-respect, and he wondered how it was possible that people could be
so degraded as to find pleasure in such childishness.
In the meantime he had lost all inclination to try the other restaurants;
he passed the Tivoli and went further into the heart of the park. Young
men and women were dancing on the grass to the strains of a violin: a
little further off a whole family was camping under an old oak; the head
of the family was kneeling down, in his shirt sleeves, with bare head, a
glass of beer in one hand, a sandwich in the other; his fat, jolly,
clean-shaven face beamed with pleasure and good-nature as he invited his
guests, who were evidently his wife, parents-in-law, brothers,
shop-assistants and servants, to eat, drink and be merry, for to-day was
Midsummer day, all day long. And the jovial fellow made such droll remarks
that the whole party writhed on the grass with amusement. After the
pancake had been produced and eaten with the fingers, and the port bottle
been round, the senior shop-assistant made a speech which was at once so
moving and so witty that the ladies at one moment pressed their
handkerchiefs to their eyes, while the head of the family bit his lips,
and at the next interrupted the speaker with loud laughter and cheers.
The schoolmaster’s mood became more and more morose, but instead of
going away he sat down on a stone under a pinetree and watched “the
animals.”
When the speech was finished and father and mother had been toasted
with cheers and a flourish of trumpets, executed on a concertina,
accompanied by the rattling of all cups and saucers that happened to
be empty, the party rose to play “Third Man,” while mother and
mother-in-law attended to the babies.
“Just like the beasts in the field,” thought the schoolmaster, turning
away, for all that was natural was ugly in his eyes, and only that
which was unnatural could lay any claim to beauty in his opinion,
except, of course, the paintings of “well-known” masters in the
National Museum.
He watched the young men taking off their coats, the young girls
slipping off their cuffs and hanging them on the blackthorn bushes;
then they took up their positions and the game began.
The girls picked up their skirts and threw up their legs so that their
garters, made of blue and red braid such as the grocers sell for tying
up pots, were plainly visible, and whenever the cavalier caught his
lady, he took her in his arms and swung her round so that her skirts
flew; and young and old shrieked so with laughter that the park
re-echoed.
“Is this innocence or corruption?” wondered the schoolmaster.
But evidently the party did not know what the learned word “corruption”
meant, and that was the reason why they were so merry.
By the time they were tired of playing “Third Man” tea was ready. The
schoolmaster was puzzled to know where the cavaliers had learnt their
fine manners, for they moved about on all fours to offer the girls
sugar and cake; and the straps of their waistcoats stood out like
handles.
“The males showing off before the females!” thought the schoolmaster.
“They don’t know what they are in for.”
He noticed how the head of the family, the jolly fellow, waited on
father and mother-in-law, wife, shop-assistants and servant girls: and
whenever one of them begged him to help himself first, he invariably
answered that there was plenty of time for that.
He watched the father-in-law peeling a willow branch to make a flute
for the little boy; he watched the mother-in-law wash up as if she had
been one of the servants. And he thought that there was something
strange about selfishness, since it could be so cleverly disguised
that it looked as if no one gave more than he received; for it must be
selfishness, it couldn’t be anything else.
They played at forfeits and redeemed every forfeit with kisses, true,
genuine, resounding kisses on the lips; and when the jolly book-keeper
was made to kiss the old oak-tree, his conduct was too absurd for
anything; he embraced and caressed the gnarled trunk as if it had been
a girl whom he had met secretly; everybody shouted with laughter, for
all knew how to do it, although none of them would have liked to be
caught doing it.
The schoolmaster who had begun by watching the spectacle with critical
eyes, fell more and more under the spell of it; he almost believed
himself to be one of the party. He smiled at the sallies of the
shop-assistants, and before an hour was gone the head of the family
had won his whole sympathy. No one could deny that the man was a
comedian of the first rank. He could play “Skin-the-cat”; he could
“walk backwards,” “lie” on the tree-trunks, swallow coins, eat fire,
and imitate all sorts of birds. And when he extracted a saffron cake
from the dress of one of the girls and made it disappear in his right
ear, the schoolmaster laughed until his empty inside ached.
Then the dancing began. The schoolmaster had read in Rabe’s grammar:
Nemo saltat sobrius, nisi forte insanit, and had always looked upon
dancing as a species of insanity. True, he had watched puppies and
calves dancing when they felt frisky, but he did not believe that
Cicero’s maxim applied to the animal world, and he was in the habit of
drawing a sharp line between men and animals. Now, as he sat watching
these young people who were quite sober, and neither hungry nor thirsty,
moving round and round to the slow measures of the concertina, he felt
as if his soul were in a swing which was being kept going by his eyes
and ears, and his right foot beat time gently on the springy turf.
He spent three hours musing and watching, then he rose. He found it
almost difficult to tear himself away; it was just as if he were
leaving a merry party to which he had been invited; but his mood had
changed; he felt more reconciled. He was at peace with the world and
pleasantly tired, as if he had been enjoying himself.
It was evening. Smart carriages passed him, the lady-occupants lolling
on the back seats and looking in their long, white theatre wraps like
corpses in their shrouds; it was fashionable then to look as if one
had been exhumed. The schoolmaster, whose thoughts were running in
another direction, was sure that the ladies must be bored to death and
felt no trace of envy. Below the dusty highroad, far out on the sea,
the steamers with their flags and brass bands were returning from
their pleasure trips; cheers, strains of music and snatches of song
were wafted by the sea breezes to the mountains and the Deer Park.
The schoolmaster had never felt so lonely in his life as he did this
evening in the moving throng. He fancied that everybody was looking at
him compassionately as he made his solitary way through the crowd, and
almost gave way to self-pity. He would have liked to talk to the first
comer, for the mere pleasure of hearing his voice, for in his loneliness
he felt as if he were walking by the side of a stranger. And now his
conscience smote him. He remembered the waiter Gustav, who had been
unable to hide his pleasure at meeting him. Now he had arrived at a
point when he would have given worlds if anybody had met him and shown
any pleasure at the fact. But nobody came.
Yes, somebody did, after all. As he was sitting by himself on the
steamer, a setter, who had lost his master, came to him and put its
head on his knee. The schoolmaster was not particularly fond of dogs,
but he allowed it to stay; he felt it pressing its soft warm body
against his leg, he saw the eyes of the forsaken brute looking at him
in dumb appeal, as if it were asking him to find its master.
But as soon as they landed, the setter ran away. “It needed me no
longer,” thought the schoolmaster, and he walked home and went to bed.
These trifling incidents of Midsummer day had robbed the schoolmaster
of his assurance. They taught him that all foresight, all precautions,
all the clever calculations in the world availed nothing. He felt a
certain instability in his surroundings. Even the public house, his
home, was not to be counted on. It might be closed any day. Moreover,
a certain reserve on the part of Gustav troubled him. The waiter was
as civil as before, more attentive even, but his friendship was gone;
he had lost confidence. It afforded the schoolmaster food for thought,
and whenever a tough piece of meat, or too small a dish of potatoes
was set before him he thought:
“Haha! He’s paying me out!”
It was a bad summer for the schoolmaster: the second violin was out of
town and the book-seller frequented “Mosesheight,” a garden restaurant
in his own district, situated on a hill.
On an evening in autumn the bookseller and the second violin were
sitting at their favourite table, drinking a glass of punch, when
the schoolmaster entered, carrying under his arm a parcel which he
carefully hid in an empty hamper in a cupboard used for all sorts of
lumber. He was ill-tempered and unusually irritable.
“Well, old boy,” the bookseller began for the hundredth time, “and
when are you going to be married?”
“Confound your ‘when are you going to be married!’ As if a man hadn’t
enough trouble without it! Why don’t you get married yourself?”
growled the schoolmaster.
“Oh! because I have my old Stafva,” answered the bookseller, who always
had a number of stereotyped answers in readiness.
“I was married very happily,” said the Pole, “but my wife is dead,
now, ugh!”
“Is she?” mimicked the schoolmaster; “and the gentleman is a widower?
How am I to reconcile these facts?”
The Pole nodded, for he did not in the least understand what the
schoolmaster was driving at.
The latter felt bored by his friends; their topic of conversation was
always the same; he knew their replies by heart.
Presently he went into the corridor for a few moments to fetch his
cigar-case which he had left in the pocket of his overcoat. The
bookseller instantly raided the cupboard and returned with the
mysterious parcel. As it was not sealed, he opened it quickly; it
contained a beautiful American sleeping-suit; he hung it carefully
over the back of the schoolmaster’s chair.
“Ugh!” said the Pole, grinning, as if he were looking at something
unsightly.
The proprietor of the restaurant who loved a practical joke, bent over
the counter, laughing loudly; the waiter stood rooted to the spot, and
one of the cooks peeped through the door which communicated with the
kitchen.
When the schoolmaster came back and realised the trick played on him,
he grew pale with anger; he immediately suspected the bookseller; but
when his eyes fell on Gustav who was standing in a corner of the room,
laughing, his old obsession returned to him: “He’s paying me out!”
Without a word he seized his property, threw a few coins on the
counter and left the restaurant.
Henceforth the schoolmaster avoided Rejner’s. The bookseller had heard
that he dined at a restaurant in his own district. This was true. But
he was very discontented! The food was not actually bad, but it was
not cooked to his liking. The waiters were not attentive. He often
thought of returning to Rejner’s, but his pride would not let him. He
had been turned out of his home; in five minutes a bond of many years’
standing had been severed.
A short time after fate struck him a fresh blow. Miss Augusta had
inherited a little fortune in the provinces and had decided to leave
Stockholm on the first of October. The schoolmaster had to look out
for new lodgings.
But he had been spoilt, and there was no pleasing him. He changed his
room every month. There was nothing wrong with the rooms, but they
were not like his old room. It had become such a habit with him to
walk through certain streets, that he often found himself before his
old front door before he realised his mistake. He was like a lost
child.
Eventually he went to live in a boarding house, a solution which he
had always loathed and dreaded. And then his friends lost sight of him
altogether.
One evening, as the Pole was sitting alone over his grog, smoking,
drinking, and nodding with the capacity of the oriental to lapse into
complete stupor, the bookseller burst in on him like a thunderstorm,
flung his hat on the table, and shouted:
“Confound him! Has anybody ever heard anything like it?”
The Pole roused himself from his brandy-and-tobacco Nirvana, and
rolled his eyes.
“I say, confound it! Has anybody ever heard anything like it? He’s
going to be married!”
“Who’s going to be married?” asked the Pole, startled by the
bookseller’s violence and emphatic language.
“Schoolmaster Blom!”
The bookseller expected a glass of grog in exchange for his news. The
proprietor left the counter and came to their table to listen.
“Has she any money?” he asked acutely.
“I don’t think so,” replied the bookseller, conscious of his temporary
importance and selling his wares one by one.
“Is she beautiful?” asked the Pole. “My wife was very beautiful. Ugh!”
“No, she’s not beautiful either,” answered the bookseller, “but
nice-looking.”
“Have you seen her?” enquired the proprietor. “Is she old?” His eyes
wandered towards the kitchen door.
“No, she’s young!”
“And her parents?” continued the proprietor.
“I heard that her father was a brass founder in Orebro.”
“The rascal! Well, I never!” said the proprietor.
“Haven’t I always said so? The man is a born husband,” said the
bookseller.
“We all of us are,” said the proprietor, “and take my word for it, no
one escapes his fate!”
With this philosophical remark he closed the subject and returned to
the counter.
When they had settled that the schoolmaster was not marrying for money,
they discussed the problem of “what the young people were going to live
on.” The bookseller made a guess at the schoolmaster’s salary and “what
he might earn besides by giving private lessons.” When that question,
too, had been settled, the proprietor, who had returned to the table,
asked for details.
“Where had he met her? Was she fair or dark? Was she in love with
him?”
The last question was by no means out of the way; the bookseller
“thought she was,” for he had seen them together, arm in arm, looking
into shop windows.
“But that he, who was such a stick, could fall in love! It was incredible!”
“And what a husband he would make!” The proprietor knew that he was
_devilish particular_ about his food, and that, he said, was a mistake
when one was married.
“And he likes a glass of punch in the evening, and surely a married
man can’t drink punch every evening of his life. And he doesn’t like
children! It won’t turn out well,” he whispered. “Take my word for it,
it won’t turn out well. And, gentlemen, there’s another thing,” (he
rose from his seat, looked round and continued in a whisper), “I believe,
I’m hanged if I don’t, that the old hypocrite has had a love affair of
some sort. Do you remember that incident, gentlemen, with
the--hihihi--sleeping suit? He’s one of those whom you don’t find where
you leave them! Take care, Mrs. Blom! Mind what you are about! I’ll say
no more!”
It was certainly a fact that the schoolmaster was engaged to be
married and that the wedding was to take place within two months.
What happened after, does not belong to this story, and, moreover, it
is difficult to know what goes on behind the convent walls of
domesticity when the vow of silence is being kept.
It was also a fact that the schoolmaster, after his marriage, was never
again seen at a public house.
The bookseller, who met him by himself in the street one evening, had
to listen to a long exhortation on getting married. The schoolmaster
had inveighed against all bachelors; he had called them egotists, who
refused to do their duty by the State; in his opinion they ought to be
heavily taxed, for all indirect taxes weighed most cruelly on the
father of a family. He went so far as to say that he wished to see
bachelorhood punished by the law of the land as a “crime against
nature.”
The bookseller had a good memory. He said that he doubted the
advisability of taking a _fool_ into one’s house, permanently. But the
schoolmaster replied that _his_ wife was the most intelligent woman he
had ever met.
Two years after the wedding the Pole saw the schoolmaster and his wife
in the theatre; he thought that they looked happy; “ugh!”
Another three years went by. On a Midsummer day the proprietor of the
restaurant made a pleasure trip on the Lake of Mälar to Mariafred.
There, before Castle Cripsholm, he saw the schoolmaster, pushing a
perambulator over a green field, and carrying in his disengaged hand a
basket containing food, while a whole crowd of young men and women,
“who looked like country folk,” followed in the rear. After dinner the
schoolmaster sang songs and turned somersaults with the youngsters. He
looked ten years younger and had all the ways of a ladies’ man.
The proprietor, who was quite close to the party while they were
having dinner, overheard a little conversation between Mr. and Mrs.
Blom. When the young wife took a dish of crabs from the basket, she
apologised to Albert, because she had not been able to buy a single
female crab in the whole market. Thereupon the schoolmaster put his
arm round her, kissed her and said that it didn’t matter in the least,
because male or female crabs, it was all the same to him. And when one
of the babies in the perambulator began to cry, the schoolmaster
lifted it out and hushed it to sleep again.
Well, all these things are mere details, but how people can get married
and bring up a family when they have not enough for themselves while
they are bachelors, is a riddle to me. It almost looks as if babies
brought their food with them when they come into this world; it really
almost does look as if they did.
COMPENSATION
He was considered a genius at College, and no one doubted that he
would one day distinguish himself. But after passing his examinations,
he was obliged to go to Stockholm and look out for a berth. His
dissertation, which was to win him the doctor’s degree, had to be
postponed. As he was very ambitious, but had no private means, he
resolved to marry money, and with this object in view, he visited only
the very best families, both at Upsala where he studied for the bar, and
later on at Stockholm. At Upsala he always fraternised with the new
arrivals, that is to say, when they were members of aristocratic families,
and the freshers felt flattered by the advances made by the older man.
In this way he formed many useful ties, which meant invitations to his
friends’ country houses during the summer.
The country houses were his happy hunting ground. He possessed social
talents, he could sing and play and amuse the ladies, and consequently
he was a great favourite. He dressed beyond his means; but he never
borrowed money from any of his friends or aristocratic acquaintances.
He even went to the length of buying two worthless shares and mentioning
on every possible occasion that he had to attend a General Meeting of
the shareholders.
For two summers he had paid a great deal of attention to a titled lady
who owned some property, and his prospects were the general topic,
when he suddenly disappeared from high life and became engaged to a
poor girl, the daughter of a cooper, who owned no property whatever.
His friends were puzzled and could not understand how he could thus
stand in his own light. He had laid his plans so well, he “had but to
stretch out his hand and success was in his grasp”; he had the morsel
firmly stuck on his fork, it was only necessary for him to open his
mouth and swallow it. He himself was at a loss to understand how it
was that the face of a little girl whom he had met but once on a steamer
could have upset all his plans of many years’ standing. He was bewitched,
obsessed.
He asked his friends whether they didn’t think her beautiful?
Frankly speaking they didn’t.
“But she is so clever! Just look into her eyes! What expressive eyes
she has!”
His friends could see nothing and hear less, for the girl never opened
her lips.
But he spent evening after evening with the cooper’s family; to be
sure, the cooper was a very intelligent man! On his knees before her
(a trick often practised at the country houses) he held her skeins of
wool; he played and sang to her, talked about religion and the drama,
and he always read acquiescence in her eyes. He wrote poetry about
her, and sacrificed at her shrine his laurels, his ambitious dreams,
even his dissertation.
And then he married her.
The cooper drank too much at the wedding and made an improper speech
about girls in general. But the son-in-law found the old man so
unsophisticated, so amiable, that he egged him on instead of shutting
him up. He felt at his ease among these simple folk; in their midst he
could be quite himself.
“That’s being in love,” said his friends. “Love is a wonderful thing.”
And now they were married. One month--two months. He was unspeakably
happy. Every evening they spent together and he sang a song to her
about the Rose in the Wood, her favourite song. And he talked about
religion and the drama, and she sat and listened eagerly. But she never
expressed an opinion; she listened in silence and went on with her
crochet work.
In the third month he relapsed into his old habit of taking an afternoon
nap. His wife, who hated being by herself, insisted on sitting by him.
It irritated him, for he felt an overwhelming need to be alone with his
thoughts.
Sometimes she met him on his way home from his office, and her heart
swelled with pride when he left his colleagues and crossed the street
to join her. She took him home in triumph: he was _her_ husband!
In the fourth month he grew tired of her favourite song. It was stale
now! He took up a book and read, and neither of them spoke.
One evening he had to attend a meeting which was followed by a banquet.
It was his first night away from home. He had persuaded his wife to
invite a friend to spend the evening with her, and to go to bed early,
for he did not expect to be home until late.
The friend came and stayed until nine o’clock. The young wife sat in
the drawing-room, waiting, for she was determined not to go to bed
until her husband had returned. She felt too restless to go to sleep.