Part 14

The colporteur, who could not gather the people out on the slope, passed the first days in the kitchen and would have read out of the Bible, but was received with indifference and fell into dispute with the laborers, who were mostly free thinkers. Whereupon he had withdrawn to his chamber, explaining that he was sick and he sent to the commissioner for the china preparation, as his bottle was emptied. Suddenly he had disappeared and it was said that he had gone with a steamer to the city.

He had now returned, the evening before, to the skerry, accompanied by a man, whom he called his brother and who brought a boat load of divers articles, mostly beer, which was packed up in a boat house, in the open door of which a plank on two barrels served as a counter, as the commonwealth wealth had permitted the opening of a provision store.

During the past few days fishing folks had commenced to gather from the islands near the mainland. And now the boat houses were opened where whole families were harbored, the cottages were filled with relations and acquaintances, and on the whole skerry there was a life, which strangely contrasted with the usual solitude.

As the skerry and the fishing waters belonged to a private individual in on the mainland, every boat paid a certain duty which was collected by an overseer who was sent here. With this overseer the commissioner had at once got on a bad footing, when he would speak about fishing with drifting nets, which would be followed by the abandoning of the shoals, and thereby the water tax would cease. But even this apparently unfavorable circumstance he had known how to turn to his benefit; for the overseer, when opposing the new method, was urged to propagate the old system by means of gin and would thereby against his will form the dark background, against which the effects of fishing with drifting nets would stand out in bolder magnificence. And the commissioner was perfectly sure of his victory, as night and day he had been sampling the water, dredging, fishing, and with his water telescope investigating the depths to find out where the shoals of fish were moving.

All these details, however, had no other interest to him, than that they served to exercise his energy for coming battles, to restore in him that feeling of power, without which nobody can endure, who has unusual abilities, which are easily lost, unless used.

And during the time, which had passed since the arrival of the assistant, the daily hectoring from the side of the young folks had by and by accustomed him to the role of an inferior, so that he was on the way to live this role himself, especially as he himself did not wish to break the engagement but found it necessary to cause the break to be made by her. Between the two young people there existed a complete sympathy on all subjects, and he had witnessed how the ripe woman was at once on a level with the unripe man, all of whose immature thoughts, all improvised notions she accepted as the height of wisdom. And each of his attempts to refute a stupidity stranded against their inability to keep together the threads of a discourse, because they were thinking exclusively under the influence of the desire to own each other. To take up some competition in acrobatic dexterity or praise of the lower sex he would not, for it was his exact purpose to be erased and make a capital end to the tie, which threatened his whole future existence. And this biandri, in which he was living, when he, for an occasional moment alone with his betrothed, only received reflexes from the other man, felt, as it were, his spirit on her lips, heard his childishness reëchoed from her mouth, all this had ended in giving him loathing for a state, which reminded of a _ménage à trois_.

The young man's conceit had no limit, and he had fallen into the ridiculous idea that he was superior to the commissioner, because he was _al pari_ with Miss Mary, who also gave the illusion of being above the commissioner; according to the perfectly correct formula: if A is greater than B, and C is equal to A, then C is also greater than B,--without, however, first examining whether A really was greater than B.

He had never before expected to find youth's secret so openly exposed as he got it here gratuitously presented on a waiter, and how well he recognized himself from a past stage.

How had he not cried of hunger and rut? Experienced Weltschmerz of envy for elders, who had already gained what he was struggling for and who then made him feel dejected, whereby also his sympathy for all oppressed and small had been aroused. This inability to judge one's powers, based on anticipation of that, which it would be possible to accomplish in this long life, if thought of as concentrated in a single act! All this sentimentality, caused only by unsatisfied desires. This over-estimating of woman, while memories from the nursery and of the mother were still fresh. These lax half-thoughts of the still soft brain under pressure from blood vessels and testicles.

He even recognized these faint signs of good sense, which under the form of primitive, animal slyness and discrimination of means so often believed themselves to be the highest prudence, but were only the fox's simple attempt to be shrewd, and which therefore wonderfully resembled the reputed women's artifice, priest shrewdness, and lawyers' trickery.

The young man had even tried mind reading on the commissioner, thereby betraying that he suspected the latter of carrying some dangerous secrets as he was unlike other beings. But in this he had acted so clumsily, that the commissioner had found out all that was thought and said about him by the ladies; instead of giving any information he had by his answers so mystified the young man, that he began to doubt whether his rival was a blockhead or of a demoniac nature. By demoniac he meant a conscious person, who under pretext of the greatest naivete acted with full calculation, always awake and leading the fates of other beings according to his plans. And as the idea of calculation, which was a virtue, always had a bad significance to the young, who could not calculate the consequences of an act, so his envy assumed the inferior's passionate desire to tear down and trample under the feet.

Thus matters stood, when the great day came that was to decide the fishermen's whole existence for the coming winter.

* * * * *

The August evening was hanging bed warm over the skerry, all of whose cliffs and stones were still warm after the sun had gone down, so warm, that the dew could not fall on them. The sea outside spread itself smooth and lavender gray where the full moon copper red slowly emerged and was just now half hidden by a brig, which seemed to sail right on the satellite's _mare serenitatis_. Nearer the strand were seen all the floats of the laid out nets lying in rows like flocks of sea birds floating on the swell.

And while the people were awaiting the break of day to look at the nets, they had camped on the strands around campfires with coffeepots and gin bottles; in the boat house, where the provision dealer was selling beer, the preacher had taken place beside his brother to assist him with the lively traffic, and with a blue apron round his hips he was seen opening beer bottles like an old expert saloon keeper.

The commissioner, who had come out to observe the direction of the currents, the temperature and barometric pressure, now wandered on the sandy beach to rest from his thoughts. Here and there he surprised a couple, who had sought solitude. Their unintelligible naivete in behavior made him only turn his back on them with a sneer and loathing. Coming further out on the point, he climbed out on the cliffs to find his seat, where he used to meditate. It was one of the arm chairs which had been perfectly polished by the waves, and was still warm as a stove from the burning sun of the day.

He had been sitting a moment half asleep lulled by the sighing of the surf, when he heard the sand creak below on the edge of the beach. There was a rustle in the dry wrack, and he saw the assistant and his betrothed coming slowly walking with their arms around each other's waist. They halted between the invisible beholder and the moonlight's street on the water, so that he could see their figures outlined as sharply, as though he had had them between the objective of a microscope and the reflecting mirror. And he saw now with antipathy's sharpened glance her profile like that of a bird of prey leaning towards the other's big ape's head with the enormous cheeks, useless to all but buglers, and the narrow tapering skull without a forehead. He observed now the superfluous mass of flesh in the man's figure, whose ignoble outlines with too large hips reminded of a woman like the Farnesian Hercules. A manly ideal of the period of the semi-brutes, when the fist still ruled over the big brain, which was not completed.

Disgraced, as though he had been engaged to a centaur, he felt that his soul through marriage with a retrogressive type, was standing before the beginning of a crime, which, completed, would falsify his lineage for all time to come, which should allure him to offer his only life for another's child, on which he should squander his best feelings and, after a time grown fast to it, drag his humiliation as a block about his feet unable to free himself. Jealousy "this dirty vice," what else is it than the healthy, strong fear of the tribal instinct lest it should be hindered in its praiseworthy egotism to perpetuate the best in the individual? And who lacks in this sound passion but the sterile family sustainer, the wife panderer, the weak fool, the cicisbeo, the gynecolater, who believes in platonic love?

He was jealous, but when the first anger over the affront had subsided, there awoke an unrestrained desire to possess this woman without wedlock. The gauntlet was thrown, the liberty in choice was proclaimed, and he felt a desire to take up the battle, break the band and appear as the lover in order that he with gained victory should be able to go calmly onwards, conscious that he was not the one who had been neglected by nature, who had been pushed aside in the battle of love. Here was no longer a question of honest contest with loyal means, it was an insidious battle between burglars. The challenger had selected the simple weapon, skeleton keys, and the combat was about stealing! With a woman as the prize all hesitation disappeared. The animal had awakened, and the wild instincts, which hid themselves under the great name of love, were as furious as the powers of nature let loose.

He arose from the rock unobserved and turned his steps homewards to arrange his fate, as he called it.

CHAPTER TWELFTH

There was a gloomy silence on the skerry about seven o'clock the next morning, for the fishing on the shoals had been a failure on account of the reasons stated by the commissioner. The fishermen were sitting dejectedly in their boats and straightening out their nets, and now and then picking out a solitary stromling, which was thrown on shore.

The traffic at the provision store had become less with the sinking credit, and the preacher had laid aside his blue apron and with book in hand had gathered a little group of despairing women around him in a cottage. With an incomprehensible, but not unusual, logic among his class he spoke of how Jesus fed five thousand men with five loaves and two fishes. There was an approximate _à propos_ for so far as this case was concerned there were many mouths and few fishes, but how these few fishes could fill so many, that he could not indicate. Now that there was no help, he must try and explain, why the miracle could not be done again, and he found the reason in the prevailing unbelief. If they only had faith as a grain of mustard seed, the miracle would be repeated. And faith could only be gained by prayer.

Therefore he exhorted the community to pray.

Although none of those present believed in the miracle of the two fishes, while the most of them had never heard of it, because they had not read that story, they followed the example and repeated the Lord's Prayer, which they had learned passably for the first holy communion.

But when they were half through, they were suddenly disturbed by a noise from the harbor. Those who were sitting nearest the window now saw a fishing boat, which had just furled its mainsail, and come up to the pier. In the bow stood Miss Mary with fluttering hair beneath the blue Scotch cap, and at the tiller sat the assistant waving his hat as a sign of success. The boat was overloaded with nets, through the dark meshes of which glittered fish upon fish.

"Come here, you shall have stromling," cried the girl with the conqueror's munificence.

"If I am only permitted to measure them first, the people shall have them," interposed the commissioner, who from his window had observed the return of the boat and had therefore come down to see the result of his labors.

"What good will that do?" said Miss Mary over-bearingly.

"It is for the statistics, my gracious lady," answered the commissioner with no sign of discomposure, for he knew that the result of the fishing had depended upon the information he had given, founded on current, depth, temperature of the water and the condition of the bottom.

"You with your statistics," joked Miss Mary with an expression of deepest disgust.

"Take it, then, but only let me know afterwards how much there was," the commissioner finished the discussion with and went home.

"He is envious of us," remarked Miss Mary to the assistant.

"Perhaps jealous?" said he.

"That he surely cannot be," replied the girl half aloud as to herself, thereby betraying that which she had hidden for several days, namely her being provoked at her betrothed's incredible indifference towards his rival which she had taken as an offending over-confidence in his power to charm.

The prayer meeting had been broken up, and all the islanders gathered around the returned fishing boat.

"Yes, see Miss Mary, you are a perfect man!" flatteringly said the preacher, getting the chance of sowing a little seed of variance as he believed.

"A sitting crow gets nothing," joked the custom house surveyor.

"One who lies on his sofa, he means," whispered the assistant to Miss Mary.

The girl swelled at the praise, and distributed the fish with full hands to those who stood on the pier, who never tired of breaking forth in praise and blessings over the angel rescuer.

But it was not gratitude for benevolence received, which called forth this beautiful emotion, it was a hearty desire to evade confessing themselves wrong towards the commissioner, whose way of fishing they had joked about. It was the reverse side of a hatred towards their real benefactor, for whom they would not bow in gratitude.

When the fish was taken from the nets and distributed between the poorest, there proved to be ten barrels, which were at once bought by the provision dealer and salted down. The money was transferred at once into coffee, sugar and beer. For they felt sure they could take their own stromling for the winter out of the sea, since Miss Mary had given them all the information regarding the new way of fishing with drifting nets.

When the commissioner reached his room, he found a letter, which had been brought by a coast guardsman returning home. It contained an invitation for the commissioner and his betrothed to honor the ball of the officers on board the corvette _Loke_, which would anchor beside the skerry at eight o'clock of the same day.

He saw at once that the moment had come in which to make an end to the engagement, for now to take the mistress of another into society and introduce her as his future wife, naturally he would not. Therefore he pulled off his engagement ring, and put it in a letter, which he had composed the night before to the widow of the exchequer officer, and in which he with the strongest expressions of despair regretted that his engagement with Miss Mary must come to an end, because of a former liaison, which he had recklessly entered into with a woman, who had borne him children, and who now appeared with a lawful claim which, if it could not compel him into a marriage with the plaintiff, still had the power to prevent his union with another. As a gentleman, but without intending to offend, he explained that he was prepared to assist the innocently injured girl who was perhaps placed in distress, both as far as the saving of her honor and her subsistence were concerned.

This fiction he had found to be the only possible way to make a final ending, as it protected the honor of both parties, but mostly that of the girl, and must be irrevocable without the hope of reparation, being an inevitable fate.

When he had sealed the letter, he whistled to his orderly, and gave it to him telling him to carry it to the widow of the officer of the exchequer.

Thereafter he lighted a cigarette and placed himself at the window to see how the shot would strike. On the porch stood the old lady shaking a mat, when the man stopped to deliver the letter. She received it with some astonishment, which increased, when she with her left hand squeezed the envelope to feel what it contained. Thereupon she turned round and went into the cottage.

A moment thereafter Miss Mary's figure was seen to move to and fro behind the lace curtains in the dining room. She seemed to walk vehemently backwards and forwards, sometimes stopping and gesticulating with her arms, as though she would defend herself against reproaches, which were thrown at her.

This lasted about an hour, after which she was seen out on the porch, throwing a revengeful glance up towards the commissioner's window. After which she beckoned to the assistant, who was coming from the harbor.

When they had both gone into the cottage and been invisible for half an hour, they appeared again and went into the woodshed, from whence they brought out a trunk and a knapsack.

So, they had considered it, and found that to tarry on the skerry longer was impossible.

After a moment the assistant again appeared, this time carrying with him his own trunk, which the commissioner recognized by its trimmings of brass.

Thus he also intended to go.

Soon the owners of the cottage appeared with servants, and the whole house seemed to be turned upside down.

Towards noon, after the commissioner had passed away the time with reading, he saw the assistant and Miss Mary step out onto the porch, and engage in a lively conversation, which became more so and was followed by gestures, indicating a controversy.

"They must know each other pretty well, as they are quarreling already," thought the commissioner.

In the afternoon the old lady and the assistant were on the pilot's boat being taken out to an inward bound steamer. Why Miss Mary stayed, he could not understand clearly. Perhaps with the hope of a renewal, perhaps with a desire to show her spite or may be something else.

However, she placed herself at the window, so that she could be seen from the custom house cottage. And there she sat most of the time, sometimes drumming on the window pane, sometimes reading a book and now and then raising her handkerchief to her face.

About seven o'clock in the evening the corvette was seen stealing from Landsort's passage and going to anchor at once between Norsten and East Skerries. When it signaled with the steam whistle for pilots, the girl arose and came out to see what was going on; and as she now stood on the slope, regarding the fine vessel, which was adorned for a feast with flags on all stays and with colored awnings amidships, the commissioner could see how she became fascinated by the alluring sight. She stood with her hands behind her back in an unbecoming attitude, until the wind brought to the skerry the tunes of a festival march, when her feet began to move on the spot. Slowly the slender body bent forwards, as if it was attracted by the tones of music, and then, at once, the whole figure collapsed, the hands covered the face and the girl rushed precipitately into the cottage, in despair like a child, who had lost an expected pleasure.

The commissioner now dressed for the ball; on the black dress coat with the doctor's insignia embroidered in black silk on the velvet collar, he hung his six decorations of knighthood on a chain and put on his bracelet, which he had not worn since the day of his engagement.

When he had finished his toilet and had still an hour left, before the boat would come for him, he decided to make a farewell visit to Miss Mary, mostly because he would not be suspected of cowardice, but also because he was longing to test his power over his own feelings. As he came into the hall he made a noise to give the girl time to pose in order that he from this pose might learn the reason of her stay and what her intentions were.

After knocking he entered and found Miss Mary sitting with sewing work, something he had never seen in her hands before. Her face expressed humiliation, regret and submission, although with an effort to look indifferent and aristocratic.

"Will you see me, Miss Mary, or shall I go?" commenced the commissioner. And he felt again the inexplicable desire to lift her above himself as a woman, when she appeared with a woman's attributes and leaned towards him, just as he otherwise felt an irresistible desire to push her down, when she came with manly pretensions and manners. At this moment she seemed more beautiful to him than he had seen her for a long time, so that he gave way to his feelings, and without making resistance he became approachable.

"I have caused you grief, Miss Mary...."

When she heard the softness in his voice she at once straightened up and snapped:

"But you were too cowardly to come and tell me, yourself."

"Considerate, Miss Mary! It is not so easy for me as it is for you to slap people's faces. And you see now, that I have the courage to show myself, as well as you to receive me."

The last was ambiguous, with the purpose of hearing whether she believed in his motive for breaking the engagement.

"Did you believe that I feared you?" asked she and took a stitch with her needle.

"I did not know how you would take my explanation, although I thought I knew that the sorrow which it might cause you would be easily consoled."

There lay something in the words "easily consoled," which seemed to cut the girl as an allusion to the young consoler, but neither of them seemed to have the desire to betray themselves; one feared to show jealousy, and the other was anxious to learn, if he had seen anything.

The girl, who had sat at her work, now looked up to read the expression in the face of her opponent and observed with a wonder which she could not hide the many orders on the lapel of his dress coat. And with a childish pettishness, which only hides envy, she sneered:

"How fine you are!"

"I shall be so at the ball!"

The girl's face twitched, twitched so terribly that the commissioner felt the reflection of her pain and took hold of her hand at the same moment that she broke out with a terrible cry. And when he leaned towards her, she drew her head towards his chest and cried, so that she shook as in a fever.

"Child!" the commissioner said soothingly.

"Yes, I am a child! Therefore you should have indulgence with me!" sobbed the girl.

"Listen! How far shall one have indulgence with a child?"

"Infinitely!"

"No! I have never heard that! There is a perfectly determined limit, where dissoluteness approaches criminal action."

"What do you mean?"

And now she jumped up.

"You know what I mean, I see that," answered the commissioner, who was again free from the enchantment, for as soon as she became hard, at the same moment she became ugly.