Part 15

"Jealous, thus!" sneered the girl, who believed she had caught him.

"No, for jealousy is an uncalled for suspicion, sometimes a measure of prudence, but my apprehensions have proved to be well founded. Therefore I am not jealous!"

"And of a boy! A whelp, that you are standing so far above," continued the girl without taking the explanation into consideration.

"So much the more ignominious for yourself!"

"Thus the whole story was a falsehood," she threw between to escape being hit by the affront.

"From beginning to end! But I would not cause your mother sorrow and yourself shame! Do you understand the delicacy?"

"Yes, I understand it! But I do not understand myself!"

"That I should be able to do, if you gave me a part of your past life!"

"My past life! What do you mean?"

"There exists then a past in your life! It was this I always suspected."

"You allow yourself to make insinuations...."

"As I have nothing further to do, with who you are or what you have been, so ... Now I must say farewell!" the commissioner broke off, as he saw a gunner out on the hill coming for him.

"Don't go away yet!" begged the girl and grasped his hand, looking into his eyes with drowning glances. "Do not go away, for then I do not know what I might do."

"Why torment ourselves longer, when separation is inevitable?"

"We will not torment ourselves! You shall stay with me this evening, so that we can talk before we separate; I will narrate to you all that you wish to know, and after that you will judge me differently."

The commissioner, who from this utterance believed he knew all and was sure that he had escaped the misfortune of binding himself to the mistress of one or more, now came to a decision. He went to the window, and dismissed the gunner, saying that he would come later in his own boat.

When this was done, he sat down on the sofa for the starting of a conversation.

But after the girl was relieved of her uneasiness, she relaxed and became almost speechless, so that finally there was perfect silence. They had nothing to say to each other, and the fear of stirring up storm birds oppressed more and more the feelings, so that tiresomeness faced them.

The commissioner began to thumb the books, which were left on the center table, and caught sight of one on which the assistant's name was written.

"The story of a young woman, I believe I Have you read it?" asked he.

"No, I haven't had time yet. What is there about the book?"

"Well, it is remarkable because it was written by a woman and yet is sincere."

"So! What is its contents then?"

"Its contents are about free love. There is a young scientist, who becomes engaged to a girl free from prejudice; and while he is on an expedition, she lends herself to an artist, while expecting later to marry her betrothed."

"So? What does the authoress say about that?"

"She only laughs at that, of course."

"Fie!" said the girl and rose to go after a bottle of wine.

"Why so? No right of ownership in love! And, besides, her betrothed was tiresome, at least in her company, to judge by the delineation in the book."

"Now we are beginning to be tiresome, also," interrupted Miss Mary, as she filled the glasses.

"What shall we amuse ourselves with then?" asked the lover with an amorous smile, which could not be misunderstood. "Come now and sit down here by me."

Instead of being offended at the coarse tone and gesture, which accompanied the invitation, the girl seemed to look up to the man with a certain admiration where before she had almost despised him for his over-respectful manners.

The twilight had fallen, and the moon in its last quarter threw only a yellow-green stripe in onto the floor, silhouetting the shadow of the balsam.

Through the open window came the subdued tones of the first waltz, "The Queen of the Ball," as a reproach, a greeting from the lost Paradise, and at the same time sustained the hope that all was not ended.

And in the hope of binding him by a memory of the highest bliss she made the last concession after a stormy explanation of love on his side.

CHAPTER THIRTEENTH

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.

CHAPTER FOURTEENTH

The autumn had advanced, but on the skerry could not be seen that the summer had gone, for there was not a deciduous tree to turn yellow, and the lichens on the rocks had become more luxuriant, and swelled by the moisture, the heath and the crowberry vines had taken on a new verdure, the juniper and the dwarf pines, the eternally green trees of the north, were freshened and freed from dust by rain.

The fishermen had flown, as their labor for the fall was ended; the silence had again returned, and the provision store was closed. The wooden frame of the chapel became more naked, as the boards had been picked off for firewood and carpenter's lumber, so that there was only the studdings to be seen, which resembled a complex of gibbets.

The preacher was seldom seen now, for since he had become an abstainer, he had misused the china wine, which was a compound containing brandy, and he already had buzzings in his ears, palpitation of the heart and was sleeping most of the time.

The commissioner after a month of labor had succeeded in curing his soul of the shot wound he had received at the game of love. With potassium iodide and low diet he had subdued the desires, and when the tristesse of the solitude took him, he generated a portion of laughing gas from ammonium nitrate, for he had found a long time previous that intoxication from alcohol was vile and succeeded by greater dejection with mania for suicide. At first the wonderous nitrous oxide had cheered him up and made him laugh, but the banal giggle had dissolved all his great thoughts and struggles into a nothing, at which he laughed, but when he had found himself down among the gigglers, who had giggled at him, he felt the need of raising himself up again above his former self, and he missed his sorrows and his griefs.

But when he had isolated himself completely, so that the chambermaid was only permitted to clean the room and bring in food, while he locked himself up in the attic room, all the memories from the summer commenced to haunt him. He remembered now without wishing it, every word that had been said. And now the appearance of the preacher in the mist on the islet appeared as something that had been planned. The words which he had uttered concerning his father and his circumstances compared with those of Miss Mary, that she knew who he was, now took root, grew and became big. There must exist some secret in his life, which everybody knew except himself. And soon he saw in the appearance of the preacher that of a planned spying, sustained by someone who wished to persecute him. He did not believe this in calmer moments, for he knew very well that the mania of persecution was the first symptom of that infirmity, which accompanies isolation. Human beings formed a great electrical battery of many elements, and when an element is isolated, it loses its power. The induction coil of copper wire was lame at the same moment the soft iron rod was taken out, and he was on the way to be lame, since his iron rod had become tempered steel.

Yes, but that was not that sickly mania of persecution, which comes from bodily infirmity, for he had in fact been persecuted, opposed from the very moment, that he in the school bespoke that he would be a power, a former of a species, that would be able to break from its kindred and like the differentiating herb beget for itself a name of its own, perhaps the name of a new genus. He had been persecuted, instinctively from below by inferiors and above by the mediocre, which latter sat as gauges and determined the standard, by which greatness should be judged. He had been hated and picked at as the yellow high-bred bird of the Canary islands, when it had flown out of its cage and come among green-finches out in the forest, where its too splendid attire provoked the wild birds.

But nature, in which he had sought company before, now became dead to him, for the intermediary, the human being, was wanting. The sea, which he had worshiped and which he sought as the only grandeur in his paltry country with its petty, trivial summer cottage landscapes seemed to him to become narrow, as his ego swelled. This blue, turpentine-green, gray circle enclosed him as a prison yard, and the uniformity of the little landscape brought the same pain, as prison cells might cause, by their want of variety. To travel away from the whole he could not, for he sat with his roots In the earth, in his little impressions, his diet, and he could not be removed with the root. It was the Norseman's tragic, which uttered itself in longing for the south.