CHAPTER III

MAN'S BREAST IS LIKE THE OCEAN

John passed an excellent matriculation, whereupon he took a fancy to become a cadet, to which his father at once gave his consent, considering that at the Military Academy he would learn order and discipline, though, as a matter of fact, if what is meant by discipline, is obedience to orders, he had no need to learn it, and he had never been disorderly in his habits. Other faults, however, he did possess, and he was twice nearly expelled from the Academy. The only thing which saved him was his behaviour to his teachers, which was always ingratiating. From the Academy he again passed a creditable examination, and became absolutely enthusiastic for his profession. He showed himself particularly good in drill. All was life, movement, and story-telling where he was, and swearing into the bargain, for by degrees he had brought swearing to a fine art. All the officers in the brigade put together, did not swear as much in the course of a year, as he did in a week. He could begin a string of oaths at one flank of the company, as they stood on parade, and keep it up till he arrived at the other. If he had used all the powers of imagination which he squandered on swearing, in painting, he could have stocked a museum; or if he had been a poet or composer, his shelves would have been full. But unfortunately his oaths will not bear repeating, for they were generally used when only men were present.

For common every-day use he was content with ordinary oaths, though, even then, his way of using them was that of a master. As an indication of the first-named description--those, namely, of his own invention--I will give one example a little toned down. On one occasion, when the company was assembled for prayers, the chaplain had wearied them by preaching an excessively long discourse, which John Kurt declared he had once read in an old book of sermons. He therefore asked for a blessing on the chaplain in the following terms: "May Satan inwardly illuminate all through his inside with burning sermon books."

He had an unending supply of stories, which were served up in a seething sauce of imagery and cursing. His stories had this advantage in them, that everybody did not believe them.

John Kurt was tall, thin, bony, and as supple as a willow. He wore beard and moustache, but they did not grow well. The hair was ragged, and there were patches where none grew. This gave his face a look of being torn in two. When his wild eyes flashed out he was actually ugly. But his brow was clear, with the fair skin which was hereditary in his family; and sometimes, when he was at his best, a gleam would pass over it which quite redeemed his plainness. His feelings were extremely strong, and he could make others feel with him.

The finest thing in the world for a grown man, he considered, was without doubt to be a soldier and officer. He thundered out his assurances to the whole world, that no one could be a man who had not gone through his drill. "Drill and discipline," he would exclaim, using by preference the commonest expressions, for book language was not strong enough; "drill and discipline. That was women-folks' greatest loss that they never had discipline or tact in their commonplace lives--the swine!" The whole country ought to be arranged as one vast "Drill-hall." There would be no more cranky bodies then: "No, there would be--devil take me--order and sense; the whole _Storting_--devil plague them--ought to go to the parade ground and be drilled." Till that day came there would be ne'er a bit of sense in the whole crew. "The king--devil stare at me--ought to be drilled, if not the whole place would be like a pigstye, where the strongest snout shoves t'other one's out of the trough. Some one must stand over them with a whip."

How then can one possibly paint the astonishment of his comrades, his friends, and, above all, of his father, when one fine day it was announced that First Lieutenant John Kurt had applied for a discharge, which had been granted him. He came storming home again, and whenever he was asked why he had left, he replied that the whole military system was--"devil pickle him--the most miserable buffoonery. No honourable man ought to lend himself to it. The officers were nothing but dressed-up, well-trained monkeys, who trained strong lusty lads to be monkeys as well. The generals were big monkeys with feathers in their caps, and the king was the chief monkey of all."

What was he going to do? "Why, dig the ground like his father. The earth--that was the only solid thing there was in creation, and so it was the only thing worth a rush, or that produced anything worth having. To get out of it all that tasted best, and smelt best, that was--may the devil quarter him--the finest thing an independent lad could turn his hand to." He dressed himself in the most slovenly way, and worked among the other labourers for his living.

That was all very well during the summer, but the harvest was hardly over before he discovered that--may the devil fly off with him--gardening was simply muck. It consisted in using this sort of muck, and then so much muck, and muck in that fashion. It seemed to him at last that "all the world was naught but a great muck-heap. They were the luckiest who owned the biggest. What--devil butcher him--was war other than that each one killed t'other for his own muck-heap? Poets and poetry were the flies in spring when the muck began to work."

He went off in a ship, bound for the South Sea, and was absent for several years, nor, when one beautiful spring day he returned home, could any one gain a clue as to where he had been. If he were to be believed, he had traversed the whole globe, for from that time no country or nation could be mentioned, nor anything remarkable in natural history, no ocean, no well-known building, which he had not seen, nor a single famous person with whom he was not on terms of the greatest intimacy, or, at the very least, well known to. It was evident that they were not all inventions. He had a great deal of information which could only have been acquired on the spot. He had undoubtedly some notable acquaintance, for his correspondence proved it. Later on in the summer an English nobleman and his friends sought him out to accompany them on a mountain hunting expedition.

Why had he come home? "To see his father before he died," he said; though, to confess the truth, his father was in the best of health, and not more pleased to welcome his son home, than he had been to see him depart.

John, however, declared all the same, that for his part, Heaven help him, he could not bear any longer to think that his father might be dying, and he not by his side.

From the time he returned he was all solicitude and affection for his father. He was now an old man, and allowed his son to do anything with him that he chose, and strange fancies he took at times. Such as, when he suddenly determined that his father should not eat anything. Or when he, all at once, hit on the plan of putting him into a warm bath, while he turned the cold douche on to him. Another idea was to lay him under a number of large eider-down coverlids, in order to make him sweat, although his father had not the slightest need for such treatment. He would give a side glance at his son, and a very speaking one it was; there was neither confidence, nor fear in it, still less any good-humour, but a certain cold inquisitiveness, as though he just wished to know what next; and sometimes he seemed to ask, "Is this John, or is it not John?"