Chapter V: Part 5

To saw down the supernumerary trees was the work of half an hour. The one that was left was slender with all its vegetative energy gathered at the top, because the others standing so close had hindered the formation of branches on the trunk. But now he must thin the crown with an ax so that the characteristic umbrella frame with its ribs came out. It was easily done, but when he afterwards looked at his creation with the diopter he still saw that the style was not perfect and that the top branches must be stretched upwards with zinc wire and the side branches somewhat downwards and outwards. When the stone pine was completed, he took a glass of wine and selected the material for the cypresses. This soon presented itself in the form of a pair of pointed junipers, which he only needed to select so that they rose against the sky, and trim them with an ax and the knife. But as they were somewhat too light, he took a pail of water and stirred some ivory-black in it and sprinkled them with the wash until they had a perfect churchyard green.

When he contemplated his work, he became dejected, and recollected a dark story of the girl who stepped on the loaf of bread; and when the white mews gave forth dreadful cries above his head, he thought of the two black ravens which came from heaven to take her soul down to hell.

After he had sat a moment and the blood had returned to his brain, he smiled at his work and at his childish fear. If nature herself had not gone exactly so hastily to work with the origin of species it was not lack of good will, only lack of ability.

Now to make a marble palace; and as that had been his starting point and he had planned it all at home on his sofa, this work was not more difficult than the other.

The limestone ledge stood perfectly vertical, ready for a facade; true there were only a few square meters of it but no more was needed, and it was only to loosen the eurite slabs, which from weathering had cracked from the limestone. The crowbar proved sufficient at first, but at the base he found it necessary to use a dynamite cartridge in the crack.

At the report of the cartridge and the raining down of shivers he felt something of the poet's longing to dump all at once the ammunition of the standing armies into a volcano and relieve humanity of the pain of existence and the trouble of development.

Now the marble slab was cleared and the crystals of the limestone sparkled like loaf sugar in the sunbeams. With his paint buckets he marked out a rustic base and outlined two small quadrangular windows. On the rocky ledge above he drove two poles and laid a third one across, tying them so that the whole formed a pergola. Afterwards he needed only to lift up the bearberry vines, which were a couple of yards long, and twine them round the poles; thus the grapevine was in place, and hanging down in festoons.

At last he retouched the soil with a gallon of muriatic acid diluted with as much water, whereby a brilliant variegation of colors was produced on the grassy carpet, to represent patches of Bellis or Galanthus which flowers he had found characteristic of the Roman Campagna at the coming of the "second spring" in October after the wine harvest has ended.

And therewith his work was completed!

But it had taken him until evening. In order that the miracle should have a proper effect there remained, however, to announce its appearance in advance and best if he could predetermine the day. He knew that there had been great heat in the south of Europe, and therefore it would not be long before a north wind would come. It had been from the east for some time now, while the barometric pressure in the North Sea had been low. According to reports, drifting ice lay off Arholma, and as soon as the wind would veer a few points to northward the ice drift must follow the current which passes to the west of Aland, where the Gulf of Bothnia empties into the Baltic Sea. If he could only get a north wind in the evening of some day then he was sure it would last a couple of days, and as it is always accompanied by clear air he would be able to foretell the appearance of the phenomenon at least one day in advance, and if he got that far it would be an easy matter to tell the hour, for the mirage only appeared a few hours after sunrise, usually between ten and twelve o'clock.

As he entered his chamber, he locked the door to devote himself to his work, his great work, which he had been planning for the last ten years and expected to complete when he was fifty; this was the goal, which had inspired his life and which he carried as his secret. He enjoyed the thought of owning himself for a few hours, for during the weeks which had passed since the arrival of the two ladies, he had been occupied every evening with keeping them company, and that, which should have been a rest and a pleasure, had become a constraint, a labor. He loved the young girl and would live with her in wedlock, in complete unification, when leisure moments would afford unpremeditated confidences and rest; but this state of semi-familiarity where he at fixed hours must appear whether he was disposed to converse or not, pained him as a duty. She had caught hold of him and never tired of receiving as he possessed the ability to be always new and entertaining; but he who never received anything, could in time find the need of renewing himself. But when he then stayed away, she became uneasy, nervous and tortured him with questions whether she was too importunate, to which he as a well-bred man could not answer in the affirmative.

Now he opened his manuscript case, where the cartons lay arranged with notes, small slips of paper with improvised thoughts on observations, stuck on half sheets as in a herbarium, and which it amused him to arrange and rearrange after new classifications in order to find out whether the phenomena could be arranged in as many ways as the brain willed, or they really could be arranged according to only one classification, viz., as nature had placed them, if indeed nature in its operations had followed any particular law and order. This occupation awakened in him the idea that he was the real arranger of chaos, who separated light from darkness; and that the chaos first ceased with the evolution of the discriminating organ of self-consciousness, at a time when light and darkness in reality were not yet separated. He intoxicated himself with this thought, felt how his ego was growing, how the brain cells germinated, burst their capsules, multiplied and formed new species of concepts, which should in time crop out in thoughts, and fall into the brain substance of others as yeast plants and cause millions after his death, if not before, to serve as hot beds for his seeds of thought....

There was a knock at the door, and with an excited voice, as though he had been disturbed in a secret meeting, he asked who it was.

It was a greeting from the ladies and an inquiry if the commissioner would come down.

This he answered by returning his regards, but he had no time this evening because he must work, unless some urgent circumstances required his presence.

There was silence for a moment. As he thought he surely knew what would follow he left his interrupted work and placed his manuscript in order; he had just completed this when he heard the mother's step on the staircase. Instead of waiting for her to knock he opened the door and greeted her with the question, "Miss Mary is sick?"

The mother started, but recovered herself at once and asked the doctor to come down and see her as it was impossible to get a physician.

The commissioner was not a physician but he had acquired the elements of pathology and therapeutics; had observed himself and all the sick that had come within his circle; had philosophized over the nature of diseases and their remedies, and finally, made up a therapy, that he applied to himself. Therefore he promised to come in about half an hour and bring the medicine with him as he heard the girl lay in convulsions.

It certainly was not difficult for him to guess the nature of her sickness. As the first messenger had said nothing about illness, it must have occurred between the two messages and had been caused by his refusal to go. It was a psychical indisposition, which he so well recognized and which passed under the yet undefined name of hysteria. A little pressure on the will, a thwarted wish, a cross plan, and at once followed a general depression under which the soul tried to place the pains within the body without being able to localize them. He had so often seen in the pharmacodynamics beside the names of remedies and their action small cautious remarks as "acts in a yet unexplained way," or "action not yet fully known," and he believed that he had found by observation and speculation, that just because of the unity of mind and matter the remedy acted both chemico-dynamically and psychically at the same time. Recent medical ideas had left out the medicine or the material basis and assumed in hypnotism a purely psychical, or in diet and physical exercise a vulgar and often detrimental mechanical method. These exaggerations he regarded as necessary and beneficial transition forms, although their trial had demanded its victims as, for instance, when one with cold water excites a nervous person instead of soothing them with warm baths, or tired out the weak with violent exercises in the raw air.

He believed he had found that the old remedies could still be of service as a kind of instruction material, to use the popular expression, in order to awaken and change impressions, and just as the group of astringents really cause a contracting of the stomach, just so do they cause a concentrating of the soul's scattered powers, which the dissipated drinker knows from experience when he in the morning winds up his run down movement with an "Angostura."

This woman felt herself bodily indisposed without directly being so. Therefore he now composed a series of remedies, of which the first would cause a real physical ailment whereby the patient should be urged to leave the sickly condition of the soul and localize it definitely in the body. To this purpose he took from his family medicine case the most nauseating of all drugs, asafœtida, which could best develop a condition of general illness, and in such great doses that actual convulsions would result; that means, the whole physique with the senses of smell and taste should rise in revolt against this strange substance in the body, and all the functions of the soul should direct their attention to its removal. Thereby the imaginary pains would be forgotten, and it would only remain then to cause in succession transitions from the one nauseating sensation down through less unpleasant ones, until finally the release from the last stage, by means of an upward grade of cooling, covering, softening, mitigating remedies, should awaken a complete sensation of vivacity as after having passed through troubles and dangers, which are delightful to recollect.

After having dressed himself in a white sack coat of cashmere and tied on a cream colored necktie with pale amethyst stripes, he for the first time since the arrival of the ladies put on his bracelet. Why all this he could not explain, but he did it under the influence of an impression, brought from the sick bed he was to visit, and which he produced in himself. And when he looked in the mirror without observing his face, he noticed that his exterior gave a mild sympathetic impression, but also with a touch of the unusual and that it would attract attention, without exciting a nervous person.

After this he collected his requisites like a magician who is going to perform, and went to the sick bed.

When he was shown into the chamber, he saw the girl lying on the sofa, with disheveled hair and dressed in a Persian morning-gown. Her eyes were unnaturally big and stared contemptuously at the intruder.

The commissioner felt for a moment embarrassed, but only for a moment, and then he stepped forwards and grasped her hand.

"How is it with you, Miss Mary?" asked he sympathetically.

She looked at him piercingly, as though she would penetrate him, but did not answer.

He took out his watch and, counting her pulse, said:

"You have fever."

Here he lied, but he must gain her confidence, that was part of the cure.

The expression on the girl's face changed immediately.

"If I have fever! Oh, I believe I shall burn up!"

She was allowed to complain, and the hostile mood against the visitor had passed so that contact closing the current could occur.

"Do you promise to obey my orders? If so, I will cure you," the commissioner began, meantime laying his hand on her forehead.

At the word obey he felt how the patient twitched as though she would not obey at all, but at the same moment his bracelet slipped below the cuff and the resistance of the imaginary sick ceased.

"Do with me as you please," answered she submissively; meanwhile her eyes were fastened on the golden serpent which fascinated her and aroused her fears of something unknown.

"I am no physician by profession, as you know, but I have studied the art, and know all that is necessary for this occasion. Here I have a drug which is very diagreeable to take, but is infallible in its action. It is no secret and I shall tell you what I am giving you. This is a resinous gum which is prepared from the root of a perennial herb which grows in stony Arabia."

At the word Arabia the girl listened, for it probably aroused some thoughts of incense, which could not hide Lady Macbeth's foul crimes.

Therefore she took the spoon and smelt of its contents; but at the same moment she threw her head backwards and cried: "I cannot take it!"

He placed his arm round her neck, firmly and gently, and reached the spoon to her once more and coaxingly said:

"Show now that you are a good child!" Thereupon he poured the drug into her mouth, before she could make resistance.

She fell backwards upon the sofa pillows and her body writhed under the pains and nauseating effects which the resin with its smell of white onion had produced, and her face expressed a horror as though all things bad and disgusting in this world had piled upon her. With a supplicating voice she beseeched him for a glass of water to free her from her agony.

This he would not give her; she must lie down and, whether she would or not, submit to the disagreeable feelings the remedy caused.

Now when he saw her melted by disgust, he took up his drug number two.

"Now, Miss Mary, the wandering in stony Arabia's desert is ended and you shall go up on the Alps and inhale the mountain air, concentrated in the vigorous gentian's bitter root, yellow as sum light," said the commissioner in an encouraging, manly voice.

The girl received the bitter drug unresistingly and shrank as though stabbed with a knife; but directly after she aroused as though her scattered powers had rushed together and her energy had returned. The violent remedy had taken away the previous obnoxious taste but irritated the mucous membranes of the stomach by its sharpness, and increased the pulse.

"Now we shall put out the fire with quilts," continued the commissioner. "And let us go to Brittany's seashore to fetch balsam in the mild Carrageen alga. Do you feel how soft the mucilage lays itself protectingly over the irritated lining of the stomach and do you notice the odor of the sea salts?"

A quiet calm spread over the patient's heated face, and as the physician now considered her strong enough to listen to him, he began with reminiscences of the coast of Brittany, the yachting on the Atlantic, the life with the fishermen in Quimper, and the hunting for seabirds at Sarzeau.

She followed his narrative, but still seemed somewhat tired, so he broke off and gave her a symphony, as he called it, which was composed of the classical route, well known as the wine spice of bridal parties in the Middle Ages; the heavenly Angelica, the spearmint with its household odor and a little touch of _Carbenia benedicta_ to preserve vigor, and a grain of juniper oil to tell of the forest.

It was as though he rubbed her with impressions, snatched her away from sickly thoughts by letting her travel in fancy from place to place; make the tour of the whole old and new world, get visions of all kinds of landscapes, all races of people, all climates. When she seemed tired he gave her a spoonful of lemon juice with a little sugar, which cooled and eased her, so that after a dreadful half-hour passed she received this simple refreshment as a great enjoyment, that made her smile.

"Turn now towards the wall," said the commissioner, "and pretend to sleep for five minutes while I go out and speak to your mother."

The commissioner, who felt his powers failing, was obliged to go out into the fresh air to recover. And now he need only to throw a glance out over the half lighted evening sky, out over the steel blue sea, shut his eyes and try not to think, to feel, how the disordered, brain regained its place again and continued its accelerating motion forwards, after having been turned backwards awhile.

While he stood thus with his arms on his chest, half asleep, he heard a thought still buzzing in one ear: a child of thirty-four years!

Thus he awoke and went into the cottage again.

Miss Mary was sitting on the sofa with her hair loosened and thrown gracefully around her, but otherwise looked perfectly well and cheerful.

The commissioner took from his basket a bottle of Syracuse wine and a package of Russian cigarettes.

"Now you shall pretend you are well," said he, "and that we have met after a long journey, upon which you shall drink a glass of sweet Sicilian wine and smoke a cigarette, for it is part of the cure."

The girl seemed to make an effort to hide her secret suffering, and drank the wine while she kept her eyes on the bracelet.

The commissioner broke the silence with, "You look at my bracelet?"

"No, I did not," denied the girl.

"I got it from a woman who of course is dead, as I have not returned it."

"Have you been in love?" asked the girl with a strong doubt.

"Yes, but with open eyes! When one usually considers it commendable to use sense, why quench it when one is going to take one of the most important steps in life?"

"So, one should be calculating in love?"

"Strongly, incredibly calculating when it is to let loose one of the wildest propensities!"

"Propensities?"

"Propensities! Yes!"

"You don't believe In love?"

"You propose questions which have no answer! Believe in love in general? What do you mean by that? There exists a mass of species of love, as much contrasted as black and white! I cannot believe in two of them at the same time, or all of them at once."

"And the highest species?"

"The intellectual; in three stories but as the English house. Above is the study, beneath the sleeping room and in the basement the kitchen."

"So practical! But love, a great love, is not calculating, that I have imagined as the highest, as a storm, a lightning stroke, a cataract!"

"As a rude, uncurbed power of nature? So it appears to the animals and the lower varieties of human beings...."

"Lower? Are not all human beings alike?"

"Oh, yes! All beings are alike as two berries, youths and old men, men and women, Hottentots and Frenchmen, certainly they are alike! Look at us two only! Perfectly alike, the only difference is that I have a beard! Pardon, my lady, now I see that you have recovered I will leave you. A pleasant sleep!"

He had arisen and taken his hat, but the next moment the girl stood at his side with both his hands clasped in hers and with the same glances with which she for the first time had vanquished him, she begged him to stay!

Under these burning glances and hand pressures he felt something as he thought a young girl might feel when she stood under the influence of a seducer's passionate attack. He became perturbed and inwardly there arose a feeling of violated bashfulness, and injured manliness. He freed his hands, drew himself back and said in a calm voice, cutting in its affected coldness:

"Consider!"

"Stay, or I shall seek you in your room!" rang the excited voice of the girl, which seemed to imply a threat from which there was no appeal.

"Then I shall lock my door!"

"Are you a man, you?" rang the challenge with a hard laugh.

"Yes, in such a high degree that I will be both the selector and attacker, and I do not like to be seduced!"

With this he went out and heard behind him a noise as from a human body falling and striking against furniture.

After he was out he felt like turning back, for through mental strain he was in a condition of weakness that made him susceptible to impressions of the sufferings of others. But after having been alone for a few seconds and collected himself, so that his powers returned, he firmly decided to break this engagement, which threatened to usurp his whole soul-life; and in time cut off all relation with a woman, who had showed so plainly that it was only his body she desired, while she ejected his soul, which he would pour into this lifeless image of flesh. She enjoyed the sound of his voice, but the thoughts she did not receive only in such cases as when they were of direct benefit. He had often caught her looking at the lines of his figure, and she used sometimes thoughtlessly to grasp his arm whose swelling muscles formed a ridge beneath the soft cloth. He remembered now these many overtures at the bath, on yachting; on going up to the lookout, which he never visited because it upset his nerve system to stand on a bluff without sufficient support. And now this evening, when he had seen this eruption of uncontrollable passion, he saw with fear that this woman was not of the developed race, which could individualize its love to a certain one, and that he to her only played the rôle of the indispensable opposite sex in general.

He had strolled down to the strand for a breeze, but the night was sultry. The sea had ceased to roll, and in the northwest the heaven was a faint melon color, while out in the east over the water rested the night. The strand cliffs were still warm, and he placed himself down on one of the many arm chairs, that the cold had blasted out and the waves had polished smooth.

The events he had just lived through passed before him, and now, when his senses were cooled off, he saw them in another light. His dream had always been that he should awaken a woman's love to such a degree that she should come begging, crawling to him, saying, "I love you, deign to love me!" Such was the order of nature, that the weaker approach the stronger with a submissive mind and not vice versa, although the latter still was the case with those who were living with a trace of superstitious ideas about something supernaturally exalted in woman, notwithstanding that investigation had made it manifest that the mysterious was only confusion and the exalted only a collection of poems by the suppressed desires of male propensity.

Now she had come as he had dreamed it, the woman of the new time free from prejudice, had shown all her inward incandescent nature, and he had recoiled! Why? Perhaps tradition and conventional habits still governed him! For there was nothing bold in her effusion, no trace of the harlot offering, no immodest behavior or impudent mien! She loved him in her way. What more could he desire, and with such a love he could safely bind himself to her, for perhaps not many men could boast of having lighted such a flame. But he felt no pride over having gained her, for he felt his own value, and rather a pressing responsibility which he would get rid of; and therefore he must depart from the island.

In thought now he sat and packed his belongings. He gathered the things from the writing table and saw the green empty spread, took away the lamp that shed light in the evening and sparkled colors in the daytime, and there was a vacuum. Stripped the walls of their pictures and draperies, and the white, sad, mathematical figure came forth. He took the books from their shelves, and the dreadful solitude faced him, monotony, nudeness, poverty!

And then came the fatigue from bodily efforts, fear of traveling and its tiring effects; anxiety of the unknown where he now might be cast, deprived of his accustomed surroundings and her company. And he saw the young girl in her childish but still majestic beauty; heard her complain, saw her whitened cheeks, which another would cause to blush again as time passed.

Thus he suffered all the pangs of separation through a whole quarter of an hour, which had seemed to him as long as hours, when in the dusk of the summer night, he saw a woman's figure up on the rock outlined against the light sky. The splendid contours, that he knew so well, assumed still nobler proportions against the now pale yellow sky, which could just as well be the end of a sunset as the beginning of sunrise. She seemed to have come from the custom house cottage, and to be searching for someone. Bareheaded and with her hair still hanging over her shoulders, turning her head to spy, she seemed suddenly to discover what she sought, and with brisk steps she hurried down to the beach where the object of her search was sitting, immovable, without the power to flee, without the will to proclaim himself. And when she reached him she fell down and laid her head in his lap and talked wildly, modestly, beseechingly, as though she was annihilated with shame without being able to hold her tongue in check.

"Don't go away," sobbed she. "Despise me, but have mercy! Love me, love me or I will go where I shall never return!"

There now awoke in him the mature man's intense longing for love. And when he saw the woman at his feet, it aroused the inherent chivalry of man, who would see in its mate the mistress not the slave; and he arose, lifted her up, placed his arm round her waist and pressed her to him.

"At my side, Mary, not at my feet," said he. "You love me, for you knew that I loved you, and now you belong to me for life. And you will never leave me alive, do you hear! For our whole life long. And now I place you on my throne and give you the power over me and my belongings, my name and my property, my honor and my actions, but if you forget that it is I who gave you the power, and if you misuse or give it away, then as a tyrant I will overthrow you to such a depth that you shall never see the sunlight more! But you cannot do it, for you love me, is it not true that you love me?"

He had placed her on the stone stool, and kneeling he laid his head in her bosom.

"I lay my head in your lap," continued he, "but do not cut off my hair meanwhile I sleep on your bosom. Let me uplift you but do not drag me down. Become better than I am, for you can when I protect you from contact with the world's corruption and misery, in which I must delve. Ennoble yourself with great faculties which I do not possess, so that we together shall become a perfect whole."

His feelings began to take the cooler tone of reason and seemed to quench her exaltation, so that she interrupted him by placing her glowing face to his, and when he did not answer her caress, she pressed a burning kiss on his lips.

"You child," said she, "don't you dare to kiss when nobody can see it?"

Then he sprang up, clasped her round the neck and kissed her throat repeatedly until she freed herself from him with a laugh and stood erect before him.

"You are a perfect little savage," scolded she.

"The savage is there, be careful!" answered he, and grasping her round the waist they wandered onwards on the warm sands which whispered round their feet.

And now the lighthouse in the distance blinked, as the air had cooled off and the dew had fallen. Out from the rookeries they heard the cries of the seals as from the shipwrecked.

They wandered an hour or more, and spoke of their first meeting, about their secret thoughts from time to time; about the future, about the coming winter; about traveling in foreign countries; meantime they came out on the point where the pile of stones with a cross was selected in memory of a shipwreck with loss of life.

Suddenly they caught a glimpse of two shadows that sneaked away and disappeared.

"It is Vestman and his sister-in-law," said Borg. "Fie! If I were her husband I would sink her!"

"Not him?" came from the girl more hastily than she intended.

"He is not married!" answered Borg shortly; "that is the difference!"

There was a silence, a disagreeable silence, such as makes one seek for a topic for conversation; and meantime whispered the thoughts, now untied from the enchantment: and he already longed for the enchantment again, for the intoxication, which blinded him, which turned gray to rose color, which built pedestals; which placed gilded edges on cracked china.

At this they turned from the rocky wall to go home. The wind which had been quite asleep, now began to waft against them and in his anxiety the awakened lover felt how freshly it blew. It was the north wind which he had waited for, and which he now greeted as a rescuer. For in a second when the girl's contradiction in a serious matter had just as though broken something in him, so that he felt that her being could only be soldered to his, not melted together with it, unless he gave up resisting and delivered himself to her wholly and fully, he now grasped the opportunity to raise himself again without treading upon her.

"Why do the people hate me?" asked he suddenly.

"Because you are superior to them," slipped from the girl without her observing the confession she made.

"I do not believe it," answered he, "for their intellect is not sufficient to value my superiority."

"Their hate can pervert their vision!"

"Superbly answered! But if they should see the miracle, would their eyes open?"

"Perhaps! If the wonder aroused fear."

"Well, they shall have the miracle! To-morrow at ten o'clock it will appear!"

"What?"

"That which I have promised you!"

The girl looked into his face with amazement as though she did not believe what he said. After which she laughingly interposed:

"If it should be cloudy weather then?"

"But it won't be," answered the commissioner with decision. "However, now we have already come so far as to speak about weather, we can even think of what your mother will say about us."

"She won't trouble herself about it," answered the girl at once.

"It is astonishing that a mother does not pay any attention to what man her daughter is to bind herself in relationship, and whose name she is to carry! Can that be immaterial to her?"

"Good night, now!" interrupted Miss Mary and reached her mouth for a kiss. "To-morrow morning you will come and visit us! Is it not so?"

"Certainly," answered he, "certainly!"

She walked away.

But he still stood on the same place and saw her slender figure rise against the now sulphur yellow sky as she stepped upwards on the hillock, and when she came to the highest point she turned back and threw a kiss to him, and then she seemed to sink behind the slope until he only saw her head with its loose hair which fluttered in the northern wind.

CHAPTER EIGHTH

When the commissioner sat the following morning at breakfast with his betrothed, after having been received without comment as the future son-in-law, he felt again the combined impression of a great calm at having been received in a little circle, where common interests formed a tie to unbounded confidence; and at the same time an anxiety over the necessity of giving himself up for these manifold considerations which sympathy and relationship bring. The past evening had rushed into his life mixing great and small, as life offers it, his whole history of love, which he had dreamed of with open eyes, had passed with his eyes purposely blindfolded. He had closed his eyes to the girl's pretended or imaginary illness; closed them completely, so that he had deceived himself into taking it seriously; for if he had not done so, and instead had said plainly from the first moment: rise up and be well, you are only sick in imagination, then she would have hated him for life; and his aim was to win her love. Now he had gained her love, perhaps because she believed that she had deluded him; therefore his love stood in direct relation to his credulity; and when now in the morning he repeated to himself again and again the question: Do you believe in your Mary? his rested reason translated it thus: Am I sure I can delude you? No, there does not exist a love with open eyes; and to gain a woman by frankness is impossible; to approach her with raised head, and with plain words is to drive her away. He had begun with lies and must go on with dissembling. However, now while the conversation drifted between trifling things and effusive expressions of feelings, it gave no time for worry, and the pleasure of being in a home between two women made everything so bright and soft, that he delivered himself up to the enjoyment of being the petted one, the child, the little one, the son of the mother-in-law; and he did not observe that the daughter, who had already outgrown her mother, treating her as though she the mother was her child, by simple syllogism gradually took authority over him, who called her equal "mother-in-law." It amused him, this reversing of nature's order, and he had always before him the image of the giant, who let the children pull out three hairs from his beard, but only three. As they were sitting at their coffee and chatting, there was heard a murmuring from the people down on the beach.

From the window they saw them gathered on the landings, sometimes standing immovable, with hands shading their eyes: sometimes rocking on both feet, as though the ground was burning beneath them, or as if they could not stand still from fear.

"It is the miracle!" cried the girl, and hastened out accompanied by her mother and her betrothed.

Coming out on the slope the ladies stopped as though struck by fright, when on this clear sunny morning, they saw a corpse-white colossal moon rising above a graveyard with black cypress, floating on the sea.

The commissioner, who had not calculated the effect at this point of view, did not see quickly enough the relation of things, and stood deathly pale from the shock which follows something monstrous and unexpected in the otherwise law-bound nature. He hastened past the ladies who stood petrified and unable to move, and came down to the strand where the people were gathered. In a moment he found the solution of the riddle. His intended marble palace had become involuntarily framed between a projecting, rounded cliff on one side and a pine top on the other, so that the limestone slab showed as a round circle and, with the two windows which were too faintly painted, it imitated the map of the moon's disk.

The people who had been posted as to the exact hour when the miracle would appear, as promised by the commissioner, regarded the approaching man with frightened but venerating glances and the men contrary to what had been their habit to him raised their hats and caps.

"Now what do you say about my mirage?" asked he jokingly.

Nobody answered, but the head pilot, who was the most courageous, pointed northwest towards the heavens, where the real moon was hanging pale in its first quarter.

The miracle thus was crushing, and the strong impressions which the two moons had already produced was too deep to be effaced with an explanation. And when the commissioner made an attempt to the beginning of which nobody listened and the people stood infatuated just as though enamored of the fear of the inexplicable, he ceased trying to remove their belief. He had wished to give them a proof that neither he nor nature could break laws, and, nevertheless, chance had made him a wizard.

When he turned back he found his betrothed in an ecstatic state restrained by her mother, but when he appeared, she freed herself and falling on her knees she cried with half insane gestures, and words which seemed to have been borrowed from some spiritualistic circle.

"Mighty spirit, we fear thee! Take away our fear, that we may love thee!"

The case had already assumed a hazardous turn and the commissioner tried with all his art to explain the involuntary miracle, but in vain. The enjoyment of being infatuated, the numbness of fear and, behind it, the lurking feeling of ambition not to admit the confusion of senses, had so taken possession of the young girl's mind that no remonstrances or assurances availed. The mother with her unchanging, even temperament did not seem to know where she was and had forgotten the whole phenomenon of nature through her daughter's disquieting behavior.

But now the mass of people on the beach had, through Miss Mary's cries and gesticulations, turned their attention from the performance out on the sea towards her, and when they saw the young woman on her knees before the white dressed man, with his deep dark glances and bare head, out here on the rock, there must have passed before them some reminiscences from the Bible history about a young man who did miracles; for they crowded together in haste and began to whisper, while at the exhortation of the head pilot one of the women hastened into the nearest cottage and returned with a three-years-old child which had a foul ulcer on its cheek.

With the ability to call forth a mirage there should also follow a supernatural knowledge of healing.

The role which was thrown on the commissioner, began to trouble him beyond measure, and when he saw the fishing population, pilots and custom house men, leave their work, and carpenters and finishers leave the building of the chapel to listen to his words as to prophesies with miraculous power, he became afraid as though before a power of nature that he had conjured up, but could not check. The moment, however, had come when he must express himself exactly, plainly, and turn them away.

"Good people," commenced he. But silently the reflection came: how to go on, what words to use, when each expression required an explanation which again presupposed foreknowledge, which was lacking. And during the second he meditated over the distance that lay between him and them, he heard steps approaching, and turning around, he saw a man who resembled an old sailor on his leave.

The man lifted a round felt hat and looked somewhat timorous at first, but coming nearer he straightened himself up and was just going to say something, when the commissioner relieved him from his embarrassment by the question:

"Perhaps you are the Home Mission preacher whom we expect?"

"I am the same!" answered the newcomer.

"Will you not say a few words to the people here, who are in a state of tumult on account of a phenomenon of nature which they do not wish to have explained and which I at this moment cannot elucidate"--the commissioner grasped at this in his eagerness to get out of his false position.

The preacher at once declared himself prepared. Stroking his long chin whiskers he took a Bible from his pocket.

When the people saw the black book a tremor passed through them and some of the men uncovered their heads.

The preacher turned the pages a moment and finally stopped, cleared his throat and began to read.

"And I beheld when he had opened the sixth seal, and, lo, there was a great earthquake; and the sun became black as sack cloth of hair, and the moon became as blood. And the stars of heaven fell unto the earth, even as a fig tree casteth her untimely figs, when she is shaken of a mighty wind. And the heavens departed as a scroll when it is rolled together; and every mountain and island were moved out of their places. And the kings of the earth, and the great men, and the rich men, and the chief captains, and the mighty men, and every bond man, and every free man, hid themselves in the dens and in the rocks of the mountains. And said to the mountains and rocks, Fall on us, and hide us from the face of Him that sitteth on the throne, and from the wrath of the Lamb. For the great day of His wrath has come; and who shall be able to stand?"

The commissioner, who at once observed the dangerous turn the affair had taken, had drawn his betrothed half forcibly from the dangerous neighborhood, and got her down to the beach so that he could give her the right views and show, that it was no moon which had fallen from the heaven, that it was only the Italian landscape he had promised to arrange for her birthday.

But now it was too late. The girl's inner eye had already seen the vision in its first form, and the preacher's exciting interpretation had etched in that first delusion. He had toyed with the spirits of nature, conjured a foe to help him, as he believed, and then all had gone over to the foe so that he now stood alone.

While Mary's glances were still riveted to the preacher on the rock, he turned, as a trial, to the mother and whispered:

"Help us out of this. Follow me out to the skerry and see that it is only a plaything, a birthday joke."

"I cannot judge in these things," answered the mother, "and will not judge. But I believe ... that you should be married soon."

It was an advice, sober, prosaic, but from this old lady, who was herself a mother, it sounded so prudent, especially as it agreed with his own sharp understanding, he found, however, the explanation somewhat simplified. And after the hint he had received he went straight to the girl, and placing his arm round her waist, looked into her eyes with a smile, which she could not fail to understand, and kissed her lips.

At the same moment the girl seemed released from the wizard up on the rock, and without resistance she clung to her friend's arm and followed him almost dancing to her mother's cottage.

"Thanks," whispered she as she glanced into his eyes, "I thank you that you--how shall I say it?"

"Delivered you from the hobgoblin," filled in Borg.

"Yes, from the goblins!"

And she turned to look at the passed danger.

"Do not look back!" warned her betrothed as he pulled Mary through the cottage door, while fragments from the preacher's flow of words were wafted down to him by the wind.

CHAPTER NINTH

When the commissioner awoke one morning eight days later after a night of perfect rest, his first clear thought was that he must leave the skerry, go anywhere to be alone, collect himself, find himself again. The preacher's arrival had the desired effect in one way, namely to "scare the mob," so that the tumult and rudeness ceased; but on the other hand the commissioner had not been able to enjoy the newly gained peace, for the exalted condition of his betrothed obliged him to keep her always in his sight. So he had accompanied her, and formally guarded her from morning to night; and by endless talk upon the questions of religion tried to keep her aloof from the preacher's seducing talk. All these matters which he had fought through in his youth, he now had to fight over again; and as new counter-proofs had been brought forth since then, he must reedit his whole apology. He improvised psychological explanations of God, faith, miracles, eternity and prayer; and he imagined that the girl understood him. But when after three days he found that she held the same position and that this matter of feeling lay outside the conversation, he dropped the whole subject and sought by awakening the erratical with its new sphere of feeling to drive away the first. But this he must soon give up, for to speak of that which should be lived only excited the girl's feelings still more, and he soon observed that there existed secret bridges between the religious ecstasy and the sensual one. From the love of Christ she ran so easily over to love of the man on that broad drawbridge the love of one's neighbor, and from abstinence one could trip over the footbridge renunciation to its neighbor penance; a little contention awakened the disagreeable feeling of debt which must be resolved in a lustful feeling--the reconciliation.

In his need he must first tear up the bridges, place her face to face with carnal desire, awake her avidity for the temporal, which he delineated in glowing colors. But when he had so succeeded and retreated at the last moment, there arose the coldness of disappointment in her, and when he then tried to cultivate her feelings, and lead them out to the thoughts of offspring and family, she withdrew and explained to him with determination, that she would not have any children. She could even use a phraseology which is current among a certain group of women, saying that she would not be the womb which he lacked; or carry his heirs, whom she must with danger to her life bring to the world for him.

Then he felt that nature had placed something between them which he did not yet understand. He consoled himself by imagining that it was only the butterfly's fear to lay its eggs and die, the flower's suspicion that its beauty would fade away with the setting of its seed.

But he had worn himself out in these eight days; his fine wheels of thought had begun to halt in their pivot holes, and the spring in the movement had become relaxed.

After such a day of exertion, when he would have worked for a couple of hours, his head was filled with trifles. Small words repeated themselves almost audibly to his ear; gesticulations and mannerisms, that she had used in their conversation, miraged themselves, suggestions how he ought to have answered now and then, and the recollection of an appropriate repartee which he had made gave him a momentary pleasure. In a word, his head was full of bagatelles, and now he observed that he had tried to straighten out a chaos; that he had conversed as a schoolboy instead of exchanging thoughts with a mature woman; that he had given out from himself masses of power without getting anything in return; that he had placed a dry sponge in the center of his soul, and that the sponge had swelled, while he himself had become dry.

He loathed everything; was tired, and longed to get out for a moment; for be free forever he could not.

When he now looked out through the window, about five o'clock in the morning, he saw only a dense fog which stood immovable notwithstanding a light breeze from the south. But far from being discouraged thereby, he felt attracted by this light, white obscurity, which would hide him and seclude him from the little fragment of the earth, where he now felt himself tied down.

The barometer and weather vane told him that there would be sunshine later in the day, and therefore he stepped into his boat without long preparations; only provided with chart and compass, on which, however, he did not intend to rely, as he could hear the whistling buoy three miles out at sea, just in the direction in which he would seek a landing.

He therefore put full sail on and was soon in the fog. Here, where the eyes were free from all impressions of color and form, he felt first the pleasure of isolation from the medley of an outer world. He had as it were his own atmosphere around him, soaring onwards alone as on another celestial body, in a medium, which was not air but water vapors, more agreeable and more refreshing to inhale than the exsiccating air with its superfluous seventy-nine per cent of nitrogen, which had remained without evident purpose, when the elements of the earth emerged from the chaos of gases.

It was not an obscure, smoke colored mist, through which the sunlight shone. It was light, like newly melted silver. Warm as wadding it lay healingly round his tired ego, protecting it from jars and pressure. He enjoyed for a moment this fully-awake rest of the senses, without sound, without color, without smell, and he felt how his pained head was soothed by this safety from contact with others. He was sure of not being questioned; needed not to answer, nor talk. The apparatus was standing still a moment, now that all conducts had been cut off; and so he began again to think clearly, systematically over all that had passed. But what he had just gone through was so inferior, so trifling, that he must first let the bilge water run off before the fresh came in.

In the distance he heard the whistling buoy cry at intervals of several minutes, and guided by the sound he steered his course right into the mist.

It became silent again, and only the splashing of the boat at the bow and the purling aft in the wake made him conscious that he was moving forwards. Immediately after he heard a sea gull cry in the fog, and at the same time it seemed to him that he heard the dashing and rustle about the prow of a boat coming abaft, and when he shouted to avoid the danger, he received no answer, but heard only the hissing of the water as when a boat is falling off.

After a moment of sailing he observed to windward the top of a mast with mainsail and jib, but nothing was to be seen of the hull or helmsman for they were hidden by the high swells of the sea.

This occurrence under other circumstances would not have disturbed his thought, but now it made an impression which was momentarily inexplicable, and which caused a fear, which was only one step removed from thoughts of persecution. The newly awakened suspicions were further aroused, when he shortly after caught sight of the haunting boat which shot by him on the lee side, as though painted on the mist, without his being able to get sight of the helmsman who was hidden by the mainsail.

He now hailed again, but instead of an answer he saw only the boat fall off so much that he observed that the stern sheet was empty; and then the apparition vanished in the all devouring mist.