The Visionary: Pictures From Nordland

Introduction

I know many people who have felt the same inclination that sometimes

comes over me, to choose bad weather to go out in. They are generally

men who have passed from a childhood lived in the open air of the

country, to an occupation which entails much sitting still, and for whom

the room sometimes seems to become too narrow and confined--or else they

are poets. Their recollection and imagination live, more or less unknown

to themselves, in a continual longing to get away from the confined air

of a room, and the barrack-life of a town.

So one day when the country comes into the town in the shape of a

downright storm of wind and rain, which shakes the tiles on the roofs,

and now and then flings one after you, while the streets become rivers,

and every corner an ambush from which the whirlwind makes a sudden

attack upon your umbrella, and, after a more or less prolonged and

adroit struggle, tears it, and turns it inside out, until at last you

stand with only the stick and the ribs left in your hand--at such a

time, it now and then happens that a quiet, dignified civil servant, or

business man, instead of sitting at home, as usual, in the afternoon in

his comfortable room after the day's toil in the office, says to his

wife that he "is sorry he must go out into the town for a little while."

And what he unfortunately must go out for is, of course, "business." For

little would it become a sedate, grave man, perhaps an alderman, and one

of the fathers of the town, to acknowledge, even to himself, that he is

childish enough to go and wander about in bad weather, that he only

wants to walk down to the quay to see the spray dash over the bitts, and

to watch the ships in the harbour playing at shipwreck. He must, of

course, have something to do there; if nothing else, at any rate to see

"ne quid detrimenti capiat respublica"; that is to say, that the town,

whose welfare, in one way or another, it is his business to look after,

is not blown down.

The fact is, there is a revolution in the streets--not a political

revolution, Heaven preserve him from that--but one which has an

attraction for him, because it awakens all his old recollections, and in

which, much to his disgrace, he contrives surreptitiously to join,

although, in its own way, it too defies all police arrangements, breaks

windows, puts out street-lamps, tears the tiles from the house-roofs,

damages piers and moorings, and chases police and watchmen into their

holes. It is Nature's loud war-cry, in the very midst of the civilised

town, to all the recollections of his childhood, to his imagination and

his love of Nature; and he obeys it like an old trumpeter's horse that

hears the signal of his youth, and instantly leaps the fence.

After an hour or two out in the storm, the fire in his veins is subdued,

and home he comes once more a quiet, grave man, carefully puts his stick

and goloshes in their accustomed places in the hall, and is pitied by

his wife, who has been anxious about him, and is now helping him off

with his wet things. Strange to say, he himself, in spite of adverse

circumstances, is in capital spirits that evening, and has such a number

of things to tell about this storm--every thing of course, as becomes

the occasion, in the form of anxiety lest damage should be done, or fire

break out in the town.

It was in such weather that I--a practising doctor, and having, as such,

good reason, both on my own account and on that of others, for being out

at all times of the day or night--one rainy, misty, stormy October

afternoon, roamed the streets of Kristiania, finding pleasure in letting

the rain dash in my face, while my mackintosh protected the rest of my

person.

Darkness had gradually fallen, and the lighted gas-lamps flared in the

gusty wind, making me think of the revolving lights on a foggy night

out on the coast. Now and again an unfastened door swung open and shut

again, with a bang like a minute gun. My inward comment on these

occasions was that, even in our nervous times, there must still be an

astonishing number of people without nerves; for such bangs thunder

through the whole house right up to the garret, as a gust fills the

passage, and doors fly open and shut, shut and open; everybody feels the

discomfort, but no one will take the trouble to go down and fasten the

origin of the evil; the porter is out in the town, and as long as he is

away the inmates must put up with an absence of all domestic comfort.

It was just such an unfastened, unweariedly banging door that led to

what I have to relate.

As I passed it, I heard a voice, which seemed familiar to me, an old

beloved voice--though at first I could not recall where I had heard

it--calling impatiently to the porter. It was on the subject of the

banging door. The man was evidently the only nervous individual in that

house; at any rate, the porter was not, for he appeared to be quite

wanting in feeling both for his door and for the man who had interested

himself in it, and was now fumbling in vain with a latch-key, which did

not appear to fit.

At last the porter came out of his subterranean hole, and it was during

a little altercation between the now placable and gentle voice, sorry

for its previous irritability, and the growling porter, that with all

the power of an awakened recollection I recognised my old friend of

student-days, David Holst, with whom I had lived three of the richest

years of my youth.

"If that is you, David, you must let me in before you lock the door!" I

cried, just as I should have done in the good old days, twenty years

before.

The door opened wide, and a warm shake of the hand from the dark

advancing form, told me that he had not needed to search so long through

the chambers of his memory as I, but had recognised me at once.

"Follow me!" were his only words, and then we mounted silently, he in

front and I behind, up the dark stairs, one, two, three floors and one

considerably narrower flight above. There he took my hand to guide me--a

very necessary proceeding, for, as far as I could make out, the way led

across a dark loft, hung with clothes-lines. He told me, too, to bend my

head.

As I mounted I drew my own conclusions. His hand--I remembered that in

old days he used to be rather proud of it--was damp, perhaps with mental

agitation, and he sometimes stopped as if to take breath. The narrow

garret-stairs whispered to me too, that my friend David, who in his

time had given promise of good abilities, could not have made great use

of them for his own worldly advancement.

He opened a door and bade me go in first.

Upon a table stood a lamp, whose shade concentrated the light round its

foot, in a circle of scarcely more than half a yard's radius, upon an

inkstand and papers which lay there, leaving the ends of the table in

apparent darkness. Behind the table was what looked like a black grave,

which, however, when the eye became accustomed to the abrupt transition

from light to shadow, revealed itself as a sofa, before which stood an

almost correspondingly long, painted, wooden table with square ends.

When two old friends meet in such a way, there is often, under their

frank manner, a secret shyness to overcome; for there is a layer of the

different experiences of many years that has to be cleared away.

After a short pause, my friend, as if with a sudden resolve, went

quickly up to the table and took the shade off the lamp, so that the

whole room became light.

"You see," said he, "things are just the same with me as in the old

days, only that there are now two garret windows instead of one, a few

more shelves with books, and a rather better monthly salary, which I

get by combining a teachership in one of the lower-class schools here,

with an easy post on a daily paper. It is all I need, you see. I moved

here from Bergen this spring, and ought properly to have paid you a

call, but have not yet managed it; when I have seen you in the street,

you have always looked as if you were too much taken up with your

practice. But now that I have you in my den, we will have a chat about

old times, and what you are doing. Take off your coat, while I go down

and see about getting some toddy made." Whereupon he replaced the lamp

shade, and disappeared through the doorway.

My friend's somewhat forced introductory speech did not seem natural to

me; it was as though, in his ready confidence, he were regulated rather

by my circumstances than by his own, and the whole thing gave me the

impression that at the outset he would parry all unnecessary questions.

As yet I, at least, had not said a word; indeed, I had not seen more of

my friend than a brief glimpse of his face, as he turned towards the

lamp and replaced the shade. Still I recognised, in spite of the

difference in age, the same thin, delicate, pale face, which, in the old

days, would sometimes assume such a beautiful, melancholy expression--it

was with that he was always photographed in my memory--but the features

had now acquired a striking sharpness, and in the quick glance I caught

there was an expression, both suffering and searching, which made me

indescribably sad. I have seen sick people look at me in the same way,

when they were afraid they were to be operated upon; and I thought I now

understood at any rate this much, that what wanted operating on here was

my friend's confidence, and this would require all my dexterity.

I was once the most confiding fellow under the sun; but since I became a

doctor and saw what people really are, I have become thoroughly

suspicious; for there is nothing in the whole world you may not have to

presuppose, even with the best of mortals, if you do not want to be

misled as to the cause of their disease. I suspect everybody and

everything, even, as the reader has seen above, those sedate men who go

out in stormy weather. An Indian does not steal more unperceived and

noiselessly through a primeval forest than I, when necessary, into my

patient's confidence; and my friend David had all at once become my

patient. He would scarcely succeed in deceiving _me_ any longer with his

talk about "old days" and a glass of punch in his "unchanged student's

den."

My first strategem was now hastily to continue the inspection of the

room, which my friend had somewhat cursorily allowed me to begin. I

took the lamp and began to look about me.

Under the sloping ceiling, against the wall opposite the sofa, was the

bed, with a little round table beside it. On some bookshelves, which

stood on the floor against the wall in the corner at the foot of the

bed, I recognised Henrik Wergeland's bust, even more defective about the

chin and nose than in my time, and now, in addition, blind in one eye;

he had fared almost as badly as the old pipe I used to smoke, which I

recognised again, in spite of its being cut and hacked in every

direction. For my friend had a habit of cutting marks in it while he sat

smoking, now and then throwing a word into the conversation to keep it

going, just as one throws fuel on a fire--it was the spirit of the

conversation, and that something should be said, rather than the thought

itself, he cared about. When sitting thus, his face often wore a

melancholy, peaceful expression, as if he were smiling at something

beautiful we others did not see.

Between the bed and the shelves I discovered some bottles, ordinary

spirit bottles, and the suspicion flashed like lightning through my

mind--I have, as I said, become suspicion personified, not naturally,

but through disappointment--that my friend was perhaps given to drink.

I put the lamp down upon the floor. In one bottle was ink, in the

second paraffin, and in the third, a smaller one, cod-liver oil, which

he probably took for his chest.

I remembered his clammy hand, his stopping, and heavy breathing on the

stairs, and I felt thoroughly ashamed that I could have been such a

wretch as to think the dear friend, I might also say ideal, of my youth,

was no better than any scamp in vulgar life, who positively ought to be

suspected.

I offered him, in silence, a penitent apology, while I read over the

titles on the backs of the books, recognising one and another. These

shelves seemed to be the bookshelves of his student days. I drew out a

thick volume, old "Saxo Grammaticus," which I remembered to have bought

at an auction, and presented to him; but now I found something quite

different to think about.

It happened with me as with a man who draws out a brick and suddenly

finds a secret passage--I all at once felt myself at the entrance to my

friend's secret, though, as yet, only before a deep, dark room through

which my imagination might wander, but which I could not really see,

unless my friend himself held the light for me.

What thus attracted my attention and rivetted my thought and

recollection to the spot, was no hole, but the head of a violin, with a

dusty neck, and a tangle of strings about the screws which was stuck up

at the back of the shelf. The fourth string hung loosely down; the

over-stretched, broken first had curled up, and under the two whole

strings the bridge lay flat, as I ascertained by taking several books

out of the row and feeling for it. I examined the violin, which I could

easily remove, as carefully as if I had found a friend ill and starving;

there was an unmended crack in the body. Enchained by old memories, I

could not help falling into a very sad frame of mind.

I put the books on the shelves again, replaced the lamp on the table,

and sat myself on the sofa, where puffing away at the pipe (I found on

it among others my own initials, cut by myself) I gave myself up to

reflections, which I will here impart to the reader even at the risk of

his thinking my friend is rather a long time getting the punch. Through

these reflections he will stand before the reader, as he did before my

mind's eye in the light of youthful recollections, and as the reader

must know him, if he will understand him.

Our acquaintance as students arose naturally from the fact that we were

both from Nordland. He was three or four years older than I, and his

being the trusted though anonymous theatrical reviewer on the H---- paper,

was enough of itself to give him, in my eyes, an official superiority,

before which I bowed.

But what worked still more strongly upon my youthful imagination was

his manner. There was something unusually noble about his slender figure

and his delicate, oval-shaped, earnest face, with the high forehead and

the heavy masses of dark, curly hair on the temples. His strongly-marked

eyebrows and a decided Roman nose drew one's attention away from his

eyes, which were light blue, and more in keeping with his pale and

beardless face than with his more energetic features. But yet it was his

eyes that gave one the first impression of him. I learned later to read

his features differently, and to see that in them was reflected the

meeting of the currents of that twofold nature by which his life was

gradually crushed out.

A sweet smile when he talked and a reserved manner gave him a

distinguished air, which at any rate impressed me greatly. He was the

only student I knew who did not wear a student's cap; he used to wear a

flat blue sailor's cap with a short peak, which suited him very well.

When he became eager, as might happen in a dispute--for he was a great

logician, though it was only his intellect that took part in a

discussion, and never, as far as I could see, his heart or his deeper

feelings--his voice would give way; it became overstrained and harsh, as

if from a weak chest. Such encounters always told upon him, and left him

in irritable restlessness for some time after.

One of his peculiarities was that he sometimes went on walking tours of

several days out in the country, both in summer and winter.

Companionship he would never hear of. Had he wished for it, he would

have asked me I knew, and therefore I never thought of forcing myself

upon him.

On these occasions he would set off without a knapsack; I noticed this

once when I happened to be roaming in the fields two or three miles [A

Norwegian mile is about seven English miles.] from a town, where I had

gone on a visit. When he came home again, he would be in capital

spirits, but before setting out he was always so silent and melancholy

that I had to sustain nearly the whole burden of the conversation. He

used to have periods of low spirits.

One indication of these moods was his manner in playing on the violin I

had now found with broken strings, at the back of his bookshelf. As it

lay there, it recalled the incidents of twenty years ago.

This violin he once held in high esteem; it had the place of honour on

his wall, with the bow beside it. It had been left him by a friend, an

old clerk, [Norw. "klokker," almost answering to the Scotch precentor,

but a klokker, in addition to leading the singing in church, has to read

the opening prayer and to assist the priest in putting on his

vestments.] at his home up in the north, who had taught him to play,

and had evidently been one of those musical geniuses who are never fully

appreciated in this world.

David loved to give play to his fancy, not only upon this violin--he had

a good ear, and had learnt not a little--but also about it: where it

really came from, and how old it might be? He would exceedingly have

liked an indistinct mark inside to mean that it was "possibly a

Cremona"; it was one of his weak points, and this room for conjecture

was evidently, in his eyes, one of the excellences of the violin.

David had a small collection of what he called classical music, long

compositions which he played from the notes. They were not much to my

fancy, and always struck me as being of a piece with what was strange in

his manner when he posed as a logician. When he played them it was more

like severe, mental, school exercise than anything his heart was in; and

he played as correctly as he argued or wrote.

The times when classical music and critical conversations ruled in his

room, were certainly those in which he felt his mind most in balance. He

was less hearty in manner then, even towards me.

But then would come times when the music-stand would remain in the

corner. He would sit for a long time looking straight before him, as if

lost in thought, and then give expression to his feeling, on his violin,

in all kinds of fantasies, which pleased my uncultivated ear far more

than his so-called classical music.

He sometimes played a variety of small pieces, and then gradually sank

into his own peculiar minor strain, and sometimes into a wonderfully sad

melody. I very seldom heard him play anything right through, and then

always in a kind of self-forgetfulness. At such times, I had a feeling

that he was confiding to me something beautiful that he had lost, and

over which he could never cease to mourn.

At a later period of our friendship he became, as I have said, more

irregular in his habits, and was seldom to be found at home; he would

sometimes talk ironically about his comrades, the professors and things

in general, and his sarcasm was almost biting.

I was privileged to take my friend's key, and go into his room, even

when he was not at home. If his violin hung uncared for, I knew that

something was wrong, and that his own condition answered to that of his

instrument. The first thing he did, when all was right again, was

carefully to put it in order.

But never during those times had I seen his treasure so badly treated

and neglected as when twenty years later, I found it again, dusty and

cracked at the back of the bookshelf. The reader will now be able to

understand how sorrowful were the reflections it aroused, and how it led

me to suspect the story of a joyless life; and I trust he will forgive

me for having taken him so far from David Holst's room--where I sat and

waited for my friend to come with the punch--into the land of my

youthful recollections. For three years we had been together almost

daily. After that David had to go out as tutor, and our ways parted, as

they so often do in this life.

And this evening we had met again.

There was a jingling in the passage, and immediately after David Holst

carefully opened the door for a servant-girl, who brought in a steaming

jug of hot water and other requisites for punch, which were most welcome

to a man who had been out several hours in the wind and rain, as I had

that very afternoon.

David found me installed on the sofa with his pipe in my mouth and his

slippers on my feet, just as he would have done in the old days, and

this I reckoned as one of my cunning artifices; for with these passes,

his pipe and slippers, I reinstated myself, without more ado, on the old

friendly footing. I felt like a general who is fortunate enough to open

the campaign by occupying a whole province.

In default of his accustomed place on the sofa, David drew a chair up

to the table and sat down opposite to me, with the punch tray between

us.

We were now once more on the banks of the same river of delight, in

which we had so often bathed and tumbled in our youth; but now we both

approached it more carefully.

In the course of conversation, he often leaned over towards me, as if

listening, and in this way his head came within the region of the lamp's

bright light. I then noticed that his hair was much thinner, and

sprinkled rather plentifully with grey, and that the perspiration stood

in beads on his no longer unwrinkled brow. His pallid, sharp-featured

face, and a strange brilliancy in his eyes, told me that either his

physical or his mental being hid an underground fire, perhaps no longer

quenchable. Thinking from his repeated fits of coughing, that his

bending over towards me arose quite as much from the fact that he was

tired and was trying to rest against the edge of the table, as from his

interest in the conversation, I determined to enter at once upon the

question of the state of his health, and thus put myself in possession

of yet another important outwork of his confidence.

I rose suddenly, determined and serious, and said that, as an

experienced doctor, I unfortunately saw that he was ill in no such

slight degree as he perhaps thought, and that, as he was evidently weak

and languid--as the drops of perspiration on his forehead showed--he

must, at any rate, at once seat himself on the comfortable sofa I had

hitherto occupied.

He acknowledged that going twice downstairs had been rather too much for

him--the first time he had only gone down to put an end to the

uncomfortable draught through the house--and willingly took his place on

the sofa at my desire.

It was his chest, he said. By the help of the stethoscope, I found that

this was only too true. His chest, indeed, was in such a condition that

it was only a question of gaining time, not of saving life; for one lung

was entirely gone, and the other seriously affected.

During the remainder of the evening, both he and I felt ourselves

re-established on the old footing, my authority as doctor now giving me

a slight superiority.

At nine o'clock, I declared that he must go to bed, and I told him that

the next morning I intended to come again, and prescribe what was

needful. I heard he was not to be at school before eleven: until that

hour he promised me not to go out.

When I came home, I found my wife in great anxiety about me. She could

not conceive how a sensible man, and a doctor into the bargain, who gave

others such good advice, could be out more than was necessary in such

dreadful weather; and I had been out in it the whole time since dinner.

There was nothing to be said to this, and I only considered, while she

talked, how I could best win her over to the cause which I now had at

heart. My wife had not the slightest acquaintance with my dying friend,

and, if I knew her aright, might even feel hurt when I told her that he

had, in a way, possessed my affection before I knew her.

Things turned out as I foresaw; for it was only after a rather doubtful

pause that she came up to me, and said that my best friend should of

course be dear to her.

And from that moment no one could have been more helpful than she.

Whatever she undertakes, she always does thoroughly, and she settled

that very evening how the matter should be arranged.

At ten the next morning I was up in my friend's room with my wife, and I

introduced her to him, saying that she wished to be regarded as an old

friend like myself. I told him, as consolingly as I could--but when I

said it, my wife looked away--that his illness absolutely required that

he should put himself under treatment for six months, until the warm

weather came and completed his cure, and that I hoped he would consent

to let me arrange matters at the school for him.

He was evidently both surprised and touched. Life had not offered him

friendship, he said; he was so little used to accept it, even when it

came to him as true and good as this was. After a little parleying, he

surrendered at discretion to my wife, who never liked being defeated.

He would not, however, move to our house, as I suggested, for he had a

fondness for this room, and, as he frankly said, he would not feel happy

if obligations of a pecuniary nature were introduced into the matter.

From this time I visited him as a rule every morning, and generally had

a little chat about different things in the town which I thought might

interest, or at any rate divert him.

My wife treated him in her own way. Contrary to what I had been a little

afraid of, she carried out no radical revolution in his housekeeping

arrangements. That the servant-girl had her reasons for coming up to him

so often, and that every day she waited in fear and trembling my wife's

quiet inspection whether the room were properly dusted and in order, he

could have no suspicion.

The only thing that my wife openly effected, was the sending of all

kinds of strengthening food. One of the children often went with the

maid who took these, and it sometimes amused and entertained him, to

keep the child with him for a while.

This new and unaccustomed state of affairs seemed at first to divert

him; but in the course of a month he began to be depressed again. Our

visits evidently troubled him, and, for this reason, were discontinued

for a time. He spent almost the whole day on the sofa at the dark end of

the room.

One evening the girl said she had heard a sound as of crying and sobbing

in his room, so she did not go in, but remained standing outside. A

little while after it seemed to her as if he were praying earnestly, but

she did not understand the words. The next evening she heard him playing

a soft melody, as if on a violin which did not give a clear sound.

The following morning when I came to him his mood was entirely changed,

and to my surprise I saw that his violin, dusted and with strings in

order, but still cracked, hung on the wall with the bow beside it. On

the table, by the bed, I noticed too an old Bible that I had never

before seen, probably because this treasure had always been kept in his

drawer as a sacred thing.

He looked more languid and worn out than usual; but his face wore a

beatified expression, as of a man who had wrestled with his fate, and

had won rest and resignation.

If possible, he said, he would like to speak to my wife that same

morning; but he would rather talk with me at once, and so I must sit

down for a little while.

With a smile--that same quiet, sweet, mysterious smile of his that I

knew so well, but which now seemed no longer to shun observation--he

turned to me saying, as he laid his hand on my shoulder and looked into

my face:

"My dear, kind Frederick! I know for certain, though I cannot tell you

why, that I shall not live to see the spring again. What is wanting

neither you nor any one else can give me, only God; but of all men you

have been the kindest to me, and your friendship has reached farther

than you would ever imagine. You have a right to know him who has been

your friend. When I am gone--and that will undoubtedly be this winter,

perhaps sooner than you, judging from my condition, think--you will find

some memoranda in my drawer; they are the history of my early youth, but

uneventful as that was, it has had its effect upon my whole life. It

will tell you that the world has been sad, very sad for me, and that I

am as glad as an escaped bird to leave it."

"There was a time," he added after some hesitation, "when I wished to be

buried in a churchyard up in Nordland; but now I think that the place

does not make any difference, and that one can rest just as peacefully

down here."

Saying which, he pressed my hand, and asked me to go for my wife.

When she came, she was surprised to see him brighter and in better

spirits than she had ever thought he could be. He wanted, he said, to

ask a favour of her. It was a whim of his; but, if he should be called

away, she must promise him to plant a wild rose upon his grave next

spring.

My wife understood how sad the request was when I told her what had

already passed; for David had looked so confident and bright when he was

talking to her, that the sorrowful element was absent.

My friend's prophecy about himself proved to be only too true. Though

his mood grew constantly brighter, so that he sometimes even had a gleam

of the joy of living, his illness went in the opposite direction, always

toward the worst.

One day I found him lying and watching from his bed--where he now spent

nearly the whole day--my little Anton, who had "made a steamboat" out of

his old violin-case--of which the lid was gone--and was travelling with

it on the floor, touching at foreign ports. When I came up to the bed,

David told me, smiling, that he had been at home in Nordland playing on

the beach again.

My wife had, meantime, become more and more his sick-nurse. She was with

him two or three times a day, and sat at his bedside. He often held her

hand, or asked her to read him something out of his old Bible. The

portions he chose were generally those in which the Old Testament

speaks of love and lovers. He dwelt especially on the story of Jacob and

Rachel.

My wife, who had now become very fond of him, confided to me one day

that she was sure she knew what my friend was suffering from; it was

certainly nothing but unrequited love.

She had never thought any one could look so touchingly beautiful as he

did, when death was near. When he lay still and smiled, it was as though

he were thinking of a tryst he should go to, as soon as he had done with

us here on earth.

One evening he asked my wife to sit with him. At nine o'clock a message

came for me; but when I got there, he was gone.

He had asked my wife to read to him, for the first time, a part of

Solomon's Song, where she found an old mark in his Bible. It was the

second chapter, in which both the bride and the bridegroom speak, and

which begins: "I am the rose of Sharon, and the lily of the valley"; and

ends: "Until the day break, and the shadows flee away, turn, my beloved,

and be thou like a roe or a young hart upon the mountains of Bether."

He had asked her to read it a second time, but during the reading he had

quietly fallen asleep.

And there he lay, beautiful in death, with a peaceful smile, as though

he were greeting just such a grove, on the other side of the mountains

of Bether.

Next summer there stood a wooden cross, and a blooming, wild briar-rose,

on a grave in one of the churchyards of the town. There rests my friend

David Holst.