Part 15 (2/2)

--So the wedding came off, and a splendid wedding it was. Miss Ludvigsen had written an unrhymed song about true love, which was sung at the feast, and Louisa eclipsed all the other bridesmaids.

The newly-married couple took up their quarters in the nest discovered by Mrs. Olsen, and plunged into that half-conscious existence of festal felicity which the English call the ”honeymoon,” because it is too sweet; the Germans, ”Flitterwochen,” because its glory departs so quickly; and we ”the wheat-bread days” because we know that there is coa.r.s.er fare to follow.

But in Soren's cottage the wheat-bread days lasted long; and when heaven sent them a little angel with golden locks, their happiness was as great as we can by any means expect in this weary world.

As for the incomings--well, they were fairly adequate, though Soren had, unfortunately, not succeeded in making a start without getting into debt; but that would, no doubt, come right in time.--Yes, in time!

The years pa.s.sed, and with each of them heaven sent Soren a little golden-locked angel. After six years of marriage they had exactly five children. The quiet little town was unchanged, Soren was still the Sheriff's clerk, and the Sheriff's household was as of old; but Soren himself was scarcely to be recognized.

They tell of sorrows and heavy blows of fate which can turn a man's hair gray in a night. Such afflictions had not fallen to Soren's lot. The sorrows that had sprinkled his hair with gray, rounded his shoulders, and made him old before his time, were of a lingering and vulgar type.

They were bread-sorrows.

Bread-sorrows are to other sorrows as toothache to other disorders.

A simple pain can be conquered in open fight; a nervous fever, or any other ”regular” illness, goes through a normal development and comes to a crisis. But while toothache has the long-drawn sameness of the tape-worm, bread-sorrows envelop their victim like a grimy cloud: he puts them on every morning with his threadbare clothes, and he seldom sleeps so deeply as to forget them.

It was in the long fight against encroaching poverty that Soren had worn himself out; and yet he was great at economy.

But there are two sorts of economy: the active and the pa.s.sive. Pa.s.sive economy thinks day and night of the way to save a half-penny; active economy broods no less intently on the way to earn a dollar. The first sort of economy, the pa.s.sive, prevails among us; the active in the great nations--chiefly in America.

Soren's strength lay in the pa.s.sive direction. He devoted all his spare time and some of his office-hours to thinking out schemes for saving and retrenchment. But whether it was that the luck was against him, or, more probably, that his income was really too small to support a wife and five children--in any case, his financial position went from bad to worse.

Every place in life seems filled to the uttermost, and yet there are people who make their way everywhere. Soren did not belong to this cla.s.s. He sought in vain for the extra work on which he and Marie had reckoned as a vague but ample source of income. Nor had his good connections availed him aught. There are always plenty of people ready to help young men of promise who can help themselves; but the needy father of a family is never welcome.

Soren had been a man of many friends. It could not be said that they had drawn back from him, but he seemed somehow to have disappeared from their view. When they happened to meet, there was a certain embarra.s.sment on both sides. Soren no longer cared for the things that interested them, and they were bored when he held forth upon the severity of his daily grind, and the expensiveness of living.

And if, now and then, one of his old friends invited him to a bachelor-party, he did as people are apt to do whose every-day fare is extremely frugal: he ate and drank too much. The lively but well-bred and circ.u.mspect Soren declined into a sort of b.u.t.t, who made rambling speeches, and around whom the young whelps of the party would gather after dinner to make sport for themselves. But what impressed his friends most painfully of all, was his utter neglect of his personal appearance.

For he had once been extremely particular in his dress; in his student days he had been called ”the exquisite Soren.” And even after his marriage he had for some time contrived to wear his modest attire with a certain air. But after bitter necessity had forced him to keep every garment in use an unnaturally long time, his vanity had at last given way. And when once a man's sense of personal neatness is impaired, he is apt to lose it utterly. When a new coat became absolutely necessary, it was his wife that had to awaken him to the fact; and when his collars became quite too ragged at the edges, he trimmed them with a pair of scissors.

He had other things to think about, poor fellow. But when people came into the office, or when he was entering another person's house, he had a purely mechanical habit of moistening his fingers at his lips, and rubbing the lapels of his coat. This was the sole relic of ”the exquisite Soren's” exquisiteness--like one of the rudimentary organs, dwindled through lack of use, which zoologists find in certain animals.--

Soren's worst enemy, however, dwelt within him. In his youth he had dabbled in philosophy, and this baneful pa.s.sion for thinking would now attack him from time to time, crus.h.i.+ng all resistance, and, in the end, turning everything topsy-turvy.

It was when he thought about his children that this befell him.

When he regarded these little creatures, who, as he could not conceal from himself, became more and more neglected as time went on, he found it impossible to place them under the category of golden-locked angels had sent him by heaven. He had to admit that heaven does not send us these gifts without a certain inducement on our side; and then Soren asked himself: ”Had you any right to do this?” He thought of his own life, which had begun under fortunate conditions. His family had been in easy circ.u.mstances; his father, a government official, had given him the best education to be had in the country; he had gone forth to the battle of life fully equipped--and what had come of it all?

And how could he equip his children for the fight into which he was sending them? They had begun their life in need and penury, which had, as far as possible, to be concealed; they had early learned the bitter lesson of the disparity between inward expectations and demands and outward circ.u.mstances; and from their slovenly home they would take with them the most crus.h.i.+ng inheritance, perhaps, under which a man can toil through life; to wit, poverty with pretensions.

Soren tried to tell himself that heaven would take care of them. But he was ashamed to do so, for he felt it was only a phrase of self-excuse, designed to allay the qualms of conscience.

These thoughts were his worst torment; but, truth to tell, they did not often attack him, for Soren had sunk into apathy. That was the Sheriff's view of his case. ”My clerk was quite a clever fellow in his time,” he used to say. ”But, you know, his hasty marriage, his large family, and all that--in short, he has almost done for himself.”

Badly dressed and badly fed, beset with debts and cares, he was worn out and weary before he had accomplished anything. And life went its way, and Soren dragged himself along in its train. He seemed to be forgotten by all save heaven, which, as aforesaid, sent him year by year a little angel with locks of gold--

Soren's young wife had clung faithfully to her husband through these six years, and she, too, had reached the same point.

The first year of her married life had glided away like a dream of dizzy bliss. When she held up the little golden-locked angel for the admiration of her lady friends, she was beautiful with the beauty of perfect maternal happiness; and Miss Ludvigsen said: ”Here is love in its ideal form.”

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