Part 4 (1/2)
”No, no, nothing to do with that. We're all right as far as money goes.”
”All right, eh? But you're put out about something, that's plain to see. Liver out of order, perhaps?”
”Oh no!”
”Why, then, there's nothing else that I can see.”
”It's those wretched youngsters of mine.”
”Ho, is that all?”
”All! As if it wasn't enough! I tell you they're going stark mad, the pair of them.”
”Seems to me they've been that way a long time now.”
”Oh, it's all very well to talk like that. But really, it's getting beyond all bearing. William's taken it into his head to go and be a painter.”
”Well, and not a bad thing, either, as long as he does the work decently, with plenty of driers and not too much oil in the mixing.
Look at Erlandsen up the river, he's made a good thing out of it.”
”Oh, not that sort of painting. It's an artist, I mean. Painting pictures and things.”
”Pictures!” Bramsen looked dumbfounded. ”Painting pictures? Well, blister me if I ever heard the like. Wait a bit, though--there was Olsen, the verger; he'd a boy, I remember, a slip of a fellow with gold spectacles and consumption, he used to mess about with that sort of thing. But he never made a living out of it--didn't live long, anyway.”
”But that's not the worst of it, Bramsen. There's Marie--she wants to be a singer.”
Bramsen almost fell off the sugar-box on which he was seated.
”Singer--what! Singing for money, d'you mean? Going round with a hat?”
”Something very much like it, anyway--only it'll be my money that goes into the hat. What are we to do about it, eh?”
”H'm ... Couldn't you pack the boy off to sea? And the young lady--send her to a school to do needlework and such like?”
”Oh, what's the good of talking like that? No, my dear man, young people nowadays don't let themselves be sent anywhere that way.
There's the pair of them, they simply laugh at us.”
Holm walked back to the office deep in thought. On his return, he found Hans Martinsen, and Berg, the organist, awaiting him.
Bramsen remained seated on his sugar-box and murmured to himself: ”Well, it's a nice apple-pie for Knut Holm, that it is. Lord, but they children can be the very devil.”
A little later, Garner came down to the quay, and found Bramsen still meditating on his box.
”What's wrong with the old man to-day, Bramsen? He looks as if he was going in for the deaf-and-dumb school; there's no getting a word out of him.”
Bramsen sat for quite a while without answering. Then at last he said solemnly:
”It's my humble opinion, and that's none so humble after all, that there's a deal of what you might call contrapasts in this here world.”
”Meaning to say?”