Emanuel, or Children of the Soil/Book 2, Chapter 3
The curate had gone up to his own room, a spacious attic, quiet and secluded, surrounded by large lofts, a little world in itself. In spite of the sloping ceiling and scanty light from the one window, it was a comfortable room. There was a writing table, a sofa, and an old-fashioned mahogany desk; shelves filled with books, a big armchair, little mats on the floor, and a bed behind a screen. The air was fresh and flowerscented. The curate was one of those marvels among theologians—a non-smoker. He was also an ardent lover of flowers; the window was full of plants, and an ivy twined its pale green shoots round the window frame.
A small collection of family likenesses hung over the sofa between two big portraits of Luther and Melancthon. There was his father, a tall, thin, stately-looking man leaning against a table with his hat in his hand, and the broad ribbon of an order in the buttonhole of his tight-fitting coat. By his side hung a little Daguerreotype picture of his mother, surrounded by a wreath of yellow everlastings. It evidently dated from Mrs Hansted's maiden days. It was so bleached by the sun, that one could only through a haze catch a glimpse of a youthful face with the hair dressed high, and large, bright, wide open eyes. Besides these, there were portraits of the curate's brother, a lieutenant in the guards,—a handsome young man with a spirited and lively face; also of his sister, the wife of a consul-general, a little bird-like creature, hardly more than a child, with nervous twitching eyes and a sickly smile.
And here, by the writing table, sat Emanuel, the eldest of Councillor Hansted's children. He was sitting resting his chin on his hand, in a brown dressing gown, in the act of opening a letter. It was from his father; he had received it the previous day, but had put off reading it, so as not to be disturbed in the composition of his sermon. Now he opened it almost unwillingly, and read it through, at first hastily and abstractedly. There were the usual insignificant details of family events—his brother had been to a court ball,—the consul's birthday dinner,—his sister's baby had got a tooth, and so on. By degrees his attention was arrested. He read more slowly, word by word, sometimes with a thoughtful smile, and at last with a touch of sadness. The end ran thus:
"As you may imagine, my dear son, we are all delighted to hear that you are well and contented in your wilderness—as your brother in joke always speaks of it. There is no doubt that you have chosen a noble and exalted profession; and though I don't deny that I would rather have seen you choose a position in life more in accordance with our family traditions, and one which would not have taken you so far away from us; still, I can say with a clear conscience, that I and all of us wish you success and every blessing in the responsible work you have chosen. It is naturally rather difficult for us, who have always lived entirely in the society of our own cultivated class, to grasp thoroughly the possibility of any close or profitable companionship between people of such different circumstances and education; as, for example, you and the people among whom you have chosen to live. I do not deny that satisfactory intellectual intercourse—of course outside strictly religious ground—has always been to me an unsolved riddle. Perhaps this lies in my ignorance of the real conditions, and I only repeat that our best wishes follow you in your work."
Emanuel read this last part twice slowly through—and during the reading a darkening shadow spread over his face. Then the hand with the letter sank slowly on to his knee, and he remained motionless in this position, with his eyes fixed on the floor.
Suddenly he started up, and began striding up and down the room. He could not—he would not believe that his father and the others were right—that all his bright dreams were mere chimeras!—and yet, and yet! was it not this same gnawing doubt which tormented him now? Had he not in his innermost heart begun to lose faith, in at any rate possessing the powers to succeed in this vocation? He knew that he had tried with all his strength and will to perfect himself for his office. The closely written sheets in the drawer of his writing-table could witness to the untiring diligence, the conscientious care with which week after week he had prepared his sermons—hoping that in the end he might succeed in captivating his hearers with the power of his words and the strength of his faith. But in vain!—No sooner did he on Sunday go into the pulpit and see all the strange eyes turned upon him, than all the warmth and conviction of his words froze on his lips. In despair he heard his sentences ring hollow and empty under the echoing arches, while he noticed an ever heavier drowsiness creeping over the whole congregation. It was as if an ever deeper and deeper gulf opened between him and the people, across which his voice could not reach—a dark and icy crevasse into which all his heavenward struggling words fell one by one like frozen birds. He stopped his troubled walk and stood in the deep embrasure of the window, looking out for a long time without moving. The sun shone with a golden light on the tall, fair-haired man, and as he stood there in his loose dressing gown, with his shoulder leaning against the edge of the wall, framed in, as it were, by the green ivy, he recalled the figure of some youthful monk gazing dreamily from his lonely cell, on the world which held all his longings. He could see almost the whole parish from his window. Straight below there was a corner of the Parsonage garden, and beyond this were a couple of the big Veilby plastered farms and the walled-in pond. Then he could follow the wide highway for a couple of miles, winding over the sloping fields, till, far away in the south, it dropped down between the three big, bare earthmounds behind which Skibberup hid itself so cosily that not a chimney pot was to be seen above the crests of the hills. Farther off, there was a glimpse of the lonely church, and along the whole of the eastern horizon the blue shallows of the fiord appeared, and the green and white shores of the opposite coast.
Emanuel had stood here every day, gazing out, and he already knew every house, tree and hill in the landscape. His eyes had dreamily followed—now the peasants, as with their ploughing teams they wandered one day in sleet and another in sunshine over the wet fields; now the boats of the Fiord fishermen cruising between the coasts, with their white or brown sails; now the hurrying vehicles of Skibberup as they rolled home from the town along the winding highroad, becoming smaller and smaller before his eyes at every turn, until like little mice they crept behind the three mole-hills in the distance. In the evening, when the last gleams of the sun had disappeared in the south-west, he saw the lights appearing one by one in the cottages, like stars in the sky.
Then in his loneliness he had put himself in imagination into the easily contented and toilsome life of the poor; and he thought of the time when, in his hatred of the society to which he belonged by birth, he had fancied himself related to these free children of the soil, and dreamt that he could live in frank intercourse with them as a friend and brother.
He now understood that he had made a mistake. His eyes were opened to the deep impassable gulf, which divided him from these children of the soil, who lived here in their half underground dwellings, digging, and busying themselves with the dark earth—gnomes—whose very being was a riddle, whose language was hardly intelligible, whose thoughts, words, dreams, sorrows and hopes were known to none.
And would it ever be otherwise? Was it not as if mankind had forgotten the magic word which could raise the hills on pillars of fire and bring the earth-folk to the light of day?
He was roused from his reflections by a lively chirping above his head.
He looked up. A Starling!
That was curious, he thought—he had been so taken up all day by his thoughts, that he had not noticed how the sun at last had burst through the cold fogs which had enveloped the land for weeks.
He looked about—and again a starling twittered near him—and then another and another—the whole garden seemed filled with the spring!
He smiled sadly. He thought how many times in the course of the winter he had longed for the coming of spring—because he had had a strange belief, that with it all would come right; that with the vernal break-up of the frost-bound fields and fiords, the spring of love which was rising in his heart would also be set free.
He turned towards the room, went to the writing-table and carefully put away his father's letter in one of the drawers, passed both his hands over his forehead and up through his hair, as if to drive away the heavy thoughts; changed his clothes, and taking his hat and umbrella, which stood by the door, left the room.