The Red Room - August Strindberg (best summer reads TXT) 📗

to come and tell me that it’s all over,” said Falander.

She rose and pinned on her hat before the glass.

“Have you any scent?” she asked.

“Not here; at the theatre.”

“You should stop smoking a pipe; the smell hangs about one’s clothes.”

“I will.”

She stooped and fastened her garter.

“I beg your pardon,” she said, looking at Falander, pleadingly.

“What for?” he asked, absentmindedly.

As she made no reply, he took courage and drew a deep breath.

“Where are you going?” he said.

“To be fitted for a dress; you needn’t be afraid,” she replied, innocently, as she thought.

Falander could easily tell that it was an excuse.

“Goodbye, then,” he said.

She went to him to be kissed. He took her in his arms and pressed her against him as if he wanted to crush her; then he kissed her on the forehead, led her to the door, pushed her outside, and said briefly: “Goodbye!”

XVI In the White Mountains

One afternoon in August, Falk was again sitting in the garden on Moses Height; but he was alone, and he had been alone during the whole summer. He was turning over in his mind all that had happened to him during the three months which had passed since his last visit, when his heart was brimful of hope, courage, and strength. He felt old, tired, indifferent; he had seen the houses at his feet from the inside, and on every occasion his expectations had been disappointed. He had seen humanity under many aspects, aspects which are only revealed to the eye of the poor man’s doctor or the journalist, with the only difference that the journalist generally sees men as they wish to appear, and the doctor as they are. He had every opportunity of studying man as a social animal in all possible guises; he had been present at Parliamentary meetings, church councils, general meetings of shareholders, philanthropic meetings, police court proceedings, festivals, funerals, public meetings of working men; everywhere he had heard big words and many words, words never used in daily intercourse, a particular species of words which mean nothing, at least not what they ought to mean. This had given him a one-sided conception of humanity; he could see in man nothing but the deceitful social animal, a creature he is bound to be because civilization forbids open war. His aloofness blinded him to the existence of another animal, an animal which “between glass and wall” is exceedingly amiable, as long as it is not exasperated, and which is ready to come out with all its failings and weaknesses when there are no witnesses. He was blind to it and that was the reason why he had become embittered.

But the worst of it all was he had lost his self-respect. And that had happened without his having committed a single action of which he need have been ashamed. He had been robbed of it by his fellow-creatures, and it had not been a very difficult thing to do. He had been slighted everywhere, and how could he, whose self-confidence had been destroyed in his early youth, respect a person whom everybody despised? With many a bitter pang he saw that all Conservative journalists, that was to say men who defended and upheld everything that was wrong⁠—or if they could not defend it, at least left it untouched⁠—were treated with the utmost courtesy. He was despised, not so much as a pressman as in his character of advocate of all those who were downtrodden and hardly dealt with.

He had lived through times of cruel doubt. For instance: in reporting the General Meeting of Shareholders of the Marine Insurance Society Triton, he had used the word “swindle.” In replying to his report, the Grey Bonnet had published a long article proving so clearly that the society was a national, patriotic, philanthropic institution that he had almost felt convinced of having been wrong, and the thought of having recklessly played with the reputation of his fellow citizens was a nightmare to him for many days to come.

He was now in a state of mind which alternated between fanaticism and callousness; his next impulse would decide the direction his development was to take.

His life had been so dreary during the summer that he welcomed with malicious pleasure every rainy day, and it was a comparatively pleasant sensation to watch leaves rustling along the garden paths.

He sat absorbed in grimly humorous meditations on life and its purposes, when one lean, bony hand was laid on his shoulder, and another clutched his arm; he felt as if death had come to take him at his word. He looked up and started: before him stood Ygberg, pale as a corpse, emaciated and looking at him with those peculiarly washed out eyes which only starvation produces.

“Good morning, Falk,” he whispered, almost inaudibly, and his whole body seemed to rattle.

“Good morning, Ygberg,” replied Falk, suddenly brightening up. “Sit down and have a cup of coffee! How are you? You look as if you had been lying under the ice.”

“Oh! I’ve been so ill, so ill!”

“You seem to have had as jolly a summer as I had!”

“Have you had a hard time, too?” asked Ygberg, a faint hope that it had been the case brightening his yellow face.

“I can only say: Thank God that the cursed summer is over! It might be winter all the year round for all I care! Not only that one is suffering all the time, but one also has to watch others enjoying themselves! I never put a foot out of town; did you?”

“I haven’t seen a pine tree since Lundell left Lill-Jans in June! And why should one want to see pine trees? It isn’t absolutely essential; nor is a pine tree anything extraordinary! But that one can’t have the pleasure, that’s where the sting comes in.”

“Oh, well! Never mind! It’s clouding over in the east, therefore it will rain tomorrow; and when the sun shines again, it will be autumn. Your health!”

Ygberg looked at