One of Life's Slaves by Jonas Lauritz Idemil Lie

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ONE OF LIFE'S SLAVES

by

JONAS LIE

Author of "The Visionary," etc. etc.

Translated from the Norwegian by Jessie Muir

London Hodder Brothers 13 New Bridge Street, D.C.
Printed by Ballantyne, Hanson & Co., London & Edinburgh

1895

PREFACE

In a review which appeared in the _Athenaeum_, of a translation of one
of Jonas Lie's earlier works--"Den Fremsynte" ("The Visionary")--the
reviewer expressed a hope that I would follow up that translation with
"an English version of Lie's 'Livsslaven,' that intensely tragic and
pathetic story of suffering and wrong." It is in accordance with this
suggestion that the present volume makes its appearance.

In taking Christiania life for the subject of "Livsslaven," Jonas Lie
attempted for the second time to break down the preconceived opinion of
critics, that such a subject did not come within his province. They were
accustomed to have tales of sea-life from his pen, and could not readily
be persuaded that another sphere of life might afford equal scope for
his talent. "Thomas Ross," published in 1878, had treated of Christiania
life, and had attracted but little attention; and now, in the spring of
1883, appeared this "story of a smith's apprentice, with his struggles
for existence and his ultimate final failure owing to the irresistible
indulgence of a passionate physical instinct." At first this too seemed
to be a failure. To use the words of Arne Garborg, a Norwegian author
and critic, Lie "had spoken--cried out in the passion or agony of his
soul, and people stood there quite calm and as if they had heard
nothing;" there seemed to be a total lack of sympathetic comprehension
on the part of the public. In the end, however, the book found its way
to the hearts of its readers, and, to quote Mr. Gosse's words on the
subject, "achieved a very great success; it was realistic and modern in
a certain sense and to a discreet degree, and it appealed, as scarcely
any Norwegian novel had done before, to all classes of Scandinavian
society."

Lie himself, in speaking of this work, says that a writer should "aim
at presenting his subject in such a way that the reader may see, hear,
feel, and comprehend it with the utmost possible intensity." This
precept he has certainly put into practice in the present instance, for
the subject is treated with such power and so full a grasp, that in
reading the book one feels an actual anxiety, an oppression as of
approaching disaster. This, at any rate, is the case with the original,
and I trust that its power has not been altogether lost in the process
of rendering into another language, but that the stamp of genuineness,
the author's leading characteristic, may to some extent be found also
in this translation.

J. MUIR.

CHRISTIANA,

November 10, 1894.

CONTENTS

CHAPTER

I. NEGLECTED RESPONSIBILITIES

II. A STRICT DISCIPLINARIAN

III. A FIGHT AND ITS CONSEQUENCES

IV. A STOLEN INTERVIEW

V. AMONG THE UNEMPLOYED

VI. THE FACTORY GIRLS

VII. "THE WORLD IS RIGHT ENOUGH AFTER ALL"

VIII. AN UNEXPECTED ARRIVAL

IX. AN IMPORTANT STEP TAKEN

X. A RISE IN LIFE

XI. THE WEDDING POSTPONED AGAIN

XII. THE FAIR AND THE CONVICT

CHAPTER I

NEGLECTED RESPONSIBILITIES

"Like a prince in his cradle," you say, "with invisible fairies and the
innocent peace of childhood over him!"

What fairy stood by the cradle of Barbara's Nikolai it would be
difficult to say. Out at the tinsmith's, in the little house with the
cracked and broken window-panes in the outskirts of the town, there was
often a run of visitors, generally late at night, when wanderers on the
high road were at a loss for a night's lodging. Many a revel had been
held there, and it was not once only that the cradle had been overturned
in a fight, or that a drunken man had fallen full length across it.

Nikolai's mother was called Barbara, and came from Heimdalhoegden,
somewhere far up in the country--a genuine mountain lass, shining with
health, red and white, strong and broad-shouldered, and with teeth like
the foam in the milk pail. She had heard so much about the town from
cattle-dealers that came over the mountain, that a longing and
restlessness had taken possession of her.

And then she had gone out to service in the town.

She was about as suitable there as a tumble-down haystack in a handsome
town street, or as a cow on a flight of stairs--that is to say, not at
all.

She used to waste her time on the market-place by all the hay loads. She
must see and feel the hay--_that_ was not at all like mountain grass.
"No indeed! Mountain grass was so soft, and then, how it smelt! Oh dear
no!"

But her mistress had other uses for her servant than letting her spend
the morning talking to hay-cart drivers. So she went from place to
place, each time descending both as regarded wages and mistress. Barbara
was good-natured and honest; but she had one fault--the great one of
being totally unfit for all possible town situations.

Yet Society has, as we know, a wonderful faculty for making use of,
assimilating and reconstructing everything, even the apparently most
meaningless and useless, for its own purpose. And the way it took,
quickly enough, with poor Barbara was that she became the only thing in
which she could be of any service in the town--namely, a nurse.

It was a sad time and a hard struggle while the shame lasted, almost
enough to kill her; and after that, she never thought of returning to
the Heimdal mountains again.

But things were to be still harder.

The various social claims, which an age of progress increasingly lays
upon the lady of the house in the upper classes of society, asserted
themselves here in the town by an ever increasing demand for nurses.

"The reason," as Dr. Schneibel explained, "was simply a law of
Nature--you can't be a milch-cow and an intelligent human being at the
same time. The renovation of blood and nerves must be artificially
conveyed from that class of society which stands nearer to Nature."

And now the thing was to find an extra-healthy, thoroughly strong nurse
for Consul-General Veyergang's two delicate, newly-arrived, little ones.

Dr. Schneibel had very thoughtfully kept a nurse in reserve for Mrs.
Veyergang--"a really remarkable specimen of the original healthiness in
the common stock. One might say--h'm, h'm--that if Mrs. Veyergang could
not get to the mountains, the mountains were so courteous as to come to
her. The girl still had an odour of the cowshed about her perhaps; but
when all's said and done, that was only a stronger assurance of
originality. And _that_ is an important factor in our day, madam, when
milk is adulterated even from the very cows themselves.--Quite young,
scarcely twenty!"

Barbara Hoegden had not the faintest suspicion, as she carried water and
wood, or stood at the edge of the ice beating linen, or did any drudgery
she could find to do, in order to earn a little money to pay for herself
and her baby at the tinsmith's, that, from her deepest degradation, she
had risen at one step to the rank of an exceptionally sought-after and
esteemed person in the town.

For a nurse _is_ an esteemed person. Indeed, she is on the expectancy
list to become respected.

After having nursed her mistress's child, and been a correspondingly
unnatural mother to her own, she ends by sleeping on down, and being
considered in every way, until a new nurse for a new heir deposes her
from her dynasty.

Should she prefer to give her own little baby the only treasure she
possesses, her healthy breast, should she really be so blind to her own
interests, why then the case is different, and (to use Dr. Schneibel's
words) not altogether unmerited, only a result of the social economy to
which she does not know how to be intelligently subordinate, and which
will reduce her, with the inexorable logic of the laws of civilisation,
to a useless superfluity, which Society's organism rejects. Or, vulgarly
speaking, she is left with shame, contempt and poverty resting upon both
her and her illegitimate offspring. As a private individual, she is in a
sense right; but socially, as a member of society----!

At first poor Barbara was quite blind on this point, utterly obstinate,
rigid as a mountain pony that could not be got to stir.

Dr. Schneibel was standing for the third time at the tinsmith's, with
his stick under his nose, while his gig waited down in the road. Each
time he had added to both wages and arguments, and had again and again
pointed out how bad it would be both for her and her boy if she
continued so obstinate. He appealed to her own good sense. How could she
expect to bring him up in such poor, narrow circumstances, and with all
this toiling and moiling? She would only need to give up a part of her
large wages to the tinsmith, and they would look well after the boy.
Besides she could often come out and see him, at least once a month!--he
could promise her that on the Veyergangs' behalf, and it was very kind
of them now they lived such a long way out of town.

Dr. Schneibel talked both kindly and severely, both good-naturedly and
sharply: he was almost like a father.

Barbara felt a pang of fear every time she saw him come down the street,
and turn in by the rotten, mouldy wooden fence. She watched him like a
bird that is afraid for her nest, and was sitting close to the wall in
the darkest corner with the cradle behind her, when he opened the door.
It was impossible for her to answer except by a sob. The tinsmith's wife
did all the talking with: "Why, bless me, yes!" and "Bless me, no!" and
"Just so, doctor!" in garrulous superabundance, while Barbara only sat
and meditated on taking her baby on her back and departing.

But to-day the doctor had talked so very kindly to her and offered her
so much money. He had appealed so directly to her conscience, patted the
child, and said that when it came to the point, he was sure she was not
the mother who could be so cruel as to bring misery upon such a pretty
little fellow, let him suffer want, let his pretty little feet be cold,
when he might lie both comfortable and warm and like a little prince in
his cradle!

It was not possible to resist, and in her emotion something like a half
promise escaped her.

Afterwards a neighbour came in and was of exactly the same opinion, and
told of all the little children whom she had known that had died of want
and neglect, only in the houses round about, during the last two years,
because their mothers had had to go out and work all day and could not
pay any one to look after them. And she and the tinsmith's wife both
spoke at once about the same thing--only the same thing.

Barbara sat listening and tending her child. Her heart felt like
breaking. For a moment she thought of going, not to Hoegden, but in
another way, home with him at once.

It was a temptation.

That night she broke into sobs so ungovernable, that, in order not to
disturb the household in their slumbers, she went out into the soft,
drizzling rain: it quieted and cooled her.

As she was standing the next morning, helping a neighbour's wife to
rinse and wring the clothes by the brook, a pony-carriage stopped in the
road. The coachman--he had gold lace on his hat and coat--got down and
went in to the tinsmith's.

"You must wring that sheet right out, Barbara," said the neighbour's
wife; "it'll be the last you'll wring here, for that's the Consul's
carriage."

And Barbara wrung the sheet until there was not a drop of water in it.
It had come now!

She went in and dressed the child; she hardly knew what she was doing,
and hardly felt it under her hands.

She saw the man give six dollars to the tinsmith's wife. He was so stiff
and tall and distinguished-looking, with such a big, aristocratic nose,
and he made a kind of bend every time she happened to look at him, and
assured her that there was no hurry--not the least! They never woke
before nine at the Consul's, so there was still plenty of time. And then
he looked at his watch.

And every time he looked at his watch, she looked at her boy: there were
now orders and a time fixed for her to leave him.

He had fallen asleep again. If he were to wake, she did not know what
would happen--she was sure she could not leave him then.

"No hurry, no hurry!" and he took the thick silver watch out of his
pocket once more.

But now it was she who was in a hurry, and so eager that she gave
herself no time to look round before she was seated in the carriage, and
the long, stiff-necked, braided coachman was driving her away along the
road of her appointed destiny.

In the summer she accompanied the Consul-General's family to a
bathing-place. There Barbara wheeled the perambulator with the two
children in it along the shore, and more than once the Veyergangs were
flattered by the exclamations of passers-by: "What a fine-looking
nurse!"

But there were difficulties with her, too--fits of melancholy to which
she completely gave way. She would sit by the cradle, her eyes red with
weeping, longing for her child, and would neither eat nor drink.

This was a matter of no little importance. A nurse must be kept in good
spirits; her frame of mind has such an immense influence on her health,
and that again on the health of the child.

Mrs. Veyergang had all sorts of good things brought in from the
pastry-cook's to enliven her; silk handkerchiefs and aprons abounded,
and the servants at home received injunctions to inquire after Barbara's
boy at the tinsmith's.

There was praise and nothing but praise to be given every time the
Consul-General's Lars stopped there in driving past, and when Barbara
only received a message of that kind, she could be happy and contented
the whole month.

She was made much of, as she very soon felt. If she said or wanted
anything, she was obeyed as if she were the mistress herself. And
handsome clothes with constant change of fine underclothing, not to
mention meat and drink--hardly anything of what she was accustomed to
call work, her hands had already become quite soft and supple. And she
felt that she was beginning to be attached to the two little ones whom
she tended day and night.

* * * * *

One day, after the Consul's family had returned from the bathing-place,
Barbara set out for the tinsmith's. It was late in the autumn. She could
hardly ever remember the road out there so bad and muddy as it was now.
Both her boots and the bottom of her dress would need cleaning and
washing when she got back again.

The thought that she would soon see her boy put her in a cold
perspiration; but of course things were best as they were, now that she
could pay so well for him.

When she turned in by the wooden fence and saw the cottage with its
familiar cracked windows in front of her, she slackened her pace a
little. A feeling of apprehension suddenly came over her.

And then the neighbour's wife, whom she had so often helped, came out
and began to talk and give her information, rattling on like a
steam-engine. There had been war among the neighbours in the tinsmith's
alley, and now that she saw Barbara herself, the truth should out, the
real, actual truth.

The tinsmith's people need not imagine that other people hadn't got eyes
in their head! Everything they possessed had gone to the pawnbroker's;
there was barely enough of the tin-ware left to put in his cracked
windows. And what they lived on, nobody round there could imagine,
unless it was the payment they got for that poor little ill-used boy,
that they gave lager-beer to, to keep him quiet. For no one would put up
there now that the police had begun to keep an eye on the company, not
even certain people who were not generally so particular about their
quarters.

"But if you take my advice, Barbara, you'll take the boy to blockmaker
Holman's down at the wharf. They are such nice, respectable people, and
have pitied the boy so when I told them how they were treating him out
here."

Blockmaker Holman, blockmaker Holman! The name rang in her ears as,
heavy-hearted, she entered the tinsmith's.

There he lay among the ragged, dirty clothes, pale, thin and neglected,
with frightened eyes. He began to cry when she took him up; he did not
know her, and she scarcely knew him.

The disappointment--all that she felt--found vent in a rising torrent of
angry words against the tinsmith and his wife.

But at the same time, while she was washing the boy, she felt how big,
coarse and clumsy his face and body were, compared to the two delicate
ones she was accustomed to. She saw now for the first time how
impossible it would be to keep him herself.

But he should go to the blockmaker's, poor boy! Her name wasn't Barbara
if she didn't get her mistress to see to that at once--as early as
to-morrow.

She returned home with a face red and swollen with crying, and was
inconsolable the whole evening until her mistress came down from the
office with the promise that the matter should be arranged.

And thus it was that Nikolai came to blockmaker Holman's.

CHAPTER II

A STRICT DISCIPLINARIAN

It is in some ways a blessing that those who have suffered hardship and
been neglected in their babyhood, do not remember anything about it--and
yet perhaps something clings to them.

So, at any rate, Mrs. Holman declared. From the very first day the boy
came into the house, she could see he had been brought up in a thieves'
nest. His eyes were so wise and watchful, and he could be so craftily
cunning and refractory, long before he could speak. She declared that he
was positively malicious, so drowsy and quiet as he would be until she
had just fallen asleep, when he would begin to shout as loud as a
watchman.

But every one who knew anything about the Holmans, said that if they had
not been fortunate in getting the boy, he had at any rate been fortunate
in having found his way to them. There were not two opinions as to what
an orderly woman Mrs. Holman was, and how strict in the fulfilment of
her duty. Tall, thin and neat in her person, even her small,
liver-coloured face, with the pale blue expressionless eyes, told you at
once that she was not the woman to allow herself to be carried away by
rash impetuosity.

And on the few occasions in the year that Barbara visited the boy--it
was not so easy for her to come now that the Veyergangs lived in their
country house all the year round--she could see for herself how
well-cared-for and clean he was, and how strictly he was kept. From the
time she got there to the time she left, she heard nothing except how
difficult it was to straighten out all the tinsmith's dents, all that
had been wrongly and improperly dealt with from the very first,
especially his obstinate temper! Now he really could walk quite a good
way, but he would do nothing but crawl, and so quickly, that no sooner
had she, Mrs. Holman, taken her eyes off him than he might be anywhere,
either at the saucepans and pots, or in the water-bucket, or else at the
plummets on the bell. And he upset things, and got himself in a mess,
wherever he went; yesterday the cat's food lay all over the floor! So
now she had hung the birch-rod low down on the wall, so that it might be
before his eyes; for it was necessary to frighten him, and vigilance and
punishment must positively be used. And Barbara must know herself, that
it wasn't so easy to manage other people's children, and especially such
a stray creature, come into the world in such a manner!

It was all just, as Barbara was obliged to acknowledge to herself, from
beginning to end, however much it might sting her, and therefore she was
always in a hurry to get away again.

It cannot be denied that she learnt something from it too, namely, what
she, on her side, might have reason and right to say to Mrs. Veyergang
about all the toil she had had with her two, if they ever had a
difference.

But the same spirit of disobedience remained in the boy as he grew
older. It was impossible to cure him of it, for all that Mrs. Holman
could do, and Holman had to help too sometimes. This did not happen,
however, until his wife had duly impressed on him the moral necessity of
taking upon himself his share of the duties of the house.

Holman was a silent man with a pair of quiet, shining eyes. He went and
came, morning and evening, rubbed and dried his shoes, and stood
hesitating at the door with some tool or other, or the tail of a block
in his hand, before he went in. What he might think of his married life
there was little opportunity of seeing in his face. One thing was
certain--a wife like Mrs. Holman was a treasure, which could not be
sufficiently prized; and if there was not quite so much left of Holman,
if, in fact, he had become--with all reverence be it said--something of
a fool, yet every one was sensible that in that union it must be so, if
the balance was to be kept. Any one who had only seen or spoken to Mrs.
Holman once, understood it immediately, but what was not so easy to
understand was that, after all, it was Holman who made the blocks down
in the workshop, by which the household lived.

It was still more remarkable that he had sometimes been met in the
gateway in an irresponsible condition, such as no one would have
expected in a man so happily married as he was.

After the miracle of Mrs. Holman's having a little girl herself had
happened--after that great and important change in the household, it was
deliberated whether it would not be better to rid the room of other
people's progeny. But then it was good regular money to have, and in
time the boy could be made use of at the cradle.

It was the lightest work in the world--just made for a little boy,
sitting and rocking the cradle with his foot--nothing but a little
practice for him.

But here, too, she was to have sad experience. She left him by the
cradle went she went out, but when she came home, he would be standing
gazing out of the window or from the top of the cellar stairs at the
children playing in the square. She had even caught him right outside
with the door open behind him--it was all the same to him, as long as he
could get out of the cellar and away from his duty.

Well, the young rogue would have to pay for it, as much as his mortal
back could bear!

And she assured the servant upstairs, who put in her head to hear what
the little imp had done now, as he was screaming so--that all the
punishment she gave him, and all her attempts, both by letting him have
no supper and by locking him in, were equally useless: he was just as
defiant and unreliable as ever!

She had frightened him now by saying that the devil sat in the corner
behind the bed and watched to see if he left the cradle!

He was almost beside himself with terror, and fancied all the time that
he could see the aforesaid sinister personage putting up his head over
Mrs. Holman's pillow. He could not help looking now and again towards
the window--there was some one playing outside in the square. And,
somehow or other, he came to be standing there, and stood until he once
more remembered what was behind him. Then he darted back like an arrow,
and sat staring in mortal fear into the corner.

From being made useful beside the cradle, Nikolai was advanced in course
of time to mind the Holman's daughter Ursula, outside the cellar steps.
To move farther, only as far as the trees over on the other side of the
street, was a capital offence. The idea of what overstepping the bounds
meant, was impressed upon him with full force. How could Mrs. Holman be
sure otherwise that he did not take Silla right up to the basin round
the fountain, where all the naughty boys played with their ships, and
shouted and made a noise? His poor little body had received so many
black and blue marks every time he had fallen into temptation that at
last the limits stood instinctively before his frightened perception
like an invisible iron grating. A foot's breadth beyond was, in his
imagination, the blackest crime, an enormity which would draw down the
fiercest retribution upon him.

That Silla was an uncommon and remarkable being of a higher order, so to
speak, than himself, had been driven into him in so many ways ever since
she came into the world, that he looked upon the assertion as raised
above all doubt.

Notwithstanding everything that he had endured for her sake, or perhaps,
by a strange contradiction, just because of these sufferings, the
feeling that she was under his care was most highly developed. His
admiration of her was unqualified; he thought her more than remarkable
in her blue bow and an old red stuff rose in her hat, and he submitted
to a wilfulness which was quite as despotic as even Mrs. Holman's. When
he had sat long enough and let her fill his hair with dust, she would
order him to pull off her shoes and stockings. If he did it, he got a
beating; if he did not do it, she screamed, and then he got a beating
too.

Insecurity was, so to speak, the soil on which he lived, and the
hurried, shrinking glances he continually cast, as if from habit,
towards the cellar door--even when his often guilt-laden conscience felt
itself most guiltless--were only the fruit of daily experience.

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