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L A C K M A KflJR . 1, KH 1, M
HAS AN IDEA
Laccmaker Lekholm
Has an Idea
(1 U S TA F fl R LIST ROM
Iranslatftl by
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l.iuttln Mae Vragh
THK DIAL 1'RKSS
Ntw Yart Affmxx.\i
1951, v DIAI, TRUSS, INC.
IW TO OWJTKf* fiTATKn nf
Y TUK VAlt-ftALLOU fKtfl, SHC.
BOOK ONE
They were approaching Sweden.
Karly one afternoon, under a low, chilly December sun,
they had seen, a few miles away on the port quarter, the surf
breaking house- high against RockalPs desolate sugar-loaf,
white with gulls' droppings.
At breakfast on Sunday morning the captain told them
that they had passed through the Pentland Firth during
the night.
Dinner that evening had been a regular festivity j a dis-
play of drcs#uits, deeolletages and jewels from New York
and Seattle, Chicago and Worcester, Saint Paul and Minne-
apolis} champagne and eloquent speeches in praise of the
new country and the old, the captain and the ship 5 the band
had played "l)u gamla, du fria" and "The Stan-spangled
Banner," and at dessert a secretary of the Legation in
Tokio, on his way home on leave, had declaimed Heidcn-
fctam's "Sverige v and drawn tears from many a steely,
shrewd emigrant's eye.
Monday had been a breaking-up day. Everyone had
packed. And in a corner of the bar, or out on the promenade
deck in the raw North Sea December drizzle, those com-
pelled to do so had broken the more or less romantic bonds
which people so inclined cannot avoid during ten or twelve
days of la/y luxury on that unsteady Cythera, an Atlantic
liner.
Karly next morning they had headed in towards Gothen-
burg between bare, rain-lashed rocks, grey and desolate in.
the faint, drizzly dawn. And they had been met by hun-
dreds of expectant, shining umbrellas on the quay, while,
on deck, the band clad in oilskins had played national aits
3
4 LACEMAKER LEKHOLM
and eyes had grown wet and hearts had filled with emotion:
Sweden, Sweden, Sweden!
At last the Christmas boat, with her thousand passengers
and, thanks to the prosperous times, her record mail, which
was to spread joy and well-being over a motherland still op*
pressed by economic troubles, was moored alongside the
quay.
A few hours later Dr. Charles Holmes, house surgeon at
the American naval hospital at Annapolis, was walking up
and down in his room at the hotel among unopened trunks
and suitcases. Outside the rain poured down from a low,
leaden sky he could not see, but whose height and hue he
could guess from the faint light in the room. Across the
narrow street on to which his window looked, a row of wet
panes stared at him, with impenetrable darkness behind
their dirty grey lace curtains. Under one of them a dingy
signboard creaked in the wind, and on it was printed in
black letters: Anna Bergquist's Dining-rooms.
Dr. Holmes, alias Karl Lekholm, formerly medical stu-
dent at Lund, walked up and down his room deep in
thought.
Now he had reached his goal. Within twenty-four hours
he would stand before his aged father and say "Here I am*"
He had not seen him for nearly twenty years. About ten
o'clock one January morning it had been a Wednesday, he
remembered he had boarded a Wilson steamer to go out,
via London, into the world and life. Once, eight years ago,
he had sent home to his father a money order for something
over six thousand kroner. That was the sum he owed him,
But apart from that money order, dispatched under an as-
sumed name during a visit to New York, he had, all these
years, never sent a word to his people at home to let them
know how he was doing or where he was.
And now he was at his goal. There could no longer be
evasion or delay. Within twenty-four hours he would stand
HAS AN IDEA 5
before his father and say "Here I am." And he was afraid-
mortal ly afraid. All the years that had passed were wiped
away like chalk scrawls from the blackboard of his life. He
had shrunk again to the boy he had once been, in constant
fear of a thrashing, with a daily accumulation of crimes on
his permanently had conscience, living in an equally per-
manent fear of discovery* But now there was no longer a
way out, I le must go home, must enter his father's presence
and say "I lere I am."
Dn Holmes, alias Kalle Lekholm, paced up and down
his room in ever increasing agony of mind. cc Why did I
never write in all these years?" he asked himself. It was per-
fectly incomprehensible to him now. It could have been so
easy, it ought to have been comparatively easy. Only a few
lines, a prayer for forgiveness. , . . At any rate it would
have been easier than this having to stand before his fa-
ther, after nearly twenty years' complete silence, and say
"Hero I am,"
The letter home the letter which was never written in
which he had meant to explain everything, his crime, his
flight, his silence, had been a nightmare to him all these
years. Not every night or every clay. But the least little re-
verse in his professional or private life, especially in the last
few yean, had sufficed to reawaken the old fear in him.
"The letter! the letter!"
During these periods of depression the spectre had
clutched his throat in an iron grip and squeezed the sweat
from the pores in his forehead. He had gone to bed dead
tired, as one does after a hard day's work, like a lump of
lead in pyjamas. And about three in the morning the still-
ness all round had suddenly wrenched him out of his heavy
slumber, and in the silence, empty and yawning like an
abyss, he had felt his whole existence waver, grow giddy
and fall- And during the dizzy fall into the bottomless
chasm a voice within him had cried, "The letter! the let-
6 LACEMAKER LEKHOLM
ter ! " He had woken at the cry and found himself sitting up
straight in his bed, bathed in sweat. And he had promised
himself: "I will write next Sunday ... I must write next
Sunday." ...
And yet the letter had never been written.
Heaven knew how many Sunday afternoons he had put all
recreation aside and endeavoured to pull himself together.
But nothing had ever come of it. He did not know how or
where to begin. Memories came rushing into his mind, a
swarm of accusations, ever growing, howling at him ever
louder like an angry mob. Like most other people, he had
pleasant memories too of his childhood and youth, in which
he played a less pitiable, humiliating role, which bore wit-
ness to the honesty and modesty in his nature. But it was as
though he were in the presence of a hostile, yelling crowd;
the pleasant memories, stealing shyly and cautiously into
his mind, had no prospect of holding their ground against
the shouts of his accusers, demanding his surrender.
He was filled with disgust when he saw his own childhood
and youth pass before him. He could not recognize himself,
so different had he been then from what he had become
since & good, law-abiding and on the whole successful
American citizen. He could not discover any kind of connec-
tion between the two individuals. It was as if he had lived
two quite separate lives the one untruthful and unbal-
anced, the other honest and steady,
His childhood and youth! He had been guilty of most of
the sins a boy and a youth can commit ; he had lied to escape
punishment, pilfered at home to satisfy some sudden and
urgent desire. A habit of fibbing as a small boy had grown
into systematic deceit at the Gymnasium. And no sooner had
he taken his degree than his deceit took an active form. The
son of a hard-working municipal treasurer, he had led the
comfortable life of the aesthetic university hedonist within
the scope a small town allowed: shelves full of beautifully
II A S A N I D E A 7
bound books, frequent visits to Copenhagen, the pose of a
gourmet and a judge of wines, his motto the words: "The
most difficult thing of all is to do nothing."
It had ended in a crime. And he had run away the same
evening ... to start a new life. . . .
When Dr. Charles Holmes was called down to dinner
after a Sunday afternoon like this, devoted to mental con-
centration and the writing of letters, he had achieved only
pages covered with disconnected words. He never got any
further. He could not do it. His whole being groaned in
anguish under a divine Nemesis which hour by hour, inch
by inch, was dragging him before a tribunal from which
there is no appeal to a higher court on earth.
So the letter was not written that time.
Instead, since he had married, something else happened
regularly in those times of depression $ when he felt himself
breaking down he fled to his wife, and that he might have
something solid to lean on in his life, rootless for all its out-
ward stability, clung desperately to her coldly proud, shal-
low nature- These approaches on his part astonished her, as
she had no idea of what gave rise to them. Dr. Charles
Holmes, surgeon in the American Navy, could not confide
his life's secret to his wife, daughter of a highly placed
American naval officer the secret that he really and truly
belonged to the herd of European criminals who were a
national danger from the racial hygienic standpoint. His ap-
proaches not only astonished but rather annoyed her. She
had never been accustomed to outbursts of feeling of other
than a poetical, romantic kind, and they were naturally
antipathetic to hen
Sooner or later he recovered from his depression. The
recollection of it certainly remained, like the recollection of
an illness- But although the memory was always there to
remind him that in the depths of his heart he carried an in-
fection which at times of spiritual and bodily weakness
8 LACEMAKER LEKHOLM
threw his whole organism into a paralysing fever, his
outward existence lay before him again, secure and well-
ordered his many duties, his interest in his immediate
environment, and his at once exhausting and successful work.
At these times he dismissed all thoughts of the letter.
Some day within a not too remote future he would get
out of harness for a few months and suddenly appear at
home. That was the only solution, the simplest reply to the
long silence. A look, a shake of the hand, a tone of the voice,
could reveal what no letter, however detailed, could ex-
plain.
And so the letter was never written. And the journey was
postponed, too, year after year* There was always some ob-
stacle first the hard struggle for existence, then the war,
an unexpected appointment to a ship, the fear of being out-
stripped by rivals during a long spell of leave there was
always something. Once he had actually taken his ticket
home. That was after the war, when he was in Paris. But
then he had fallen in love with the girl who later became his
wife, and so the journey did not come off. He had acquired
new interests, a new task which just then seemed to him
infinitely more important than cleansing his own system of
infections.
And so the years had passed till a day came when his
wife told him that she had fallen in love with another man
and wished to be free. Then his fear flamed up into undis-
guised panic. He must go home. No powers in the world
could prevent him any longer* He must see his father* His
father . . . during the years that had passed he had
grown an old man. He had reached the age when even the
stoutest tree can be snapped by a storm. The strange thing
was that not till now had he seen his father as anything but
a middle-aged man, with the sharp, penetrating mathema-
tician's look which hardened into contempt when con-
fronted with the smallest error in the sum of life. His
HAS AN IDEA 9
father , * . he was an old man already, bent and white,
whom any trifling ailment might bring to the grave. He
was not far short of seventy.
He must go home. He must make his way home to the
source from which he had sprung, must go back to the only
thing that was safe and solid in an insecure, elusive world
his origin. I Je must see him before he died, must hold his
hand in his before it grew cold for ever, must feel it close
round his own iti the warmth of forgiveness. Everything
else muht talce its chance marriage, prospects, promotion,
everything, , - . But the meeting with the man who had
given him life could not be postponed.
He lay sleepless of nights, his hair sticking to his perspir-
ing forehead. It was perfectly incomprehensible to him that
he had been able to wait so long utterly beyond his under-
standing, I le must go home before it was too late if it was
not too late already, I le had never thought of that either,
he who had been at grips with life and death all these years
that his own father might be dead already, perhaps with-
out having sent him a thought of forgiveness. Perhaps he
had lived for years with his dead father's curse resting upon
him, and perhaps it was that curse which sent an ice-cold fear
through him at night & message from the dead. This was
sheer primitive terror. In those hours, when he lay sleep-
less, shut in by the crushing, fevering night, with a motor-
horn now and again cleaving the silence like the shriek of a
hunted, tortured soul, he felt his whole life weighed down
by this supernatural curse, through which the dead took
vengeance on the living.
I le must go home. - . ,
He inquired anonymously of the vicar of his native
town, through the Swedish Consulate-General in New
York, whether his father was still alive. When he received
an answer in the affirmative, he applied for three months'
leave and left his new country the day before his wife was
IO LACEMAKER LEKHOLM
to marry again. He must go home. He felt he was engaged
in a race with death. Every day on board the ship crept by
at a snail's pace. . . .
And now he was at his goal. In a few hours he would
stand before his father and say "Here I am, father!"
He paced up and down his room in the hotel. His brain
was filled with a swarm of memories, thoughts, feelings,
questions, which it would take a whole book to describe. For
they contained all his own history the history of his par-
ents, his brothers and sisters, his family.
And it is these thoughts and feelings, and the manner in
which his questions were answered by the event, that are
the subject of this book.
II
It cannot be denied that Dr. Charles Holmes's continual
brooding over his past life had made him what is commonly
called a philosopher.
It had happened without himself noticing it. By degrees,
as one incident of hisS childhood and youth after another
rose before his eyes, incidents in which he himself had in-
variably figured as the black sheep and whipping-boy, he
had ceased to occupy the centre of the stage and other actors
had assumed it his parents, his brothers, his grandparents,
his whole race. His outlook had extended. There was hardly
one fit of depression from which he had recovered without
having disinterred new memories, new situations, that had
thrown a stronger light on his fellow-actors* His own
destiny had acquired a background in that of his family,
arranged with fuller cohesion, more perfect continuity. And
so, in the course of years, the artless tones from these insig-
nificant instruments, unknown to himself, had combined to
HAS AN IDEA II
form a whole in which isolated events and individual fates
seemed to him to melt more and more into a complete
melody of life.
Besides his own youthful peccadilloes, there was -and of
this too he was unconscious another cause which, as the
years passed, attracted him more and more irresistibly to his
family and the varied destinies of its members. It was the
impulse which Kant calls the hidden art within us, without
which we should have no consciousness, but of which we
ourselves are seldom conscious the impulse to weave to-
gether into a connected, coherent whole the fragments of
knowledge and experience life gives us.
And in the new world to which he had fled to begin a
new life he had met with only fragments. He could expect
nothing else a foreigner and a doctor, continually moving,
ordered now here, now there. Of the lives and antecedents
of the people who had been his associates at various stages of
his career he knew little more than he was able to learn
of the surgical cases that came under his care. In the one
case it was a fragment of a human soul, in the other a hu-
man body. Beyond the few facts revealed by a chance
communicativeness in the gunroom, or an accident which
required the presence of the ambulance, he had only guess-
work to rely on, lie had not become really intimate even
with his wife's family. It was only when thinking of his own
relations that he felt himself able to follow the threads in
the woof of life- Only in their destinies, to whose analysis
his crime and his loneliness had driven him, could he find
the unity his impulse demanded that he should seek.
And so it had happened that one night, while he lay
awake staring out into the darkness and silence, and his fa-
ther and mother, and all the others whose blood was his
blood, passed before his inward vision, he asked himself: If
this handful of people were the only human beings from
whose fates you had the opportunity of passing judgment
12 LACEMAKER LEKHOLM
on existence, what would be your judgment of life? Could
you, on the basis of these obscure lives, arrive at any definite
conclusions?
The questions about life, its value, its significance, its pur-
pose, which had forced themselves upon him during his
later schooldays and his first years as a student, as upon
most young men and women of his generation, rose before
him again in the form of these lives with which his own
was most intimately connected, and which he was now, in
his hours of solitude, piecing together with the aid of all
he had heard and seen of them in his childhood and youth*
Life? What was life? What had his family to teach him
about life?
Ill
Of his grandfather, the lacemaker Pehr Anders Lekholm,
Dr, Charles Holmes, alias Karl Lekholm, had only two or
three definite recollections. One extended over many years j
it covered, indeed, the whole period from the time when he
began to find his way about in life to the time when he
turned his back on his country for ever. The other memories
embraced hardly more than a few brief minutes. Swift,
painful, dramatic situations, in which a white-haired old
man suddenly revealed the weakness, desire for domina-
tion, strength and pose of a long life.
The one memory, that which embraced the whole of
Karl Lekholm's childhood and youth, was the image of a
pleasant, slightly ridiculous little old man with a bushy
white moustache and bushy white hair which, even in his
old age, fell in a stubborn curl on to the chalk-white, blue-
veined forehead, a pair of eyes whose iris was of such a pale
blue that it made the impression of being watered, a long,
HAS AN IDEA 13
hooked nose and a curiously sewn collar which he himself
had designed to leave free an exaggeratedly large Adam's
apple.
On weekdays the old man, whom his grandchildren had
nicknamed Knsign Stfil, 1 used to wear a brown dressing-
"gown and sit as often as he could in an armchair at the
)parlour window, where there was one of the small looking-
glasses known as "gossip mirrors." With the aid of this
> mirror he had an extensive view of all that happened in the
street All the time he sat there he twined his thumbs cease^
lessly round one another, and continuous up-and-down
movements of the large Adam's apple indicated the rhythm
of his thoughts and feelings* On Sundays he displayed more
energy. He went to church twice wearing a tail coat, black
trousers, creaking high boots partly covered by his trousers,
a black cravat and a top-hat.
He did not enjoy the least respect either in Karl Lek~
holm's eyes or in those of Karl's brothers and cousins. It was
as though the old man's grandchildren had been born with
the idea that no attention whatever need be paid to him.
How this view had become so early and so deeply rooted
in their minds that it had become a positive axiom it is not
"easy to say. Perhaps they had gathered it from the tone of
voice in which he was discussed in the family.
The very nickname by which his grandchildren knew
him conveyed a world of mistrust and ridicule. For to Karl
Lekholm and his brothers and cousins the name Ensign
Still signified the limit of unreliability and untruthfulness.
!Not till they went to school did they realize, with great dif-
ficulty, that the man whose name they had given their
grandfather was no Mtinchhausen, but a generally re-
spected and esteemed historical character. How and when
the name Knsign Stdl had been given to the old man the
Lekholm children did not know. Presumably one of his
1 After the famous hero of Runebcrtfs poem.
14 LACEMAKER LEKHOLM
own sons, in a moment of thoughtless geniality, had pointed
out the supposed likeness between the two.
The fact was that the old man used often to narrate the
most hair-raising stories from a war he called the Slesvig
war, and about a place called Kolding, where he had been
in a fight. And in this fight, as in the so-called Slesvig war in
general, thousands of men, according to Ensign StaPs ac-
count, had lost their lives. When the lacemaker narrated
these stories to any of his grandchildren, he used to make
sure that the door leading into the kitchen or the breakfast-
room, where his wife most often was, was shut. For when-
ever old Fru Lekholm, by an unlucky chance, overheard
any detail of his stories, she thrust her sharp little bird's
face with its long, lean throat in at the door and said:
"There you are, Lekholm, talking so loud that the walls
shake. You're too old to sit and tell innocent children such
lies."
Then the lacemaker brushed up his white moustaches
and thumped the table with his fist.
"Be quiet," he roared. "Deuce take it! Am I ]ying?
Wasn't I in the fight at Kolding, eh?"
Old Fru Lekholm gave him a long, sharp, piercing look.
But that was the only answer she had to give. The lace-
maker had, been in the fight at Kolding,
The view that Ensign Stal was a ridiculous figure was,
therefore, easily explained. As to his kind-heartedness, Karl
Lekholm had come to this conclusion because the old man
used to give him five ore every Sunday when he accom-
panied him to church- He could still, a middle-aged man,
feel the old fellow's dry, shrivelled hand, with the great
blue veins he was afraid to touch, close round his own as
they walked to the church. When this first took place Karl
could hardly have been more than four or five. He received
the five ore when they parted after the service, a short way
from his grandparents' door.
HAS AN IDEA 15
Then the old man stopped in the street. "Hold my stick,"
he said, and looked carefully round.
The stick was a Spanish cane with a curved ivory handle,
a dog's head yellowed with age and with dirt in its ears.
Then he took out his black purse, fished out the coin,
looked round him again and put it cautiously into KarPs
hand.
"There you are, but remember not a word!"
Karl promised. He took his cap off without saying thank
you well, he had promised not to say a word about the five
ore and ran straight to Soderberg's, the confectioner's
shop in Ostra Storgatan, which opened at one o'clock on
Sundays. There he bought five-ore's worth of "remains"
biscuits which had crumbled during their tenancy of the
glass jars on the shelf behind the cake counter.
On weekdays, at any rate during his earliest childhood,
Karl saw very little of Ensign StaL And their relationship
was, without any kind of agreement, as cool as is always the
case with two people who are allied in some rather discred-
itable secret adventure.
But one Sunday their joint church-going came to a fearful
end. It was a wet day, and the rain was pouring down. The
old man was in a hurry to get home, and in his haste he had
entirely forgotten the mite he owed his grandson. They had
entered Karl's grandparents' front gate without the old
man once moving his hand in the direction of his trousers
pocket, where he kept his purse. And now, when, to judge
by all indications, it seemed to be his intention to cross the
yard diagonally and go into his house by the kitchen door,
Karl Lekholm considered that it was, to say the least, high
time to remind him of the tribute. He was convinced that,
bound by his promise of silence, he would not dare to re-
mind his grandfather of the little douceur once he was in
the house. He gave a tug at his grandfather's hand and said:
"Grandpapa, you won't forget the five ore, will you?"
l6 LACEMAKER LEKHOLM
"Deuce take it!" the old man said. He led him back to
the gate, put down his open umbrella, put his hand into his
trousers pocket, and was about to hand over the five-ore
piece to Karl when the kitchen window was suddenly
opened. Grandmamma, who had been standing, hidden by
the blind, whipping cream for the Sunday pudding, and
while doing so had observed their curious proceedings,
thrust her lean head, with a white lace cap on it, out of the
window and shrieked:
"Lekholm, what in Heaven's name are you about? Do
you think I don't see what you're doing? Do you think
we're millionaires?"
The old man stood, purse in hand. He looked first at her
and then at his grandson. Then he submissively thrust his
purse back into his trousers pocket, picked up his open um-
brella and went grumbling across the yard into the kitchen.
By that time Karl was already a good part of the way home.
The moment he heard his grandmother's voice he had
grasped the seriousness of the situation and burst headlong
out of the gate into the street.
With this scene their church-going automatically came to
an end. Not a word more was ever said about it. Grand-
father and grandson instinctively avoided one another for a
long time after. Karl Lekholm could not look his grand-
father full in the face; he was ashamed for the old man's
sake.
Another of these sudden situations which had burned
itself ineradically into Dr. Holmes's memory took place a
few years later one of those intense incidents in which a
whole long human life stands out transfigured, cleansed
from the stage of sordid cares and the grey dust of the daily
round.
It was a day at the beginning of October. His Majesty
King Oscar II, with his two sons Gustav and Karl, was to
pay a visit to the town to open the new town hall. The sta-
HASANIDEA 17
tion buildings were adorned with the king's monogram
surmounted by a crown and hung with wreaths. Avenues of
flags had been put up along the main streets and round the
market-place. Flags were flying from the military head-
quarters, the governor's house, the schools, the leading
hotel and a number of private houses and offices. On the
platform were waiting the governor of the province, the
president of the court of justice, the general, the regimental
commander, the mayor and many others. Outside a battery
was drawn up with limbered guns, farther off the children
of various schools formed a double rank, and beyond them,
in the direction of the market-place, the citizens were
crowded on both sides of the royal route.
It was a brilliant autumn day, real king's weather, with
sunshine, a touch of cold and just enough wind to catch the
flags and blow out their yellow crosses to greet the exalted
visitors.
Karl Lekholm, who was then in the fifth form of the ele-
mentary school, was standing drawn up along with his com-
rades when he suddenly received a violent nudge.
"Look, Kalle, look, here comes your grandfather! What
on earth's that uniform he's got on? And what a lot of
medals he's got on his chest! He's regularly dressed u$!"
Karl Lekholm looked . . . and a second later he went
scarlet in the face for shame, his knees grew weak under
him, and he felt himself shrinking like a toy balloon. For
there he came, his old grandfather, Ensign Stal. He was
wearing his uniform from the Slesvig war the one which
hung in a glass case in the parlour^ he had four medals on
his chest, white gloves on his hands, and the huge silvery
moustaches stuck out waxed and stiff on each side of the
thin, withered face. He walked between the straight lines
of citizens, school-children and soldiers, as if he were one
of the most eminent dignitaries in the town, received with
titters and followed by laughter.
18 LACEMAKER LEKHOLM
The apparition was at once so unexpected and so strange
that no one attempted to stop him, not even the town magis-
trate or the chief o police. Rigid as a poker he strode
towards the entrance to the station, over which was the
king's monogram.
And there he remained "standing at ease," with his arms
hanging loosely at his side and the right foot a half pace in
front of the left, in correct military style.
Two or three minutes later the king and his two sons ap-
peared at the door leading from the platform. The regi-
mental band struck up a march, the battery commander
gave the order to shoulder arms and himself saluted, the
guns on the old ramparts thundered out the first of their
twenty-one shots. . . .
The king stopped. He caught sight of kcemaker Lek-
holm, who was saluting him at the foot of the steps, stand-
ing stiffly at attention with his right hand correctly raised to
the peak of his cap. The king stopped again and went up to
the eccentric figure. Karl Lekholm shut his eyes in terror of
what was going to happen, of the king's wrath which was
about to fall on his ridiculous old grandfather, and not till
it was all over did he dare to look up and hear what had
happened. . . .
There was a third memory too. He was fourteen or fif-
teen years old then. It was a winter's evening, just about
New Year's Day, and he was in his father's room. The lamp
with its green shade was burning on the writing-table. The
stove had been lighted, and now the register was shut and
Karl's father was standing before the stove with his hands
behind him. Grandpapa and Uncle Fredrik, who had come
back from America that Christmas, were sitting on the sofa.
At Christmas nothing but gloomy topics had been discussed
Anders, who had died a few months before, money, em-
bezzlement, drunkenness, ruin. . . .
HASANIDEA 19
Suddenly Uncle Fredrik said slowly, emphasizing each
word:
"If I had known that, I could have helped him!"
There was a dead silence, a long, oppressive, painful si-
lence.
Then, suddenly no one really knew how it had hap-
pened, so absorbed was each one of them in reflection over
Uncle Fredrik's words suddenly the old lacemaker had
rushed at Karl's father. He had seized him by the collar
with both hands and shaken him backwards and forwards:
"You're fractricides, that's what you are! You're fractri-
cides, you and Per!"
Karl Lekholm's father, who had inherited his mother's
height and was a head taller than his old father, stood quite
still and let himself be shaken. He only said:
"Go out of the room, boys!"
And Karl and his three brothers slouched out of the room
in silence, one behind the other.
IV
At the time when Dr. Charles Holmes made his noisy en-
trance into the world, at the beginning of the eighties, the
old lacemaker had been for more than a decade a super-
fluous individual, broken, dethroned, without authority $ an
empty noise of which no one was afraid. Even the profes-
sion to which he had devoted the strength of his youth and
manhood was such that it now hardly afforded a living, at
least in the form or on the scale on which he exercised it.
And it was not only he himself and his occupation which
were hopelessly of the past; the whole epoch in which he
had been born and brought up, had lived and worked,
2O LACEMAK.ER LEKHOLM
seemed now, in his old age, so infinitely remote that it had
long melted into pure legend bordering on the idyllic a
time with no telegraphs, railways or telephones.
That time had been his time. And in it he had been a devil
of a fellow.
One only needed to ask him to find out that. And that he
had been in the prime of life, if not exactly a notable figure,
nevertheless a figure in the daily life of his native town and
his circle of acquaintances the countless stories that were
told of him bore witness to that. Stories which with the pas-
sage of years, now that the dust lay thick over reverses, cares
and troubles, bestowed on him almost classical proportions.
Pehr Anders Lekholm was, as has been said, a lacemaker
by trade. He was the fourth of the line, for father and son
had plied their craft in the town. It was in its way an aristo-
cratic craft, inasmuch as in his time there were not more
than twenty-four lacemakers in the whole kingdom. It was
a clean, decent trade, too j not dirty and evil-smelling like a
shoemaker's or tanner's, or noisy like a coppersmith's, or
sedentary like a tailor's, a watchmaker's, a goldsmith's, or
exposed to changes of climate like a mason's, or sticky like a
painter's. There was a certain amount of variety about itj
sometimes one was spinning up in the long attic, at other
times sitting at one's loom in the workshop. It was, in other
words, a trade which ought to have suited the brisk, lively
little man as a glove fits a hand.
It was, moreover, a trade which in those days yielded a
decent living, and not least in his native town. For it was
no ordinary town in which he and his father had been born.
If the legend that the town owed its origin to a mighty
king's dream was not true, it was none the less a town of
distinguished origin. It had been built by royal command, as
a fortress and bulwark against Swedish attacks and raids on
the rich Danish province Skane, on a low-lying island, sur-
HAS AN IDEA 21
rounded by a river which every spring flooded the fields
around and gave the whole district the appearance of a lake.
It was not a pretty town and never had been pretty. It
was built on a stiff military rectangular plan, with four
straight streets running lengthways, two fairly broad and
two narrow, with side streets of equal number and equal
straightness crossing the long streets. The whole was sur-
rounded by a high fortress wall with redoubts, bastions,
canals, casemates and gates several feet thick with mono-
grams over them.
Two neighbouring towns of great antiquity had been de-
prived of their privileges as market and craft towns in order
to supply it with citizens. No pigs might be kept in the
town 5 no cattle might graze on its ramparts, and every citi-
zen who built a house there must construct a stable for at
least eight horses to satisfy the State's billeting require-
ments. The place had been a fortress and remained a mili-
tary town, even , after most of the walls had been pulled
down and had made way for broad, shady boulevards.
A town whose inhabitants were proud of it, where aristo-
cratic officers rattled their sabres in the uneven streets, a
town to which charming young ladies of the highest social
position drove from the big estates throughout half the
province to dance at the great gatherings with gold^-braided
lieutenants with horse-tails on their helmets and clinking
spurs. The world's greatest artillery regiment, CardelPs
Regiment, which had won fame in the battles of Gross-
beeren and Dennewitz, was stationed in the town. Such was
the glory and distinction of being an officer in this regiment,
that even in ceremonial processions its junior lieutenant
walked several paces in advance of the president of the
royal court of justice.
Pehr Anders Lekholm had been apprenticed to his fa-
ther. As a journeyman, according to the custom of the day,
22 LACEMAKER LEKHOLM
he had travelled widely; he had worked in Stockholm,
Malmo, Ltibeck and Copenhagen. He had then seen a good
deal of life and men before he took over his father's work-
shop as a master lacemaker and became a citizen of the
town.
In those days he had been regarded in his circle as a re-
markably good match. Several years after he had come into
the world King Karl XIV Johan had graciously decided that
the regiment stationed in the town, as a mark of distinction
for the services it had rendered in fighting the great Bona-
parte in the battle of the three Emperors at Leipzig, should
receive a new uniform, a black jacket the breast of which
was adorned with no fewer than eleven rows of black braid.
All this braid-making work was carried out by Pehr An-
ders Lekholm's father, who had previously woven all the
braid which was worn as stripes on the trousers and distin-
guishing marks on the sleeve. Neither Pehr Lekholm nor
his father, therefore, was dependent on casual orders for
his earnings, like most of the other lacemakers in the king-
dom lace and fringes for drawing-room sofas, plush chairs
and coffins. All that had to be done was to go up to the regi-
mental office once a year, bow to the quartermaster and
submit a sealed envelope containing a tender, neatly writ-
ten out by the copyist at the court of justice, for the delivery
of lace and braid for uniforms to his Majesty the King and
his Government. It was, strictly speaking, a matter of form.
Pehr Anders Lekholm, like his father, grandfather and
great-grandfather, was the only lacemaker in the town. His
existence, therefore, was deeply and firmly rooted both in
the past and in the present. The contract with his Majesty
the King and his Government must have been a lucrative
business. Only ten years after the Lekholm workshop had
obtained the contract, Pehr Anders's father had exchanged
his old house for a new one built of stone, in Ostra Storga-
tan, only a hundred yards from the market-place.
HASANIDEA 23
According to the oral traditions preserved by Pehr Lek-
holm's sons from his years of apprenticeship and wander-
ings as a journeyman, nothing peculiar or notable had been
observed in regard either to his personal characteristics or
his participation in public affairs, until after several years'
work abroad he returned to his native town one day at the
end of September 1 849 with the claim to be treated and ad-
mired as a hero. He had been one of the 170 Swedes who
had taken part as volunteers in the first Slesvig war. To
confirm his statements and claims he brought with him a
shabby Danish soldier's uniform of dark-green cloth with
red collar and white buttons, and a certificate which Dr.
Holmes as a child had spelt his way through such countless
times that he still remembered it by heart:
"The Swedish volunteer, PEHR ANDERS LEKHOLM, private in
the 5th battalion of the line, 1st company, is hereby released from
service with the battalion according to the order of August 9.
"It is the battalion commander's pleasant duty m this con-
nection to observe that the above-named private, during the
time he served in the Danish Army, has distinguished himself
both by courage and endurance in the dangers and hardships
of the campaign and by exemplary good conduct both on and
off duty.
"HELGESEN, Major, acting commander
"5th battalion of the line.
"KjAERSGAARD, August 19, 1849."
Along with this uniform and this official certificate Pehr Lek-
holm brought a cutting from a Danish newspaper describ-
ing the battle of Kolding. This cutting described how the
battalion which had been ordered to take the lead in storm-
ing the town had recoiled for a moment before the rain of
24 LACEMAKER LEKHOLM
bullets with which the Germans received them from roofs,
windows and street corners. At this critical moment, how-
ever, one of the senior officers of the regiment, Major
Schindel, dashed forward into the thick of the fight, and
with him Captain Rothe, Lieutenant Goerfeldt, Corporal
Larsen, Privates Lars Larsen and Hans Nielsen-Vade, and
the Swedish volunteers Berglund, Pousette and Lekholm
names as ineradicably rooted in Dr. Holmes's memory as
the order of the Swedish kings. Schindel himself fell, his
breast pierced by German bullets, and several of the rest
were wounded. But their courage electrified the whole
assaulting column, which now rushed forward to victory
shouting "Hurrah! "
To these trophies, the uniform, the certificate and the
newspaper cutting, Pehr Lekholm was able next year to add
others: the Dannebrog Order in silver, an address of
thanks, prettily ornamented and framed in cardboard,
signed by nearly 50,000 men from every part of Denmark 5 a
silver medal one side of which depicted Heimdal blowing
a battle-call on his horn, while the reverse was adorned with
a Viking ship bearing two warriors, and inscribed: "And the
wind blows her in to Denmark." The medal was accom-
panied by a letter in which Denmark thanked Pehr Lek-
holm not only for his personal help, but also for the
contribution he had made for "the first cohesion of the
Scandinavian peoples in the hour of danger. 33
All these trophies in turn were installed in the parlour
in the Lekholms 3 house in Ostra Storgatan. The uniform
and a rifle (which he had not used in the war) and the card-
board address in which he "was hailed by nearly 50,000
men from every district of Denmark" were placed in a wal-
nut bookcase with a glass front, whose shelves had hitherto
been adorned with specimens of his skill in his craft. Around
this bookcase, which stood against the wall opposite the
door leading into the lobby, were grouped his certificate of
HASANIDEA 25
demobilization, the newspaper cutting and the address
thanking him for his contribution to Scandinavian cohesion
in the hour of danger, all three glazed and framed, while
the silver medal was mounted on a sort of round cushion of
red velvet, which also but only on ceremonial occasions
was hung up on the wall beside the bookcase. The Danne-
brog cross, on ceremonial occasions, Pehr Lekholm himself
wore on the lapel of his tail coat.
There was, then, no question but that the little lacemaker
was a hero. He had been working in Copenhagen when the
war broke out. That he had served in the war as a volunteer
was also known in the town from the letters he had written
to his father his mother was dead and which he had
signed: "My father's ever-faithful son and soldier, P. Lek-
holm, ist company, 5th battalion of the line."
That he would return as a hero was, apparently, some-
thing which those who had known him in his childhood
found it harder to imagine. His outward appearance, to
begin with, corresponded in no way with the popular con-
ception of the military heroes of history, least of all in a
garrison town, and at a time when no one much under six
feet tall was accepted as a recruit for an artillery regiment.
Pehr Lekholm was considerably below medium height,
so undersized, in fact, that his marvellous good fortune in
coming out of the fight at Kolding with a whole skin was
jestingly explained by his being so small that the Germans
could not see him. The warlike moustaches with which he
reappeared in his native town, and which he allowed to
grow in such a way that they joined his whiskers under his
cheekbones, were calculated, if anything, to emphasize his
amiable, not to say rather foolish, expression.
And as for his qualities of character, there was not one
acquaintance of his childhood or youth who preserved from
those days any memory of him which could be said to in-
dicate latent heroism. The courage, coolness and contempt
26 LACEMAKER LEKHOLM
of death with which he and a handful of other men had in-
spired a whole attacking column to dash forward to vic-
tory seemed, to say the least, improbable, when seen against
the background of the obscurity in which he had hitherto
lived.
On the other hand, there is no reason to suppose that
doubts were cast upon either the documents he brought
with him or the vivid descriptions with which he further
illustrated and described them. People seem to have ac-
cepted his heroic deeds with the reluctance with which
Swedes, from time immemorial, have received the news of
a countryman's success and exploits in a foreign land. The
colonel of the regiment shook hands with him in the mid-
dle of the market-place, when they met one day by chance
just outside headquarters. His health was drunk at the
usual monthly evening of the craftsmen's association im-
mediately after his return from mortal danger. But these
honours must have been done him with the subconscious
but none the less firmly rooted conviction that in spite of
all his heroic deeds he was still only Pehr Lekholm, and
Pehr Lekholm, as his fellow-men had learned to know
him, was certainly no hero.
This subconscious conviction seems to have shown itself
even in the honours that were done him. When the colonel,
outside headquarters, congratulated him on the laurels he
had won in the field, it is said that he did so with the pro-
fessional hero's faint ironical smile at the blind hen which,
by a quaint freak of chance, had fluttered down into a corn-
bin. At the craft association's evenings the same undercur-
rent of ridicule ran like a broad red strand through all the
stilted formal oratory. It all came to this that anyhow he
was the same old Pehr Lekholm as before and they ex-
pressed their pleasure at having him back again as he always
had been a quiet, capable journeyman hcemaker, who was
now to take over his invalid father's workshop.
HASANIDEA 27
The fact unfortunately inseparable from human na-
ture must also be taken into consideration that nobody,
even in a small town in the middle of the last century, could
or wanted to occupy his imagination for any length of time
with anyone so uninteresting as a lacemaker, even if he had
inspired a whole assaulting column to dash on to victory.
It is certain that the undercurrent of ridicule and swift
oblivion offended the little lacemaker. He and his comrades
had been accustomed to different treatment on the other
side of the Sound. The whole of the latest period of his life
had been filled with enthusiastic ovations and the epic at-
mosphere of perils overcome. In the field he had often
dreamed of his return home, picturing it in the vivid colours
of a war painting, as the culminating point of his experiences
during the last year. And his reception had been lukewarm,
grudging j his exploits had been minimized, ridiculed and
swiftly forgotten.
Pehr Lekholm was by nature what we nowadays should
call a bad psychologist. His simplicity forbade him to seek
for any deep-rooted causes for the reception he had met
with. At the same time, his kind, not to say generous, heart
prevented him from thinking ill of his fellow-creatures. He
was, unfortunately for his own future, ignorant of the
Swede's characteristic reluctance to recognize obvious merit
openly and without reserve, of the need to level all emi-
nences so typical of his countrymen.
His naivete, moreover, blinded him to the fact that his
readiness to make the supreme sacrifice wakened a feeling
of shame in many others. He had accomplished what they
had neither desired nor dared. The whole of his little per-
son, made ridiculous by his absurd moustaches, was an ac-
cusation which stabbed them to the heart. The sight of this
little man, who had come out of mortal danger with a whole
skin, reawakened in a painful manner all the doubts and
questionings which a year and a half ago, when their breth-
28 PACEMAKER LEKHOLM
ren's call for help was echoed in the Swedish papers, had
kept the keenest of them at home. Evidently the risk had
not been so great . . . perhaps they would themselves
have returned as heroes, if they had gone forth like men.
The doubts of the spring of '48 now turned to accusations
of cowardice. And an accusation is something which one
does everything possible to get rid of or at least minimize.
But Pehr Lekholm saw nothing of all this. He was con-
scious only of the lukewarmness, the grudgingness, the
ridicule. And he could not explain them in any way except
as evidence of mistrust. People thought he lied, or at least
exaggerated. And accordingly he felt injured. The misjudg-
ment which he considered was being passed on him grew
in his mind as misjudgment so often does to an obses-
sion. It was in his particular case very easy for his grievance
to take the proportions of an obsession $ for it naturally,
through a kind of horror vacui, filled the gap the changing
scenes and stirring events of his year in the field had left
behind them.
For a man in the position which lacemaker Lekholm con-
sidered himself to occupy the most natural way out would
perhaps have been to cloak his injured pride with a chilly,
dignified reserve. But this way out was closed to him by
another very prominent characteristic in his moral equip-
ment his gregariousness. He was by nature no more of a
recluse than he was a misanthrope. Like the time in which
he lived, he was filled with sugary ideals of brotherhood.
Moreover, the driving force of his active, lively tempera-
ment was a petty inquisitiveness, always stretching out its
neck to glean something new, always with one eye on the
"reflecting mirror." He must be there in a corner, must feel
himself, if not at the centre of events, at least somewhere
on their outskirts. And so it came about that Pehr Lekholm,
instead of proudly drawing back into a dignified reserve,
made it his first duty to define his place in and contribu-
HASANIDEA 29
tion to the Slesvig war, and thus dissipate the mistrust with
which, rightly or wrongly, he believed himself to be re-
garded.
The result he achieved unfortunately proved to be quite
different from and contrary to his intentions j he only laid
bare, more and more pitilessly, the inmost recesses of his
nature,
In other words, the hero of Kolding invited ridicule. He
became a ludicrous figure, a butt.
It is easy to understand how the transformation from hero
to butt could take place so rapidly.
It only required that some member of the company
should ask him: "By the way, Lekholm, what was it hap-
pened that time you, etc.," for the lacemaker to begin his
narrative.
In a few minutes a wag would interrupt him: "Last time
you told it all quite differently."
Then the lacemaker would jump up, red in the face as a
cock's comb, brush up his bushy moustaches and cry:
"Deuce take it, don't you believe me? Do you think I'm
lying? Deuce take it, I never heard such a thing" and his
story used to begin all over again.
The most painful feature of the part he came to play, for
his relations, was that when he gradually realized it he only
made a still greater fool of himself by his fruitless efforts to
secure respect for himself and credence for his assertions.
To lacemaker Lekholm's credit, however, it must, with-
out anticipating events, be pointed out with emphasis that
his claim to the title of hero acquired at a very early stage a
deeper significance than sheer vanity or the necessity of
dissipating the supposed incredulity of people in general.
In the light his intellect was capable of casting on life and
its complicated problems, the thesis, put in the briefest form
possible, was this: once a hero, always a hero. And it was
precisely this view which his fellow-men refused to accept
3O LACEMAKLER LEKHOLM
or at any rate in his case. Their view could, in turn, be
quite briefly formulated thus: that even if Pehr Lekholm,
in the fight at Kolding, had in some way or other inspired
a whole assaulting column to dash forward to victory, this
did not alter the fact that he was just Pehr Lekholm, the
little lacemaker.
Deep under his vehement and foolish attempts to gain
himself credence burned another desire, more disastrous to
his own future and his family's to show his fellow-creatures
the justification of his estimate of himself. He thus laid upon
himself the obligation to live up to his heroic deeds, to
achieve notable results despite his humble position in the
community.
VI
Pehr Lekholm's first notable achievement after his return
from the war was to get engaged and married. From a
superficial point of view, it would hardly seem that in tak-
ing this step he had done anything which marked him out
from the overwhelming majority of men. He was then
nearly thirty, so that he was fully old enough to marry.
Nor could it be said that he was taking upon himself a re-
sponsibility exceeding most men's capacity 5 his livelihood
was more than secure, as he had already in name, if not yet
in a pecuniary sense, taken over his father's workshop, a
very good business by the standard of the time. Nor was
there anything about his choice of a bride which on the whole
afforded any striking contrast to the ordinary bourgeois
love affair.
But in the lacemaker's eyes his conquest of his future
wife was the most remarkable thing he had ever done, al-
most as notable as the part he had played in the fight at
Kolding, although it naturally fell into a quite different
HASANIDEA 3!
and more pleasant category of events. His fellow-creatures
were ready to agree with him, in so far as they were obliged
to credit him with more than normal courage in daring to
link his fate with Augusta Topfer's. In doing so they
thought primarily, not so much of her personal appearance
as of her established reputation for having an uncommonly
strong will of her own.
Augusta Charlotte Topfer was daughter to a German
assistant surgeon who had been employed with General
CardelPs artillery regiment during Karl Johan's war against
Napoleon. He had accompanied the regiment back to its
depot and opened a little .barber's shop, where, in addition
to shaving and cutting the hair of the officers and leading
citizens of the town, he carried on in an inner room various
activities of a "minor surgical" nature: he bled people, drew
teeth, removed corns and spliced broken arms and legs.
The assistant surgeon had prospered. He had married
one of the daughters of the town, bought a little two-storied
wooden house in Ostra Storgatan, not far from the Lek-
holms', and occupied his spare time with his violin and the
occult writings of Swedenborg.
By reason of his tendency to mysticism and his alleged
intercourse with spirits, his solitary life and his inability to
acquire a mastery of the Swedish tongue, he had, in the
eyes of the populace, come to be surrounded with an at-
mosphere of mystery. His uncanny appearance contributed
in no small degree to this result a very tall, very lean,
stooping form, with deep, piercing black eyes, a long, thin,
pallid face, an unusually long upper lip and a goat's beard
which made his pointed chin more pointed than ever. In
the little town where the force of circumstances had planted
him it was not the sweep, but the surgeon, that was the chil-
dren's bogy. Superstitious old women were ready to swear
that his eyes burned green in the dark just like those of Old
Nick himself. In reality Herr Topfer was a peaceable, kind-
32 LACEMAKER LEKHOLM
hearted old man, who worshipped, besides the one true
God, his violin, Swedenborg and vegetarianism.
Despite his German birth, Herr Topfer had won the lace-
maker's genuine affection as soon as Lekholm returned
from the war. The assistant surgeon, who had smelt powder
himself, was the only person in the town who visibly and
audibly appreciated Lekholm's act of heroism. Further,
the old man took a layman's interest in strategy. And the
two often spent the evening together at his house, where
the surgeon followed the lacemaker on his and the Danish
army's honourable retreat with many appreciative or critical
comments.
It was during these evenings that love awakened and
grew in the lacemaker's breast. And this love seemed to him
the most remarkable thing that had ever existed of its kind.
It should be pointed out that it was not the great mystery
of love itself, its electrifying effect on body and soul, that
seemed to him so strange. He had experienced sensations of
that kind more than once before. If the words he uttered
on this subject in moments of anger, hate or humiliation
were to be accepted at their face value, his wanderings as a
journeyman could easily have been traced by the women's
broken hearts he had left behind him on his way.
The element of romance in this love story lay in the fact
that she had accepted him. For she was the most remark-
able woman he had met. And according to his own account,
as has been said, he had had to do with a good many.
Augusta Topfer had never been pretty, even as a young
girl. And now she was thirty-one, and definitely reckoned
an old maid. Her face and figure were so like her father's
that people, looking at her, noticed the absence of the goat's
beard. Her undeniable disabilities in the marriage market,
clear to every swain of superficial inclination, were, however,
wiped out by her conspicuous qualities, at least in the eyes
of a man who could appreciate moral beauty. The fact is
HASANIDEA 33
that she was in many respects a remarkable woman.
Equipped with a keen intelligence, she was highly educated
for her time and social position, and further possessed a
considerable musical talent. She played the piano in a way
which, in Major Rosenstjerna's firm opinion, would have
made good on any concert platform in the world, if she
had been trained.
It does honour to the lacemaker's instincts that her un-
attractive exterior did not blind him to her brilliant quali-
ties of mind and intellect. During the whole of the first
period of his marriage not to speak of his engagement
he never grew tired of muttering to himself: "Deuce take
it, I never saw a woman like my wife." In her outstanding
qualities he felt that he found a complement to his own.
Even the fact that she had gone through life so long un-
appreciated became a further merit in his eyes: she would
be content with no one but a real man, a hero. He was not
only happy in his choice 5 he was proud of his Augusta.
With the generosity and sincerity of heart which had made
him respond to a kindred people's cry for help in the hour
of distress, he recognized her merits with unqualified en-
thusiasm. He was the first to admit that in his married life
she represented the strong brain, the high culture, the re-
markable talent, while he on his side embodied the typical
quality of the male sex courage.
Unfortunately his enthusiasm led him to quote her fre-
quently, when with his friends and boon companions: Au-
gusta thinks this my wife says that Augusta played to me
yesterday till my heart melted in my body, the deuce it
did. ...
Socially, Augusta Topfer was in no way superior to the
lacemaker, although her father's solitary life and the fam-
ily's abstention from intercourse with others could not fail
to endow it with the mystery and dignity of the recluse.
On the other hand, there was no question but that Augusta,
34 LACEMAK.ER LEKHOLM
thanks to her musical gift, enjoyed a social position which
marked her off from most of the daughters of the bour-
geoisie. Thereby she shed an additional glamour over the
name of Lekholm. For example, she was invited to play
at gatherings at the Stadshotell, and so came into personal
contact with the wives of the governor, the president of
the court of justice and the colonel.
Further, she had for several years played the piano in
the quartette formed by Major Rosenstjerna, known as an
able violoncellist, the other two members of which were a
judge named Nolleroth who played the flute and a head-
master who performed on the violin. This quartette assem-
bled two Saturdays in each month at the house of one of
the three gentlemen, and the music was followed by a sup-
per, in which Augusta Topfer participated as a matter of
course.
The social barrier did, indeed, prevent the three from
accepting an invitation which lacemaker Lekholm, after his
marriage, once reverently sent them, suggesting that they
should transfer the musical entertainment to his humble
but well-provided home. The respect with which the three
gentlemen regarded Fru Lekholm, and the musical com-
radeship which had arisen between them, was nevertheless,
in a way, extended to the lacemaker. They returned his
greetings with marked friendliness $ sometimes they even
stopped in the street, chatted with him, and jestingly warned
him not to take up too much of his wife's time.
In short, Lekholm found that through his marriage he
had acquired a social distinction which no other craftsman
in the town possessed except Hofstedt, the tanner. But
Hofstedt was so immensely rich that his daughter had mar-
ried into the officers 7 corps.
As for Augusta Topfer, her thoughts and feelings were
as different as could be from the lacemaker's. He was far
from being the man she had dreamed of having as a hus-
HASANIDEA 35
band. It was commonly asserted that she had secretly cher-
ished other, socially loftier aspirations and had on their ac-
count refused several offers from men of her own class j it
was even said that the choice of her heart was no one less
than a certain lieutenant, who later became Major Rosen-
stjerna. It is certain at any rate that in later years she made
no concealment of the fact that the lacemaker had not been
her ideal husband. Moreover, she realized perfectly from
the first that, as regarded qualities of head, he was but in-
differently equipped. But, on the whole, she preferred
Lekholm to the certain prospect of going through life in
loneliness. His father's health was poor; his mother had
died in child-birth several years before 5 in other words, she
would, in all human probability, soon be mistress in her own
house. And she did not consider the lacemaker too stupid to
be her children's father.
In this respect he fully satisfied the hopes she had set on
him; after a year's marriage Fru Augusta Lekholm gave
birth to twins a son, Per, and a daughter, Charlotte.
This happy event further strengthened the lacemaker's
conviction that Augusta and he were a remarkable married
couple.
VII
It was inevitable that the rumour that Fru Lekholm "wore
the trousers" should spread rapidly through the town.
Among the circumstances which contributed to this result
were Augusta's reputation of "having a will of her own"
and the lacemaker's incurable and unlucky habit of talking
of her and her sayings and doings in tones which combined
sincere admiration and boastful generosity. Even the dif-
ference in the height of husband and wife was probably a
factor of some influence. Another factor which most cer-
36 LACEMAKER LEKHOLM
tainly played a considerable part was the fact that people
had, once for all, come to regard the lacemaker as a butt.
Now one cannot repeat the same joke for ever, least of
all in a small town, where pleasant social life is a necessity
of existence. When people had grown tired of teasing Pehr
Lekholm about his military exploits, they were obliged to
seek for new and still more vulnerable points. They attacked
the one which for several reasons was the most obvious
the lacemaker's marriage. In doing so they may be said to
have followed one of the royal roads of male jesting - y a hen-
pecked husband has from time immemorial been an utterly
ludicrous and contemptible figure, and not least in Pehr
Lekholm's prime, when submissiveness was regarded as a
wife's absolute duty and a husband's supremacy was so un-
assailable that he was respectfully addressed, even when in
bed, not as an individual, but as the representative of a large
and powerful group of human beings in this case the Lek-
holm family.
Certain it is that, when he had been married a few years,
people began to chaff the lacemaker about the unheroic
role he played as a husband. At the gatherings which his
gregariousness prevented him from ever missing, it became
customary to hint to him, by pointed allusions, that his
humiliating position in his own household was no longer a
secret. The attack was delivered from both flanks with cun-
ning and tactical skill. Someone wondered if his old woman
had given him leave to stay out so late. Someone else asked
dubiously whether Augusta would let him have another
glass.
It was not because of any particular delicacy in the in-
sinuations made that it was some time before the lacemaker
grasped the humiliating sense of the questions addressed to
him. The period in which he lived was no time of half-
suppressed melodies. Men were still rough and hard both
HAS AN IDEA 37
in jest and serious matters. His failure to understand was
due partly to what his wife Augusta used later to call his
natural foolishness and partly to his inability to take the
charges seriously. Were not he and Augusta good friends,
a happy married couple? Did he not admire her as much
as a man could admire his wife? Was he not proud of
her?
But one evening, at one of these social gatherings, he
suddenly understood. He did not quite know why, but he
understood, as happens once or twice in a man's life, when
everything of a sudden becomes clear and the eyes seem
to have acquired the gift of penetrating the thickest walls.
What the devil! Did they think he was henpecked? He!
He who, with a few others, had inspired a whole assaulting
column to dash forward to victory! who considered him-
self, in his marriage, to represent the manliest of all virtues,
courage! he, who had the same contempt for a henpecked
husband as for a deserter in the field! . . . He twirled his
moustaches, went as red as a cock's comb in the face and
sprang up from his chair.
"Deuce take it, gentlemen, you don't think my wife rules
me?"
Well, no, they wouldn't go so far as that. There was a
good deal of gossip in the town. "They say that at home
you stick your tail between your legs and make yourself
scarce."
There were further moustache-twirlings.
"Surely you don't mean, gentlemen, that I, who was in
the battle of Kolding, am afraid of a woman?"
Well, bigger men than he had trembled at the knees be-
fore a woman.
"Deuce take it, I never heard such a thing!"
Like the man of action he was, he took immediate steps.
The lacemaker was by nature at any rate for those days
38 LACEMAKER LEKHOLM
moderate in his consumption o strong drink. But now,
as in the fight at Kolding, he would rather die than show a
lack of courage. He gave them all the lie there and then,
all together and each separately, by mixing himself an-
other toddy of a mahogany-brown colour. And it was fol-
lowed in the course of the evening by many others.
Late that night the lacemaker was borne home on broad
though rather unsteady shoulders to the two-storied house
he owned. At the foot of three age-worn stone steps, which
led up to the outer door, they laid him down to find his
keys, hauled him up to the door and pulled the bell-rope
with a red velvet tuft on the end, a product of the Lekholm
workshop. Those who had stayed on the pavement could
see from the street a light struck in the bedroom, which was
beyond the parlour, and a moment later the bearers heard
Fru Augusta's sharp, now rather frightened voice ask in-
side the door:
"Who's that?"
One of the men who had carried him replied after some
hesitation, disguising his voice, and to an accompaniment of
suppressed giggles:
"It's Lekholm."
There was a moment's pause. Then Fru Augusta said,
the fear in her voice now increased to terror:
"If you're Lekholm, you can very well open the door
yourself."
No, Lekholm could not open himself.
There was another long pause. Then Fru Augusta's voice
was heard again, now sunk in a hoarse whisper:
"Is he ill?"
"No, not exactly. But we'll lay him here on the mat."
They stole out and, pressed against the wall right under
the two windows of the parlour and bedroom, followed in
breathless silence the further development of events, listen-
ing eagerly to the words that passed between the couple as
HASANIDEA 39
Fru Augusta, to judge from the noise, dragged her husband
into the lobby, words that on the lacemaker's side were
limited to monotonous mumbled oaths, while his opponent
gave proof of the possession of a considerably larger vocab-
ulary. And when the lobby door was shut they crept off like
black shadows, still keeping close to the walls, till they
reached the neighbouring market-place. There they stopped,
held their hands to their sides, and finally burst into roars
of laughter which echoed in the Trinity Church's hallowed
walls and woke all the sleeping dogs in the town.
They had not had such fun since goodness knew when.
And they looked forward with joyful anticipation to the
rich harvest whose seed had been sown that night.
Events developed very rapidly in the Lekholm family.
The day after that night of degradation the lacemaker had
stayed in bed and accepted submissively and without pro-
test the spiritual and physical attentions his wife bestowed
on him. Even when, in the evening, she declined to brew
him the fortifying toddy his alcohol-poisoned body required
in order to sleep peacefully explaining fully her reasons
for so doing he submitted to her decided refusal, not with-
out a bitter grumble into his pillows. For the next two or
three days the lacemaker performed his tasks in the attic
and at the loom with the new and savage energy which, in
a decent well-conducted man, usually follows an alcoholic
outbreak. In a few days more this energy was reduced to its
normal everyday dimensions, and the lacemaker was again
the man he had been before the night of degradation. At
least he considered that he was.
Unfortunately his wife did not share his view, which he
fully realized when a fortnight later, as every Saturday, he
left the loom at five o'clock and went downstairs to change
his clothes.
When, after washing and changing his underclothes, he
40 LACEMAKER LEKHOLM
opened the wardrobe door to take out his Sunday tall-coat,
it was not there.
At first the good-natured fellow did not realize the situa-
tion. He called to his wife in the kitchen:
"Augusta, where's my best coat? "
"I'm coming, I'm coming."
A minute later she came in, shutting the door carefully
so as not to be overheard by the servant, the two journey-
men and the apprentices, who were just having their supper.
'Tour best coat, Lekholm?" she said quietly, with an
emphasis on every word. "I've locked it up. What do you
want it for this evening, anyhow?"
The lacemaker looked at her.
"What do I want it for? You know it's the craftsmen's
association's evening at the Schweden to-night."
Augusta Lekholm's voice was calmer than ever, and the
words fell one by one, weighty as the phrases of the Cate-
chism:
"It'll be a long time before you go to any more evenings,
Lekholm."
Now the lacemaker understood. If this incident had taken
place many years later, and the lacemaker had known the
German language and been intimately acquainted with its
modern poetry, he might at that moment have quoted the
immortal opening to one of Rilke's most beautiful poems.
Mit einmd weiss ich viel von der Font'dne! It would, no
doubt, have expressed just what he felt. So she meant to
have her revenge! That was why she had stopped abusing
him the first day he was up and about again. And he had
thought that she was so submissive because his newborn
ferocity had made her respect him. Oho so that was what
she was after. Oho! He twirled his moustache and said:
"Well, that's the deuce. You've locked up my best coat."
"I have," his wife replied, "and you won't see it again
for a long time except when you go to church."
HASANIDEA 41
The lacemaker put his hands on his hips, advanced his
left foot a half pace in front of the right, puffed out his
chest and regarded her.
"Deuce take it, Augusta, hand over that coat!"
She looked down at him with a gleam of contempt in her
black eyes.
"You're a fool, Lekholm, a silly idiot! You make your-
self a laughing-stock in everyone's eyes. Fve always thought
that, but Fve never said it till now. But now I'll say it so
that you can hear it!"
The lacemaker planted his right foot a half pace before
his left.
"I don't care a damn for that. But if you lock up my best
coat I'll go as I am in my working clothes. And then peo-
ple'll know you're a vixen. For that matter, they all know
it already. It's only I who've been such a fool that I didn't
realize it till now. Hand over the coat, I tell you. Deuce
take it!"
There was a moment's silence. Fru Lekholm had turned
as white as a corpse. And she smiled, a peculiar smile which
the lacemaker had never seen before.
"Who says I'm a vixen?" she asked, with an ominous
quiet.
"Everyone! everyone! the deuce! give me my coat!"
She did not answer for a moment. She only nodded two
or three times. Then she turned round.
"You shall have your coat, Lekholm."
The lacemaker took the coat, put it on, and went to the
craftsmen's association's evening.
There was not a single man in the lacemaker's day, and
very few in ours, who would not have acted as he did, or at
any rate, if for one reason or another he had acted differ-
ently, would not have sympathized with Lekholm in the
course he had taken. And there have been many and still
42 LACEMAK.ER LEKHOLM
are some men, who, like the lacemaker, would have em-
phasized their independence by coming home drunk.
By her method of reforming her husband, Augusta Lek-
holm had done something very serious she had set the
lacemaker's thinking apparatus working. And this was all
the more dangerous in that this apparatus apart from its
never having been seriously used before gave every indi-
cation of being simple and elementary in its construction.
All that evening, at the gathering, Pehr Lekholm
thought.
That she had called him a fool and a silly idiot mat-
tered nothing to him. He had never claimed to be any kind
of genius 5 from the first he had frankly acknowledged her
undeniable superiority in intelligence, as also in education
and musical talent. (It would in any case have been super-
fluous for the lacemaker to emphasize her superiority in the
last-named field, for he had no feeling whatever for music
beyond his admiration of skill with the fingers, which as a
lacemaker he could fully appreciate.)
But by locking up his best coat she had shown that she
doubted his courage 5 and this wounded him to the in-
most depths of his being. He, who had taken part in the
fight at Kolding and inspired a whole assaulting column
to dash on to victory, who had made his contribution, grate-
fully recognized by the State of Denmark, to the first co-
hesion of the Scandinavian peoples in the hour of danger
that he should not dare take a coat out of a locked cup-
board! What the deuce was she thinking of? Who did she
suppose he was? Did she, too, think his stories of the war
were lies? Deuce take it, he must make an example! This
was war! And war was something he understood.
Moreover, Augusta Lekholm, by her impulsive method
of education, had also succeeded in offending the lacemaker's
sense of justice. As he sat there among his boon compan-
ions, the degrading punishment she had desired to inflict
HASANIDEA 43
seemed out of all proportion to his offence. He had come
home dead drunk. Quite true. But what if he had? He was
not the first man in the world's history who had made a slip
of the kind. Such things had happened, and still happened,
to men of greater distinction and higher position in the town
than himself. And that a woman, for a reason like that,
should wish to deprive a man of the only real reward for his
week's toil was too much for his comprehension and for his
kindly heart's universal good will.
Her trick injured him the more deeply in that, as pre-
viously indicated, his coat was too short to be turned into
the soft, capacious cloak of the recluse or misanthrope. He
was a gregarious animal in the literal sense of the word.
He loved, after his week's labour, the clink of glasses, the
speeches over the punch-bowl, the free jesting, the smell of
beefsteaks, the kaleidoscopic abundance of the hors tfoemre.
He was a cheerful person by nature. But cheerfulness, in his
view, ought to be a collective quality. It blossomed most
freely in company. If he were forbidden to attend the crafts-
men's association's evenings and similar functions, it simply
meant that he was deprived of the reward of his week's
labour, his whole life turned to one long working week-
day. And that was what she had tried to do. Damned cat!
And she had done more than that. She had meant to
humiliate him to a degree beyond anything his friends had
ever dared. Their jokes had never been so base, so devilish.
Lock up his Sunday coat! Prevent him from coming to the
gatherings! And suppose he had been such a weakling as
to stay at home, to keep away till she was graciously pleased
to let him have his coat back! What would have happened
then? His friends and colleagues would have laughed till
their sides split. That was what the consequences would
have been if he had let himself be intimidated. It was really
she, and not his friends, who was trying to make a fool of
him. His friends were right j she was a vixen. Damned cat!
44 LACEMAKER LEKHOLM
If they thought she ruled the roost, they were quite wrong.
Your best!
If the lacemaker's behaviour that evening meets with a
certain degree of comprehension even from men of our
own day, to whom the idea of being dominated by a woman
no longer signifies the nadir of degradation, it is equally
certain that some women of the present time, who are as
anxious as Fru Lekholm to bring up their husbands in the
way they should go, will doubt whether her educational
method was the right one. }
Indeed, she herself discovered in her old age that, how-
ever admirable her object of reforming her husband had
been, her method had been ill chosen. At least, she once
confessed it herself to her children and grandchildren. Her
husband was ill with pneumonia, and both the nature of the
illness and the patient's great age made recovery unlikely.
The seriousness of the moment softened her bitterness. A
life of scolding at an obstinate husband gave place, in the
hour, as she thought, of final separation, to a degree of
gentleness and self-reproach. She vowed that she had not
been the original cause of the degradation and ridicule into
which Lekholm in the course of years had plunged her,
himself and his whole family. Before that unfortunate
night when he had had to be carried home she had never
uttered one word or made one gesture to show what a silly
fool she thought him. And Heaven knew there had been
cause enough.
It was above all the force of circumstances unhappy
circumstances which had by degrees transformed her into
the shrew all saw in her her husband, her children, her
grandchildren, her servants, her fellow-creatures. She could
prove that she had not been a devil from birth. She had
been born and brought up in a God-fearing home. From
her universally respected father, who had held his head
upright through all the changes and chances of life, she had
HASANIDEA 45
learned to know her place, as a daughter in the house, as a
wife in the home, as a woman in the community. Long be-
fore she married Lekholm she knew that a woman should
obey her husband. God had arranged and ordered it so. She
had never interfered in what he did until, unhappily, it
was too late. And she only asked her children whether both
they and their offspring would not have had quite another
and a more promising future before them if she had taken
charge of affairs long before she was compelled to do so.
Nor had she ever, on any occasion, wished to prevent
Lekholm from going to the cafe. She had wanted him to
have his amusement like other decent men. But she appealed
to her children: how could she have acted otherwise after
he had been borne home like a corpse on that fatal evening?
And with his accursed obstinacy, worse than a mule's! They
must remember that she had been born and brought up not
only in a God-fearing, but in a temperate home. She had
never seen a drunken man in her father's house. He had
taught her to hold them in horror. And when Lekholm
paid court to her, it was just on the fact that he was known
as a decent, sober tradesman that her father had laid em-
phasis. And he was to come home from every gathering
drunk, for years on end.
If they only had an idea how many tears she had shed
and what sufferings she had endured because she knew what
a laughing-stock he was making himself in the eyes of God
and men. And the tipsier he became, the more absurdly he
behaved. Ought she not to have prevented him? She had
known from the beginning, or at least had a feeling, that
he at bottom was nothing of a man, for all the heroic deeds
of which he bragged. But she wished to keep up appear-
ances, at least to the world. She wanted people to think she
was married to a man and not to a fool. She knew what
they had said when she accepted Lekholm that she could
get no one else. Every time people made mock of him, their
46 LACEMAKER LEKHOLM
mockery pierced her heart like a knife. Did they think it
was any pleasure to be regarded as a shrew? That was all
she wanted to say in her own defence now, by his death-
bed.
It might be that she had acted rather thoughtlessly that
time when she had locked up his best coat But after all . . .
And she would not have given up the coat that time, if he
had not said that everyone thought her a vixen. She a
vixen! It had deprived her of all power of resistance. She
felt that nothing else signified anything. Lekholm, the
idiot, could at that moment have taken not only his Sun-
day coat but everything he possessed. He could have carried
off the whole house without her being able to stir a finger.
She had felt it so much. It was as if she had stood naked in
the pillory in the market-place. She, who loved music, who
could interpret the piety of Bach, the profundity of Bee-
thoven, the seriousness of Handel, the charm of Mozart
that she should be regarded by the craftsmen of the town,
men who had grown up as plain, rough-hewn journeymen,
as a common scold!
And anyhow, if she had not handed over the coat that
time, things would have turned out just the same. She knew
her Lekholm. They could take it from her!
VIII
The handing over of the locked-up Sunday coat was not
the only incident of that evening which had such a decisive
influence on the Lekholms' married happiness. On his re-
turn home as on his departure the lacemaker had a sur-
prise. And now, as eight or ten hours earlier, a key played
a part of special significance. Fru Lekholm never referred
to this scene in her old age unless directly reminded of it
HAS AN IDEA 47
by her husband. In her eyes it was only a logical solution of
the problem which lay at the root of the tail-coat quarrel.
The lacemaker, for his part, was of quite another opinion.
In his view his married life would have taken quite a differ-
ent course if his reception by Augusta had been other than
it was.
As far as can be judged, there are no factors which di-
rectly challenge his assertion, especially in view of his good
nature and his power of forgetting an injury.
The lacemaker had on the whole enjoyed his evening.
He could, on the whole, be said to have conquered all along
the line 3 he had compelled his wife to produce the coat from
the wardrobe , he had, in his own view, turned the edge of
his friends' ridicule by a double manifestation of his abso-
lute independence 5 he had gone to the gathering, and had
drunk of his own accord several ostentatiously dark toddies.
He felt that he had had something resembling a triumph
that evening, and made his way home with more tender
feelings in his heart. That he was drunk he denied to his
last day, but he was certainly in a jovial mood, ready to
forgive his wife and bury the wrong perpetrated earlier in
the evening in oblivion and his own bosom.
He walked home with two or three friends who lived
in the same direction. He stood with them for a long time
at the foot of his stone flight of steps, discussing the af-
fairs of the world. Everything was apparently quiet in
the house 5 the light was out in his and Augusta's bedroom 5
the arch of heaven lay above them in all the glory of a cold
winter night, thickly dusted with stars.
He shook hands in farewell with his companions, as-
cended the two steps up to the outer door, unlocked it, shut
it, opened the lobby door, shut that too, hung up his hat
and overcoat and was about to go into the parlour, when
what the deuce! What was the matter with the door? It
would not open. . . .
48 LACEMAKER LEK.HOLM
Struggle with the lock as he might, the thing seemed be-
witched. He passed his hand across his forehead, a sudden
prey to the painful uncertainty which comes over a man
when he suddenly finds himself confronted with the inex-
plicable. What had happened? Where was he? He lit an-
other match and looked round. No, there was no mistake
about it. He was in his own lobby. He looked carefully at the
lock as long as the match gave light, then felt it again care-
fully in the dark, and stood still for a long time with his
back to the wall, thinking. . . .
And suddenly it dawned upon him. She had put the catch
up. ... The damned cat had locked him out 5 he supposed
she wanted him to sleep on the floor in the lobby. . . .
He stood absolutely motionless, muttering to himself:
damned cat, the devil take her! . . . Here he had come
home, filled with thoughts of peace and reconciliation and
affection . . . and she had shut the door. ... A damned
vixen! . . , For a few short minutes his heart was melted
at the thought of all the tenderness he had felt for her in
the last few hours. He was sorry for himself. It was not
only that he, the hero of Kolding, should be treated like a
dog by a hag of a woman. But that his kind heart should
have cherished tender feelings for her, that . . . that.
. . . No, the deuce! . . . The next moment he had made
a run at the door and delivered a double kick on it.
"Open the door, I tell you. Open the door!"
There was no answer from within. But he heard a roar
of laughter out in the street. It came from his friends, who
had waited outside to hear what kind of reception he would
get. His shouts had been heard through the pane of glass
which admitted light from the street. And the laugh was
followed by a cry of encouragement.
"Can't you get into your room, lacemaker? Do you want
any help?"
The lacemaker became perfectly quiet again. He put his
HASANIDEA 49
back to the wall again and thought. He was quite sober
now, absolutely sober. His brain was working at high pres-
sure. Now he would once more be the talk and laughing-
stock of the whole town. The very next day everyone would
know how he had been shamed and humiliated.
It was a little while before he had made up his mind
how he must act. He felt once more as if he were on the
field, out alone on a dangerous patrol, where any hasty step
might be fatal.
He could have broken the door in if he had liked. But if
he had done so, his companions outside would have had all
the more to tellj besides, he would wake the whole house,
the court copyist and his sister, who lived on the floor above,
the servant, and perhaps the journeymen and apprentices
as well. He passed his hand again across his forehead, which
was covered with perspiration from the mental strain he
had been through.
"Deuce take it, Lekholm, you've got to take this business
quietly and sensibly. You must be careful how you act."
And without uttering another word, except to murmur
under his breath that he had bivouacked under the open
sky in earlier days, he took off his overcoat quietly and
peaceably, went up to the attic and curled himself up on
the floor with a piece of matting under him, a bale of wool
braid for a pillow and his thick winter coat laid over him.
He did not sleep well. But nevertheless he smiled a strange
smile, quite new to him.
"The deuce! You'll pay for this, you cat! "
Just before five in the morning, before the inmates of
the house got up, he crept down from the attic again, opened
the lobby door and cautiously felt the lock of the parlour
door, which she had unfastened some time in the course of
the night. He was trembling and shivering with cold. His
face was white, his nose and lips blue. His moustaches hung
from the corners of his mouth like a walrus's whiskers.
5<3 LACEMAKER LEKHOLM
He presented a most ridiculous and at the same time lamen-
table appearance. But if Augusta could have seen his soul
at that moment she would have recoiled in horror at the
sight. It was not only his body which had frozen that night j
his heart had turned to stone. And something else had hap-
pened to him as well. The moment out in the lobby when
he saw light, when the secret of the lock was suddenly re-
vealed to him, was the third and last time in his life that he
understood, that he realized the position. From that mo-
ment on he only thought, brooded over a scheme of revenge.
He did not open any conversation with his wife while
he took off his best coat and crept into his working clothes.
His taciturnity might have seemed ominous to anyone else
than Augusta 3 and perhaps it would have seemed so to her,
if she had remembered the part he had played in the fight
at Kolding. But during her three years of married life
nothing had been farther from her than the association of
Lekholm's personality with any act of heroism. She took
his silence as a sign that she had really crushed him, broken
his obstinacy for ever.
Like the man of action he was, and with the quickness
that characterized his work as a craftsman, he put his plan
into execution as quickly as possible. He did not leave his
home during the whole of the week that followed. He went
about his daily work, to all appearance as though he had
been subjected to no humiliation. The only change notice-
able in him was that he put as much fresh energy into his
work as if a new Government contract had been at stake.
But at the same time he was in the best of humours, which
was not customary with him on such occasions, and sang
the Danish song, Den ta$re Landssoldat, from morning
till night.
At one o'clock on Saturday he left the workshop without
saying a word to his men, went to the market, where he
bought several pounds of beefsteak, and obtained some
HASANIDEA 5!
brandy and toddy. He conveyed all these articles in by the
door opening into Smalgatan and up to a safe hiding-place
in the attic, without anyone noticing either his absence or
his mysterious proceedings on his return. At four o'clock
an hour earlier than usual when he knew that Augusta
was out making her last purchases at Hintze's, the grocer's
he went down to the bedroom, had a wash, changed his
underclothing and put on his Sunday suit.
At half -past four exactly the lacemaker left his house,
ten minutes or a quarter of an hour before Augusta might
be expected to return. Having plenty of time on his hands,
he went for a short walk outside the town and then returned
to the Schweden, where he found some of his companions
assembled craftsmen and tradesmen who, like the lace-
maker, celebrated the arrival of the Sabbath every Saturday
night. There was a lot of joking about his having been
locked out, and finally the court copyist Lind, who lived
with his sister on the floor above the Lekholms and was
known for his intellectual brilliance, summed up the whole
situation in a witty, malicious pun which made them nearly
choke with laughter. And the curious thing was that the
lacemaker himself laughed.
"Deuce take it, I'll tell my wife that when I get home
to-night."
"Oh, I say, go easy, Lekholm, you don't say so much
when you get home at night j we know that."
Unfortunately there was a hitch in the lacemaker's plan
right at the beginning} or it would perhaps be more cor-
rect to say that things did not happen quite in accordance
with his calculations. He had expected that at about half-
past six or seven, when she had waited for him till her
patience was exhausted, Augusta would send one of the ap-
prentices to find him and ask him to come home. He had
his answer ready:
"Say that I shall come when I please,"
52 LACEMAKER LEKHOLM
But no apprentice came. That was a thing he had not
counted on. He scratched his head: what the deuce could
the baggage be up to? Had she suspected anything? Per-
haps she had made a search and found the provisions and
got an inkling of his plan? He reflected for a few moments
as to whether he should steal home and see whether the
beefsteak and the drinks were still where he had put them.
But the ex-volunteer from the Danish war saw the necessity
of suppressing his natural curiosity in the interests of high
strategy.
On those Saturdays which were not a special occasion
the gathering used to break up at eleven o'clock. But before
they separated that evening, the lacemaker tapped on his
glass, rose and said:
"Gentlemen and friends, you are welcome to my home
now to eat a little beefsteak with onions, empty a glass or
two and drink a little something when you go."
They stared at him. What the deuce! What had come
over the lacemaker? But he only smiled.
"Deuce take it!" he said, with a twirl of his moustaches,
"don't you believe there is any food and drink in the house?
Fve been out myself and bought two pounds of beefsteak,
and brandy and toddy. Don't you believe me now? Or
perhaps it's you who are afraid of my dear little wife? If so,
I'll only say that you have misjudged her. She's as quiet as a
lamb, and she and I ars the best of friends. She'll show
you that to-night. Come along! You'll be welcome I prom-
ise you that."
The lacemaker had grown fierce as he delivered his in-
vitation. He felt as if his heart had shut like a fist that tren>
bled with longing to strike. Now they should see, by Gad!
Now he would show them who they had been making fun
of. He would like to know if they still took him for a fool
after what was going to happen to-night. Now now,
by all the devils in hell, they should see a man who
HASANIDEA 53
had been in the fight at Kolding, and plenty of others, too!
He twirled his moustache again and raised his right arm
in the air like a company commander in the field:
"Forward, march, boys!"
Several refused to obey orders even before the march
had begun. And the column which formed up outside the
Schweden under the lacemaker's command and marched
across the Little Market in the clear winter night and turned
into Ostra Storgatan, had no little resemblance to that which
had recoiled before Kolding. They advanced slowly, as
though they might expect to fall into an ambush at any mo-
ment, so that the lacemaker was far ahead of the rest as he
strode on with long steps, muttering fearful threats and
swinging his Spanish cane like a sabre. A hundred yards or
so from his front steps he began to trot, which further in-
creased his lead. His anger was by now exalted to a holy
wrath. He talked to himself under his breath:
"Now, by Gad, now I'm going to put a stop to this. Fve
been a butt and a henpecked husband long enough. Now
the baggage shall see who's master in this house, she or I,
and all the others, too. Now you'll get beefsteak and onions
till your nostrils are full of it, you set of asses, who sat at
home when I was risking my life in the war. Now! now! "
He reached his own house, bounded up the three steps
like a leopard and hammered on the door with his clenched
fists:
"Open the door, Augusta, open it, or the deuce !"
The others had stopped for a moment to watch his pro-
ceedings. Then they advanced again slowly, all except the
copyist, who hurried forward to be at hand if needed. The
situation was becoming more and more of a puzzle to him,
as to the others.
The lacemaker thumped on the door again.
"Open the door, Augusta, I tell you, or, the deuce !"
The copyist had joined him.
54 LACEMAKER LEKHOLM
"What are you yelling for, you lunatic? If you've for-
gotten your key, I can open the door for you."
The lacemaker pushed the copyist down the steps.
"Don't interfere. The hostess shall receive her guests at
the door."
He attacked the door again.
"Open the door, I tell you, or, deuce take it ! We're
going to have beefsteak and onions and brandy and toddy.
Pve got the grub up in the attic. You've only got to put your
clothes on, old woman, and do some cooking. Open the
door, open the door, I tell you, or "
The copyist had reascended the three steps. But he was
pushed down again:
"Keep your hands off, please. And hold your tongue.
Don't interfere! No one but me understands this business.
Open, you damned cat, or I'll break in the door. Don't you
hear what I say?"
At that moment the door was actually opened. The great
key was hesitatingly and creakingly turned in the old lock.
The door groaned and was slowly opened an inch or two.
There was a glimpse of a tall white form inside.
The lacemaker flung the door wide open.
"I want beefsteak and onions," he yelled, blind with fury
at her not having opened the door earlier. "Beefsteak and
onions, I tell you! And deuce take it, I'll make you stir
your stumps, too!"
A second later he had given the white figure a resounding
box on the ear. The white figure uttered a scream:
"Help, help, he'll kill me!"
She fell backwards, struck her head against the banisters
of the staircase which led up to the rooms where the copyist
and his sister lived, screamed again and fell to the floor
with a thud.
The copyist, after the lacemaker had pushed him down
the steps for a second time, had joined the other guests.
HAS AN IDEA 55
All were growing more and more dubious and irresolute.
But the copyist recognized his own sister's voice calling
for help. He leapt to her aid, caught hold of the lacemaker
in the darkness and gripped him in combat. Several of the
other guests moved off in silence, while three or four
advanced hesitatingly to the steps to see what could be
done.
Augusta Lekholm, who that night had again fastened
the door between the lobby and the parlour, had lain in bed
listening to her husband's heathenish noise with a chilly
smile on her lips, cold despair in her heart and an inflexible
determination to go to her own home next day with the
twins until the lacemaker gave satisfactory assurances of
complete surrender in the future.
But when she heard the cry she leapt out of bed, lit a
candle and, with a quaking heart, hurried to the door.
There, to her consternation, she found Mamsell Lind sit-
ting on the stairs that led to her rooms, with blood running
down her face on to her nightgown from a wound in the
scalp. On the floor lay in a tangle the copyist Lind, the
looking-glass maker Safberg, the girdler Olsson and on
top of them all her own husband. The little lacemaker
seemed to have been inspired with the strength of a lion
and the suppleness of a leopard. He struck, kicked, bit,
panted and swore. He trembled and gnashed his teeth as
he groaned:
"Now, now, now, deuce take it! PU put a stop to this!"
"Lekholm, Lekholm! Good heavens, Lekholm, what
are you doing?" she cried, when, after a moment's thought,
she had succeeded in unravelling the tangle and more or
less realizing the situation. "Lekholm, don't you hear what
I say?"
She seized one of his coat-tails and pulled with all her
might. But the lacemaker was beyond hearing and feeling.
He only continued to shout:
56 LACEMAKER LEKHOLM
"Now, now, now, deuce take it! I'm going to put a stop
to this!" . . .
And he did put an end to it. After that evening of blood-
shed and disturbance the lacemaker assumed and for many
years held the place in his home which God and the Church,
by the words of the Marriage Service, had reserved for
him. He had nearly frightened the life out of Augusta.
When at last she had succeeded, not without some damage
to her nightdress, in tearing him from his opponents' grasp
and had got him into the bedroom, where she meant to
deal with his behaviour in the most moderate language
possible, his fury broke out again. Once more he began to
tremble all over, to grind his teeth, with flashing eyes and
fists clenched till they grew white at the knuckles. He leapt
into the air several times with both feet together, shouting:
"Silence, woman, silence! This is all your doing, you
vixen. I'll have silence here the silence of the grave. Or
else I don't know what I may not do."
Augusta looked at the little man she may be said to
have looked him up and down, as her greater height com-
pelled her to do. But only for a few brief seconds. For she
had met the look in the eyes of a man who had been driven
to the uttermost length, to the limit of reasoned action. She
felt at that moment to her frozen marrow that the man
before her would not shrink from murder.
And she said nothing. She said nothing for many years.
The lacemaker only needed to thump the table and say:
"Silence, the silence of the grave or I don't know what I
may not do." No more was needed to stifle any objection
or opposition from her side. For behind the words she always
saw the raving Lekholm of that sanguinary evening, the
man of superhuman strength, the hero of Kolding.
Nor was she the only person who, after the fight at the
front-door, which had been the subject of universal discus-
HASANIDEA 57
sion and comment, took another view of Pehr Lekholm.
Certainly he remained absurd. But people did not dare chaff
him so openly as before. Allusions to his foolishness always
had to be so veiled that he did not understand them. If they
were too obvious, his eyes flashed as much as to say: "Silence,
or I don't know what I may not do." The lacemaker had,
in other words, succeeded in making himself respected.
Nor was this all. Everyone now realized what people had
at first been unable to understand, with the result that they
had made light of his exploits that forces were alive in
him which, in the hour of danger or of exaltation, could
make a hero of him.
With the fight at the front-door, which attained wide
celebrity in the town, began Pehr Anders Lekholm's time
of greatness. And at the same time, it may be said, his his-
tory left the realms of legend and heroic exploit for the
firmer ground of economic reality.
He had won a victory on two fronts. He had gained his
companions' respect in so far as they no longer dared chaff
him openly, and at the same time he had made himself
master in his own house to such a degree that he could
henceforward come home from his convivial gatherings in
whatever state he pleased, quite sober or intoxicated, with-
out Fru Augusta Lekholm (daring to complain.
But there was something which made it impossible for
him to rest on the laurels he had won, respectable as they
were. There was still one slur to be wiped out 5 his wife had
called him a fool and an idiot. It was perfectly true that he
could not play the piano or talk German as well as Fru
Augusta. He had, moreover, hitherto readily and generously
admitted that in his home his wife represented both the
higher education and the keener intelligence, while he him-
self completed the picture as the representative of courage.
His restless spirit now desired nothing more or less than to
show his superiority in the intellectual domain also, and in
58 LACEMAKER LEKHOLM
one way or another establish his renown for all time in that
field as well. Only then would he be able to live free and
happy.
It was at this juncture in the history of the Lekholm fam-
ily that the lacemaker's brother, Oscar, appeared on the
scene, to play the leading role for many years to come and
reduce Pehr to a figure, certainly not unimportant, but of
the second rank.
This Oscar was born in 1838, so that he was fourteen
years younger than Pehr. He was one of those children who
come into the world more or less as Isaac did; their mothers
have stood behind the door and smiled. Oscar's mother
had paid for her smiling with her life 3 she was in any case
rather old to have a child, and then she had contracted
puerperal fever and died a fortnight after the boy's birth.
Oscar had been a delicate boy all through his childhood
and earliest youth 5 every time he was attacked by a child-
ish ailment he had nearly died.
When Pehr Lekholm came home from the Slesvig war
he had, as was mentioned earlier, taken over the workshop
for practical purposes, if not in name. His father, who suf-
fered severely from gout, moved with Oscar into the rooms
on the first floor, and there the old man died in 1 85 1 of ague,
which ravaged the town that winter. Then Oscar moved
down to his brother's part of the house and lived with the
apprentices in a little room looking on to the yard, while
the first-floor rooms were let to the court copyist Lind and
his sister.
Oscar had duly been sent to the grammar school, in which
the lacemaker himself had gone through three classes, and
owing to his poor constitution had stayed on year after
year without either the lacemaker or himself coming to
any decision about his future. But now he had reached the
age when a decision must be made. He had himself no
HASANIDEA 59
definite wishes. The lacemaker scratched his head when he
thought of the boy. What should he do with him? There
was no go about him. He had always been quiet, uncom-
municative and reserved. He spent most of his time sitting
over a book. One summer he had helped with the spinning
up in the attic, but he had not put his back into the work.
And now he had risen so high in the school that he could
hardly be trained as a craftsman. The lacemaker thought
the matter over and came to the conclusion that he would
perhaps do best behind a counter faking the weights when
customers were not looking, sitting and writing figures in
an account-book, or something in that line. One thing was
certain: he was no good as a craftsman. Pehr Lekholm had
already spoken of him several times to Johan Hintze, and
wondered whether a place could be found for him among
the casks of herrings and sacks of flour. But Hintze thought
the boy was not strong enough.
"Serving in a shop's not like sitting at a loomj it needs
a man's strength."
The lacemaker had to abandon the idea of his brother
and protege serving in a shop, and thought of apprenticing
him to Sjogren to learn watchmaking. That ought to be a
quiet enough profession!
The lacemaker was worried about Oscar. And even if
he did not take a gloomy view of the boy's future, he had
never dreamt that through him would come the oppor-
tunity of removing the slur Augusta had cast upon him
when she called him a fool.
And yet this was the case.
About six o'clock one Saturday evening at the end of
April the lacemaker and the other members of the "monthly
bath" club were sitting in the bath-house, sweating, scratch-
ing their backs and exchanging such ideas as the situation
and temperature suggested to them. The schoolmaster
Browallius came in, and Lekholm was introduced to him.
6O LACEMAKER LEKHOLM
They had run. up Against each other several times at the
meetings o the education circle. And hardly two months
earlier Browallius and his wife had been to the shop to buy
two or three yards of black material to ornament a coffin j
their newly born child had died, and this melancholy oc-
currence had given the lacemaker an opportunity of re-
marking, as he handed over the little parcel, that the Lord
giveth and the Lord taketh away, and that men must praise
His holy name and obey His commandments. The fat
schoolmaster was short-sighted, and without his glasses had
some difficulty in finding his way in the feeble light of the
bath-house. The lacemaker, however, rose when he saw
him and said:
"Please sit here, Herr Doktor, I'll move along and make
room."
The schoolmaster blinked; he had obviously not recog-
nized the lacemaker. The latter accordingly bowed and
murmured his name; and the schoolmaster sat down beside
him. As they sat there, scratching their backs, chests and
arms, the lacemaker suddenly had an idea an idea which
was to decide the fate of Oscar, himself and his whole
family. Suppose he asked Dr. Browallius about Oscar's
future? . . . He had, as has been said, had earlier contact
with him both on the ideal plane in the education circle
and on the commercial plane, when he sold the material for
the coffin. It could, therefore, hardly seem presumptuous
or too familiar if he now, with a simple question, asked the
schoolmaster's advice in a family matter.
"Excuse my troubling you, Herr Doktor," he said, "but
I have a younger brother and, so to speak, proteg6, who is
one of your pupils, and with regard to whose future I feel
a certain anxiety, if I may so express myself."
"Excuse me, but what is your name?" asked Browallius,
who had not caught the name when the lacemaker bowed
to him.
HASANIDEA 6 1
"Lekholm. Master-lacemaker Lekholm. You did me the
honour of making a small purchase from me on the occa-
sion of the loss of your youngest child."
"I know, I know. But why are you anxious about your
brother's future?"
Lekholm explained his meaning in a long and round-
about oration. Before he had finished, the schoolmaster in-
terrupted him.
"Why not let the boy go to the university, and possibly, if
ways and means allow, read for Holy Orders? His mental
abilities are of such an order that they deserve a chance of
further development. Besides, from my knowledge of him,
and from what I have seen of his general behaviour, he
seems to be of a quiet and meditative disposition. So why
not let the boy continue his studies, if, as I said just now,
ways and means allow of it?"
No one knowing the lacemaker's impressionable and at
the same time proud nature, and his childish wealth of im-
agination, will have any difficulty in understanding what
effect these words had upon him. Oscar had mental abilities!
They ought to be further developed! Oscar was of a quiet
and meditative disposition! Oscar should be a student! A
Lekholm a student! A Lekholm with a university degree.
. . . That was something quite new in the history of that
family of craftsmen, a thing he himself had never dreamed
of for all his power of imagination. His only brother at a
university! What lustre would he not cast upon the family
name! The lacemaker already saw himself visiting Oscar
at Lund and drinking toddy with his friends, men of learn-
ing. His brother Oscar a clergyman! Perhaps he would
even see the day on which his own brother would preach
in Trinity Church itself, from whose pulpit, famous
throughout the kingdom for its beauty, so many eloquent
preachers had interpreted God's word!
The very thought filled him with enthusiasm* A brother
62 LACEMAKER LEKHOLM
of his student and clergyman. ... No other craftsman in
the town had such a thing. . . . Through the puny little
Oscar he would himself attain a social position all the heroic
deeds in the world could not have secured him 5 he, master-
lacemaker Lekholm, had a brother a student, studying at
the university. . . .
To the crackling, shining firework display of imagery
which Dr. BrowalHus's words had called into being in his
naive and impressionable mind, there was added a few mo-
ments later one rocket excelling all the others in brilliance
and splendour. Augusta would not be able to call him a fool
any longer now! Had he not a brother who was to take his
degree at the university? She had none. One of her brothers
was nothing more than a barber, and the other was behind
a counter in a shop in Malmo. But he, the lacemaker, had
a brother who was to be a student. What did that prove?
Why, if his father had not apprenticed him at fourteen, but
had let him continue his studies, who knew but that he him-
self would not have given proof of the same intellectual
capacities as Oscar? Why not? Who could prove the con-
trary? Was not the presumption rather, seeing that Oscar
had brains and they were brothers, that he himself had
similar mental abilities, although they had never been
tested? Who could prove the contrary?
It was a long time before the lacemaker could pull him-
self together sufficiently to stammer a reply to Dr. Bro-
wallius.
"It's worth thinking about," he said, although he had
already made his decision, "and as for ways and means, that
could be managed. The boy has inherited half the freehold
from his father, and the house is valued at over six thousand
riksdaler."
Browallius smiled.
"Men have become bishops on less," he said.
When the lacemaker came home that night from the
HASANIDEA 63
convivial gathering at the Schweden, he went straight into
the apprentices' bedroom and shook Oscar till he woke.
"You're to be a student!"
Oscar rubbed his eyes. At the sight of his brother and
guardian, with inflamed countenance and smelling o toddy,
he feared some berserk outbreak, and held both hands bei-
fore his face in alarm.
The lacemaker shook him again.
"Don't you hear what I say? You're to be a student!
And then you're to read theology and be a clergyman. Dr.
Browallius and I have put our wise heads together and de-
cided the matter. And now you've got to put your back into
it. The deuce you have!"
Then he went into the bedroom and aroused his wife,
who was only pretending to be asleep.
"Who was it who always said I was a fool?"
Augusta protested. She too was alarmed at his resolute
and martial aspect.
"Go to bed, Lekholm dear. You'll wake the children."
The lacemaker twirled his moustache.
"I want to know first who it was that called me a fool."
"Perhaps I may have once, Lekholm, years ago. . . ."
"Once! Often! But anyhow you admit having called me
a fool?"
"Yes, yes, Lekholm, only don't wake the children."
The lacemaker stepped a pace nearer the bed, put his
hands on his hips and said:
"Look at me!"
"Yes, yes, I'm looking, I'm looking."
"I only want to tell you that Oscar is to be a student and
read for Holy Orders. Dr. Browallius and I agreed on that
this evening. Do you hear what I say?"
"Yes, yes, Lekholm, I hear, I hear."
The lacemaker put the other foot forward.
"Well, what does that prove?"
64 LACEMAK.ER LEK.HOLM
"Why, it proves that Browallius thinks he has brains."
"But what does it prove as regards myself?"
"I don't understand what you're driving at, Lekholm, I
really don't."
"You don't understand j you, with your good brains and
your musical talent. I understand. But do you know what
it proves? It proves that I, as Oscar's blood-brother, am
not the fool you think I am. Do you understand now?"
Now one of the twins began to cry, Augusta protested:
"Didn't I say so, Lekholm? Now you've woken the
children."
'Woken them? That's just what I mean to do wake
them! My boys shall be students, the whole lot of them,
as many as you give me. Thatfs what Pm good jorl"
The lacemaker, without knowing what he did, had ut-
tered the fatal words, and had made demands on himself
and his posterity the full bearing of which neither he nor
any other person on earth at that moment could grasp or
foresee. Sooner or later the dream of a university degree
would have attracted some member of the Lekholm family,
as for over a century it has attracted and still attracts every
Swedish family which longs to rise above the mass and
move in a loftier, freer sphere.
But, as it happened, it was the lacemaker, Pehr Anders
Lekholm, who had dreamed the dream and, late one Sat-
urday night, uttered the fatal words:
"My boys shall be students, the whole lot, as many as
you give me."
From the moment when the puny weakling Oscar, whom
they had not known what to do with, revealed himself as
a future servant of the Lord, the lacemaker, with his cus-
tomary enthusiasm, made the boy's future his whole inter-
est in life. Certainly Oscar could not have a separate room
for his studies: space conditions forbade that. The two ap-
prentices were enjoined to keep as quiet as mice in the
HASANIDEA 65
den they shared with him when Oscar was "working."
But he ought to and should have better food, and he
alone of the whole family was regaled with an egg for
breakfast. The lacemaker knew that a working brain re-
quired plenty of nourishment j an apprentice or a young
journeyman could make do with whatever came along, and
he himself was content so long as he could fill his stomach j
but a young man who was doing brainwork must fill his
brain, and as food for the brain there was nothing like hen's
e gg s - An egg contained, in the lacemaker's frequently ex-
pressed opinion, all the nourishment which was later re-
discovered in the adult fowl.
So the lacemaker incorporated Oscar's success with his
own, and his life during the next ten years became a kind of
magnified reflection of his brother's. One September day,
when he was eighteen, Oscar returned from Lund, where
he had matriculated and been entered as a member of the
university. His head was crowned with the blue Lund
student's cap. The lacemaker took a holiday from the work-
shop that day and did not leave Oscar's sidej they walked
together up and down the two main streets, and in the eve-
ning Pehr Lekholm gave a party at the Schweden in his
brother's honour, to which all his own boon companions
were invited.
Oscar had passed his examination so well that he had been
allowed to live out for the next three terms on a Count's
estate not very far from his native place, and he occasionally
visited the town in the Count's carriage and even in the
company of the Count and Countess.
That Christmas he sprang a further surprise on his
brother and guardian. He declared that he would rather
read medicine than theology. The lacemaker stared at him
with his mouth half open, twirled his moustaches, and said:
"Are you as clever as all that?"
"Clever? What do you mean?"
66 LACEMAK.ER LEKHOLM
"What do I mean? Deuce take it! Pm not so stupid that
I don't understand that one needs much more brains to be-
come a doctor than a clergyman."
Oscar considered that from the point of view of brains
there would be no difficulty 5 it was only a question of
money.
The lacemaker could sit still no longer. He walked to
and fro with his arms folded. He could not utter a word.
He, lacemaker Lekholm, had a brother who was to be a
doctor! Brother to a man who was lord of life and death,
a man to whom all doffed their hats in fear and reverence!
Perhaps he might even become town doctor in that very
town! Dr. Lekholm, lacemaker Lekholm's brother.
He stopped, put his hands into his trousers pockets and
looked at his young brother. That puny little chap, as weak
as a chicken, with down on his chin and pimples on his
cheeks so he was to rise to social eminence, rescue human
lives from the jaws of death j wherever he went a kind of
vacuum of reverence would be created around him, some-
thing majestic and exalted which could be expressed in no
other way than a subdued murmur of "the doctor's coming,
Dr. Lekholm's coming." . . . The lacemaker could only
laugh, a laugh that was half bewilderment, half triumph.
The news was too overwhelming, too unexpected for him
to be able to think clearly. The only articulate words he
could utter were: "The deuce!"
It was not till some time later that he added:
"We must think it over. But not a word to Augusta. Not
a word. Mind that! Or, deuce take it "
Pehr and Oscar spent the whole of Christmas-time working
out calculations. A room could be got for something between
25 and 40 kroner a term. Oscar would have breakfast and
supper at home. The charwoman would fetch dinner in a
basket. It cost 75 ore for two i.e. 37^ ore a head. That
made about 200 kronor a term, including books. At any
HASANIDEA 67
rate, until Oscar had taken his bachelor's degree and had to
go to Stockholm to take up duty there. The whole thing
would take eight years. It was a long time, but at the end of
it he would be a doctor and a man of position. And when
Oscar had got so far, it would be his turn to help the lace-
maker's boys, who would by then be old enough to go to
the university. For they were going to be students. The
deuce they were!
"But not a word to Augusta about it. Not a word till
youVe taken your bachelor's degree. Mind that! We must
keep it dark, or she may think it'll cost too much."
Augusta, however, was informed of the state of affairs in
a roundabout way. The very evening Oscar went back to
Lund the lacemaker confided his secret to his tenant, the
copyist Lind. As they sat and drank at the Schweden, Lek-
holm's heart overflowed. He took the copyist by the hand
and looked into his eyes with an air of profound solemnity
and importance.
"Can you keep a secret?"
The copyist pledged his honour as an official of the court
of justice. How many secrets were hidden in his breast!
how many things unknown to the world he had inscribed
on stamped paper!
The lacemaker stretched out his neck till his unnaturally
large Adam's apple looked like a second chin. He put his
lips so close to the copyist's ear that his huge moustache
tickled the other's face, and whispered:
"Oscar's going to be a medical student. What do you
think of that? A doctor! The deuce! But not a word. Not a
word to a soul! Augusta knows nothing about it. And she
isn't to know anything till he's taken his bachelor's degree.
She might think it'll be too expensive now when our own
little ones are beginning to come one after the other."
The copyist alluded once more to all the secrets that lay
hidden in his breast. But when they had parted that same
68 LACEMAKER LEKHOLM
night on the threshold, he went straight up to his rooms,
woke his sister Lina and told her under promise of absolute
secrecy what he had heard. He had never forgiven the lace-
maker for the sanguinary encounter in which his sister had
come off so badly, and he knew what a promise of secrecy
meant for Lina. He was glad to have a chance of paying off
old scores against the lacemaker, the conceited idiot.
And at seven the very next morning Augusta came rush-
ing up to the workshop in the attic, where the lacemaker
was. She wanted to speak to him quite privately. But the
lacemaker was no longer a man who could be talked to pri-
vately, except when he chose. Moreover, he understood in
an instant what had happened.
"The devil take the copyist! Silence here! the silence of
the grave! or I don't know what I may not do."
Augusta withdrew to her own domain, grumbling to her-
self. It is possible that there might have been a storm
which would have compelled the lacemaker to assert his
authority again by some display of violence. But a visit from
the lacemaker's father-in-law, Herr Topfer, that very eve-
ning, had a pacifying effect. The surgeon took Lekholm's
side completely. He thought the plan an extremely wise
one. The medical profession was without doubt the noblest
to which a man could devote his abilities, and no sacrifices
were too great when it was a question of helping a gifted lad
to consecrate his life to the art of healing. If God in His
wisdom had granted him, the assistant surgeon, sufficient
means he himself would have chosen that career.
The lacemaker soon forgave the copyist for having
blabbed. He felt, indeed, that it had been all to the good;
for now that the secret had become public property without
serious consequences to his domestic peace, lie could talk
openly of his brother's brilliant future.
And he did so with an enthusiasm which would have
wearied his acquaintances if his lack of sense of proportion
HASANIDEA 69
and megalomania had not given them an opportunity o
"pulling his leg." He became a butt again, as he had been
on account first of his heroic exploits and later of his admired
Augusta. When his friends and acquaintances met him, the
first question they asked was:
"Well, any news of Oscar ?"
The lacemaker twirled his moustaches.
"Oscar, yes, the deuce there is! Yes, by Jove! I had a
letter from him the other day. He "
And he would start a long story. . . .
In the course of a few summer and Christmas holidays
the lacemaker, by means of an inquisitiveness which Oscar
found most wearisome, had completely identified himself
with the academic world. He soon knew everything there
was to be known about the university. Not only had he the
professors of the medical faculty at his fingers' ends, but by
dint of ceaseless questioning he had extended his knowledge
till it embraced a large number of the lecturers and the
best-known of the eccentrics who stayed up without ever
taking a degree. He revelled in them their peculiarities,
their absent-mindedness, their remoteness from the world,
their strange doings. None of the funny stories told over
the toddy-glasses had any zest for him if their subject was
not the university. Incidents in his own sphere of activity
and circle of acquaintances, the adventures and pranks of
travelling journeymen, had no interest for him; they be-
longed to a lower, insignificant world which made no appeal
to him. Even in the fights which, according to Oscar, still
took place between "town and gown," though on a smaller
scale than in old days, he abjured his own past completely
in his thoughtless enthusiasm and took the students 5 side
with all the vehemence of his fiery nature.
"I'd like to have been there I'd have shown them how
we did it in '48. The deuce I would!"
At this time, in his own view, the lacemaker was at the
7O LACEMAKER LEKHOLM
height of his power and prestige. Another factor contributed
to this besides Oscar's future medical career the origin and
extension of the volunteer movement in Sweden. It was a
matter of course that this movement should arouse the lace>-
maker's enthusiasm to a degree hitherto unwitnessed even
in him. At the very first meeting of the education circle at
which the question was discussed he took the floor and de-
livered two harangues which created a pardonable sensation,
less on account of their oratorical form than of their vigour.
They were more like a demonstration in bayonet fighting
than anything else. As an ex-volunteer in the Slesvig war
he regarded himself as marked out for a command, and was
put in charge of a troop.
Sunday, instead of Saturday evening, now became the
one day in the week in which he felt that he lived in the true
meaning of the word. In order worthily to prepare himself
for it, and for the responsibility which rested upon him, he
came home from the cafe the evening before at an earlier
hour and as a rule perfectly sober. He was up early on Sun-
day morning, brushed and examined his green volunteer's
uniform and polished his sword. Immediately after break-
fast he arrayed himself in his panoply, put on his shako,
brushed up his moustaches and girded himself with his
sword. He cast a last approving glance at himself in the
parlour mirror and turned to his wife and children, who
were watching him, with the words:
"Am I all right?"
Then he went off to the volunteers' pavilion on the out-
skirts of the town, where they used to parade. For several
hours he commanded and shouted at his troop with an ever-
growing sensation of joi de vivre. And this sensation swelled
to positive ecstasy when, at the head of his men, he rushed
forward across the little pavilion garden in a bayonet charge
against the enemy, who were waiting for them behind
Lagergren's garden hedge under command of Olsson the
HAS AN IDEA 7!
girdler. The girdler always retreated a few steps when at-
tacked by Lekholm. The lacemaker always rushed straight
at him, and forgetting in his martial zeal that this was not
Kolding, but only pretence, he used to thrust his sword at
the girdler through the hawthorn hedge in a manner which
the latter considered threatening and aggressive. The gird-
ler had repeatedly remonstrated with him for his mis-
placed zeal, and once they had nearly come to loggerheads
during the luncheon which after the exercises was always
consumed in the pavilion, a luncheon with plenty of drink,
including innumerable glasses of bultis.
During these years blessings fell like spring rain on the
lacemaker's head. His wife had borne him three more sons,
all of whom were to rise to distinction. He himself thought
the time was not far off when he would be promoted to be
lieutenant in the volunteer corps. Oscar came home in the
holidays and accompanied him to the Saturday evening re-
unions at the Schweden, where the lacemaker made the
shy, reserved lad tell stories about professors and students.
And one day at the beginning of June Oscar came home
as a bachelor of medicine, wearing the red-braided officers'
cap of the Royal Medical Corps, Oscar was all but an offi-
cer! Artillerymen, police-constables, sergeants and even
elderly sergeant-majors saluted him as he walked along the
boulevard at the lacemaker's side.
When he came home after this triumphant walk he
stopped in front of Augusta, looked her hard in the eyes and
asked:
"Do you remember calling us Lekholms fools?"
Augusta protested:
"I've never called Oscar a fool."
"No, but youVe called me one! Isn't Oscar my brother ?"
But Augusta flung up her hands in disgust.
"Pish, I haven't the patience to listen to you! You talk
such rubbish!"
72 LACEMAICER LEKHOLM
During these years only one dark cloud appeared in the
summer sky of his happiness. When in 1862 town councils
were introduced in Sweden, he was, to his immense astonish-
ment, passed over, although several tradesmen were elected,
including the girdler Olsson, the dyer Lundgren, the tan-
ner Hofstedt and the looking-glass-maker Safberg. His
name was not even mentioned in private discussion. That he
should be thus ignored he who had taken part in the Slesvig
war, who was a prominent figure in the volunteer move-
ment and had a brother who was practically an army sur-
geon!
But he consoled himself. He supposed they thought him
too young. He was still under forty j and they were all
elderly men except Olsson. His turn would come one
day. . . .
And the sky was summer blue again.
IX
The. beginning of the collapse of lacemaker Lekholm and
his family may be said to date from the introduction of
town councils in Sweden, although it had no connection with
the development of the new communal administration. It
had its origin in another event which took place at this time
his brother Oscar's departure for Stockholm to do duty
at a hospital there.
Great as were the differences between the two brothers as
regards both brain-power and qualities of heart, a retrospec-
tive observer of their psychologies cannot help noticing one
important point of resemblance namely, in the conditions
they required for their spiritual flowering. Oscar, just like
Pehr, demanded exceptional or at least spacious conditions
for the full development of his latent characteristics. It had
needed a war to reveal the lacemaker as the man he really
HASANIDEA 73
was 5 and now Oscar Lekholm, medical student, required a
town of the size of Stockholm for the unfolding of his re-
markable personality in full splendour.
It seemed to be clothes which were the decisive factor.
Even in the relatively peaceful panoply of a volunteer the
lacemaker had terrified girdler Olsson by his manifestations
of bloodthirstiness. Something similar happened in Oscar's
case. The mere act of putting on the tall hat with which a
medical student, in those days, used to crown his head on
arriving in the capital had awakened in him dreams of whose
existence the lacemafcer at least had till now been completely
ignorant. Or it would perhaps be more correct to say that
as the placing of sword or rifle in the lacemaker's hand had
turned his heroic dreams to realities, so Oscar, by virtue of
the tall hat, was able to fulfil the desire he had till now con-
cealed behind a fagade of reticence and shyness the long-
ing for a merry life amid clinking gksses and intoxicating
music.
This metamorphosis of Oscar from a quiet, reticent, al-
most boorish Lund student to a full-fledged young aris-
tocrat about town came as a complete surprise to the lace-
maker when it finally did come in the form of a series of
crashes.
If he had been as keen-sighted in the matter of human
weaknesses as in hitting the bull's-eye on a target he was a
remarkably good shot he would probably already have
noticed one or two circumstances which might have given
him food for thought. Oscar's studies had cost considerably
more than had originally been calculated j the time allotted
had also proved to be insufficient. But it was not till Oscar
had moved to Stockholm that the lacemaker began to be
seriously anxious. As, unfortunately, is only too usual in
such cases, it was possible for the metamorphosis to be hid-
den from the person mainly concerned until it had been
for several years a melancholy, incontrovertible fact. Like
74 LACEMAKER LEKHOLM
a star shining in space, happiness often continues to send it
light to men long after it has ceased to exist. It can, too
sometimes warm a human heart long after its source hai
ceased to be life-giving. For another year the lacemakei
could go about singing his younger brother's praises, and hii
brother could pay a few isolated and very brief visits to hii
native town in the summer on his way to or from duty
And then there was joy and feasting in the Lekholms' house
or at the Schweden.
So little idea had the lacemaker of the reality that hung
over his little head like a sword of Damocles on a threac
that grew ever thinner, that he even declared to all anc
sundry that Stockholm had "made a man of Oscar." He hac
developed in every way, both bodily and mentally 5 he hac
become fat and round, had grown a moustache and wore z
tall hat even on visits to his native town. He had also de
veloped hitherto undreamed-of social gifts. What speeches
he could make, what stories he could tell! He showed him
self the master of a rich and varied instrument. He coulc
strike a serious note, relate incidents from the behind-the
scenes of politics, describe August Blanche's appearance
when he made his great speech, and much else of the kind
The merry and the serious-minded found equal pleasure
in listening to him.
The lacemaker used to sit leaning back in his chair with
a cigar in his right hand and his left fist on his left thigh
like a field-marshal on horseback, and look round at his
companions as they listened eagerly and proved by then
silence, or by a sudden burst of laughter, what a marvellous
doctor Oscar would be in time. He could hold his audience
fascinated for a whole evening, now with his jokes, now with
a survey of historic events in the capital ; and then, before
they broke up, came the great moment. Oscar tapped on his
glass and announced that he wished to say a few words
which came from the depths of his heart. He wished here-
HASANIDEA 75
among Pehr's comrades, publicly to thank his elder brother
and foster-father for all that he had been to him. He pointed
out that his brother had shown no less generosity of heart in
time of peace than in the hour of danger and amid the tu-
mult of battle. In the Slesvig war he had been ready to
sacrifice, if need be, his life for a brother nation, now he sac-
rificed his savings for a brother in the flesh. But he would
not have made that sacrifice for nothing. He, Oscar, would
see to that. It all sounded so beautiful that the lacemaker
had to take his flowered handkerchief from his tail-coat
pocket and wipe away a tear or two. It was wonderful to
hear Oscar talk like that.
But it was always rather tiresome afterwards, when the
guests had all gone and Augusta had put out the lamp that
hung from the parlour ceiling and retired to the bedroom.
The two brothers were left alone. And then Oscar used to
say:
"By the way, I wanted to have a little business talk with
you, Pehr."
These words filled the lacemaker with consternation
not that he was mean, but because he desired to keep his
emotional mood untroubled by all mundane considerations
as long as possible.
"Won't it wait till to-morrow?"
But Oscar could not wait. He always had to leave next
day. And he did not want to interfere with his brother's
work. That was one of his principles never to disturb peo-
ple at their work.
So they had their business talk.
"It's a lot of money," said the lacemaker.
H'm, it might seem a lot of money. But the lacemaker
did not understand these things. A medical student who
would soon be a doctor could not possibly live like a student
of theology. He must show himself in society, make friends
and gain confidence, for a man never knew where he might
76 LACEMAKER LEKHOLM
not find himself when he had finished his training. And one
of these old friends might make a great deal of difference
to his future when he applied for a post as town doctor or in
a hospital. Some big bug in the town might say: "Oh, yes,
Lekholm, I know him. We'll take him." But the lacemaker
did not understand these things.
The suggestion that the lacemaker did not understand
anything was the most effective method of immediately re-
ceiving his support. Then he understood in a moment. No
one should think him the fool Augusta saw in him. He
twirled his moustaches and wrinkled his brow.
"Deuce take it, not understand? I don't see anything so
difficult to understand in that!"
"Besides," Oscar added, "what are a few thousand kronor
more or less to a doctor when he's once started?"
When the little transaction was over and the lacemaker
joined his wife, Augusta sometimes gave him a timid,
questioning look.
"How much did he want?"
The larger the sum had been, the more emphatically did
the lacemaker reply:
"I'll have silence here! The silence of the grave! You
mind your own business, and I'll mind mine! "
For some days after Oscar's visit the lacemaker could not
get rid of the thought that it had been a great deal of money.
But his good nature and quickness to forget soon came to his
help. His friends' eulogies helped too. They clapped him
on the back and said:
"A devil of a fellow, Oscar! A fellow with such humour
and such a power of expressing himself has only to open his
mouth to frighten death from the door. Who'd have
thought it of him?"
"Thought it of him? Why not? Did anyone believe what
Pd done at Kolding, when I came back from the war?"
HASANIDEA JJ
After Oscar had been two years in Stockholm the first bolt
came. And it came from a still comparatively cloudless sky.
What had happened was this. Oscar had, as a good com-
rade should, backed bills for a friend. Not that there was
anything new in that} all medical students did it the
Handelsbank, which had a professor of medicine on its
board, accepted their bills readily. Nor did the banks lose
anything. But this time the comrade whom Oscar had guar-
anteed had got into serious trouble and could not meet the
bill. He had bolted. It must be said on his behalf that love
and passion had a hand in the gamej Oscar's comrade had
fallen desperately in love with a beautiful soubrette. But
for this passion there would have been no danger j for Oscar,
with the thorough knowledge he possessed of his comrade's
sterling character, could swear that he was at bottom an
honourable manyes, the most honourable man who had
ever pressed the hand of another. But where human pas-
sions are concerned the dictates of honour often have to
come second. So not one hard word of this friend, who, his
future destroyed, would all his life bitterly regret the de-
vouring flame the soubrette had kindled in his breast.
But now his affairs must be cleared up. Otherwise he,
Oscar, and several of his friends would "go smash." And
much more than that: the Stockholm banks' confidence in
medical students would receive so severe a blow that he
and his comrades had grave fears lest medical students' bills
should be refused for several years to come. The reputation
of a whole students' corps was at stake. It was, in other
words, the duty of every medical student to do his utmost
to preserve its honour and credit. He, Oscar, was involved
in this unhappy affair to the extent of 5,000 kronon This
sum must be obtained at all costs, and quickly.
It was certainly not the first time in the history of the
world that such appeals, thanks to the (in such cases) un-
78 LACEMAKER LEKHOLM
failing accuracy of the postal service, have reached their
destination. Archaeologists' excavations in Egypt prove that
papyrus rolls of a practically identical nature were sent,
four hundred years before the birth of Christ, by needy
students at Alexandria University to their worthy fathers,
tilling in the sweat of their brows the fertile but stubborn
land of the Nile delta. But to the lacemaker the news his
younger brother sent him was something absolutely new,
something entirely undreamt of. That letter made so pro-
found an impression on him that he used, several decades
after, to describe to his grandsons its effect on his feelings
and thoughts by way of warning from an old and experi-
enced man to a lad about to go to the university.
According to his own account, the kcemaker had been
utterly at a loss. He had, at least, understood clearly from
the start that the disaster must in all circumstances be con-
cealed from Augusta. For a time he considered turning to
some outside person for advice in his sore need. The first
person he thought of was naturally the copyist Lind, partly
because he was his nearest neighbour, partly because he was
comparatively well educated. But his second thought was
not to do so; Augusta would have been told the story in a
couple of hours by Mamsell Lind. And that must be pre-
vented at all costs.
He thought for a moment, too, of Dr. Browallius. But
both pride and fear prevented him. He would not let any
outsider know what was happening to Oscar and his studies.
He had bragged about him so much in the past that he
could not now expose both Oscar and himself to the sneers
of the envious and spiteful. And he was afraid too afraid
that another university man might tell him the whole truth
about Oscar and his behaviour. For despite Oscar's constant
references to his inability to understand academic conditions,
he saw fully and clearly that something was wrong. But to
HASANIDEA 79
He never hesitated a moment, of course, as to whether he
should help his young brother or not. The prestige of a
whole students 7 corps was clearly at stake, and of the corps
which he regarded as the finest of all, that which had the
last word in the fight between sickness and health, between
life and death. And Oscar would completely misjudge his
brother if he thought that, in such a case, he would ignore
the first call of duty and humanity.
The lacemaker raised the money on the security of his
freehold house in Ostra Storgatan. At his father's death
the property had been valued at something over 6,000
riksdaler, but it was worth more even then} and its value
had further increased with the passage of years.
Grandpapa Lekholm used to tell his grandsons who were
going to the university also as a warning what a perfect
hell the following years had been. Nor had anyone who
knew his wife any reason to doubt the truth of his words.
For one thing, the blow in question was not the only one of
its kind. It was followed by others, delivered with the su-
perior, easy confidence of the man of the world. For another,
the time soon came when the lacemaker simply could not
say no to Oscar's demands. He had already pledged the
greater part of what once had been his property. There was
no alternative but to go on staking more and more in the
hope, which became more uncertain every year, that Oscar
would at last take his final degree.
And the worst part of it was that he never had a chance
now of discussing matters with his young brother. Oscar
never came home now. He had so much to do. He had his
work to do j he was sent off to do duty as provincial doctor,
as town doctor, as surgeon to a battalion. There was no
answer to thisj these turns of duty brought in income
for example, at Smedjebacken one summer Oscar had
earned two thousand riksdaler in two months. This was all
to the good 5 above all, it proved the accuracy of Oscar's
8O LACEMAKER LEKHOLM
contention that when he was once in practice a thousand-
kroner note one way or the other would make no diff erence.
But what the lacemaker could not understand was that Os-
car, despite these profitable duties, asked for more money
than ever.
Even harder to bear than the impossibility of having
speech of his younger brother was the persistency with
which Augusta endeavoured to discuss the matter with him,
Lekholm.
Augusta certainly knew her place in the scheme of things
as a wife; she had sworn before God and men to obey
Lekholm, and he had himself, with all emphasis, reminded
her of the duties she had undertaken. But she was also a
mother. Did he give no thought to his own children, who
were now growing up? Were they to have any education?
Or was it only his usual fine talk, when he went about
boasting that his boys were to be students, every one of
them, all four? What sort of education would they get if
all the money went to that young cuckoo, that odious dandy,
who was too proud to show himself at home? How much
money had Lekholm actually lent him? And when did he
mean to take his examination? Would it not be much better
to take his examination than to go on doing these turns of
special duty?
Day after day Augusta asked him these disagreeable
questions. And she always ended with the warning:
"You say Pm to mind my business, and you'll mind
yours. Look after yours, I shan't interfere in it. But Heaven
help you, Lekholm! Whatever you do, think of your chil-
dren!
Lekholm twirled his moustache.
"Deuce take it, Augusta, hold your tongue! Or I don't
know what I may not do ! "
"I will hold my tongue. I won't say another word. But
HAS AN IDEA 8l
there's just one thing Pd like to know. What's your own
boys' future to be?"
The lacemaker tried to smile.
"Bright! very bright!"
Augusta looked him up and down.
"You're a fool, Lekholm. That's what you are and always
will be, to your dying day. Mark my words!"
The lacemaker thumped the table with his fist.
"Didn't you hear what I said? Hold your tongue! Not
another word about Oscar!"
But the clenched fist and the command lacked their old
strength. His hard-won grip of the family reins had begun
visibly to loosen. The fact was that the lacemaker was not
only good-natured, hard-working and on the whole punc-
tilious in the discharge of his duties to his fellow-creatures.
He was also an extremely just man. And, at the juncture
to which affairs had come, he fully realized that Augusta's
persistent questions were more than justified. He was indeed
risking his children's future. He saw that more clearly
every day. He had till now been too absorbed in Oscar and
his future greatness fully to grasp the consequences if all his
plans for his younger brother came to shipwreck. Moreover,
till now his children had been so young that he had had no
occasion to think of their future in any but the vaguest
manner as something very bright and prosperous, with
the blue Lund students' cap as the glorious crown of their
youth.
Now, when Oscar's brilliant future was in danger, the
lacemaker made a singular discovery; all these years, in the
inmost recesses of his heart's workshop, he had been weaving
rosy dreams of his boys' future which now suddenly revealed
themselves as finished articles. Only now did he fully realize
how definitely their futures had shaped themselves in his
mind. They were to be leading men in the town, like Oscar
82 LACEMAKER LEKHOLM
doctors, judges or mayors. When, in his old age, he took
his Sunday afternoon walk, a well-to-do citizen and town
councillor, he would be greeted with special respect as father
of a town doctor, a judge and a mayor. The haloes that
surrounded the boys 7 heads would shine round his own
white hairs too, and form a triple crown unique in all
Sweden $ there was in the whole kingdom no such lacemaker
as he.
He had never tried to find out whether the boys really
had the ability to make these dreams come true. He had
unconsciously set a standard for himself and his children.
He felt that it would be a setback, a retreat, a humiliation,
if the boys were deprived of the possibility of going to the
university and had to go into a workshop like himself, or
behind the counter of a grocer's shop. The whole idea of the
Lekholm family was linked in his mind with a longing to
rise, a struggle to reach a higher social sphere: and the fail-
ure of these plans would mean to him the abandonment
of an ideal.
It was for this reason that his gestures and speech lacked
their old compelling power when he thumped the table and
commanded silence.
Augusta, with her feminine acuteness, detected the dif-
ference in the ring of the words. And without fear that
Lekholm "might not know what he was doing," she re-
peated:
"You're a fool, Lekholm, That's what you are."
X
Years passed.
It looked as if Oscar would never have finished his train-
ing. The autumn in which it was fifteen years since his
matriculation, the lacemaker sought counsel of the town
HAS AN IDEA 83
doctor. What did he think about Oscar? Fifteen years! But
the doctor maintained that there was nothing unusual about
it, when a man was away on duty for a long time on end
and his reading was interrupted. There was no actual cause
for uneasiness. That was the lacemaker's opinion also. But
he was beginning to grow rather tired of all these questions
from friends and acquaintances: "Well, how's Oscar get-
ting on? When will he have finished? Won't it be time
soon?" The doctor declared that there was nothing to worry
about. People could say what they liked. Envy and malice
were the hereditary sins of mankind. The only thing to do
was to say nothing, put up with it and see what time would
bring. "You ought to take plenty of baths, get into a thor-
ough perspiration, cleanse your system and get drunk now
and again, when you're not feeling up to the mark. And
above all, wait and see what time brings. That's the most
important thing."
And the lacemaker promised to wait on events. But it
was not as easy as it sounded. He simply did not dare think
of the future. He did not think so much of the money he
had already spent on Oscar's studies. This was by now all he
possessed. The house was mortgaged up to the chimneys.
He had even begun to touch the money Augusta had in-
herited from the old surgeon. He must go on helping
Oscar! Oscar must become a doctor and pay back what he
owed! Otherwise Augusta would be right when she said
that he had destroyed his own children's future for a young
cuckoo's sake. And the children were beginning to grow up
now, one after another. The time would soon have come
when a decision would have to be made regarding their
future. The boys must go to the university j that he had
promised himself, Augusta and them.
The eldest, Per, was now sixteen. The lacemaker had
never been able really to make him out. Charlotte, too, his
twin, was a peculiar child, although easier to understand.
84 LACEMAKER LEKHOLM
She was very musical, and when she was only five used to
climb up on to the music-stool and play by ear. Moreover,
she was of the female sex, and could not cause her father
anxiety for the future beyond the possibility of her never
marrying.
It was otherwise with Per. Not only because he was a
boy, but also because of his singularity. In appearance he
was a typical Topfer, like his twin sister. His figure, nose
and chin all came from the Topfers. But his affinity to the
old surgeon was not confined to external characteristics.
As the eldest male grandchild, old Topfer had made him his
favourite from the beginning. When Per was only three
years old, the old man used, in spring and summer, to take
him out for little walks on the boulevard, sit on a bench in
the sun with the little boy on his knee and discourse to him
on life and its diverse manifestations. As a child of five or
six he was more in his grandfather's house than at home with
the Lekholms. Often, indeed, he stayed there for a long
time, sleeping at night in the old man's bed, till Augusta,
seized with maternal jealousy, came to fetch him and made
him stay at home for a few days. At the end of that time
the old Swedenborgian surgeon would appear and ask if he
might ''borrow" the little boy for the day, the result of
which was that the "loan" was not repaid and Augusta had
to collect it in person. What the two did in the three low,
dark, small-windowed rooms over the barber's shop the
lacemaker could never discover. When he asked his father-
in-law what he thought of the boy, the surgeon answered:
"I consider him a remarkably godly child,"
"But do you think he's got brains?"
The surgeon gave his foolish son-in-law a look over his
spectacles, full of comprehension and humour.
"The godly don't need brains."
The lacemaker scratched his head.
"Yes, but what do you MnkF*
HASANIDEA 85
"I don't think. I know. I know that the Lord Jesus was
only a carpenter's son."
His son-in-law was shrewd enough to draw the intended
conclusion from these words, at once simple and mysterious.
Per was a lacemaker's son. But the conclusion did not satisfy
him. He did not want Per to be the founder of a religion.
The uncertainty of such a career found no place in his
dreams of the future. He wanted to know whether his
father-in-law thought the boy would become a doctor or a
judge or a mayor. And he therefore extracted from the old
man's enigmatic words the answer he desired: Per should
be a lawyer possibly influenced by the cant phrase which
attaches to justice the epithet "divine."
Per went to a primary school, and did his home work at
his grandfather's. And as the Lekholm abode was gradually
filled with younger brothers the dark little rooms over the
barber's shop became his home.
To the lacemaker's astonishment, however, Per did not
prove the genius the surgeon's prophecy had led him to
expect. His reports were of average quality, perhaps rather
below than above. The lacemaker, who as brother to a
student felt that he could approach the masters without
seeming presumptuous, sometimes asked them what they
thought of his son Per. Their answers showed more surprise
at the question being asked at all than at the way it was put.
None of them had a word to say against the boy.
"You see, the fact is," the lacemaker used to add, "that I
think of making him read law later on."
The schoolmasters' bewilderment grew greater than ever
and found concentrated expression in a curt, surprised
"Oh!"
Per was thirteen when his grandfather closed his intro-
spective eyes for ever. The boy had to go home to the now
mortgaged house in Ostra Storgatan. But he never assimi-
lated himself to the milieu, could take no real part in the
86 LACEMAKER LEKHOLM
thanks to his mother stern and rigid family life. He
went about alone, as shut-up as an oyster, had no playmates,
visited his grandfather's grave daily, and kept such things
as he might be brooding over rigidly secret. At school he
was still among the mediocrities.
The lacemaker used to complain to Augusta, with a sort
of bitter triumph in his voice:
ic We shall never make anything of Per. He's got no
head for bookwork. He can never go to the university. He's
a regular Topfer through and through."
But Augusta had her answer ready.
<c Well, none of your boys'll be able to go to the university,
if we've got to go on keeping that Oscar."
The lacemaker thumped the table with his fist.
"Hold your tongue, I tell you. Not a word about Oscar.
Not one word. Or I don't know what I may not do."
And he used to slouch away. His threats were but empty
words. What would he do with the other three boys if Oscar
did not begin to practise soon and begin repaying him?
There was no need to worry about Per. He must be what
he would and could be 5 he must be apprenticed, or put
behind a counter and turned into a shopkeeper. The lace-
maker could thank his lucky stars that he and not the second
boy, Carl, was the eldest. Carl was a real Lekholm, in mind
if not in body for in appearance he was a Topfer. He had
brains. His gift for mathematics had already attracted his
teachers' attention. The old mathematical master had more
than once stopped the lacemaker in the street and said:
"Your boy Carl will go far. He's got the makings of a
professor in him."
Carl was now in the lower sixth.. Oscar had still three
years in which to finish his training. He must start repaying
the money in three years. Otherwise the lacemaker must
plead failure.
When Carl had got his remove to the upper sixth, and
HASANIDEA 87
Oscar, despite constant exhortations by letter, had not yet
taken his examination and time after time had decisively
but politely refused his brother's invitation to come home so
that they could discuss the matter seriously, the lacemaker
decided to pay a visit to Stockholm and see for himself what
was happening.
This visit became celebrated in the annals of the Lekholm.
family. The lacemaker came home with a cashmere shawl
for his wife and a receipt for a piano which was to come by
water from Stockholm. She had talked about this shawl
and piano for years. A cashmere shawl was in those days a
mark of social position. One master craftsman's wife after
another had received one from her husband. But Lekholm
had never been able to afford to confer such a mark of dis-
tinction on his wife. And as for the piano, she declared that
it was his duty to get a new one 3 fancy her and Charlotte,
with their musical talent, having to sit and hammer away at
an ancient instrument she had brought with her from her
fathers house, just that every penny might go to an idle
young loafer who never took an examination!
On the lacemaker's return, however, she got both shawl
and piano.
It was not till several months later that the awful truth
was revealed. The lacemaker had certainly met Oscar.
But the money with which he had bought the presents for
his wife he had not received from Oscar, but had borrowed
from his old friend and fellow-journeyman, master-
lacemaker Schulte in Gotgatan. When he had learnt the
truth about his brother, whom he had met in a tavern in
Trebackarlanggatanj when he had no doubt left, not only
that he had gone to the bad, but that he would never in his
life become a doctor or anything else of any use in the
world, his first thought had been to go and drown himself in
Strommen. He felt that he had no other choice. His whole
life was ruined. All that he had and owned, and more, had
88 LACEMAKER LEK.HOLM
gone the way of all things mortal. Oscar had cost him over
20,000 riksdaler. Twenty thousand riksdaler futz weg,
as his German father-in-law used to say when he had shaved
a client or cut his corns 20,000 riksdaler clean gone!
His brother would never be a doctor. His boys would
never be students. And what would become of himself he
did not know. The only thing of which he was fully and
firmly convinced was that he would never know another
happy moment. Every day for the rest of his life Augusta
would be at him. "You're a fool, Lekholm, an utter fool!"
Year in and year out he would have to listen to this, without
being able to utter a word in reply, because she was right.
He was a fool! He had always been a fool. Augusta's eternal
wrath that was the only thing that waited him. Better
Strommen. . * .
Then he had had an idea Schulte in Gotgatan. They
had been fellow-journeymen in their careless youth. Lek-
holm had worked for a year with old Schulte, the present
master's father. He had been like a son of the house. He
would go and talk to him first. He needed someone in whom
he could confide, to whom he could lighten his heart, just
for once reveal his terrible secret.
But that came to nothing either. Schulte and his whole
household received him like a twin brother, with open arms
and the most liberal hospitality. He had had to move to
Schulte's. It was out of the question that Pehr Lekholm
should stay at a hotel, so long as the firm of Schulte existed
in Gotgatan. There was a few days' drinking at home and
abroad, in the houses of a few other master-lacemakers and
at restaurants. The lacemaker never managed to say what
was on his mind. It was out of place among solid Stockholm
citizens and members of his own guild, who had no idea
that Lekholm was not rolling in money, seeing that he had
a contract with his Majesty and the State.
Perhaps Pehr Anders himself was infected by his fellow;-
HASANIDEA 89
craftsmen's air of prosperity, persuaded himself that he was
not yet ruined, that perhaps his younger brother would
after all take his examination before it was too late. Perhaps
he even sat amongst his old friends and, in that hour of ruin
and despair, bragged about himself and his possessions, of
his earnings, of his freehold house, of his boys who were
going to be students and Oscar who would soon be a doctor.
It may also be presumed that he said something about his
thinking of buying a cashmere shawl and a new piano for
his wife, but not having brought enough ready money with
him. The fact is that, as has been said, instead of throwing
himself into Strommen he came home with the shawl and
the receipt for the piano and declared that there was no
danger whatever as far as Oscar was concerned. He was get-
ting on well and would take his final examination soon.
How he had imagined that he could conceal the real state
of affairs for ever it is hard to say. In all probability he did
not think at all of any remote future. He doubtless lived
as most others do in a position like his for the next day, the
next week, in some kind of vague hope of everything coming
right in the end. That during the months which followed,
that is to say, the whole of the autumn, he was profoundly
miserable, a prey to constant fear and qualms of conscience,
is clear not only from his own subsequent admissions but
also from his wife's testimony. She had noticed all that au-
tumn that he perspired fearfully at night, that he lay and
tossed in the bed as though on a gridiron, and constantly
got up, went out of the room, and was absent for a long
time. He had explained these departures by pleading in-
digestion.
One thing is certain that he tried to improve his posi-
tion by gambling in the Hamburg lottery.
As things happened, however, the lacemaker did not have
to wait long for the day when he would be compelled to
9O LACEMAKER LEKHOLM
admit failure. The true state of affairs was revealed in a
very simple and unexpected manner.
One morning, just before Christmas, the quartermaster
of the regiment sent a message saying that he wished to
speak to the lacemaker.
Lekholm knew what it was about the contract for the
regiment. He had expected the quartermaster to send for
him any day. The whole thing was a matter of form and
would be disposed of in the twinkling of an eye. He had
only to put on his Sunday coat and go up and bow to the
quartermaster, who said:
"Yes, we have opened the tenders. You will get the con-
tract."
And then they signed a paper.
So this time, as he had done for so many years, the lace-
maker climbed down from his loom, washed and shaved,
took his Spanish cane with the ivory dog's head, went off
to headquarters, entered the regimental office, bowed to
Quartermaster Berghoff and nodded to Sergeant-Major
Sundberg, who sat at the desk opposite.
Yes, it was about the contract he had been sent for. And
the fact was, that he could not have it for the next year. A
lacemaking firm at Malmo, Albert Svensson, had made a
considerably lower offer. He had had the contracts for the
Crown Prince's Hussars and the Skane Hussars for several
years, and now he evidently meant to have this one too.
He could do it much cheaper.
It was then that the lacemaker fainted. He was just going
to take out his glasses, which were in the top upper pocket
of his black velveteen waistcoat, to look at the tender of the
Svensson firm, which the quartermaster had just laid before
him. But just as he was about to put his glasses on his hook
nose, he tottered and fell to the floor like a log. The quarter^
master and Sergeant-Major Sundberg lifted him up and
carried him to the long sofa under the portrait of General
HASANIDEA 9!
Cardell. The orderly dashed forward with a jug and poured
water over him.
When he came to, the quartermaster tried to console him.
He had not lost the contract for ever; he could come back
another year with a lower tender, and all would be well
again. Besides, the contract did not mean everything to him,
who had a big stone house and, people said, money in the
bank and a brother who would soon be a doctor.
The lacemaker had risen to a sitting position on the sofa,
with water running over his face and down on to his tail
coat, velveteen waistcoat and trousers. He gazed up at the
quartermaster with a look in his eyes which Sergeant-Major
Sundberg declared that he would never forget as long as he
lived.
"I'm ruined, captain," he said.
The captain turned to Sergeant-Major Sundberg and said
in a voice full of emotion:
"Poor devil!"
XI
When the lacemaker left the regimental office a quarter of
an hour later, he was a broken man. With his still wet hair
sticking to his forehead, his once so martial moustaches
hanging like a walrus's tusks, and large damp patches on his
trousers, the usually trim little man set out upon his ter-
rible walk home to render account of his stewardship.
The hero of the battle of Kolding and the fight at the
front-door, once so terrible in his fury, was like a child who
has dirtied his clothes in the cruel child's-play of life, and
whose only thought is to run home in a panic and complain
how rough the game has been and with what shocking in-
justice he has been treated. Sometimes, in after years, the
lacemaker used to express regret that, instead of going home
to his wife, he had not jumped straight into the river or
92 LACEMAKER LEKHOLM
crept up to the attic and hanged himself by a rope from a
rafter. But perhaps he hoped for a little kindness and for-
giveness from his wife on the ground of the monstrous
injustice that had been done him. It is even possible that
during the five minutes' walk from regimental headquarters
to the house he still owned in name, he was so filled with
the news importance of the appalling catastrophe that his
naive, communicative temperament was animated by one
instinct only to rush home as fast as his legs would carry
him and tell the story. "Can you imagine what has hap-
pened? They've taken the contract away from me from
me, who have had it for all these years, and my father be-
fore me. And they've gone and given it to a fellow called
Svensson, at Malmo, whom I never heard of in my life."
And when he had confessed everything once for all,
and rendered account, he could hardly have expected any
other reception than he got. Even in her old age Augusta's
heart was a cauldron of seething poisons. Even twenty years
later her thin, shrivelled lips, at moments when the bitter-
ness of her humiliation made her heart boil over, could open
again like sluices to release a torrent of hate and contempt
of the liar and cheat who had flung her and her children
into poverty, the miserable creature who for so many years
had frightened her into silence and submission with his
play-acting, his big talk and violent gestures. "Silence,"
he had thundered, the empty braggart, "I'll have silence
here the silence of the grave! " And she had been deceived
and taken him for a man him, the mountebank and
fool! . . .
XII
Immediately after the fearful confession Fru Lekholm took
over the direction of affairs. She adopted the methods women
generally employ when the home has to be saved from ruin}
HASANIDEA 93
organized economy, retrenchment, cutting-down. The bank
took over the house, and the family crowded into a smaller
one, a little, low wooden house of one story in Ostra Bule-
varden, whose only merit was that it had an attic long
enough to be used for spinning.
The journeymen and apprentices were turned off j work
would now have to be confined to the making of lace, trim-
mings and braid for drawing-room chairs, sofas, fortieres
and coffins all the trumpery little work the lacemaker had
previously undertaken only to accommodate the dignitaries
of the town and old customers. Augusta herself helped in
the work up in the attic $ Charlotte had to look after the
shop and give piano lessons at twelve skilling an hour; meat
was served only twice a week, and the sweet was cut out of
the Sunday dinner. Fru Lekholm also, of course, took
charge of the finances, kept the books herself and guarded
them like a dragon j Lekholm might not even look at them.
He received only twelve skilling a week for tobacco.
The lacemaker bowed submissively to her tyranny. In his
old age, on the occasions when the sluices of Augusta's
wrath were reopened, he could plead in his defence that the
family's humiliation was not really his fault, but hers. If
he had only had time to recover his strength after the fear-
ful blow he would have entered into competition with the
Malmo firm the next year and they would have been well
off again. He could have borrowed money from friends and
acquaintances to pay the interest during the lean year, and
thus he could have got on his feet again.
But this defence was nothing but the cloak of mercy
which Providence wraps about those who cannot endure the
burning rays of the truth. Even if he had been a man of
much greater financial ability than he was, he would not
have been able to improve his position. In his old age he
had forgotten something of which his wife was able to re-
mind himj he would never have been able to borrow an
94 LACEMAKER LEKHOLM
ore. The reason was not merely that, as Augusta expressed
it, no one on earth would have had any confidence in a fool,
a vain idiot, who was stupid enough to invest his own and
other people's money (she meant her own inheritance) in
a rake's dissipation. He seemed to have forgotten that the
time of the disaster was the beginning of the seventies,
when the great economic crisis and time of scarcity were
just setting in. Did he not remember that the rate of interest
had risen to six per cent.? Had he forgotten that even the
State Bank would not lend money even against Government
securities? Did he not remember how everyone hid his coins
as if they had been gold, which, for that matter, they were.
If he had forgotten, she remembered it, and would re-
member it as long as there was life in her body. For she had
more than once discussed the matter with Major Rosen-
stjerna and the judge, Herr Nolleroth, when they met to
play their quartettes. They had told her how one big com-
pany after another which had been formed in recent years
had had to close down. They had even explained to her what
the cause of all this misery was 5 it was, they said, the conse-
quence of the Franco-German war.
Seen from a loftier viewpoint that of Major Rosen-
stjerna and Herr Nolleroth it might, therefore, be said
that the lacemaker, who had once emerged as a hero from a
war against Germany, had now received his mortal wound
in combat with that swiftly advancing Great Power.
Whether his own reflections were strong-winged enough
to rise to such heights must be left unsaid. But one thing is
certain that in his old age his hatred of Germany increased
year by year. As he sat in his armchair by the window, con-
templating in the little mirror the life of the street and the
boulevard beyond, he was often heard to mumble:
"Germany's the curse of the world."
But these words might equally well be interpreted as a
HASANIDEA 95
sly dig at Fru Lekholm, who was, of course, German on
her father's side. At any rate, that was how she understood
them.
But even if the world situation had been otherwise at the
time of the Lekholm disaster, it is hardly likely that the
lacemaker would have been able to recover his lost position.
He was already about fifty, and his life hitherto had hardly
given proof of the stubbornness and astuteness called for in
a competition which was just then beginning to make new
demands, more exacting than in the past, on a man's mental
and physical equipment.
Faced with the "struggle for life" which set in at the
beginning of the seventies, master-lacemaker Pehr Anders
Lekholm laid down his arms unbidden. Even in her old
age, his wife used to complain of the absolutely incurable
slackness which, after the catastrophe, spread like a con-
sumption through his organism. "One had to go on at him
from morning till night to get the least little thing done,"
she used to say.
Ruin and humiliation that was the atmosphere the lac&-
maker breathed from now onward. All that he had lived for
in the days of his strength and prosperity the dream of
seeing his boys with university degrees, men of mark had
been buried under the ruins of his career. It was too late
now to spit on his hands and take a fresh grip. Nor could
anything be expected of Oscar. He went about Stockholm,
a broken-down student 5 it was even affirmed that he begged
in the streets, till one of his fellow-students somehow or
other secured him a post on a newspaper in a small town,
where he lived on for a few years as a bohemian, raconteur
and frequenter of cafes. Till one day he fell ill with inflam-
mation of the lungs and died.
The lacemaker's boys had to fend for themselves. Per
had been apprenticed to a joiner before the catastrophe.
96 LACEMAKER LEKHOLM
And the three younger boys Carl, a Lekholm in intellect,
a real mathematical genius, Anders, who had inherited his
mother's musical talent and the Lekholms' good brains j
and Fredrik, who was still too young for the lion's claws
to have appeared they must be what they would or could
be, tradesmen, shop assistants, anything. . . . One thing
was as good as another. It was all the same to him. The main
thing was that they should go out into the world as quickly
as possible. For it was close quarters in the little wooden
house in Ostra Bulevarden only two rooms and a kitchen.
Carl, the mathematical genius, left his home in a rage and
went to sea. It was his intention to study and eventually se-
cure a master's certificate. But in a year he was back again 5
he was too poor a sailor. And so the dreadful thing hap-
pened, which, so to speak, set the crown on the Lekholm
family's social collapse j this Carl, of whom the lacemaker
had hoped so much, enlisted in the artillery as a common
gunner.
This was the final mark of the family's social collapse. So
low had it sunk, and with such giddy rapidity, that only a
few years after the lacemaker had possessed a brother hold-
ing the rank of lieutenant in the medical corps, he had a son
an ordinary recruit. He who had once dreamed of saunter-
ing along the streets flanked by his four sons, the judge,
the doctor, the mayor, and whatever Fredrik was going
to be, would now, if he had been willing to show himself out
of doors in their company, have walked between a journey-
man carpenter and a gunner. . . .
Humiliation and social collapse that was all he had to
expect during the rest of his life, which he hoped God in
His wisdom would make as brief as possible for the poor
henpecked husband that he, the hero of Kolding, now
owned to himself that he had been.
His was indeed a monotonous life. And Augusta did what
HASANIDEA 97
was b her power to make him taste hell before his time. But
it was hardly this foretaste which made him a God-fearing,
church-going man in his old age. His piety was due rather to
his gregariousness. The catastrophe had deprived him of
all intercourse with his fellow-men in the form and the
atmosphere in which he had previously enjoyed it, amid the
smell of beefsteak and the vapour of steaming toddies. His
straitened economic position and Augusta's dragon's claws
round his purse cut him off from all such cheerful reunions
and festivities. Nor, perhaps, during the first years would
he have cared to make a public display of his and his fam-
ily's humiliation.
He became a lonely man. And for anyone with his con-
spicuous fondness for his fellow-creatures and sociability
this must have been the heaviest part of his punishment.
And there was only one alleviation of it going to church*
In church a man in his position could press against his fellow-
creatures, feel their elbows touching his own, inhale the
odour of their bodies when entering and leaving, and ex-
change with them the words his soul yearned for. Going to
church was even becoming to a man who had been struck
down by misfortune as he had been.
Hunched up on his bench, free from Augusta's scolding,
at once alone and in company, he could sink into himself
and reflect on the strange measure which had been meted
out to him for having followed one of the most beautiful
injunctions of Scripture to love his neighbour as himself.
He had obeyed that commandment in regard to his younger
brother. His obedience to the commandment had certainly
made him an unhappy, broken man. But his misfortune, his
crushing blow, were only a test from the Almighty. Some
day the hour of justification would strike, the day when the
words would become reality:
"The last shall be first, and the first last."
98 LACEMAKER LEKHOLM
XIII
The fall of the Lekholm family left behind it no traces
whatever except in the minds of its own members. Not even
in a little town of five or six thousand inhabitants could it
occupy the thoughts and tongues of the community for any
length of time. The lacemaker was most missed at the gath-
erings he had never failed to attend in the days of his pros-
perity. His absence deprived them to no small extent of the
element of humour they had contained.
The role of butt and fool in social life is none too easy to
fill. To play it with brilliance and zest quite special qualities
are demanded of the actor, not, perhaps, so uncommon as
single characteristics, but very rarely met with in the well-
balanced combination required to make a first-class butt.
There was no one else in his circle, either among the crafts-
men, the tradesmen, or the volunteers, who combined in his
personality the lacemaker's naiVe enthusiasm, his abnormal
vanity, his explosive irritability, his sensitiveness to insults
to his dignity, and his peculiar imagination, which identified
the events in which he had taken part with his own small
person.
And so he was missed. And this, as in so many other cases,
led to a revised estimate of his personal worth. Now that he
was no longer there, and was seen only through the rosy
mist of the past, the ridicule of which he had been the object
was transformed into a personal quality of his own. He was
remembered, and all the more so as time passed, as a humor-
ist of a peculiar type. There had always been jokes and
laughter in his company. Therefore he himself must have
been by nature a cheery fellow, a funny dog, a comic turn,
whose little face, with its hook nose and big moustaches,
radiated humour. Younger generations of craftsmen and
merchants heard his own contemporaries talk of entertain-
HASANIDEA 99
ments and gatherings in the days when old Lekholm was in
his prime as a time of unforgettable enjoyment, side-splitting
fun and ringing peals of laughter.
All the episodes relating to these convivial meetings, all
the jokes which lay outside the bounds of personal experi-
ence, were described as having taken place in Lekholm's
prime. The twenty odd times when he, rather unsteady on
his feet, had been accompanied home to his wife by a few
jokers, were magnified to great processions headed by the
bold lacemaker, swinging his Spanish cane as he advanced
to the attack on "that damned cat, his old woman." A re-
mark he had made one evening to one of his boon compan-
ions at the Schweden, "If I hadn't got Augusta for my wife
Pd have got peace instead," became a proverb "Peace,
said Lekholm, and went home to his wife." The proverb
was quoted in those days far beyond the limits of the town
itself when the advantages and disadvantages of marriage
were being discussed among men.
But even the lacemaker was to have his hour of justifica-
tion. It came when he was about seventy.
One day at the beginning of October his Majesty King
Oscar II, with his sons Gustav and Carl, was to pay a visit
to the town. The station buildings were adorned with the
king's monogram, surmounted by a crown, and hung with
wreaths. Avenues of flags had been put up along the main
streets. On the platform were waiting the governor of the
province, the president of the court of justice and the rest of
the court personnel, the regimental commander and the offi-
cers of the garrison. Outside a battery was drawn up with
limbered guns, farther off the children of the various
schools formed a double rank, and beyond them, in the di-
rection of the market-place, the citizens were assembled
many deep along the route.
It was a brilliant autumn day, real king's weather, with
sunshine, a touch of cold, and just enough wind to catch the
IOO LACEMAKER LEKHOLM
flags and blow out their crosses to greet the exalted visitors.
Dr. Charles Holmes, or Kalle Lekholm as he then was,
who was in the fifth form of the elementary school, was
standing drawn up along with his comrades when he sud-
denly received a violent nudge from his neighbour.
"Look, Kalle, look, Kalle, here comes your grandfather!
What on earth's that uniform he's got on?"
Kalle Lekholm looked . . . and a second later he went
scarlet in the face for shame, his knees grew weak under
him, and he felt himself shrinking like a toy balloon. For
there he came, his old grandfather, Ensign Stal. He was
wearing his uniform from the Slesvig war the one which
hung in a glass case in the parlour 5 he had four medals on
his chest, white gloves on his hands, and the huge silvery
moustaches stuck out waxed and stiff on each side of the
thin, withered face. He walked between the straight lines
of citizens, school-children, and soldiers as if he were one
of the town's most eminent dignitaries. Suppressed titters
received him.
The apparition was at once so unexpected and so strange
that no one attempted to stop him, not even the town
magistrate or the chief of police. Rigid as a poker he strode
towards the entrance to the station, over which hung the
king's monogram.
And there he remained "standing at ease," with his arms
hanging loosely at his side and the right foot a half-pace
in front of the left, in correct military style. From time
to time he gently stroked his waxed moustaches and
changed feet.
The account he gave at the subsequent domestic cross-
examination showed that he had planned his coup to greet
his beloved sovereign in person in the most minute detail.
He had told old Fru Lekholm that he did not want to see
the ceremonies. It was rather cold, and he did not want
to catch a chill. But the moment she and their daughter
HAS AN IDEA IOI
Charlotte had left the house, in plenty of time, the old man
had got to work. He had taken out his uniform, brushed it,
put it on, put on his medals and then sat down and waited,
so that he might reach the station at the moment the royal
train steamed in. If he did this no one would have time to
interfere with him. And he calculated quite correctly 3 he
had not been standing there for more than a few minutes
when the beflagged engine crept into the station, and no one
gave any further thought to the lacemaker.
Five minutes later the king and his two sons appeared
at the door leading from the platform. The regimental
band struck up a march, the battery commander gave the
order to shoulder arms, the guns up on the old ramparts
thundered out the first of their twenty-one shots. . .
Then a strange thing happened.
His majesty caught sight of the lacemaker, who was
saluting him right at the foot of the steps, standing stiffly
at attention with his right hand correctly raised to the peak
of his cap.
The king stopped.
"Who are you?" he asked. "In what regiment have you
served?"
"Your Majesty, my Bang and master," the lacemaker
replied, cc the uniform I am wearing is that of the Danish
infantry, and I served as a private in the first company of the
5th battalion of the line in the first Slesvig war in '48 and
'49. 1 have come to pay my duty to my sovereign."
"Thank you. What was your profession? " the king asked.
"I am a citizen of this town, was a master-lacemaker,
and used to supply lace and braid to your Majesty's royal
artillery regiment here."
The king clapped the veteran genially on the shoulder
and called his sons Gustav and Carl, while he fingered the
lacemaker's Dannebrog cross.
"Gustav," he said, half-turning to the crown prince,
IO2 PACEMAKER LEKHOLM
"Kerens a gallant old Swede who's got an order none of us
have got, or have any likelihood of ever getting."
"We don't live in such times, papa," the crown prince
answered.
"No, we don't," the king replied, "and Heaven send we
never shall. But all the same, I'm always delighted when I
see anyone with this beautiful medal. What is your name,
and what did you get it for?"
"Your Majesty, my name is Pehr Anders Lekholm, and
I received the medal for bravery in the battle of Kolding."
Both princes shook hands cordially with the hero, while
the king clapped him on the shoulder again and at the same
time, as though he had knighted him, turned to one of his
adjutants and said:
"Lekholm shall have the Swedish silver medal for brav-
ery in the field. It's none too soon."
He smiled again at the erect little old man and, accord-
ing to the account which appeared in the local paper next
day, took a long look at his still keen, vigorous features.
Not till this scene was over did his Majesty proceed to
inspect the battery, while the lacemaker, still standing at
attention, was congratulated by the whole of the brilliant
royal suite.
When Pehr Anders Lekholm returned to his little home
he had a curious reception from his wife and daughter. Fru
Lekholm cursed him; Charlotte was dissolved in tears,
bewailing the fate which had decreed that, thanks to her fool
of a father, she had never had a moment's happiness in the
whole of her life.
What had happened was, briefly, this. When Fru and
Froken Lekholm, who were among the spectators at the
corner of the market-place and Kyrkogatan, caught sight
of the lacemaker and heard the ironical remarks and titters
of the crowd that surrounded them, they fled in panic and
HAS AN IDEA 103
went straight home to hide the disgrace in which they had
been plunged.
The lacemaker stopd for a few moments listening to their
outburst of anger and hatred 5 then he suddenly banged the
table with his fist with something of his old strength, and
said:
"Silence! the silence of the grave! My sovereign has
talked to me and presented his sons to me. Silence! "
And there was silence. The two women stared at him.
They thought he had gone mad. His stiff waxed moustaches
trembled, his body shook in the old uniform as if he had the
ague$ a second later he put his hands before his face like a
child and wept, wept for joy without shedding tears, as a
dried-up old man does.
Both the newspapers of the town, both the Conservative
organ and the dreadful Socialist rag, agreed, in their ac-
count of the previous day's events, that the king's meeting
with "our revered old veteran and hero of days long past"
had been the most remarkable moment of a most remark-
able day.
BOOK TWO
It was one of the lacemaker's sons, the musical Anders, who
for several years to come indisputably played the most im-
portant part in the family chronicles. But long before the
Lekholm grandchildren realized how much room he and
his doings occupied on the narrow stage of family life, he oc-
cupied a prominent and romantic position in the outside
world. There was, for that matter, hardly a single boy in the
town to whom he had not, for some period of varying
length, appeared as a revelation from loftier, unattainable
spheres. There was probably not a single boy between five
and eight who had had one fleeting glimpse of Anders with-
out being stirred by his brilliant, festal aspect to dreams of a
glorious future.
The fact was that Anders Lekholm in those days used to
march at the head of the guard which at noon every day
passed along Vastra Storgatan to headquarters. And not
only did he march at the head of all the other bandsmen: he
also played the monster bass, the largest and heaviest instru-
ment in the band, the one which in every respect set the
tune, which could be heard above all the others like the low-
ing of a cow, or the voice of a giant shouting from a cellar
something magnificent and terrible.
To every boy who followed the march from its begin-
ning, that is to say the falling-in on the barrack-square, it
was clearer still what a dominating part he played in that
daily display of shining instruments, gleaming sabres, black
plumes and clinking spurs. For it was he and no other who
determined when the brilliant formation should march off.
It could certainly be theoretically argued that it was the lieu-
tenant in command with his "Battery, forward, march ! " who
IQ7
IO8 LACEMAKER LEKHOLM
represented directing will and the decisive voice. But all the
same, it was clear to anyone that there would be no changing
o the guard at all till Sergeant Lekholm had made his de-
cision. More than once for a most regrettable reason it
had happened that Uncle Anders had not immediately
obeyed the lieutenant's command. The result had been that
the whole battery had to mark time till Lekholm had got
under way.
In normal circumstances the ritual was as follows. First
Anders Lekholm brushed his bushy moustache out of the
way with the back of his left hand. Then he raised his heavy
instrument in the air 5 once, as a sign that all the other
bandsmen should arrange their moustaches and dry their
lips; a second time, whereupon all put their instruments to
their mouths j and a third and decisive time, on which the
regimental march burst forth and the guard began to move.
And the little lieutenant's shrill word of command was
drowned in this march like a vain cry for help in a Novem-
ber gale.
What Uncle Anders's presence meant to this brilliant
procession was best proved on the occasions when a substi-
tute took his place. It seemed then as if the sun had gone
out, and the small boys who lined the pavement nudged one
another and said:
"Lekholm's drunk again."
When Dr. Charles Holmes, alias Kalle Lekholm, in his
manhood looked back to early times, and thought of Jiis
childhood and its momentous events, he sometimes felt tfiat
it was just Uncle Anders who helped him to fix the date at
which he really ceased to be altogether a child. That was the
day on which the sight of Sergeant Lekholm in all his splen-
dour first failed to send cold thrills of admiration and en-
thusiasm coursing down his spine j the day when he realized
the elemental absurdity of the strutting little figure the
instrument much too large for his stature, the round pro-
HAS AN IDEA IO9
jecting stomach, the thin legs in the mercilessly tight, cling-
ing trousers, the ludicrously swollen cheeks when he blew,
the eyes which seemed to be growing and forcing them-
selves out of their sockets, the white-fringed eyelids which
blinked ceaselessly as if in an endeavour to prevent his eye-
balls from tumbling out on to the roadway. . .
On the day when one noticed these details of the brilliant,
festal ensemble, one ceased to be a child5 the critical sense
had begun to cloud the boundless enthusiasm, the unquali-
fied adoration, which is the need of earliest childhood, . . .
But for those who, like Kalle Lekholm, came into close
touch with Uncle Anders, he did not on that account cease
to be a source of pleasure, to which one fled from the duties
of school and home. Or rather, it was his home which was
the source of pleasure. For this home, which certainly
against his will, and in a careless, irresponsible manner he
had made for himself and his large family, was for boys a
paradise within doors. There was in the three small rooms
the atmosphere of stuffiness, overcrowding and happiness,
whose attraction for children has only been plausibly ex-
plained, thanks to Freud, in our own time. Here no objects
were sacred: there was no furniture, whose polished mahog-
any surfaces might not be touched by careless, dirty boys'
hands, no carpets which could be damaged by muddy or
snowy boys' boots, no treasures in the shape of china figures
which could tumble from their lofty dwelling-places in the
middle of an exciting game, no cane hidden behind a shut
wardrobe door. It was Liberty Hall one of the forgotten,
ruined annexes of the Shut Paradise.
At times, when the noise, screaming or quarrelling of the
flock of children, to whom Uncle Anders became father in
truly record time, rose to an abnormal pitch of violence, he
would interfere in his own exalted person and command
silence. On these occasions he used to arm himself with his
monster bass, open the door of the room where the noise
IIO LACEMAK.ER LEKHOLM
was going on, push his big moustache out of the way, put
the instrument to his mouth and low like a bull. Then he
removed it from his lips again and said:
"Silence here! "
A moment later he went back to his interrupted occupa-
tion, which, according to the hour of the day, might consist
in lying asleep on the dining-room sofa, playing cards and
drinking coffee and brandy with some of his friends, or sit-
ting and composing at the dining-room table on a big sheet
of paper ruled with many black lines. For a few minutes
after the rebuke the children were quiet5 then the game be-
gan again in a slowly rising crescendo, till the noise was as
loud as ever. Uncle Anders did not give more than two
warnings. The second time the lowing was a few seconds
more prolonged than the first time, and the seriousness of
the situation was further emphasized by the words:
"Look out, you kids, or old Nick'll take you!"
After this second warning one could continue undisturbed
without any further interference on his part. If he had been
wakened from his slumbers on the dining-room sofa, he
usually thrust himself into his uniform coat and went to
Berggren's tavern, which by a dispensation of Providence
was on the ground floor of the house where he lived. If he
had been disturbed when composing, and the spirit was
particularly strong in him, he went heroically past the tav-
ern to the regimental music-room to resume his converse
with his muse. If, on the contrary, he had friends with him,
playing cards and drinking brandy and coffee, they simply
moved into the room of "Uncle" Jocke, a regimental com-
rade of Uncle Anders's, cornet-player and bachelor, who
rented the end room of the flat.
There was no need to consider Fru Lekholm, Aunt
Hulda. She was to be found for the most part out in the
kitchen with her last baby, when not serving coffee to her
husband and his friends. She counted for nothing in the
HAS AN IDEA III
household. She had been a serving-maid at Berggren's tav-
ern and was therefore accustomed to din} she loved life,
noise and movement.
It is not surprising, therefore, not only that Sergeant Lek-
holm was loved by his sons for the boundless freedom in
which he let them grow up, but also that the boys who en-
joyed their friendship, and the much sought-for honour of
visiting them in their home, were all very fond of Uncle
Anders.
Sometimes, when Anders Lekholm was in a specially
good humour that is, when he had drunk more than usual
he encouraged his sons' guests to yell still louder than they
were doing. On such occasions he would turn to one of his
own nephews, CarPs boys, of whom there was generally at
least one present, and say:
"Yell, my boy, yell till your lungs burst. You mayn't
yell at home except when your father licks you and hardly
even then, poor little devil! Are you licked much at home
nowadays?"
There was silence in the room 5 and only after a long
pause, punctuated by giggles and digs in the ribs, came the
answer, shy and hesitating:
"Sometimes."
"Are you afraid of your father?"
"Yes."
"Why are you afraid of him?"
"Everyone is."
"Do you think Pm afraid of him too?"
Silence. Or a dubious "No" an obligatory lie told
against better knowledge, for the sons of Carl, the "mathe-
matician," had discovered at a very early stage of their
lives that Uncle Anders "trembled in his riding-breeches"
when he was summoned to his elder brother's presence to ac-
count for his misdeeds.
112 LACEMAKER LEKHOLM
"No, you're not afraid of father."
"Do you know what's wrong with your father?"
"No."
<c He's jealous of me. Yes, of me."
The boy was silent.
The thought of his brother the "mathematician" had by
this time, combined with the excitement induced by drink,
caused Uncle Anders's face to assume a bluer tint than ever j
his eyes, with their bloodshot whites, bulged out of their
sockets just as when he played the monster bass, and his
voice grew hoarse.
"And do you know why he's jealous of me?"
Silence.
^TBecause I'm an artist. And he's not. Because he knows
that in reality I'm miles above him you've no idea how
far! Tell him that when you get home!"
Silence.
"For that matter, you needn't tell him. He knows it
damned well himself. But there is something you can tell
him. And that is that my boys'll leave his standing some
day, for all the lickings and strict upbringing you get. And
do you know why?"
Silence.
"Well, I'll tell you 5 because my kids, poor as they are,
have got art in their blood. And a lad who's got that doesn't
need to be a student. He becomes an artist. And one doesn't
need to be anything more than that in this world. For that
matter, one can't be anything more. Tell him that! Don't
forget!"
These messages were never delivered. The boys hardly
gave them a thought, except a mental note that Uncle An-
ders was drunk again. That their cousins had "art in their
blood," or were artists and would some day be great men,
was delusion born of brandy. The eldest boy, whom his
father had proudly named after himself, had certainly en-
HAS AN IDEA 113
tered the elementary school. But he had spent two years in
each class, and had moreover earned himself a reputation
by smashing twenty-three window-panes at the artillery
stables one evening. The other boys had never got beyond
the national school. This talk of their future greatness could,
therefore, be attributed to the fact that Uncle Anders had
had "a drop too much."
The question whether Uncle Anders could be regarded
as "miles above" their own father was, on the other hand, a
matter for discussion among boys of nine or ten even after
their eyes doomed henceforth to lifelong disillusionment
had been opened to the hollowness and absurdity of
Uncle Anders's prominent position in the changing of the
guard. The question could give rise to profound reflection
even in boys who, like the "mathematician's" sons, saw in
their father the loftiest human type imaginable.
The fact was that Uncle Anders had more sides to his
personality than that which he displayed to a critical sense
when the guard marched through the streets. For example,
when some opera or operetta company came to the town.
Then he used to sit in the narrow slit of an orchestra as a
first violin. Here, too, after the conductor, who only waved
a baton in the air, he took the leading place. He now pre-
sented a less ludicrous appearance; instead of the tight uni-
form he wore a tail-coat with a white tie; his goggle eyes
became half -closed and dreamy j his right arm moved
caressingly and gracefully above the strings, and he leaned
his head a trifle sideways as though listening to mysterious
voices from beneath the dingy tiles of the orchestra floor.
But the fact which weighed heaviest of all in the scales
in which the little Lekholms weighed him against their own
father was that Uncle Anders was a composer. He had writ-
ten waltzes and polkas, a quadrille and a lancers. They had
actually been printed and, during the dancing season after
Christmas, were sometimes displayed in the window of
114 LACEMAKER LEKHOLM
Anderberg's bookshop with his own name, Anders Lek-
holm, on the title-page in letters representing intertwined
boughs of trees.
They were played every year, too, when the dancing
master, Herr Lindquist, came to the town and held his
dancing classes. One had a peculiar feeling of pride in being
able to say to one's partner, "My uncle composed this
waltz." Sometimes one received the answer, "The one who
drinks so?" But even this fact considerably augmented his
greatness, at least when one's knowledge had reached a
point at which one could reply with a superior smile:
"Didn't Tegner drink? And Lidner? And Bellman?
Haven't all the Swedes who have been great in literature
and art drunk like fishes?"
Uncle Anders's little weakness for strong drink was,
therefore, a further and indisputable proof of his greatness
as an artist. This, moreover, was openly acknowledged even
by Major Rosenstjerna, who also had composed music; he
had declared on more than one occasion that Sergeant Lek-
holm was much his superior in this field.
Uncle Anders's creative activity was not, however, con-
fined to light music. For many years he had been composing
something he intended to call "Jephthah's Daughter," a
work on a large scale which caused him the greatest difficul-
ties and was a source of frequent lamentation. And the
goal and crown of all his endeavours, the summit of his am-
bition as an artist he was to write a funeral march. He
would sometimes explain, emphasizing every sentence with
blows of his fist on the table:
"I'm going to write a funeral march some day, a funeral
march so damned stirring that it'll beat Chopin himself. If
only I feel in the mood. A funeral march that's the great-
est, most profound work of art there is. It wants a musician
of genius to write a march so moving that it sends cold
thrills down the back of every soul who hears it. And Pm
HAS AN IDEA 11$
that musician. A funeral march that shall embrace life and
death, that shall describe the chill of death, grief and de-
spair, and the joy of resurrection. It's no light job. And
what's wanted above all is, that one shall feel in the mood-
feel in the mood!"
The effect of Uncle Anders's whole personality when he
talked about his funeral march was to the youthful listener
violently incongruous. On one side the round head with the
bloodshot goggle eyes, the corn-coloured hair, the big
moustache, so fair as to be almost white, with its central
part brown with tobacco juice, the bloated, inflamed face
with the long, blue, hooked nose 5 on the other the chill of
death, the black night of despair, and the triumphant fan-
fares of the resurrection, of which he spoke.
His older listeners could smile or laugh in their sleeves.
A younger listener, of a more serious turn of mind, could
only shudder, in an instinctive terror of life's grisly inconse-
quence. What mysterious, grotesque powers could they be
that called to life in such a body the notes to which men and
women are borne to their eternal rest, to the heaven which,
as Holy Writ tells us, makes all things plain?
II
The question whether the musical Lekholm was so in-
finitely superior to his elder brother the "mathematician"
was one of those questions to which those most nearly in-
terested, in this case the mathematician's sons, did not re-
ceive any convincing answer, at any rate, not during the
years when a boy expects his father to be superior to all
other fathers.
They could certainly have asked their mother. But their
instinct told them beforehand that in this case she was
Il6 LACEMAKER LEKHOLM
bound to be partial and could not give a perfectly objective
answer.
There was only one person on earth on whose judgment
in the question they would have absolutely relied j and that
was their own father. But they could no more turn to him
than they could have gone to God the Father with a request
for enlightenment on one or another of the questions that
occupied their thoughts. They could go to their father and
ask him for a pencil, a school-book or five ore for a new
india-rubber. But the boys did not trouble him with ques-
tions about things which touched on the most profound
problems of life. It was hard to say why. For one thing, they
knew beforehand that he would consider the question child-
ish. In the second place, they were afraid of him. They had
been afraid of him as far back in the morning of their life
as they could remember. And their fear had become
stronger as they had gradually discovered that everyone
else was afraid of him. In the town he was nicknamed
"Grumpy Lekholm," or "Old Erik," a common euphe-
mism in the place for the devil himself. His sons very soon
came to know these nicknames 5 when they made a new ac-
quaintance in a backyard or out in the boulevard, the first
question put to them was:
"Is it your father whom they call Old Erik?"
The mathematician's appearance, too, might well inspire
alarm. He was tall, lean and sinewy. He had a long, thin
face with a long, hooked nose, a bushy, hanging moustache
over thin, tighdy dosed lips, and he wore his hair combed
forward over each ear in a style called a hussar's curl, which
gave his hard expression something foreign, alien, almost
cruel 5 people in the town used to say he looked like a regu-
lar janissary. The strained expression of his face combined
the racking pain of chronic toothache and deep-rooted mis-
anthropy. But the most terrifying of all his attributes was
his look steel-grey, hard, cold and penetrating. It was like
HAS AN IDEA 117
an operating knife which with one swift cut laid bare all lies
and all humbug. His speech was curt and decisive; he ex-
pressed himself by preference in the form of commands and
required brief, definite answers. When he came into the
room where the boys were playing or sitting doing their les-
sons, they had to rise at once and remain "standing at ease"
until he himself, with a curt nod of command, indicated that
they might sit down again. He never caressed any of them.
His sons could not remember ever having sat on his knee.
They never heard him laugh, they seldom saw him smile.
And when he did, it was not a real smile 5 all that happened
was that the tension of his face was relaxed. It was as though
the torturing toothache had ceased for a moment or two.
He worked from early in the morning till late at night,
In the afternoons, when his duty was over for the day, he
gave lessons in mathematics to schoolboys or sub-lieutenants
who were going to the artillery or engineering schools in
Stockholm. For a few hours in the week he taught arithme-
tic in the new secondary school for girls. The house had to be
quiet the whole afternoon; there was always someone sit-
ting doing sums in his room. At frequent intervals his curt,
hard voice was heard raised in rebuke. Sometimes there
were scenes, when he called some sub-lieutenant a block-
head.
"What the devil do you mean by calling your superior a
blockhead?" the lieutenant would exclaim.
r When a superior is stupid, I shall tell him so. I shall
do as I please here. Rank doesn't count in my room. If
you're not satisfied with my teaching, you had better go."
And the door was slammed; the lieutenant had gone.
Kalle Lekholm and his brothers used to steal into the
parlour and listen at the door of their father's room when
lessons were going on. They hardly dar$d breathe; they
shivered with curiosity, and were terrified at the possible
result of these scenes; would the lieutenant put their father
Il8 LACEMAKER L E K. H O L M
under arrest for "insubation"? Sometimes, at meals, they
found their mother red-eyed. She and their father were
talking about some act of insubordination he had com-
mitted, and the possibility of his having to leave the regi-
ment. But their father only answered:
"One isn't a dog because one happens to be an N.C.O."
After supper he sat at his writing-table till late at night
and worked at statements and accounts which had been
given to him to draw up. Sometimes he was so tired, and
leaned so hard against the edge of the writing-table, that he
had to have a cushion between it and his ribs to prevent it
from hurting.
At seven every morning he was on horseback and rode
for an hour. He was considered a hard rider, and generally
rode remounts which for one reason or another were hard to
manage.
Long before the mathematician's sons had guessed the
secret which lay behind their father's hardness and severity,
they had realized that, along with his severity, they had cer-
tain obvious advantages to set off against the much-envied
freedom at Uncle Anders's. The differences between the two
households gave them ample food for thought. Kalle Lek-
holm and his brothers were better off generally than their
cousins. They were better dressed. They got more Christ-
mas presents and more valuable ones.
The furniture in the mathematician's home was quite
different, too, from that of their uncle the musician pol-
ished mahogany drawing-room chairs with tassels, a gold-
framed mirror, and Ensign Stal's Legends and the Angel
of Death on the parlour table. The double-bed in the bed-
room was of mahogany, too. The bookcase in their father's
room contained Starback, Wallis's history of the world, the
poems of Tegner and von Braun, Rydberg's Bible History
of Christ } Sigurd's stories, Erik Bogh's poems (in Danish),
HAS AN IDEA 119
and "8,OOO foreign words." The meals were more abundant
than at Uncle Anders's and were served on a proper white
table-cloth. They had beer only once a week, on Saturdays,
and they had cooked food for supper.
No pocket-money was ever given. An unlimited gener-
osity, however, was shown as regards books and school
necessities. The boys had only to knock at the door of his
dreaded room, wait for the curt order, "Come in-n-n!"
stand at attention inside the door and wait till he looked up.
"What is it?"
"A book."
"Must you have it?"
"It's a school-book."
"Go to the bookseller's and have it put down to me!"
In all these things he was generosity itself. He was only
severe in matters of offence $ neglect and equivocation were
swiftly and effectively punished:
"Go into the lobby and fetch the riding-whip. Then
come into my room and take down your breeches."
The punishment was considered to have effected an
immediate cure 5 whenever the whip had been put back in
its place in the lobby not a word more was said about the
offence. There were no long-drawn-out reprisals. The boys
were brought up according to the principles for breaking
in remounts: plenty of exercise, whip and spurs when neces-
sary to check shying and bad behaviour, but no punishment
in the stable itself.
It was clear to the mathematician's boys at a very early
stage of their lives that there was method in his dispensa-
tion of generosity and severity. As soon as they went to the
kindergarten it was impressed upon them that a specially
heavy responsibility rested upon their shoulders. More was
expected of them than of other children. They must be
among the best in their class. Why it was so, and must be so,
they did not at first understand. They knew only one thing:
I2O LACEMAKER LEKHOLM
they must do well. Five or more AB's in the term's report
were rewarded with a brand-new krona piece, three AB's
with a fifty-ore piece, and one with a twenty-five ore piece,
which, unfortunately, after a brief and painful inspection,
had to be pkced in a money-box, to be transferred later on
to the savings bank. Not even the most excellent report
ever led to any other comment. Not a word of praise was
ever uttered: not an expression of satisfaction, pleasure or
surprise. It was as though a good report was only what was
due. A bad report, on the other hand, led to a long and
searching cross-examination, culminating in a curt order to
fetch the riding-whip and take down one's breeches.
There was no question about it 5 the boys must make
progress, must adapt the ignorance and playfulness of their
childhood and youth to that harsh climate, in which a puri-
tanical sense of duty prevailed for eight months of the
year and the deadly dullness of a clear conscience was the
highest form of pleasure known: nothing else could be done
in term-time without pangs of conscience and a pricking fear
that they were endangering their future.
In the holidays, again on the principles on which re-
mounts are fed up, they were sent out to grass at the neigh-
bouring seaside village.
On his promotion from the third to the fourth class of the
elementary school each boy was initiated into the inner
significance of the iron discipline in which he and his brothers
had been brought up. This promotion was, indeed, a mile-
stone in a schoolboy's life. He had now to decide which line
he would take to choose Latin or English. It was then,
during a conversation, or rather a monologue, which took
place in their father's room, that they understood the na-
ture of the responsibility that rested upon them. They were
to go to the university. They must go.
It was, in fact, nothing less than the old lacemaker's idea.
HAS AN IDEA 121
which had now been taken up by his son. But although the
idea was the same, there was a fundamental difference be-
tween the lacemaker's foolish dreams of some day promen-
ading the streets with his sons the doctor, the judge and the
mayor, and the plans the mathematician wished to realize
as regards the future of Ms sons. They were woven of a
more genuine material, and were coloured by his own bitter
experiences.
When this important period in each boy's life arrived he
was called into his father's much-feared room and was in-
vited to sit down in a tone faintly tinged with amiability.
The mathematician began to walk up and down the floor,
stopped at the window, began walking again, and as he
walked he told his son the story of his own life. He talked
not as a father talks to his children but as one man to an-
other, curtly and sharply, as if he had been out reconnoitring
on manoeuvres and was reporting his observations of the
enemy's position.
c< You've done well enough so far. And I want you to go
to the university. When I was a boy I had only one aim all
the time to go to the university. My father had promised
that I should. I know my masters, especially my mathe-
matical master, thought I ought to go to the university.
And then, as perhaps you have heard, our family suffered
a misfortune. Your grandfather lost all he had. It meant
poverty for us. I was in the lower sixth then. When I was
eighteen I enlisted in the artillery. There were plenty of
other professions I could have chosen. I could have gone
into a chemist's shop or a bookseller's, or the post office, or
one of the railways. But I was desperate and bitten I felt
that I had been shamefully cheated of my future.
"God forgive me, but I hated my old father and two or
three other people to whom I secretly turned for help. They
said no. They excused themselves by saying what a bad
time it was. No doubt they thought my plans for the fu-
122 LACEMAK.ER LEKHOLM
ture were too ambitious. I had wanted to study mathematics.
Instead, I went and enlisted. There was a little method in
my madness, although I have difficulty now in understand-
ing how I could have used such foolish arguments then.
But I hoped there would be a war soon. People used to say
that sooner or later Sweden would have to go to war with
Russia. And I thought: here's a way out for me. I shall dis-
tinguish myself in the war in one way or another and get my
commission like that, as thousands and thousands of poor
Swedish lads had done in old times. But no war came, and
so I couldn't get my commission. Instead, I had to accus-
tom myself to standing still and marking time, waiting for
my turn to come for promotion. It made no difference how
hard I worked. I could never rise above sergeant-major. I
hadn't been to the university."
He stopped by the window again and looked down over
the barrack-square, where the newly arrived recruits were
practising the military salute. He turned the quid which
lay close to his right wisdom tooth.
"You mustn't think I've any hatred of the community
because I can't become anything more than what I am. The
community is like that. I didn't come into the world to put
it right. The Socialists can do that, and we can only hope
they'll use lawful means. I sympathize with them in many
ways. But I hardly think that in my own branch any change
is desirable or necessary. I'll tell you one thing. There are
two kinds of people men and rotters. And there are rot-
ters in every class and every rank. It may be that the epau-
lettes aren't always to be found on the worthiest shoulders,
and that even a colonel's cap can crown a head in which the
grey matter is well mixed with cork or sawdust. But that
doesn't mean that the great Napoleon was right when he
said there was a marshal's staff in every corporal's knapsack.
I'll tell you a secret about people. There are so damned few
of them who are born leaders, who have brains and char-
HAS AN IDEA 123
acter, whom one can respect and follow. In fact, I can tell
you at once that there are devilish few men like that.
"I don't know which category you'll belong to when
you're grown up, and that's a matter in which your mother
and I can do nothing. But what we can do for you and your
brothers is to give you a chance, so that you needn't feel
your future trammelled as I and thousands of others have
done. That's a thing one owes both to one's self and to
one's children. Your mother and I brought you into the
world 5 you didn't ask if you might come here. It is our
duty to see that you get the best bringing-up our small means
can give you. That's why we're ready to wear ourselves to
the bone if it's necessary. We want you to go to the uni-
versity. It's your duty to become fit to go. And that duty
may under no circumstances and on no conditions be neg-
lected or scamped. Your parents are sacrificing both lei-
sure and enjoyment for its sake. And it is a sacrifice. I can
tell you in confidence that your mother and I considered the
matter long and thoroughly before we decided to do it. We
decided to do it. We decided to sacrifice the pleasure of our
lives to your future. We give up a great deal for it. And
we have to. It isn't easy to bring you up as your mother
and I agreed that we should on a sergeant-major's pay. We
both have to work from morning to night to earn extra
money. And so you must do your duty as well! Do you
understand?"
The boy rose:
"Yes, father."
"Then you can go."
One after one, in turn, at intervals of a few years, the
mathematician's four boys left their father's room, fiery
red in the face at the thought of the responsibility whose
serious nature had now been made clear to them. They
closed the door noiselessly behind them, and outside in the
parlour, among the white antimacassars and stiff chairs,
124 LACEMAKER LEKHOLM
they swore a solemn oath never, never to forget the words
their father had just spoken.
From that afternoon, far more important and serious than
their confirmation, which took place a few years later, they
understood their father, his hardness and his severity as
they had never done before. This new understanding did
not bring with it any greater intimacy or confidence 5 their
fear of him had become too essential a part of their organ-
isms ever to be expelled. But his severity, inexorable as it
was, had become more human.
And their understanding of their father was combined
with a new feeling, which he himself would have been the
first to extirpate by every means in his power they felt
sorry for him. Their father had had bad luck. They became
more and more firmly convinced that he had got into the
wrong place. The bitter contrast between his abilities and
his social position seemed to them more and more grotesque
the more they thought about it. It was he, and not the
captain, who ought to give orders. Life and circumstances
had thrust him down. He was really quite a different man
from what he seemed a born leader, a natural chieftain, a
head taller than all the men before whom he now had to
stand at attention and salute rigidly. His boys knew well
enough what he meant when he said there were so damned
few real men in the world. He was one of those few. . . .
It would not be true to say that this conviction became
firmer as year after year passed that was impossible but
it received more and more positive proof. A vast amount of
tasks outside his ordinary duties were allotted to him. With
the intelligence officer, Major Bong, who was a recognized
mathematical genius and was actually an instructor at the
artillery and engineering school, he invented a range-finder
which was adopted. But he could not rise above the rank of
sergeant-major.
HAS AN IDEA 125
The impossibility of his being promoted filled his sons
with bitterness against the community. Even as an old, grey-
haired man he would be compelled to salute any lad of a
lieutenant into whom he had instilled mathematics in his
spare time* It was a strange community in which such a
thing could be permitted, in which clearly proved superior
ability had no possibility whatever of making itself felt and
assuming the position that was its by right.
It was hard on him. It was no wonder he had become em-
bittered in a world of humbug, where the emptiest in-
dividuals wore the finest raiment. They understood how it
was that he could never laugh, never smile except in scorn,
never caress, never praise. They understood that he must
punish, because his own life was a punishment and a tor-
ment.
But they would be avenged. In one way or another they
would give him the satisfaction he demanded.
When only in the lower sixth the mathematician's eldest
son, in his brothers' presence, wearing his father's riding-
boots, took a solemn vow some day to be colonel of the
regiment in which his father had led a life of toil as a non-
commissioned officer.
Ill
And yet a convincing answer had not been given to the
question: was not Uncle Anders right when he declared
that he stood so high above their father that "they could
have no idea of it"?
It was now many years since his brilliant aspect at the
changing of the guard had seemed to them the embodi-
ment of ceremonial magnificence. It was several years, too,
since they had discovered that the liberty which prevailed in
his home had the most devastating results both for himself
and for his children, who were dressed all anyhow, and
126 LACEMAKER LEKHOLM
sometimes even in rags. There was no question that their
own father was superior to any lieutenant or captain, and
that the invention of the new range-finder put him on a level
with the colonel himself.
But poor and run to seed as he was, there was some-
thing in Uncle Anders that their own father lacked some-
thing in him which always caused the mathematician's sons
a curious sensation of pleasurable expectation, a faint thrill
along the spine as though in the presence of something alive,
something surprising, inexplicable both in its origin and in
its manifestation. And this something was what he himself
used to call the artist in him.
When he was "in the right mood," he would take a pen-
cil and ask:
"What have I got in my hand?"
"A pencil."
Then he would raise his heavy moustache so that his
front-teeth were visible, and point to them.
"What are these?"
"Your front-teeth."
"And what's this?"
He tapped his front-teeth with the pencil, and the result
was a tune the Swedish army tattoo, "Under the Double
Eagle," or some other regimental march. And he would
laugh and say:
"You see! Your father would say it was a pencil plus a
few front-teeth. And so it is, if you like. And especially if
all one can do is to add a to b. But it's something more, it's
music, it's poetry. But you don't understand that. I'll let
you have it again."
He began to hammer out the army tattoo again. And
when he had finished he said:
"And it isn't only the army tattoo. It's a camp. Ljungby-
hed, or anywhere you like. Rows of tents. A summer eve-
ning. The sun's just setting, as yellow as a hard-boiled egg
HAS AN IDEA 127
behind the bkck fir woods. The officers are sitting on the
mess verandah, drinking punch. The bats are beginning to
fly. The first star is shining. . . . But to your father it's
just a street performer's trick. Tell him so from me!"
Or he would take his violin out of its case, lean his head
on one side and tune it. Then he would say:
"Now this violin's tuned. Take it home to your father
and ask him to play it hear what it sounds like. Worse
than a cat on the tiles. The neighbours'd come and kill him
in two minutes. And when I got the violin back, it'd be so
out of tune I couldn't get a note out of it. But now listen! "
He put the violin under his chin and began to play.
"What's that?"
"It's one of your waltzes."
"Yes, it is. But it's love and longing too. It's the poetry of
love. That's what it is. It doesn't matter a straw whether
it's three-quarter time, or who composed it. The love in
it is the main thing. But you don't understand that, poor
little devils! You may have got brains. You may go far in
your way. But you've no poetry in you. And that's why I'm
sorry for you. Tell your father so from me. Your mother had
a little poetry in her once. But he's knocked it out of her.
Tell him that too!"
It was not improbable that their father himself knew
in his heart that Uncle Anders was so much his superior
that "you boys can have no idea of it." The musician caused
him, and the family in general, continual worry. But the
only condemnation of Uncle Anders his sons heard him
utter was that he had betrayed the confidence his fellow-men
had placed in him.
"That fellow's failed in his duty," he used to say, and
there was an infinite contempt in his tone.
Like his sister, Charlotte, Uncle Anders's musical talent
had attracted attention when he was still a child. He was one
of those people who can make musical instruments out of
128 LACEMAKER LEKHOLM
anything they lay their hands on: combs, saw-blades, pen-
cils and front-teeth. He could just as well have taken up
the piano as the violin. But as Charlotte had for a long
time been playing the piano, old Fru Lekholm chose the
violin for the boy. He was her pride, the child of her heart.
She dreamed of a brilliant career for him which would atone
for all the ridicule that fool Lekholm had brought upon
the family. Anders should study at the College of Music
in Stockholm 5 Anders should become a great musician.
And then came the loss of the regimental contract, the
crash, collapse, poverty.
When the lad was seventeen Major Rosenstjerna came
to the rescue. For many years he had talked to Fru Lekholm
about the boy's remarkable talent, and had never omitted
to point out what a brilliant career might be his if he had
an opportunity of developing his gifts. That was at the time
when the foolish Lekholm was still regarded as a fairly
well-to-do man. Immediately after the crash the quartette
was broken up by the death of the judge Nollerothj the
disaster kept Fru Lekholm for the most part busy indoors,
and she saw less and less of Major Rosenstjerna.
But one day, when Anders was in his eighteenth year,
he came to call quite unexpectedly. He wanted to talk about
the young musician's future. He had not forgotten him.
He was still of opinion that Anders's gifts were so remark-
able that he did not feel he could bear the responsibility of
nothing being done to bring the lad's rich promise to ful-
filment. And now he had a proposal to make. He and a few
others, a sort of committee, would sign an appeal and have
it published in the local paper, inviting the public, if in-
clined and willing to help, to contribute according to their
means to enable the lad to continue his studies in Stock-
holm. To make this appeal less humiliating for a family
which had seen better days and had found its resources
diminished through no fault of its own, the major suggested
HAS AN IDEA 129
that Fru Lekholm, Mamsell Lekhoim, he himself and
young Anders should give a concert at the town hall at
which a moderate entrance fee would be charged. He had
arranged a programme for the concert : Fru Lekholm should
play a few piano solos, she and the major a few duets, and
Mamsell Charlotte and young Anders likewise a few duets,
which would enable the public to convince themselves of
the abundance of his natural gifts.
The appeal was published in the paper, signed by Major
Rosenstjerna and the headmaster of Anders's school, sub-
scription lists were displayed in Anderberg's bookshop, and
at half-past twelve one Sunday the concert began before a
large audience.
Next autumn young Anders was sent to Stockholm and
was admitted to the Royal Musical Academy. He went to
live en pension with the proprietor of Schulte's lacemaking
business in Gotgatan.
In this family he soon seemed to have made himself not
merely popular, but positively worshipped, on account of
his social gifts. Neither Herr Schulte nor his friends had,
except on a concert platform, seen a young man who could
not only play the piano, the violin, the concertina and the
mouth-organ, but also blow tunes on a comb and, with the
aid of an ordinary pencil and his front-teeth, play the Swed-
ish army tattoo so convincingly that his hearers could see
the campfires burning and the sun sinking behind the
woods. Further, this richly endowed youth was a regular
variety artist 5 he could put on ragged old clothes and sing
comic couplets and topical songs with inimitable humorous
patter. All these things were reported in the letters which
master-lacemaker Schulte sent to his old fellows-journeyman
and colleague down in Skane.
Unfortunately, it became clear that Anders Lekholm,
despite his talents, was as incapable of standing the Stock-
holm air as his uncle, "Dr." Oscar Lekholm, had been. The
I3O LACEMAKER LEK.HOLM
spring after his arrival the sad news came that Herr Schulte
could no longer keep the young musician under his roof.
The reasons were numerous. He had waited till the last pos-
sible moment before making any complaint. But an un-
fortunate incident, involving a black velveteen waistcoat
with white spots belonging to himself, had now made it his
painful duty to inform the young man's parents of his
frivolity and his general moral defects.
The Lekholms of the third generation never altogether
understood what part the velveteen waistcoat had played in
Uncle Anders's interrupted career. There was no question,
however, that, after long discussions with Major Rosen-
stjerna, he was restored to his native town, was accepted as
a bandsman in the regiment and clad in a humble private's
uniform. His degradation in life made the atmosphere of
the lacemaker's overcrowded little home gloomier than
ever. Fru Lefcholm could not even shed a tear; her pride,
the child of her heart, had awakened her from the last beau-
tiful dream of her life to the sordid daily round. Hence-
forth her heart was as shrivelled and bitter as a dry nut.
Whether Anders Lekholm, during the years that followed,
was at all affected by the joyless gloom of his home, the
annoyance of his patrons and the disapproval of his fellow-
men, is not recorded in family tradition. It cannot, how-
ever, have been long before his natural cheerfulness,
reinforced by his youth and his sociability, began to reassert
itself. His social gifts, moreover, in so small a town and so
restricted a circle as that in which he moved, were too bril-
liant to be allowed to be buried for ever, even under the
thickest stratum of repentance. Stronger characters than his
would have failed to resist the temptation, especially as it
was the only alternative to Fru Lekholm's bitter lamenta-
tions and old Rosenstjerna's accusations of gross ingratitude
towards his patrons, as well as unpardonable lack of artistic
HAS AN IDEA
conscience and sense of responsibility as a citizen. This ex-
plained, i it did not excuse, the impudent answer he once
gave to Major Rosenstjerna when the latter lamented the
premature death in him, Anders, of a great musician.
"Herr Major y the musician's not dead. He's only got
screwed and gone to sleep afterwards."
He was now swallowed up in a new life. This new life
was represented by Berggren's tavern in Ostra Bulevarden.
He was usually to be found there in his spare time and a
bandsman had a great deal.
Berggren's tavern certainly did not enjoy the highest
reputation in the town. It ranked far below the restaurants
where the citizens in general sought refreshment and recrea-
tion. At the same time, it could not be called a common
ale-house. There were a good many mothers and wives in
the town who called the place by even worse names. But
that was due to other circumstances. It had, in fact, a pe-
culiar position among the places of entertainment in the
town and was frequented by a special clientele.
Berggren's tavern was situated in a fairly new three-
storied house opposite the cattle market. Whether the situa-
tion had been chosen with a view to the proximity of the
cattle market, or the cattle market had given the tavern
its special position among the local houses of refreshment,
it is hard to say. One thing is certain that the very name of
Berggren's tavern brought curses to many women's lips for
miles round the town. There, it was declared, the money
paid for many horses, cows, sheep and pigs, for corn and
vegetables in plenty, had disappeared without leaving a
trace.
The owner of the tavern was one Herr Berggren, a little
man of about forty-five at that time, who always wore a tail-
coat and had a round face, a big cavalry moustache, close-
cropped hair, a stomach like a beer-barrel and very short
bowlegs. No one knew where he had come from. One ru-
LACEMAKER LEKHOLM
mour declared that he had been a Skane hussar in his youth.
Another maintained that he had laid the foundations of his
fortune as owner of a disorderly house in Humlegatan in
Malma This fortune, according to popular legend, he had
swelled to immeasurable proportions by playing cards with
intoxicated farmers and winning from them the money they
brought in with them from the cattle market which lay
opposite.
Every night, after a fair or market day, rows of slumber-
ing horses stood in the street near his establishment, and in
the back of each cart sat a fanner's wife wrapped in a shawl,
waiting for her husband, who was kept a prisoner within by
the demon of gambling and drink in the shape of Herr
Berggren. At last they came staggering out, surrounded by
clouds of cigar smoke and exhaling an odour of nicotine and
beefsteak and onions, having first been plucked naked and
made so drunk that they could not explain how they had
lost their money. On ordinary days the tavern was visited
only by confirmed topers among the small tradesmen, who
shambled shyly and unsteadily to and fro between it and
the little shop or office they were drinking to disaster.
It was this restaurant-keeper Berggren, himself a quiet,
reticent, perfectly sober man, who got hold of Anders Lek-
holm. The young musician's reputation as an inexhaustible
source of gaiety, an admirable performer with violin, con-
certina, comb and pencil, added to a dramatic gift, especially
in rendering military ditties, caused him quickly to realize
what an acquisition he might be to the establishment. He
had especially^ in mind the part of the tavern which was called
the "drawing-rooms" two rooms which were separated
from the other four, had an unobtrusive entrance of theii
own by the door which opened into Smalgatan, and wen
furnished with sofas, plush chairs, antimacassars, a marble
topped table with iron feet, and a large oil painting of the
repentant Magdalen on the main wall. This work, it wai
HAS AN IDEA 133
affirmed, had once adorned the reception-room of Herr
Berggren's disorderly house in Malmo. In this room a
few of the really well-to-do fanners of the wealthy district
met in distinguished seclusion men who sat on the bench
and belonged to rural councils, county councils, even Par-
liament itself.
There was nothing humiliating in Herr Berggren's offer
to Anders Lekholm that on fair evenings, in return for free
food and drink and possibly also a little douceur > he should
entertain these local grandees with exhibitions of his talent.
In the first place, Berggren knew how to garnish his pro-
posal with smooth flatteries. Besides, it was obviously a
great mark of distinction for a young man of nineteen to be
permitted to associate and, when they were under the
influence of drink, on familiar terms with magistrates,
chairmen of rural councils, and county councillors, men of
position with big farms, bulging wallets and money in the
bank, even if their enthusiasm at the young man's perform-
ances could not be regarded as a conclusive estimate of his
talent. The new role he was playing as professional enlivener
was an entirely pleasant one 5 indeed, food and drink, praise,
noisy applause and thumps on the back were obviously pref-
erable to his mother's acid grumbling and Major Rosen-
stjerna's accusations of lack of artistic conscience. Nor could
he tell to what this life might not lead. Life, especially an
artist's, was full of surprises. Perhaps, one fine evening,
one of these well-to-do patrons would put his hand on the
place where both heart and his wallet were to be found, and
amiably place the latter at his disposal for the further de-
velopment of his rich natural gifts.
This, indeed, never happened. His new admirers, unlike
Major Rosenstjerna and his other ex-patrons in the town,
seemed entirely satisfied with his performances as they saw
them. His plan of himself making such a proposal one eve-
ning was brought to nothing by his preference, characteristic
134 LACEMAKER LEKHOLM
o a lyrical temperament , for hoping instead of acting. None
the less, his new intercourse stimulated his creative faculty.
These rich peasants, whose farms lay scattered about the
fertile plain to the south of the town, often gave parties.
And they began to ask Anders Lekholm to them, partly
to amuse the other folk, partly to play dance music for the
younger people. These invitations not only brought him in
a little much-needed money, but soon kindled in him a pas-
sion for one of the daughters of farmer Carlson of Olstorp.
The Olstorp waltz was written in her honour.
His love was not returned, but the Olstorp waltz con-
tinually brought him in orders for new waltzes and polkas.
What was sauce for the goose was sauce for the gander j if
Olstorp had got a waltz, Nygard and Isgrannatorp and
Gardsgard must have theirs. Anders Lekholm, whose grief
at the scorning of his love had plunged him into a full tide
of inspiration, supplied all these farms with their private
dance music melancholy, yearning waltzes, polkas of sav-
age gaiety, fas tie quatre full of courtly grace, and graziel-
las brimming with Spanish life and sunshine. These orders
too brought in money.
But the enthusiastic youth, who transferred his tender
passion from one house to another with lyrical facility,
could not become stepson to any of their owners. In one
case, where his feeling seemed to be returned, the match
broke down before the father's stubborn resistance. A farmer
would not let his daughter marry a "fiddler."
Further, all his dreams of combining the pains of artistic
creation with the pleasures of rural life were frustrated
by an unfortunate occurrence. It appeared that he was shortly
to become a father. The prospective mother was a serving-
maid at Berggren's named Hulda Stal, daughter of a lame
sawyer in the town, a well-built young woman with a mass
of black hair, dark, warm, moist eyes and a prominent bosom
concealed on fair and market days under a white silk blouse,
HAS AN IDEA 135
which by the end o the evening was covered with finger-
prints from grimy rustic hands.
His fatherhood clearly caused no spiritual crisis of long
duration in Uncle Anders. The family chronicles contain
no record from this period except a peculiarly disagreeable
encounter between Fru Lekholm and the sawyer StaPs wife,
each of whom, to judge from oral family tradition, seems
to have accused the other of failing to look after her child
properly. The initial blame seems to have lain with Fru
Lekholm, who, in the heat of the first encounter between
the two mothers, called Fru StaPs daughter a hussy. Fru
Stal replied by quietly asking what was the proper term for
Fru Lekholm's scamp of a son, who played at Berggren's
for food and drink.
Fru Lekholm replied to this insult by pointing out that
the discussion was taking pkce in her kitchen and that she
was accordingly within her rights in asking Fru Stal to go,
especially as she, Fru Lekholm, had no wish to continue a
conversation with "scum." Unfortunately, she accompanied
the request by a grip on Fru StaPs arm and an eloquent
gesture in the direction of the door. Fru Stal replied by put-
ting her right hand under her shawl and thrusting her fist,
thus protected, through a pane of the kitchen window.
At this moment the situation was further complicated by
the lacemaker's appearance on the scene. For some reason
he had armed himself with his volunteer rifle. At the sight
of the weapon the sawyer's wife gave a heart-rending shriek
and dashed out into the yard and through the front gate
into the street, crying:
"He's going to murder me, he's going to shoot me, the
devil! Help, help! he's going to shoot me!"
A lull of half an hour or three-quarters of an hour fol-
lowed, after which Fru Stal returned to the Lekholms's little
house, this time accompanied by her husband, the lame,
bearded sawyer, who had armed himself with his axe for
136 LACEMAKER LEKHOLM
all eventualities. The Stals were not received by the Lek-
holms. Warned by the sound of Fru StaPs shrill voice when
she and her husband entered the yard, accompanied by
quite a respectable crowd for such a small town, Fru Leb-
holm had bolted the kitchen door. Fru Stal had to content
herself with expressing her thoughts and feelings through
the broken window, while the sawyer hovered in the back-
ground, mumbling threats and significantly testing the edge
of his tomahawk with his thumb.
This scene, which attracted no small attention and was
commented on for some time after Fru Stal, indeed,
threatened, to prosecute the hero of Kolding for carrying
lethal weapons had no influence whatever on the course
of nature. In the fullness of time Hulda Stal, or, as she
was commonly called, Hulda at Berggren's, gave birth to
a daughter. The child was handed over to Fru StaPs care.
Fru Lekholm refused, as she herself expressed it, to touch
the child with a pair of tongs. Hulda returned to Berg-
gren's tavern and two years later was again in an interesting
condition, resulting in the birth of a second daughter. An-
ders was again the father.
The lovers 7 fate was now sealed. When Uncle Anders
was promoted a year or two later he married Hulda Stal
and went to live with her parents, who inhabited a wooden
hut a little way out of the town, surrounded by a patch of
ground on which potatoes were grown. Here then, although
on a smaller scale, Uncle Anders found his dream realized
his dream of combining the pain of artistic creation with
peaceful rusticity.
IV
All this had happened long before Dr. Holmes, alias Kalle
Lekholm, had as a boy of seven or eight formed the habit
of flying from the puritanical atmosphere of his own home
HAS AN IDEA 137
to Uncle Anders's paradise. At this later period the musi-
cian and his family lived in the same house as Berggren's
tavern, in rooms on the first floor, reached from the yard
and looking on to Ostra Smalgatan. Herr Berggren, who
had flourished exceedingly, had bought the whole house
and, on his protege being promoted to sergeant, had let
these rooms to him, presumably in order to have him at
hand in case of need an arrangement of which Uncle An-
ders was never heard to complain.
At that time, too, Uncle Anders had passed through his
worst years of storm and stress, and as a mature man, in the
prime of life, had settled down as a good-humoured and
on the whole quiet drinker.
It must be pleaded in his defence that both his tempera-
ment and his profession made this unfortunate state of
things only too easy and natural. As has been briefly in-
dicated, the predominance of the lyrical element in him laid
fetters upon any energy and industry which may originally
have formed part of his organism. Moreover, his profession
compelled him to lead a life which consisted largely in
doing nothing 5 and this leads to idleness, the mother of all
the vices. His duties as sergeant in the regimental band
were confined to an hour and a halPs practice in the music-
room, the daily march at the changing of the guard, and
participation two or three times a week in the concerts which
the band gave in summer in the hotel gardens, in winter
in the town hall. There were also the fairly frequent eve-
nings spent in the orchestra when operas or operettas were
being given by a travelling theatrical company.
Only on the autumn manoeuvres was he compelled to do
real military service in the capacity of battery trumpeter.
He detested these manoeuvres. They brought into his life
an element of pressure and hurry which was quite out of
keeping with his poetic, contemplative disposition, and filled
him with terror because he was compelled to mount a horse.
138 LACEMAKER LEKHOLM
His experiences had bred in him an active dislike of this
noble animal.
But apart from these three weeks, which caused him so
much mental and physical suffering, he could not be re-
garded as overworked. Private lessons could not fill his
spare time to any degree worth speaking of 5 no one in the
town wanted to learn the monster bass, and all too few the
violin. It was, therefore, in the nature of things that Berg-
gren's tavern came to play too large a part in his life after
he had taken upon himself the responsibilities of a house-
holder and father of a family.
His move to the house in which the tavern was proved
advantageous in that he could go home from his potations
without any publicity. It was dangerous for a man in uni-
form to be visibly intoxicated in broad daylight, and Uncle
Anders had, unfortunately, on leaving Berggren's tavern,
at times been unable to bear himself with the dignity ex-
pected of a warrior. He had been put under arrest first
with, then without, duty, and finally in "clink." He had by
degrees reached the point at which he could be punished
only twice more 5 after that only dismissal from the service
awaited him. It was obviously, therefore, a great advantage
for him to move to Berggren's house and be able to go
straight to bed across the yard unseen of critical eyes.
This arrangement, however, came to an end in a few
years as the result of a disagreement between Uncle An-
ders and the publican. After this breach he transf ererd his
libations to his own home, where the move from the festal
board to bed was still more easily accomplished. His rooms
became the resort of various boon companions, and the
cornet-player Jocke, who was a paying-guest of the family,
used to act as deputy-host. This arrangement proved con-
siderably cheaper than the visits to Berggren's tavern.
No middlemen were involved^ as Uncle Anders ex-
pressed it, there was no need to throw money down the
HAS AN IDEA 139
throats of greedy publicans. Now he had only to send two
of the elder girls down to Bergs, the spirit merchants', with
an empty bottle and the necessary ready money. Hulda
Lekholm, for her part, had no objection, either in principle
or in practice, to this new arrangement. For her it was, on
the other hand, a renewal of the occupation of her youth,
with its movement, its gaiety, its fun, its laughter. It meant,
too, a break in a housewife's monotonous daily round. A
glass of brandy now and again in the course of the day was
an effective means of driving away pain or indigestion. And
whatever might be said against Uncle Anders, he was of a
generous nature, and liked his wife to share his pleasures.
Every time she came in with fresh coffee, he said:
"You take a little pick-me-up, mother. It's good for the
digestion."
These years were without doubt, comparatively speaking,
the happiest in Uncle Anders's life. He might still undergo
two punishments 5 there was, therefore, no immediate dan-
ger of dismissal from the service, as long as he did not show
himself in the streets drunk. He was still young. The chil-
dren that is to say, the boys were small, and the neces-
sity of pulling himself together and making an effort to se-
cure their future was still remote. And he imagined the
boys' future as very bright, as his father, the old lacemaker,
had done before him. If human calculations counted for
anything in life, his boys ought to be very musical. He had
thought, too, that he could detect unmistakable signs of
talent in them. Being artists, there was no need for them to
acquire expensive book-learning. And there was plenty of
time before he need come to a definite decision regarding
their future.
Not even Uncle Anders, of course, escaped the black
hours which are the essence of every artist's life. There was
business, bills to get backed or accepted, stormy meetings
with brother Carl in connection with some necessary trans-
I4O LACEMAKER LEK.HOLM
action, painful scenes with sister Charlotte of a kind which
always stung to disagreeable wakefulness the repentance
which slumbered in the depths of his heart, and inquisi-
tions and judgments before the family tribunal, with his
eldest brother, Per, specially summoned for the occasion,
as judge. Not to mention the continual threats of Anders-
son, the grocer, to allow no further credit.
But it was in these hours that his creative faculty came
to fruition. Among other things, as has been said, he was
wrestling with the idea of utilizing the at once brilliant and
tragic destiny of Jephthah, judge of Israel, as the theme of
a great oratorid. During his short stay at the College of
Music, this had been the subject of a prize competition for
the pupils in the highest class, and he took it up now.
For various reasons the subject appealed to him. Jeph-
thah, the man of God, had, as everyone knows, been ex-
pelled from his family as an illegitimate son and led a
wandering and highly irregular life for some years until, in
the war against the Ammonites, he suddenly appeared in
the role of Israel's saviour. Perhaps it was this part of
Jephthah's proud but tragic life which kindled Uncle An-
ders's imagination. Perhaps he saw in the wandering, irregu-
lar early fife of the man of God from Gilead a reflection
of his own. Jephthah's sacrifice of his daughter could hardly
have had any symbolic counterpart in his own life. It is
possible, on the other hand, that Jephthah's victory over
the tribe of Ephraim suggested to Uncle Anders the man-
ner in which he and his children would some day outstrip
his brother the mathematician and his sons.
He often talked about this great oratorio when he was
"in the right mood." He had imagined it in four parts.
The first was to deal with the great Gileadite's youthful
irregularities; the second with his election as chieftain of
Israelj the third with the sacrifice of his daughter^ while
in the fourth and last part the crushing of the tribe of
HAS AN IDEA
Ephraim (here he gave Kalle Lekholm and his brothers a
meaning look of his bloodshot eyes) would be described in
passages of tremendous power. The first of these parts,
dealing with Jephthah's chequered youth, was finished al-
ready. He had worked into it the waltzes, polkas, fas da
quatre and graziellas which he had dedicated to neigh-
bouring estates the Olstorp waltz, the Nygard polka,
the Isgrannatorp fas de quatre and the Gardsgard gra-
ziella.
In the darkest hours of all, which generally followed
painful encounters with his sister Charlotte, when he re-
garded his life as a failure, or at least as having belied its
rich promise, his musical genius busied itself with thoughts
of death and of his funeral march. This was to be his swan-
song. When it was completed it was to be placed in a sealed
envelope on which would be written in large letters, "To
be opened immediately after my death. Anders Lekholm."
Then, at his own funeral, the world would first hear the
notes in which he had concentrated the whole majesty of
death, and in whose opening bars the monster bass would lift
up its mighty voice in a way which "would send cold thrills
down the back of every devil who heard it," as Uncle An-
ders himself put it. In other words, he would show the
world by this musical testament that, whatever sister Char-
lotte said, his life had not been a failure. With this funeral
march, which he imagined as gradually supplanting Cho-
pin's, at any rate in his own country, he would conquer
oblivion and, with oblivion, death.
It can fairly be affirmed that this period, in spite of every-
thing, was the midsummer of his life.
The autumn of his life came early, quite unanticipated by
himself and entirely contrary to all that he intended.
As a result of the difference of opinion between Heir
Berggren and himself, which is understood to have been
142 LACEMAKER LEKHOLM
due to a business matter, Uncle Anders had vowed never to
set foot in the tavern again. One morning, however, at
about half-past ten, he broke his vow. His good nature made
it impossible for him to remain on terms of permanent en-
mity with one whom he had known intimately for years,
and who, moreover, was his landlord. He visited the publi-
can one morning with the object of clearing up the mis-
understanding, and was offered a glass or two as a mark of
reconciliation.
Whether these glasses contained any peculiarly deadly
ingredients was never clearly ascertained. However that
may be, when Uncle Anders left Berggren's tavern at a
quarter to twelve to take his place at the head of the column
for the changing of the guard, he was so drunk that in
full dress uniform he stumbled over his sword, lost his
kepi in the gutter, fell down while vainly endeavouring to
pick it up, and was unable to get up again.
Sergeant Anders Lekholm received his last punishment
but one three weeks' arrest without duty.
After this lamentable incident he changed his way of
life. At his brother CarPs earnest advice if so mild a term
can be applied to their conversation he became a member
of the Good Templars' lodge ''Well done," which had been
established in the town a few years before.
The conference between the Lekholm brothers took place
late in the afternoon of the day on which, on the stroke of
twelve, the musician was released from the cells in which
he had spent three weeks. It lasted a very long time. In the
mathematician's home supper was kept waiting in an at-
mosphere of depression and impending disaster. At last,
at half-past eight, the family sat down, and had just finished
HAS AN IDEA 143
their meal when the mathematician's key was heard in the
lock, and he was heard to come in and absently place his
sword in the umbrella-stand.
When he appeared at the dining-room door not a trace
of what had passed between him and his brother was visible
in his expression. He only nervously turned the quid which
he always held cunningly concealed far inside his mouth,
between the right wisdom-tooth of his lower jaw and his
underlip. He nodded curtly by way of greeting and, with-
out saying a word, went into his own room to wash his hands
and remove the quid. Then, still without saying a word,
he sat down at the table, put on his glasses, which years of
work by artificial light had compelled him to use early in
life, and tucked his napkin in between his neck and the
collar of his uniform.
His wife gave him a quick glance of interrogation as she
passed him the bread. But she dared not put a direct ques-
tion. His sons sat rigid and silent, with their eyes fixed on
their empty plates. They dared not even look at their fa-
ther. Their thoughts were circling round the subject they
had been discussing the whole afternoon, to the great detri-
ment of their work: What had he done to Uncle Anders?
Had he thrashed him with his riding-whip? They had seen
that it was not hanging in its usual pkce in the lobby, so he
must have taken it with him. And had Uncle Anders dared
to hit back? Or had he made the same instinctive movement
as they did when the riding^whip was produced put both
hands over his eyes and endeavoured to shield his face with
his arm? For it sometimes happened that the mathematician,
when punishing his sons, flew into a strange berserk passion
and had no idea where his blows were falling. After such
outbreaks he used to lock himself into his room, and their
mother had confided to them, to console them, that he burst
into tears of regret for his blind fury.
"You mustn't think ill of him," she used to say. "You
144 LACEMAKER LEKHOLM
don't understand his severity and his violence. But you will
some day. He's had to put up with so much injustice in his
life. And it all breaks out like this at home sometimes j he
just can't help it."
At last their father said, looking at his wife with a strange,
almost tender smile which his sons had never seen before
& smile like the drawing of a heavy curtain for one single
instant to yield a glimpse of a hidden world:
"Maria, have you begun to use my riding-whip to beat
carpets with?"
Their mother blushed and looked uncomfortably at her
children. But she did not answer. There was another long
silence, and then their father said:
"He's to join the Good Templars' lodge to-morrow. And
he moves from Berggren's on April ist. I've been to Berg-
gren myself and given him notice. It was simply awful at
Anders's. I haven't been there for years. Shabby and dirty
and run-to-seed. I hardly liked to shake hands with Hulda,
she was such a sight. Utter squalor! Upon my soul, I can't
see what the end of it'll be, if he doesn't turn over a new
leaf now."
The mathematician's wife drew a long breath.
'TTes, I hope we shall be able to breathe a little more
freely now. The last few years have been dreadful."
"And the disgrace of it!" their father continued, as he
rolled up his napkin and thrust it into the ring. "I've some-
times felt I'd like to change my name, if it could have done
any good. You boys, mind you do all you can to keep your
name respected! A man who drags his family name in the
dirt isn't fit to live! Mark what I say!"
The boys continued to stare at their empty plates,
It was as the mathematician's wife had hpped; the Lek-
holm family breathed freely for a few years till the aw-
ful tragedy overtook Aunt Charlotte.
HAS AN IDEA 145
It came like a clap of thunder from a cloudless mid-
summer sky. The members of the family stared at each
other in terror, and the unspoken question was on the lips
of each: Is that in our family, too? and who will be the
next?
Aunt Charlotte was about forty at the time of the catas-
trophe. For ten years or more she had been a well-known
figure in the town to both young and old. She used to pky
the piano at Herr Lindquist's dancing classes, which were
held regularly in the town at intervals of a few years, and
so came into contact with most of the sons and daughters
of the upper and middle classes. She also gave piano les-
sons, and thanks to her low charge fifty ore an hour
had secured a great many pupils, mostly girls of the middle
class. She enjoyed among them an established reputation
as a monster of ill-temper and cruelty: a small ruler which
she held in her long, thin, bony hand during the lessons
for the purpose of beating time was always ready to de-
scend with pitiless edge on the fumbling fingers of the
children, hopelessly confused and frightened by her cease-
less complaints of their idleness and lack of musical ability.
Among her pupils were her nephews, the mathemati-
cian's boys. The best possible education which he was en-
deavouring to give his children included, in his view, the
ability to play "Napoleon's March Across the Alps" or
<c Blue Danube" without too many false notes. He attached
all the more importance to this musical instruction in that,
as a mathematician, he had calculated that his sons ought
to have inherited at any rate a fraction of their grandmother's
notable musical gift. Moreover, on account of his near rela-
tionship, he obtained a reduction of fifty per cent, in the
price of the lessons a reduction which she worked off on
the boys one by one in the form of showers of abuse, blows
on the hands, and complaints to their father of their idle-
ness, leading, of course, to family complications.
146 LACEMAKER LEKHOLM
It was a continual puzzle to the Lekholm boys how any
parents besides their own could have been willing to send
their children to such a termagant, such a demon of spite
and cruelty. But they did go, partly on account of her repu-
tation as a pianist, partly because the lessons were so cheap,
and partly, too, because instruction and bodily pain were in
those days, and in certain circles of society, regarded as
synonymous 5 as were also external elegance and physical
pain. Just as everyone who wanted to be smart must also
be ready to suffer pain, so he or she who wished to be ini-
tiated into the intricate and comprehensive mysteries of the
piano must resignedly and uncomplainingly submit to bodily
and mental torture.
The circumstance which won her what may be called the
negative popularity she enjoyed among the adult inhabi-
tants of the town was her attendance at all lyings-in-state,
funerals and weddings. The Lekholm boys had heard their
father say that she had not been so bad-looking in her youth,
that she had even been a rather pretty woman. But her
beauty must have been of the kind which requires other
nourishment than spinsterhood and piano lessons. As Dr.
Holmes, alias Kalle Lekholm, remembered her she was a
tall, thin woman with dark, long, thin, strongly marked
features and a pair of dark, strangely burning eyes.
Her most conspicuous characteristic, after her ill temper
and cruelty to her pupils, was an elegance which excited the
envy and ridicule of her f ellow-townswomen. Every ore she
managed to scrape together by playing at dancing classes
and giving lessons was spent on clothes. Once every spring
she made a three days 7 trip to Copenhagen and returned
with as many of the season's novelties as her savings allowed
her to purchase. There was only one detail of her clothes
in which she obstinately refused to follow the fashion. Long
after the bustle had ceased to be an integral part of a well-
dressed woman's attire, she continued to wear one, having
HAS AN IDEA 147
discovered that it compensated for a certain defect in her
figure.
She was everywhere. When anyone in the town no
matter who lay in state, she was one of the first to arrive
at the house of mourning, eagerly studied the expression
on the face of the corpse, the grave-clothes and the decora-
tion of the coffin, made a mental note of every word ut-
tered, every tear shed by the relatives, selected the largest
and finest sweet from the pkte that was handed round,
thrust it into her pocket and preserved it at home in the top
drawer of her writing-table, which she had turned into a
museum of funeral and wedding sweets.
At funerals her sharp elbows were invincible weapons
with which to fight her way forward to the pkce next to
the mourners. While the clergyman was casting the three
handfuls of soil over the coffin and bidding the departed
one rest in peace, Aunt Charlotte stood opposite him scan-
ning the faces of the chief mourners with her burning hawk's
eyes. On such occasions she was deaf to all remarks, all sharp
words and sarcasms, insensible to all rebukes in the form
of elbows thrust into her chest and heels placed on her toes.
She was inspired by a passion that knew no obstacles. She
must get forward, have one of the best places, must see
everything, satisfy her desire.
At private weddings she arrived early and posted herself
outside the house to see who had been invited and how they
were dressed. She waited patiently in rain and slush on the
other side of the street till the time came when the wed-
ding breakfast was over, the lights were lit in the drawing-
room windows, and the bridal pair, at the eagerly and
loudly expressed desire of the public, appeared in all their
finery.
But the red-letter days of her existence were the regret-
tably rare occasions when one of the male or female celebri-
ties of the town was married in church. She was there the
148 LACEMAKER LEKHOLM
day before, to see the altar and choir being decorated. On
the wedding-day itself she was one of the first to arrive,
and stood pressed close to the church doors, in order, the
moment they were opened, to dash up the nave with her
pointed elbows thrust out and secure a place at the end of
the pew just behind those reserved for relatives and friends.
Her head on its long, thin bird's neck, crowned by a hat
with plumage in the latest fashion, was continually bobbing
nervously up and down over the edge of the pew.
But she was at all times, in ordinary life, a conspicuous
figure in the town. On mornings when she had no piano
lessons she was always out and about, in the streets and on
the boulevard. She walked very fast, as if endeavouring
to escape some pursuer or late for an important appointment.
In contrast to her behaviour at weddings and funerals, she
was as formal and correct as possible when out walking;
she looked straight in front of her, with her head slightly
bent forward. It was commonly said that if a young man,
particularly an officer, saluted her she turned fiery red and
broke into a trot, as if fearing an approach. Impudent school-
boys used to take off their caps to her to see if this was true.
The curious thing about her was that, despite her inquisi-
tiveness and love of sensation, she had no confidante, no
friends, hardly even acquaintances in the little town where
she had been born, gone to school, been confirmed, and lived
for nearly forty years. She passed her old school comrades
in the street with a curt inflection of her long, skinny neck
and a faint malicious smile, in which people saw a mon-
strous, unjustified consciousness of superiority.
At home, too, she kept to herself as far as was possible
in three little rooms and a kitchen, in constant friction with
her old parents, each of whom, in different ways, misfor-
tune had turned into a regular eccentric. She was a torment
to the two old people, above all through her rigid insistence
on her rights. She paid a small sum monthly for board and
HAS AN IDEA 149
lodging, and considered that when this was done she had
no further obligation. She refused to help in the kitchen or
do any housework or cleaning beyond dusting the parlour,
which she regarded as her private room; the lacemafcer was
only allowed to enter it in the morning, when she was out
for her aimless walks.
She was mean, too. She put her savings into the bank
till the time of her annual visit to Copenhagen approached^
and it was only after a violent altercation that, when times
were hard, she could be induced to lend her mother a small
sum to meet the most necessary expenses. She spent her
spare time devouring novels, which she took out of the
lending library every Saturday. Sometimes she even bought
a book at the bookseller's with her own money, and jeal-
ously locked it up in a drawer of her writing-table.
The mainspring of her life was one single devouring bit-
terness, a burning hatred of her brother Anders. He had
become a bugbear to her. Her family dared not mention
his name in her presence for fear of the burning flood of
accusation, hate and contempt which, at the thought of An-
ders, flowed from her lips like lava from a crater. She had
the nose of a bloodhound, and despite all efforts at secrecy,
she always found out when Uncle Anders had visited his
parents in her absence and tried to induce them to intervene
with his brother the mathematician with a view to a little
financial assistance for himself. Then she came rushing up
to the mathematician's wife she did not dare approach Carl
and unburdened herself:
"So you're going to help him again, the drunken beast!
Always him! But what have father and you others done for
me? Answer that if you can! No one's troubled about me.
No one has thought for a moment what I might have done
in the world if I'd gone to the College of Music instead
of him. 7 was good enough to play at that concert, when
money was to be raised so that he might go to Stockholm
I5O LACEMAKER LEKHOLM
to live a loose life and steal Herr Schulte's waistcoat. But
no one thought there was anything in me. You haven't
an idea what I could have done on the piano i I'd been
sent to the College of Music. You haven't a notion what
I've got in here!" (She laid her long, skinny hands on her
breast.) "No, you haven't. It's never been me only him.
I shouldn't have boozed and slacked. I'd have worked till
a bloody sweat stood on my forehead. How do you know
what I couldn't have done, if you'd given one day's thought
to my future and my talents? Have you ever heard of a
little peasant girl from Smaland whose name was Chris-
tina Nilsson, and who is now the Countess Casa de Miranda?
Or Jenny Lind? I hate him and you and father. And that
old Rosenstjerna, who took the drunken beast up. Do you
think that if I'd been a common harlot and been willing
to pay a certain price, he wouldn't have helped me? Oh
yes, I know men!"
The mathematician's wife protested.
cc For Heaven's sake be quiet j don't talk so loud. You
know the boys are in the next room and can hear every
word. You're quite incorrigible."
"Boys! yes, your boys, whom I have to sit and wear my-
self out over for twelve skilling an hour! But that's noth-
ing to do with it. I know men. Women don't get help in any
other way, whatever their gifts may be."
"But you don't mean that Jenny Lind and Christina
Nilsson "
"I only mean what I think. And that's enough. I know
men. I've seen through them."
"But you don't mean that Major Rosenstjerna made you
tried I really don't know how to express it, it's so dread-
ful to make charges against a dead man! You ought to
be ashamed of yourself, Charlotte, that's all I've got to
say."
"I don't say he did. I only say he might have. I know
HAS AN IDEA
men and I know they're all alike. Well, that's all I've got
to say. Good-bye!"
The Lekholm boys had often overheard these outbursts.
Sometimes they ended differently. Suddenly they heard
her burst into tears.
"I know, Maria, you think I'm a raw, silly creature. But
you don't know what's in my heart. You've done everything
you could to suppress it. It can never get out. It only burns
and burns inside, inwards. I sometimes feel as if I had a
fire in my breast. And I've nobody, nobody I can confide
They heard their mother trying to console her.
"Come, come, Charlotte, make an effort and calm your-
self "
But she only wept.
What Aunt Charlotte had in her head or hidden in the
depths of her heart her nearest relations did not know. Nor
did anyone else. The mathematician's boys had, as has been
mentioned, several times heard their father say that she
had been a pretty woman in her youth, and that she could
have been married if she had not held her nose so high in
the air. And by putting together isolated utterances made
on various occasions in the family circle, they discovered
that she had really had several admirers in her youth.
One of them in particular, according to what they heard,
seemed to have shown a kudable constancy. His name was
Carl Jonsson and he had stood behind the counter in Kjell-
gren's shop. He had certainly, according to what their fa-
ther said, been as ugly as the devil in those days, red-haired
and freckled and squinty-eyed, with white eyebrows and
eyelashes j but a pushing, capable, shrewd fellow, with all
his wits about him, and a courteous, graceful humorist with
a way of treating customers which was equally pleasing to
matron and maid, society kdy and servant-girl, countryman
LACEMAKER L E K. H O L M
and townsman. But when Aunt Charlotte had refused him
for the third time, he had got tired of calling on her with
large bags of chocolates and mixed sweets, and had in-
vited a girl in Nissalowitz's shop to the next sledging party
followed by a dance which the young men of the town used
to arrange every New Year's Day. And he had married the
girl, too.
He was now, though only forty-five, a man of position,
the commercial Napoleon of the town, a town councillor for
ten years past, newly elected chairman of the finance com-
mittee, a vice-consul and the largest wholesale spirit mer-
chant in the province, with, it was said, a fantastic income.
The dinner he gave every winter at the leading hotel to
the members of the spirit distillers' association was a regular
marvel, both in its arrangements and its consequences. He
wore, too, a freemason's ring on the middle finger of his
right hand, and had long ago changed his name of Jonsson
to the considerably more euphonious Jonzen.
It seemed as if the persistent Carl Jonsson and his perhaps
too prosaic advances had left a deep imprint on Aunt Char-
lotte's mind and had inspired her with a distaste not only
for him but for the male sex in general, for love and every-
thing connected with them. It was not only her habit of
blushing and stumbling along faster every time a young
man took off his hat to her. During the dancing lessons she
appeared in the role of a self-appointed guardian of morals.
As she sat at the piano, playing her repertory of waltzes,
polkas, quadrilles, lancers, schottisches and fas de quatre y
her hawk's eyes swept the room, seeking the slightest occa-
sion to criticize any youth's way of holding his partner. And
when the lesson was over, she interrupted any whispers
that might be exchanged in the cloak-room between young
people of the opposite sexes in whom romance was awaken-
ing. When, behind the barricade of overcoats and cloaks,
a lad was whispering a halting invitation to the lady of his
HAS AN IDEA 153
heart to come to the pastrycook's with him, or at least to
let him escort her home. Charlotte's sharp, bird-like face
was suddenly thrust between the coat-hangers:
"What are you two talking about?"
Their knowledge of her unwearied vigilance in matters
of the kind gave many mothers a certain feeling of security $
they regarded it as an insurance against the romantic in-
clinations of the young people themselves, and also the
more Gallic ideas of propriety held by the dancing master,
Herr Lindquist. This difference of view was the cause of
frequent and vehement disputes between Charlotte and the
dancing master, and these, to her great indignation, were
always terminated by Herr Lindquist with the same obser-
vation:
"At any rate, mademoiselle, your puritanism doesn't pre-
vent your playing dance music with a passion that could
hardly be equalled in any provincial town in Sweden."
Charlotte Lekholm turned crimson.
"You ought to be ashamed of yourself an old man like
you!"
The white-haired old dancing master bowed slightly,
smiled his most meaning smile and said with a courtly
motion of his right hand:
"Yes, mademoiselle, it's no use at all trying to conceal
a thing like that 5 the music is sure to betray it."
VI
For some ten years before the disaster overtook Aunt Char-
lotte there had been in the town a young officer who had
no sooner arrived than he became the general topic of con-
versation by reason of his antecedents, his imposing appear-
ance, his debts and his irregular life. His name was Baltzar
Rosenstjerna, and he was a distant relation to the violinist,
154 LACEMAKER LEKHOLM
Major Rosenstjerna, Augusta Lekholm's friend and the un-
lucky Anders's patron, who was now dead.
He had been compelled to transfer from a Stockholm
regiment in consequence, the rumour went, of a tragic
love affair in the very highest circles of the capital. He was
believed to be irresistible as a conqueror of female hearts $
in fact, his capacities as an officer were less marked than his
social talents. The curious thing about him was that, despite
his eminence as a seducer, he was as popular among married
men as among bachelors, even among those who had to
thank him for the horns they were believed to wear.
With an exterior that was a type of manly beauty the
figure of an Apollo (he was said to have the most perfect
back in the Swedish army), a Greek head with wavy, shin-
ing black hair, thick eyebrows, cold steel-blue eyes, a sensual
mouth under a dashing black moustache he combined a
French gentilhomme's chivalry, an aristocrat's perfect
courtesy to high and low, a gentleman's tact, the complete
reliability of a man on his oath, the faithfulness and loyalty
of a foster-brother, a readiness to help which kept him con-
stantly short of money, and an idle voluptuary's lenient
comprehension of the weaknesses of others. In short, he
was a real nobleman. Most easily led, and lamentably ill-
equipped in the struggle for existence, he had only one
weapon at his disposal: he disarmed all his opponents,
creditors and deceived husbands, with the quality which is
the most unusual of all in the male sex in Sweden charm.
The tailors, jewellers, grocers and wine merchants, who
rang his bell fully determined to deprive him of the very
shirt on his body, if he proved to have no other resources
at the moment, departed a quarter of an hour later affirm-
ing their sincere respect for him and begging to retain his
highly valued custom in future. Married men who had asked
for a private conversation with him, thirsting for his blood,
might be seen the same evening emptying glass after glass
HAS AN IDEA 155
of punch with him at the Stadshotell. He had disarmed them
in the same way as his murmuring creditors by the sincere
readiness he displayed to put everything right.
He went into his financial position, generally deplorable,
with his creditors in detail, gave figures to show the extent
of his indebtedness, the necessity of the expenses he was
obliged to incur in the immediate future, and the impos-
sibility of taking the measures desired at the moment. In
these discussions it was his genuine sincerity which carried
the day. He might, indeed, fairly be called a Casanova at
compound interest. The same sincerity, the same readiness
to do everything in his power to right the wrong that had
been done, was displayed by him when confronted with a
deceived husband. Like most other people of little brain,
he easily fell into stereotyped ways of speech and action,
and it was common knowledge that, in conversation with
an injured husband, he always, sooner or later, referred to
Ibsen's Doll's House, one of the few literary works which
some freak of chance had placed in his hands. (His flat in
Vastra Bulevarden was nicknamed the "Doll's House,"
though for other reasons.)
He always pointed out to an injured husband that a
woman who deceives her husband has some definite reason
for doing it, and this is usually to be found in the husband
himself. He begged him, if possible, altogether to ignore
the unfortunate fact that it was he, Baltzar Rosenstjerna,
who in this case had played the serpent's role. That was
purely a matter of chance. Besides, of what use was moral
indignation? What was done could not be undone. The great
problem of the moment was to try to prevent a recurrence
of the evil. He himself was willing to do everything in his
power to assist the husband in this respect. But he must do
his best too. Women were sensitive creatures really noth-
ing more than bundles of nerves.
Having laid down these general principles, he went on
156 LACEMAKER LEKHOLM
to discuss their practical application. He enlarged, tactfully
and discreetly, on the psychology of woman, with special
reference to the injured husband's particular reasons for dis-
satisfaction with his own marriage. Here, too, his tactics
were successful, though mainly from a cause he himself
did not realize. It was not through his well-intentioned
explanations of the theme of A Doll's House that he had
stilled the deceived one's thirst for blood, but by his sin-
cerity. It had been dearly proved that this much-feared
Don Juan regarded the woman he had seduced with com-
plete indifference. It was a triumph for every married man
to be able to go home to his wife and declare scornfully:
"That fellow doesn't care a brass farthing for you. He
doesn't know what love means. It's only an amusement to
him,"
It might have been thought that a reputation of the kind,
especially as it was probably fully deserved, would quickly
have destroyed his prestige as a Don Juan. But there was
always some woman daring enough to attempt to pierce
his armour of indifference.
Nor was he, really, at bottom, intemperate. But lack of
ambition, idleness and the monotony of garrison life had
turned him into a hard drinker even for his day and his
class, just as, combined with his outward attractions, they
had turned him into a Don Juan. It was, unfortunately, by
no means an uncommon occurrence for him to go home at
night so drunk that he could not distinguish one person
from another. It not infrequently happened, therefore,
especially during the months of darkness, that he accosted
in chivalrous though somewhat fuddled tones solitary
women of such an age and appearance that in broad day-
light, or when fully sober, he would have confined himself
to courteously saluting them* But however completely his
power of distinguishing between individuals had deserted
him, he never lost his peculiar charm of manner. The mo-
HAS AN IDEA 157
ment he perceived his mistake, he lifted his hand to his cap
and expressed his genuine sorrow and profound regret.
Aunt Charlotte herself, on her way home from local dances,
had several times been accosted by him. And each time she
had on the following day, still in a violent state of agita-
tion, tried to persuade her brother the mathematician to
speak to Lieutenant Rosenstjerna on the subject.
At half-past ten one January night, when Aunt Charlotte
was on her way home from the mathematician's, she sud-
denly returned, in a state of terror amounting to collapse.
For a long time she could not find words to say what had
happened to her. It was Lieutenant Rosenstjerna who had
insulted her again. She had almost run into his arms at the
corner of Lasarettsgatan and Ostra Bulevarden. He had
staggered towards her, flung his arms round her waist and
said something to her she could not say what he had said.
She sat hunched up with her handkerchief to her eyes and
swayed to and fro.
She did not dare go home alone that evening; the mathe-
matician had to escort hen
A few years passed.
One morning the little town awoke to find that a tragedy
had taken place during the night in the quarters inhabited
by Lieutenant Rosenstjerna's most intimate friend, Lieu-
tenant Brockman, the companion of his drinking bouts and
his helper in matters of finance. His batman had found him
dead in bed, with a revolver-shot through his right temple.
This catastrophe had surrounded Baltzar Rosenstjerna's
curly head with a blood-red halo. What would he do now?
It was common knowledge that his affairs were more hope-
lessly involved than ever as the result of his friend's death.
It was clear to everyone that he had to choose between sui-
cide and a speedy marriage with a very rich woman. It was
an open secret that, the very day on the morning of which
158 LACEMAKER LEKHOLM
Brockman had been found dead in bed, the colonel had sent
for Rosenstjerna and had seriously pointed out to him that
his only possible road was to the altar. The prestige of the
regiment could not stand another suicide for many years to
come. That very morning the colonel had received a num-
ber of anxious inquiries from various quarters as to the con-
sequences of Brockman's death for Rosenstjerna.
It was said during the next few days that Rosenstjerna
was to get a month's leave, and that some of his brother
officers intended to raise a sum of money which would en-
able him, during that month, to secure a rich fiancee.
But, to the gossips' surprise, he remained in the town,
while the tension among his creditors and the other in-
habitants increased daily. What did he mean to do? How
would he straighten out his affairs? One bill after another
was not met- At school every morning the question was
asked: Has anyone heard if he's shot himself yet? The
waitresses at the hotel brought him his afternoon and eve-
ning punch with extravagant adoration $ they felt they were
serving a man who would soon be a corpse and the centre
of a tragedy. And each night, after he had staggered off
home, they shed bitter tears in the service-room: would it
happen to-night? Rosenstjerna's letter-box, which had al-
ways contained plenty of correspondence, was every morn-
ing stuffed with envelopes, mostly addressed in a feminine
handwriting.
Six weeks after Brockman's death the garrulity of Lind-
gren, the bank commissionna%re^ caused the bombshell to
explode. In addition to his ordinary avocation, he used to
wait at private dinner-parties on special occasions of cere^
mony, wearing a dress-coat and white cotton gloves. He had
been summoned one morning to the house of Consul Jon-
zen who had engaged him for the next Tuesday evening.
There was to be a very grand dinner-party at which the en-
HAS AN IDEA 159
gagement of the Consul's sister Anna and Lieutenant Balt-
zar Rosenstjerna would be announced. The bank commis-
sionnaire, directly the bank was opened the same day, had
felt bound to confide the secret to the manager a retired
major in the words:
"I don't think we need worry much about Lieutenant
Rosenstjerna's little bills now, Herr Major. I was at Jon-
zen's I beg your pardon, Consul Jonzen's for a few
minutes this morning."
Jonzen! you don't think a sharp fellow like that is
going to be fool enough to poke his nose into a wasps'
nest!"
"I will only call your attention, Herr Major, to the fact
that Consul Jonzen has a sister "
"What the devil do you mean, Lindgrenr You don't
mean to say that Rosenstjerna has been there too?"
Lindgren only replied, lowering his voice to a mysterious
tone and looking round the empty board-room:
"Lieutenant Rosenstjerna and Froken Anna Jonzen will
announce their engagement at a very select dinner-party a
week from to-day."
He compressed his lips as though his mouth had been a
purse, and, with his head thrown back, read in the major's
face the effect of the tidings he had imparted.
The major stared at him in helpless astonishment. At last
he said:
"Gracious Heavens above us! How old is she?"
"She's younger that she looks. She is, one might say,
in the prime of life only thirty-three. And perhaps you
will remember, Herr Major, that red-haired women retain
their youth longer than others. And they always have such
pretty, fair complexions. And the Consul has had her well
educated, too. He paid for her to train as a national school
mistress. And she was one for a few years, till Fru Jonzen
died and she went to live in the house."
l6o LACEMAKER. LEKHOLM
The major again sat in silence for some time5 then he
thought aloud:
"What in Heaven's name will his colonel and brother
officers say?"
"According to what I gathered from Consul Jonzen, the
colonel was to be at the dinner-party."
<c \Vhat the deuce are you talking about, Lindgren? Bor-
genschiold at a family party at the Jonzen's! Please send
for the cashier."
Lindgren bowed and disappeared, having first respect-
fully pointed out that the news had been told him in con-
fidence by Consul Jonzen. The major waved his hands:
"I understand, I understand! Send the cashier here!"
Work was stopped in every home in the town for at least
an hour that afternoon, as the report spread from house to
house. And during the next few days too the consumption
of coffee was, the grocers stated, abnormally large. There
had never been such a mesalliance in the regiment's history.
It was true that a few years back a lieutenant had married
a waitress at the Stadshotell. But that was quite another
thing thoughtlessness, or romance, or whatever one liked
to call it. But a lieutenant who married a middle-aged school-
mistress whose brother was said to have eighty thousand
kronor a year could not be called thoughtless or romantic.
What a squalid denouement to a drama which had promised
to offer sensations of a really high order a revolver-shot or
the sudden apparition of a fairy princess! A red-haired
schoolmistress was not the angel excited imaginations had
expected to see float down in the nick of time. Such a way
out as this indicated a lack of resource in Baltzar Rosen-
stjerna still more lamentable than his monstrous financial
debts and deficits.
People had thought him capable of something better
than this. And now he had been hopelessly shown up as a
common humbug. When the first wave of surprise ipras over,
HAS AN IDEA l6l
they could not even feel sorry for him. His fall was as swift
as that of a swindler exposed by a crash.
It may be observed parenthetically that Fru Rosenstjerna,
within a few years, had acquired a lasting popularity in
the highest society of the town. Not only did she possess
the ordinary feminine adaptability, but with her abundance
of natural talents she combined a red-haired woman's wit,
readiness and cheerful vitality. As for Baltzar Rosenstjerna,
he proved, to the general astonishment, an ideal and per-
fectly faithful husband, and became in the public estimation
nothing more than the brainless charmeur which, at bottom,
he had always been. He kept his beautiful figure, however,
till he died of apoplexy at the age of fifty-five.
What Aunt Charlotte thought of Rosenstjerna's engage-
ment, or whether she thought anything about it at all, no
one knew and, as she had no friends or confidants, no one
asked her. The engagement might, as far as she was con-
cerned, have given rise to sundry reflections of the kind peo-
ple are so fond of indulging in. If she had not refused Carl
Jonsson, she would now have been sitting as hostess at
Rosenstjerna's wedding feast, assuming she had not died of
consumption like the real Fru Jonzen and there was no
reason why she should have done that, seeing that there
was no tuberculosis in the Lekholm family. She would, in
brief, have become Rosenstjerna's sister-in-law if she had
married Jonsson and if Rosenstjerna in the circumstances
had had the opportunity of making Anna Jonzen's acquaint-
ance, which perhaps would not have been the case, for
Consul Jonzen would then have needed no housekeeper,
there being no tuberculosis in Aunt Charlotte's family.
Whether these reflections occupied her at this time there
was, as has been said, no one who knew. Nor was there
anyone in the town who in his wildest nightmares could have
imagined the role she was going to play at the wedding.
Even without Aunt Charlotte's co-operation the wedding
l62 LACEMAKER LEKHOLM
could not have failed to be talked of for years. It contained
so many picturesque elements which could not fail to make
it a striking spectacle. There was, for example. Consul Jon-
zen, who was to appear for the first time in his uniform as a
Danish consul, made in Copenhagen by the tailor to the
Danish diplomatic corps. There were the bride's old father
and mother Anders Jonsson Glad, formerly a dragoon,
now the owner of a villa at Harsjo, and Nilla his wife, who
were to sit in the front pew along with the representatives
of the Rosenstjerna, Gyllenschantz and Borgenschiold fam-
ilies. The whole of the officers' corps was there in full dress
uniform 5 the governor of the province in all his splendour,
accompanied by the countess 5 judges and officials of the court
of justice, headed by the president 5 the mayor, the whole
of the town council, and the regimental band, which was to
play Mendelssohn's wedding inarch from up in the organ-
loft. What a feast for the eyes, and what exercise for the
neck!
As the bride and bridegroom were to leave by the 3.50
train, the wedding began at one o'clock. It was reckoned that
it would be over an hour later, when Consul Jonzen was
giving a big luncheon at the Stadshotell for two hundred
persons at twenty kronor a head. The church was crammed
with guests and curious spectators among the latter, of
course, Aunt Charlotte, wearing a felt hat with gull's wings
in it. She had stationed herself at an early hour at the church
door, where she had defended her position with bravery
and endurance against ill-mannered competitors, her face
pressed against the apostle Peter on the church door and
her bustle acting as a buffer to meet the hardest blows. She
had been the first to enter the church when the verger opened
the door from inside, and, thrust forward by the surging
wave of humanity, she had reached the place which she de-
sired, and which she generally secured at weddings.
The regimental chaplain took up his position in front of
HAS AN IDEA 163
the altar to the strains of the inarch from Tannhauser, and
immediately after the bridal procession entered. There
were no bridesmaids or groomsmen, mainly on account of
the difficulty of finding suitable bridesmaids among the
bride's intimate acquaintances. The opening psalm had been
sung, the clergyman had read his exhortation to "dear
Christians/' and paused a moment for the sake of effect.
Then he cleared his throat, raised and lowered the service
book several times, and began in a loud, sonorous voice:
"Before God the All-knowing and in the presence of this
congregation I ask thee, Hubert Baltzar Dieudonne Rosen-
stjerna, if thou wilt have Anna Mathilda Jonzen to be thy
wedded wife and love her in sorrow and in happiness."
No one could hear whether Lieutenant Rosenstjerna
answered the clergyman's question. Presumably he did At
the moment when the chaplain, smiling amiably at the
bridegroom, lowered his book in expectation of an answer
at that moment and in the short pause which followed his
question a hoarse cry, a woman's rending shriek, rose from
one of the pews:
"No o o! no o o!"
The cry echoed in the vaulted roof; and then there was
silence, dead silence. It was as if the whole congregation
had been turned to stone. No one moved. No one dared to
move. No one turned his head to see where the cry came
from; no one farther back stood up. There was silence, dead
silence. To all who were not sitting quite dose to the woman
who had uttered the cry it seemed to be the utterance of a
spirit, forbidding the scandal which was about to be sanc-
tioned by Holy Church under the eyes of the bleeding
Saviour over the altar.
The clergyman had turned as white as chalk. He cleared
his throat afresh, raised and lowered the book again, and
said:
"Before God the All-knowing and in the presence of this
164 LACEMAKER LEKHOLM
congregation I ask thee, Hubert Baltzar Dieudonne Rosen-
stjerna, if thou wilt have Anna Mathilda Jonzen to be thy
wedded wife and love her in sorrow and in happiness."
Lieutenant Rosenstjerna's reply was again inaudible. The
clergyman was looking past him, staring, petrified with
terror, at a fashionably dressed woman who at that moment
had risen from a seat in the body of the church and was
rushing towards the altar.
It was Aunt Charlotte.
Again no one tried to stop her. The congregation sat
huddled up in their pews, shrank into themselves in horror
at the appalling scene. She reached the altar rails unhin-
dered, flung herself at the bridegroom's feet and screamed:
"No, no, Baltzar, don't do it, don't sell yourself! You
don't love her!"
She had seized Lieutenant Rosenstjerna's right trouser-
leg in both hands. Like the gentleman he was, he en-
deavoured to free himself by moving his leg backwards and
forwards. The bride did not even look down at Charlotte.
She stared straight in front of her and swayed gently to and
fro as if trying to keep her balance.
At this critical moment only one person in the whole
congregation had his wits about him; and that was Consul
Jonzen. As soon as he had collected himself and realized
who the woman was, he was beside her at the altar in three
steps, like the active grocer's kd he had once been, bent
down, put his arms round her waist, that female waist he
had once so often and so fervently desired to encircle, and
whispered:
"Lotte! Lotte! Get up at once and go away! "
Aunt Charlotte was on her legs as though worked by a
spring, put both her hands against his chest and pushed him
away in disgust.
"You, you shopkeeper, you spirit merchant you you
help me, Baltzar, help me!"
HAS AN IDEA 165
Consul Jonzen had taken her by the waist and was holding
her so tight with his short bear's arms that her body was
bent back as though she were wrestling. By now several
young officers had reached the spot, and by their united
efforts the poor woman was carried out of the church. She
defended herself as best she could biting, tearing, scratch-
ing, kicking.
It was a madwoman, with her clothes half torn from her
body, who was finally carried out of the church, put into
one of the waiting landaus, driven to the hospital and thrust
into a strait-waistcoat.
The same evening the horrified Lekholm family sat in
conclave at the mathematician's 5 the lacemaker, his Augusta,
the musician, now for some years a wearer of the blue ribbon,
and his Hulda. Both Uncle Anders and she had witnessed
with their own eyes the harrowing incident in the church,
Anders from the organ-loft and Hulda from one of the
pews.
The event was still too recent to be regarded in any other
light than that of the appalling scandal involved. Aunt
Charlotte had by her conduct, which grandmamma Augusta
declared "no sane person could have dreamed of," set a
stain upon the name of Lekholm which it would take years
to wipe out Grandmamma for her part felt that the sooner
the gravedigger made ready her last resting-place the bet-
ter. She didn't see how she could show herself at the market
on Wednesdays and Saturdays after this. If there had been
a merciful God, He would have let her sink into the earth
rather than expose her to this disgrace in her old age. She
wondered what she had done to deserve the hard fate that
had been hers. What grievous sins had she committed that
the Almighty in His Si-wisdom should thus have sent her
one severe trial after another, ever since she had exchanged
her honourable, universally respected name of Topfer for
l66 LACE MAKER LEKHOLM
that of Lekholm? It was as though that name were under
a curse.
And now she could bear it no longer. Now she would
only, in all humility but none the less insistently, beg the
Lord to let His servant depart in peace. She had had enough
of it! All those years in which Lekholm, the fool, had still
been in what was called his full manhood, and had made her
and her family the laughing-stock of the town! All those
years in which Anders by his drunkenness had brought dis-
grace and misery on himself and his family! And hardly
had he begun to live a sober, respectable life, when this had
come like a bolt from a cloudless sky! And what would
happen next? She could not believe it was the last of this
in the history of her own and her family's sufferings. The
years had taught her a great deal, and her accumulated wis-
dom had convinced her that so long as one Lekholm breathed
and had his being on earth, he could never be free from
sorrows and misfortunes. "Truly, O Lord, I have had
enough of this vale of tears," she concluded.
The mathematician, like the man of action he was, had
visited the hospital doctor that afternoon to ascertain his
opinion of the cause of the outbreak and its probable dura-
tion. The doctor did not believe that she would recover,
at any rate for a very long time. As for the cause of the out-
break, he would only point out that a krge percentage of
insane women were spinsters. He was not, however, a spe-
cialist on the subject, and knew too little of this particular
case and its antecedents to be able to give any definite opin-
ion. The best thing would be for her to be taken to the
asylum at Lund and shut up there.
The mathematician's wife maintained that the appalling
outbreak was the result of long suffering borne in silence,
nourished and stimulated by bad novels. But grandmamma
Augusta was of quite a different opinion. Charlotte had
always been difficult, even ill-natured. But no one was go-
HAS AN IDEA l6j
ing to tell her that Charlotte had not been sanez person so
precise in her ways and so mean and grasping in money
matters. No, she had always been in her right mind, there
could be no doubt of that. It was just the suddenness o the
outbreak which was so typically Lekholmianj just to rush
ahead without the slightest thought or reflection, without
caring what misery one was causing. If that was not the
Lekholms all over, she had been married to a Lekholm for
forty-two years blindfolded. She, for her part, could see no
great difference between what had happened in church that
day and what Lekholm had done one night Heaven knew
how many years ago, when he came home and half killed
Lina Lind because he wanted beefsteak and onions. Hadn't
he kicked and hit out all round when those friends of his
(a nice lot they were) had tried to quiet him? Oh, no, it was
a regular bit of Lekholmery, what had happened. But she
was sick to death of the Lekholms and all their ways.
Three weeks after the wedding Lieutenant and Fru Ro-
senstjerna returned from Paris, where they had spent their
honeymoon. One of the lieutenant's first acts was to call on
the mathematician and ask after his sister. He wondered if
it would be suitable to send her a bunch of roses as a sign
* that neither he nor his wife bore her any grudge whatever,
but only hoped that she might speedily be restored to health
and peace of mind.
"And there's something else I wanted to ask you, sergeant-
major. I beg that you won't think me in any way indiscreet.
The fact is, I've been thinking about it all the time I've
been away."
He took an envelope from his tunic pocket and showed it
to the mathematician.
"Do you by any chance know this handwriting?"
"Yes, I think so. It's my sister's."
Lieutenant Rosenstjerna nodded gravely once or twice.
l68 PACEMAKER LEKHOLM
"I thought it might possibly be her. The idea came to
me on the train to Paris. I suddenly thought: it may be her!
The fact is that for a few years past Pve received a great
many anonymous letters in that handwriting. I've racked
my brains to discover who could have written them
guessed this person and that. And as they are so unusual I
have kept practically all of them, except the first, which, as
I usually do, I tore up and threw into the wastepaper-basket.
But I kept these letters because I soon found out that they
were of particular value, I mean literary value. I've often
thought they ought to be printed and published as a book,
they were so well-written and interesting. But now Pd like
to hand the letters over to her relations, because I consider
that they belong to them and not to me. Will you take
them, sergeant-major?"
But the mathematician would not take them. It was no
concern of the family what his sister had written to Lieuten-
ant Rosenstjerna, and in any case it was of no help as re-
garded her illness. He would be grateful if the lieutenant
would burn them, so that they would be destroyed for good
and all. Lieutenant Rosenstjerna promised to burn them,
after pointing out once more that in his opinion they de-
served a better fate. There were certain pages which, still
in his private opinion, were superior to A DolVs House.
But not even this high estimate could induce the mathe-
matician to alter his decision. And so Aunt Charlotte's let-
ters, written in fire, were committed to the flames.
VII
It was not long before Anders Lekholm made himself an
esteemed member of the Good Templars' lodge. It may al-
most be said that he did so in face of the strong prejudice of
HAS AN IDEA 169
the other brethren. The reformation of so confirmed a
drunkard could, of course, occasion only rejoicing, although
the immediate cause of his reformation was hardly such as
to make him an acquisition to the lodge from an ideal stand-
point. The fact was that the lodge was too young, its message
had not yet secured a firm enough hold of the public ear,
for it to be able safely to admit such a monster bass of drunk-
enness to its, for all its enthusiasm, feeble orchestra.
There were even, the mathematician learned, various
members who held that the temperance movement in the
town, which had so much prejudice to contend with, must
above all things see that its own members did not involve it
in unnecessary ridicule, and that for that very reason Uncle
Anders's identification with the gospel of sobriety was not
particularly desirable in view of the contemptuous mockery
which would inevitably be the immediate consequence. A
veto of the kind, however, was opposed to both the spirit
and the rules of the order. Anders Lekholm was admitted
to the tr Well done" lodge with the secret reservation that
an especially sharp eye should be kept on his goings and
comings. Further, it was made a condition that his wife
should take the pledge at the same time, a proposal to which
she agreed with the same rather lukewarm readiness with
which she had accepted so many other suggestions much less
beneficial to herself.
The shortness of the time in which Anders Lekholm
acquired the confidence and esteem of his new brethren is
clear proof of the wealth of his resources.
The cause of his rapid victory over mistrust and dislike
was not, as might have been supposed, his friendliness, his
irresistible good humour, his childlike innocence, or his skill
in playing on a variety of instruments. If he had set out to
win over the brethren of the order by his brilliant social
gifts, it is probable that he would have had a freezing recep-
tion. They would at once have made it dear to him that the
I7O LACEMAKER LEKHOLM
order of the Good Templars, as a serious body, had no use
for convivial humour and tavern tricks.
Anders Lekholm won his brethren's respect and affection
in quite another way a manner which, if his mentality
had contained any element of calculation, would at once
have assured him a place among the masters of psychology.
He overcame all resistance simply by his fanaticism in the
cause of temperance, the violence with which he championed
total abstinence, the burning hate with which he denounced
the devastating effects of drink on the individual, the
family, the community, the State. If the order had de-
manded such a sacrifice of him, he would, in his ecstatic
moments of enthusiasm, hardly have hesitated to commit a
"temperance harorktrP in order to demonstrate the drink-
er's liver which, according to the ideas of the time, was the
drunkard's distinguishing characteristic.
His fanaticism, to which he gave expression by ceaseless
coffeeKlrinking at a little temperance cafe, where the breth-
ren discussed their affairs between meetings, was extended
to the recruiting of proselytes. He succeeded, for example,
in converting for a time his friend Jocke, his fellow-
musician and former paying-guest. He went so far in his
zeal as to point out to his brother the mathematician the
perils to which the latter was exposing himself, his family,
the community and the State by drinking a schnafs at din-
ner on Sundays and consuming one or two toddies on
Church and civil festivals announced in the almanac Christ-
mas, Easter, Whit-Sunday, midsummer day and Martin-
mas. This attempt at conversion was one of the few oc-
casions when the mathematician's sons heard their father
laugh loudly and heartily.
Anders Lekholm's social gifts were not realized by the
lodge till somewhat later. And then, to be quite correct,
only one side of them found appreciation. His fanatical
contempt for those who had not yet realized the destructive
HAS AN IDEA
effects of alcohol had buried the lighter side o his sociable
nature. Gone were the shouts of delighted laughter, the
carelessness for the morrow, the love of pranks, the military
songs, the pencil and front-teeth impromptus all these had
been banished by the abstainer's crushing seriousness. But
the lyre was still in his soul, and its strings were continually
stirred by the burning winds of fanaticism. He called to life
the musical talent in the lodge which hitherto had slum-
bered undisturbed, and in some degree realized the dream
of his own youth and still more his parents that he might
control the waves of sound baton in hand. He formed a
men's quartette in the lodge which in the course of years
grew to the dimensions of a small choir. Besides this, he used
to play a few violin solos at lodge festivities.
Thus a new epoch had opened in Uncle Anders's life.
The transformation within began gradually to be reflected
in his outward appearance. The blue veins, swollen with
alcohol, became less conspicuous; he could even be said to
be on the way to recovering his complexion ; his eyes grew
less bloodshot, and his stomach slowly grew smaller as a
frozen snow hillock melts under the May sun. But it did
not disappear entirely owing to the large consumption of
sugar entailed by continual coffee-drinking.
Some readers, even those experienced in treading the laby-
rinths of psychology, may perhaps be astonished at the
sudden revelation of a fanatic's gloomy temper and religious
enthusiasm in so thorough a hedonist as Uncle Anders.
This circumstance, over which his nephew the doctor had
often reflected, could, as a matter of fact, be quite naturally
explained by the two qualities which, along with his hedon-
ism, were the principal elements of his character his op-
timism and his impatience. These three qualities combined
were the fuel which made his enthusiasm for everything
new blaze up like a beacon.
LACEMAKER LEKHOLM
The role pkyed by these three elements was probably
somewhat as follows: his hedonism demanded better for-
tune, more comfort, better economic conditions, and a higher
measure of physical well-being; his optimism told him that
all these things could be gained by pursuing the new road
on which he had set his feet, especially as his previous way
of life had been proved to lead in the opposite direction}
lastly, his impatience demanded that this change should take
place as quickly as possible. Hence the amazing initial ve-
locity with which he flung himself into his new role^ he
told himself that the more quickly he could get over the
first stage, painful both bodily and mentally (the three
weeks in the cells had in some degree facilitated this), the
sooner he would reach the goal which his hedonism, his
optimism and his impatience together made him certain
of reaching.
It was, therefore, in the nature of things that the time
should be none too distant when he was compelled to arrive
at a most depressing conclusion that he had been largely
mistaken. It was certainly true that after a year and a halPs
abstinence from strong drink there was a decided improve-
ment in his physical condition. Certain afflictions which
before his conversion had obstinately reminded him of the
perversity of his manner of living an unrefreshed feeling
when he awoke, a giddiness when called upon to exercise his
brain, a more or less noticeable trembling of the hands,
which could not be cured by any other remedy than a few
morning pick-me-ups had all disappeared.
But this increased bodily vigour had no counterpart in an
increased mental activity. Anders Lekholm found himself
gradually driven to the curious but no less serious discovery
that he had nothing to feel fit and healthy for. On the con-
trary: the unrefreshed feeling with which, under the former
regime, he had faced the day and its duties corresponded
HAS AN IDEA 173
more faithfully to the realities of his life than this new
bodily vigour.
The miscalculation his three fundamental characteristics
had induced him to commit made itself felt most quickly
on the economic side. It soon became clear that his new way
of life in no way improved his financial position. It could
even be said to have become worse. Not, of course, if reck-
oned in cold prosaic figures. Coffee, in however large quan-
tities it was consumed, was and remained cheaper than
brandy and other spirits. But Anders Lekholm, in the course
of years, had managed to accumulate very considerable
debts for his modest means. And his new life did not con-
tribute in any degree worth mentioning to the discharge
of these debts. All his calculations brought him to the same
conclusion} it was painfully dear to him that it would take
years to get rid of them years of economy and sobriety.
In this connection he made another very serious dis-
covery 5 his new, orderly way of life was, rather than a help,
a direct obstacle to the discharge of these debts. The ex-
planation of this curious fact is not far to seek. It is simply
this that one is more likely to succeed in a request for a
small temporary loan in a tavern, among cheery compan-
ions and full glasses, than in a temperance cafe, with a cup
of coffee in one hand and a roll in the other. And even if,
before his conversion, he had not always been successful
in negotiating loans, he had always been able to soften a
refusal and the pain it caused him by a drop more brandy
in his coffee or another glass of toddy. And then life had
smiled on him again*
But now it was no longer so. Now a debt had become
just a debt, an obligation an obligation, settlement day
settlement clay. A creditor can treat a drunkard with a good
deal of leniency, if as actually was the case he is shaped
in the same mould as himself. He unconsciously takes into
174 LACEMAK.ER LEKHOLM
consideration the fact that he has had a good deal of his
money back in the form of the imponderabilia of human
intercourse pleasure, laughter and fun, violin-playing and
the Swedish army tattoo performed on the front-teeth. But
of a person who, so to speak, has emptied the safe of pleas-
ure, he demands punctuality and ready cash.
Life and creditors are like that.
In the dilemma in which he found himself, refused the
help he needed by both old and new associates, Anders Lek-
holm had no choice but to turn to his brother the mathe-
matician. It was he who had forced him to join the lodge. It
was, therefore, in a sense his duty now to try to help him out
of the blind alley into which he had got, with his nose up
against an insurmountable wall.
In conversation with him, Anders Lekholm broached the
fundamental question of the utility of the temperance move-
ment to anyone with a past like his. He declared it to be his
unshakable opinion, based on experience, that when anyone
took the pledge the Good Templars' lodge ought to under-
take to pay the new brother's debts. Otherwise all the talk
of conversion and a new life was only a qualified truth. A
new life meant, or ought to mean, at least as he understood,
a new life in which a man ought not to have to bear the
grievous burden of his past.
And he added:
"In the old days, when things were all wrong, one could
have a glass or two and feel happy for a few minutes at
least. But one can't do that now."
With his quick grasp of a situation, the mathematician
immediately perceived the temptation to which the musician
was exposed, and the necessity of endeavouring to prevent
a relapse. And together with their elder brother, Per, he
undertook to try to straighten out the tangle Anders had
made of his finances.
In other words, Uncle Anders was placed under financial
HAS AN IDEA 175
control. The sums to be controlled were certainly not large,
but the step, while in itself necessary, was strong enough to
make the musician feel that he was no longer a citizen of a
free, constitutional kingdom.
The severe blow which had been dealt to Uncle Anders's
impatience was, however, only a first instalment, which was
followed by others. His sober vision now perceived some-
thing which hitherto he had never been willing to look at
seriously the future. But now it stood there before him
not a single dark, menacing figure, past which it might be
possible to slip by some feint or by a lucky chance, but the
whole gloomy prospect which was in store for himself and
his family.
It was, in other words, the naked, sober truth that stared
him in the face. The future! What had he to expect in the
future? He could hardly count on getting many more pri-
vate violin and monster bass lessons. He could not expect
any outside earnings beyond those he had made by playing
at concerts or when operetta companies came to the town 5
his conversion to a sober and decent life had not made these
occasions any more frequent. Nor could he ever rise higher
than sergeant; he had been in the cells too often ever to be
promoted to sergeant-major. In ten years or so he would
retire with a pension of five or six hundred kroner.
That was his future, and his children's too.
Even for anyone with his lack of economic sense it was
clear that he would under no circumstances be able to give
them an education suited to their, in his opinion, indispu-
table talents. His eldest girl, Augusta Seraphia, was now six-
teen. She had, again in his opinion, been endowed by nature
with a voice in which there was a gold mine. There was no
question that she had before her the brilliant future of a
Jenny Lind or a Christina Nilsson, if only she could be
given the opportunity of being properly trained. But this
he could not possibly give her. And as no one in the town,
176 LACEMAKER L E K H O L M
except his wife, seemed to share his view of his daughter's
capacities, he was obliged, to his great distress, when she
had reached the age at which she must earn her living, to
send her into Anna Larsson's tailoring establishment as an
errand girl.
He really began to feel like Jephthah, judge of Israel,
who had been compelled to sacrifice his daughter, but a
Jephthah who would never in his life, by way of compensa-
tion, attain the exalted position of judge.
Next to Augusta came Hulda Zuleima. She, too, had a
nice voice really, perhaps, prettier than Augusta Ser-
aphia's; certainly it had more expression in it, and was
richer, though of course she was still too young for any
definite opinion to be pronounced. In any case he could
swear that he had never in his life met a human being so
genuinely musical as Hulda Zuleima. And it would pre-
sumably be her lot, too, when the time came, to be put b&
hind a counter.
Then there were the boys. Four of them, since the young-
est had died of whooping-cough. They would never, despite
his repeated assurances and frequent threats, outstrip the
mathematician's boys, all four of whom were at the ele-
mentary school and were to go to the university. He did not
believe for a moment that they had any particular ability.
But their father drove them up the school, and every term
they came home with good reports for grandpapa and
grandmamma to examine through their spectacles. Well,
time would show how they were going to turn out. They
had not rowed far from the land so far, and the third boy,
Sven, did not (Anders was glad to note) promise to become
a model young man.
No, neither he nor any other mortal could foretell their
future. But the future, whatever it might be, was traceable
in the present. The social cleavage between the cousins be-
came more and more marked as the years passed, not only
HAS AN IDEA 177
in their dress, but also in their interests. The mathema-
tician's boys already belonged to another class, and it had
even happened that in the fights between the pupils of the
elementary school and those of the national school the
cousins had stood face to face armed with bars of lead and
leather straps.
If, at this period of his life, Anders Lekholm could have
achieved his dearest wish by a stroke of magic, he would
have abolished the matriculation. Or he would have abol-
ished it for the Lekholm family. In his opinion matricula-
tion at the university had been the family's special curse
from the beginning, and was so now in a higher degree than
ever. For all the torment and feeling of humiliation he now
had to suffer daily, when he thought that his own boys would
never wear the white cap, "the old man," as he called his
old father, was to blame. It was the old man who in his
pride had expected more from his sons than other fathers in
his position. Why could not Anders and his brothers have
been allowed to grow up like other boys, without its being
everlastingly dinned into their ears that they were destined
for something quite remarkable and conspicuous "in life?
How could the old man know beforehand what they were
going to do? What grounds had he for his expectations?
He could not himself be accused of being a genius, a clever
business man, or indeed of possessing any capacity at all
except for talking big.
Strictly speaking, the old man had never had more than
one idea in all his life. That idea was that his sons should go
to the university. And then he himself had made it impos-
sible for any of them to go. And yet he sat in his chair now
and twisted his thumbs out of joint and lamented that his
boys had not got on in the world as he had hoped. Why
should he, Anders Lekholm, be made to feel himself a
failure and a disgrace because he was not a bandmaster?
None of the other regimental bandsmen considered himself
178 LACEMAKER LEKHOLM
a failure because he was not a bandmaster. Except for one
or two who were harassed by debt, they were cheery musi-
cians, contented with their lot.
But the worst of it was that the old man's idea had taken
root in the mathematician's mind, and that rock of obsti-
nacy seemed, curiously enough, to have been the soil in
which the old man's fantastic ideas took as firm root as
bindweed and grew into trees visible for miles round, en-
couraging attempts at cultivation in other quarters, too,
where the soil was just as poor. In other words: the mathe-
matician's effort to make his sons' education the main object
of his life, and subordinate everything else to this ambition,
had not only attracted his comrades' attention, but had
served as a model. Within the memory of man, no non-
commissioned officer in the regiment had thought of putting
his sons in a position to obtain the white cap by his own
unaided resources, and sending them to the university. That
had hitherto been regarded as outside the bounds of possi-
bility; a noncommissioned officer's pay was altogether too
low. But Carl Lekholm had resolved to make it possible.
And his comrades, knowing his firmness of will and un-
quenchable vigour, were convinced that if he never saw his
boys at the top of the tree it would not be his fault.
It was an infectious example; it awoke the best and most
vital elements among his comrades from the indifference
which arises from the consciousness that, however hard one
tries, one can get no farther in the world; it inspired them
to fifteen or twenty years of effort, and created within the
non-commissioned officers' corps an aristocracy which meant
to and would get something out of life, not for themselves,
but for their children. It was as if Carl Lekholm had looked
into his comrades' eyes with his keen, serious gaze and put to
them the unspoken question: have you the will and the
strength to put your own interests and desires on one side
in order to give your son a future?
HASANIDEA 179
More and more followed his example.
But his brother Anders was not one of them. And now,
when he was confronted by the sober, unadorned reality,
he saw that his conversion had come too kte in his life.
He could do nothing to assist his children's education.
Despite his wealth of natural talent he was still a pariah.
And for the feeling of shame this caused him he had, in a
way, to thank his own brother.
But there was one field in which, for all his humiliation,
he could outstrip his brother; and that was his music. He
had composed before, certainly many years before, but the
musical creative power is one of God's gifts, which one
either has or has not, and of which no power in the world
can deprive one. But now, when his affairs had ceased to
be chaotic and he no longer felt physically below the mark,
the time had come for concentration and serious work.
He had, indeed, a task to fulfil.
The fact was, that immediately after his admission into
the order he had had the idea of composing for "The Inter-
national Order of Good Templars" a march, to whose
strains the brethren and sisters should march when they
went out with waving banners to a coffee party in the country
or held a ceremonial procession. It was to be a march full of
joy, cheerfulness and faith, a crashing hymn of temperance
to the forces of good in life which originated in temperance.
He had imagined it something in the style of "Glad as a
bird." It must not, of course, on any account be a plagiarism,
or even an imitation, but it must certainly have something of
its seething youth, its joyous enthusiasm.
Unfortunately, Uncle Anders had not been able to pre-
serve this idea as a secret in the depths of his own and his
family's heart till the time had come when he could send it
out, fully instrumented, as a triumph-song of temperance
throughout the land and why not? the world. He had,
l8O LACEMAKER LEKHOLM
on the contrary, often hinted that he was thinking o some-
thing of the kind at the cafe where the brethren emptied
their coffee-cups. And now a grand lodge meeting was to be
held at Malmo in a few months. Did he think he could
finish it by then? It would be a triumph for <c Well done."
Anders Lekholm promised.
Every afternoon he went to the barracks and sat down
alone at the piano in the regimental music-room. He fingered
the notes, looking into space, with his head on one side. He
pkyed with them as a man plays who seeks to conjure forth
the shy nymph Inspiration, struck up a few experimental
harmonies. . . .
But nothing came of it. He looked down at the notes,
wrinkled his forehead and said aloud to himself:
"This is the very devil! Can't I compose either, now?"
But that was no help at all.
Well, he thought, after all it was natural that he should
not get into the way of it at once, seeing how long it was
since he had done anything of the kind. It wasn't worth
worrying about 5 he would try again next day.
But next day it was just the same. He fingered the notes,
played the first tentative harmonies and came to a dead
stop!
"This is the deuce! " he exclaimed. "Can't I even compose
a Good Templars' march I, who have had so many waltzes
and polkas in the bookshop window?"
But not even this allusion to his previous fortunate en-
counters with Inspiration could draw her to the piano. The
result was and remained nil.
"This is the very devil!"
But they were no longer the words of one who is kept
waiting for an appointment. They rose, slow and reflective,
from a heart which in the past year had had to endure many
disappointments, of which this last was the most bitter.
There was tragedy in the words* What had been the use
HAS AN IDEA l8l
of this new, sober lif e, if now this was to come, on the top of
all his other disillusionments? What was the use of it? Had
he by his drunken way of life flung away the last and sole
possibility of improving his position? Was there nothing
left but dull, grey reality for a fellow like him to grow cold
and old and die in?
And what sort of a reality was it? A poor home with
shabby furniture all in holes. A wife who never combed her
hair unless she happened to be going on some errand, and
who was losing her teeth from constant pregnancy and
neglect. Children who were going out into the world to
make their way as best they could. That was the reality he
was to grow old in. Could he bear it without music?
Anders Lekholm's temperance inarch, dedicated to "The
International Order of Good Templars," was completed
in time. It was played at the lodge meeting at Malma But
it had been created under the influence of strong drink
obtained through Jocke, who had broken the pledge several
months earlier, and consumed by the musician in secret
It was a real success. It made his name known at once in
all the lodges from Ystad to Haparanda.
VIII
But even without this success it would not have been long
before Uncle Anders came to occupy not merely a respected,
but a prominent position in the lodge. He had passed quickly
through the lower stages, and, had he wished, could cer-
tainly have risen much higher. But he had no craving for
power, had no desire whatever to exercise an influence over
his fellow-men or play any part among them beyond that of
a man of superior gifts. He belonged to the type common in
Sweden which prefers being thought capable of doing great
182 LACEMAKER LEKHOLM
things to actually doing them. His romantic temperament
contained too much egotism for him to be able to interest
himself heart and soul in a general cause and make sacrifices
for it. In this respect he was like the war poet who urges
his brethren to battle from his armchair. The fanaticism he
had displayed from the very start, the dizzy rapidity with
which he had flung himself into the new life, were due en-
tirely to his eagerness to get through an unbearable in-
termediate stage as quickly as possible. The fundamental
principles of the temperance movement left him cold and
indifferent.
It was the brethren of the order and not he himself who
conferred on him the prominent position he came to assume
in the lodge. His glowing enthusiasm had caused them to
draw, quite comprehensibly, the conclusion that the man
was much better than his reputation. And as often happens
in a case of the kind, they went further and concluded that
Anders Lekholm was a man who had been led to soil him-
self in the nauseous puddle of drunkenness only by the
unpleasant circumstances of his life; when he had been
washed clean he proved to be a man without spot or blemish.
His prestige was naturally increased by his musical gifts,
which, in a movement fond of string and wind instruments,
was bound to make him an extremely useful recruit, even if
he had proved not entirely reliable in the matter of the
pledge. With the reputation the march had brought both
to him and the "Well done" lodge, the way was straight
for his march to the stars.
The success had a notable influence, too, on Anders Lek-
holm's personal prosperity. Not only, after many years
of dissipation, degradation and collapse, had he reached the
position he had once occupied as a lad a man of great
possibilities, of whom all kinds of things might be expected
in the future. The march brought him in a certain amount
of money, by no means to be despised by a man in his modest
HAS AN IDEA 183
circumstances. It was printed, "dedicated to The Interna-
tional Order of Good Templars by Brother Anders Lek-
holm." It was regularly advertised in the Reformer, and
sold at a generous discount to lodges all over the country.
Uncle Anders had thus acquired a small source of revenue,
the existence of which was unknown to his two trustees, his
brothers Per and Carl, until several years afterwards.
His success, however, and the additional income it
brought him, had provided Uncle Anders with the material
for a vicious circle from which he was never to escape. The
manner in which he became more and more fatally entangled
must already be clear to the reader. The undertakings he
had given as a temperance composer must be kept 5 to sum-
mon up the necessary mood of exaltation he was obliged
to make use of artificial means of inspiration, that is, alcohol^
and the means to purchase alcohol he obtained by the ad-
ditional income from his compositions, which included a
number of temperance songs with words taken from the
Reformer.
Only two persons shared with him the secret of this new
modus Vivendi, which satisfied in every respect different
sides of his mentality, and enabled him to combine the
respect of his fellow-men with a moderate amount of
private indulgence. The initiates were his wife and the rene-
gade Jocke, who purchased the spirits necessary for composi-
tion in return for a percentage of the proceeds. As for Hulda
Lekholm, it is unlikely that Uncle Anders had any difficulty
in convincing her of the rectitude of his compromise be-
tween a sacred pledge and an obligation as an artist. As an
ex-waitress at Berggren's tavern she held peculiarly liberal
and lenient views in the matter.
The difficulty of the new arrangement, as Jocke pointed
out with accuracy and vigour, was that he could not go out
and amuse himself in the town when the drink-inflamed
spirit demanded a broader horizon, a wider field of activity
184 LACEMAKER LEKHOLM
than was afforded within the four walls of the composer's
home.
The keeping of the secret, however, was greatly facili-
tated by Aunt Charlotte's misf ortune. When it became clear
that her recovery would take a long time, Uncle Anders
proposed that the piano should be moved to his house,
where he was in urgent need of such an instrument for his
work.
"One can't rush off to barracks every time one has an
idea," he said.
Old Fru Lekholm let him take the piano. She herself
had not touched it for a long time. Years and misfortunes
had broken her, and she shrivelled visibly each winter. It
was in a way a relief to her to get rid of the piano. She only
hoped it might give more pleasure in its new abode than it
had given during the decades for which it had stood in her
home. She had made one discovery in life, on which she
never wearied of enlarging in one form or another:
"Music and the Lekholms don't agree. A musical Lek-
holm causes nothing but trouble. Look at Charlotte! And
look at yourself, Anders! The only Lekholms who 4o well
are those who can't tell the 'Marseillaise' from the *Wacht
am Rhein.' Look at Per! Look at Carl! Take the piano
home if you like! I only hope it won't do even more harm
where it's going!"
Old Fru Lekholm had no idea of the extent to which her
premonitions were justified.
IX
A few years passed three or perhaps four Dr. Holmes,
alias Kalle Lekholm, could not say exactly. Happiness has
no history, and the period of uneventfulness and relative
freedom from care which was granted by fete to the Lek-
HAS AN IDEA 185
holm family, after Aunt Charlotte's misfortune, he was
able to measure, many years kter and in a strange milieu,
only by the monotonous succession of the school terms and
the changes of the seasons.
But there came an autumn in which his elder brother
had only one year left before his matriculation, and he him-
self was in the upper sixth.
All that spring and summer Uncle Anders had been in a
mood which, while it cannot be said that it caused his rela-
tions any great anxiety in the Lekholm family the various
members' moods did not cause immediate anxiety had on
many occasions given rise to brief comments. Old granny
maintained that he quite certainly "had something on his
mind, whatever it might be," while the mathematician for
his part could not deny that Anders of late had "had his tail
between his legs."
One cause of the musician's depression may have been the
gossip which connected his eldest daughter's name with that
of a certain young lieutenant stationed in the town. Augusta
Seraphia had become an assistant in Carin Andersson's
tailoring establishment in Vastra Storgatan, where she served
the town's more or less gilded youth and middle-age with
sartorial novelties from Copenhagen and Berlin. At the
same time she had changed from an insignificant slip of a
girl to a young woman of remarkable attractions, in which
her mother's rather lukewarm, passive sensuality was re-
fined and ennobled by the dreamy romanticism of her
musical father. Augusta Seraphia was very dark it is not
improbable that her mother had in her gipsy blood from the
forests she had an abundance of dark, shining hair, and a
complexion whose darkness might formerly have been at-
tributed to neglect at home, but which now, when various
toilet accessories stood on shelves within her reach, showed
itself to be as natural as the brightness of her hair a warm
186 LACEMAKER LEKHOLM
olive tone which called up images of rich velvets, soft
divans, the tender notes of mandolins, mocha and narghile
in a sweetly scented atmosphere. Slenderly built, active as a
deer, well-developed for her age, her beauty might have
been taken from a picture entitled "A Corner of the Sultan's
Harem."
How much truth there was in the gossip which connected
her name with that of a young lieutenant none of the family
knew for certain. Nor had any of them the moral courage to
go into the matter for fear of being confronted with a jalt
accompli and the disgrace it would involve. Old grand-
mamma had several times tried to speak to the musician
about the matter. But his bad conscience as regards the
children and their future made him answer abruptly:
"Well, mother, you can't say her life is a failure because
she hasn't been to the university or become a bandmaster."
Instead, grandmamma had begged the mathematician to
reason with the girl, if it was not too late already. "There's
never anything but trouble in this family," she said. But
the mathematician had refused at once. He did not under-
stand women, he said. He had proposed to a woman once
in his life and been accepted, and he considered that he had
thereby fulfilled his duties towards the weaker sex. He did
not consider that he possessed the most elementary qualifi-
cations for so delicate a task as that of intruding upon a
woman's tender feelings, endeavouring to reason with her
or lead her back to the paths of virtue. For a task like that
a man with curlier hair than his was needed. His was
straight, as his mother well knew. He thanked Providence
for having given him only sons. He understood boys. Any-
how, he knew how to teach them to behave themselves. But
women were not his speciality. He further enlightened his
mother as to the existence of something called heredity.
At all events, her son Anders had something on his mind.
And that, in her judgment, must be grief at his daughter's
HAS AN IDEA 187
immorality. He had often told old grandmamma that he
was now seriously determined to begin his work on "Jeph-
thah, prophet of Israel." He had said: "I know what it
means to sacrifice one's own daughter," and had added, "I
want to finish 'Jephthah' before it's too late. A man must
leave something behind him in the world."
The mathematician shrugged his shoulders. He had diffi-
culty in seeing how the prophet Jephthah's sacrifice of his
daughter could have any connection with the fact if it was
a fact, which he for his part had no reason either to believe
or to doubt that Augusta Seraphia had an intrigue with the
young lieutenant. Deuce take it, it was not Anders who had
flung her into the boy's arms! Anders, unfortunately, had
done a good deal in his life that he should not have done 5
but procuring was a thing of which he considered him under
no circumstances capable. All this talk about him and Jeph-
thah's daughter and Augusta Seraphia proved only one
thing, and that was something everyone knew perfectly
well already the simple fact that Anders's top story was
very poorly furnished. Last of all, experience had shown
that until Anders began to yell there was no danger.
But the mathematician's logical acuteness did not calm
grandmamma. It was certain she could swear to it that
the girl had been deceiving her family the whole spring,
possibly ever since the New Year. She had come home kte
in the evening, not to say kte at night, and pleaded stock-
taking after the Christmas sales. It had, however, constantly
happened that grandmamma herself, about eleven at night,
had put on her cloak and walked past Carin Andersson's
tailoring establishment, and found it in total darkness. "And
one doesn't take stock in the dark," she observed.
The mathematician could not contest the logic of this
conclusion. But, as he had said, he had not curly enough
hair to interfere in women's affairs. If a man grew up
crooked, one could try to straighten him by a good thrash-
l88 LACEMAK.ER LEKHOLM
ing. But one couldn't lay hands on a woman. . . . He did
not care at all for the idea of reporting the lieutenant to the
colonel. He would rather ask the lad for a private interview
and give him a perfectly commonplace hiding. But suppose
the boy replied that he loved Augusta Seraphia? Then he
could say, "Then will you kindly marry her?" But apart
from the fact that such a scene was too much like something
in a novel for his taste, he could, personally, very well
understand that even a young man in love might think
twice and think hard before he decided to become son-in-law
to Anders and Hulda.
And there the matter remained. Uncle Anders had to
keep his sorrow, whatever it might be, to himself.
Uncle Anders had always particularly disliked the manceuh
vres which took place every autumn. During the three
weeks for which they lasted he was compelled to do daily
duty as battery trumpeter, which introduced into his life an
element of hurry and pressure peculiarly uncongenial to his
poetical, contemplative temperament.
But besides this, the manoeuvres added another factor to
his existence the horse. He had the most profound antip-
athy to this noble animal the result of many painful ex-
periences. His short legs prevented him from getting a
proper grip with his knees. The long upper part of his body,
and his yearly increasing stoutness, made his heavy upper-
works as insecure as a ship with too much deck cargo in a
gale.
The pkce which, as battery trumpeter, he occupied dur-
ing the manoeuvres was unluckily so prominent that his
defects as a horseman, natural and acquired," were bound to
HAS AN IDEA 189
attract notice. It was his duty to ride a horse's length behind
the battery commander to one side and convey Ms orders
to the battery by trumpet. In other words, what Uncle
Anders had to do was this: at full gallop, amid the thunder-
ing of wheels, the puffing and snorting of the horses and the
creaking of saddles, with a cloud of dust enshrouding the
battery as it rushed forward, to put his instrument to his
lips and, with his head bent back and the upper part of his
body leaning slightly to the right, trumpet the battery com-
mander's will skyward. A noble sight and inspiring to heroic
deeds, but a task of real difficulty to one of Adders Lek-
holm's disposition and bodily habit.
Unfortunately, too, he had got a new battery commander
that year one of those too common one-sided humorists
who are fond of jesting at their neighbours 7 expense and in
Dr. Holmes's adopted country are called practical jokers."
Presumably he thought Uncle Anders an ass, and he had
fairly good reason for taking such a view. One thing is
certain he must have known that his abilities as a horseman
were of the slenderest At the very beginning of the ma-
noeuvres he gave orders that the battery trumpeter should
exchange his old, well-trained grey mare for another horse
chosen by himself. It was a big chestnut hunter, with a
broad back which further reduced the grip and ma-
noeuvring power of Uncle Anders's short legs with a mouth
like wood, so that it was practically impossible to stop it,
and inspired with a zeal which kept it a length ahead of all
the others. To crown everything, it had never before been
ridden by a trumpeter. It was a beast without its like in the
whole regiment & fit mount for a giant with legs of steel
and a pugilist's muscles.
Uncle Anders protested as vigorously as a subordinate
properly could do and with all the moving accents of en-
treaty a terrified musician can command5 but all in vain.
I9O LACEMAKER LEKHOLM
And so began a two-days' equestrian pantomime out on
the training ground, during which the whole battery, from,
the commander down to the ktest-joined recruit, rocked in
their saddles in suppressed convulsions of laughter. No
sooner had Uncle Anders put his trumpet to his lips to con-
vey the captain's order in ringing tones, than the chestnut
set off at a breakneck gallop with extended nostrils. He did
not stop till he had reached the other side of the ground,
where the lake brought him to a halt; and Uncle Anders
returned to be met by an astonished query from his com-
manding officer:
"Where the devil have you been, sergeant? This isn't a
race. Blow column right wheel, trot!"
And the same thing happened again. . . .
Strange as it may seem, the first day Uncle .Anders con-
trived to keep his seat. It was said that he was perspiring
copiously when the battery rode back through the town a few
hours kter, and that he was shaking all over with fatigue
and terror when at last he stood on the ground again out-
side the stables.
But next day he was thrown. The horse galloped on and
returned by degrees to the battery, where, after some
curveting and circling, it forced its way into the ranks and
took up the position it had always been accustomed to oc-
cupy during battery training. But Uncle Anders was left
lying on the ground. It was seen that he repeatedly en-
deavoured to rise, only to fall back on his side again, with
one elbow to the ground.
As it was not outside the bounds of possibility that he had
sustained some serious injury, he was conveyed to the garri-
son hospital, where, after a minute examination, it was
ascertained that there was nothing the matter with him
except that he was drunk. This conclusion was arrived at
on a purely medical basis and as the result of elaborate
tests; for Anders himself declared that he had never con-
HAS AN IDEA
sumed any alcoholic liquor whatever from the day he had
entered the Good Templars' lodge.
Seeing how much was at stake for Uncle Anders, and that
no one realized this better than himself, it is hardly probable
that he would have capitulated and confessed only on the
strength of the result of the examination, clear as it was.
Although his brother, the mathematician, had so often said
that his "upper story was poorly furnished," he can hardly
have been so blind to his own most vital interests as deliber-
ately to have betrayed his secret to the world} he must
rather, it would seem, have persisted in his simple tactics of
flat denial, if only to gain time. One must, I think, look deep
into the history of human development, and go back to the
days of witchcraft trials and the Inquisition, to understand
his sudden confession of the whole truth. Terrified at the
prospect of having, every day for another two and a half
weeks, to mount the wild beast a humorous captain had
placed at his disposal, he had preferred to put his cards on
the table and take the consequences rather than again en-
dure the mortal fear of the past two days. It is not outside
the bounds of psychological possibility that, at the moment,
not only a month's isolation from the outer world, but even
dismissal from the service, seemed to him preferable to daily
torture on horseback*
In short, he confessed to the battalion surgeon. He ad-
mitted not only that he had drunk copiously that morning
to give himself strength and courage for the impending
death ride, but also that for several years he had secretly
consumed strong drink, originally with the sole object of
"getting into the right mood to compose the Good Tem-
plars' inarch."
The feelings the confession excited among the inhabitants
of the town varied in accordance with their personal relation-
ship to the lost one: despair, grief, wrath, consternation,
astonishment, amusement
192 LACEMAKER LEK.HOLM
Events followed quickly.
Just at this time the old Lekholms had moved to the
mathematician's. The lacemaker sat for days on end in an
armchair at the mathematician's parlour window, twiddled
his thumbs, took snuff or sucked a cigar, while he sought a
little relief from his cares in looking at the people down on
the boulevard. At almost regular intervals, Hke those at
which the sea rises in a wave bigger and higher than those
before and after it, his heavy breathing culminated in a sigh:
"O-o-oh yes but . . ? Old grandmamma, whom not
even despair could keep unoccupied, had sat down in the
dining-room with some crochet. Her thin, blue-veined hands
fumbled with the meshes, and her eyes were full of tears
not of grief, but of strain caused by the work. Now and again
she laid it on her knees, pushed her spectacles up on her
forehead, dried her eyes and broke into a monologue of
lamentation. In fragmentary utterances she reviewed the
whole of her life since the day when by marrying the lace-
maker she had taken the name of Lekholm a long life of
wrongs, disappointments, sorrows and cares. To her grand-
sons, the mathematician's boys, she pitilessly revealed her
own tragedy and that of the Lekholm family, and the refrain
to every strophe of her lamentation was this : music was the
curse of all the Lekholms.
For her and her father long ago music had been only a
blessing, a source of gladness and a service to God. But in
her children music had been combined with the Lekholms's
conceit} and that had been their misfortune. There was only
one thing she could never understand where Lekholm had
got his conceit from. To her knowledge he had never done
anything in his life except commit follies. In the midst of
her despair she still felt like laughing when she thought
that the king had said a few years ago, outside the railway
station, that he hoped Sweden would have many men like
her Lekholm in the hour of danger. Yes, a lot of help they
HAS AN IDEA 193
would be! Might God preserve the kingdom from all
danger, if the king had nothing but Lekholms to rely on!
And not only had he, in his vanity, wasted all that he had
on his miserable brother 5 he had the face to say to her that
it was she who had brought misfortune into the family with
her music. Had music made her honourable, universally
respected old father unhappy? Or herself? Heaven knew
what she would have done if she had not had music as a
refuge in her misery! Music had been a divine gift to the
Topfers j to the Lekholms it was a curse. What did it prove
except that it was the Lekholm traits in the children which
dragged them down into misery? Music should make them
humble. It can bear no conceit 5 conceit soils it, and he who
devotes himself to music in a spirit of conceit is sacrificing
not to God in heaven, but to the prince of darkness.
The mathematician was the centre of activity at this pe-
riod. Externally he seemed just as usual, except that he
nervously and ceaselessly chewed his quid. When he came
home from duty in the afternoon, grandmamma's lamen-
tation ceased. She pushed her spectacles up on to her forehead
and looked at him, followed every one of his movements
for some time, and at last uttered a hesitating "Well?"
"I've had a talk with the colonel to-day. He has prom-
ised to take a lenient view of the matter if Anders applies for
his discharge immediately. Otherwise there'll be a court-
martial. Where's the sense in his spending a month in the
cells when he'll be dismissed the service afterwards, any-
how, and lose his pension? He's made the devil of a lot of
trouble for himself, and other people. And I can't see him
or speak to him. I've been there three times. But my lord
won't receive anyone. He's locked himself in, Hulda says.
I knocked on the door myself, but he didn't answer. Hulda
says she always gets one and the same answer from him:
'I'm played out. They can do what they like with me, Pm
played out.'
194 LACEMAKER LEKHOLM
<c But Pm not pkyed out. I've even written out his ap-
plication for discharge. But if you think I can get him to
sign it you're mistaken. He can't even hold a pen. If he
hasn't signed the application and handed it to me by to-
morrow morning early, into clink he goes. And then he'll
get no pension. He'll be dismissed the service. I hope he'll
be able to write his name to-night. He's only got fourteen
hours to do it in till nine to-morrow morning 5 I must
have it then. He cwtt!"
The mathematician crushed his quid impatiently.
From within the parlour the old lacemaker's deep sigh-
ing was heard:
"O-o-o-oh ye-es, but "
The lacemaker had had no afternoon sleep that day.
And now it was seven in the evening. The deep sigh ended
in a long yawn.
"O-o-o-oh, ye-es, bu-u-u-ut . . ."
Next day, when they were all at supper in the mathe-
matician's house, there was a ring at the bell. Some mem-
bers of the <c Well done" lodge wished to speak to him. They
had tried to see their late brother Anders, but had only
been able to exchange a few words with him through the
door. He was tired and ill and quite pkyed out, he had
said. It was a very important matter. . . ,
The mathematician showed them into his room, and the
door was closed on them. The room was on the other side
of the parlour, and in the silence which enveloped the sup-
per table voices from within could now and then be heard j at
times they were raised in heated discussion^ only to drop
back into quiet conversational tones the next minute.
The rest of the family remained sitting over their supper.
The clock ticked on the wall and struck the half-hour and
the hour. Grandpapa sat with his hands in his lap, twiddling
his thumbs- But he was in such a state of nervous tension
that he did not sigh once.
HAS AN IDEA 195
It was late when the mathematician showed the breth-
ren of the order out through the parlour into the lobby and
the front-door was shut on them.
"How long they were!" his wife said nervously.
He only nodded in reply, as if he had hardly even heard
what she said.
"I suppose he's been expelled from the lodge," grand-
mamma surmised.
"No," he answered, "they came to say that they thought
of making him Grand Master."
Then his wife rose, her hands pressed to her bosom in
fear.
"Oh, Carl, what's the matter with you? What's hap-
pened? I've never seen you like this before. You're as white
as chalk.''
<r We'd better be white as long as we can. We shall be red
for shame soon."
He stopped and stared down at the dining-room carpet
for a long time, while the wrinkles in his forehead grew
deeper than ever. At last he looked up and said:
"They came to say that he has embezzled money of
theirs."
His wife had sat down. It was as though a cloudburst, a
hailstorm, had descended on the family 3 they all sat with
their heads bent forward, staring down into their plates.
His wife was the first to look up. She said slowly, empha-
sizing every word:
"That means 1 prison."
But before the mathematician could answer, something
had happened. Suddenly the old lacemaker stood upright
and struck the table with his thin white hand again and
again, so that plates and knives and forks leapt up and down.
"Silence, I say! Don't utter the word prison. No Lek-
holm has ever been in prison as far as I know. I won't hear
the word. Silence!"
196 LACEMAKER LE&HOLM
The mathematician looked at his father with a hardly
perceptible smile of compassion.
"Don't be so violent, my dear father. Of course, if
you're in a position to interf ere, I don't think those gentle-
men will have any objection to hushing up the business."
Grandmamma gave her spouse and old antagonist an
edged glance:
"Have you ever done anything but rush in without think-
ing what you're doing^ Lekholm?"
But the unexpected happened. The lacemaker refused to
be crushed, either by his son's icy calmness or his wife's
taunt. He thumped the table with his fist again.
"He shan't go to prison! Fll see to that! I can stop that!"
The mathematician gave him a long look, and an impa-
tient twitching began in the region of the concealed quid.
"How are you going to stop it?"
"You and Per will stop it. You'll pay up. I won't have a
son in prison."
cr Well, father, as for Per, I can't answer for what he may
think fit to do. And as for myself "
The old man took a few steps towards him. Two dark-red
spots flamed up in his sunken waxen cheeks, the blue veins
on his temples swelled.
"As -for yoity do you say? As for you? Am I your father
or not?"
The nervous twitch in the mathematician's face became
more violent. To get away from his old father, he turned
his back on him and went and sat down on the sofa under the
clock.
"Am I your father or not? " the old man repeated*
"Let us hope so. Anyhow it's pretty certain that Anders
is my brother. But for Heaven's sake sit down, father, and
let us try to keep calm."
"I will not sit down at your table till you have promised
HAS AN IDEA 197
to save your own brother from prison. I will not set foot
in your house again if you don't help him."
The mathematician passed his hand over his eyes again
and again.
"Don't use such hard words, dear father don't use such
hard words. You know as well as I do that both Per and I
have done a great deal for Anders already, a great deal.
And it has hardly done any good."
"You don't mean that it would do him good to go to
prison?"
"I can't say. It could hardly make his -position any worse
at any rate, economically. He's sure of his pension now, as
he managed to sign his application for discharge last night.
Personally I must say that I shouldn't weep if a fellow of
brother Aiiders's calibre had, just for once In his life, to take
the responsibility for all the devilment and trouble he's
caused. But that's another question. There's another point,
too, and I tried to drive it into the skulls of the Well done'
gentlemen that if, with the knowledge they have or ought
to have of his antecedents, they let him manage their ac-
counts without even thinking of having them checked, I'm
almost inclined to think that it's they who ought to pay the
piper now, and not others. Such naivete as they have shown
is not merely criminal; it's sheer madness. But, strictly
speaking, that isn't relevant either."
"If they had any honour they would pay, of course,"
grandmamma said* "But I've never believed in Good
Templars. My father, who was an absolutely honourable
and highly respected man, never needed to join any order,
and yet he never touched strong drink. But he was a T5pf er
and not a Lekholm. If Anders had been a Topf er and not a
Lekholm there need never have been any talk of prison or
anything of the kind, that's my opinion."
Grandpapa gave her a look.
198 LACEMAKER LEKHOLM
"I will only point out that before I married you and our
children were born, no Lekholm had been in prison. And no
Lekholm will go there as long as I live. When I'm dead
and buried, I can't help what happens. But as long as I
live "
"You're talking nonsense. I'd like to know what you
can do to help matters. You're just a talker, that's what you
are!"
The mathematician shrugged his shoulders and inter-
rupted them.
"So father wants Per and me to intervene. I can't an-
swer for Per. He has never told me how well off he is."
"He's got money invested," the lacemaker burst out.
"I don't think he has."
"He could have, if he hadn't given all he could scrape
together to that mission."
"He can do what he thinks best with his money so long
as he doesn't interfere with other people's rights."
"Per is a misguided fellow. He doesn't worship in God's
house, but goes to mission meetings instead, and he's actually
one of those who take the Sacrament at home in coffee. Is
that God's commandment? I ask you. Is it reverent to par-
ticipate in Christ's flesh and blood in coffee with brandy
in it? Whereabouts in the Bible does it say that coffee shall
represent Christ's blood?"
Grandmamma sighed.
"You're talking nonsense, Lekholm. You must surely
know there was no such thing as coffee at the time when the
Son of God dwelt among us."
"I know that," the lacemaker snapped. "But I know too
that if there had been coffee in the days when Our Saviour
lived and worked here on earth, He would not have been
foolish enough to 'invite His disciples to coffee the night
when He was betrayed. Not even the traitor Judas would
have thought of anything so insane. But that's just what
HAS AN IDEA 199
Per and his friends do. That fellow Waldenstrom ought to
be burned at the stake. He leads away foolish people from
God's house and the true doctrine."
"Well, Christ's blood is in coffee just as much as it is in
wine, if the Waldenstromites drink coffee at Communion,
which they dotft" said the mathematician impatiently. His
wife raised her eyebrows and gave him a swift look which for
as long as Dr. Holmes could remember had meant, "Re-
member the children!"
The mathematican replied with an almost imperceptible
nod to show that he had understood
"But let's get back to the question we've got to clear up
before we go to bed and that isn't Per*s attitude in this
matter, but mine! I'd like to say to you, father, as calmly as
I can and with all possible self-control, that, in the first
place, I have made great sacrifices for Anders already, and
so has Pen It has always been we who, in the long run,
have had to pay the piper for his exploits. In the second place,
I would like to point out that it isn't, strictly speaking, Maria
or I who come into question, but our boys. You know that
Maria and I once, many years ago, made an agreement
that we would give our children a better start in life, and
greater chances of getting somewhere, than I had had. We
have worked for that all these years. It looks at present as
if our work would bear fruit. The boys are doing well at
school on the whole, and I hope they will do well in future.
Lars will go to the university in a couple of years. Two
years later it will be Karl's turn. Maria and I have discussed
the matter and agreed that if the boys want to do so, and
conduct themselves well in other ways, they can go on and
take their degrees.
"If I intervene now, Lars at least cannot go to the uni-
versity. It will be quite out of the question. So you want
Lars's future to be sacrificed to save Anders two or three
months in gaol which won't affect his future or his money
2OO LACEMAKER LEKHOLM
position in the smallest degree. And which will hardly save
him or us the disgrace, seeing that the whole town knows
already that he has embezzled. Is that what you want?
That's what the consequence will be, anyhow."
The mathematician's face twitched. His sons saw what
an effort it cost him to control himself.
"If that is so, I feel bound to say that we Lekholms seem to
have a peculiar fate, or whatever one may call it, reserved for
us to sacrifice our children's future for our brothers! . . ."
The old kcemaker had risen. His parchment cheeks were
burning. He beat the air with his clenched fist:
cc You mean that I've sacrificed that I've destroyed
that my brother . . . I'll tell you one thing, that I'm proud
of having done all I could for my brother Oscar. I'm as
proud of it as I am of my medals for bravery. And you dare
to accuse me!"
He raised his clenched fist above his head, as though he
sought to call down God's punishment on the house and
those who dwelt in it.
"Don't you know what the catechism says? don't you
know how the Fifth Commandment runs? Thou shah hon-
our thy father and thy mother, that thy days may be long
in the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee. Have you
forgotten that, freethinker? Do you curse your own father
because he has acted in accordance with Christ's word, which
says that one shall love one's neighbour as one's self? 7 did
all I could for my brother. You send your brother into
misery, to prison."
The mathematician too had risen now. His long, sinewy
body was shaking all over. His lips had thinned to two
straight, bloodless lines under his moustache. His wife hid
her face in her hands.
"Just one word more, father," the mathematician said in
a stifled voice. "Just one word more. I know, and I have
known for many years, that in your heart you hate Maria
HAS AN IDEA 2OI
and me, because because we've lived a careful life, because
we've lived for our children and their future, and haven't
flung away what small chances we have had of helping them
in life. We and our boys have been a reproach to you ever
since Lars first went to the elementary school."
The lacemaker met his son's hard, steely gaze. He drew
up his shrivelled little form to its full height.
"It's you who hate me!" he cried. "You're a freethinker
and a heathen! You don't believe in God, in His kw and
His Gospel. But remember what Holy Writ says, my son:
Thou shalt honour thy father and thy mother. This is my
last word in my own son's house. Good night, and I wish
you all God's peace, now and always. For it is also written:
Unto him that smiteth thee on the one cheek, offer also the
other!"
He collapsed again. He looked like Old Time as he left
the room, with his long, white moustache and whiskers, his
mass of white hair and his shrunken little body.
The mathematician accompanied him to help him on
with his overcoat, but he replied with a curt "No!"
The mathematician went into his room and shut the door
behind him. His wife had burst into tears. But old grand-
mamma sat stiffly in her chair, unmoved by the painful
scene. When she heard the old lacemaker shut the door
behind him, she only said:
"If he only had the excuse that he was in his second child-
hood! But he's never been anything but a child. No one
can imagine what I've had to bear since I went to live in
his house."
In a short time the mathematician returned. He had a
folded paper in his hand.
"I've written a telegram to Per asking him to come at
once. You'd better take it, Lars, and run to the telegraph
office to-morrow morning in first break."
2O2 LACEMAKER LEKHOLM
Uncle Per had replied by return that he would take the
morning express and would, therefore, arrive in the eve-
ning. Now they were sitting and waiting for him. The mathe-
matician had gone to the station to meet him. There was a
clean cloth on the supper-table, the best china, silver forks,
a pewter teapot with shining black ebony handle, silver salt-
cellars with blue glass insides and a silver sugar-basin shaped
like a Greek urn. The smell of beefsteak with onions and
baked potatoes came from the kitchen.
Grandpapa had put in an appearance, despite his avowed
intention never again to cross his son Carl's threshold. The
mathematician had given way to his wife's moving appeals,
visited the old gentleman early in the morning, and begged
his pardon for his wounding remarks the evening before.
The old man had promised to come on condition that he
should under no circumstances be compelled to exchange a
single word with Carl; at the same time he had declared
that he would under no circumstances partake of supper or
accept a cigar if offered one.
As for Uncle Anders, he was still in bed, locked into his
room. The old lacemaker had, after a long parley, been
admitted to his room. Uncle Anders had turned his face to
the wall the whole time, said that he neither could nor would
look his father in the face, nor anyone else except his faithful
Hulda, and declared that he did not care what might hap-
pen y he was played out. He had said all this in a scarcely
audible voice, with his face turned to the wall. He had
asked the old man to forgive him for the sorrow he had
caused him during a wasted and useless life, and to convey
the same request to all the others. He could do no more.
Most of the time grandpapa had been in his room he had
lain silent, absolutely motionless. But when grandpapa told
him that Per was expected in the evening, he made a con-
vulsive movement, as if in terror, and said:
"No, no, for Heaven's sake, whatever you do, don't bring
HAS AN IDEA 2O3
him here. I don't want to see him! I don't want to talk to
him! He's worse to talk to than Carl himself!"
"I'm sorry to say he smelt strong of drink," grandpapa
said, in recounting what had happened.
Grandpapa had represented to Hulda what a wrong and
shocking thing it was to give brandy to a man who had not
only been expelled from a temperance order, but had also
embezzled their money. But Hulda, the silly creature, had
replied that if a poor fellow needed a pick-me-up once in his
life, it was when he was in poor Anders's present situation.
In the afternoon the two emissaries from "Well done"
called on the mathematician and had a long conversation
with him j they showed him books and accounts, orated and
insisted.
And now they were sitting waiting for Uncle Per, the
lacemaker's eldest son, of whom his old grandfather, Herr
Topfer, had said that he "considered him an extraordinarily
religious child, who did not need to have brains."
XI
Now, long after, with the deeper insight derived from time
and profound meditation on the Lekholm family, Karl had
no difficulty in discovering in Uncle Per's individual charac-
teristics, and the new type he represented in the family, traits
which had occurred in it previously or in some one of his
contemporaries.
He was poor Aunt Charlotte's twin brother, and under
his black double-breasted tail-coat there burned something of
the same dark passion which for years had lain hid beneath
her latest Copenhagen bodice. His fire and vehemence he
had inherited from the lacemaker, while his German ear-
nestness came from the surgeon. From old Topfer, too, he
had doubtless acquired his religious turn of mind; and this
LACE MAKER LEKHOLM
had been further strengthened and developed in earliest
childhood through his intimacy with the old Swedenborgian,
vegetarian, hater of intoxicants and preacher of clean living.
His taste for music, too, came from his mother. Every morn-
ing and evening he played two psalms on his harmonium.
Towards all non-religious music his attitude was one of
condemnation.
That he had become a follower of Waldenstrom was due
mainly to chance. It is hardly probable that the eminent
divine's divergence from the State Church as regards the
doctrine of atonement had determined his choice. Theolog-
ical hair-splittings can have made no appeal to himj nor,
indeed, did intellectual interests generally.
What had happened was simply this. He had left his
native town as a journeyman and gone north. Circumstances
had placed him with a joiner in a little town where the fol-
lowers of Waldenstrom were just forming an active group,
and his new master had joined them. But it is probable that
if fate had placed him in a community where the Baptists or
the Methodists had started an equally vigorous spiritual
movement, he would have joined them.
For vehemence and earnestness meant everything to
him. If he had found these qualities in the State Church he
would certainly never have condemned it as severely as he
did as the greatest enemy of real, profound religious life.
As a citizen and in his profession he was attended by a
good fortune which must have been a constant reminder
of God's special satisfaction with all that he did. Even at the
time of the events described he had long before taken over
his master's workshop and considerably extended it. He em-
ployed over twenty workmen, all belonging to the same
religious community as himself. His flawless sense of hon-
our, the weight of his personality, his lucid and calm judg-
ment of all worldly aflkiirs, had soon attracted the attention
not only of the congregation but of his ellow;-<itizens in
HAS AN IDEA 2O5
general, and had brought him into communal life as a town
councillor at a comparatively early age.
The prosperity he enjoyed as a citizen was not accom-
panied by mental peace. He was one of those people who at
once give the impression of a constant, sometimes violent
inner conflict. What this conflict was, what it was about, on
what plan and with what weapons it was fought, no one
knew. Yes, perhaps one man knew P. P. WaldenstrSm
himself, whose close friend Uncle Per had in time become.
But no one else. People only felt and knew, as certainly as if
he had confessed all that was in his heart: That man is fun-
damentally unhappy 5 under that man's double-breasted,
ever-buttoned black tail-coat a lif e-and-death struggle is in
progress.
It was not hard to think of one reason for his unhappiness.
Early in his life he had married a young woman of the
congregation. But the marriage was a childless one. His wife
had twice been pregnant, but each time the child had died:
the elder at birth, the younger of scarlet fever when three
years old. This Divine punishment had affected his wife's
mind 3 she suffered continual mental anguish, which at times
clouded her reason and made her feel as though her breast
was a cooking-pot, and that her poor heart was being boiled
in it as a feast for the black birds, heralds of death, that
fluttered before her eyes in the dark at night.
Uncle Per did not often visit his native town. Even as a
child, when the old surgeon had died and he had gone home
to his parents, he had been a stranger to his brothers and
sister, had spent his time alone, with no playmates, keeping
to himself the secrets over which he brooded. His religion
had alienated him still further from his relations. He was
to them a riddle, respected on account of his insolubility and
the melancholy, serious dignity which characterized him
even when quite young. The old lacemaker thoroughly dis-
approved of him in several respects. For one thing, there
2O6 LACE MAKER LEKHOLM
was his ungodly dissent, in particular the receiving of Holy
Communion "in an ordinary room or some mission hall or
other."
The lacemaker also condemned most vehemently Pear's
way of managing his worldly possessions. It seemed as
though Uncle Per was trying by all possible means to work
against or neutralize his own material prosperity, as though
he had seriously made Christ's commandment a leading
principle in his life not to lay up treasures upon earth,
where moth and rust corrupt. Such a procedure might, in
the old lacemaker's view, have had some justification in
Christ's time, but hardly in our days, when, to quote the old
gentleman's own words, cc bank rate was so high." What he
really meant by this obscure allusion, and what connection
it had with the inadvisability of failing to lay up treasures,
it is not easy to understand. But the lacemaker had never
been noted for clear thought or economic perspicacity. The
fact was that Uncle Per gave to the "movement" practically
all that he felt he could spare from his modest household
requirements. His little home, moreover, provided free
quarters for travelling preachers and brothers and sisters of
the community.
Old Fru Lekholm, for her part, was grieved that he
should regard non-religious music as a temptation of the
devil designed to lead men into sin. Aunt Charlotte re-
garded him simply as a humbug. She knew what men were
like.
The musician was terrified at his exalted moral earnest-
ness, and the mathematician could not understand "how a
man with such indisputably good brains, such a clear, ob-
jective view of things in general, could be so illogical as to
believe for a single moment in God's alkwisdom and good-
ness in a world like that in which we are for our sins com-
pelled to live."
None of this criticism was heard on the occasions when
HAS AN IDEA
Uncle Per visited his parental home, generally in connec-
tion with a missionary meeting or on account of brother
Anders's escapades. He brought with him a peculiar atmos-
phere which Dr. Holmes always connected with the Good
Friday feeling, a heavy, guilty solemnity. The Lekholm
children were not the only people who felt his presence as
an oppression. The older members of the family, too, seemed
to feel a painful need for spiritual spring-cleaning before his
arrival.
And now he was coming. . . .
He was tall and thin 5 and in his tightly buttoned tail-coat
he looked even taller and thinner than he was. He had a
pale clean-shaven face, a high white forehead, a narrow, hard
mouth, and a pair of grey eyes of a curious sharpness, an
almost gentle and sorrowful sharpness. It was a look which,
for all its gentle forgiveness, crushed and annihilated a
Good Friday look, which mercilessly placed one's own sinful
little life against the background of the Cross, on which
the Son of Man bled and suffered and died.
And now he was to talk to Uncle Anders. . . .
The two eldest Lekholm boys at least had only one
thought with regard to his visit. And that was: Poor Uncle
Anders. The intention was that he should go to see his
brother, the musician, immediately after supper, and have
a private conversation with him. The old lacemaker had
paid Uncle Anders another visit and pointed out the neces-
sity of his having a conversation with Per. And Anders had
at last promised to receive him.
What would Uncle Per say to him? He never grew
angry like the mathematician, never flew into a rage, never
used hard words or lost his self-control. Nor did he use
smooth language, or use religious arguments where they
could avail nothing j he had never made the slightest at-
tempt to effect conversions among his relatives. He was
really most formidable when he said nothing at all, and
2O8 PAGEMAKER L E K. H O I, M
only his look pointed out the road a fellow-mortal had to
travel the road to Golgotha, the road of the bloody
sweat, which must be trodden.
That was how he would look at Uncle Anders. Uncle
Anders, who had broken the pledge, who had lived for
years a life of hypocrisy and lies, and now actually saw
prison doors opening before him. Poor Uncle Anders! He
would meet him in an hour or two. The train from the
North had come already. The voices of the mathematician
and Uncle Per might be heard in the lobby at any mo-
ment. . .
As the family waited for them there came a sudden ring
at the bell & long, hard ring. In that moment of tension no
one, curiously enough, was surprised at the mathematician
not opening the door himself with his latch-key. Instead
they all rose from their chairs in the parlour, where they
had been sitting in silence, and went out into the lobby to
receive the guest. When they came out the maid had already
opened the door, and there, on the threshold, stood Hulda
Lekholm, hatless, with dishevelled hair and a shawl thrown
over her shoulders.
"He's cut his throat !" she said.
XII
Among the few things that Uncle Anders left behind him
was a funeral march, fully orchestrated and complete. It
was dedicated to his old regiment. "Jephthah's Daughter,"
on the other hand, he had never completed.
Anders Lekholm's funeral march was not, however, to
be played at his funeral. No ceremonies could take place at
his interment, no church bells ring his soul to rest, no prayers
be read over his body, no procession follow him to the sta-
tion where the simple coffin was placed on a goods truck to be
HAS AN IDEA 2O9
conveyed, in accordance with the kw of the land, to the
anatomical institute at Lund.
But Anders Lekholm's funeral march lived. It did not
outstrip Chopin's, as he had so often threatened that it
would. It did not spread all over the world, not even over
his own country. But at any rate it became the funeral
march of his native town and his regiment; and to its
strains, in the course of years, many a soldier, of high and
low rank, and many a citizen was borne to his last resting-
place.
XIII
A few days before Christinas in the year in which Uncle
Anders had departed this life right in the middle of the
manoeuvres, an event occurred which cast a glamour of
anticipation over a festival which had promised to be a grey
and gloomy one, the kind of atmosphere in which painful
memories raise their heads and grow like mushrooms.
Uncle Fredrik came home unexpectedly from America!
None of the Lekholm children had ever seen him. Never-
theless, during a great part of their youth he had been a
hero of their imagination greater in a way, and certainly
for a longer time, than Uncle Anders himself.
The part Uncle Fredrik had pkyed in their childish and
boyish fancy could best be described by saying that he began
where Uncle Anders left off. He had, in a natural, matter-
of-course way, come to occupy the place in their imagination
which the musician left so grievously empty when, from
being an idol, an apparition from the realms of romantic
splendour, he dwindled to the poor little figure he cut in
reality.
None of the family had any idea what Uncle Fredrik was
now, or where he lived.
2IO PACEMAKER LEKHOLM
But he once had been, the older ones declared, all that
to a boy's brain and a boy's longing is the embodiment of
manliness, enterprise and adventure 5 he had been both a
cowboy and a gold-digger.
On the table near the sofa in the old lacemaker's parlour
was an album with a red plush cover, to which the Lekholm
boys in due order, at intervals of a few years, made a pilgrim-
age as to a holy place. On the third page of this album, at
the top on the left-hand side, was Uncle Fredrik's portrait.
The photograph, it is true, corresponded in no way to their
ideas, derived from books about Red Indians, of a white hero
in combat with Indians thirsting for his scalp. It was one of
those faded photographs from the beginning or middle of
the seventies, and it showed a young man with whiskers and
moustaches (heavily blackened in the retouching) seated on
a narrow, high-backed drawing-room chair, clad in a black
tail-coat and tight, light-coloured trousers, and carrying a
walking-stick. On a small table beside him was a black tall
hat j and at his feet sat a pug-dog (of papier mache) with its
head a trifle on one side and its forehead deeply wrinkled, as
though reverently and attentively testing the breadth and
profundity of the words of wisdom which fell from its
master's Hps.
But far from having an entirely chilling effect on an
adventure-loving, sanguinary boy's imagination, this faded
old carte de visits photograph filled them with marvel. It
was wonderful that anyone so attired could at the same time
be a hero who, wearing a broad-brimmed hat and leather
breeches richly ornamented with silver, swung his lasso over
the buffalo herds of the Wild West, or for weeks and months
trod the roughest, most perilous tracks in search of the red
gold. The dualism of the album photograph and the won-
derful living reality only made Uncle Fredrik a hero of such
fantastic dimensions that grandpapa himself had to be ap-
pealed to to confirm the reality of the phenomenon.
HAS AN IDEA
The old lacemaker gave this confirmation most willingly.
He pushed his moustaches aside and said:
cc What do you say, boy? Is it true that Fredrik looked as
he does in the photograph and yet could be a hero, a cowboy
and a gold-digger? Deuce take it, boy, what do you mean?
Why shouldn't he be a hero, although he's dressed like or-
dinary people are on Sundays? What do I look like when
I go to church on Sundays? Deuce take it, boy, you don't
know what you're talking about! Or when I'm sitting at
the loom with my spectacles on? Do you think I wasn't in
the fight at Kolding, all the same? Or what do you think?"
And thus the inquisitive grandson had the fight at Kol-
ding rubbed into him. . . .
There was, however, in Uncle Fredrik's life yet a further
dualism, quite as incomprehensible as that of the gentleman
in the album and the gold-digger, cowboy and slayer of
Indians. It appeared from what the grown-ups said that
Uncle Fredrik's youth had been divided between two pro-
fessions so incompatible to a boy's brain as those of sailor and
gardener.
Like his elder brother Carl, the mathematician, he had
gone to sea when he grew up. He had been away a few
years, came home, been apprenticed to a nursery gardener
named Soderquist, stayed with him some years, gone off
again, come back again, rented a garden and married. It
had seemed that this restless spirit was at last to settle down
quietly. But suddenly the devil came into him again the
expression by which the old lacemaker was accustomed to
designate Uncle Fredrik's Wanderlust. He had read in the
papers of new gold finds somewhere in America, and em-
barked with his wife and his six-months-old son. His wife
died on the passage, was sewn up in a sail and buried at sea.
A few days later the baby boy followed his mother. And
Uncle Fredrik landed on America's soil for the third time,
alone.
212 LACEMAKER LEKHOLM
He had written home for a few years. Now he was at the
gold-diggings, now he had a job on a ranch, now he was
working as a gardener in California.
Then silence followed, complete silence. Only occasion-
ally at the great annual festivals, when the Lekholms as-
sembled in obligatory peace and harmony, was there talk
of him, of his restless spirit, his longing for adventure, his
thirst for gold, his longing for the quiet life of a gardener,
and his incredibly light-hearted, almost criminal optimism.
It had appeared from his letters home, it seemed, that he
was convinced that he would one day, despite all reverses,
be a very wealthy man and return to his native town in
honour and glory.
"Poor Fredrik," old Fru Augusta Lekholm used to say
on such occasions, "the honour and glory didn't amount to
much. But he was a dear, good boy at bottom."
"He was a fool as a boy," the lacemaker replied, "and a
fool he'll remain as long as he lives, if he isn't dead by
now. But I think he might write home and tell us how he
is."
Old Fru Lekholm gave her foolish husband an edged
glance.
"If he's dead, how can he write home and tell us how he
is, poor boy?"
The lacemaker thumped the table:
"I didn't say he was dead. I said if he was dead."
"Yes, and that's just what I say that you said. If he's dead,
surely he can't write."
The mathematician shrugged his shoulders and inter-
rupted the dispute.
"Dead or alive, one can say that he was an incurable
dreamer, completely devoid of the most elementary power
of reasoning and calculation. But that's his affair j and he's
suffered for it, no doubt, poor devil. But it was criminal of
HAS AN IDEA 213
him to take his wife and child with him on an adventure of
that kind."
He did not seem to have attained any glory or splendour.
Years passed, never a line or a single word came from him.
And now, many years later, a few days before Christmas,
when he had long been thought dead, the old lacemaker
received a telegram:
"Arrive to-morrow by evening train. Fredrik."
All the Lekholms in the town, except old Fru Lekholm
and the mathematician's wife, were at the station to meet
him. The family had been substantially reduced during the
past few months. Not only had Aunt Charlotte and Uncle
Anders gone, in different ways, but Hulda and all her chil-
dren had left their native town. At a family conclave the day
after Uncle Anders's funeral, it had been decided that the
musician's family should move to the town where Uncle Per
had his successful business. He could get Hulda as much
work as she could do. He employed a number of women in
the town on jobs that need not be done in the workshop.
And the children needed closer supervision than the mathe-
matician could undertake to give them, occupied as he was
from morning till evening, and with four boys of his own
on his hands. He could find posts for Augusta and Hulda
at once, for Augusta in his own business and for Hulda in a
mission bookshop in which he had both a spiritual and a
financial interest. The two elder boys could find employ-
ment in his workshop, while the two younger, Gunnar and
Bertil, were to continue to attend the national school. He
proposed to lodge the whole family in a three-roomed flat
which he knew was standing empty, and into which they
could move at once.
The lacemaker, his wife and the mathematician had found
the proposal extremely sensible. It had, indeed, so appealed
to the old lacemaker, liable as he was to be carried away by
214 LACEMAKER L E K H O L, M
any new fancy, that he expressed a desire to transfer his owr
household gods to his eldest son's town, that he might grovi
old and die far from the scene of family tragedies and per
sonal defeats. And before he went to his eternal rest he conic
do a little lacemaking for his son's furniture factory.
For once in a way perhaps for the first time since the
journeyman lacemaker Pehr Anders Lekholm paid court tc
Mamsell Augusta Topfer it appeared that she shared his
view. She too desired nothing more than to leave the towr
which for almost the whole of her womanhood had beer
for her a vale of humiliation and sorrow.
They were to move immediately after the New Yean
Only the lacemaker, the mathematician and the latter^
four sons, therefore, were at the station to meet the inter
esting traveller from a distant land. When the train stopped
they had gone up to a third-class carriage to welcome hiir
and help him with his luggage. But no Uncle Fredrik was tc
be seen. All the other people in the carriage had got out
The mathematician got in himself to make sure that his
brother was not still there. He jumped down on to the plat
form again, shrugged his shoulders and chewed the quid ir
his mouth nervously. The old lacemaker twirled his droop
ing moustaches in embarrassment. Well, well, . . .
Then, from the part of the platform opposite which the
first-class carriage usually stopped, a tall, lean man ap
proached them, with a furrowed, sun-burnt Red Indian'*
face under a broad-brimmed hat, a martial moustache, and
clothes such as the mathematician's sons had never seen be
fore a lounge suit with padded shoulders of an athlete's
breadth, wide trousers, a gaily striped silk shirt and ne\*
brogues as yellow as a duck's foot. They could not say whict
part of this turnout impressed them most; but perhaps il
was the shoes that took the prize in a close contest. Yellow
shoes were a rarity of the first order, previously worn in the
HAS AN IDEA 215
town only by a few young officers noted for dandified dress
and debt, and as for the shape of Uncle Fredrik's shoes,
nothing like them had ever been seen in any bootmaker's
window in the place.
There was something lacking in his attire; but this was
not discovered till the old lacemaker, after embracing him,
said: cr Where's your overcoat?" It appeared from Uncle
Fredrik's reply that he was so hardened against rain and
cold and storm that he never wore an overcoat.
Uncle Fredrik shook hands with his nephews one by one
and asked their names and ages. It was a big dark-brown
hand that took theirs, hard, rough and horny, ingrained with
the soil.
<c Where are your things ?" the mathematician asked.
Uncle Frednk jerked his head towards the hotel porter,
who stood with shoulders bowed under the weight of three
krge yellow bags which he was carrying towards the exit.
"Why, there," he said.
"Aren't you coming to stay with me?" the mathematician
asked, raising his eyebrows.
"Well," Uncle Fredrik replied, interlarding his speech
curiously with English words, "I'd rather not disturb you.
I'll stay at the hotel. Less trouble all round."
The old lacemaker stroked his moustaches again with a
dissatisfied look. He did not like the overcoat business. A
well-dressed man ought to have an overcoat, even if he
did not need it as a protection against the cold. And then
there was his manner of speech.
f T>euce take it," he muttered, "it's hard to understand the
way you talk."
The Lekholm boys were sent straight home to their
mother to tell her that all the steps she had taken to turn one
of them out of his room and make it over to Uncle Fredrik
were unnecessary. He would stay at the hotel. The mathe-
2l6 LACEMAKER LEKHOLM
matidan and the lacemaker had gone there with him, and,
as soon as he had settled in, the three men would come back
to supper.
For Dr. Holmes in particular Uncle Fredrik's visit to
Sweden was to mean a definite change which was to affect
the whole of his life.
He was then in the lower sixth. It was many years since
he had left books about Indians to Sven and Tage for good
and all. Even the heroic exploits of the Abergs had ceased to
set his heart on fire several terms ago. He had already tasted
Strindberg and Geijerstam. But there were still in his heart
wide fields that thirsted for the fertilizing rain of romantic
adventure. In his heart of hearts he had not yet abandoned
the hope that his life would be as wonderful as a fairy story,
as full of variety and exploit as a legend. Strindberg*s
Tschandala had made him feel literally ill, and Erik Grane
had given him the nauseated feeling of shame that follows
secret self-indulgence. His whole soul thirsted for the action
and tumult of the wide world, the rattle of sabres (in a
figurative sense) , the glamour, the glitter, the clink of spurs,
the waving of plumes.
And now Uncle Fredrik appeared on the empty stage of
his imagination, the man who had experienced just what his
soul thirsted after adventure, danger, uncertainty. . . .
He had not been able to sleep the night the telegram
came. His brain was afire. He wondered how long Uncle
Fredrik meant to stay. He wondered if he would ask him to
go back with him, to share his hard, variegated life, to leave
the dull little town, his school-work, reports, the Erik Grane
university, the grey, gloomy life which, according to the
literary heroes of the day, was all that awaited him. . . .
And then Uncle Fredrik came. . . .
Not only did he go to the tailor's the day after his arrival
and order a winter coat to protect himself against a tempera-
HAS AN IDEA
ture which stood only a few degrees under zero. He not only
revealed himself as the most commonplace man Dr. Holmes
had ever met ; in the pitiless light of growing disillusionment
he became in his nephew's eyes stupidity personified. In this
Karl did Uncle Fredrik a slight injustice, how great he never
had an opportunity of finding out. But the more dearly he
saw that the gilding on Uncle Fredrik's armour was only
paper, the more savage became his desire to tear off his
trappings.
The first week he was Uncle Fredrik's faithful slave.
Uncle Fredrik had arrived the day before the autumn term
ended, and Dr. Holmes, alias Kalle Lekholm, was able to
place all his time at his disposal. He waited on him at an
early hour of the morning, knocked shyly on the door of his
hotel room, witnessed his toilet, and after breakfast went out
walking with him in the town and its neighbourhood with a
thousand questions on his lips concerning his uncle's past
life.
But it appeared that this man's sole interest was to go
about poking his nose into old courtyards, look up at the
house walls and come out into the street again with the
words:
"I've kicked up a jolly row here."
Then came the next house and the next yard and the next
remark:
"I've lacked up a jolly row here too."
Even the fascination of his American accent diminished in
a few days.
It was just the same at meals and of an evening. He sat
and smoked his pipe, and of a sudden he would ask the
mathematician:
cc Ey the way, I was thinking of that fellow Axel Berggren.
I used to play with him. What became of him?"
"He's dead."
"Oh, he's dead, is he? Well, perhaps it's best for him on
2l8 PACEMAKER LEKHOLM
the whole. Though one never knows what comes after
death. It's so hard nowadays. There are so many doctrines.
One doesn't know what to believe. The old people were
better oflFj they could stick to the Bible."
There was another long silence 5 he went on puffing at his
pipe till a new name from his childhood occurred to his
sluggish memory.
But of his own life and experiences he never told them a
word! And what experiences that man must have had dur-
ing his strange, romantic life as a gold-digger sudden
wealth, extravagance, crushed hopes, revolver play, fight-
ing, murder, his life in his own hands, a fortune depending
on a single call at poker, courtesans in silken gowns, poverty,
starvation. * . . But he never told them a word about it
all!
Instead, he would ask the mathematician:
"By the way, Carl, there used to be a girl called Julia
Persson, Do you remember her?"
<c Yes, of course! She married a supernumerary teacher,
and lives at Strangnas now, where he has a job."
Uncle Fredrik sucked his pipe for a long time.
"Oh, she got married, did she?"
"I seem to remember your fighting for her once," said the
mathematician.
Uncle Fredrik shook his head.
"Did I? I don't suppose it was serious. I've never cared
much about girls."
"You've never thought of marrying again since you be-
came a widower?"
Uncle Fredrik shook his head long and slowly.
"No, there's been no room for women in my life*"
But about this life of his what it had meant to be and
had been in reality not a word. Had he sacrificed every-
thing for an idea, and if so, what idea? And had he sue-
HAS AN IDEA 219
ceeded or failed? Did he mean to settle down in his own
country, or was he still seeking fortune in the form in which
he had always sought it? The mathematician had several
times expressed his astonishment at Uncle Fredrik's silence
on this point. His luggage afforded as little material for
guesswork as the fact that he had arrived first class.
He remained in his native town till a few days after the
New Year, when he was to accompany his aged parents to
the town where Uncle Per lived. The evening before he, his
brother and the old lacemaker were sitting in the mathe-
matician's room after supper. Old Fru Lekholm was tired
and had gone to bed already. The mathematician's wife was
busy with household affairs. But the boys sat or hung, ac-
cording to their age, on chairs in the mathematician's room
to listen to the leisurely conversation. At last the mathe-
matician got up, went to the stove and stood with his back
to it and his arms crossed on his breast
cc Well, Fredrik, when you've seen brother Per, what do
you mean to do next?"
Fredrik took his pipe out of his mouth.
"Well, I'll go to Stockholm for a bit. I've never seen the
pkce. And then . . . Well, when I took my ticket home
I'd thought of settling down at home for good. I'm getting
on in years. But there's nothing else to be done but go back
again."
"Aren't you happy here? Do you think you've been away
too long?"
Uncle Fredrik stroked his moustache.
"No, it's not that exactly. I can be happy anywhere, on
the whole. In Klondyke or California or New Mexico. And
Sweden, too, for that matter. But there's something I've
found out in this time here. I've had damned bad luck all
my life. I scraped a little together at the diggings. Then I
became a gardener in New Mexico. I did well at that. I
22O LACE MAKER LEKHOLM
joined a Dutchman I mean a German. Then came the
rush to Kiondyke. I sold my share to the Dutchman I mean
the German, and went there. Same bad luck. I had to begin
again as a gardener. I did better and better at that. I became
quite comfortably off, and extended my plant. But it wasn't
what Pd meant to do at first nor afterwards either, for that
matter. Well, six months ago a man came up to me one day
as I stood on my land and wanted to buy it and the land
round about I'd bought to extend my plant. And he offered
me such a big sum that I thought the fellow was stark mad.
I laughed in his face. So I said, more as a joke than any-
thing else, C A11 right, you take it! ' The man had actually got
the contract in his pocket, and it was signed there and then.
And before the ink was dry on the damned contract he said:
'That was a good joke/ Then he said: c My son, do you know
there is oil on your land, just outside your plant? Oil for
about half a million greenbacks.' "
Uncle Fredrik puffed slowly at his pipe:
"Well, you can understand, Carl, that that broke me. Pd
been running after gold all my life. Of course Pd heard of
oil, and read about it. But you see, Carl, Pd never thought in
terms of oil. You understand what I mean. Pd only thought
in terms of gold, but not oil. Oil hadn't taken my fancy, as
they say over there. And there I had been stumping about
my plant with half a million of oil inside the fence ; carrying
on with my job without thinking of oil instead of gold for a
single moment And so I made up my mind and came home.
I was broken down felt that fate was against me. I meant
to settle down here for good and all. I've money enough to
have an easy time for the rest of my life. But now I've begun
to think in terms of oil too. And it'd be the very devil "
He bit his pipe-stem hard.
'Well, when I've been to Stockholm I'm going back
again. I'll never be easy in my mind till I do."
HAS AN IDEA 221
There was a long silence. The swift turning of the mathe-
matician's quid betrayed his impatience with this brother of
his who could never have more than one thought in his brain
at once.
"Hm!" he said, "my dear Fredrik; I don't know any-
thing about it, and so I can't advise you."
Uncle Fredrik looked at him.
"Advise me? I've always decided for myself. But there's
something else I've been thinking about since the first
evening we three sat together and you told me about An-
ders's suicide. If I'd known what was happening to him, and
all the trouble he was in, I could have helped him. If I'd
been over here, I'd just have sent along the money,"
There was complete silence a long, oppressive, painful
silence.
But suddenly no one knew exactly how it had happened,
for all were ruminating over what Uncle Fredrik had just
said suddenly the old kcemaker had rushed at Karl's fa-
ther. He had seized him by the collar with both hands and
was shaking him slowly backwards and forwards, backwards
and forwards.
"You're fratricides, that's what you are! You're fratri-
cides, you and Per!"
Karl Lekholm's father, who had inherited his moth-
er's height and was more than a head taller than his old fa-
ther, stood quite still and let himself be shaken. He only
said:
"Go out of the room, boys!"
And Karl and his brothers slouched out of the room in
silence, one behind the other.
Next morning the mathematician's family saw the old lace-
maker, grandmamma and Uncle Fredrik off by train. The
lacemaker wept. Now, at the last moment, he regretted his
222 LACEMAKER LEKHOLM
decision to leave the town of his forefathers, where several
generations of Lekholms had plied their honourable craft.
But old grandmamma, in a new bonnet and a new black
cloak with fur round the neck, took a dignified farewell of
the friends who had come to see her off. Uncle Fredrik was
unmoved.
The stationmaster, who had been at school with Uncle
Fredrik, saluted them all three with his flag, put his whistle
to his lips and gave the signal for departure. . . .
For Dr. Holmes, as has been said, Uncle Fredrik's visit
was a turning-point in his life. Consciously and subconsciously
his mind was constantly occupied with the lessons he had
learned that Christmas. And some years later, when he was
in the lower seventh, these lessons took the shape of a Swed-
ish essay on hero-worship and the influence a hero's noble
example can have on mankind in general. In this essay, in
poetical, highly coloured language, the schoolboy upheld the
view that a hero was in reality a quite ordinary, everyday
person who, by a caprice of fate, the vagaries of chance, his
own spiritual unrest, or of set purpose, has been placed in an
unusual situation and has performed deeds which in the
given situation were perfectly natural. This everyday indi-
vidual became a hero in the eyes of people who had never
witnessed such events, simply on account of the distance that
separated them.
The essay gave rise to a long discussion in the class-room
between the reader in Swedish and young Lekholm. In this
discussion the latter indisputably came off worst, partly on
account of his insufficiency as a dialectician, partly for the
simple reason that he was wrong.
As for Uncle Fredrik, he returned to America to make
his thoughts of oil a concrete fact. He took Uncle Anders's
two eldest sons, Anders and Henrik, with him to the foreign
land of great possibilities.
HAS AN IDEA 22,3
XIV
After Uncle Anders's death, it seemed as if the Deity in His
all-wisdom had ordered His emissaries to abstain from
chastising His faithful servant lacemaker Lekholm and all
his house. Indeed, to judge from the rich harvest of bless-
ings these years bore, it was as though He, the Almighty, had
found that He had treated the Lekholms too hardly 3 and,
to make good the wrongs they had suffered, had taken spe-
cial care to let the sun of His grace shine on the old lace-
maker and his family.
So, at least, the old gentleman himself interpreted the
gifts which rained down in abundance upon his two sons Per
and Carl, like manna from heaven.
The way in which good fortune, after an absence of many
years, again crossed the Lekholms's threshold was nothing
less than miraculous. Uncle Per^s wife, who had lain under
the curse of barrenness for nearly twenty years, now pre-
sented him, on the threshold of old age, with two children.
First a son was born to him. Lefctor Waldenstrom him-
self left his parliamentary duties specially to christen the boy
in the mission house, which was crowded not only with mem-
bers of the community but with many other inhabitants of
the town, who desired by their presence to show their loved
and respected fellow-citizen the pleasure his unexpected
good fortune had given them.
The son was christened Peter Paul.
A daughter was born two years later, and was christened
Maria Elisabeth. On this occasion, too, Waldenstrom per-
formed the ceremony. But the mathematician, who had
attended both christenings, related on his return that the
great man of God and politician had jestingly remarked, at
the meal which followed the baptism, that Per Lekholm
224 LACEMAKER LEKHOLM
could not count on his presence in future every time God
bestowed His blessing on him in this form.
Soon after Peter Paul's birth it became clear to all that
fatherhood had effected a transformation in Uncle Per's
mentality which might also, in some degree, be regarded as
a miracle. Uncle Per, who hitherto had despised all those
who hankered after worldly things and had more than once
been involved in acute controversy on the subject with the
members of his community, one day surprised his fellow-
creatures by buying a house. Nor was it a small house. It
had what might be described as a commanding position at
the corner of Storgatan and the park, had two stories, with
one long row of windows looking on to Storgatan and an-
other on to the park, and had previously been inhabited ex-
clusively by people of quality officers in the infantry regi-
ment stationed in the town, doctors and senior officials. He
himself moved into a few rooms in this house and let two
rooms looking on to the yard to his aged parents, where,
freed from financial anxiety, they could quietly compose the
disagreements of a long married life. To give the exterior
of the house a distinction fully corresponding to its dom-
inating position, Uncle Per had a small top floor added just
at the corner, adorned with a copper-roofed turret in the best
architectural style of the nineties.
What share Uncle Pert wife, who had been mentally
stimulated by her new motherhood, had in this purchase it
is unnecessary to inquire. But there is no question that it had
the most far-reaching effects on his material existence. Ben
f ore concluding the deal, he had applied to the local branch
of the Malmo Bank in order (ignorant as he was of all busi-
ness outside his own restricted field, the carpentering and
furniture branch) to obtain some information and advice.
During this and subsequent conversations with the new bank
manager, who during his short residence in the town had
hitherto heard him spoken of only as a universally respected
HAS AN IDEA 225
dissenter, Per Lekholm displayed an eye for business so un-
commonly acute and far-seeing that the bank manager -was
very soon quite decided upon one point: this is a devilish
smart fellow, and we must have him on the board at all
costs.
The bank manager, of course, did not overlook the cir-
cumstance that, by making sure of Uncle Per, the bank
would gradually obtain a new and by no means to be despised
clientele in the town and its neighbourhood the adherents
of Waldenstrom, who were particularly numerous in those
parts, and formed a respectable, capable, thrifty and, in the
mass, wealthy community. Hitherto most of them had fa-
voured the Provincial Bank, but he, the bank manager,
would not be the sharp fellow he thought himself if Herr
Lekholm's immense prestige among the brethren did not
attract them to his bank. And the increased custom which
the bank thus secured could not possibly have more than one
consequence for him, the bank manager his transference to
a larger branch.
Although Uncle Per and Uncle Carl met so seldom, they
had corresponded actively for many years. This had orig-
inally been necessitated by all the financial trouble the mu-
sician had caused himself and them 5 and from this necessity
the two uncommunicative, reserved brothers had derived a
habit of writing to one another about their own personal af-
fairs. And the habit had, in turn, established a confidential
relationship between them in matters in which they knew
that they could meet on a common ground of straight, manly
rectitude the family's material affairs.
A few months after Uncle Per had informed his brother
of the purchase of the house, there came one afternoon a
very long letter. The mathematician read it aloud that eve-
ning at table, after supper. Against the true inclination of his
heart, in contradiction to the principles to which hitherto he
had rigidly adhered, and after long meditation, Uncle Per
226 LACEMAK.ER LEKHOLM
had given way to the universal, strongly expressed desire of
his fellow-inhabitants that he should join the board of the
local branch of the Malmo Bank. Members of his own com-
munity had endeavoured to persuade him. The governor of
the province himself had repeatedly attempted to influence
him. He had given way to the pressure of this universal de-
sire. He would not conceal from his brother that this meant
for him an entrance into the business world, which had long
tempted him, and that he felt that he was at a turning-point
in his life. It was, therefore, ten times more important than
it had been before never for a moment to lose sight of the
one essential of life the Saviour Who suffered and died for
us on the Cross.
When the mathematician had read this letter, he said:
"It's what Fve always said: Per has always stood in the
way of his own success in the world. He could have been a
rich man by now if he'd liked. But he may go far still,
though he's nearly in the fifties, once he's tasted blood."
XV
But the mathematician and his family prospered also.
One Thursday, a few weeks after Peter Paul's birth, he
came home to dinner looking more severe than usual, with
a parcel under his arm. He went straight to his bedroom
and locked himself in. Not even his wife was allowed to
enter. She knocked at the door several times to say that
dinner was on the table. But each time he replied curtly:
"I'm coming as soon as I can. You sit down."
The others sat down in silence. There had been so many
disasters in the family: a remorseless destiny still hung like
a heavy thundercloud over their heads, and it was with a
tinge of fatalistic insensibility that they waited for the father
of the family in silence, and wondered what could have hap-
HAS AN IDEA 227
pened. Aunt Charlotte was in the asylum at Lund. Uncle
Anders's bones had lain in unconsecrated soil for nearly a
year. The sons looked at their mother. They felt that she
was thinking: Was it not enough? Would the Lekholms
never, never have peace? Would there never, never be an
end to their misfortunes? Would they never have time to
straighten their backs like other people? Would they al-
ways be compelled to go through life hunched up, in fear
of blows from above? And whom had the blow struck now?
Was Peter Paul dead? Had he met with the same fate as
his brothers and sisters many years ago?
At last the key was turned in the lock of the bedroom
door, and the mathematician stood on the threshold. He had
changed his clothes and was in civilian dress, as on a Sunday.
He stood quite motionless, stiffly at attention, sloping arms
with the parcel which he had been carrying under his arm
and which now, under the thin wrapping-paper, revealed
the shape of a stout bottle. He stood quite motionless and
looked from one to the other with a curious, imbecile stare
and his mouth wide open, as if he had suddenly gone out of
his mind. His wife and sons gave him a swift, nervous glance,
without saying anything, without daring to ask.
"Now," he said at last, "is no one going to congratulate
me?"
His wife looked at him.
"Oh, dear Carl, don't frighten us! I really can't bear it
any longer."
The mathematician sloped arms again with the bottle-like
parcel, and to the astonishment and terror of all present, he
goose-stepped the few steps to the table, bent over his wife
and kissed her. It was the first time the boys had seen him do
such a thing, and they looked down stiffly at their plates.
"Lady and gentlemen," he said, "from the first of next
month I leave the army and begin a new life as treasurer to
the town finance committee. What do you say to that?"
228 LACEMAKEU LEKHOLM
He ckpped his heels together again, sloped arms once
more with the parcel, put it carefully on the floor beside his
chair, and sat down at the table.
They all looked at him as he stuffed his napkin under his
chin.
"Yes," he said, "stare your eyes out of your sockets if you
like. It's true anyhow. I can tell you now that there's been
talk of it for some months. Old Lundquist's getting too old.
Besides, the whole system of accounts is to be remodelled.
And so they, that is to say Jonzen, have offered me the post.
I didn't want to say anything before. There's no object in
useless talk. But now it's all fixed up. I've applied for my
discharge to-day and been given leave till I get it. You'll
never see me in uniform again. Of course I get a reduced
pension from the regiment, but my salary as treasurer is
three times my present pay -three times. Ut supra in fidem.
CarlLekholm."
There was still silence at the table.
Well," he said after a moment or two, "aren't you
going to congratulate me?"
"Yes," his sons answered hesitatingly. But they said no
more 5 for at that moment their mother burst into tears.
She leaned one elbow on the table and put her hands before
her eyes, while tears of joy ran down her cheeks into the
Thursday peas in her plate which were rapidly growing
cold.
"You frightened me so, Carl," she sobbed. "I shall never
understand your jokes. When I saw you standing in the
parlour door, I thought of poor Charlotte. I thought you
had gone out of your mind. I thought my heart would turn
to stone. So many things have happened. . . ."
The mathematician's face grew dark for a moment, and he
shrugged his shoulders almost imperceptibly.
'Women don't understand men and men don't under-
stand women. And they are two in one, I felt cheerful for
HAS AN IDEA 229
once in my life. I felt, as I came home, walking the streets in
uniform for the last time in my life, that life was having a
bit of a joke with me. And so I wanted to have a joke my-
self. And I thought of this. And I only frightened you! But
you can forgive me that. Look here!"
He took a little black jewel-case out of his pocket and
opened it. It was a brooch of blood-red garnets which formed
seven stars. He handed it to her with a slight air of embar-
rassment. And at the same time he said:
"For Heaven's sake, Maria, don't thank me whatever you
do, or I'll blush. Besides, Fve got something else here.' 7
He took up the bottle-like parcel, tore off the wrapping-
paper, and held in his hand a bottle of champagne.
"We haven't any champagne glasses yet. But we must
buy some for Lars's matriculation. We'll have to drink this
out of beer glasses. It's the first time wine like this has been
drunk in this house. But it's going to be drunk to-day for
certain reasons."
His wife looked at him.
"But, Carl, we're not going to drink champagne with
pork and peas?"
"That's just what we are gobg to do. We're going to
drink it with pork and peas. At least the first bottle which is
drunk in our home. One might say that the combination is
symbolic for us. Per as'pera ad astra^ it used to run when I
learnt Latin. And I suppose it still does. And those words
might very well be our life's motto, Maria. Dinner-party
wine with everyday food. And now, while you're putting
on the brooch, I'll uncork the bottle and we'll have some
speech-making."
The boys' mother stuck the brooch in her vyella blouse
with trembling fingers, and the champagne cork flew out
with a pop. The mathematician poured out wine for her
and himself. He poured out for the boys, too. Lars, who
was to be a student in a few weeks, got a half-glass > Karl
23O LACEMAKER LEKHOLM
and Sven a third and a quarter respectively, and Tage, who
was only ten, a few drops to drink healths with. He worked
it all out mathematically, measuring with his eye. Then the
newly appointed treasurer tapped his glass.
"Yes, my boys, now we're going to drink mother's health
and thank her that we're where we are. It's her doing more
than mine. Dear Maria, we thank you with all our hearts,
We beg you to forgive us for . . . I beg you to forgive me
for all my hardness, for all that I know you've put down tc
insensibility and lads: of affection in me, dear Maria, I beg
... I beg . . . you ... it wasn't for want of love K
He could say no more. His face began to twitch, and he
suddenly rose and disappeared into his room.
But their mother did not weep. She only smiled. She sat
looking straight in front of her, with her eyes still shining
from the tears she had shed a little while before. Her sons
glanced shyly at her.
It was as though an entirely new woman had taken the
place where she had been sitting a few moments before, a
young woman who resembled a faded portrait in the photo-
graph album, representing their mother at the time of her
engagement. The face of the woman who now sat there
was certainly as worn as their mother's, the cheeks were
sunken, the forehead as wrinkled. But her eyes and her
smile revealed a soul that for years and years had been
buried under a mountain of toil and daily worries, and now 3
suddenly awakened by the falter in another's voice, was
listening, wondering and expectant, to the implied confes-
sion.
Their father was out of the room a long time. When at
last he came back he smelt of eau-de-Cologne, with which
he had been bathing his face. He was quite himself again,
and said in his normal tone of command:
"Now we'll drink mother's health, boys."
They raised their glasses awkwardly and looked at her.
HAS AN IDEA 231
The smile had gone. Her eyes had lost their brightness and
were as tired and dull as before5 the spell was broken ; she
had become twenty years older again in a few seconds. She
passed her hand over her eyes once or twice, as though try-
ing to brush away a dream or a vision which had clung to
her eyelashes like a flying spider's web.
"No," she said, "now we'll congratulate father instead,
children!"
After dinner father and mother shut themselves into his
room. It was, no doubt, the new future they were talking
of, the new and wonderful possibilities which at one stroke
had been revealed to them and their children. It was the
key to the door Sesame which was being tested 5 the shin-
ing treasures of which they could catch a glimpse inside,
and which, to judge from the papers the mathematician
had left on his writing-table, had been estimated in his
beautifully formed figures.
The boys, too, held a conclave that evening in their rooms
on the other side of the lobby. Their lessons were left to
look after themselves. What had happened was more mai>
vellous than the miracles in the legends. Their father was
no longer a non-commissioned officer. He need no longer
stand at attention before every young lieutenant with his
hand raised to the peak of his cap. He was a free man. The
world and the community had at last discovered what a
fine fellow their father was, and by making him treasurer
to the finance committee had paid a tribute to obvious jus-
tice which had been lacking all these years.
A few weeks kter the champagne cork popped again in
the mathematician's home. It was the first Saturday in June,
and his eldest son had matriculated that day. The goal was
reached. The old lacemaker's dream had become a reality.
It had taken the work of a whole generation to make his
232 LACE MAKER LEK.HOLM
brag a living truth. Two human beings, a man and a woman,
had toiled and moiled, calculated and denied themselves for
twenty years to help a lad of hardly eighteen to a life in
better conditions and of greater possibilities. But now the
goal was reached! Lars Lekholm stood that day where his
father had once dreamed of standing, many years before.
The mathematician himself had been down to the school
yard to meet him. His wife had not dared to go. One never
knew the improbable might happen. . . . Besides, she
was not sure of herself 5 she did not know whether she could
control herself at the moment when the school doors opened
and the crowd streamed out . . . That day meant so much
for her, more than for most of the other mothers who now
shared her nervousness.
But the mathematician was sure of himself 5 and he went.
He had placed himself at the fence of the governor's gar-
den, right in front of a white lilac bush in flower. He looked
very "cross," more serious than usual, as serious as he used
to look when some misfortune had afflicted the family, and
only then. He turned his quid rapidly and spat quickly now
and again, with his eyes immovably fixed on the shut doors
of the school. When anyone passed, or greeted him with
a few friendly words, he started, raised his hat nervously
and spat. Hidden behind his back he held an ebony stick
with a crook of wrought silver bearing a monogram and
a date, and he looked as if he meant to spring upon his
son and give him a thrashing the moment he came within
range.
When the doors were thrown wide open and the white-
capped band came crowding out, he remained at his post,
with his sinewy neck at full stretch, with his cold grey eyes
peering into the cluster. Then a solitary student elbowed his
way out of the chaos of hurrahs and flowers and went quietly
to the spot where his father was waiting for him by ar-
rangement a tallj fair-haired boy with down on his chin.
HAS AN IDEA 233
The mathematician took the stick from Its place of con-
cealment behind his back, felt it once or twice, weighed it in
his hand and gave it to him.
"Well," he said with a smile, "you've scraped your way
through, anyhow. Congratulations* I suppose you were one
of the last?"
"No, not exactly. I think I came out first or second."
His father turned his quid.
"That's what I expected of you, my boy. We must hurry
home now. Mother is so anxious."
But before they left the school yard they were stopped
by a crowd of men in uniform the mathematician's old
comrades. They saluted and shook hands with the newly
made student.
"You're the first of our boys to put on the white cap,"
they said. "Ours will follow you. But you're the first. We
congratulate you and wish you all possible luck."
"Yes," his father answered with a grim smile, "he's
really scraped through. But it must have been a near thing."
And so they went home, father and son, with the two
next boys on each side and Tage running in front like a
dog. The lobby door was locked, against the mathema-
tician's express order. He fumbled for the bunch of keys in
his trousers pocket and at last opened the door.
"What can be wrong with mother, that she doesn't come
out to meet us?" he said.
He jerked the parlour door open. And there she stood,
stiff and straight, looking at her eldest son. Her face was
as white as chalkj she stretched out her hands towards him,
her fingers trembled, and her lips moved, but she stood in
perfect silence, unable to utter a word of greeting. Then
she passed her hand over her forehead and eyes and sank
down on a chair.
They all rushed forward to help her.
"What is it? What in Heaven's name? Maria mother! "
234 LACEMAKER LEKHOLM
She shook her head
"I don't know. I feel so fun "
The mathematician rushed out into the dining-room,
uncorked the champagne bottle and came back with a glass,
a real champagne-glass, as tall and narrow as a flower-vase.
"Look here, take this wait, Pll help you drink this
. . . it'll make you better, you'll see it will. . . ."
She sipped from the glass, pushed it gently away and
stretched out her hand as if feeling for something.
"Where are you, Lars? . . . My Lars. . . . Come
here. ... I want to feel your hand. ... I feel as if I'd
been right away from you. . . ."
In half an hour she was herself again. They stood in a
group round the table with the new champagne glasses in
their hands. The mathematician raised his glass and said:
"Yes, my boy! We have never spoken of your future till
now. There's no sense in unnecessary talk. Matriculation
was the first stage j and each stage has to be taken sepa-
rately. But now it's time to talk to you about your future.
And now I have a piece of news to give you, which will come
as a surprise even to your mother. I don't know at all what
you've thought you'd most like to be. But now I want to
say to you that you can choose whatever career you like!
On one, but a very important condition that your con-
duct yourself well. On that condition your mother and I
will meet the cost of your training as a lawyer or school-
master or doctor, or whatever you want to be. Without
doing any injury to your younger brothers, we will try and
arrange for you to study till your training is finished with-
out financial worry. But now I've got a surprise even for
your mother. I think I've noticed that you've leanings
towards a military career. You can become an officer if you
like. You can't join the regiment here. You wouldn't be
taken, seeing that you're the son of an N.C.O. in the regi-
HAS AN IDEA 235
ment. And even i you were taken, they'd make you feel
in one way or another that your father had started in the
ranks. But I think they'd take you in a north-country regi-
ment. I even think the colonel would put in a good word
for you if I asked him. If you want to be an officer you may.
If so, you've a few weeks in which to make your decision.
Perhaps it's madness on my part to encourage you in that
direction. But seeing how much better off Fve become, well
God bless you! So long as you lead a simple, sober, hard-
working life your health!"
The mathematician's eldest son had already come rigidly
to attention and acknowledged the toast in military style
by immediately lowering his emptied glass to the level of
his third waistcoat button.
His wife looked at him with an astonished stare. This
was his revenge, her husband's revenge for all those years.
It was madness. It was contrary to all sound reason, to all
the calculations he had hitherto made, to their mutual
agreements, to his view of the military profession and an
officer's existence, to all that he had till now impressed upon
his children as regards the purpose and aims of life. And
now there he stood, urging his own son to enter the army!
As if he himself thought for a single moment that Lars,
careful and decent lad as he was, could avoid temptation
and live a simple, sober, hard-working life as an officer!
He who knew himself what went on in the mess and out-
side. ... It was madness! It meant sending their own
child into a life of misconduct, debts and misery! It was
madness! But it was revenge, too his revenge for all these
years in which he had worn the king's uniform. And there
was something else something she now discovered for the
first time in this uncommunicative, reserved man whose
wife she had been for so many years. She stared at him
darkly in boundless astonishment and gave expression to
her thought:
236 LACEMAKER LEKHOLM
"Taken all in all, you're a typical Lekholm. In your
heart of hearts you're your father's son. . . ."
Now it was the mathematician's turn to stare at his wife.
"I like my jather?"
He shook his head several times, completely at a loss.
"I really can't see any likeness. . . ."
His wife nodded, curtly and decisively:
"I haven't till now, either. But now I do! "
It is possible that the mathematician, in his calculations
for Lars's future, had reckoned with one of the wealthy
marriages so common among officers as a solution of an
economic problem which would become more and more
involved as the years passed. If so, he would have been
obliged to nourish the most serious apprehensions for his
son's future had he been able to see him in the park an
hour after the health-drinking and speech-making.
With money he had earned in the course of the year he
had bought an engagement ring, and this ring, on a bench
in a summer-house surrounded by lilac in blossom, he placed
on Froken Gurli Svensson's finger, swearing as he did so
eternal love and fidelity.
Froken Gurli Svensson was then in the eighth class of
the girls' school. She was daughter to a private coach, who
did not possess, never had possessed, and never had any
prospect of possessing, a single ore beyond what was needed
to keep his family alive.
Gurli Svensson and Lars Lekholm had been secretly
engaged for several years in fact, since Lars Lekholm was
in the upper seventh. Their union was now further sealed
by this engagement ring, imported from Malmo for secre-
cy's sake, which he placed on her finger on absolute condi-
tion that she would not show it to a living soul and only
wear it at night, when no one could see her.
Gurli Svensson gave her solemn promise. And what was
HAS AN IDEA 237
more remarkable, she kept it faithfuUy! For she was like
that, in her love and her loyalty.
The day after his matriculation Lars was sent by his father
to the regimental doctor.
Lars was to be examined in view, not only of his future
career, but also of life insurance. At breakfast the mathe-
matician explained to his sons the enormous importance of
life insurance, both in general and with particular reference
to the Lekholm family and its history. The absence of life
insurance had played a decisive and tragic part in the family
drama. If, for example, Uncle Oscar, the wastrel and dandy,
had had sufficient sense of responsibility to insure his life, or
if his father the lacemaker, that incurable optimist, had had
foresight enough to take out a life insurance policy in Os-
car's name corresponding to the sums he had been foolish
enough to lend him, the family finances and fortunes would
have been entirely different.
It was, of course, true, as the mathematician pointed out,
that the idea of life insurance was not then as familiar as it
had become in their day. But it had existed for some twenty
years at any rate. What he wished to impress upon his sons
was this: life was really such a simple matter that with only
a small degree of foresight and sense of responsibility, and
exact punctuality in the payment of premiums, the cruellest
weapons could be wrested from the hands of disaster, and
at least the most superfluous blows of a blind fate warded
off. In the mathematician's opinion, if the ten command-
ments were revised in future, the fifth ought to contain a
clause making the taking out of a life insurance policy an in-
tegral part of the honouring of one's father and mother.
So Lars was ordered to present himself before the regi-
mental doctor at ten o'clock the same morning. The mathe-
matician had already mentioned the matter to the doctor.
He had also spoken to the doctor about his wife and her
238 LACEMAKER LEKHOLM
little attack of giddiness. It had certainly passed off at once.
But he wondered if it would not be best to have her ex-
amined.
But his wife refused absolutely. She would not go to any
doctor. She had felt unwell in the same way several times
before. It was not real giddiness $ it was stomach trouble,
and had nothing whatever to do with the heart. . . .
The mathematician was of the same opinion. Besides,
she was a woman; and women were specially constituted,
quite unlike men. That was to say, men's physical failings
were, so to speak, more logical, more calculable. In a man,
an attack of dizziness meant that the time had come when
he must pay for the sins of his youth 5 it was, in fact, the
first serious warning. But a woman need only be subjected to
a little extra emotional strain to turn up the whites of her
eyes and look as if her last hour had come.
"Besides," his wife said, "I shall be able to rest now and
take things a little more quietly."
XVI
Yes, now she would be able to rest and take things quietly.
And she needed to rest.
She had borne her husband four sons in eight years, kept
house for him, cooked, mended clothes, darned, woven,
sewed, scrubbed, polished in the first years of her marriage
alone, kter with the help of some young girl from the coun-
try, who as a rule left the moment she had learnt her duties.
In addition to this, the mathematician's wife had had the
regimental mending for fifteen years through her husband.
Two days in the week she spent cutting out privates' shirts
and making drawers and socks, which were then given out
to poor widows and necessitous spinsters in the town for
completion. The few poor hundred-kronor notes she hon-
HAS AN IDEA 239
estly earned in this manner were placed in the bajnk to help
her sons, when their time came, to a brighter and easier
future than had been their parents' lot.
As long as Dr. Holmes could remember, his mother had
never had a moment to herself, from a quarter to six in the
morning, when the boys had to be woken and sent to school,
to half-past eleven at night, when she crept into the big
mahogany bed and fell into so heavy a sleep that she often
did not even wake when her spouse, an hour or two later,
had finished his work for the day and stretched himself out
at her side.
And yet this life of toil had not affected her mentally.
She was always the same low-voiced, definite, sparing of
words, resourceful, resolute. There was no suggestion of
strain about her ways or manner. She was one of those
women who, amid the worst household turmoil, only need
take off their apron, turn down their sleeves and smooth
their hair to give an unexpected visitor the impression that
they have only been interrupted in the preparation of a
sweet.
Certainly her cheeks were sunken. But as she had never
been a beauty despite her regular features, her straight
short nose, her broad low forehead, the oval of her face and
a chin of feminine softness her sunken cheeks and her
thin form made the impression of being constitutional rather
than an indication of prematurely faded womanhood. There
was still a gleam of sunshine and youth in her rich fair hair,
worn in a heavy knot on her neck. And her deep-set blue
eyes, which generally had a tired look, could shine up and
reveal glimpses of a placid, meditative life, directed by
reason rather than by feeling the mirror of a quiet, bal-
anced, somewhat melancholy spirit.
She was the daughter of a clergyman, who had died sud-
denly a few years after he had obtained a living and left his
24O LACE MAKER LEK.HOLM
family a widow, one daughter and two sons with an ex-
tra year of grace beyond the usual one in which to pay off
the remaining part of the debts he had accumulated as a
student and to make some provision for their own future.
And she was in many respects a typical clergyman's daugh-
ter, intended by nature to develop from a fair young bud
in an idyllic country vicarage into the commanding, ma-
tronly, humorous, practically religious wife of a rural dean.
But instead she had married the mathematician. And all
the qualities which lay hid within the bud had, in the leaner
soil and less sunny atmosphere to which she had been
transplanted, developed into but pale reflections of what
nature had intended. The authority the rural dean's wife
wielded at home and abroad, in farm, cottage and poor-
house, had shrunk into willingness and patience to listen to
all the complaints over the wretchedness of life and the
caprices of fate in which the poor women of the town used
to indulge when they came to fetch or leave the soldiers'
drawers and shirts. The portliness had been atrophied. She
was still as little, slim and fragile as in the photograph in
the album on the parlour table, taken at the time of her
engagement, and all the rest in the world could not give
her the double-chin, ample bosom, swaying hips and com-
fortable embonpoint of the rural dean's wife.
Her humour, too, had been checked in its free growth
that special feminine humour which meets one at the
door of every vicarage in the country, the healthy, purify-
ing product of daily companionship with the weakness of a
servant of the Lord. The humour had not, like the portli-
ness, been atrophied, for humour is one of the rare spiritual
plants which never let themselves be completely stifled.
It had adapted itself to the less favourable surroundings
and, after creeping along dark, crooked tunnels, reached
the light of day in the form of intellectual satire and irony.
It had lost the cast-iron security of the vicarage. In the home
HAS AN IDEA 24!
o the mathematician-atheist it had become a religion in the
land of the heathen, continually exposed to the brutality
o logic, the seductions of common sense and the persistency
of proselytism. A religion which always had to be ready
to shift its tents, wandering eternally in the sandstorm-
swept deserts of atheism 5 compelled every Sunday after-
noon the only one at her disposal to try to strengthen
its position by reading, to arm itself against the literature
from which the infidel derived his modern wisdom his
theory of a miserable human race, which had a gorilla for
its father instead of God, and was inspired by the greedy
egotism of a wild beast in the place of the Holy Spirit.
How she and the mathematician got on together as a
married couple their sons did not know. They were both
quiet and sparing of words. When the two eldest boys,
Lars and Karl, had reached the age at which Strindberg's
theory that married life was a hell upon earth was debated
by the mature gentlemen of the gymnasium, they often
discussed their parents* life and endeavoured to interpret
it as a regular Strindbergian hell of hatred, that being in
their eyes the most modern and highly cultured form of
legal connection between man and woman. Certainly their
mother and father hated one another! Sometimes they
surprised their mother sitting and weeping. They had pre-
served, too, from their earliest childhood a few faint mem-
ories of her coming into their room in the middle of the
night, kissing them on the forehead and then disappearing
for several days. Their father had explained to them that
she had been summoned to her mother, who had suddenly
been taken ill. What had really happened they never knew:
but it was the sort of thing that happened in Strindberg! A
schoolboy could understand that. Once when Karl, now
Charles Holmes, had surprised her crying, he had gone up
to her, stroked her cheek and tried to console her.
"Has father been unkind to you again? " he had asked
242 LACEMAKER LEKHOLM
But he never tried to console her again: for she had turned
him straight out of the bedroom with the words:
"Go away! You're not to say an unkind word about your
father 5 he's the best man in all the world!"
But this outburst, too, was typically Strindbergian, and
further confirmed the boys 7 theory that her marriage with
the mathematician was really up to date in every respect.
The two eldest brothers' speculations as to the relations
between their parents had this amount of justification that
even an impartial observer could not help being astonished
not so much at their marriage having endured, for most
unhappy marriages did in those days, but at the fact that
the two had ever come together as two people must come
together for the thought of marriage ever to arise. They
seemed so utterly different in very way. They had really
nothing in common since the remote date when craftsman-
ship and agriculture went different ways and created the
different mentalities of peasant and bourgeois.
And yet the explanation was simple enough. The mathe-
matician gave it to his sons one evening some years later.
It was romance pure and simple.
Once, as a young sergeant, the mathematician had gone
to her part of the country on manoeuvres and had been
billeted in the vicarage where her mother was spending the
first year of grace. He had come there in command of the
battery's ammunition column, with high boots, sword and
revolver ; on horseback, with men and wagons behind him.
He rode across the garden, with its big chestnut which was
just shedding its leaves, reined in before the front steps,
embowered in crimson Virginia creeper, spurred his horse
to make it curvet, and called: "Is anyone in?"
Then she had come out, small, slight and pale, with big,
rather frightened blue eyes and fair, wavy hair that hung
down her back in a long plait. He had raised his hand to his
cap, spurred his horse again to make it curvet still more
HAS AN IDEA 243
elegantly, and taken a paper from the breast pocket of his
dusty tunic.
He, his men and his horses were to be billeted there for
twenty-four hours. The rest of the battery was down at the
squire's. He promised to cause as little inconvenience as
possible. She had looked at the paper and up again at the
man on the prancing horse 5 he was as dusty as a tramp, but
a pair of flashing steel-grey eyes shone in the brown, weather-
beaten face, on which the dry dust still lay in streaks, the
fair moustache was brushed upwards in martial style, and
the chin protruded, manly and resolute, above the tight
chin-strap. She had blushed and turned pale again, just as
the poets will have it, and said:
"If you'll wait a minute, lieutenant, I'll tell mother."
He corrected her mistake as to his rank later in the eve-
ning, when her mother asked him to supper at the vicarage.
He knew that his life's happiness might and probably would
be destroyed if he pointed out the error. But he had toj he
was already head over ears in love with her. He had said:
"Please don't call me lieutenant, ladies. I'm only a ser-
geant."
Early next morning he rode off at the head of the am-
munition column. A marvel had taken place, something
he had not dared hope for: she had got up and served coffee
for him in the dining-room. And it was after he had experi-
enced that marvel that his resolution was formed: when
he reached the end of the chestnut avenue which led up to
the vicarage he turned in his saddle and swore: She or
none!
He wrote to her for a year and a half. Then, at the end
of the extra year of grace, she and her mother moved into
town. The boys were going to school, and the widow was to
try to keep herself and them by taking paying guests. A
year later the mathematician and the clergyman's daughter
were married against the will of her family. Not that the
244 LACEMAKER LEKHOLM
widow and her brother, who was himself a clergyman, had
ever heard anything but good o him. But they were unwill-
ing to give Maria to a man who had lived in barracks among
rough soldiers for several years. Besides, what future could
there be in marriage with a man who could never get any
higher than he was, however efficient he might be? They
had nothing to live on but the scanty pay of a non-
commissioned officer. And he was a freethinker into the
bargain. "Toil and labour, misery and poverty, that's what
it'll be," her mother had prophesied. But the little fair-haired
girl with the deep, serious blue eyes, who one autumn after-
noon had fallen in love with a clashing warrior on a pranc-
ing horse, whom she had taken for a lieutenant, would not
listen to reason. She joined her fate with that of a man
who, in addition to perfect faithfulness, could promise
her only one thing that their sons should be students.
And there was a spice of revenge in that promise for her
too.
Her life had been toil and labour. But now their eldest
son was a student, and the others would follow him. And
she herself would begin to take things quietly!
Although the mathematician's wife gave up the regimental
sewing that summer, she had much to do in the months
that followed.
Now the boys were to be equipped with sheets, pillow-
cases and towels, everything a student takes with him when
he leaves home and goes out into life.
Lars had been accepted as a volunteer in the Norrbotten
Regiment. In two years it would be KarPs turn, two years
later Sven's, and last of all Tage's. Would she see the day
when the youngest won the white cap, she wondered? . . .
She hardly thought so. She felt so tired, now when she was
to begin to take things quietly. She did not seem able to do
half what she could do before, now, when she was freed of
HAS AN IDEA 245
the sewing. No, she would never live to see the day when
Tage came home with the white cap on. ...
It was best to equip them all four at once $ and it was the
only right and just way too. If it was done so, there could
be no favouritism. They should all have things o the same
bind and at the same price. And the things should be o
such quality that when they married their wives should need
only to glance at the monogram to see what kind o mother
she had been to her sons.
She had thought of weaving the linen herself 5 but before
the loom was ready, she had a feeling that she could not
do it. The blankets, however, she would make herself blue
in colour, warm, light and soft. And in the middle of each
blanket a little heart should be worked containing the boys'
initials their mother's heart, which would warm them
long after she herself was in her grave.
And there was another thing: if she did not weave the
linen herself, she would have time to do some reading, not
only on Sunday afternoons, which hitherto had been her
only free time in the week, but every evening. She would
read masses of books! and with them she would bombard
Unbelief so heavily that at last it would beg for mercy,
not from her, but from Him from whom all mercy comes.
She would, before it was altogether too late, convince the
atheist, with his own weapons of logic, that the human race
was not descended from gorillas and orang-outangs, and
that God's own voice spoke in men's hearts if they would
only have ears to hear it.
It was a curious thing that the thought of death should
be with her daily now, when she was to have rest and quiet.
. . And not only the thought of her own death, but a
fear for her husband and his atheism, the need, that grew
ever more urgent, of trying to convert him before before
what?
But of all this, of her weariness, her feeling that death
246 LACEMAKER LEKHOLM
was near, of her anxiety to serve her husband because it was
too late, she said nothing to him. Now and again she wrote
a few words on the subject in letters to her brothers, who
had now been vicars for a long time.
For the last four or five years the mathematician had rented
one half of a villa in a fir-wood close to a fishery some twenty
or thirty miles from the town. He had reckoned that sun,
the air of the pine-woods and salt-water bathing would
strengthen the boys' bodies and sharpen their intellects for
new efforts in the next school year. "Remounts must be put
out to grass if one wants to get the best out of them," he
used to say.
He came out himself on Saturday evenings and spent
Sunday fly-fishing with a few companions from the neigh-
bouring villas. He could cast for twelve hours on end,
swearing at the unreliability of the human eye and judg-
ment in the use of strength. During his four weeks' holiday
he instructed backward holiday makers in mathematics the
whole morning. The lessons took place on the glassy-roofed
verandah, and mathematical formulas echoed in the depths
of the pine-wood. Right down on the white sands, where the
boys and girls floundered in the shallow water, his curt,
sharp question could be heard: cc What is meant by a log-
arithm?"
But this summer, his first as treasurer, he took no holiday.
He had .to acquaint himself with so much that was new.
He only came out for Saturdays and Sundays. Sunday was,
as before, entirely devoted to fishing. But on Saturday eve-
nings he and his wife used to sit on the glass-roofed veran-
dah. They talked of the future. Happiness had come to their
home at last, not as a casual and fleeting visitor, but as a
member of the family. The time of family tragedies was
over. The future lay before them like a sunshiny summer
HAS AN IDEA 247
morning. No, it was clearer. For him it took the form of a
theory of heredity worked out on a mathematical basis.
There was a man called Galton, in his opinion the greatest
genius of the century along with Darwin. This Galton had
f ormulated a law by which an individual's compound he-
reditary characteristics could be determined with almost
mathematical accuracy, and hence, with only the slightest
margin of error, his future. This brilliant genius, Galton,
had discovered that to a child's individuality the parents
contribute one-half, the four grandparents together one-
quarter, and their parents in turn the remaining quarter.
"Do you understand?"
The mathematician wrote out his sons' heredity on a
sheet of paper and showed his wife all the possibilities which
might occur under Galton's kw. As he reckoned it, their
boys were on the whole on the safe side. That was to say
there was one black spot, which had already proved fatal
in brother Anders's case$ and that was the combination of
the old kcemaker's incurable optimism and old Fru Lek-
holm's musical talent But it should be observed that he,
the mathematician, had inherited neither the kcemaker's
unpardonable optimism nor his mother's musical talent. As-
suming that this unlucky combination occurred in any of
his sons, it would in any case form so small a part of his
hereditary qualities seeing that a man only inherited an
eighth part from his grandparents on the father's side
that the combination would hardly do any decisive injury
to the remaining seven-eighths of his individuality.
"Do you understand?"
But his wife only answered: "Do you know, Carl, I
sometimes feel that I wish you might experience a real
sorrow."
C What do you mean? Haven't 7 had sorrows in my life?"
She shook her head.
248 LACE MAKER LEKHOLM
"Never a real sorrow, never a sorrow which has hit you
really hard, so that for once in your life you have had to
bow your head before God."
"And you wish me that? That's a kind wish, I must say."
She looked him seriously in the eyes.
"Yes, that's just what it is: a kind
XVII
Her wish was fulfilled earlier than anyone could have
guessed.
One day in late spring, the year after the mathematician
had been appointed town treasurer, he came home to din-
ner declaring that he had a quite unique piece of news. His
news, he said, affected the whole family and its future most
immediately, and was as all family news now habitually
was particularly pleasant. In the event of his wife being
able to guess what it was she should receive by way of re-
ward a fur-trimmed plush cloak from Augusta Lundin's
in Stockholm, which, by chance, he had been offered for
a song; while, if any of the boys succeeded in hitting the
nail on the head, the lucky guesser would be presented
with a krona piece.
The krona piece was taken from his purse simultaneously
with the promise, displayed to his sons and placed for the
time being beside the mathematician's plate. As regards the
fur-trimmed plush cloak from Augusta Lundin's in Stock-
holm, his word had to be taken ; but no one had ever doubted
that yet.
The meal was finished without anyone having even
brushed against the curtain behind which the mysterious
news was concealed. They had guessed everything possible,
from the first prize in the Danish class lottery to a new
bicycle instead of the old one, which now, after having been
HAS AN IDEA 249
used by four brothers, was in such a state that not even Tage
would mount it.
At last the mathematician put the krona back into his
purse, expressed his pleasure at having saved the price o a
fur-trimmed plush cloak, took a large envelope from his
wallet and, with painful deliberation, produced a photo-
graph. Holding it in his upraised right hand he displayed
it to his family, whose patience had now reached breaking-
point.
"What's this?"
"A house."
"It's a villa," the mathematician corrected. "Whom do
you think that villa belongs to?"
No one could say.
"Well," the mathematician said, "from noon to-morrow
that villa will be called 'Mariero* and will belong to Fru
Maria Lekholm, nee Brogren j it is presented to her by her
good and faithful husband, Carl Lekholm, as a mark of
his love and gratitude, and is intended to be owned and
used by her as its new name indicates as a resting-place
for her during the remainder of her life. If she allows her
hard and brutal husband to live under the same roof as
herself, it was the giver's idea that Herr and Fru Lekholm
should spend their old age in this villa like Philemon and
Baucis, the aged couple in Ovid."
With these words he handed the photograph to his wife,
adding:
"The inventory of this villa includes a fur-trimmed plush
cloak from Augusta Lundin's in Stockholm. I hope you
like it"
The boys had jumped up from their chairs and placed
themselves behind their mother to look at the photograph.
It showed a two-storied wooden villa, crenellated and tow-
ered, with gargoyled roof, glass verandah and porch, all
in the finest architectural style of the nineties as applied
25O LACEMAKER I, E K H O L M
to summer villas, something between a mediseval castle
and a restaurant. All this could be seen from the photo-
graph.
But this stately, not to say monumental exterior was, the
mathematician declared, nothing compared to the interior.
There were no less than fourteen rooms, six of them on the
upper floor j two passages; a staircase so wide that one could
drive a gun-team up it, a pantry as spacious as if it had
been meant for a hotel j large, lofty, light rooms, with
stoves in the sitting-rooms so imposing and artistically orna-
mented that they were a pleasure to the eye a chocolate-
brown majolica stove in the dining-room, a white and gold
one in the drawing-room, and so on. There was also a roomy
outhouse with a loose box for a horse, and, note bene> a hen-
house with a stove in it!
"Mariero" stood in a commanding position fully corre-
sponding to its splendid exterior and interior. It stood on a
rise in the ground where two roads crossed, surrounded by
a garden of two acres, certainly rather new, but with fruit-
trees already bearing. Opposite its south front was the vil-
lage shop with its life and movement. Behind the shop, in
a grove of ancient chestnuts, rose the square, massive white
church tower, and farther off ky the red-painted vicarage,
covered with ivy and Virginia creeper. The lady of the
house, therefore, would not lack society. On the contrary,
she would be restored to the atmosphere of her childhood 5
she would live only a stone's throw from a charming coun-
try vicarage, like that from which he had taken her long
ago. The church bells would ring the Sunday evening peace
right into her room, as she sat in her armchair at the
window.
It seemed that day, as they sat over their coffee longer
than usual, that the mathematician had been endowed with
the inexhaustible resources of a magician. It appeared, as
he continued his account of "Mariero" and its position, that
HAS AN IDEA 251
the southern outlook could not remotely be compared with
the view that met the eye from the windows on the north
side, especially from the upper floor. This view, he declared
with emphasis, was an absolute pearl, fully equal to anything
that any other country in the world could offer. It was so
beautiful that it must bring tears to the eyes o any man
whose heart was not utterly hardened. He was willing to
confess that he himself, as he stood at the window of the
first-floor room which he already called Lars's room each
son was to have his own room on the first floor yes, he
said, as he stood up there and looked at the view and thought
that he and Maria would soon call all this their own, he
had had to take out his handkerchief. He had had a feeling
in his breast which he had never known before in his life,
and for which he could find no other expression than the
childish word religious.
For where the fence of the garden of "Mariero" marked
the frontier of his domains, there began (i) a meadow,
sloping gently to (2) the river, which, thanks to a water-
fall three or four feet high, whose noise could be heard
through the open window, broadened into a lake with alder-
clad banks, in which fish were declared to abound. On the
other side of this lake-like pool ky (3) a fair-sized property,
whose white main building was visible through the alders,
(4) fields and meadows patched with clumps of trees and
buildings, and rising gently to where (5) the woods towards
the Smaland border began, at first dark and jagged, then
growing ever bluer till they finally melted far away into
(6) the horizon.
The distance between the fence of "Mariero" and the
edge of the woods he, as an old artilleryman, accustomed to
judge ranges, estimated at about 20,000 yards. With a bat-
tery placed on the slight elevation on which "Mariero" had
been built by its former owner, a Government official who
had died a few months before, he, the mathematician, could
252 LACEMAKER LEICHOLM
command and defend an area of something like 30,000
square yards so dominating was the villa's position.
And now all this was his wife's as a mark of his love and
gratitude.
"There you are, and welcome! And, as I told you, the
fur-trimmed cloak from Augusta Lundin's is part of the
present. But whatever you do don't thank me, or I'll
blush. And now you're to go in and learn your lessons,
boys!"
The mathematician's wife smiled. She sat with the photo-
graph in her hand.
"I won't thank you," she said. "I'll only say one thing
I don't know anyone who'd have done this in the way
you've done it."
The mathematician twirled his moustache with a smile
of satisfaction.
"You know, last Sunday, when I said I was going out to
see some land belonging to the town, I wasn't speaking the
truth. I was at *Mariero.' I decided the matter then, al-
though I didn't want to say anything till the contract was
signed. There's no sense in unnecessary talk."
His wife shook her head gently and smiled again.
"It wasn't quite that I meant. I meant that no one else
would buy a house for his wife without asking her if she
thought she would be happy there. Though I know I
shall be."
And now something happened which the mathematician
had most insistently begged might not happen: he was
compelled to blush. He blushed furiously; and it was not
till some moments after that he said, with a shamefaced,
helpless smile:
"Well, Maria, you know I've learnt as a soldier that
surprise is the most important element in tactics."
But now his wife was laughing.
"Your tactics, yes! At first I used to admire them. Then
HAS AN IDEA 253
I submitted to them. At last Pve grown so accustomed to
them that I really believe I like them. The only thing
that astonishes me is that there is still something in me
which protests against them."
During the weeks that followed "Mariero" became Herr
and Fru Lekholm's main interest.
There was planning and calculating of an evening when
the day's work was over. The mathematician, who had
hitherto regarded life with conspicuous mistrust and a
severe freedom from illusion, blossomed out in these hours,
like an evening primrose, into an optimist pure and unde-
filed. It was as though the barren northern soil in which he
had hitherto been rooted had, through the signature of the
contract, been transformed into the fertile earth of some
southern land, producing the most wonderful harvests and
the most marvellous fruits. His expectations from the two
acres of new garden, which surrounded the villa with its
towers and gargoyles, would have sufficed to provide the
whole town, not only with such necessities as potatoes and
beans, but also with asparagus, raspberries and gooseberries j
while the mere presence of a stove in the hen-house caused
him to dream of poultry-breeding and egg-laying on a gi-
gantic scale.
His wife, brought up in a country vicarage, simply
laughed at him.
"If you had an idea how like your father you are at
bottom!"
Then she took the pencil from his hand, drew a thick
line through all his fantastic calculations and made her
own estimate, based on experience and hard facts. The
mathematician replied by purchasing and studying a hand-
book on poultry-keeping entitled Our Fowls and Their Out-
put a small volume with numerous illustrations in which
he found powerful and much-needed support for his op
254 LACE MAKER LEKHOLM
timism. But his wife remained immovable. To all his argu-
ments she offered the same objection:
"There's nothing so tough as an old dead hen and noth-
ing so delicate as a live chicken."
Against this dialectical fortress the mathematician was
obliged to bring up his heaviest artilleryj he dragged the
stove up to the attack.
"You seem to forget," he said, "that there's a proper
stove in the hen-house."
Early in May the mathematician's wife went to " Mariero"
to get the garden into order and furnish the rooms pro-
visionally. It would still be many years before the house
was properly occupied and inhabited in both summer and
winter. That would not happen till the mathematician re-
tired from the finance committee at the age of sixty-five.
Till then they would only spend the summer there. And as
time passed they would complete its furnishing step by
step, room after room, as their means allowed, until, on
the mathematician's sixty-fifth birthday, it would be com-
plete from cellar to tower dining-room, drawing-room,
study, the master's room, the mistress's room, rooms for
each of the sons, and spare room, with gates open wide to
welcome relations, friends, and possible daughters-in-law
and grandchildren. And at "Mariero," every year after
that, the same possible daughters-in-law and grandchildren
would spend the summer and Christmas, gentle, affec-
tionate daughters-in-law and robust, rampageous children,
admired and spoilt by their soft-hearted grandfather.
The mathematician had worked it all out in advance,
even his own transformation into a soft-hearted grand-
father.
The reports his wife sent home after the first few days
had temporarily, and in some degree, a cooling effect on
his enthusiasm. It appeared that the rain came inj probably
HAS AN IDEA 255
the whole roof would have to be covered with fresh felt.
In the vicar's opinion, too, a new well would have to be
sunk sooner or later $ the water in the present one had never
been good. And what was worse, it seemed that they would
have to sink the shaft very deep, perhaps even blast away
the rock, which here was covered only by a fairly shallow
layer of soil. As for the garden, considerable quantities of
manure were required; and even then, also according to
the vicar, no output of any magnitude could be expected.
On account of the slope and the thin kyer of earth, with
the rock just underneath, the soil could not benefit from
the rain to the degree which was necessary if the garden was
to be a success.
The mathematician himself went over for a Sunday and
convinced himself of the truth of this information, and the
probable correctness of these suppositions. The result of his
personal inspection would probably have convinced any-
one who knew more about such matters that he had made a
bad bargain. But in the first place he consoled himself with
the thought that neither he nor his family, in all human
probability, would be compelled to live on the produce of
the garden 5 in the second, the mere sight of the handsome,
imposing building and the sextuple view in the direction of
the Smaland border, combined with the feeling of owner-
ship, filled him with a primitive joy so powerful that all
disagreeable facts and depressing prophecies were put to
flight
In the evening he took the train back to the town, full
of the old Lekholm enthusiasm. At the station he chucked
his wife under the chin, spoke words of consolation to her,
and promised to come next Sunday accompanied by the
builder to attend to the roof and an expert in wells.
But the trip never came off.
At half-past ten the next Thursday morning he was sit-
256 LACEMAKER LEKHOLM
ting in his office when a telephone message came from the
vicar.
Fru Maria Lekholm had been found that morning lying
dead at her bedside by the woman who came to help her
in the house. A doctor had been sent for and declared that
the cause of death was heart disease.
During the first twenty-four hours his sons thought he
would go out of his mini They had hardly time to think
about their dead mother or pay any attention to her. They
lived in continual terror lest something might happen to
him they dared not speak of, but only as a vague and fleet-
ing association of ideas Uncle Anders's suicide, Aunt
Charlotte's terrible fate . . . which of the two would it be?
The mathematician's sons, in their childhood, had al-
ready seen grief at close quarters more than once; but never
before a grief like this, one moment terrifying, silent and
brooding, the next as vehement and furious as if he wanted
to crush the universe, shake the very pillars of life, like
Samson, till they shook and fell, and he himself, and every-
one and everything, were buried under the ruins.
He would have nothing to do with any of the practical
details regarding his wife's burial. He would not even go
over and fetch her dead body. He would not eat any-
thing, would not go to bed, would not even take off his
clothes and try to get a little rest.
Before the body was brought home to be placed in the
coffin he barricaded himself into his room. Sometimes there
were long periods of silence. And then suddenly there
was a noise as of furniture being flung here and there, and
he uttered a scream a long hoarse scream like a furious
wild beast's. They could hear him walking up and down
with heavy steps, at times unsteady, as though he was stag-
gering like a drunken man. Then there was quiet again for
a time, and nothing was heard but his heavy breathing
HAS AN IDEA 257
every breath a moan, as if he were being tortured with the
most unbearable pain till the moaning became less and died
away. . . . Ajid then, a quarter of an hour or half an hour
later, there was a fresh outbreak, . . .
Karl Lekholm, now Dr. Holmes, who was the eldest son
at home, had had to make preparations for the funeral
as best he could. He telegraphed to Lars, who was now at
Karlberg, Uncle Per, his clergymen uncles on his mother's
side, his grandmother at Lund. They all came, one after
the other.
Uncle Per came first. He had put aside all his work at
once, managed to catch the day express, and was at the house
of mourning the same evening. After a long delay he was
admitted to his brother's room. But instead of having a calm-
ing effect, his presence seemed to make the mathematician's
condition even worse than before. The sons, outside, could
hear what took place in their father's room. Uncle Per was
speaking to him in his low, earnest voice. Then came their
father's cry, the cry of a man strained to breaking-point:
"God! you talk to me about God! It's a devil who's
taken her from me! Only a devil could have done it Don't
speak of your God! Not a word about your Saviour! I can't
hear their names! Be quiet! Have pity on me! I don't know
what I'm doing! Leave me! I beg you! I want to be alone!
Surely I can be master in my own house. Go away, I tell
you!"
Uncle Per came out into the parlour again and paced
up and down the floor with his hands behind his back.
Half an hour afterwards he knocked again at the door
of the mathematician's room. But he was not admitted* The
three boys and their uncle spent the whole night in the par-
lour, listening in terror to what was passing in their father's
room.
The eldest of the three boys suggested that they should
send for a doctor* But Uncle Per only shook his head-
258 PAGEMAKER LEKHOLM
"No doctor can help. Nothing can help but faith in God
the Father in heaven and His only begotten Son, who gave
His life for mankind."
.*. v
When the coffin arrived next morning and was pkced in the
bedroom, the mathematician came out of his room, went
into the room where his dead wife was and asked to be left
alone again. He seemed quieter now. He shook hands
with each of them Uncle Per, Lars (who had arrived
shortly before by the morning train), and the three other
sons a polite, absent, hurried, cool greeting, as if he were
meeting them for the first time in his life.
"Now I want to be alone with mother for a bit," he said,
and locked the bedroom door.
They heard him moving about in the room. It sounded
as if he were carrying heavy things, hunting in drawers,
moving the furniture. ... In three hours he came back
again. He had prepared the coffin for his dead wife, combed
her hair and put the grave-clothes on her, and adorned her
with the few and simple trinkets he had given her during
their long married Hfe the gold watch with the long
gold chain, the two gold bracelets, the blood-red garnet
brooch. . . .
He himself said nothing of all this. He only said:
"It is my wish that no one shall on any account touch
her or change anything in her coffin."
From that moment till the day after the funeral, when
he resumed his work as treasurer, he did not utter a word
but "yes," "no," and "do as you like."
^ To all appearance he had become colder, harder, more
silent and reserved than ever before.
Only his sons, during the years that followed, could note
the profound change that had taken pkce in him. He seemed
to have become utterly indifferent to them their conduct,
HAS AN IDEA 259
their reports, their success, their future. He could not, in-
deed, free himself from his old habit of asking them at
dinner every day, before they sat down to table, if they had
known their lessons. But they knew that the answer no
longer interested him.
What filled his mind, what was the mainspring of his
silent, hermit's life, he never told them j they had to guess.
For that matter, they saw very little of him. He went to
his office at a quarter to nine. At four o'clock he came home
to dinner by way of the churchyard, where he spent a quar-
ter of an hour daily at his wife's grave on his way to and
from his work, standing by the grave hat in hand. At a
quarter to six he returned to the town hall and often stayed
there till ten o'clock.
It was as though he hated his home, feared the empti-
ness of it, and felt that nothing but work could give him the
oblivion he longed for.
As for "Mariero," the proud, pinnacled villa in the com-
manding position, where his wife and he were to have grown
old among gentle daughters-in-law and noisy rampageous
grandchildren, he never saw it again. A few weeks after his
wife's funeral he put it up for sale and sold it for what it
would fetch.
BOOK THREE
He himself, Dr. Holmes, alias Karl Lekholm, had been the
instrument of the next blow life had dealt his father.
How had it affected him? how had he sought to defend
himself? or had it, perhaps, been the coufe de grace?
He did not know.
We know roughly how large a quantity of poison the
human organism can endure. We know with how small a
fraction of a lung it can live. We know how much of its
skin and flesh it can lose through an accident and still be
kept alive. And we know a great many other things about
the limits within which it can support fife.
But we do not know at all, we have not the faintest idea,
how a man can endure blows directed against his life's be-
lief and his life's work. No idea! not the faintest idea!
Dr. Holmes walked up and down in his hotel room, up
and down. . . .
Now he was at the goal. Within twenty-four hours he
would stand before his father and say Here I am!" How
should he explain himself, his crime, his silence? No eva-
sion, no postponement was any longer possible. The cow-
ardice which had once made Uncle Anders prefer death to
meeting his two brothers, that same cowardice had driven
him, for all these years, to seek protection behind the im-
penetrable armour of silence. But now he must put it off,
stand naked before his father and say: "I have not been a
good son to you. I have hurt you as badly as a son can
hurt a father. I may have killed all the faith and hope in
life you had left, since your wife's death swept like an
avalanche through the house you had built up with so
much toil and care. When I forged your name I struck a
263
264 LACEMAKER LEKHOLM
blow in the face of all you held most sacred in life^-your
lifelong labour for your children's success and prosperity,
your impeccable sense of justice, your upright manliness.
The sacrifice of all your manhood, the sun of your days and
the star of your nights, I snuffed out as carelessly as one
blows out a match. And here I am! "
And what answer would he receive?
He saw his father before him 5 the hard, cold gaze, the
thin, disdainful lips, that face in which every muscle could
quiver with wrath, bitterness and contempt. He heard his
dry, curt voice: You've lied!" He saw his hands gripping
the riding-whip with the convulsive fanaticism with which
the Puritans drove devils out of the possessed.
Dr. Holmes walked up and down except for his dress,
a faithful copy of his father at forty 5 tall, slender, sinewy,
with his father's long, thin, rather curved nose, his cold,
steel-grey eyes, his high, narrow forehead, strongly pointed
chin and thin lips. And he was afraid mortally afraid. It
was as though twenty-five years had been wiped like chalk
scrawls from the blackboard of his life. He had shrunk
once more into the frightened boy of old days, when the
voice of doom rang out from his father's study: "Come
here, I want to speak to you! "
"Yes, father . . . here I am ... after twenty years."
It would not be the riding-whip this time, as so often
before. He would not have to stand still under a hail of
blows, as in his boyhood. He would be met by something
else, something even worse: contempt, anger, sorrow. . . .
The curt voice would say: "I despise you, I don't know
you"; the cold look would indicate the doorj and a voice
would whisper to him, "See what you have done with your
father, see how you have bent him, how deeply you have
furrowed his face. Don't you see that what you have done
has hit him ten times as hard as your mother's death? Then
it was fate dealt the blow fate, which no man can master.
HAS AN IDEA 25
But next time it was you! The second and hardest blow was
delivered by you! Can you meet the man whose old age
you have emptied and desolated as death itself could not
have done?"
No, he could not not yet. He was not ready yet, he had
not the courage. Not yet.
He crept back into his armour of cowardice. Even now,
to the very last moment, he tried to gain time. He wanted
to go the longest way round, like a dog which has hunted
forbidden game and been called back to its master. He must
make inquiries first, as he had done times without number
in his childhood when inevitable punishment had awaited
him. He well remembered the swift, frightened question
addressed to one of his brothers: a ls he very angry r"
He even called his medical knowledge to his aid. It was
not only he himself who was concerned, not merely the
appalling mental strain he himself had to undergo at this
meeting, in the first few moments in which they two would
stand face to face the bowed, shattered father and the son
who had bowed and shattered him. He must think of the
old man too. He had already reached the age when violent
emotion might have the most serious consequences. He
must arrange somehow that the old man was warned in
advance. He must get into touch with one of his brothers,
and take counsel as to the best course of action in order to
spare the old man the first and most severe trial. . . .
His brothers how should he get hold of them? What
had become of them? He had no idea!
Lars! He was probably the easiest to get into touch with.
He ought to be able to find him in the Army List or the
State Almanack. Presumably they had the State Almanack
at the hotel He telephoned to the porter at once and asked
him to send it up at once. He opened the book with nerv-
ous fingers. . . . G . . .1 . . . M...L...La...
Le . . . Lekholm, P. P., lieutenant, page He stared in
266 LACEMAKER LEKHOLM
front of him . . . Lekholm, P. P. that was not Lars.
Was it was it his cousin Paul? He turned up the page in-
dicated. Smaland Artillery Regiment . . . lieutenants
. . . Lekholm, Peter Paul, born 1898. Uncle Per's son
a lieutenant an officer! Punch, cards, women, money
troubles! The son of WaldenstrSm's disciple! He remem-
bered him as a pale, pampered little boy of eight or nine;
and now, twenty years later, he was a lieutenant. The man
of God's only son! How had that happened? What was the
explanation? The hunger which in the father had eaten
its way inwards had it now in his son, with the savage
appetite accumulated during a generation, flung itself on
the simplest dishes life provided punch, cards and women?
What did Uncle Per think of this leap into folly? No
idea!
And Lars where was he? What had become of him?
Lars had always been a good son, who, as far as Dr. Holmes
could remember, had not told a lie more than once in his
life, and had suffered such torments of conscience after-
wards that he had been sick. That was the time when he had
been sent out on an errand and had bought a clay pipe and
a twist of tobacco with the krona entrusted to him instead
of using it as he had been told to do. Immediately after the
crime he had been seized with panic, had gone out of the
town and buried the twist of tobacco and the pipe, and
then come home and said that he had "lost" the money.
He had confessed his crime to Dr. Holmes in the evening,
after they had gone to bed, and said that he must tell his
father. Dr. Holmes had had the greatest difficulty in con-
vincing him that this was an unnecessary and painful pro-
cedure, and Lars had refrained from confessing. But he
had been sick instead.
Where had he gone? How had life treated him, and
he life? Safe, sure, quiet Lars, who throughout his child-
HAS AN IDEA 267
hood and school-days had seemed to be the product of a
union between diligence and sense of duty, who when still
in the upper sixth had sworn eternal loyalty to Gurli Svens-
son he had formerly confided the secret to Dr. Holmes
one evening, emphasizing the immense importance of the
step he had taken and married her two years after he had
left Karlberg on a sub-lieutenanfs scanty pay and the thou-
sand kronor a year his father had promised to allow them.
Lars, who right down in the lower sixth had sworn a, solemn
oath some cky to avenge the wrong life had done their fa-
ther by one day commanding the regiment himself! Why
had he left the Army? Had the trials of his milieu been
too strong for him? Had he been swallowed up in the jungle
of pleasure and disappeared?
No idea!
And the two others Sven and Tager He knew still less
of them and their chances in life. They were younger than
himself, Sven three years, Tage five years. And as younger
brothers they had been treated as quantizes negligeables,
except when they had called attention to their existence in
an irritating manner and been duly castigated.
What had become of them? Where should he look for
them? At any rate they were not officials, as their father
had dreamed and hoped. He had always pointed out how
secure State employment was in compensation for the low
pay. And now not one of his sons was in the stout register
of Government officials.
When Dr. Holmes left the country Sven had already
been for two years at the Technical High School. He was
to become an engineer.
Sven had come into painful contact with the riding-whip
more often than his brothers. As a boy he seemed to lad:
all capacity or wish to concentrate his mind on his work. And
as the mathematician was firmly convinced that this in-
268 PACEMAKER LEKHOLM
capacity was not due to any kck of theoretical ability, he did
all that was in his power to overcome Sven's dislike o his
studies by means of the riding-whip.
It gradually became clear that his idleness at his lessons
was due to his unusual gift for mechanics. When only ten
or twelve years old he was an expert watch-repairer. Un-
like most other boys, he could not only take a watch to
pieces, but also put it together again 5 he could even make
it go. When still in the second class, his reputation as a
watch-maker was so firmly established in the school, where
there were plenty of rotten old silver and brass 'timepieces,
that he came home nearly every afternoon with a shabby
watch in his trousers pocket. And his interest in the watch
made him neglect his lessons. Directly after dinner he sat
down at a writing-table, placed an open school-book ostenta-
tiously in front of him, pulled out the drawer in which the
watch and a few tools were kept, and began his work. He
must, when so engaged, have suffered from considerable
nervous strain. He had at the same time to keep his eyes
on the task in hand and his ears on the alert for the very
least suspicious sound from the next room 5 for at any mo-
ment the mathematician might appear in the doorway, and
then the drawer containing the watch and tools had to be
thrust in again without fail.
For his elder brothers he was a generous source of an-
noyance and torment. The duty of keeping him on the nar-
row, stony path of virtue and diligence rested, according to
a general order issued by their father, on their shoulders.
This responsible task was the cause of continual friction,
not only between them and the young mechanician, but be-
tween duty and curiosity in their own breasts. For it was
undeniably interesting to see him take a watch to pieces and
repair it. The result was usually a compromise; they let
him alone, and then, at the last moment, helped him with
his translations and did his sums for him. Nevertheless, at
HAS AN IDEA 269
the end of the spring term they, as well as he, were blamed
for his bad reports and his failure to secure removes.
At last the mathematician put his threat into execution.
When Sven, despite his promise to do better, failed to get
his remove from the fifth class, he was taken away from
school and apprenticed to a watchmaker. It soon appeared,
however, that his craft did not satisfy the demands of his
intellect. In a year's time he begged to be allowed to go
back to school. His prayer was granted, though on very hard
terms. And now his laziness had disappeared 5 he rose from
class to class and obtained better and better reports in mathe-
matics.
What had become of him? . . . Every time in recent
years that Dr. Holmes had read of an epoch-making inven-
tion, he had wondered what had become of Sven, and if
he too would astonish the world some day. He deserved to,
if only for all the thrashings he had received in his boy-
hood. But Dr. Holmes had never seen his name in the pa-
pers, although in the past few years not a few Swedes had
obtained worlds-wide publicity for achievements in Sven's
line. But not he. What had become of him? Where was
he now?
And Tage?
He had just got his remove into the fifth class when Dr.
Holmes left the country. A little chap with extraordinarily
fair hair and even more extraordinarily thin legs in his
wide winter boots. . . .
As a little boy he had always said that he would be a
bishop. His greatest pleasure had been to put on one of his
mother's black silk aprons like a gown, climb up on a chair
and repeat "Our Father" again and again.
One afternoon his passion for expounding Holy Writ
had all but cost him his life. He had got up on the window-
sill wearing the silk apron and opened the window to preach
to the public in the street below. He had suddenly over-
27O LACE MAKER LEKHOLM
balanced and fallen to the pavement from the second floor.
Luckily the apron had caught in master-painter Blomberg's
"gossip mirror" a floor below, which broke the violence of
the fall. He had been carried up in a fainting condition to
his mother, who was busy in the kitchen and had no idea
that anything was wrong. He had a big bruise on his fore-
head, just over his right eye; that was all. And three days
kter he was standing on a chair again, preaching.
But what Dr. Holmes best remembered in him was his
monstrous vanity, which often brought him into conflict
with justice. His love of smart clothes had impelled him to
the device of tearing buttons off his everyday suit on Mon-
day mornings or making holes in it, so that he might be
allowed to wear his Sunday finery one day longer. During
his first year in the dancing class he had fastened cotton-
wool round his calves in order to make his skinny legs look
more handsome, manly and muscular. But he had been
found out one day, when during a shottische the cotton-
wool had slipped down to his ankles, and it had taken him
years to live it down.
He was, too, the only one of the four brothers who had
shown any feeling for or interest in music. But then he
had escaped Aunt Charlotte's instruction and the sharp-
edged ruler with which she beat time on her pupils 5 knuckles.
What had become of him? As a child he had had just
those qualities which the study of his admired Galton made
his father fear most the combination of the Lekholms'
vanity and the Topfers' musical gift. But no doubt the
mathematician in the course of years had come to see that
the genius Galton had not discovered the convenient and
infallible solution to life's great collection of sums that he
fancied he had found. Another man, whose name was Men-
del, had taken his place.
Had he abandoned Galton for Mendel? And had Men-
HAS AN IDEA
del been able to afford him any consolation in his misfor-
tunes?
In a few hours he would find this out, this and a great
deal else. And he was afraid mortally afraid.
II
At one o'clock the telephone bell rang. It was a travelling
companion he had agreed to lunch with, a silver-haired,
rosy-cheeked old judge of the Supreme Court of the State
of Oregon. His father had been Swedish, and now, in the
evening of his life, he wanted to come home to the land of
his forefathers to see how they had lived and find out
something about his pedigree. He had not been able to
make the journey before. It was not that he had lacked
time or opportunity. He had been in Europe three times
before. But he had never been able to get his wife to travel
up to Sweden with him. Not for one single holiday during
their thirty-eight years of married life had he left her side,
the dear old soul. And she had not wanted to come to
Sweden. That had, indeed, been the only subject on which
they had ever differed in their long life together- She had
argued thus: one utilizes a trip to Europe in looking at
museums and art treasures in Paris, Italy and Athens, and
possibly in visiting Jesus' tomb, but not in travelling to
the North Pole.
But now she was dead, dear old soul. And now he had
come. His pedigree was to be found in the books in a church
in the HarjedaL "Beautiful country, I'm told." He had
heard his father say, and was himself convinced, that his
ancestors had occupied a very prominent position in that
part of Sweden. C Very prominent and most remarkable
people, I'm told." He would celebrate Christmas in the
LACE MAKER LEKHOLM
church his forefathers had attended. He had always heard
his father speak of the Christmas festival as the most won-
derful memory of his childhood: snow, torches, sledges.
And now he himself was on his way to see it.
He had repeatedly confided to Dr. Holmes and, for that
matter, all the firstilass passengers the object of his jour-
ney at this season. He had, indeed, talked so much about
<c the Swedish Christmas" in the saloon, library, bar and
drawing-room that on the third or fourth day out he had
been nicknamed "Father Christmas,"
The old judge was waiting for him at a big round table
in the middle of the dining-room. It was full of people
late travelling companions of his and other visitors in the
hotel. The judge greeted him with a slice of cold veal on
his fork and a smile which spread like a rosy shimmer from
his snow-white teeth over his round baby cheeks,
He had been on his legs the whole morning 5 he had paid
a visit to the American consul and through him got hold
of a map of Gothenburg as it had been in the days when
his father had emigrated thence to America. With the help
of this map he had spent a few hours walking along roads
his dear old father had once trodden on his journey into
the unknown. "Most remarkable feeling, I tell you, doo-
tor!" He was not ashamed to say that he had had to take
out his handkerchief several times. His father had little
dreamed then that one of his sons
No, he would not boast about himself and his success,
For if his father had not been the wonderful man he had
been, he himself would not have reached the position he
held in the State of Oregon. And it was a most strange feel-
ing to be treading the soil of the land of his fathers. And
just as strange was the thought that one must of necessity
seek one's way back to one's place of origin, to one's roots
in the earth. His children and his old friends had declared
that it was madness for a man of his age to travel to Sweden
HAS AN IDEA 273
in midwinter. But his mind would never have been at peace
if he had not seen a Swedish Christmas before he closed his
eyes for ever. Two journeys were the outstanding features
of his life his wedding journey from Portland, Oregon,
to New York, and now this. "A most remarkable, wonder-
ful feeling!"
The old man chattered ceaselessly throughout lunch.
The warmth of the room had heated his cheeks, as round
and pink as a child's, till they looked as if they had been
smeared with strawberry juice, and the keen, shrewd grey
eyes glistened in anticipation of the marvels of a Swedish
Christmas in the little church where his forefathers had
worshipped.
Dr. Holmes suddenly felt physically unwell. He had not
eaten a scrap the whole morning, and yet he could not
swallow any food.
Perhaps it was that the talkative old man opposite him
was a judge. He did not know. But suddenly the thought
occurred to him: Was forgery one of the crimes in respect
of which a charge kpsed after a certain number of years,
or was it not? Was he still in danger of being stopped, ar-
rested and sentenced to penal servitude? Suppose someone
here in the restaurant recognized him? He had not thought
of that before.
His fear became panic. He pushed his plate away and
looked swiftly round. Suppose someone who knew him was
sitting at a table close by some fellow-student from his
Lund days. . . . He did not know himself how much his
appearance had changed since those days 5 one always thinks
that an inward change must be reflected in one's outward
appearance. Perhaps it was not so. ...
The judge had got a large, thick, black cigar, a Corona
Corona, and was sucking at it as if it was a stick of carameL
fr What's wrong with you, doctor? You look so pale. Do
you feel the motion of the ship now that you're ashore? I
274- LACEMAKER LEKHOLM
know that feeling most remarkable feeling. Take a brandy
with your coffee. I mean to myself."
Dr. Holmes made an excuse, rose and rushed up to his
room. A perspiration broke out on his forehead. He flung
himself on his bed in the alcove, thrust the pillows out of
the way and stretched himself at full length, with his eyes
shut and his hands folded over his breast. His brain was
in a fever. The pain that tormented him seemed to him
unbearable, even for a few short minutes. He sprang up
again and staggered about the room, not knowing where
he was going. . . .
He thought of Uncle Anders. He understood him now,
understood him with every nerve in his body his anguish,
his fear, his cowardice at the moment when he seized the
razor. It was, perhaps, in such a state of panic that most
people took their lives. Their desperate acts had, perhaps,
in most cases no connection with any feeling that their lives
were ruined or misspent. It was the next minutes, hours
or days that they could not endure the anguish, the hell
fire which they must go through before they came out on
the other side where forgiveness and reconciliation awaited
them. He understood Uncle Anders 5 he understood all
these people now.
He had had to deal with several would-be suicides $ sev-
eral times he had saved their lives. And each time he had
thought: Why am I mending this wreck of humanity to
lead a long life of misery? But he saw the problem in a
different light now. The mental agony, the hellish torture
which he himself went through, as he tottered up and down
the little hotel room among unopened trunks and suit-
cases, had thrown a sudden, blinding light over the whole
mental state in which a man commits suicide. It was the
coining minutes or hours from which suicides wanted to
save themselves, not life. It was those hours in which the
pressure from within is so appalling that it shatters the in-
HAS A $T IDEA 275
telligence, when the thoughts swarm one upon another
like ants in a demolished ant-heap 5 it was those hours that
could make a man commit suicide, and not the long dark-
ness which awaited him when he had got through those
hours. A man could grow accustomed to long years of
darkness. There was a saying, "Life is a matter of habit" $
and this applied even to a gloomy, unhappy life.
If it were otherwise, why did not all these would-be
suicides more often repeat their attempts? It was not their
lives they wanted to destroy. They only wanted to take a
leap forward in time, to jump over the abyss and find rest
and balm for their tortured souls on the other side. And
this leap, this flight from a few anguished moments, be-
came what it really was never intended to be a leap into
eternity. . . . That was time's own revenge for its misuse
by men 5 it allowed no such leaps. . . .
He opened one of his suitcases and hunted for some
veronal tablets. He knew they were finished already. He
had slept badly on board. And when he had taken the last
powder he had said to himself: "Now I must go through
with it!" He had not even that way out any longer a few
hours' artificial oblivion. He must act. . , .
In a little while he went down to the porter to try and get
hold of his cousin. His cousin ought to find it easier than
Uncle Per to understand and excuse an absconding forger.
. . . Paul was probably on the telephone. In any case there
was no doubt a regimental officers' mess where they could
give information about him.
He told the porter what he wanted to get into touch
as quickly as possible with a Lieutenant Lekholm in the
Smaland Artillery.
The porter stood turning over the leaves of the telephone
book, giving Dr. Holmes a swift glance from time to time
as he did so. Then he said:
276 LACEMAKER LEKHOLM
"Excuse me, sir, do you speak Swedish?"
Dr. Holmes went scarlet. Was he discovered already?
"Yes," he said in a low voice, and looked at his hands.
The porter smiled.
"I beg your pardon," he said, "but I ask you because
Engineer Lekholm came out a little while ago and asked if
a Herr Lekholm had come by the boat from America $ and
from the description he gave, I understand that it must
have been you he meant."
Dr. Holmes stared at him.
"Engineer Lekholm?"
"Yes, Engineer Sven Lekholm."
"Does he live here?"
"No, he lives at Falkenberg. But he's often in town on
business, and he stays here. He's sure to be up in his room
now 5 the key isn't here. I'll ask."
"No, no, I'll go up myself. What number is it?"
"211."
"Thanks."
Ill
Dr. Holmes went slowly upstairs. His heart thumped 5 his
legs could hardly support him. He had to take a tight grip
of the banisters and drag hims ( elf up step by step. He stood
for a long time outside 211 before he knocked. But he no
longer felt any fear. He was only tired, pumped out as
after a long and perilous march. And he felt something of
the same relief and indifference which a criminal is said
to feel when at last he surrenders to the authorities: Here
I am! Here you have me!
He knocked and knocked again, the second time harder.
And as he received no answer, he turned the handle, opened
the door and entered a small lobby. He stood for a mo-
ment or two in the darkness and knocked for a third time,
HAS AN IDEA 277
on the inner door. He heard a voice within answer, but his
heart was beating so hard that he could not understand the
words. And then he opened.
With his back to him at the washing-basin in the dark
alcove stood a man in his shirt and drawers, occupied with
his toilet. He caught up his trousers and disappeared behind
the curtain which separated the alcove from the rest of the
room.
"The devil!" he cried, "why can't one be left in peace? I
told you to wait! Is it the porter? What do you want?"
Dr. Holmes had shut the door behind him and remained
standing with his back to the wall. Suddenly a smile flashed
over his face: in that fraction of a minute in which he had
caught a glimpse of his brother he had been carried back
thirty years to their boyhood.
cr Who is it?" the curt voice asked again. "What do you
want?"
"It's I," Dr. Holmes answered quietly in an almost chok-
ing voice, "your brother Karl."
He was answered by a low, satisfied, neighing laugh, a
laugh like an audible smile.
"I said so! So I was right when I said it was you I saw
going out of the restaurant! Who was that fellow you were
sitting with?"
"An American lawyer. A judge."
"You'd better take care of yourself. I shouldn't like to do
business with him."
Dr. Holmes sat down on the sofa, with his elbows on his
knees and his head in his hands. This meeting was so un-
like everything he had imagined all these years, so absurdly
commonplace.
"Why wouldn't you like to do business with him?" he
asked, just for the sake of saying something.
"Him? He's as hard as stone under his pink tooth-paste
smile. I'm a bit of a student of faces, a Sherlock Holmes.
278 LACEMAKER LEKHOLM
That fellow's cordiality itself when it doesn't cost him any-
thing. But if there was anything at stake, he could not only
murder a man, but kick away the corpse."
Dr. Holmes shrugged his shoulders impatiently. This
was the same Sven he had parted from twenty years ago
just as cocksure, sententious, positive.
"You're mistaken," he said.
Sven poured water into the basin.
"I mistaken! Seldom, old chap! Seldom! Perhaps I was
mistaken, too, when I went out to the porter a little while
ago and asked if there was another Lekholm in the hotel,
a Lekholm who had arrived by the boat from America this
morning?"
"How could you be so sure of that?"
"I'll tell you, old chap! The whole secret is this, that
there are so few possibilities in this life. It doesn't need
any sixth sense to see into the future a bit. I knew you were
still alive."
"How could you know that?"
"Because if you weren't, we should have found out that
you were dead."
"I might have lived under another name out there as a
matter of fact I did."
Sven laughed.
"Ha, ha! Even if you lived under an assumed name, you
must have had a document giving your real name some-
where among your things."
"Yes, I had."
"There, you see. In the second place, I knew you were
getting on well."
"How could you know that?"
<f Well, for one thing, the old dad said a few years ago
that you had sent him a lot of money, University debts.
For another, it's nine chances out of ten that before any-
one drowns he cries for help. And you hadn't done that.
HAS AN IDEA 279
You hadn't written home and asked for money once."
"I might have gone under in silence."
"Very few people indeed do that. Anyhow, I was sure
you would come home just now, for the old dad's seventieth
birthday. Nine people out of ten want to see their old fa-
ther, or mother, before they die. And when I was sitting
at lunch in the restaurant and saw all the Swedish Ameri-
cans who had come home by the boat for Christmas I
thought at once: C I wouldn't be surprised if Karl was sit-
ting in this room.' And I looked round to try and find you.
But you were sitting with your back to me. It wasn't till
you got up and went out that I was prepared to swear it
was you. I was on the verge of calling after you. But in-
stead I went out to the porter and said, 'Look here, porter,
that gentleman who went out of the dining-room just now
is called Lekholm. Where did he go?' But of course that
damned idiot of a porter said, *No, there's no other Lek-
holm in the hotel but you.' So I thought, all right, I may
have been mistaken. And so I went up to my room. I'll
be ready in a minute. There's no particular difficulty about
lifting the veil of the future a little, as the novelists say.
It's only a question of using one's intelligence. There aren't
such a damned lot of possibilities in life as people imagine."
Dr. Holmes looked at his hands.
"Does father expect me too?"
"Of course he does. Anyhow he's been sure you'd come
home before he died. You're a Lekholm. Uncle Fredrik
came home."
Dr. Holmes interrupted him. "Tell me, Sven, before we
talk about the others what do you think father will say to
me?"
"What should he say? He'll be glad, of course. Why
shouldn't he be?"
"How is he?"
"How is he? First-rate! He got a boil on his neck three
28O LACEMAKER LEKHOLM
years ago. That's the only thing he's ever had wrong with
him as long as I can remember."
"But how is he, generally speaking? How's he getting
on?"
"How's he getting on? How could he get on in more than
one way? What in Heaven's name do you mean? Are you
another of those fellows who think there are so many possi-
bilities in life? You seem to think that, because you've been
away twenty years, the whole world here at home must be
completely changed. No, old chap, life isn't as complicated
as that. It's a pretty simple affair at bottom. Believe me, I'm
right. The old dad's still treasurer, still goes to mother's
grave and takes his hat off every morning, and sets the math-
ematical matriculation papers every spring and autumn.
He's just like what he was twenty or thirty years ago. The
only difference is that his hair's got a little shorter not
thinner, but shorter. And his teeth too they're as strong
as they werej but they've got worn down."
"But isn't he broken? . . . Isn't he?"
"Broken? Who could have broken him, if I may ask?"
"I mean, when I left the country . . . When I went
off "
"Why should you have broken him? The only difference
since you went is that he's become easier to deal with. He's
quite spoilt Tage. He's been allowed to do what he likes.
But otherwise he's just the same. And so's old grandpapa."
Dr. Holmes looked up at the curtain behind which Sven
was still occupied with his toilet.
"Grandpapa? You don't mean to say he's still alive!"
Sven laughed.
"Yes, he is' It's his hundredth birthday the day after to-
morrow. Didn't you know that?"
"Yes, of course, I remember that he was born the day
after to-morrow a hundred years ago, now that you mention
it. But how could I imagine ?"
HAS AN IDEA 28l
"That he was alive? Why not? There are only two al-
ternatives. Either one's alive or one's dead. And he's alive.
He's in bed most of the time nowadays. But otherwise he's
as lively as a grig. Just as aggressive as he must have been
in old times. Ten years ago he actually put Uncle Per in the
corner. Took him by the collar and put him in the corner.
He didn't get his Sunday dinner at half-past one sharp.
Uncle Per hadn't come home in time from the mission
house. The sermon had been too long. And the old man
flew into a rage. He declared that God in His all-wisdom
had decreed that a real Christian service should end punctu-
ally at one, so that people could get home in time and eat
their dinner at half-past one. And so he put his eldest son in
the corner. Well, I'm ready now."
The curtain was pushed aside and Sven Lekholm
emerged. Dr. Holmes rose and looked at his brother. Why,
it was grandpapa grandpapa without a moustache grand-
papa as he remembered him from a faded photograph on
the table that stood by the sofa at home: the hook nose,
the incorrigible lock of hair on the forehead, the slight
nervous frame. Sven gave his brother a curt nod by way
of greeting and said: "Wait a minute, I just want to speak
to the porter!"
He went to the telephone.
"Can I speak to the porter? Thank you. Yes, it's Engineer
Lekholm. Well, wasn't there any other Lekholm in the
restaurant but me? . . . What do you say? . . . You
didn't know? . . . What do you say? . . . You couldn't
know. . . . But I told you he was there. What do you
say? ... Of course not! All I wanted to say was that one
oughtn't to be too cocksure. What do you say? . . . No,
that was all I wanted to say. Thank you!"
He put the telephone receiver down with a thump and
went up to his brother.
'^Welcome, old chap! We won't be sentimental and
282 LACEMAKER LEKHOLM
ceremonial. We'll just give each other three thumps on the
back. Wei-come home! The devil, how like father you
are!"
"And you're like grandpapa !"
Sven (drew himself up:
"I like grandpapa? What do you mean? I'm not like any
of the family. I'm like myself and no one else. What do you
do out there?"
"I'm a naval doctor."
"Excellent, you can give me something for my little
troubles. Who's got time to go to a doctor? Something
with real American push in it. Were you in the war too?"
"Yes, a bit."
Sven began to pace nervously up and down the room.
"Yes, that war it was the devil of a business. Uncle
Per became a millionaire over it."
"A millionaire?"
"Yes, indeed! He's a regular Midas. He can't touch
anything without its turning into money. That's Ms curse.
You can understand how unhappy he must bej fancy want-
ing all the time to follow one's Saviour and finding gold
sticking to one's fingers every time one folds them in prayer.
Tragic!"
He smiled to himself the bitter, superior smile of the far-
sighted man with no illusions, the lifelong solitary, the
self-centred theorist. His light blue, colourless eyes had the
same absent, fanatical stare. Dr. Holmes contemplated him
as he walked up and down with short steps, nervously
fingering the small change and keys in his trousers pockets.
He seemed suddenly to see Sven's destiny before him
the unsuccessful inventor's. He was filled with compassion.
But at the same time the feeling he had had towards Sven
in his childhood and youth rose again in him impatience
with a man who had only himself, his imaginary superiority,
his obstinacy, to blame for his failure.
HAS AN IDEA 283
Sven Lekholm stopped short in his promenade up and
down the room.
"By the way, Pve just thought of something. Can you
tell me who wrote the words, 'The book of history is the
bible of irony'?"
Dr. Holmes shook his head. Sven began to pace up and
down again.
"Pve seen that somewhere in an English book. It's the
best general summing-up of life Pve ever heard or read:
c The book of history is the bible of irony!' What do you
say, old chap?"
Dr. Holmes shrugged his shoulders impatiently.
"You were talking about Uncle Per just now. You were
going to tell me about him."
Sven Lekholm rattled the keys and money in his pocket
louder and more nervously than before.
"That's just what I am doing. It's Uncle Per I'm talking
about. But you seem to have forgotten in these twenty years
that I'm not a schoolboy, but nearly forty. If I talk about a
thing I'll talk about it in the only way I can talk about it.
I'm not at school any longer, and obliged to answer ques-
tions. I'm a grown-up man, damn it! But you seem to be
just like Lars 5 you can't ever realize that I'm anything
but a silly, troublesome little boy. Lars is always like that
as if he was hearing my lessons. I've my way; you've
yours."
Dr. Holmes shrugged his shoulders.
"My dear Sven, we haven't met after twenty years only
to come to loggerheads as we did when we were boys."
"Good, I'm glad you said that! Now, we can talk. But
don't interrupt me. I've my own way, and it suits me! Well,
then, I was going to tell you about Uncle Per. But first I
must offer you a drink."
He went to the alcove in which the bed stood, began to
rout in a suitcase, and came back with an unopened whisky
284 LACEMAKER LEKHOLM
bottle, a little round box and a corkscrew. He put the bottle
and corkscrew on the table. He opened the little round box,
stepping forward to Dr. Holmes as he did so.
"Look at that!" he said, showing him a little collar stud.
"What do you see that's curious about that?"
Dr. Holmes looked at the stud. It seemed to be a quite
ordinary collar stud, such as one wears in the front of one's
shirt, with an ivory foot and neck and a head of some yellow
metal.
"Well, can you see anything curious about it?"
Dr. Holmes weighed it in his hand, tried to screw it, and
attempted to open it, supposing that the little object con-
cealed some mysterious, ingenious mechanism. But he could
not discover anything curious about it. The stud was, and
remained, in his eyes a quite ordinary collar stud.
Sven threw it up and caught it several times in his open
hand, and smiled his superior, disillusioned smile, while his
unseeing, light blue eyes stared out into space.
"This collar stud," he said in a moment or two, "has a
most remarkable characteristic. It can't roll under the furni-
ture."
He went to the chest of drawers, lifted his hand to a level
with his head and dropped the stud on the floor. It stopped
almost directly it had fallen. He stooped down to pick it
up and carried out the experiment a dozen times, repeating
every time:
"You see!"
Finally he went to the window and looked out into the
rain.
"That stud's history," he said, "throws a good deal of
light upon the human mentality, upon the incredible stu-
pidity of the animal which zoologists call homo sapens.
Perhaps you know what is the most damnable thing in the
world, next to lying down on the grass on a summer day to
dream and doze, and being compelled to fight flies and gnats
HAS AN IDEA 285
instead. It's this: You're in a hurry. You've got to change
at top speed. You've got to change your shirt. And as you're
putting your collar stud into the shirt, it slips out of your
fingers and rolls under the heaviest piece of furniture in the
room, the chest of drawers or the wardrobe, right to the
back, close to the wall. You throw yourself flat on the floor
and try to reach it with your fingers. You can't reach it.
You swear. You get up again, go out into the lobby and get
a stick to push it out with. Now you can reach it, certainly.
You curse. It may happen that you get it out at last, after
great efforts and hellish cursing. But more often you can't
get it. And then you have to play the part of furniture-
remover and move the chest of drawers or wardrobe.
"And when you've got the infernal thing in your blood-
thirsty hands again at last, you swear a sacred, solemn oath
that the first thing you'll do next morning is to go into a
haberdasher's and buy a spare stud. But you don't. You
forget. The trouble's all over. It's rather embarrassing, too
in fact, it requires some courage to go into a shop and
buy only a collar stud. The charming shop assistant, or the
gentleman who looks like a Foreign Office attache, makes
you feel awkward. You get annoyed when you're asked if
you don't want something else as well silk shirts, socks,
pants, ties, collars. And so you put off buying that spare
stud.
"Well, when I'd had a misadventure of this kind twice, I
swore that I would invent a stud which could not possibly
roll more than a few inches at most from the spot where it
fell. I racked my brains over it. But one night, as I was
lying awake, thinking of quite a different problem, a voice
within me said: 'You silly fool, make the foot square, and
then it can't roll!' I patented the stud. I was sure that I
should make a fortune by it 5 and so was the dealer I got
into touch with. But what do you think happened? A fiasco,
old chap! Fiasco and loss! The dealer and I saw pretty soon
286 LACEMAKER LEKHOLM
that people don't want any kind of studs but those which
can roll under a chest of drawers. That's the only stud the
human race wants, that and no other. One would think it
would be more or less a matter of indifference to the said
human race whether it used a collar stud with a square or a
circular foot: and that, consequently, it might prefer to buy
a stud with a square foot, if it proved to possess notable ad-
vantages.
"But it isn't so. The human race isn't like that. When the
world war broke out, most people couldn't believe their ears.
They couldn't understand that there could be people so mad
as to want to murder and ruin each other. But do you know
what I did, old chap? Why, I smiled. / knew how damnably
stupid mankind is. The collar stud fiasco had taught me that.
Now I'm presenting it to friends and relations 5 but there's
not one of them uses it except the old dad. He thinks it most
practical. But the others only laugh. As if there was anything
so damned ridiculous and laughable in a person wearing a
rational collar stud! As if one "
Dr. Holmes's impatience had now reached such a pitch
that he was no longer able to control himself. He inter-
rupted Sven in the middle of a sentence.
"Look here, Sven," he said. "I've come home after being
away twenty years. I've a thousand things to talk to you
about. We can let the collar stud wait till later. It oughtn't
to be so hard for you to understand that after all these years
I'd like to hear something about my father and my brothers
and my relations in general."
Sven rattled his keys.
"All in good time, all in good time. The reason I told you
about the stud was that I meant to make you a present in
return for all the times you've swotted over English and
German with me, old chap! It won't take long to tell you
about the family. You seem to have the mistaken idea that
the possibilities of life are inexhaustible. That's only so in
HAS AN IDEA 87
novels. Not in life! Believe me, Fm right ' Life with a big
L, as male and female bluestockings call it, is a pretty-
simple business. And its motto might very well be those
words I once read, 'The book of history is the bible of
irony.' That's as true as can be. Look at Uncle Per, for ex-
ample. It was him we were talking about, by the way. You
remember what he was like. I always call him Good Friday.
You understand from Robinson Crusoe, you remember!
Friday, Robinson's black servant Good Friday, Jesus
Christ's white servant!"
Dr. Holmes could not help intervening. He had become
a schoolboy again and felt he simply must call his younger
brother to order.
"Of course it doesn't matter," he said, "but I'd just like
to point out that it wasn't you, but Lars, who once said he
always felt it was like Good Friday when Uncle Per came
to stay."
Sven stopped short as if he had been checked by a mortal
insult.
"Shut up! It was 7 who called him Good Friday and
that's that!"
Dr. Holmes shrugged his shoulders.
"Well, well, as you like. You've your way, as you said
just now. Go on."
Sven went on walking up and down like an animal in a
cage.
"Well, then, about Good Friday. You know what he was
like. He despised the world and the flesh, including his own.
But you remember, too, perhaps, that when Paul was born
he bought that house in Storgatan. And what happened
then? Why, he joined the local board of the bank 5 then he
became a member of parliament one of the Free Church
group in the Second Chamber chairman of the town coun-
cil, and at last a director of the Provincial Bank. Everything
he touched turned to money and yet more money till at
288 LACEMAKER LEKHOLM
last he became a millionaire. And it was I who helped him
to become a millionaire!
"It happened like this* It was during the war. I was mov-
ing about in Sweden a good deal, just as I am now. And I
had an idea. It wasn't a stroke of genius by any means.
Ships 1 I must try and get hold of a few old tubs ! They were
worth money at that time. It didn't matter what the ships
were like so long as they could float more or less. I had got
hold of four or, to be quite correct, I could get them cheap.
But I had no ready money. And so I thought of Good
Friday. I went to see him and expounded the text. He
loathed the war, of course, and would naturally have showed
me the door if I had dared even breathe that it was chiefly
the money I was thinking of. But, you see, for Good Friday
the war was a quite special war between the only German
Protestant God on the one side and the Franco-Catholic
rogues and Antichrists on the other. And I knew that if
one could put it to him that it was every Protestant Chris-
tian's duty to do everything possible to help the Germans
and their God, he'd join. And he did! And so I and another
chap became ship-owners on the spot. And we made money
heaps of money!
"For over a year all went well with the company unity
and concord, peace and happiness. But one fine day I got a
telegram from Good Friday. He must see me, he said. Well,
I got into the train, came, saw and heard. He didn't want to
remain in the company. His conviction of the inner mean-
ing of the butchery of the war had not been shaken in any
way, and he still considered that everything possible should
and must be done to help the Germans as the representatives
of Protestantism. It was not that aspect of the matter which
made him wish to withdraw. But however righteous the
cause might be, he did not feel that he could, to God and his
own conscience, justify his conduct in risking other people's
lives even for the most righteous cause in the world. He
HAS AN IDEA 289
meant the crews of the old tubs. I tried to explain to him
that their lives were a matter for their own consciences and
not his. They knew what they were about. They had entered
the firm's service voluntarily, with their eyes open and with-
out any sort of misrepresentation on the part of the firm.
From one point of view it was certainly deplorable that
there were men ready to risk their lives for filthy lucre.
But this was perhaps comprehensible, if one looked a little
deeper into the question. Perhaps they had families to keep j
the captains and some of the officers had, at least. Perhaps,
with the high pay they got, they could provide their chil-
dren with a better education than they could otherwise have
done. And those who had no wife or children possibly had
an old mother or broken-down father to keep, to whom
they might give a little more happiness in those days of
bread-cards and no fats. Indeed, he fully agreed with me
on that point, and had himself looked at the matter from
the same angle.
"But his decision was unalterable. He had formed it in
accordance with the demands of his conscience, and could
not alter it. He wanted to be free. Well, it didn't matter to
us me and the other chap. It was only a question of buy-
ing him out. Money wasn't hard to get, and he received, by
degrees, something like a million.
"Well, what do you think happened then? That was what
I've been leading up to and I think it's a good example of
the truth of those words, c The book of history is the bible of
irony.' What do you think happened? Why, a few years
later the other chap and I were left with a few old tubs on
our hands, which no human being on earth would look at.
They were the only assets we had. Moreover, not only had
we lost every ore we possessed, but we were liable for un-
paid taxes. But Good Friday, who felt, for the most lofty,
noble reasons, that he could not take part in such a profitable
business, has got money which he despises and which makes
29O LACEMAKER LEKHOLM
him ill and unhappy, because it takes away too much of his
time and strength from the one thing that really matters
in this world the saving of souls."
Sven stopped in front of Dr. Holmes and stared at him,
smiling his disillusioned smile.
"That's what I mean when I say, The book of history is
the bible of irony. 5 "
He stood motionless for a long time. Even the nervous
fingers in his trousers pockets had ceased to rattle money
and keys as he stared with unseeing eyes into his brother's
face. Then the rattling in his trousers pockets began again,
and he recommenced his promenade.
"Or take Uncle Fredrik!"
He sniggered once or twice.
"Poor devil! Pve often thought of him. The whole of his
life he wandered about and wore himself out in the search
for gold. And then it turned out that he had oil worth
several hundred thousand kronor just outside his front-
door. Do you remember what he said before he went back:
'I used to think only in terms of gold, but now Pm begin-
ning to think in terms of oiP? And so he went off to look
for oil. But he never found any. Pve often thought of him.
His brain is in its way typical of all mankind's. One can't
see a problem as a whole. Take an invention as an ex-
ample "
He stopped by the writing-table and evidently caught
sight of the whisky bottle, which still stood unopened.
"Good Lord, I forgot you were going to have a drink.
You must need one, as you come from a prohibition country.
We've an institution here called the Bratt system. Perhaps
you know "
Dr. Holmes interrupted him impatiently. "Yes, yes, I
know it. I heard every detail of it on board the boat. You
needn't go into it now. Go on!"
HAS AN IDEA
Sven took up the corkscrew which he had laid on the
table when he put down the whisky bottle.
"Here you see another of my admirable inventions! I
don't suppose there's anything more damnable than a cork
which breaks when one's trying to pull it out o the bottle.
You're left with the corkscrew in your hands and the floor
covered with fragments of cork. It was a rotten cork. You
try again. The hole in the cork only gets bigger. You take
out your pocket-knife to cut the damned thing out, and nine
times out of ten you end by pushing the cork down into the
bottle, and so the wine or whisky is spoilt. But here you've a
real corkscrew. It can never break the cork, however old
and rotten it is, because it isn't constructed like an ordinary
corkscrew. It isn't really a corkscrew at all. It doesn't bore
down into the cork, but grips it on two sides by means of two
thin blades which one pushes down between the neck of the
bottle and the cork. It's the only rational corkscrew. But do
you think it sold? No! And why? For the simple reason that
it doesn't correspond to people's idea of a corkscrew. The
whole trouble is that "
There was a ring at the telephone. He looked at his
watch, and took plenty of time before putting the receiver
to his ear.
"Thanks, I'm coming!"
He put back the receiver and continued:
"You see, the trouble is that because the implement with
which one draws a cork out of a bottle is called a corkscrew
in everyday talk people have got the idea that it must neces-
sarily have a screw. And the screwless corkscrew may be the
most rational in the world, it doesn't help. People are like
that. They "
Dr. Holmes's patience had reached breaking-point. How
many hundreds of times, as a boy, he had tried to make him
hurry so that he might get to school in time! There was
292 LACEMAKER LEKHOLM
always something which detained him. And then he had
been late and had it noted against him.
"I say, Sven, is someone waiting for you down there?"
"Yes, I'm going now! Pve an appointment t In fact, it's
the most important appointment Pve ever had in my life.
In a way. The car's come."
Dr. Holmes rose. He had turned fiery red in the face
with suppressed wrath. He could no longer contain it. The
fellow was and remained incorrigible. Just as casual and
self-centred as in old days! No idea of punctuality! No
consideration for others. Always some absurd trifle at the
last moment, which interested him to the exclusion of every-
thing else! He knew this appointment was one of the most
important in his life. And yet he stood about preaching on
the stupidity of mankind with an idiotic corkscrew as his
text.
"Look here, Sven, I don't want any hard words to pass
between us in the first half-hour of our meeting, when we
haven't seen one another for twenty years. But I must say I
think you're behaving rather casually in standing here and
jawing about an old corkscrew. Be off with you! The car's
waiting, you say."
Sven smiled his superior smile.
"The car won't come to any harm. It's a closed one!
Besides, it's mine! In the third place, I know what I'm
about! I'm not so stupid as you seem to imagine. But there's
one thing I meant to ask you when you first came in. Did
you meet a Mr. Thompson on the boat?"
"Yes, I did. He has something to do with cars."
"What sort of fellow is he?"
Dr. Holmes shrugged his shoulders.
"I don't know. I didn't study his mentality."
"It's him I'm to meet now. If things go well, you may
come to have a different idea of me. It's about an article of
universal value. But we won't talk unnecessarily, as the old
HAS AN IDEA 293
dad says. Fll ring you up later, and then we can arrange
when we shall have dinner."
He went into the alcove by the bed, snatched up a brown
leather portfolio, put on his overcoat and crammed his
velour hat on the back of his head.
"Have a whisky while I'm out! Exit Sven Lekholm!
Now for it!"
Dr. Holmes stood still for some time, staring at the door
which Sven had slammed after him. . . . Then he went to
the window and looked down into the street. He caught a
glimpse of a car driving away. It was a Nash saloon car
which must have cost several thousand dollars. Perhaps
Sven was well off despite everything? . . .
He turned round and cast a glance at the writing-table as
he passed it. On it lay the collar stud which would not roll
under a chest of drawers and the rational corkscrew. He took
the corkscrew in his hand and looked at it. It had a handle
like an ordinary corkscrew, but instead of a screw it had two
thin steel plates, one slightly curved. To test the "only
rational" corkscrew he took up the whisky bottle and tried
to thrust the steel blades down between the neck of the bottle
and the cork. But he could not make it work; and after
several attempts he flung it down on the table.
He did not know what to think. ... If the invention
Sven was to show Mr. Thompson was no better than that, it
had little chance of being placed upon the world market. . . .
And he suddenly burst out laughing as he had hundreds
of times as a child and as a young man, when his anger had
disappeared and he was able to take a tolerant view of Sven
and his doings. When he tried to leave the room, a minute
later, he could not get out. Sven had locked him in and
taken the key with him. . . .
He had to telephone down to the porter and ask to be
let out.
294 LACEMAKER LEKHOLM
Dr. Holmes stayed in his room the whole afternoon; and
as he thought, he could not help feeling, ever more strongly
and more painfully, how little life gave. Twenty long years
had passed; but for Sven they might have been so many
weeks. His knowledge had increased, and perhaps his ca-
pacities too 5 and deep furrows had been ploughed in his
forehead. He had, too, to judge from the little he had told
Karl about himself, suffered the changes and chances of
business life. He had been a millionaire for some time and
become as poor as a rat again. But despite his knowledge,
capacities and experience, he was still marking time on the
same spot where Dr. Holmes had left him twenty years
ago. It was as though the years had just flowed like running
water through his continually occupied fingers. , . .
He himself had probably no idea how stationary his life
had been, with all its nervous hurry, like a squirrel in a
cage. If Dr. Holmes were unkind enough to point out how
exasperatingly like he was to what he had been in old days,
he would probably not even take it as an insult. He would
only smile his superior smile and say, as he used to say in
his boyhood, "Shut up!" Perhaps he would also point out
how many things of different kinds he had done, how many
inventions he had produced which had been more successful
than the collar stud and the corkscrew. He would refer to
the nervous energy with which he had worked all those
years. In other words, he would not even understand what
Dr. Holmes meant, blind as he was to characteristics of his
own which everyone else could discover at a glance.
The thought of Sven gave him a disagreeable feeling. It
was as though the meeting with him had made life seem
grudging and miserable. Perhaps it was the same with him-
self as with Sven and with most other people too. Indi-
vidual development was nothing but an illusion created by
mankind with regard to itself 5 hands moving on a clock
face in the same everlasting circle to measure another de-
HAS AN IDEA 295
velopment of quite a different kind time. Perhaps a man
never really grew older than he was when he reached
maturity, and all that followed, and was called individual
development, was nothing but an illusion, which a deeper
insight into his character and history would reveal as noth-
ing but greater skill in utilizing the capacities his education
had given him.
He went through every detail of the meeting again and
again Sven's fantastic talk, his manner of expressing him-
self, his gestures. . . .
There was one possibility which he now realized for the
first time the whole of Sven's behaviour might have been
nothing more or less than camouflage. Perhaps the object of
his ceaseless flow of words was to avoid a painful explana-
tion, to escape a morbid discussion of his brother's crime,
which had been committed twenty years before and which
no amount of discussion could alter. Or perhaps he had
simply desired to conceal his own embarrassment, his un-
certainty in the situation created by their unexpected meet-
ing. And so, in his haste, he had had recourse to the means
which lay nearest at hand jabber.
It was possible that this was the case, and that Sven was
quite a different person from what he had shown himself to
be in that awkward half -hour.
It was even possible that Sven was two quite different
people, a gas-bag to the world but inwardly calm and con-
centrated, a man who tried to drown the noise around him
with his own noise to protect himself and his, a man who
was himself only in his work. And perhaps he was like that
now, as he sat and conferred with Thompson about the
article of -universal value. . . .
But whatever the reason for his camouflage might be,
Dr. Holmes had gained nothing by meeting him. He really
knew just as little as before about his father and the rest of
his family just as little, indeed, about Sven himself.
296 LACEMAKER LEKHOLM
About six o'clock Sven rang up Dr. Holmes. They could
not meet for dinner; he had to dine with Thompson and
"another chap" at a place called the Bachelors' Club. After-
wards there was to be another conference. But he hoped it
would be over at eleven. He would ring up later* . . .
Dr. Holmes dined alone in the almost deserted hotel
restaurant. The American boat's passengers had scattered in
the course of the afternoon, and those who still remained
occupied only a few tables. The old judge from Oregon had
a companion with him, of whom Dr. Holmes, without any
reason whatever, was ready to bet that he was the American
consul. The other visitors were conspicuous by their ab-
sence.
After dinner he went down into the cafe. That, too, was
practically deserted. The orchestra was playing to empty
chairs and tables. The waiters leaned against the massive
marble pillars like tired caryatids. The few guests who were
there talked in whispers or in hushed tones.
Dr. Holmes did not understand it at first. What had
become of the cheery, noisy Swedish cafe life, the round,
ruddy faces illuminated by the glow of cigars, the atmos-
phere of punch and tobacco, the crashing bursts of laughter,
the buxom waitresses? Was Sweden still in the ban of the
economic crisis? Could people afford it no longer? He
called a waiter to make inquiries, and was answered with a
smile and a name:
"Bratt."
He fled from the desolate scene in half an hour and began
to pace up and down his room again, waiting for Sven.
Hour after hour passed. At last, at twelve o'clock, he
undressed, put on pyjamas and a dressing-gown, and went
on walking up and down in slippers.
He could not sleep. His fears took possession of him
afresh. What should he say to his father? How would he
HAS AN IDEA 297
find him? ... He was convinced now that Sven's behav-
iour had been only a trick to win time before the truth had
to come out. . . .
At last, at half-past twelve, Sven rang up. He had just
come home, he said; and now they would have a real good
talk. He would just get hold of a few bottles of mineral
water.
A few minutes later he appeared with the bottles in one
hand and the whisky bottle and the only rational corkscrew
in the other.
"We've been at work the whole time, except three-
quarters of an hour for dinner," he said. "A drop of whisky
wouldn't be amiss now. And now we've the night before us,
old chap. Jolly to see you, anyhow!"
He pushed the steel blades of the only rational corkscrew
down between the cork and the neck of the bottle, and
immediately the cork emerged with a loud, cheerful pop!
"Well, how did things go?" asked Dr. Holmes.
Sven shrugged his shoulders.
"We won't talk about that till there's something to talk
about," he said. "I've got to be up at half-past seven to-
morrow morning. Thompson and I are going out at nine."
He mixed himself a weak grog and swallowed it at a
draught.
"What is your invention?"
"It's a secret. For the present. We won't talk about that
now."
He began to walk up and down the room, rattling the
loose cash and bunch of keys in his pocket.
"There's something I've been thinking about, a propos
our conversation this afternoon."
He stopped and stared at Dr. Holmes,
"Have you ever followed the history of an invention?"
Dr. Holmes shook his head.
298 LACEMAKER LEKHOLM
"No, I haven't. It's been outside my field."
"That was stupid of you, old chap. It might have taught
you a lot about life and about people."
He began to walk up and down again.
"I don't know of anything more instructive," he said,
"than the development of the steam engine. . . ."
Dr. Holmes drew a deep breath. Sven was incorrigible.
The only thing to do was to intervene and silence him.
"Sven, Sven! If you're tired we'd much better go to bed.
There's no sense in your walking about this room all night
lecturing me on the development of the steam engine,"
Sven laughed.
"If you'd a little patience, you'd soon find that there is
some sense in it."
He went on talking, while Dr. Holmes sat hunched up on
the sofa, waiting for a chance of interrupting him. . . .
"Genius," Sven was saying, "genius is in some degree a
novelty, and therefore inexplicable. So far, perhaps one
ought to add as a precaution. Staffan declares that it won't
be long before we've an explanation of genius too."
Dr. Holmes saw a chance of turning the conversation.
"Who's Staffan?" he asked.
"Lars's boy. Surely he was born before you went away?"
Dr. Holmes nodded. Yes, of course j the boy had been
several years old when he left the country. But he had
never taken him into consideration at all in thinking about
his family. Was he old enough already to have opinions
about the problem of genius?
"How old is he?" he asked.
"Twenty-three. He's to be a doctor. To begin with, any-
how. He's a really gifted boy what I call a splendidly
furnished brain. And damned intelligent for his age. A bit
too much of an insurance man to be really congenial to me."
"What do you mean by an insurance man?"
Sven smiled
HAS AN IDEA 2-99
"I divide mankind into two classes insurance men and
lottery men. The lottery man is daring, he takes risks, he
may even stake everything he has. The insurance man pro-
tects himself ; the whole aim of his life is to secure himself
against risk. A classification like this is much more sensible
than classification by races, because it tells you something
about people. If I have to do business with a fellow, it's much
more useful to me to know whether he's an insurance man
or a lottery man than whether he's a Frenchman or an
Englishman or a Russian or a German.
"Well, Staffan's a little too much of an insurance type for
my own taste. Though I must admit that with him it's only
the defect of a most excellent quality. If he liked, he could
certainly be a very fair painter. Where he got that talent
from God knows. Of course there's no question of his turn-
ing out a Rembrandt. But he could put up a very good show
against these modern blighters cubists, expressionists, and
naivists. At any rate, he's got so much talent that if he'd
been born twenty-five years earlier he'd have been going
about at his present age with long hair, a sombrero and loose
tie and regarding the common herd with contempt. But
after a critical examination he's found that his talents were
not really first class. He doesn't want to be a mediocre ar-
tist. There are quite enough already, he says. And so he's
reading medicine instead. I've a feeling that he'll go a long
way*
"At any rate, Staffan's very refreshing when one compares
him with brother Tage. Tage was at Lund and read classics
and philosophy. He was getting on towards his finals when,
bless my soul! he got the idea that his musical gifts were so
remarkable that he was not justified in depriving the world
of them. And as the old dad had completely spoilt him, he
got his way and took the musical examination, and now he's
in Stockholm, giving piano lessons from morning to night to
keep body and soul together. He has a small job at the
3OO LACEMAKER LEKHOLM
College of Music, too; he teaches harmony there, and per-
haps he'll be professor of music some day."
"Doesn't he compose?"
Sven stopped walking up and down.
"Yes, worse luck worse luck, old chap! He writes the
most damnable music I ever heard. Just noise and nothing
else! I'm sure Uncle Anders in heaven changed his name
when he heard Tage's first symphony and found that a
Lekholm was the criminal. And he's married, too, poor
devil, to one of those pushing modern women, who's made
it the ambition of her life to get him recognized as one of
the greatest Swedish composers."
"Does she believe in him?"
"Not she! But so long as she's married to him, she won't
have him regarded as a common musician. And as she's
goodJooking and as cold as ice, and can flirt without com-
promising herself in the slightest degree, she's secured him
a heap of influential friends who see that his name gets into
the papers. She learnt that art in Paris, the damned humbug.
She sings a little herself, and not only in private, worse
luck. And Tage's such a fool that he lets her run him. I've
told him the truth several times. c Thump the table, old
chap,' I said, c and shout "Silence!" ' Last time I went for
him on the subject he was rather annoyed. And of course,
he went and told her what I'd said. He's one of those mar- f
ried men who stand on such a high moral level that they
consider it their first duty to tell their wives everything.
And you can understand that she hates me! We don't meet
very often, thank God, but when we are obliged to she looks
daggers at me."
He laughed really heartily and unconstrainedly, for the
first time that evening.
"Besides, I'm sorry for Tage. To keep his menage going
and pay for all the teas and receptions and soirees musicales,
he has to wear himself out working from morning to night.
HAS AN IDEA 301
For all that tea and those sandwiches and cakes cost money.
And the less the creature wears the more her clothes cost.
But she's pretty tall and slim and fair, with darkened eye-
brows and lashes. And as cold as ice."
"I suppose he's in love with her?"
"Of course he is! And that's what I've told him I can't
understand."
Dr. Holmes shrugged his shoulders.
"If I hadn't seen by your ring-finger long ago that you're
not married yourself, I'd guess it now."
Sven stopped again.
"Why? Because I told him the truth? Old chap, I've told
people more unpleasant truths than that in my time! Be-
sides, as for my not being married, I can tell you that I have
been married. And you can be sure, too, that when I
thumped the table and said 'Silence,' there was silence.
Dead silence! Life's so short already that we haven't time
to shorten it further by long discussions at home. But we're
not talking about me 5 we're talking about Tage and Staffan.
I expect a lot of Staffan. He's got the scientific temperament.
He's at once inventive and critical, enthusiastic and ob-
stinate, and has inherited his father's phenomenal capacity
for work."
"And what's become of Lars himself?" asked Dr.
Holmes.
Sven stopped and gave a neighing laugh.
"What's become of Lars? I don't understand how you can
ask. Do you think anyone like Lars could change? No, old
chap. If the possibility had occurred to him, he would have
secured himself against the risk by taking out a policy against
the possibility of changing. That's the real insurance man
all over."
Dr. Holmes shrugged his shoulders impatiently.
"Yes, but he must have changed enough to leave the
service. His name's not in the Almanack. I know that."
3O2 LACEMAKER LEKHOLM
Sven smiled.
"Oh, he left the army a long time ago. You see, he mar-
ried so young. Certainly the old dad helped him a bit.
But he thought it humiliating to be a burden on his father.
And so he began to insure his fellow-creatures to earn a
little more money."
Sven stopped, laughed loudly and shook his head several
times.
"Poor devils of north-countrymen! They didn't get a
minute's peace, by Gad, till they'd insured themselves
against everything possible through Lieutenant Lekholm.
You know the old story of the commercial traveller who
was kicked out of the grocer's shop through the door twenty-
five times and came back the twenty-sixth time through the
window, as cheerful and as full of go as ever, and said:
'Joking apart, shan't we do a little business to-day? ' Multiply
the commercial traveller by six, and you can get a faint
idea, but still an idea, of Lars and the north-countrymen.
He's as obstinate as a mule and as patient as an elephant.
And his army training has helped him a great deal. He's
orderly, can give commands, isn't afraid of taking responsi-
bility, has a certain eye for strategy, great powers of organi-
zation, and, like all soldiers, isn't afraid to go out in the
rain. He would quite certainly have gone far in the army,
or wherever he had been placed. But the company soon
had their eye on him and got him to Stockholm, and there
he is now as assistant manager. Just now he's introducing
quite a new kind of insurance. He's a devilish able fellow,
and works like a horse. But he's an insurance man from
top to toe and as such he's really a dangerous fellow, if
he had his way. You understand what I mean 5 his ideals
are absolutely damnable. If he got a free hand he'd turn
the Swedish people, the descendants of proud, brave Vik-
ings, into a collection of petty capitalist skinflints, as bad
as the stingy French, who wouldn't dare risk a single
HAS AN IDEA 303
ore or make one proud gesture in life. Not to mention the
fact that he'd kill all spirit of enterprise in the country. And
he's such an insurance monomaniac that he hasn't eyes for
the simplest reality. When we meet, I exasperate Gurli for
my private amusement by daring to oppose him, the Only
Man in the World. I wrangle with him about the fall in the
value of money and its effect on old age insurance. You
understand it's like this: despite all fluctuations, money has
the unfortunate tendency to fall continually in value; a
krona of 1500 is worth thirteen ore now. The very
basis "
Dr. Holmes ceased to listen to his brother, who was
wandering deeper and deeper into a labyrinth of figures con-
cerning the fluctuations of the price level and the stimulating
effect of higher prices on economic life evidently to pay
out his sister-in-law Gurli for what he considered her foolish
admiration for Lars,
Dr. Holmes sat all the time with his legs up on the sofa.
A smile played about the corners of his mouth, and a look
which might have been called dreamy came into his eyes.
He was thinking of the lunch the day after Lars's matricu-
lation examination. He had felt that day as if his heart
would break. Lars was a student. But he himself had two
years more, two long unbearable years of grind and disci-
pline, before the world would lie open before him with its
freedom and all the immense possibilities of which he felt
himself capable. He did not know how he would get through
those two years. He felt himself in fetters, a young Prome-
theus chained to the hard rock of the school curriculum,
with vulture-masters pecking his heart out of his body. He
sat silent at the luncheon table, nibbling at the poached
eggs and bacon which were served in honour of the occasion,
while within him a famished young Titan, eager for life,
rent and tore at his fetters.
He remembered that the mathematician had begun talk-
304 LACEMAKER LEKHOLM
ing about insurance the idea of insurance, its vast impor-
tance in life, the security it afforded, and how it was every
good son's duty to pay his premiums punctually. He had
gripped his knife and fork in helpless wrath. He would
have liked to fling his plate of eggs and bacon at his father's
head. There he sat, with his myriad potentialities, his heart
bursting with still untested titanic forces, and there was his
father talking about the duty of paying life insurance premi-
ums! "Oh God, oh God!" he had murmured to himself,
"how shall I endure these years ?"
But it had been different with Lars Lars, who was a
student, Lars who was about to make the great leap into life
with all its riches and marvels. The mathematician's words
had clearly sunk into his brain like a lump of lead into a jar
of butter, right to the bottom. Security duty insurance!
Those words had become his ideal. . . .
"Do you remember," Dr. Holmes interrupted his
brother, "that lunch the day after Lars matriculated, when
father told him he was to go and see the doctor to be ex-
amined for life insurance?"
"No, I don't. But father and Lars and I have often talked
about it since."
Sven stopped and stared at, or through, Dr. Holmes.
"And what else does that prove but what I said just now,
that one can't expect such great changes in a person? No, old
chap, no surprises there. The old dad himself was such a
definite personality, that at the worst his boys could only
recur to a previous Lekholm type. But if you're looking for
surprises in the family, we'll talk about Uncle Anders and
Hulda Stal's children. You see, of a union between people
like the mathematician Lekholm and his wife nothing can
be expected but either decent, careful fellows, something
like father and our clergyman grandfather and his peasant
ancestors, or a recurrence of an older Lekholm type. There's
also a third possibility genius. But from the children of
HAS AN IDEA 3O5
Uncle Anders and Froken Hulda Stal, both of whom were
chaotic personalities, anything might be expected. Such a
union might produce quite new and undreamt-of types.
And Uncle Anders's children are the j oiliest of the whole
family. Good Friday's children are simply tiresome. Peter
Paid is a recurrence of an old type of Lekholm, though on a
higher social scale dissipated, wild, extravagant, snobbish.
They call him 'the Count' in his regiment. Maria is a mis-
sionary out in China and teaches the disciples of Confucius
the advantages of Waldenstrom's doctrine of atonement.
But Uncle Anders's children in them you see continents
growing out of chaos."
He laughed.
"You remember Augusta Seraphia Lekholm. She went
into Anna Larsson's tailor's shop, first as an errand girl, then
behind the counter, where she sold ties, collars, pants and
shirts to the jetme$se doree of the town. You remember too,
perhaps, that at the time of Uncle Anders's death she was
alleged to be mistress to a lieutenant in the regiment here.
Well, this Augusta Seraphia, who was good-looking a
beauty of the dark, frivolous type went to Uncle Per, as
you'll remember, and was put into his business. But in a year
she cleared out and came to Stockholm. Her lover had per-
suaded her to go there, as he himself was to be at the
Artillery and Engineering Academy for a time. But in Stock-
holm there were then, as there are now, a lot of other lieu-
tenants and captains and majors, with whom she became
acquainted. If not with all of them, at any rate with a great
many."
<c You don't mean that we've a cousin who's a "
"Don't hesitate to say the word, old chap! Yes, indeed,
we have. But not her. Not now. Besides, don't interrupt
me. I'm telling you. You remember Hulda Zuleima, too, of
course. Good Friday took her and put her into a mission
bookshop he was interested in, and she got a really good
306 LACEMAKER LEKHOLM
Free Church education. Till she, too, cleared off to Stock-
holm one day, and spent one half of her life as a waitress in
the back room at Blanch's and the other half in a charming
little flat in Riddargatan. She was pretty too. And perhaps
you remember that Uncle Anders used to say of her that
she had an even better voice than Augusta Seraphia."
Sven stopped and stared at Dr. Holmes.
"Well, what do you think happened to these two lively
and charming ladies in the course of time?"
Dr. Holmes shrugged his shoulders. His forehead was
puckered with concern.
"Well, I'll tell you! Augusta Seraphia Lekholm-Svarten-
berg-Vedman-Bjorncrona has been for some years one of
the principal feminine ornaments of the Royal Opera, has
appeared in several big Continental cities, and is on her
honeymoon in Tunis, Algeria and Morocco with her third
husband, Lieutenant Baron Gustaf Bjorncrona, who is
fifteen years younger than she is. So you won't meet her at
Uncle Per's on grandpapa's hundredth birthday. She is,
and has been for many years, in Stockholm society, where
she has the greatest prestige on account both of her serious
devotion to art and of her social gifts. Her sister, Hulda
Zuleima, leads at the age of forty-four a miserable exist-
ence as an ex^waiteress at Blanch's. Once she looked very
old and worn out. But now, since shingling and short skirts
have come in, she looks ten years younger. But she's very
badly off. The family have tried to save her several times.
Now we hold out a stick to her, so that she can at least keep
her nose above water. She lives in one room with a kitchen
on Kungsholm, and the walls are covered with photographs
a fairly complete collection of Swedish army uniforms
during the last twenty-five years. She's a pretty fair nui-
sance, on the whole . . ."
He gave one of his neighing laughs.
"She writes and abuses us now and then, when she wants
HAS AN IDEA 307
money, says she hasn't a rag on her body or a scrap of food
to eat, and calls us stuck-up fools a really charming little
person. And she's ready to tell everyone her pedigree. She is
daughter to the great composer Anders Lekholm, who
wrote the Swedish army's funeral march. She is sister to the
great opera singer Augusta Lekholm-Svartenberg-Vedman-
Bjorncrona, She has an uncle who is a bank director and a
millionaire, a cousin who is manager of a life insurance com-
pany, another who is a lieutenant, one who is an inventor
and one who is a composer, c though not nearly as eminent as
her own father.' You can imagine that it isn't very pleasant
for the family to have her going about waving her pedigree
like a fan, especially as she still likes a bit of fun, and goes
off now and again to the Djurgarden restaurants and dances
with strangers.
"Augusta Seraphia has offered her a fat sum down to
change her name. She hates Hulda Zuleima like poison. But
one mustn't mention that. Hulda Zuleima tells her and the
whole family that Augusta Seraphia isn't in reality a bit
better than herself, that it was Augusta who persuaded her
to lead a gay life, and that even at forty-six Augusta isn't a
scrap better than she has been all the rest of her life, despite
all her worldly honours and splendour. And perhaps she's
right from an impartial point of view. The fact is that
Hulda Zuleima has no respect for what may be said to have
ennobled Augusta Seraphia's somewhat chequered private
life her artistic talent. She points out in her lamentations
to the family that she had a much better voice than Augusta,
and is much more musical than *that conceited pig.' And if it
had not been that that fellow Pilip Svartenberg in the 2nd
Hulda Zuleima has all the regimental numbers at
her fingers' ends fell in love with Augusta, wanted to
marry her, and made her take singing lessons, Augusta
Seraphia would have been in the same boat as herself to-day.
And she may be right there. Hulda Zuleima met no one
308 LACEMAKER LEKHOLM
who was interested in her voice. So Augusta has no right to
put on airs at her expense on that account. Which, for that
matter, Augusta doesn't. She dreads her like the plague.
You can imagine that Hulda's not an agreeable person."
Dr. Holmes looked at his watch. It was past three, and he
had still learned nothing about his father. He knew no more
than before how he would find him, what he would say,
what answer he would get. It became clearer and clearer to
him that Sven was deliberately avoiding talking about the
old man or of the incident which had turned Karl Lefc-
holm into Dr. Holmes. He looked at Sven as he walked
up and down, talking without a sign of weariness fresh
and vigorous as if he had just come from his morning
shower-bath. He would have to interrupt him in a moment
and force him to give him a straight answer. At last he said:
"Look here, Sven, it's getting late. But before we go to
bed, there's one thing I want to know. How is father?
How do you think he'll receive me?"
Sven stopped:
"How will he receive you? He'll be glad to see you, of
course. He is glad. I rang him up before dinner and said
there was a surprise waiting for him to-morrow at Uncle
Per's. He guessed what it was. We've so often said that you
were quite sure to come home for his seventieth birthday."
Dr. Holmes sat staring in front of him.
"Look here, Sven, you're not being straight with me.
Can't you tell me the whole truth? For example, the whole
evening youVe avoided talking of the reason why I left the
country."
"What is there to talk about? You went to Lund and fell
in love with some hussy there and thought it best to cut the
whole thing by moving to another continent what is there
in that to talk about now, twenty years afterwards?"
Dr. Holmes stared at him.
HAS AN IDEA 309
"I don't know what you mean. 7 fell in love with a hussy?
Who told you that?"
"Who told me that? Why, we all know it. Father told
us! And it's nothing to be ashamed of for years afterwards.
You're not the first person in the history of the world who's
done such a thing. And as for your not writing. Uncle Fred-
rik didn't write. Our cousins, Uncle Anders's sons, have
never written a line. That's Lekholmian."
Dr. Holmes sat motionless, looking at his hands to hide
his face. His father had not told the truth. . . . His father
had kept the forgery a secret. . . . Why?
Sven looked at him:
"Or was it something else you quarrelled about?"
Dr. Holmes did not move. A voice within him whis-
pered: *<Don't tell him. Don't give yourself away. You've a
chance of getting out of it." But he did not want to. He had
"got out of it" often enough in his life, like so many other
Lekholms. He rose and said to his brother:
"No, it wasn't an unhappy love affair. It was something
quite different."
But then his courage failed him again. He would have a
talk with his father first. And he continued:
"I'll tell you the whole story another time. It's late now.
It's time to go to bed. . . . But there's something I must
find out first. What arrangements shall I make for the jour-
ney to-morrow?"
Sven gave him a superior look.
"That's all arranged! I rang up Uncle Per at dinner-
time and told him you were coming. Lars and his Gurli and
Tage arrive from Stockholm at five this morning. Gunnar
too. Bertil's coming from the Grand Hotel at Lund."
"Why from the Grand?"
"Why? He's a waiter there. At eleven o'clock there's a
great family gathering in honour of the centenarian. We
3IO LACEMAKER LEKHOLM
shall be spared seeing tfiat creature of Tage's, thank God.
She's on a concert tour, having great successes in little pro-
vincial holes. You're to be at the train in " (he looked at
his watch) "in two and a half hours. It goes at six. Pve told
the porter to call you and take a ticket for you. I shall try to
get there somehow in the course of the afternoon. Some
means can always be found. But don't say anything about
that. And not a word about my invention and Thompson.
Thanks. Good night and good-bye!"
He picked up the whisky bottle and corkscrew and walked
to the door with a swift, elastic step.
Dr. Holmes sat for a few moments staring at the door
Sven had slammed after him. Then he rose slowly, mur-
muring in English: "Lord, what a hell of a fellow! "
IV
Uncle Per met him at the station.
Dr. Holmes had difficulty in recognizing him at first. He
had grown very old. The tall, well-built man of twenty
years ago had bent under the weight of his worldly suc-
cesses, this morning represented by a luxurious fur coat
which seemed too large and heavy for him to bear. His chin
and the part of his face abutting on it had shrunk and left
too much room for the big hooked nose and the long, clean-
shaven upper lip. The strained, weary features suggested
many years of bodily or mental suffering cancer of the
stomach or torments of conscience, it was hard for a doctor
not skilled in ocular diagnosis to say which. Uncle Per's
glance was sharper than that which Dr. Holmes remem-
bered, uneasy, as if seeking salvation, as observant and pene-
trating as a deaf man's.
He was standing shaking hands with several other men
wearing fur coats and carrying leather portfolios, whose
HAS AN IDEA 311
bearing and expression told of municipal responsibility and
financial power. They stood alone in an open space rever-
ently left free by their fellow-citizens and, as became local
deities, raised their hands casually to their caps in acknowl-
edgment of the taking-off of hats round them.
Not till these grandees entered their carriage at the
guard's respectful suggestion did Dr. Holmes approach
Uncle Per. His uncle laid his hand upon his shoulder in wel-
come.
"You're the image of your grand old father. Lars and
Tage are more like your mother and her family, and Sven is
very like your grandfather. These differences in brothers
and sisters are curious."
He spoke slowly, with the chairman and lay preacher's
rooted habit of uttering the most elementary thought with
weight and finality.
"I've ordered a room for you at the hotel," he continued.
"Perhaps you'd better send your things there by the hotel
porter, who's generally here to meet the trains. And then
we can go home straight to your father ; he's waiting for you
at my house. We're to meet at eleven o'clock, after break-
fast, to congratulate our old master-lacemaker."
The bank director smiled a humorous smile Dr.
Holmes could not remember having seen in the old days.
But he could not decide whether the humour to which the
smile bore witness was a gift derived from worldly success
and contact with worldly people, or if it had its roots in the
words once uttered from the Cross: "Father, forgive them,
for they know not what they do."
They emerged from the station building on to the
Jarnvagstorg, as large as a square in New York and as
empty as a desert. A solitary motor-car was crossing it diag-
onally, and an antediluvian ox-waggon came clattering out
of a side street, driven by a native perched unsteadily on a
sack of hay.
314 LACEMAKER LEKHOLM
the students money and charges no interest. I hope he gets
his money back. Fve offered to help him to buy a temper-
ance cafe, but he refused for reasons which, from his stand-
point, I must admit to be logical. I am still willing to help
him in anything he may undertake, in so far as it is not di-
rectly against my principles. But he has no ambition. He is
contented with his earthly lot and evidently feels that he is
fulfilling some function in life, although I have never been
able to make out what. I would, so far, put him down as an
idealist quiet, good-natured and a trifle ridiculous."
They had reached Uncle Per's house. Uncle Per stopped
and pointed with his stick.
"There's your father, up there, standing at the window."
Dr. Holmes had been walking with his collar turned up
and his head bent forward. He gave a start; his heart
thumped violently, and he raised his head slowly to meet
his father's eyes. But in the windows to which Uncle Per
had pointed there was nothing to be seen but impeccably
white lace curtains.
"Where? Where?" asked Dr. Holmes.
"He's disappeared. Curious. I thought I saw him at the
spare-room window, up in the tower. Perhaps he's come
down to meet us in the hall."
But he was not there either. Uncle Per called, "Carl, are
you there?" But no answer came.
"I expect he wants to welcome his son alone," Uncle Per
said, and indicated the way up to the tower room.
He stood outside the door of his father's room 5 and he felt
that the whole of his life was crowded into those few mo-
ments in which he stood there, calling all his powers of self-
control to his aid to save him from collapsing. What was he?
How old was he? The anguish of the moment, the crime of
twenty years ago, all the times when, as a child and as a
schoolboy, he had stood outside his father's dreaded door
HAS AN IDEA 315
awaiting punishment the sensations of the present and the
memories of the past melted together into a strange com-
pound, dreamlike yet vividly real. He felt as if a crystalliza-
tion of his inmost soul had taken place 5 as he stood now at
his father's door he was his real self as God saw him with
His all-seeing eye. God had always seen him so. ...
He was afraid no longer. He no longer feared anything.
What he felt was something quite different something
akin to the complete self-surrender when the trumpets of
doomsday call and Man stands in all his frailty before the
Throne. Here am I! Forgive my sins, merciful Father!
Then the door was opened gently, and a low, affectionate
voice within the room said:
"Come in. It's cold out there."
He tottered and had nearly fallen when his father's hand
took his arm cautiously and led him into the warm room.
He stood with his back to the wall. He could not see his
father. It was as though a blinding light emanated from the
old man's figure and broke into shimmering colours against
the tears in Karl's own eyes. A violent trembling shook
him, and a second later he burst into tears, the uncontrolled
weeping of a child.
"Father . . . father . . . forgive me!"
His father led him to a chair and patted him hard on the
shoulder.
"There, there! Don't cry, my boy. It's not I who have to
forgive you; it's you who should forgive me. There's only
one thing which has grieved me all these years, and that was
that you couldn't say where you were, so that I could write
to you and ask you to forgive me. As a matter of fact, I did
write. The letter is with my will, so that you would have
had a chance of reading it when I was dead at any rate, if we
hadn't met again in this life. But you mustn't cry, my boy.
Perhaps you don't know it, but I have always been inclined
to shed tears myself. We Lekholms are a sentimental fam-
316 LACEMAKER L E K H O L M
ily. And some of us have tried to hide it under an outer
layer of hardness. And you don't want to see your old father
cry, do you? It isn't proper for old men to cryj it's their
business to smile and bless everyone. That's their only
ratson d'etre in this world. It's the recompense they have to
give for still being alive and a nuisance to people."
He brought a handkerchief and a bottle of eau-de-
Cologne from the washstand and bathed his son's face as
vigorously as he had blown his nose for him when he was a
child. And as he did so he said:
"Tell me one thing. When you met Sven yesterday, I
suppose you didn't tell him why you left the country?"
"No," Dr. Holmes replied. "I meant to, but but I was
too cowardly."
"Thank God for that, my boy! I've been worrying about
it all night. You see, I never told anyone what the real cause
was. If anyone asks you, you must say that you made a mess
of your life over a woman. I couldn't think of anything else.
That's what I've said. And you mustn't say anything else.
You mustn't mention the real cause. And there isn't really
any real cause. . . . You're not a ... You didn't . . .
It was nothing but a youthful freak. ... A folly at the
worst . . . Surely your life since has given sufficient proof
of that?"
There was a suggestion of a timid question in his last
words, a nervous trembling in his voice as if he had meant
to say: "You haven't, have you, my boy?"
"No," said Dr. Holmes. "I've never forged since." His
father raised his hand, still holding the eau-de-Cologne
bottle.
"S-s-sh!" he whispered. "Don't use that word. For God's
sake! Not that word. Never, do you hear! Promise me
that!"
Dr. Holmes felt for his father's hand.
HAS AN I DBA
"Yes."
"No, look me right in the face."
He looked up at his father.
"Yes, I promise."
"Well, then," the old mathematician said, with the old
crisp curtness in his words and accent, "that's done with,
thank Heaven. And now we can proceed to the serious busi-
ness of the day."
He put the eau-de-Cologne bottle on the dressing-table,
hung the towel on the rail and sat down in the centre of the
sofa, straight-backed, with his arms crossed over his still
broad chest. He was as slender as twenty years before. Only
his former brawny muscular strength seemed, to judge
from his clothes, to have given place to the sinewy tough-
ness of hale old age. His temples were still full and no
prominent blue veins, indicating calcification of the veins,
had made their appearance. The short-clipped moustache
had turned a little grey. But his hair had kept its fair colour,
and was still combed forward into two dashing cavalry curls
at his ears. These curls, the powerful spectacles which
seemed to make his eyes rounder, and the big curved nose,
now more prominent than ever, gave him the appearance of
a wise old owl investigating the secrets of the night from its
solitary fir branch.
He drew breath several times as if winding himself up,
and said:
"Well, tell me how youVe been getting on. Have you
had a very bad time?"
Dr. Holmes looked into the old, wise, round grey eyes.
"No, not nearly as bad as I deserved. I must tell you the
whole story from the beginning."
"No, never mind about that. Breakfast is waiting for us
downstairs. And we've agreed never to talk about that any
more."
318 LACEMAKER LEK.HOLM
Dr. Holmes looked at his hands.
"There's something I must say at any rate. Fd been mak-
ing a beast of myself. And then I became afraid. 55
"Afraid of what?"
"Afraid of your uncle Oscar and my uncle Anders.
Afraid of the inevitable collapse, the tendency to go under,
which was in the family. I felt I could not possibly pull
round if I stayed at home. Grandpapa's brother and Uncle
Anders their fates were nightmares to me. They com-
pletely paralysed me. It became a sort of hypnotism. I be-
came more and more possessed with the feeling that I was
going under. It will be with me as it was with Oscar Lek-
holm: I shall never become a doctor. And then, one fine
day, I shall take my own life as Uncle Anders did. My
whole future lay before me like an open book. I lived their
lives over again. I saw no possibility of recovery. I thought
it was too late. I couldn't pull myself together and work. It
wasn't worth while. I knew what would happen. But at the
same time there was something else in me the will to live.
I knew all the time that if only I could get away from here,
into quite fresh surroundings, I should recover my strength.
And so and so, after thinking of all kinds of things, I
thought of Uncle Fredrik and America. But it was a long
time before I decided to write "
The old mathematician interrupted him:
"And so you left the country. Go on ! "
"Y es, I left the country. I committed a crime to be able to
start a new life. I committed that crime in full possession of
my senses. It was not a youthful freak, as you called it just
now. I had reckoned with every possibility, even with your
not denouncing me to the bank. But nevertheless I had
reckoned with the possibility of the crime coming to light in
one way or another j and to protect myself and get a start I
left the country through Gothenburg, because I assumed
that I should be looked for in Copenhagen and Hamburg.
HAS AN IDEA 319
I want you to know that. I don't want to make myself out
any better than I am or rather, perhaps, than I was then.
IVe held back long enough. I committed a crime deliber-
ately in order to be able to begin an honourable and useful
life. I haven't the excuse that Oscar Lekholm and Uncle
Anders could put forward that they really never meant to
do what they did.
"And so I got to New York. I didn't know what to do. I
avoided my countrymen, of course. I'd a little money left
after my Lund debts were paid. I tried to get a job as a
waiter. I wandered about the streets. And then, a week after
landing, I happened to see, in Union Square, a warrant offi-
cer in the American Navy standing by a recruiting placard
recruiting sailors. Both you and Uncle Fredrik had gone to
sea in your early days. Your voices sounded in my ears and
urged me to go and speak to the man. I did so. We went
into a bar at the corner of Union Square and Fourteenth
Street. He tried to persuade me to join. He got a commis-
sion on every recruit he could enlist. We became rather
more confidential with one another as we drank. He told
me he was a Swiss by birth, the only Swiss in the American
Navy. He was wondering what sort of fellow I was. He saw
that I was an 'educated man,' and somehow or other it came
out that I'd studied medicine. He put his arm round me,
ordered fresh drinks, and said, 'Young man, you and the
Navy are one.' He told me that if I joined as a sick-bay at-
tendant I should get my medical training free, if I con-
ducted myself well and had an inclination for study. He
took a book out of the inside pocket of his coat and convinced
me that what he said was true. And the next minute I had
joined up."
The old mathematician smiled and shook his head.
"Curious!" he said. "That was what I imagined my own
career would be when I enlisted as a gunner. I meant to
work my way up and get a commission."
32O LACEMAKER LEKHOLM
He shook his head again, as if a glimpse of the workings
of God's ways had been revealed to him. A long silence fol-
lowed. At last the mathematician asked:
"I say, my boy, there's something I've been thinking of.
Have military and naval doctors any reputation as doctors
in America ?"
Dr. Holmes burst out laughing.
''Well, yes," he said, "I certainly think I can say they
have."
His father gave a nod of satisfaction.
"That is to say, you can do rather more than tell the dif-
ference between sore feet and appendicitis."
"Yes, I think I could undertake to do a bit more than
that"
cc What service have you been on, generally speaking?"
"In the last few years I've been assistant surgeon at the
naval hospital at Annapolis."
His father rose.
"My dear boy, you don't mean to say that such intelligent
people as the Americans dare to let you loose on live human
beings knife in hand? But it's true that human life hasn't
the same value there as here."
He sat down on the sofa again with his arms crossed on
his breast.
"A surgeon! That was always what I wanted you to be.
Well, go on!"
He puffed out his chest several times. Dr. Holmes
smiled. It was something like this he had imagined the old
lacemaker puffing out his chest when he dreamed of walk-
ing about his native town flanked by his sons the doctor, the
judge and the mayor.
"Come, go on!" the old mathematician said again.
"Well, there's not much more to tell you. I got married."
"You made as sensible a marriage as I did, I hope?"
"We were legally separated just before I came over."
HAS AN IDEA 321
His father nodded.
"Well, I can't tell whose fault it was, yours or hers. But
we'll talk about that another time. But one thing is certain 5
there isn't one woman in a million like your mother. And
there isn't one marriage in ten thousand so happy as ours
was. There was never a cloud in the sky. Not one hard word
was ever exchanged between us 5 there was never a shadow
or suggestion of a misunderstanding. If it can ever be said
of a man and a woman that they are two in one, it can be
said of your mother and me. It was an ideal relationship,
ideal in every respect."
Dr. Holmes gave h;s old father a swift glance. He took
out his handkerchief'and pretended to blow his nose to hide
a smile. He realized now for the first time that his father
had grown old. He had forgotten. . . . For even if his
and his wife's marriage had not been the Strindbergian in-
ferno Dr. Holmes had imagined as a schoolboy student of
literature, he knew it had not been free from profound and
serious differences of opinion. But the old man had for-
gotten them. So the mathematician too was really, despite
everything, a poet at heart, an idealizer of reality. And so
was everyone for that matter. In fact, were not man and
poet synonyms, and time the factor which in the long run
made poets of us all, even the most prosaic? . . .
"There's one thing I've often wondered," the old man
continued after a long silence. "And it's this: if your mother
had lived, wouldn't you have given a sign of life all these
years?"
Dr. Holmes nodded reflectively.
"Ye-e-es, I think I would."
"And why?"
because because I don't quite know. It's hard to say."
"Then I'll tell you. You'd have written to her because
you knew she'd forgive you?"
Dn Holmes nodded again as he answered:
322 LACEMAKER LEKHOLM
"Yes."
"But you wouldn't write to me because, with the knowl-
edge you had of me, you were convinced that 7 shouldn't
forgive you? Wasn't that so?"
"Yes, it was."
His father rose. He paced up and down the narrow floor-
space, as straight-backed as a soldier, and then resumed his
place in the middle of the sofa with his arms folded across
his breast.
"You see, my boy," he said after a long pause, in which
the concealed quid was vigorously turned, "life isn't mathe-
matics. Life isn't logic. I used to think it was. I don't think
so any longer. I haven't thought so since the day when
your mother was torn from me and the rest she was entitled
to expect. There was one thing your mother and I had a
little difference of opinion about. And that was your
bringing-up. She didn't approve of my principle. That was,
as you know, simple enough $ boys must be taught to behave
themselves. She thought I treated you altogether too
severely. She even thought that by my method I was knock-
ing untruthfulness and evasion into you, instead of knock-
ing it out of you, as I thought. It even happened sometimes
that she left home in the middle of the night and stayed
away for several days when someone was to be punished.
But she was such a wonderful woman that she would never
show you children by one word or one act that she did not
agree with me. I know what this cost her. And then she was
taken away from us. And the morning when I laid her in
her coffin I swore, with my hand on her cold heart, that
henceforward I would bring you up as she wished. I left
you alone. I let you do as you liked. I let you look aftei
yourselves.
"But not till that business of yours happened did I realize
what irreparable harm my way of bringing you up had
done. What you did in a moment of boyish folly was my
HAS AN IDEA 323
fault. I had alienated you from me to such a degree, by my
severity towards you as children and boys, that a thing like
that could happen. I had gained your confidence so little $
you had so little love and affection for me, thanks to my
own mistaken method, that that could happen that which
we are never going to speak or think of again . . . and I
couldn't write to you. ... I couldn't let you know by one
single word how I took it, never send you one line begging
for forgiveness I had to to bear it alone."
The old man had broken down. He sat bent forward
with his face hidden in his hands. The lean sinewy body
was shaken with sobs.
Dr. Holmes had flung himself at his father's feet. He
laid his head on his knees and sobbed:
"Father father don't talk like that don't talk like
that!"
The old man stroked his son's head, looking in front of
him with unseeing eyes.
"All those sleepless nights all those nightmares when
I thought you hated me so much that you didn't think me
worth a single line the money order you sent without a
word, in another name as much as to say, Tve settled
with you now' all this I had to bear alone. I stood by your
mother's grave every day and told her all about it and
of my despair. And I got no answer no consolation $ the
black earth itself seemed to say, 'You deserve all you're
suffering!'"
"Father, father you mustn't talk like that you
mustn't."
The old mathematician went on stroking his son's head.
"Yes, yes! it had to be said once and for all. We've so
much to talk about, you and I. My home your home is
just as it was when your mother died. There's only a new
carpet in the dining-room that I had to buy a year or two
ago. And a few glasses have been broken by careless maids
324 LACEMAKER LEKHOLM
in the course of years. But otherwise everything is exactly as
it was the day when she left us. We'll be happy together,
you and I. As a rule I go up to Lars's in Stockholm at
Christmas. Gurli's just like my own daughter. And their
boy is such a promising lad that my old heart regularly
swells with lacemaker Lekholm's pride when I think of his
future. Now that you've come back, and IVe said to you
what I wanted to say, IVe hardly any other wish than to be
buried beside my dear one. There's Sven, of course, who
causes us worry. He's an incurable optimist, like my old
father. He's been busy for some years now with an inven-
tion of some kind. I suspect that it's an automatic gear. But
there are sure to be a thousand people racking their brains
over that at the present moment. He could have done well
if he'd liked. He had a good job as engineer to a motor-car
factory. But it's impossible to work with him. He made a lot
of money over those ships. And then he built a little shop
for his own experiments at Falkenberg and a thumping
great house. And then the whole thing went fut. He's man-
aged to keep the workshop I don't know or understand
how. There must be some people who are stupid enough to
believe in him. At present but when there are no more?
What will become of the fellow? I daren't think of it.
"And he's made a mess of his family life, too. I don't
know what women see in him. But he's had one affair after
another, both before and after his marriage. The latest is
with a woman he met in the train between Stockholm and
Gothenburg. She was going to America, had her ticket and
passport and everything, and was even going to be married
there. But instead he persuaded her to stay in the course of
that short journey. And now they're going to be married.
What they're going to live on Heaven knows. His divorced
wife and girls are pretty hard up at times. I've often
tackled him about it. But he only answers, nervously and
HAS AN IDEA 325
impatiently, as he always did: 'Wait, my day '11 come in
good time.' "
Dr. Holmes had risen.
"It looks as if he was going to succeed now."
But the old mathematician shook his head.
"Ah, my dear boy, he's thought so, and we've hoped so,
for many years. He still thinks so. But we've ceased to hope.
He'll never be a reasonable person. Thafs my definite opin-
ion, and Lars's too. Tage thinks he still has a chance.
But "
There was a knock at the door. It was Uncle Per.
"Breakfast's ready," he said.
From the conversation at the breakfast-table it appeared
that the old lacemaker had begun his hundredth birthday
in a very bad temper. He had had a serious dispute early
that morning with his eldest son Per, when the latter had
gone into his room to make the final arrangements for the
ceremonies of the day. The subject of the dispute had been
a bottle of madeira. The lacemaker had intended to wel-
come each of his sons and grandsons, when they visited him,
in a glass of the wine in question. Per had refused to allow
this, for reasons which he set forth to those present at the
breakfast-table his brother Carl, his son "the Count," and
Lars, Gurli, Karl, Tage and Bertil. Gunnar, for some rea-
son, had not come to breakfast, but had sent a message
through his brother Bertil that he would be there punctually
at eleven.
The ground of Uncle Per's refusal to provide the madeira
was that, as a total abstainer of long standing, he did not
feel that he could allow alcoholic drinks to be served in his
house. He had adhered rigidly to this principle throughout
his life. More than once, since he had reached a social posi-
tion in which he was obliged to give more or less official
326 LACEMAKER LEKHOLM
dinner-parties at his house, his late wife had begged him to
provide at least wine at dinner. But he had firmly opposed
any concession to a practice which all his life he had not only
strongly disapproved of but vigorously opposed. Nor could
he see any reason for disregarding his principles on this
particular day.
Per's stubbornness had made the old lacemaker angry.
He had struck the side of the bed with his chalk-white, blue-
veined hand, commanded silence, and declared that if he
could not offer madeira wine there would be no centenary
at all as far as he was concerned. Even if he was no longer
master in his own house, he must, in all reason's name, be
regarded as in full possession of the room his obstinate,
narrow-minded son had let to him. He had, moreover, in-
tended that the wine should be bought with his own money
(pointing to his greasy old purse, which contained a five-
kronor note placed in it years before by his son Per and
representing, in the old man's eyes, an immense fortune).
But Uncle Per had objected to this proposal too. He himself
would under no circumstances go out to buy the wine 5 and
he was equally disinclined to send any of the servants. All
of them were convinced blue-ribbonists, and would have
regarded such an errand as more than peculiar.
Not till Uncle Per saw that the old man, on his own cen-
tenary, was on the point of calling down God's curse on his
own flesh and blood, had he given way and sent for a bottle
of madeira.
The dispute gave rise to a number of joking allusions to
the centenarian's obstinacy and caused much laughter. Even
Uncle Per smiled.
His victory in the wine question, however, had not
caused the old hero of the battle of Kolding and the fight
at the front-door to bury his battle-axe for good and all. A
few moments later he was brandishing it again. This time
the trouble was caused by two telegrams which Uncle Per
HAS AN IDEA 327
brought him, and which annoyed him intensely. One was
from Baroness Augusta Seraphia Bjorncrona, sent from
Morocco, which ran: "Je t'embrasse mille fois mon coeur
plein d'amour et de chanson." The other was from Maria
Elisabeth Lekholm, sent from a Swedish missionary station
in China and calling down Heaven's blessings in abundance
on her grandfather in the English language.
The old man, who had still the use of his eyes (his pow-
ers of hearing, on the contrary, had considerably dimin-
ished), read the two telegrams through carefully several
times. Having vainly endeavoured to spell them out, and
found no meaning in them at all, he flung them on the floor,
declaring that he would have nothing to do with such "rub-
bish." His son, Uncle Per, picked them up, endeavoured to
explain what they were, and handed them over to the old
gentleman's attendant, a hospital nurse, who interpreted
their contents.
But this did not satisfy the old man. Who was Augusta
Bjorncrona? He had never to his knowledge had anything
to do with any such person, not even in his young days,
when he had travelled about the country as a journeyman
and had a good time with the girls. Uncle Per explained to
him who the lady was. He reminded him, as gently as pos-
sible, that he had been told many times that Augusta had
married a baron, and that she was now on her honeymoon
in a country in Africa called Morocco. This information
infuriated the old gentleman still further. So he had grand-
children who dwelt among the heathen, who had not been
baptized and were a law unto themselves. He did not want
to hear about such granddaughters, or recognize them. And
what kind of song was her heart full of? It was not God's
word, or hymns from the Swedish hymn-book, seeing that
she was among the heathen. He did not want to see such
telegrams. For that matter, he had never liked telegrams.
He remembered when these innovations had begun. People
LACEMAKER LEKHOLM
had gone on very well without them when he was a young
man. He did not want to see them !
At this point Uncle Per left him to meet his guests at the
breakfast-table. And it was with a certain feeling of tension
that the old lacemaker's sons and grandsons rose from the
table, fetched their bouquets from the hall, and, in a long
procession, entered the old man's room.
It was now three or four years since he had ceased to sit
up for a little while every morning. He was lying in bed in
the room to which he had moved after old Fru Lekholm's
death. The old parlour furniture was there, which Dn
Holmes remembered so well in the Lekholms 7 old home,
carefully arranged by Uncle Per in the same way as it had
stood in the little one-storied house on Ostra Bulevarden.
There was the oval parlour table on which lay the Bible
which had belonged to the lacemaker's grandfather, the red
plush-covered album and a little bust of Thorvaldsen's
Christ 5 the narrow, high-backed, fringed parlour chairs, the
long mahogany sofa, and above it the faded family portraits
in oval black frames. In the middle was a coarse enlargement
of old Fru Lekholm in white lace cap, black silk dress, and
half a pear in each cheek so that she might not look too lean
and miserable in the portrait which was to immortalize her.
There was the bookcase with glass doors in which the hero's
uniform had hung, but which had become a bookcase again
since moths had devoured the uniform, and on each side of
it were his certificates and decorations. There was the
writing-table in which Aunt Charlotte had kept her sweets
museum, and the armchair by the window in which the old
man used to sit and tell his stories of the fight at Kolding.
The lacemaker lay, however, on a quite modern, spacious
and comfortable English iron bedstead. In honour of the
occasion he was wearing a black tail-coat, a collar of his own
special pattern, a white tie and cuffs. He lay there, a little
dried-up figure, with great blue veins on his temples and on
HAS AN IDEA
his chalk-white hands. The still abundant hair was as white
as the coverlet, the white moustaches were faintly yellowed
with wax in honour of the great day, and there was a round,
bright patch of red on the withered, sunken cheeks. The
look behind the powerful spectacles was hard to catch. It
was as though it had crept in and hidden itself in its lair, and
peered out thence, insecure and helpless, but curiously alert,
to retreat still further in the hour of danger.
There was nothing painful in the sight of the shrivelled
little snow-white figure in the absurd, too large tail-coat.
On the contrary, Dr. Holmes could not help smiling at the
sight of him and his descendants tall, broad-shouldered
men, each of whom in turn went up to the bed, grasped his
cold white hand and murmured a few words. He did not
seem to recognize any of them except Uncle Per and the
mathematician. All those who now stood crowded round
him, and whom he hardly knew all those and many oth-
ers who had not been able to be present had their origin in
that little shrivelled, dried-up figure: human destinies scat-
tered all over the world, all distinct, and yet containing
something of that which had once been the kcemaker, Pehr
Anders Lekholm, his merits and his failings. Dr. Holmes
could do nothing but smile, as one smiles when suddenly
confronted with a bizarre spectacle. In that moment, and in
that gathering, he saw the long perspective of Lekholm des-
tinies, Lekholm tragedies and Lekholm successes as some-
thing at once simple and mysterious. Once upon a time a
young man had fallen in love with a woman. And for cen-
turies and centuries to come his flesh, his blood and his spirit
would live, work, suffer, rejoice, hope and despair in those
who bore his name. . . .
Meanwhile the nurse had poured out the madeira and
was carrying round the glasses on a tray. The lacemaker's
descendants stood in a semicircle round the bed, raised their
glasses and drank in silence.
33O LACEMAKER LEKHOLM
The old man nodded as a sign that he wished to drink
their healths.
The next moment Uncle Per folded his hands, in prayer;
and the others instinctively followed his example. He spoke
in a loud voice on the theme: the one essential is to live in
Christ.
"There are thousands and thousands of men," he said,
"who are near death, but do not know that they are in any
danger. They eat, work, make merry, sing, let day after day
go by, and do not know that they are near death. Men in
this world are very different from one another j some are
rich, others poor, some respected, others despised, some have
all they desire, others are oppressed by constant trouble.
Wherever one turns one's eyes, one sees them hurrying
about, talking to each other, discussing all their affairs with
one another, but never discussing their need of salva-
tion "
The Lekholms exchanged embarrassed, meaning glances ;
they looked down at their folded hands, the tips of their
shoes, the creases in their trousers. . . . And each of them
seemed to be thinking: It's meant for me. But suddenly
they realized that he meant himself. Now, for the first time,
he was revealing his inmost self to his family, to those who
were nearest to him by ties of blood.
He bowed his head deeper and deeper as he spoke. He
stood leaning forward with his hands clasped against his
breast, and his slow, authoritative chairman's voice became
humbler, warmer, more and more breathless and stum-
bling. Now his secret was revealed! He had bartered his
soul's salvation for worldly successes. It was a prayer, an
appeal that he was uttering,
It may have been that Dr. Holmes had seen a play of
Tolstoy's the evening before he left New York. It may have
been, too, that in his constant reflections on his family and
HAS AN IDEA 331
its destinies he had always found Uncle Per an insoluble
puzzle incomprehensible to him because he himself lacked
both the qualities which formed the foundation of Uncle
Per's character, deep religious feeling and acute commercial
instinct. But now, as he stood looking at the bent form and
listening to the hot, breathless flow of words, he suddenly
Eelt convinced, for the first time, that the man was no hum-
bug. And more: he felt that now, for the first time in his life,
he saw the old man and his lifelong internal struggle in a
new light. Uncle Per was in his way akin to the great Rus-
sian. He was a fetit bourgeois Tolstoy, who had been
wrestling for years with Mammon and worldliness and
mundane considerations like the sailor with the octopus.
But the struggle was not yet over! Uncle Per had one pow-
erful helper, God's only begotten Son upon the Cross. And
some day, perhaps, with His help, he would succeed in tear-
ing himself from the monster's arms and, like the old Rus-
sian, weak and sick and tottering, would leave all his earthly
possessions and seek loneliness, poverty, freedom and ever-
lasting joy. . . .
As Uncle Per spoke, there was suddenly a stir among the
listening Lekholms. One after another they turned and
looked at the door which led into Uncle Per's room. One
after another they turned scarlet and fixed their eyes on the
Brussels carpet. Only Uncle Per did not see. On the thresh-
old of his room stood Gunnar Lekholm, the actor and singer.
He was dressed in a costume of the middle of the nineteenth
century a long tail-coat, narrow, light trousers, stand-up
collar, and a black cravat wound many times round his neck.
He was powdered and rouged, carried a lute tied to a ribbon
over his shoulder, and had clearly, despite the Bratt sys-
tem, somehow managed to have a glass or two with his
breakfast, for a strong odour of brandy began to pervade the
room. He nodded cheerfully to his cousins, bowed slightly
33^ LACEMAKER LEKHOLM
to his uncle the mathematician, and held his right hand ex-
tended over the lute-strings, so that no unexpected sound
might come from them and interrupt Uncle Per. He even
seemed to be listening attentively to the speaker j they could
see that he was straining his ears to follow what was being
said.
"Yes, you say, but I haven't time yet. I must use all my
time to feed and clothe myself and my family. No, my
friend, you must be saved first. The most important thing
of all is that you shall be saved. Come, let us reason with
one another. Now, to-day, is the day of salvation. If our sins
were blood-red they shall become white as snow, and if they
were rose-coloured they shall become like wool, saith the
prophet Isaiah. And Paul, the apostle of the Lord, saith:
Believe in the Lord Jesus, so shalt thou and thy house be
saved. See, the day is coming is coming nearer and nearer,
when thou shalt either go into everlasting torment or enter
eternal life. Let us pray! let each one of us silently pray for
the one thing that is needful. . . ."
He bent his head still lower and hid his face in his hands.
There was a long silence. At last someone coughed, and
the Lekholms one after another straightened their backs,
casting timid glances at the spot where Gunnar stood. He,
too, had bent forward, hiding his face with his left hand
and guarding the lute-strings with his right. At last he came
into the room, bowed to Uncle Per and shook hands with
him, and said in the sympathetic, emotional voice an actor
knows how to assume:
"Pd meant to sing grandpapa a little song. But perhaps
it would be out of place on a serious occasion. You know the
song, c My grandmamma was such a dear! ' I thought of say-
ing instead, 'My grandpapa is such a dear.' But, as I
said
Uncle Per looked pained, and was at a loss for an an-
swer.
HAS AN IDEA 333
"Well," he said after a moment or two, "such songs have
never been sung in my house before. But Pve given way to
father about something else this morning already, so if
he "
Gunnar Lekholm advanced to the centenarian's bed, took
his hand, bent over him and said in a loud voice:
"Dear grandpapa, I thought of singing a little song in
your honour, if you'll allow me."
The old lacemaker looked long at him, and suddenly his
face became convulsed. He tried to rise, and pushed his
grandson away with his hand.
"What do I see? Is it you, Oscar? Where have you come
from? I don't want to see you! You've ruined me enough as
it is! Fve nothing to give you. Go away!"
Gunnar Lekholm, on account of his costume and prob-
ably also his appearance, had been taken by his old grand-
father for the man who had caused his misfortunes. He did
not sing his version of "My grandmamma." He withdrew
hurriedly, while the nurse took charge of the old man. He
showed unmistakable signs of agitation, and had to rest
to conserve his strength for the receptions that lay before
him.
After his relations had paid their respects to the lacemaker,
a deputation from the craftsmen's association of the town
had called to offer its felicitations to the revered centenarian.
The leader of the deputation had brought with him an ad-
dress from the sister organization in the town where the
lacemaker had been born, and where he himself, according
to the address, had held a prominent and respected place,
never filled at any other time in the annals of the associa-
tion, as the Grand Old Man of lacemaking. Immediately
after the craftsmen's association the clergy of the town had
called en masse to offer their congratulations and call down
God's blessing on the old gentleman, who was so pro-
336 LACEMAKER LEKHOLM
nature of the party, despite their kinship, may have con-
tributed in no small degree to this result. Not only had force
of circumstances placed some of the members of the family
in a lower social and cultural plane than the others j but
even between the mathematician's sons there was so wide a
divergence of character and interests that their genuine
pleasure at meeting again could not make them enjoy one
another's company for long.
Moreover, there was nothing to drink. The absence of
alcohol made itself more and more felt as the dinner pro-
ceeded ; dish after dish was swallowed first without en-
thusiasm, then with indifference, and finally with positive
loathing. It may seem strange that the Lekholm family,
knowing the strength of Uncle Per's principles as it did,
could be acutely disappointed at the absence of schnays and
wine. But, as Tage Lekholm put it, "everyone has the right
to hope." And at the bottom of each heart there had been a
faint spark of hope. Uncle Per had made one concession
already that day in allowing the old lacemafcer to drink a
glass of wine with his descendants. That faint spark had
been finally quenched at the sight of the Vichy water which
was borne round on a silver tray by one of the blue-ribbonist
servants as an accompaniment to the hors (Poeuvre.
It would not be true to say that the dinner went badly.
But the glamour of a festive occasion was lacking the
eager buzz of talk, the impromptus born of wine. The
table-talk was the quiet, sober conversation of elderly and
middle-aged people who knew one another inside out. It
differed from the conversation at most other family dinners
in one respect$ no family stories were told. There was too
much in the history of the Lekholm family which certainly
could be discussed and commented on en tete-a-tete, but was
peculiarly unsuited to the subject of careless, unrestrained
dinner-table conversation. Misfortunes, tragedies, griefs,
shattered hopes lay in wait for the careless talker, like cracks
HAS AN IDEA 337
in ice ready to entrap the skater in the light-hearted execu-
tion of an outside edge.
Not even the force which had brought them all together
the centenarian lacemaker who lay asleep at the other end
of the house could pull them together, as an inspiring con-
ductor with an orchestra. It was, in a way, he himself who
had split the family and been the indirect cause of the catas-
trophes upon which everyone had to be so careful not to
touch. *
The mathematician took in Uncle Per's housekeeper, a
lady of fifty belonging to the community, in a black silk
dress, white guimpe and spectacles. They at once plunged
into an animated conversation about the cost of living and
market prices in Uncle Per's town compared with those
which, unfortunately, prevailed in the mathematician's. On
his left he had his eldest son, Lars, with whom he gradually
became involved in a skirmish over the proposed disarma-
ment scheme. At times the argument between the two so
like one another in appearance that the one seemed only an
older edition of the other became so vehement that they
banged the table with their forks.
Tage, at the end of the table, between Lars and Dr.
Holmes, smilingly threw oil on the flames. He personally
had no views on the defence question, for the simple reason
that he saw no use in it 5 if he had had any, he would have
had no power of giving effect to them. But, like so many
other good-natured Swedes, he enjoyed witnessing an hon-
est stand-up fight, and tried, therefore, to prolong the dis-
pute between the two ex-soldiers.
As for Uncle Per and Gunnar Lekholm, Dr. Holmes
could not overhear their conversation, apart from a few dis-
connected remarks of the comedian. Uncle Per and Gunnar
sat on the same side of the table as himself, with Gurli be-
tween them and him. But from these fragments it appeared
that the two had somehow become engaged in a discussion
338 LACEMAKER LEKHOLM
on book-learning and its value. It appeared, too, that
Gunnar, on the ground of his own experiences and the
knowledge derived from years of acute observation and con-
centrated study, was more and more inclined to the view that
education was not so essential to human success as "people"
-by which he obviously meant the Lekholms had hith-
erto been disposed to believe. During a pause in his own
conversation with Gurli, Karl heard Gunnar say:
"Look at Anders de Wahl! He never went to the uni-
versity! Look at Ivan Hedquist! He actually began life as
a waiter, like Bertil. Or Olle Winnerstrand! He started
behind a counter. Or Gosta Ekman! He sold nails as a boy."
"I know Anders de Wahl by name," said Uncle Per,
"and I've even heard him recite a patriotic poem on Skansen.
I recollect once seeing Gosta Ekman at some cinema. But
who are Ivan Hedquist and Herr Winnerstrand?"
"Hedquist!" Gunnar exclaimed ; "haven't you ever seen
Ivan Hedquist, Uncle Per? Then you haven't seen much in
your life!"
"Possibly not," Uncle Per answered, and a smile twisted
the corners of his mouth. Then he took up his knife and
tapped on his glass.
"As you know," he said, "I don't care for after-dinner
speeches. But I should like for once in a way to depart from
my principle and briefly, but with all the affection of which
a poor, frail, sinful human being is capable, welcome my
nephew, Karl Lekholm, back to his native land and to his
family, who have missed him for so long. And at the same
time I should like all here to give a thought to our relations
who have been swallowed up by the great land to the west,
and of whom, I regret to say, we have heard nothing for
many years. A hearty welcome, my dear Karl, and a silent
prayer for my brother Fredrik and my brother Anders's
sons, Anders and Henrik."
HAS AN IDEA 339
There was a long silence. Then Gunnar rose, glass in
hand, and puffed out his chest.
"As the oldest representative present of my beloved,
revered and gifted father's children, I should like, on be-
half of my brother Bertil and myself, to thank Uncle Per
for his sincere and kindly words about my two brothers,
their futures and their prosperity."
Bertil rose, too, and the two brothers lifted their glasses
towards their uncle.
Dr. Holmes, for his pa!rt, had scarcely regarded the absence
of wine and spirits as a grievance. In the first place, he was
accustomed to "dry" official dinners. The only thing he
missed was ice with the Vichy water he had asked to be al-
lowed to drink instead of the cider and ginger ale that were
served with the dishes.
In the second place, Gurli had been kind enough to put
him next to herself. And once upon a time he had been in
love with her. She might be said to have been his first serious
love. He and she had been twelve or thirteen in those days 5
for they were of the same age.
But his love had faded away when the dancing-master,
Herr Lindquist, had thrown them into one another's arms
at his classes. They had been of the same height then, and
had therefore been compelled to dance together. Gurli's
deficiencies in this respect had eclipsed her merits to such a
degree that his love had been nipped in the bud. It appeared
that her intellectual equipment was such that she could not
5arn the figures of the quadrille. Even at the rehearsals for
the dance which was to conclude the series of classes, in one
figure she had followed him several steps out on to the floor
when he left her to bow to the lady opposite, instead of
remaining where she was. He had been so angry at her
inability to learn the figures that he had turned round and
asked in shrill, unchivakous tones:
34O LACEMAKER LEKHOLM
f< Who asked you to come?"
At this moment, when he sat here by her side, he could
remember her deep blush, and the look of misery and
shame in her light blue eyes as she awkwardly retired to her
place. That blush and that look! He had seen them so
many, many times many, many years afterwards, when he
had lain awake at night full of anguished thoughts of the
sins he had committed in his life. That blush and that look
had been the expression of a heart-rending cry:
"You're killing me, you're killing me! You're tearing
my clothes off me before everyone and showing me in all
my miserable nakedness and clumsy lack of charm. How
can you do it, Karl you, who said you loved me?"
But life had been kind to her. A few years later Lars
Lekholm, when his heart awoke in due season, during his
first year at the Gymnasium had appreciated the kind of
beauty she possessed and her charm. Perhaps Dr. Holmes
had helped him a little 5 for once upon a time, when the
flame of his passion still burned brightly, if shyly, he had
confided to his brother what a wonderful woman she was.
Now Dr. Holmes sat beside her, wondering: What
would my life have been like if I had overlooked her in-
ability to learn the figures of the quadrille, and been faithful
to her? He felt great pleasure in being near her. She had
blossomed into one of those big, fair Swedish women with
tender eyes, a soft white skin which reddened with extreme
ease, and a pleasant, friendly smile revealing brilliant white
teeth. She was no beauty $ she had certainly been on the
stout side for some years past, and in the short skirts fashion
had dealt her a rather cruel blow at a vulnerable spot. But
her whole personality irradiated the good nature, the gen-
tleness, the tenderness of which he had met with so little in
his own marriage in short, motherliness. He sat and purred
to himself in the warmth that emanated from her, and he
HAS AN IDEA 341
was glad there was no wine on the table. He felt it would
not require many glasses to make him confide to her the
secret of his life. . . .
He had, for that matter, already confided to her a good
deal of which he had never spoken to anyone else. She had
asked him if he was married and if he had any children.
And he had told her about his marriage.
She for her part had explained to him her views on di-
vorce when there were children. There was nothing new in
her ideas, but what she had to say was not merely the out-
pouring of a warm heart, but seemed to be, at the same time,
the fruit of a long and wide experience. This surprised
him.
"My dear Gurli," he said, "how can you claim to be an
expert when youVe only one child yourself?"
"Yes, we've only one child. But Fm a child-lover. I'd
have liked to have swarms of them, a dozen. I'd have liked
to have them crawling over me as I lay and hanging on to
my skirts when I walked and worked. We might have been
rather hard up though I don't think so, with such a won-
derful husband as Lars. But what would that have mat-
tered? Where there's love there's everything else. And
there's love, you can be sure of that. We're a funny lot, we
Lekholms."
She laughed.
"I always say c us' and c we' when I talk about the Lek-
holms, though I haven't a drop of Lekholm blood in me.
But really, I have to pinch myself hard to remember that
I'm not a Lekholm at all, but a Svensson. Yes, there's
something curious about us Lekholms 5 we have so few chil-
dren. What can be the reason? Here's grandpapa having
his hundredth birthday, and there wasn't one little great-
grandchild to go into his room this morning in a light blue
dress or white sailor's uniform with long trousers and hand
342 LACEMAKER LEKHOLM
him a little bouquet and sing him a little song. We Lek-
holms are simply incapable of producing such a charming
little scene. If you count them up, there aren't so many
great-grandchildren who could have come.
"Of course there's Staffan. I should so much have liked
him to come. But he's got an examination very soon. And
you know no, of course you don't how severe the com-
petition is, and that he has to be at it all the time. And then
there's you; you've no children. There are Sven's two girls,
of course, and I wrote to Greta his wife, from whom he's
divorced and asked her to let us have them here. But she's
bitter against Sven. . . . Tage can't afford to have any
children yet. No one knows anything about Bertil's affairs.
He isn't married.
"Gunnar has a little girl, but she isn't well just now. I
rang up Olga and asked. But we very seldom meet. For one
thing, we live at Salts] obaden and they on Soder. Though
I must admit that it isn't the distance that keeps us apart.
Nothing does, for that matter. Heaven knows Lars and I
aren't snobs. But they seem to think we are. That makes
the atmosphere so strained and uncomfortable, and if one
tries to explain matters that makes it still worse. They take
it as meaning that we are snobs. Anyhow, the result of it all
was that I didn't feel I could insist on Gunnar's little girl
coming with us. I don't believe she's really ill. But think
how delightful it would have been if we could have gone in
to the old master-lacemaker this morning with a little boy
or girl in blue! And now, to return to what we were talking
about: our resources in the way of little light blue angels are
limited. Can you explain it you, who are a doctor?"
But Dr. Holmes could not. Gurli laughed.
"After all, the Lekholm family isn't so fearfully ancient
that it need die out of senile decay. Now, supposing Sven
gets married now to that extraordinary woman he met in
the train, surely we may hope for children. And do you
HAS AN IDEA 343
know, while I Ve been sitting here talking, Fve had a simply
brilliant idea. You must look out for a wife, now you're
home. When you come up to Stockholm I'll find you a
wife a Swedish wife, a wife for whom I can go bail that
she's as good as gold. Indeed I will!
"And I may as well tell you," she said, looking him in
the face with a serious expression, "that I can be as obstinate
as sin when I like. And in such a way that you'll never find
out how obstinate IVe been. Lars hasn't seen it to this day.
And I can be severe too. Staffan knows that. He can twist
his father round his little finger, but not me.
"I'm sure you'll like Staffan," she went on. "Of course,
as he's our only child, I'm a proud mother and think him
simply wonderful. But you mustn't think he's a mother's
darling for that reason. Indeed, I think that if I were young
now myself he's just the sort of man I'd fall in love with.
He looks like turning out a man in the full sense of the
word: egotistical always; ruthless when need be; quick and
resolute when need be; tenacious and hard-working and
stubborn, but not objectionably so; just a little bit of a
pusher, perhaps, I feel, when I shut my eyes and get him in
proper perspective. A promising boy, and it would be a pity
if he didn't make good."
She was silent for a moment; then she shook her head.
"It's a pity to have only one child. One ought to have a
houseful of them. Then one wouldn't worry so much about
each one separately. Not to speak of another thing if any-
thing should happen to one's only child! I simply won't
think about having such a thought, Karl. I daren't. And as
for Lars, I simply can't imagine what he'd do."
She shook her head again and looked hopelessly at her
wineglassful of ginger ale. She leant towards him so that
Uncle Per, who had taken her in, might not hear.
"If only there was a glass of wine instead. . . . No, we'll
talk about something else. Tell me about American women.
344 LACEMAKER LEKHOLM
One hears so many different accounts of them. And it
would be nice to hear the truth for once."
Dr. Holmes prepared to do as she bade him. He had just
begun to explain the historical conditions which had pro-
duced the American women of today, when he noticed that
the rest of the table had stopped talking. He looked up. All
were looking rather anxiously at Bertil, who sat alone at
one end of the table, with Gunnar on his right and Peter
Paul on his left. He tapped shyly on his glass and rose
slowly, unfolding a few sheets of paper as he did so.
Bertil was the only one of the party who was in evening
dress % brand-new dress-suit made in honour of the occa-
sion. Like Tage and Peter Paul, Bertil took after his
mother's family. He was as dark as Hulda StaPs gipsy
tribe, with dark dreamy eyes, sharp irregular features and
a lean body, all bone and sinews. His dark complexion had
acquired a sickly grey colour from years of night duty and
bad air. The whole of his person his height and sinewy
leanness on the one side, the lofty forehead and dreamy eyes
on the other expressed the violent contrasts of a waiter's
life a ceaseless rush of work for a few short hours, and
idle loafing for the rest of the day, leaning against a wall
or a pillar, waiting for guests.
From long habit he had put his napkin under his left
arm. He looked straight in front of him with vague, bright
eyes, cleared his throat once or twice, and began to declaim
in a quavering voice. . . .
Dr. Holmes could hardly bear to listen. It was painful,
and worse appalling! Poor, poor Bertil! That it should
be so hard for a man to see himself as others saw him! The
em-pressement with which he flung out those well-worn
metaphors, which might have contained some shred of di-
rect inspiration a hundred years ago, in a voice that grew
more resonant and confident as he went on! That voice,
quivering with deep, genuine feeling, which seemed to be-
HAS AN IDEA 345
lieve itself to be conveying to the world a message hitherto
unheard ! What a succes fou he must win before his audiences
of mocking students, mounted on a chair amid clouds of
tobacco smoke and the steam of hot whiskies! Poor Bertil!
and yet, perhaps, lucky Bertil, who in his blind instinct of
self-expression saw neither the cruel enjoyment behind the
drink-inflamed masks nor himself in all his monstrous,
pathetic absurdity!
He could not say what train of thought he had followed,
but his last evening in New York before he sailed had come
into his mind. He had been to the Theatre Guild and seen
a play of Tolstoy's the story of a strong young Russian
peasant who had lived a life of sin, gone from sin to crime,
and had at last been found out. During the last act Dr.
Holmes had been exasperated at the obstinacy with which
Tolstoy had made the converted sinner go from one person
to another, bend low before him and beg for forgiveness.
It had ruined the dramatic effect and made the last act un-
bearably tedious.
But now he understood what the old Russian meant. It
was as though a sudden flash had thrown light on the most
secret recesses of his mind. Atonement can be won only
through a humility that never wearies of asking for forgive-
ness that was what Tolstoy meant! Atonement was to let
God and the whole world know what was in the depths of
one's heart. Atonement was to stand naked in the market-
place and say: This is what I am like, my brothers and sis-
ters, see what a miserable creature I am!
And as these thoughts passed through his mind, Dr.
Holmes realized what he himself must do before he left
his native land again. His father must release him from the
promise he had given up in the tower room. He must show
himself as he really was to all these people who now sat
round him. He must tell them the truth before he sailed.
That was the only way to the atonement for which he had
346 LACEMAKER LEKHOLM
yearned and agonized all these years. There was no
other. . . .
Bertil raised his voice and changed his metre. He was
just declaiming the line "Hark! herald voices in east and
west!" when voices were actually heard in the hall. The
next moment the door was flung open and Sven Lekholm
entered the drawing-room, dressed in a blue lounge suit.
Entirely absorbed in himself, he rudely interrupted his
cousin's recitation, and, as if they had been thinking of
nothing but him all day, he said:
"Well, here I am!"
They all turned round and stared at him.
"How did you get here?" someone asked.
"How did I get here? That oughtn't to be so hard to
guess. There aren't so many possibilities. I came partly by
train and partly by car. I nearly had a smash. It's freezing,
and the ruts are something awful. But we won't talk about
that now. It's all settled!"
The old mathematician pushed his face forward towards
Sven like a man who has difficulty in deciphering a small
handwriting.
"What's settled, my boy?"
"My invention. I'm off to America on Saturday."
His father sat straight up in his chair and folded his arms
across his chest.
"Do you mean that it's all fixed up? That your invention
whatever it is is complete?"
"Not yet! But it's so near completion that they think
it worth while to let me carry out experiments at their ex-
pense."
The old mathematician nodded several times as though
in greeting to his old companion in life scepticism. But he
said nothing.
A place was laid for the new-comer, and while Bertil con-
HAS AN IDEA 347
tinued to recite his interrupted poem in honour of the cen-
tenarian, Sven swallowed his turtle soup with the haste of
a man who is accustomed to dine alone at restaurants.
The dinner had begun at five o'clock, and at half-past
six they rose from table after the mathematician had ex-
pressed their thanks to the host. In doing so, he invited all
present to his own seventieth birthday festivities on Decem-
ber 28th. A twinkle in his steel-grey eyes gave promise of
the liquid hospitality that had been lacking on the present
occasion.
But even satiety produces a kind of intoxication, and this
was accentuated by the poisons contained in strong coffee
and black cigars. The feeling of sleepy comfort during the
first half-hour after the meal was suddenly transformed
into an urge to activity, a nervous restlessness, which, in the
absence of liqueurs or whiskies, demanded an outlet.
Gunnar proposed to his cousins that they should resurrect
the exciting games of their childhood and give a circus
performance, as they had so often done in the large attic
over Uncle Anders's small flat.
The proposal was at first received with a noticeable lack
of enthusiasm. But Gunnar, who had had sufficient foresight
to bring a bottle of brandy in his overcoat pocket, and went
out and took a pull at it at intervals, at last succeeded in
persuading the others, thanks to his own induced enthu-
siasm, the approval of the mathematician and Uncle Per,
and, not least, the sporting instinct, the reluctance to sit and
sulk, which characterized the Lekholms like most other
Swedes.
The table and chairs were pushed back against the walls
so as to leave the floor space free. Bertil took the part of
manager in the little ticket-office represented by the
drawing-room doorway; the audience were Uncle Per, the
mathematician, the housekeeper with her spectacles and
348 LACEMAKER LEKHOLM
guimpe, and Gurli. Uncle Per's room, whose walls were
adorned with an enlarged photograph of Waldenstrom
and a Christ's head, was the stable. The horses Lars, Karl,
Sven and Peter Paul were brought in unharnessed by
Gunnar Lekholm, who had borrowed Uncle Per's tall hat
and tied a string to his walking-stick to serve as a whip. He
had borrowed an old tin trumpet which had been preserved
from "the Count's" childhood, and blew one crashing march
after another on this instrument. Gunnar Lekholm was not
only ringmaster, but also clown, barefoot dancer and singer
to lute accompaniment.
As the performance went on, the players became more
inspired. Between each turn, at Gunnar's orders, the arena
was raked over by Bertil with a little flower-pot rake which
the actor's keen eye, on the look-out for properties, had
detected in the window by Uncle Per's writing-table. Lars,
in an unbrushed old top-hat, came dancing in on a stick as
riding-master. "The Count" displayed his ability to turn
cartwheels and even to walk a few steps on his hands. Karl
could spit, in the American style, right into the middle of a
large sheet of paper hung up on the wall between the dining-
room windows. He did not fail once, and the applause, at
first hesitating, compelled him to repeat the performance
till he could continue no longer.
The star member of the troupe was of course Gunnar.
He crept in and out of the dressing-room (the kitchen), now
as black in the face as a nigger, now as white as a floured
angel. As the last item of the programme he sang a few old
music-hall songs. He had just begun an old Danish music-
hall song dating from the end of the nineteenth century
about a little girl who was fascinated by military music and
soldiers and finally came to grief a song which seemed to
link up Hulda Zuleima with the centenary festivity she was
not attending when the telephone bell rang in Uncle Per's
room: two short signals, indicating a trunk call.
HAS AN IDEA 349
Uncle Per rose from his seat in the doorway leading from
the drawing-room to the dining-room, and replied:
"Yes, Director Lekholm yes, speaking. . . . Oh, Di-
rector Lekholm from Saltsjobaden. Yes, he's here. . . .
Thanks"
He turned to Lars, who still sat with his "horse" between
his legs.
"There's a telephone call for you from Stockholm in a
few minutes."
"It's Staffan," said Gurli. "He said he might ring up
when he got home this evening."
Gunnar had to repeat the first verse of the song about
the little Danish girl who was so fascinated by military
music.
Then the two short signals were heard again. Lars went
to the telephone, and Gurli accompanied him. "I'd like to
say a few words too," she said.
Lars put the receiver to his ear.
"Yes, speaking. . . . What? the Maria Hospital. . . .
Staffan. . . ."
His knees seemed to give way under him. The receiver
fell from his hands. He sank down on the chair by the
writing-table, trying to clutch the edge of the table.
Gurli uttered a short, sharp, piercing cry: "His motor-
cycle!"
She put her hands to her forehead, then pressed them to
her heart and began to shriek:
"Oh! oh oh! oh oh oh!"
Karl Lekholm could not properly take in or remember
clearly afterwards what had happened during the minutes
that followed. It had all been like a confused nightmare,
the actors in which appeared to his bemused eyes in gro-
tesque, inexplicable attitudes. The only thing he knew for
certain was that of a sudden he was standing with his arms
round Gurli's waist, and that he had to exert the whole of
35O LACEMAKER LEKHOLM
his strength to prevent them both from falling. She swayed
to and fro in his arms as though drunk, shrieking all the
time:
"He's dead, he's dead ... you can say what you like.
... I know he's dead."
He had a recollection, too, of Uncle Per standing at the
telephone speaking, after Lars had dropped the receiver on
the floor.
There remained, too, fixed in his memory a vague im-
pression of Gunnar standing in the middle of the cleared
dining-room with his hand laid across the strings of his lute
and his face whitened like a clown's.
Someone had said:
"You've time to catch the night train if you go at once."
Then he half dragged Gurli out into the hall, helped her
on with her fur coat and hat, and escorted her down the
stairs. A car was waiting there. Lars was there already, by
the car, looking at his wrist-watch.
"Quick, hurry up ! " was all he said.
At the last moment Tage came rushing down with his
hat and coat on and jumped up beside the chauff eur.
Karl stood for some time on the pavement, bare-headed,
with the snow falling in large wet flakes on his hair and
face. . . .
When he came up to the drawing-room again he heard
Sven say:
"They'll catch it all right."
"It's too late," Uncle Per answered, and he folded his
hands in prayer. "He's dead. I asked them to tell me the
truth on the telephone. He's dead."
There was a long silence. Then Bertil suddenly stepped
out on to the floor and began to redte a poem in a suitable
vein. But before he had finished the second verse Uncle
Per raised his hand gently and interrupted him.
HAS AN IDEA 351
And no sound broke the profound silence that followed
but the heart-broken sobbing of the old mathematician, as
he sat hunched-up and trembling in his stall at the Lek-
holm circus.
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