Dry Fish and Wet Part 27

"MY DEAR OLD FRIEND,--Ten minutes ago I said to a man convicted of illicit dealing in spirits, 'You are _in culpa_, my good man, and you may as well confess it first as last.' But at the same moment it struck me fairly to the heart that I might say the very same thing to myself.

"Yes, I am _in culpa_---- To think that dance should have proved the occasion of my downfall! So beautiful she was--and so gracious towards me, that my heart beat in quiet delight--until that old shark--that bottle-nosed shark, her father.... Ugh!

"He got me on to talking politics, and I, fool that I was, I took the bait, declared myself a Republican, Jacobin, Anarchist, showed myself a thousand times worse than I am, simply because the sight of his bottle-nosed caricature of a face turned me sour. Fool, fool that I was! I forgot he was her father, and now my hopes are simply done for. The old man was furious, said he couldn't forget me, and so on. So altogether I am utterly miserable, not to say desperate. For I know if I'm to lose Tulla Prois, then----

"I shall come round to dinner. Thanks.--Yours,

"SMITH."

Old Nick sat quietly for a moment, then burst out laughing, and went out into the garden to hoist the flag, by way of celebrating--well, had anyone asked him, he would probably have answered "the morning after the night before."

It was nothing unusual, however, for Old Nick to hoist his flag, especially of late, since Schoolmaster Pedersen opposite had taken to hoisting "clean colours."[1] The first time Old Nick saw this, he at once ordered a huge white sheet with the Union mark in one corner.

And every time the "clean colours" were hoisted, up went Old Nick's as well, and his flag being of uncommon dimensions, hid from the seaward side not only the opposition flag, but a good deal of the schoolmaster's house as well.

[1] "Clean Colours"--the Norwegian flag without the Union mark, _i.e._ as repudiating the Union with Sweden.

At dinner that evening Old Nick did his utmost to make things cheerful, but in vain; Smith was miserable, and miserable he remained.

"You don't know what feeling is, Nickelsen--or else you've forgotten."

"Oh, my dear fellow, I only wish I had a mark for every time I've been in love."

"In love, you! You don't know what it is."

"Yes, my boy, and seriously, too. I'll tell you what happened to me one time at Kongsberg that way. I was clerk to old Lawyer Albrektsen, and lived a gay bachelor life up there. The local chemist was a man named Walter, and had four daughters, one prettier than the others; but the eldest but one was a perfect picture of a girl, bright and cheery, and with a pink-and-white complexion, you never saw. Enough to turn the head of any son of Adam, I a.s.sure you. We went for walks and danced together, and were really fond of each other; in a word, the double barrel of our hearts was just on the point of going off--when an event occurred which severed once and for all the tender bonds that were about to unite Petrea Walter and yours truly.

"It was my birthday, the twentieth November, as you know, and I had a few friends coming round in the evening, as usual, to celebrate the occasion. The punch was made in the old style, with Armagnac and acid. Well, we got more and more lively as the evening went on, and one bowl after another was emptied. And then came the disaster; we ran out of acid. Punch without acid was not to be thought of--and there were no such things as lemons in those days. Well, the fellows all voted for going round to the chemist's and ringing him up for more. I tried all I knew to keep them from it, but they couldn't hear a word, and at last off we all went to Master Walter's.

"We lowered down all the oil lamps in the street on our way--this incidentally, as ill.u.s.trating the distressingly low degree of civilisation in Kongsberg in those days.

"When we got to the place, the first floor was all in darkness. There she lay asleep, up there, my beloved Petrea! All dark and silent everywhere, only a faint gleam from the lamp in the shop below shone out into the street. I begged my friends to keep quiet, while I tried as softly as could be to wake up the man in charge. But alas, fate willed it otherwise. Carl Henrik, my old friend, was by way of being a poet, and never lost a chance of improvising something. He stood up on the steps 'to make a speech,' but just as he was going to begin, the door opened, and there was old Walter himself in dressing-gown and slippers, with a candle in his hand. Carl Henrik made an elegant bow, and reeled off at once:

'Good Master Walter, we confess It's wrong to wake you up like this, But hear our plea, we pray you, first; We're simply perishing with thirst, And since you're there, and know the stuff, Pray let us have it--_quantum suff_!'

"Old Walter was furious. 'What the devil!' he cried out. 'Is the fellow mad?'

"I dragged Carl Henrik down from the steps, and went myself, hat in hand, and begged his pardon; said we were awfully sorry, we thought it was the a.s.sistant on duty. 'Well, and what then--is anyone ill?'

'Why, no, sir, I'm glad to say, but it's my birthday to-day, that's all.'--'Yesterday, you mean,' roars out Carl Henrik from below.--'It's my birthday, and I only wanted to ask if you'd let us have a little acid for the punch.'

"'I'll give you punch,' said the old man, and landed out at me, sending me headlong down the steps into the arms of the poet; Carl Henrik urging me to bear up bravely against what he called the blows of fate.

"I met Petrea out next day, but the moment she caught sight of me she slipped across the street into the flower shop opposite. I waited outside a full hour, but no sight of Petrea--she must have gone out the back way so as not to meet me. Well, that was the end of the first Punic war, my dear Smith, and I left Kongsberg with a wounded heart--though I'm bound to say it healed up again all right pretty soon."

Smith had brightened up considerably by now, but, try as he would, he could not admit that Old Nick's experience as related was a.n.a.logous to the present situation.

"I tell you, Nickelsen, this is a serious affair; as a matter of fact, we're--we're secretly engaged, Tulla and I."

"Uf!" said Old Nick; he had nearly broken the neck of a bottle of old Pontet Canet he was opening. Old Nick drank a gla.s.s, sniffed at the wine, put on a serious air and said solemnly:

"It's getting cloudy."

Smith hung his head; he found the situation cloudy.

"What do you think I ought to do? Go up and beg old Prois's pardon?"

asked Smith.

Old Nick sat for quite a while thinking deeply, holding the Pontet Canet up to the light. "H'm--h'm." Then suddenly he jumped up, and slapped Smith on the back with a serviette.

"We can save the situation. I've got an idea. We'll get up a public banquet for old Prois. Yes, that's what I say. And we'll send out the invitations ourselves--you and I."

"But, my dear man, you can't give a public banquet without some sort of pretext, and what are we to tell people it's for? Old Prois he's warden of the Pilot's Guild, but he hasn't done anything notable in the town, that I'm aware of, up to now."

"Oh, we must find something or other. Let me see--he's on the Health Committee--no, that won't do."

"He lent a flag to the committee for the Const.i.tution Day festivities," said Smith sarcastically.

"No, that's not enough. But wait a bit. He must have been on the Rates Committee twenty-five years now--yes, of course. That's the very thing. I'll be chairman, you can be secretary. Dinner at Naes's Hotel on Sat.u.r.day next--make it a Sat.u.r.day, so folk can have Sunday to sleep it off after."

Smith was very doubtful still.

"But suppose he thinks it's a hoax--then we'd be worse off than before."

"A hoax!" said Old Nick. "Well, so it is in a way, but n.o.body'll know except you and me. All the others will take it up as easy as winking.

Only give them a decent dinner, man, and they'll be ready enough, all the lot of them; there's always room for a bit of a spread of that sort, and we've had nothing now for quite a while. No, all we've got to do now is to get out the invitations first of all. Hand me the pen and ink over there."

And the pair of them sat down and drew up the following in due form:

"INVITATION

"A Public Banquet will be given on Sat.u.r.day, the 17th October 1887, at 4 p.m., at Naes's Hotel, to celebrate the occasion of our esteemed fellow-citizen, Warden Prois, completing his twenty-fifth year of service on the Rates Committee. Menu will comprise three courses, plus dessert and one half-bottle of wine, coffee and liqueur, at 4s. per head.

"THE COMMITTEE.

"NICKELSEN, SMITH, "Chairman. Secretary."

As soon as Old Nick had finished the draft, a heated discussion took place as to the price to be fixed per head. Smith was of opinion that four shillings and three courses was too little, and would appear mean to the guest of honour. To this Old Nick retorted that they could not well go higher than four shillings if they were to get the "rank and file" to come at all--this category including such personages as Pettersen the watch-maker, Blomberg the tailor, and other esteemed fellow-citizens, who would gladly share in the honour, but were forced to consider the limitations of their purse.

Smith also objected to the word "committee" under the invitations.

"We're not a committee," he urged.

"Aren't we, though," said Old Nick. "You and I--that's committee enough for anything. And besides, it's the proper thing on these occasions, makes it look more official like." And so it was agreed.

Old Nick then set out on a round to gather in recruits for the banquet. First of all the parson and the doctor must be got hold of; these two agreed at once without any difficulty, being comparatively new arrivals in the place, and taking Lawyer Nickelsen's recommendation as sufficient.

Next came Halvor Berg, the biggest shipowner in the town, and known to all as a cautious and particular man, much sought after by the natives in all matters requiring a.s.sistance and advice. He was thus an influential man, and it was important to get him to subscribe, for the first thing people would ask was sure to be, whether Halvor Berg was coming.

Old Nick and Halvor Berg were good friends, so the reception in this case was good enough. They chatted comfortably for a while, more especially about Berg's boats, the _Seaflower_, _Ceres_, and so on, until Old Nick suddenly produced his list. "Oh, by the way, I want your name to this, Halvor. I ought by right to have taken it round to the old magistrate first, he's waiting for it, but it won't matter if you sign now while I'm here."

"Sign?" said Halvor Berg, and proceeded to study the doc.u.ment with great earnestness. Old Nick occupied himself meantime in surrept.i.tiously setting the pointer of Halvor Berg's barometer down to hurricane level.