“Your brother is a gentleman,” said Gabel to Billfelt.
It rained as if the heavens were opened. They crowded into a street car to go into the city and have coffee. Most of them voted to go to the Hamburg Bourse.
Martin, who had always believed the Hamburg Bourse was a place where the German merchants of Stockholm assembled to do business, found himself to his surprise entering a café that seemed to irradiate a fabulous magnificence. Here and there on the couches sat some of his former teachers and a lot of oldsters who lifted their glasses and nodded genially.
Coffee and liqueurs were brought in. There was talk of future plans. Most of them were to study law and expected to spend the summer in reading up. Enthusiasm rose, and rash promises were made to keep in touch and not forget each other. At one end of the table Gabel and Billfelt swore eternal friendship; at the other Jansson expatiated on his feeling for Moberg. It was only with difficulty that Josef Marin could be restrained from prophesying. When Josef Marin prophesied he would read out long rigmaroles of stuff, marriage announcements from the Daily News mixed with bits from Tegnér’s “Svea” and Norbeck’s Theology, all recited in the solemn monotone with which he imagined Elisha had chastised Ahab, and Ezekiel foretold the destruction of Israel and Judah. It was one o’clock, getting on towards two, and various members of the party had already said good night and gone off, especially those who seriously meant to read up for law. The crowd was thinning, the electric light had long ago been turned off, only a couple of gas jets were still burning, and the waiters stood with the air of martyrs as they yearned for sleep and pourboire. There was nothing to do but break up.
Outside, the glimmer of dawn had already begun to spread over the streets and squares. It was no longer raining, but the air felt moist and cold and misty, and through the mist the clock-face of Jacobs church shone like a moon in a comic paper.
It was hard to separate, and the company walked some distance down along the car tracks past the opera house. Out of Lagerlunden came a group of poets and journalists, and Martin looked at them reverently, wondering whether it would ever be vouchsafed him to become one of them. The student caps gleamed white in the night, whereupon moths came fluttering from right and left, slipping their arms under those of the young men and tempting them with promises of the greatest happiness in life, until amid convivial mirth and harmless joking they arrived at Charles XII’s Square, for Josef Marin had the fixed idea that he must prophesy before Charles XII. But while he was prophesying, Gabel caught the prettiest girl around the waist and began to waltz with her around the statue, Moberg followed and trod a measure with an elderly bacchante, and Martin stood with a pounding heart staring at a pale little piece of mischief with eyes as black as charcoal and wondered if he dared go up to her. But while he was wondering, Planius put an arm around her waist and scampered off, and Martin stood alone and watched them whirl about in the mist, pair after pair. But the morning breeze from the south now began to clear the mist, driving it across the river like white smoke, and the cross on St. Katarina’s cupola burned like the morning star in the first rays of the dawn.
A policeman loomed up from down by the docks and gradually came nearer, one of the girls set up a cry of warning, and the crowd dispersed in all directions. A stout nymph took Martin by the arm and went along with him.
“I must hold your arm, ducky,” she said, “or the cop will pull me in. Besides, you might like to come home with me, eh? I’ve a right nice place, you’ll see. I have a big lovely bed and sheets I embroidered myself. I sit and embroider mornings mostly. One must have some fun for oneself, and I can’t stand playing cards with mamma day out and day in like the other girls, and they swear and carry on and act vulgar. I don’t care about that sort of thing; I like nice agreeable boys like you. If you’re real nice and come to me and come often, I’ll embroider you a nightshirt for a keepsake—Oh, you haven’t any money! The hell, you say; that’s another pair of galoshes! Then you must come again when you have some. Just ask for Hulda. But tell me, is it true there’s a girl at Uppsala that’s called Charles XII?”
“Not that I know,” answered Martin.
“Well, goodbye then …”
It was not quite true that Martin had no money; he still had a few crowns left from the honorarium for a poem published in the Home Friend and had only made the excuse so as not to hurt Hulda’s feelings.
V
Martin lay awake a long time, unable to sleep. It was the little pale girl with the black eyes that left him no rest. She had stood there so pale and still and lonely; she had not taken anyone’s arm or laughed or chattered like the others. She had surely been seduced and deserted; she perhaps had a little child that would freeze or starve to death if she didn’t get it food and clothes by selling her body. How he would kiss her if he had her in his arms now, how he would caress her and give her the tenderest names, so as to make her forget who
