I

Over Martin’s table in the office an electric light with a green shade swung, like a pendulum, gently to and fro on its silken cord. It had been set in motion just a moment ago when he had lighted it. He stretched out his hand to stop it, but instead waited the time when the swinging should subside and die down until it was imperceptible. Lamps were likewise screwed up over the other tables, six shining green triangles swung to and fro in the semidarkness of the room, and lean writers’ hands fumbled at the windows after the curtain cords to pull them down and shut out the snow and the winter dusk. Martin loved these green lamps, which gave out no heat or bad odor, and whose glow had the pure and cold sheen of jewels; and he longed for the day when electric light should be cheap enough to make its way down even into the homes of the poor. And just here in this big low old room with whitewashed walls, because the house was old and had a groined gateway and low small-paned windows in the entrance hall where his office was, these green lamps seemed to him to fit in even better; he saw in this a symbol of continuous development, an unbroken chain of hands and wills, from those which had wearied long since to those which were now in embryo, the new inwoven with the old. Where all is old there enters an atmosphere of wretchedness and decay, and where all is new only that can thrive and feel at home which is itself new from top to toe, from pocketbook to soul.

And Martin was not new, his clothes were not new, nor were his thoughts. He thought and knew nothing great other than that which others had taught him⁠—various old gentlemen in England and France who were now for the most part dead. If these thoughts still brought him any joy, it was mainly because the times had seemingly forgotten them long ago, as if they had been written in running water. Other winds were blowing now, winds before which he preferred to draw up his collar over his ears; everything came back and all the corpses peeped out, but he did not care to see them.

The lamp had ceased to swing over his desk, and he returned to his accounting. He no longer contented himself with putting down ticks; he carefully scanned every item and added up every column. His first youthful antipathy to a mechanical task was long since conquered, and he had gradually come to learn that these figures were not, as he had first believed, entirely free from the imperfections which are inherent in everything human. On the contrary they were often encumbered with inaccuracies and mistakes; and when he now and again discovered such mistakes, he was glad at heart but felt at the same time a faint sensation of sorrow. He was glad because he had occasion to show his great zeal and because he could count upon his rightful percentage of the sum which his alertness had saved the state treasury; and he felt the dark memory of ancient sorrow when he recalled that he had desired a quite different sort of joy from life. Sometimes, too, he thought of the poor officials down at Landskrona, Ohus, or Haparanda, who had made the wrong calculations, perhaps under the influence of last night’s toddy, and who would now have to pay the difference. But this thought left him cold, for the years had taught him he must set limits to his sympathies.

It was warm in the room, the remains of a great birchwood fire glowed in the porcelain stove, for there was no inducement to spare the government’s wood in these times when one had to skimp one’s fuel at home. Von Heringslake, the chief clerk, who had an income of forty-six hundred crowns and performed his duties with the pleasant ease which comes with an independence, sat squatted in front of the stove and roasted apples over the embers. On his bald pate⁠—which his mortal enemy, Auditor Camin, asserted was the result of early dissipations but which in reality shone with the innocence of early childhood⁠—glinted the triangular reflection of a green lamp. The fragrance of roasted apples spread and stung Martin’s nostrils, and he was bitterly annoyed that he had not in all ways the same views concerning this and the future life as Heringslake, for then he would surely have been offered an apple. From Auditor Camin’s place sounded for the hundredth time the old pronouncement, “The country will never be right till we make the farmers pay for shooting licenses.” And down at the bottom table off by the door, where it was draughty and there was a wet odor of umbrellas and overcoats, the youngest generation was eagerly at work putting in ticks and trying at the same time to recount in whispers the orgies of last night and the number of punch bottles emptied.

Martin was still young, for in government service one ages slowly, but he was no longer one of the youngest and did not have to sit in the draught of the door. He had drunk brotherhood with most of his immediate superiors and in his turn did not neglect the duty of laying aside formalities with those who were younger than he. These ceremonies were wont to be performed at a general banquet in December. This was to occur in a few days, and the list of subscriptions was now being circulated in the department, but Martin did not sign it. He had other uses for his money, and there was only one of the newcomers with whom he would have cared to drink brotherhood, a young man who had a place just opposite him at the same table and in whom there was something familiar and appealing to his sympathy: namely, an absent and dreamy glance and the mechanical gesture with which he set down the ticks. Martin often used to talk to him about the way of the world and was pleased when he sometimes received intelligent answers.

As he handed over the subscription list without writing on it himself, the other looked up and asked in a tone which seemed to convey a touch of disappointment, “Aren’t you coming to the banquet?”

“No,” answered Martin, “I have another engagement. But we who are above conventional forms can assume that we have drunk brotherhood just the same.”

The other blushed a little, and they shook hands across the table.

“Tell me,” the younger man asked after a while, “why does Auditor Camin want to charge the farmers for shooting licenses?”

“I don’t really believe he wants that,” Martin replied. “He knows that shooting licenses for the farmers would raise the price of necessities even more than taxes. He is only repeating an old saw that he heard in his youth when he was an assistant. It has stuck to him because it expresses a collective antipathy, a class hatred; and commonplace men always need to hate and love collectively. Look out for that, it is one of the surest signs of an inferior point of view. He likes women, officials, leading actors, and West Gothlanders, because he is a West Gothlander himself; and he hates farmers, Jews, Northlanders, and journalists. It is true that the farmers are a bit stingy in recognizing the services which he and the rest of us perform for our country, and that is why he hates them. But in that they observe the same principle as all employers of labor: to pay as little as competition will allow. If there was a shortage in clerks, they would pay more.”

Von Heringslake, who had by now eaten his roasted apples and resumed his place at the table next to Martin, turned on his chair and surveyed him mournfully.

“You have no heart,” he said.

It was after three o’clock; here and there the men were gathering up their papers and going off. Martin got up, took his coat and hat, put out his green lamp, and departed. He had crape on his hat, for his mother was dead.