Wordsmith’s Reviews > Dreamers > Status Update

They would have it appear they were great men living n luxury w/bad stomachs due to extravagant over-feeding.Mack went to church n shoes that creaked & made a lot of arrogant noise walking up the aisle & even his creaky shoes were copied.There were some,indeed,who set their shoes n water & dried them hard so they would creak loudly at each step along the church floor.Mack had been the great model in every particular.

The fishermen worshipped him,the little traders of the outlying stations imitated his ways.Mack had stomach trouble,brought on,no doubt,by his royal table & splendid living & he wore a broad red sash round his waist as soon as it began to be at all cold.Soon the little traders of the outlying stations began to wear red sashes too,for all they were but insignificant folk up starts whom Mack graciously allowed to live.

Mack the all-powerful was in an intolerable position. His reputation was being undermined. For 20 yrs past he had been the great man of the place & every one had made way for him respectfully; now there seemed to be less deference in their greetings. And this despite the fact that he had been decorated with a Royal Order. A great man indeed he had been. He was the spokesman of the village...

The new pastor was found to be a fighting cock. This was the third time he had preached, and already he had persuaded many of the sinners in the parish to mend their ways. When he stood up in the pulpit, he was so pale and strange that he looked like a madman. Some of the congregation found the first Sunday quite enough & did not venture to come again. Even Jomfru van Loos was shaken & that was no small achievement.

The fisherman is a gambler. He lays out his nets or his lines, and waits for the haul; he casts his seine and leaves the rest to fate.

But now it was spring again. And the spring was a thing well-nigh intolerable to a full heart. It put the whole creation on edge and blew its spice-laden breath into the most innocent nostrils.

That was where Rolandsen ought to have stopped and withdrawn, but he went forward instead, and now, last year, he had begun to speak openly. Elise Mack had been forced to laugh in his face, to make this presumptuous telegraph fellow realize the gulf between them. Was she not a lady, who had kept no less a man than Captain Henriksen waiting years for her consent?

It was whispered that Captain Henriksen worshipped her in secret; but years came and years passed, and nothing happened. What could be the matter? Rolandsen had already made an eternal fool of himself three years ago; when she was only twenty he had laid his heart at her feet. And she had been kind enough not to understand what he meant.

Rolandsen had hopes. Alas, Rolandsen was always having hopes a very little was enough to fire him. On the other hand he took his disappointments bravely; none could say otherwise than that he bore himself stiffly and proudly & was not to be crushed. There was Mack's daughter Elise, for instance even she had not crushed him. A tall, handsome girl, with a brown skin & red lips, twenty-three years of age.

This room was Rolandsen's world. Rolandsen was not all foolishness and drink, but a great thinker and inventor. Rolandsen made no secret of the fact that he kept all this medical stuff about solely to mask the smell of the quantities of brandy he was always drinking. But that, too, was Ove Rolandsen's unfathomable artfulness....