CONTENTS
FAIR HAVEN AND FOUL STRAND
THE DOCTOR'S FIRST STORY
THE DOCTOR'S SECOND STORY
HERR BENGT'S WIFE
The quarantine doctor was a man of five-and-sixty, well-preserved,short, slim and elastic, with a military bearing which recalled thefact that he had served in the Army Medical Corps. From birth hebelonged to the eccentrics who feel uncomfortable in life and are neverat home in it. Born in a mining district, of well-to-do but sternparents, he had no pleasant recollections of his childhood. His fatherand mother never spoke kindly, even when there was occasion to do so,but always harshly, with or without cause. His mother was one of thosestrange characters who get angry about nothing. Her anger arose withoutvisible cause, so that her son sometimes thought she was not right inher head, and sometimes that she was deaf and could not hear properly,for occasionally her response to an act of kindness was a box on theears. Therefore the boy became mistrustful towards people in general,for the only natural bond which should have united him to humanitywith tenderness, was broken, and everything in life assumed a hostileappearance. Accordingly, though he did not show it, he was always in aposture of defence.
At school he had friends, but since he did not know how sincerelyhe wished them well, he became submissive, and made all kinds ofconcessions in order to preserve his faith in real friendship. By sodoing he let his friends encroach so much that they oppressed him andbegan to tyrannise over him. When matters came to this point, he wenthis own way without giving any explanations. But he soon found a newfriend with whom the same story was repeated from beginning to end. Theresult was that later in life he only sought for acquaintances, andgrew accustomed to rely only upon himself. When he was confirmed, andfelt mature and responsible through being declared ecclesiastically ofage, an event happened which proved a turning-point in his life. Hecame home too late for a meal and his mother received him with a showerof blows from a stick. Without thinking, the young man raised his hand,and gave her a box on the ear. For a moment mother and son confrontedeach other, he expecting the roof to fall in or that he would be struckdead in some miraculous way. But nothing happened. His mother wentout as though nothing had occurred, and behaved afterwards as thoughnothing unusual had taken place between them.
Later on in life when this affair recurred to his memory, he wonderedwhat must have passed through her mind. She had cast one look to theceiling as though she sought there for something—an invisible handperhaps, or had she resigned herself to it, because she had at lastseen that it was a well-deserved retribution, and therefore not calledhim to account? It was strange, that in spite of desperate efforts toproduce pangs of conscience, he never felt any self-reproach on thesubject. It seemed to have happened without his will, and as though itmust happen.
Nevertheless, it marked a boundary-line in his life. The cord was cutand he fell out in life alone, away from his mother and domesticity. Hefelt as though he had been born without father and mother. Both seemedto him strangers whom he would have found it most natural to call Mr