I
I had not seen my old student comrade, Pastor Torelius of Lerkila, for ten years when, on a fine warm summer evening just a little while ago, we ran into each other on the corner of the sidewalk in front of the Grand Hotel. We had been at the same mess table at Uppsala, where I was studying something, I don’t remember what—probably the piano—but he was studying “divvers” and was a very serious young man, except on Saturday nights. For he had regular habits and was exact in everything, even in the matter of youthful indulgence. He had an excellent head, and as he was also of a good old clerical family and had more than one bishop, if not for blood uncle at least for uncle by courtesy, he had made his way quickly, so that while he was still quite young he had been assigned to a fairly good parish. All this has given him a predominantly bright and harmonious conception of Christianity, and when I saw him coming toward me on the sidewalk with arms outspread, as if it had been only a week ago we had parted at Taddi’s café, I should have believed from his expression that it was Saturday night, if I hadn’t known it was only Friday.
We sat us down at a table under the awning of the restaurant and were served with various refreshments. It so happened that we came to the end of our student memories more quickly than we expected, and our conversation dealt mostly with the present. I was informed that he had already been married for the second time and that his second venture promised to be as happy as his first would have been, had the Lord so ordained. He talked about his charming life out in the country, which he wouldn’t change for anything else in the world. He was fond of his congregation and believed that they in turn respected him. We also touched on the subject of present religious tendencies, and I asked, among other things, if he was much bothered by revivalists in his community.
“You mean the Independents?” he said. “No, I can’t say that I am. It was vexatious when the Archbishop came on his visitation and saw that more people streamed into the meetinghouse than into church. But I was new in the district, my predecessor was made the scapegoat, and since then conditions have changed for the better. There is a more conciliatory spirit, and though I can’t exactly say I have more people in church than before, at least—God be thanked!—there are fewer in the meetinghouse. Ah well, and there’s a special reason for that. …”
He broke off and looked very mysterious, but I asked no further questions, and we sat silent for a minute. On the sidewalk in front of us an occasional lean Yankee was parading amid the fat Stockholmers; from the river terrace came the last bars of a Viennese waltz, which left behind a strange stillness; and through the midst of this stillness burst the lowing of a cow. It proceeded from one of the coast boats which had just come in at the dock; a moment later we could hear the cow trampling on the gangway, another followed, and we saw a little old peasant leading both the cows after him on one rope.
“They are beautiful cows,” said the clergyman, “though not so beautiful as mine. I have the fattest and handsomest in the whole parish. But one must see cows in a green landscape to appreciate them. There is nothing I’m fonder of than my cows—among the things of this world, I mean, of course. But for that too there’s—”
“A special reason?”
“Precisely. Let me tell you the whole story, about the cows, the Independents, and my marriage. It all belongs together.