Ilka on the Hill-Top and Other Stories by Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen (the reading list TXT) 📕

happen to visit Denmark again, you must promise me that you will look me up. You have a standing invitation to my future estate."


III.


Some three years later I was sitting behind my editorial desk in a newspaper office in Chicago, and the impressions from my happy winter in Copenhagen had well nigh faded from memory. The morning mail was brought in, and among my letters I found one from a Danish friend with whom I had kept up a desultory correspondence. In the letter I found the following paragraph:

"Since you left us, Dannevig has been going steadily down hill,
until at last his order of Dannebrog just managed to keep him
respectable. About a month ago he suddenly vanished from the social
horizon, and the rumor says that he has fled from his numerous
creditors, and probably now is on his way to America. His
resources, whatever they were, gradually failed him, while his
habits remained as extravagant as ever. If the popular belief is to
be credited, he lived during the two last years on his prospect of
marrying the Countess von Brehm, which prospect in Copenhagen was
always convertible into cash. The countess, by the way, was
unflinching in her devotion to him, and he would probably long ago
have led her to the altar, if her family had not so bitterly
opposed him. The old count, it is said, swore that he would
disinherit her if she ever mentioned his name to him again; and
those who know him feel confident that he would have kept his word.
The countess, however, was quite willing to make that sacrifice,
for Dannevig's sake; but here, unfortunately, that cowardly
prudence of his made a fool of him. He hesitated and hesitated long
enough to wear out the patience of a dozen women less elevated and
heroic than she is. Now the story goes that the old count, wishing
at all hazards to get him out of the way, made him a definite
proposition to pay all his debts, and give him a handsome surplus
for travelling expenses, if he would consent to vanish from the
kingdom for a stated term of years. And according to all
appearances Dannevig has been fool enough to accept the offer. I
should not be surprised if you would hear from him before long, in
which case I trust you will keep me informed of his movements. A
Knight of Dannebrog, you know, is too conspicuous a figure to be
entirely lost beneath the waves of your all-levelling democracy.
Depend upon it, if Dannevig were stranded upon a desert isle, he
would in some way contrive to make the universe aware of his
existence. He has, as you know, no talent for obscurity; there is a
spark of a Caesar in him, and I tremble for the fate of your
constitution if he stays long enough among you."

Four months elapsed after the receipt of this letter, and I had almost given up the expectation (I will not say hope) of seeing Dannevig, when one morning the door to my office was opened, and a tall, blonde-haired man entered. With a certain reckless grace, which ought to have given me the clue to his identity, he sauntered up to my desk and extended his hand to me.

"Hallo, old boy!" he said, with a weak, weary smile. "How are you prospering? You don't seem to know me."

"Heavens!" I cried, "Dannevig! No, I didn't know you. How you have altered!"

He took off his hat, and flung himself into a chair opposite me. His large, irresponsible eyes fixed themselves upon mine, with a half-daring, half-apologetic look, as if he were resolved to put the best face on a desperate situation. His once so ambitious mustache drooped despondingly, and his unshaven face had an indescribably withered and dissipated look. All the gloss seemed to have been taken off it, and with it half its beauty and all its dignity had departed.

"Dannevig," I said, with all the sympathy I had at my command, "what _has_ happened to you? Am I to take your word for it, that you have quarrelled with all the world, and that this is your last refuge?"

"Well," he answered, evasively, "I should hardly say that. It is rather your detestable democratic cookery which has undone me. I haven't had a decent meal since I set my foot on this accursed continent. There is an all-pervading plebeian odor of republicanism about everything one eats here, which is enough to ruin the healthiest appetite, and a certain barbaric uniformity in the bill of fare which would throw even a Diogenes into despair. May the devil take your leathery beef-steaks, as tough as the prose of Tacitus, your tasteless, nondescript buckwheats, and your heavy, melancholy wines, and I swear it would be the last you would hear of him!"

"There! that will do, Dannevig!" I cried, laughing. "You have said more than enough to convince me of your identity. I do admit I was sceptical as to whether this could really be you, but you have dispelled my last doubts. It was my intention to invite you to dine with me to-day but you have quite discouraged me. I live quite _en garçon_, you know, and have no Chateau Yquem nor pheasant _a la Sainte Alliance_, and whatever else your halcyon days at the Cafe Anglais may have accustomed you to."

"Never mind that. Your company will in part reconcile me to the republicanism of your table. And, to put the thing bluntly, can you lend me thirty dollars? I have pawned my only respectable suit of clothes for that amount, and in my present costume I feel inexpressibly plebeian,--very much as if I were my own butler, and--what is worse--I treat myself accordingly. I never knew until now how much of the inherent dignity of a man can be divested with his clothing. Then another thing: I am absolutely forced to do something, and, judging by your looks, I should say that journalism was a profitable business. Now, could you not get me some appointment or other in connection with your paper? If, for instance, you want a Paris correspondent, then I am just your man. I know Paris by heart, and I have hobnobbed with every distinguished man in France."

"But we could hardly afford to pay you enough to justify you in taking the journey on our account."

"_O sancta simplicitas_! No, my boy, I have no such intention. I can make up the whole thing with perfect plausibility, here under your own roof; and by little study of the foreign telegrams, I would undertake to convince Thiers and Jules Favre themselves that I watched the play of their features from my private box at the French opera, night before last, that I had my eye at the key-hole while they performed their morning ablutions, and was present as eavesdropper at their most secret councils. Whatever I may be, I hope you don't take me to be a chicken."

"No," I answered, beguiled into a lighter mood by his own levity. "It might be well for you if you were more of one. But as Paris correspondent, we could never engage you, at least not on the terms you propose. But even if I should succeed in getting a place for you, do you know English enough to write with ease?"

"I see you are disposed to give vent to your native scepticism toward me. But I never knew the thing yet that I could not do. At first, perhaps, I should have to depend somewhat upon your proof-reading, but before many months, I venture to say, I could stand on my own legs."

After some further parley it was agreed that I should exert myself in his behalf, and after a visit to the pawnbroker's, where Dannevig had deposited his dignity, we parted with the promise to meet again at dinner.


IV.


It was rather an anomalous position for a knight of Dannebrog, a familiar friend of princes and nobles, and an _ex-habitue_ of the Cafe Anglais, to be a common reporter on a Chicago republican journal. Yet this was the position to which (after some daring exploits in book-reviewing and art criticism) my friend was finally reduced. As an art-critic, he might have been a success, if western art had been more nearly in accord with his own fastidious and exquisitely developed taste. As it was, he managed in less than a fortnight to bring down the wrath of the whole artistic brotherhood upon our journal, and as some of these men were personal friends of the principal stockholders in the paper, his destructive ardor was checked by an imperative order from the authorities, from whose will there is no appeal. As a book-reviewer he labored under similar disadvantages; he stoutly maintained that the reading of a volume would necessarily and unduly bias the critic's judgment, and that a man endowed with a keen, literary nose could form an intelligent opinion, after a careful perusal of the title-page, and a glance at the preface. A man who wrote a book naturally labored under the delusion that he was wiser or better than the majority of his fellow-creatures, in which case you would do moral service by convincing him of his error, inhumanity continued to encourage authorship at the present rate, obscurity would soon become a claim to immortality. If a writer informed you that his work "filled a literary void," his conceit was reprehensible, and on moral grounds he ought to be chastised; if he told you that he had only "yielded to the urgent request of his friends," it was only fair to insinuate that his friends must have had very long ears. Nevertheless, Dannevig's reviews were for about a month a very successful feature of our paper. They might be described as racy little essays, bristling with point and epigram, on some subject suggested by the title-pages of current volumes. At the end of that time, however, books began to grow scarce in our office, and before another month was at an end, we had no more need of a reviewer. My friend was then to have his last trial as a reporter.

One of his first experiences in this new capacity was at a mass-meeting preceding an important municipal election. Not daring to send his "copy" to the printer without revision, I determined to sacrifice two or three hours' sleep, and to await his return. But the night wore on, the clock struck twelve, one, and two, and no Dannevig appeared. I began to grow anxious; our last form went to press at four o'clock, and I had left a column and a half open for his expected report. Not wishing to resort to dead matter, I hastily made some selections from a fresh magazine, and sent them to the foreman.

The next day, about noon, a policeman brought me the following note, written in pencil, on a leaf torn from a pocket-book.

DEAR FRIEND;

I made a speech last night (and a very good one too) in behalf of
oppressed humanity, but its effect upon my audience was, to say the
least, singular. Its results, as far as I am personally concerned
were also somewhat