Old Nick

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Title:     Old Nick
Author: Anthon B. E. Nilsen [More Titles by Nilsen]

"This where Petter Nekkelsen lives?"

The speaker was an awkward-looking lad, acting as postman in Strandvik for the first time.

"No, you muddlehead." Old Lawyer Nickelsen held out his hand for the letters. "This is where Peder, comma, N. Nickelsen, full stop, lives. And a nice lot of louts they've got going around, that can't learn to call folk by their proper names!"

Thor Smith, the magistrate's clerk, was of the same opinion, but liked a touch of honest dialect occasionally; he was not unwilling on occasion to contradict Old Nick.

"Honest dialect, indeed! Rank impertinence, I call it! But wait a bit, young fellow; in a few years' time you'll be wishing these understrappers at the North Pole, or some other cool place."

The two men filled their pipes, and took up their position on the veranda of Lawyer Nickelsen's house, continuing their discussion as to the merits of natural simplicity, concerning which they held diametrically opposite views.

The lawyer was a bachelor of sixty-seven, and kept what he called a home for young men of decent behaviour and tolerable manners. In particular he had, ever since he first came to the place forty-three years earlier, kept open house for the magistrate's clerks successively, taking them under his paternal care and protection from their first entering on their duties in the town.

Smith and Nickelsen sat on the veranda, but somehow the discussion fell curiously flat. Smith was unusually absent and uncommunicative, to such a degree that Nickelsen at last asked him point blank what was the matter.

"Oh, nothing. H'm. I say, Nickelsen, that fellow Prois--he's an intolerable old curmudgeon."

"Oho, so that's the trouble! Won't have you for a son-in-law, what?"

"Oh, don't talk nonsense."

Smith stepped aside, and scraped out the tobacco from the pipe he had just filled, but Old Nick's searching glance perceived that he had flushed up to the roots of his hair.

"My dear Smith, I agree with you that Tulla Prois is a charming girl. A pity, though, they couldn't find another name to give her. They were making songs about it last winter."

"Oh, don't drag in that silly stuff, Nickelsen, for Heaven's sake. I can't see anything funny in it myself."

Old Nick laid down his pipe and put on his glasses, and sat watching the other with an expression only half serious. He found himself hard put to it not to laugh. At last, finding nothing more suitable to say, he ventured in a tone of unnatural innocence: "Smith, what do you say to a drink?"

Old Nick was irresistible. Smith could not help laughing himself. "Oh, you incorrigible old joker," he said, giving the other a dig in the ribs.

The ice once broken, and under the influence of a glass of good Madeira--Old Nick invariably had "something special" in that line--Smith opened his heart, and revealed Tulla Prois in the leading rôle of Angel, etcetera, Papa Prois being cast for the part of hard-hearted father, or "intolerable old curmudgeon"--which amounted to much the same thing.

"I met him yesterday, just come back from Christiania, with a whole armful of parcels he could hardly carry. I went up as politely as could be, and offered to lend a hand, and what d'you think he said?"

Old Nick shook his head and tried to look interested.

"Shouted out at the top of his voice so all the street could hear him, 'No, I'm damned if you do!' Nice sort of father-in-law that, eh?"

"There's a dance on at the Seamen's Union to-morrow, Smith. You're going, I suppose?"

Smith brightened up at once. "Yes, of course, we must go; you must come along too, Nickelsen. But--but--isn't old Prois chairman of the committee?"

"Quite so--and for that very reason all the more chance of your meeting your--young lady, I was going to say."

"Then you'll come?"

"Me? Go to a dance, with my gout and all? Well, I don't know, perhaps I might. Get myself up spick and span, and have my corns cut specially for the occasion--I might pass in a crowd, what?"

The dance took place, and on the following day Old Nick sat pondering and trying to remember what had happened after twelve o'clock, his memory being somewhat defective.

No--it was no good. He could not remember a thing. He had a vague recollection of talking to Tulla Prois, and saying a whole lot of extravagantly affectionate things, but beyond that all was confusion.

"Only hope I didn't make a scene, that's all. H'm--Puh--weakness of mine--infernal nuisance. And I don't seem to get any better--oh, well, what's the odds after all!"

The final note of resignation in his monologue revived his inexhaustible natural good spirits, and with a contented smile he sat down to indite the following letter to Smith, who was, he knew, in court that day:

"DEAR SMITH,--For various reasons I find myself unable to recollect anything of last night's happenings. And being in consequence much troubled in mind lest something scandalous may have taken place, and my position of unimpeachable respectability in the town undermined, you are hereby invited to dine with me to-day, in order that we can discuss the matter and, if necessary, find some means of meeting the situation.--Yours,

"OLD NICK."

Old Martha, Nickelsen's housekeeper, shuffled along to the court-house, with strict injunctions to bring back an answer, and returned half an hour later with a scrap of paper from Smith, on which were scribbled the following lines in pencil:

"MY DEAR OLD FRIEND,--Ten minutes ago I said to a man convicted of illicit dealing in spirits, 'You are in culpa, my good man, and you may as well confess it first as last.' But at the same moment it struck me fairly to the heart that I might say the very same thing to myself.

"Yes, I am in culpa---- To think that dance should have proved the occasion of my downfall! So beautiful she was--and so gracious towards me, that my heart beat in quiet delight--until that old shark--that bottle-nosed shark, her father.... Ugh!

"He got me on to talking politics, and I, fool that I was, I took the bait, declared myself a Republican, Jacobin, Anarchist, showed myself a thousand times worse than I am, simply because the sight of his bottle-nosed caricature of a face turned me sour. Fool, fool that I was! I forgot he was her father, and now my hopes are simply done for. The old man was furious, said he couldn't forget me, and so on. So altogether I am utterly miserable, not to say desperate. For I know if I'm to lose Tulla Prois, then----

"I shall come round to dinner. Thanks.--Yours,

"SMITH."

Old Nick sat quietly for a moment, then burst out laughing, and went out into the garden to hoist the flag, by way of celebrating--well, had anyone asked him, he would probably have answered "the morning after the night before."

It was nothing unusual, however, for Old Nick to hoist his flag, especially of late, since Schoolmaster Pedersen opposite had taken to hoisting "clean colours."[1] The first time Old Nick saw this, he at once ordered a huge white sheet with the Union mark in one corner. And every time the "clean colours" were hoisted, up went Old Nick's as well, and his flag being of uncommon dimensions, hid from the seaward side not only the opposition flag, but a good deal of the schoolmaster's house as well.

[1] "Clean Colours"--the Norwegian flag without the Union mark, i.e. as repudiating the Union with Sweden.

At dinner that evening Old Nick did his utmost to make things cheerful, but in vain; Smith was miserable, and miserable he remained.

"You don't know what feeling is, Nickelsen--or else you've forgotten."

"Oh, my dear fellow, I only wish I had a mark for every time I've been in love."

"In love, you! You don't know what it is."

"Yes, my boy, and seriously, too. I'll tell you what happened to me one time at Kongsberg that way. I was clerk to old Lawyer Albrektsen, and lived a gay bachelor life up there. The local chemist was a man named Walter, and had four daughters, one prettier than the others; but the eldest but one was a perfect picture of a girl, bright and cheery, and with a pink-and-white complexion, you never saw. Enough to turn the head of any son of Adam, I assure you. We went for walks and danced together, and were really fond of each other; in a word, the double barrel of our hearts was just on the point of going off--when an event occurred which severed once and for all the tender bonds that were about to unite Petrea Walter and yours truly.

"It was my birthday, the twentieth November, as you know, and I had a few friends coming round in the evening, as usual, to celebrate the occasion. The punch was made in the old style, with Armagnac and acid. Well, we got more and more lively as the evening went on, and one bowl after another was emptied. And then came the disaster; we ran out of acid. Punch without acid was not to be thought of--and there were no such things as lemons in those days. Well, the fellows all voted for going round to the chemist's and ringing him up for more. I tried all I knew to keep them from it, but they couldn't hear a word, and at last off we all went to Master Walter's.

"We lowered down all the oil lamps in the street on our way--this incidentally, as illustrating the distressingly low degree of civilisation in Kongsberg in those days.

"When we got to the place, the first floor was all in darkness. There she lay asleep, up there, my beloved Petrea! All dark and silent everywhere, only a faint gleam from the lamp in the shop below shone out into the street. I begged my friends to keep quiet, while I tried as softly as could be to wake up the man in charge. But alas, fate willed it otherwise. Carl Henrik, my old friend, was by way of being a poet, and never lost a chance of improvising something. He stood up on the steps 'to make a speech,' but just as he was going to begin, the door opened, and there was old Walter himself in dressing-gown and slippers, with a candle in his hand. Carl Henrik made an elegant bow, and reeled off at once:

'Good Master Walter, we confess
It's wrong to wake you up like this,
But hear our plea, we pray you, first;
We're simply perishing with thirst,
And since you're there, and know the stuff,
Pray let us have it--quantum suff!'

"Old Walter was furious. 'What the devil!' he cried out. 'Is the fellow mad?'

"I dragged Carl Henrik down from the steps, and went myself, hat in hand, and begged his pardon; said we were awfully sorry, we thought it was the assistant on duty. 'Well, and what then--is anyone ill?' 'Why, no, sir, I'm glad to say, but it's my birthday to-day, that's all.'--'Yesterday, you mean,' roars out Carl Henrik from below.--'It's my birthday, and I only wanted to ask if you'd let us have a little acid for the punch.'

"'I'll give you punch,' said the old man, and landed out at me, sending me headlong down the steps into the arms of the poet; Carl Henrik urging me to bear up bravely against what he called the blows of fate.

"I met Petrea out next day, but the moment she caught sight of me she slipped across the street into the flower shop opposite. I waited outside a full hour, but no sight of Petrea--she must have gone out the back way so as not to meet me. Well, that was the end of the first Punic war, my dear Smith, and I left Kongsberg with a wounded heart--though I'm bound to say it healed up again all right pretty soon."

Smith had brightened up considerably by now, but, try as he would, he could not admit that Old Nick's experience as related was analogous to the present situation.

"I tell you, Nickelsen, this is a serious affair; as a matter of fact, we're--we're secretly engaged, Tulla and I."

"Uf!" said Old Nick; he had nearly broken the neck of a bottle of old Pontet Canet he was opening. Old Nick drank a glass, sniffed at the wine, put on a serious air and said solemnly:

"It's getting cloudy."

Smith hung his head; he found the situation cloudy.

"What do you think I ought to do? Go up and beg old Prois's pardon?" asked Smith.

Old Nick sat for quite a while thinking deeply, holding the Pontet Canet up to the light. "H'm--h'm." Then suddenly he jumped up, and slapped Smith on the back with a serviette.

"We can save the situation. I've got an idea. We'll get up a public banquet for old Prois. Yes, that's what I say. And we'll send out the invitations ourselves--you and I."

"But, my dear man, you can't give a public banquet without some sort of pretext, and what are we to tell people it's for? Old Prois he's warden of the Pilot's Guild, but he hasn't done anything notable in the town, that I'm aware of, up to now."

"Oh, we must find something or other. Let me see--he's on the Health Committee--no, that won't do."

"He lent a flag to the committee for the Constitution Day festivities," said Smith sarcastically.

"No, that's not enough. But wait a bit. He must have been on the Rates Committee twenty-five years now--yes, of course. That's the very thing. I'll be chairman, you can be secretary. Dinner at Naes's Hotel on Saturday next--make it a Saturday, so folk can have Sunday to sleep it off after."

Smith was very doubtful still.

"But suppose he thinks it's a hoax--then we'd be worse off than before."

"A hoax!" said Old Nick. "Well, so it is in a way, but nobody'll know except you and me. All the others will take it up as easy as winking. Only give them a decent dinner, man, and they'll be ready enough, all the lot of them; there's always room for a bit of a spread of that sort, and we've had nothing now for quite a while. No, all we've got to do now is to get out the invitations first of all. Hand me the pen and ink over there."

And the pair of them sat down and drew up the following in due form:

 
 "INVITATION
"A Public Banquet will be given on Saturday, the 17th October
1887, at 4 p.m., at Naes's Hotel, to celebrate the occasion of
our esteemed fellow-citizen, Warden Prois, completing his
twenty-fifth year of service on the Rates Committee. Menu will
comprise three courses, plus dessert and one half-bottle of wine,
coffee and liqueur, at 4s. per head.
                                "THE COMMITTEE.
        "NICKELSEN,              SMITH,
        "Chairman.               Secretary."

As soon as Old Nick had finished the draft, a heated discussion took place as to the price to be fixed per head. Smith was of opinion that four shillings and three courses was too little, and would appear mean to the guest of honour. To this Old Nick retorted that they could not well go higher than four shillings if they were to get the "rank and file" to come at all--this category including such personages as Pettersen the watch-maker, Blomberg the tailor, and other esteemed fellow-citizens, who would gladly share in the honour, but were forced to consider the limitations of their purse.

Smith also objected to the word "committee" under the invitations. "We're not a committee," he urged.

"Aren't we, though," said Old Nick. "You and I--that's committee enough for anything. And besides, it's the proper thing on these occasions, makes it look more official like." And so it was agreed.

Old Nick then set out on a round to gather in recruits for the banquet. First of all the parson and the doctor must be got hold of; these two agreed at once without any difficulty, being comparatively new arrivals in the place, and taking Lawyer Nickelsen's recommendation as sufficient.

Next came Halvor Berg, the biggest shipowner in the town, and known to all as a cautious and particular man, much sought after by the natives in all matters requiring assistance and advice. He was thus an influential man, and it was important to get him to subscribe, for the first thing people would ask was sure to be, whether Halvor Berg was coming.

Old Nick and Halvor Berg were good friends, so the reception in this case was good enough. They chatted comfortably for a while, more especially about Berg's boats, the Seaflower, Ceres, and so on, until Old Nick suddenly produced his list. "Oh, by the way, I want your name to this, Halvor. I ought by right to have taken it round to the old magistrate first, he's waiting for it, but it won't matter if you sign now while I'm here."

"Sign?" said Halvor Berg, and proceeded to study the document with great earnestness. Old Nick occupied himself meantime in surreptitiously setting the pointer of Halvor Berg's barometer down to hurricane level.

At last, having ploughed his way conscientiously through the invitation, Berg looked up, with a searching glance at Old Nick, who faced him without moving a muscle.

"H'm. H'mmm--look here, you know, Nickelsen, don't you think we could find some one else to give a banquet for instead of Prois?"

"Well, no, I can't see that we could. I don't know anyone else that's been on the Rates Committee for twenty-five years."

"He'd have been more use to the place if he hadn't been on it at all," grumbled the other.

"Oh, well, if you don't feel inclined to join with the leading people in the town on such an occasion, why...." Old Nick began folding up the list, but very slowly.

"Of course I'll come in--only I can't see what he's done to deserve it, hang me if I can."

"Look here, Halvor Berg, you can surely understand that when the parson, the doctor and myself go in for a thing like this, we've some reason for it."

"All right, all right! Hand me the list, then."

And he wrote with big, sprawling letters "H. Berg," at the same time inquiring whether an after-dinner toddy was included in the four shillings.

On leaving Halvor Berg's, Old Nick regarded the matter as settled; when this cautious old card had put his name, the rest of them would soon follow after.

Sukkestad, the dealer, was inclined to hesitate, and could not make out what Prois had really done either, but since Halvor Berg was in it, why, he might as well put down his four shillings too.

Apothecary Peters, who had only been a week in the place, was most grateful for the honour done him in inviting him to be present, and insisted on paying down his four shillings on the spot--at which Old Nick was incautious enough to remark that it was not wise to skin your beast before you'd killed him--Old Prois being the beast.

The rest followed as one man, and by the evening the list counted over sixty names, from all classes of society. Even old Klementsen, who had been parish clerk for fifty years, without getting so much as a silver spoon for his trouble, set down his name with a smile, albeit with an inward gnashing of teeth.

Thor Smith sat up in the magistrate's office, sweating over a taxation case. In the inner office was the old magistrate himself, with his wig awry, smoking his coarse-cut tobacco.

"Filthy hole of a place this is," soliloquised Smith. "Hang me if it isn't enough to make a man weep. I wonder how Old Nick's getting on with that list now? Oh, it's no good, I know; things never do go right." He glanced out of the window and up along the street, in case Old Nick might be coming along.

But--what on earth--a green tartan frock, and a toque with a white feather--she herself! He placed himself in the window, as if by accident--aha, she catches sight of him. And such a blush--and then she looks down. Won't she look up again? Yes, just once.

A smile of understanding, and she hurries away, as if from some deed of guilt. Thor Smith flattened his nose against the pane, staring after her as long as he could still see a thread of the green skirt, and for some time after.

He was awakened from his reverie by the magistrate himself, who came up behind and looked over his shoulder inquisitively.

"Well, and what are we looking out at, eh?"

"Oh, only those two funny old women over in the woollen shop; I never saw such queer things as they are."

"Nothing to look at in them that I can see," said the magistrate, who was by no means a woman-hater. And, taking his hat and stick, he bustled out.

A moment later Old Nick entered, flushed and out of breath. "Old man in?"--"No."--"Good!" He flung himself down in a chair and handed the list across to Smith.

"Puh! Devil take it, but this is hard work. And all for you and your lady-love. You don't deserve it."

Smith took the list and began counting the names. "Seventy-two--why, that's splendid, Nickelsen; you're a trump."

"Yes; don't you think I deserve a medal for it, what? Oh, by the way, though, we must hurry up and get hold of Prois himself now, or we'll have somebody else telling him all about it beforehand."

The esteemed fellow-citizen was busy down at the waterside, with a big pile-driver repairing the landing-stage. The men hauled at the ropes, while he stood by, calling the time in approved sing-song: "And one ohoy, and two ohoy, and three...." he stopped short at sight of Smith and Nickelsen approaching. He looked by no means pleased as he handed over command to Pilot Iversen, and told him to carry on with the pile-driving.

Tulla Prois was in the kitchen, making fish-balls; but on seeing the three men enter in solemn procession, she ran off in a fright to the attic, hid herself in a corner and burst out crying violently; evidently the matter was to be decided now once and for all. "Oh, it's mean of Thor," she murmured. "Why couldn't he wait till father was in a better temper?"

Meanwhile, Old Prois was wondering what on earth the two men could want with him.

He did not even glance at Smith, but when they got inside, invited them both to sit down.

Old Nick settled himself on a big birchwood sofa, with soft springs, into which he sank about half a foot deep. Above the sofa hung a picture of the "Cupid" (Captain Prois), with the port of Hull in the background, and all the seamen wearing stovepipe hats.

Old Nick cleared his throat a little, and started off with his introduction, pointing out the meritorious work of his host on the committee during the "considerable span of years" which he had devoted to the service of the community.

Prois sat dumbfounded, at a loss to understand what was coming.

At last, thinking he had sufficiently stimulated the other's curiosity, Old Nick came to the point:

"Consequently, and, I should add, chiefly at the instigation of my friend Smith, as secretary of the said committee, our fellow-citizens have empowered us to request the honour of your presence, my dear Warden, at a ceremonial banquet, to take place on Saturday next at 4 p.m., where we may hope to--er--find some suitable expression for our feelings--er, h'm--our appreciation of the fact that you have been for twenty-five years so closely associated with this important--this most important of our local institutions."

Old Prois flushed slightly, tried to look unmoved, coughed, and finally requested the pair to "take a seat"--which they had already taken--and then rushed out into the passage calling in a voice of thunder for "Tulla, Tulla!" Then out to the kitchen, to send the maid to find her.

Meantime Old Nick sat stuffing an embroidered antimacassar into his mouth, laughing till the cushioned sofa and the picture above shook in dismay. He made faces at Smith, who, however, was not in the mood to appreciate the humour of the situation, which fact seemed further to increase Old Nick's amusement.

At last came a voice outside--"Where the deuce have you been, child? Hurry up and bring in some cakes and wine at once." Old Nick threw the antimacassar under the sofa, and his face resumed its most serious expression.

"Excuse my running off a moment, gentlemen, but I--er--you must allow me to offer you a glass of wine, with my best thanks for the invitation. I--er--really, it's too good of you, I must say. I'm sure I haven't done anything special for the place, but--well, since my esteemed fellow-citizens are good enough to think so, why...."

"I'm sure, Warden, your work has been most arduous and most valuable," said Smith, "and as secretary myself, you must allow me to judge." He spoke with some warmth, hearing Tulla approaching with the wine--and indeed the girl was trembling to such a degree that the glasses rang like a peal of bells.

Smith greeted her somewhat bashfully as she entered, but Old Nick chucked her under the chin in his superior paternal manner, and asked how she had got on at the dance. Thor Smith nudged his friend surreptitiously as a sign to him that the subject was one better left alone.

Old Prois poured out the wine, expressing his thanks for the honour anew, and drank a glass in the kindliest manner with Smith, the latter flushing with pleasure. Tulla stood over by the piano, intently occupied in putting her music in order, and wondering what on earth it all meant.

Old Nick was suddenly seized with a fit of coughing, under cover of which he managed to empty his glass of Muscatel into a flower-pot by the window. Then, catching sight of a hen crossing the courtyard, he developed an enthusiastic interest in Black Minorcas and White Leghorns. Prois, it should be mentioned, was a keen fowl-fancier, and had a whole collection of prize medals from various exhibitions, of which he was particularly proud.

Naturally enough, then, Old Nick had to be shown the fowl-runs, though until that date his fondness for the tribe had been exclusively confined to the table. He and his host accordingly went out together.

This left Thor Smith and his Tulla alone, blessing the Black Minorcas and the White Leghorns impartially, and not forgetting Old Nick; while for the rest, they utilised the opportunity just as other sensible young people in love would, to wit, by settling down in the big sofa and exchanging kisses under the "Cupid," while the men down at the landing-stage chanted their "one ahoy, and two ahoy, and three...." The pile-driver had got to sixteen when they heard Old Nick's voice outside: "Yes, those white-cheeked Leghorns are splendid, really splendid."

And Thor Smith and his Tulla judged it best to wake up from love's young dream.

The Banquet was a magnificent success; Thor Smith's speech for the guest of honour's family being particularly notable for the warmth and earnestness with which it was delivered.

Dessert and the half-bottle of sherry having been disposed of, the general feeling, which had been somewhat dull at first, grew more jovial, and speeches were numerous. The coffee and liqueurs brought the diners to the stage of embraces and assurances of mutual affection. Even Rod and Hansen, the two shipbrokers, who in the ordinary way hated one another cordially whenever one closed a charter more than the other, might be seen drinking together, and assuring all concerned that never were business competitors on friendlier terms. Here's luck, Rod, and Cheer-oh, Hansen!

Smith and Warden Prois became quite friendly, not to say intimate, in the course of the evening; they sat a little apart, in animated discussion of something or other, but apparently on the best of terms. And they finished up towards morning by drinking eternal brotherhood and embracing each other.

The guest of honour was escorted to his home by such members of the party as were still able to keep their feet; and Old Nick, in a farewell speech, expressed the wish that he, the Warden, might long retain the memory of that evening in his head, which charitable sentiment was greeted with delighted applause.

A week after that memorable occasion Thor Smith went round to the Warden's, and presented himself in due form as a suitor for the hand of Miss Tulla.

He had previously arranged with Old Nick, whom he had visited on the way down, that if all went as he wished, and the matter was settled at once, he would wave a handkerchief from the garden steps, so that Nickelsen, on the look-out at his corner window, would see, with a glass, the result of the suit.

Scarcely had Old Nick arrived at his post, glass in hand, when lo, not one, but two handkerchiefs waved from the Warden's garden.

He walked up and down the room, rubbing his hands in keen gratification, but turned suddenly serious, and murmured to himself: "Ay, they're the lucky ones, that don't have to go through life alone. Well, thank Heaven, I've never been given to grieving over things myself, and that's a blessing, anyhow." He lit a cigar, and the passing cloud was wafted away as usual by his inherent good humour.

"Oh, I can't wait any longer; I must go round and be the first to offer congratulations." And off went Old Nick, hurrying down the street to the Warden's.

[The end]
Anthon B. E. Nilsen's short story: Old Nick

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