Finn stood at the window in Cordt’s room, with his head leaning against the frame, and looked down into the yard, where the porter’s children were playing.  
He had come, as usual, to say good-morning and Cordt had told him to wait while he finished a letter. The letter had been sealed for some time, but Finn had not noticed it. He was watching the game down below and bending forward to see better.
 
Then the children were called in. He laid his head against the window-frame again and looked up at the grey sky. He thought of Hans, who had left for Paris that morning and was to remain abroad for two years.
 
[256]Cordt sat silent. From where he was, he could see Finn’s profile: the forehead, which was so white, the eyelids, which lifted themselves so heavily, the mouth, which was so tired and so weak.
 
“Finn!”
 
Finn started and turned round.
 
“Did you see Hans off?”
 
“Yes.”
 
Finn sat down by the window where he stood, with bent head and his hands upon his knees. He wound the cord of the blind round his fingers and unwound it again.
 
“I wonder if you will miss Hans?”
 
“Oh ... yes.”
 
“I shall,” said Cordt. “Hans represents the new order at its finest ... the hero in modern poetry ... the engineer, you know, whom they can never put on the stage without making him insipid ... because he never acts a part. He is strong and has the courage to employ[257] his powers. To us he often seems lacking in refinement and he finds it difficult to grant us our due. He has no ancestors ... he is the ancestor ... he founds a dynasty.”
 
“Yes,” said Finn.
 
They sat silent for a while.
 
There was no doubt in Cordt. He knew what he wanted and wanted it. He did not seek for kind words, but strong words. Finn knew this too. He sat like a culprit awaiting sentence and was thankful for every minute that passed.
 
Then they looked up into each other’s eyes.
 
They measured each other’s strength. And Finn was strong in his hopelessness, even as Cordt was strong in the hope which he could not let go, because he had nothing else to fall back upon.
 
“Do you know that you are a born artist, Finn?”
 
[258]Finn smiled sadly and shook his head.
 
“You are,” said Cordt. “There is no doubt about it. When you were travelling abroad ... there was simply nothing in your letters but delight at the pictures you saw. Your journey was one long progress through a royal gallery. At sea, in the street, on the mountains ... everywhere you caught life and hung it on your wall and sat down to look at it.”
 
“Did I?”
 
“Had you not been born with a silver spoon in your mouth, you would have been lost beyond redeeming. You would have become a painter ... no ... an author.”
 
“Would that be so bad?”
 
“What use is literature to us modern people?” said Cordt. “Where does it lead us? How does it form our lives? If the old poets had lived nowadays, they would certainly have been merchants, or electricians, or arctic navigators.... Just[259] look round you, Finn ... the books we read, the pictures we look at, the plays they perform: isn’t it all like an orchestra that plays for an hour while people walk about the grounds? Tired people, who like to hear a bit of music before they go to bed. The band plays its tune and gets its pay and its applause and we are interested in seeing that the performance is well and properly given.... But ... the poet, Finn.... A solitary horn sounds over the hills. We drop the plough and listen and look up, because the notes seem to us so rare and so powerful and we have never heard them before and know them so well. Then our eyes glisten. And the sorrow that bent our back and the gladness that held us erect and the hope we had ... all of that suddenly acquires color and light. And we go whither the horn calls us ... over the hills ... to new green fields where it is better living.”
 
[260]“Father....”
 
Finn raised his head, but then could not find the phrase for what he wanted to say.
 
“Don’t you think that the poet must be a man ... a man like the others, with courage in his breast and a sword at his thigh? Then he goes forth and sings them to battle and wedding, to dance and death. He is a part of the business, foremost in the crowd.”
 
“The poets also sat in the ladies’ chambers and sang,” said Finn.
 
Cordt nodded:
 
“They did that also,” he said. “But the poets we now have do nothing else. There will always be fiddlers as long as there are idle women and women with two husbands and wars and kings. As long as the stars wander so far through the sky and the children cannot catch the bird that flies in the bush.... But never[261] mind that, Finn. Never mind that. Just look at those who sit in the orchestra to-day.... Would you sit among them? They are sick people singing about their sickness. One is sick with love and one with lewdness and one with drink. One chants his faith on vellum, another sells his doubts in sixpenny editions. The feeble will of the one quavers in silly verses ... the other intoxicates his pale fancy with blood and horrors drawn from the olden times. Do you think that a free man would of his own accord select his place among those artists?”
 
Finn looked up with his quiet eyes:
 
“Who is a free man, father?... Are you?”
 
Cordt put his hands on Finn’s shoulders and bent over him and looked at him:
 
“You are, Finn.... You are a free man ... if you wish to be.”
 
“Father....”
 
[262]Finn put out his hands like a child asking for something. But Cordt looked at him inexorably. And so strong and radiant was his glance, that Finn tried to escape it, but could not; tried to speak, but was silent.
 
Then Cordt walked across the room, up and down, with great, calm strides, and spoke and was silent and never for a moment released his son from his stern grasp.
 
His words seized Finn and lifted him up where things were great and beautiful and bitterly cold, he thought; then let him fall again, till he relapsed into his own dark corner; and seized him anew and carried him aloft.
 
But, when Cordt ceased, it was to Finn as though he heard a flourish of trumpets from the clouds proclaiming that other words were now coming, greater still and austerer, more loving, ever heavier to bear.
 
“You are right, Finn.... I am not a[263] free man, I never was. I am bound up in the tradition that built my house and bore my race and, when I could not support the tradition, things broke for me. But that did not make me free.... Those were heavy days, Finn. I could not understand it, you see, and I fought to the end. I was young and strong and I was in love. You are fond of the old room ... you can hear the legends up there singing their powerful, melancholy song.... Remember, Finn, I am one of those on whom the legend is laid. I have lived in the secrecy of the old room.... I have stood, in my calm, proud right ... up there, where the room stood, unseen by any one except the master of the house and his wife ... always remote and locked and hidden in its time-honored might ... always open to him who owned it.... I left it like a beaten man. But I could not retire into a corner and mourn, for I[264] had you, Finn. You were only a little child then, so I could not know how your paths would go. I knew only one thing, that you would never sit with your wife up there, where people became so small when they sat down in the big chairs and where it was so pleasant and so safe. I was the last. With me, the tradition of the old room was finished.... Then I had to try if I could find my way in the world which I did not understand. I had to go through all that which I disliked so desperately and which had killed my happiness. For myself, I had nothing to gain: I was a bound man and a wounded. But I had you, Finn.... And I had to know if they were building properly and honestly somewhere behind all the dancing and flirting and singing which I saw before my eyes. Or if it was no different from what my eyes saw and if I should not be doing best to carry my child out into the[265] mountains and let the wild beasts tear it to pieces.... I was alone in this. Your mother went to live in an old house beside the old house where her happiness could not grow. There she found peace. But I needed no refuge. Where I was, I was at home: I only wanted to see the place where you and your children should flourish.... I did not spare myself, Finn. I sought honestly, south and north, east and west. I took their books ... the light ones burst like soap-bubbles in my hands and the powerful ones my thoughts had to struggle to understand. Not one of their green visions but has been with me in my room, not one of their bright swords but has flashed before my eyes.... I did not allow myself to be blinded by my own bitterness, or tricked by catch-words, or frightened by abuse. I went on as long as I could see the way ... and longer, Finn. I peered out into the farthest,[266] where those who thought as I did saw nothing but horror and insanity.... And Finn ... I don’t know.... Perhaps it was your mother’s God that helped me ... perhaps it was my ancestor, who himself had sailed into harbor and raised our house on new ground for many a good, long day. Perhaps it was your little hand, which lay so trustingly in mine, when you used to come to me in those anxious, lonely days and say good-morning and good-night.... I don’t know. I daresay it was my love for you that lifted me above myself. I climbed as high up the mountains as a mortal ............