# Emanuel, or Children of the Soil/Book 3, Chapter 2

At last a solitary figure appeared on the sandbanks. It was Emanuel. He carried a light overcoat, and walked down to the village with hasty steps. When he caught sight of the expectant group outside the Meeting House, he hurried forward and reached the door in a few minutes. His face, in spite of the heat and his hurried walk, was unusually pale, and betrayed a high state of nervous excitement, which gave him an utterly strange expression. He greeted the weaver and a few of the other bystanders absently, with a silent shake of the hand, and then immediately entered the hall.
Here the conversation was abruptly brought to a close, and all necks were craned to see him The weaver forced a way through the crowds with his long, baboon-like arms, and led him to the upper end of the room, where he offered him the place of honour, a basket chair with a broken seat.
After a few words had been exchanged between them, the weaver mounted the reading-desk and took a hymn-book from his coat-tail pocket. He ​remained standing a moment silent, with the book in his hands, while he closed one eye and glanced round the room with the other, a sly triumphant smile, dedicated to thoughts of the Provst, stealing over his face, which was answered gleefully by the men at the back of the room. At last he said in his guileless voice—
"Now, friends all, I suppose we must have a song to open with! Pastor Hansted has no partikler choice, so we can e'en please ourselves. What will ye have?"
Different songs were called for from the assemblage. At last they agreed on "Forward, peasants forward."
"Yes, let's sing that," said the weaver, with a meaning smile, "that'll just suit us."
He gave the note himself in a stentorian voice, and the other voices broke out deafeningly on all sides. It was not song. It was a wild enthusiastic shout, a delight in their own lung power, which threatened to blow the roof off.
Emanuel took his place on the basket chair, where he sat leaning forward with his legs crossed, running his hands uneasily through his hair from time to time. He did not join in the singing, and was not at all at his ease. The dark, gloomy room, the many free glances, and this noisy discordant singing, had for the moment put him out of spirits.
Besides which, he was a prey to conscientious scruples, because, on account of unavoidable ​circumstances, he had not had an opportunity of telling the Provst that he proposed to speak here to-day. He had intentionally put off till the last moment saying anything about it, just as he had asked the weaver not to announce the meeting publicly, so that the Provst might not have time to prohibit him from taking part in it. But when, shortly before leaving the Parsonage, he sought the Provst, he found that he had left the house half an hour earlier to pay a visit.
Under these circumstances he thought it proper to lay his plans before Miss Ragnhild, with whom he had made friends again since the collision on the night of the party; though the old familiar terms were by no means re-established. Miss Ragnhild was not nearly so surprised as Emanuel had expected. She had heard one thing and another about the curate's doings from the old servant; besides, she had guessed something of what was impending from various utterances of his own.
If Miss Ragnhild was not astonished, Emanuel—to make up—was very much so, at the unusual severity with which the young lady spoke home truths to him, and advised him strongly against taking his proposed step.
"With all your faint-heartedness you are a curiously fickle person," she said. "Here you plunge blindly into something you know nothing about—merely because you are not satisfied with the position in which you find yourself for the ​moment. I have no doubt it is ridiculous on my part to try to bring you to reason. I know what you are when you have got a thing into your head. But all the same, I will ask you seriously to consider, what may be the consequences of such a step, both to you and to us, Mr Hansted. When you know—and you do know—how this weaver and his imitators have behaved to my father, one would have thought it would be superfluous to point out to you how peculiar—to put it mildly, and not to say downright improper—any approach to these people must appear, and in fact is."
Without giving him time to answer, she turned and left the room.
These words, and the tone in which they were spoken, caused the last scales to fall from Emanuel's eyes. He had by no means been blind to what the consequences might be in the Parsonage, and he was quite prepared for his days there as the Provst's curate, being numbered. But he had thought that people would at any rate respect his serious convictions—nay, he had even entertained a faint hope that the storm might end in mutual reconciliation. He now saw that every attempt to come to an understanding would be fruitless; that hereafter, not only at the Parsonage, but among all "right thinking" people, both here and everywhere else, he would be looked upon as a traitor, to whom no mercy would be shewn.
​It was therefore doubly painful to him, to have appeared to keep silence towards the Provst, in a way which might be considered cowardly.
Besides making him clearer sighted, this new collision with Miss Ragnhild had roused in him the self-confidence and readiness for battle which hitherto he had lacked. Now he only felt eager to break with his past once and for all. Even at this moment, when he was depressed by the discomfort of the gloomy room and the lack of solemnity among the assemblage, he was burning with impatience to arrive at a settlement, to leave the bridge behind him, and to take the step which would put his position beyond all ambiguity.
As soon as the song came to an end he rose and mounted the reading-desk.