But the change for the better did not last long, for Frithiof was
without the motive which “makes drudgery divine.” And there was no
denying that the work he had to do was really drudgery.
It has been the fashion of late years to dwell much on the misery of the
slums, and most of us are quite ready to be stirred into active sympathy
with the abjectly poor, the hungry, or the destitute. It is to be
feared, however, that very few of us have much consideration for the
less romantic, less sensational lives of the middle class, the thousands
who toil for us day after day behind the counter or at the desk. And yet
are their lives one whit less worthy of sympathy? Are they not educated
to a point which makes them infinitely more sensitive? Hood has given us
a magnificent poem on the sorrows of a shirt-maker; but who will take
trouble to find poetry in the sorrows and weariness of shop assistants?
It has been said that the very atmosphere of trade kills romance, that
no poet or novelist would dare to take up such a theme; and yet
everywhere the human heart is the same, and shop-life does not interfere
with the loves and hatreds, the joys and sorrows which make up the life
of every human being, and out of which are woven all the romances which
were ever written. No one would dispute the saying that labor is
worship, yet nevertheless we know well enough that while some work of
itself ennobles the worker, there is other work which has to be ennobled
by the way in which it is done. An artist and a coal-heaver both toil
for the general good, but most people will admit that the coal-heaver is
heavily handicapped. If in the actual work of shop assistants there is a
prosaic monotony, then it is all the more probable that they need our
warmest sympathy, our most thoughtful considerateness, since they
themselves are no machines, but men and women with exactly the same
hopes and desires as the rest of us. It is because we consider them of a
different order that we tolerate the long hours, that we allow women to
stand all day long to serve us, though it has been proved that terrible
diseases are the consequence. It is because we do not in our hearts
believe that they are of the same flesh and blood, that we think with a
sort of contempt of the very people who are brought most directly into
contact with us, and whose hard-working lives often put ours to shame.
About the middle of July the Bonifaces went down to Devonshire for their
usual summer holiday, and Frithiof found that, as Roy had predicted, Mr.
Horner made himself most disagreeable, and never lost a chance of
interfering. It must be owned that there are few things so trying as
fussiness, particularly in a man, of whom such weakness seems unworthy.
And Mr. Horner was the most fussy mortal on earth. It seemed as if he
called forth all that was bad in Frithiof, and Frithiof also called out
everything that was bad in him. The breach between the two was made much
wider by a most trivial incident. A miserable-looking dog unluckily made
its way into the shop one morning and disturbed Mr. Horner in his
sanctum.
“What is the meaning of this?” he exclaimed, bearing down upon Frithiof.
“Can you not keep stray curs off the premises? Just now too, with
hydrophobia raging!” And he drove and kicked the dog to the door.
Now there is one thing which no Norseman can tolerate for a moment, and
that is any sort of cruelty to animals. Frithiof, in his fury, did not
measure his words, or speak as the employed to the employer, and from
that time Mr. Horner’s hatred of him increased tenfold. To add to all
this wretchedness an almost tropical heat set in, London was like a
huge, overheated oven; every day Frithiof found the routine of business
less bearable, every day he was less able to fight against his love for
Blanche, and he rapidly sunk into the state which hard-headed people
flatter themselves is a mere foolish fancy—that most real and trying
form of illness which goes by the name of depression. Again and again he
wrestled with the temptation that had assailed him long ago in Hyde
Park, and each sight of James Horner, each incivility from those he had
to serve, made the struggle harder.
He was sitting at his desk one morning adding up a column which had been
twice interrupted, and which had three times come to a different result,
when once again the swing-door was pushed open, and a shadow falling
across his account-book warned him that the customer had come to the
song-counter. Annoyed and impatient, he put down his pen and went
forward, forcing up the sort of cold politeness which he assumed now,
and which differed strangely from the bright, genial courtesy, that had
once been part of his nature.
The customer was evidently an Italian. He was young and strikingly
handsome; when he glanced at you, you felt that he had looked you
through and through, yet that his look was not critical, but kindly; it
penetrated yet at the same time warmed. Beside him was a bright-eyed boy
who looked up curiously at the Norseman, as though wondering how on such
a sunny day any one could wear such a clouded face.
Now Frithiof was quite in the humor to dislike any one, more especially
a man who was young, handsome, well-dressed, and prosperous-looking; but
some subtle influence crept over him the instant he heard the Italian’s
voice; his hard eyes softened a little, and without being able to
explain it he felt a strong desire to help this man in finding the song
which he had come to inquire about, knowing only the words and the air,
not the name of the composer. Frithiof, who would ordinarily have been
inclined to grumble at the trouble which the search involved, now threw
himself into it heart and soul, and was as pleased as his customer when
after some little time he chanced to find the song.
“A thousand thanks,” said the Italian warmly. “I am delighted to get
hold of this; it is for a friend who has long wanted to hear it again,
but who was only able to write down the first part of the air.”
And he compared the printed song with the little bit of manuscript which
he had shown to Frithiof. “Now, was it only a happy fluke that made you
think of Knight’s name?”
“I know another of his songs, and thought this bore a sort of likeness
to it,” said Frithiof, pleased with his success.
“You know much more of English music than I do, most likely,” said the
Italian; “yet surely you, too, are a foreigner.”
“Yes,” replied Frithiof, “I am Norwegian. I have only been here for nine
months, but to try and learn a little about the music is the only
interesting part of this work.”
The stranger’s sympathetic insight showed him much of the weariness and
discontent and _Heimweh_ which lay beneath these words.
“Ah, yes,” he said, “I suppose both work and country seem flat and dull
after your life among the fjords and mountains. I know well enough the
depression of one’s first year in a new climate. But courage! the worst
will pass. I have grown to love this England which once I detested.”
“It is the airlessness of London which depresses one,” said poor
Frithiof, rolling up the song.
“Yes, it is certainly very oppressive to-day,” said the Italian; “I am
sorry to have given you so much trouble in hunting up this song for me.
We may as well take it with us, Gigi, as we are going home.”
And then with a pleasant farewell the stranger bowed and went out of the
shop, leaving behind him a memory which did more to prevent the blue
devils from gaining the mastery of Frithiof’s mind than anything else
could possibly have done. When he left, however, at his usual dinner
hour, he was without the slightest inclination to eat, and with a
craving for some relief from the monotony of the glaring streets he
walked up to Regent’s Park, hoping that there perhaps he might find the
fresh air for which he was longing. He thought much of his unknown
customer, half laughing to himself now and then to think that such a
chance encounter should have made upon him so deep an impression, should
have wakened within him desires such as he had never before felt for a
life which should be higher, nobler, more manly than his past.
“Come along, will you?” shouted a rough voice behind him. He glanced
round and saw an evil-looking tramp who was speaking to a most forlorn
little boy at his heels.
The child seemed ready to drop, but with a look of misery and fear and
effort most painful to see in such a young face, it hurried on, keeping
up a wretched little sort of trot at the heels of its father, who
tramped on doggedly. Frithiof was not in the habit of troubling himself
much about those he came across in life, his heart had been too much
embittered by Blanche’s treatment, he had got into the way now of
looking on coldly and saying with a shrug of the shoulders that it was
the way of the world. But to-day the magical influence of a noble life
was stirring within him; a man utterly unknown to him had spoken to him
a few kindly words, had treated him with rare considerateness, had
somehow raised him into a purer atmosphere. And so it happened that he,
too, began to feel something of the same divine sympathy, and to forget
his own wretchedness in the suffering of the little child. Presently the
tramp paused outside a public-house.
“Wait for me there in the park,” he said to the child, giving it a push
in the direction.
And the little fellow went on obediently, until, just at the gate, he
caught sight of a costermonger’s barrow on which cool green leaves and
ripe red strawberries were temptingly displayed. Frithiof lingered a
minute to see what would happen, but nothing happened at all, the child
just stood there patiently. There was no expectation on his tired little
face, nothing but intense appreciation of a luxury which must forever be
beyond his hopes of enjoyment.
“Have you ever tasted them?” said Frithiof, drawing nearer.
The boy shook his head shyly.
“Would you like to?”
Still he did not speak, but a look of rapture dawned in the wistful
child eyes, and he gave a little spring in the air which was more
eloquent than words.
“Six-pennyworth,” said Frithiof to the costermonger; then signing to the
child to follow, he led the way into the park, sat down on the nearest
seat, put the basket of strawberries down beside him, and glanced at his
little companion.
“There, now, sit down by me and enjoy them,” he said.
And the child needed no second bidding, but began to eat with an eager
delight which was pleasant to see. After awhile he paused, however, and
shyly pushed the basket a little nearer to his benefactor. Frithiof,
absorbed in his own thoughts, did not notice it, but presently became
conscious of a small brown hand on his sleeve, and looked round.
“Eat too,” said the child, pointing to the basket.
And Frithiof, to please him, smiled and took two or three strawberries.
“There, the rest are for you,” he said. “Do you like them?”
“Yes,” said the child emphatically; “and I like you.”
“Why do you like me?”
“I was tired, and you was kind to me, and these is real jammy!”
But after this fervent little speech, he said no more. He did not, as a
Norwegian child would have done, shake hands as a sign of gratitude, or
say in the pretty Norse way, “_Tak for maden_” (thanks for the meal);
there had never been any one to teach him the expression of the
courtesies of life, and with him they were not innate. He merely looked
at his friend with shining eyes like some animal that feels but cannot
speak its gratitude. Then before long the father reappeared, and the
little fellow with one shy nod of the head ran off, looking back
wistfully every now and then at the stranger who would be remembered by
him to the very end of his life.
The next day something happened which added the last drops to Frithiof’s
cup of misery, and made it overflow. The troubles of the past year, and
the loneliness and poverty which he had borne, had gradually broken down
his health, and there came to him now a revelation which proved the
final blow. He was dining at his usual restaurant. Too tired to eat
much, he had taken up a bit of one of the society papers which some one
had left there, and his eye fell on one of those detestable paragraphs
which pander to the very lowest tastes of the public. No actual name was
given, but every one knowing anything about her could not fail to see
that Blanche Romiaux was the woman referred to. The most revolting
insinuations, the most contemptible gossip, ended with the words, “An
interesting divorce case may soon be expected.”
Frithiof grew deathly white. He tried to believe that it was all a lie,
tried to work himself up into a rage against the editor of the paper,
tried to assure himself that, whatever Blanche might have been before
marriage, after it she must necessarily become all that was womanly and
pure. But deep down in his heart there lurked a fearful conviction that
in the main this story was true. Feeling sick and giddy, he made his way
along Oxford Street, noticing nothing, walking like a man in a dream.
Just in front of Buzzard’s a victoria was waiting, and a remarkably
good-looking man stood on the pavement talking to its occupant. Frithiof
would have passed by without observing them had not a familiar voice
startled him into keen consciousness. He looked up hastily and saw Lady
Romiaux—not the Blanche who had won his heart in Norway, for the lips
that had once been pressed to his wore a hard look of defiance, and the
eyes that had insnared him had now an expression that confirmed only too
well the story he had just read. He heard her give a little artificial
laugh in which there was not even the ghost of merriment, and after that
it seemed as if a great cloud had descended on him. He moved on
mechanically, but it was chiefly by a sort of instinct that he found his
way back to the shop.
“Good heavens, Mr. Falck! how ill you are looking!” exclaimed the head
man as he glanced at him. “It’s a good thing Mr. Robert will be back
again soon. If I’m not very much mistaken, he’ll put you into the
doctor’s hands.”
“Oh, it is chiefly this hot weather,” said Frithiof, and as if anxious
to put an end to the conversation, he turned away to his desk and began
to write, though each word cost him a painful effort, and seemed to be
dragged out of him by sheer force. At tea-time he wandered out in the
street, scarcely knowing what he was doing, and haunted always by
Blanche’s sadly altered face. When he returned he found that the boy who
dusted the shop had spilled some ink over his order-book, whereupon he
flew into one of those violent passions to which of late he had been
liable, so entirely losing his self-control that those about him began
to look alarmed. This recalled him to himself, and much disgusted at
having made such a scene, he sunk into a state of black depression. He
could not understand himself; could not make out what was wrong; could
not conceive how such a trifle could have stirred him into such
senseless rage. He sat, pen in hand, too sick and miserable to work, and
with a wild confusion of thoughts rushing through his brain. He was
driving along the Strand-gaden with Blanche, and talking gayly of the
intense enjoyment of mere existence; he was rowing her on the fjord, and
telling her the Frithiof Saga; he was saving her on the mountain, and
listening to her words of love; he was down in the sheltered nook below
the flagstaff at Balholm, and she was clinging to him in the farewell
which had indeed been forever.
“I can bear it no longer,” he said to himself. “I have tried to bear
this life, but it’s no use—no use.”
Yet after a while there rose within him a thought which checked the
haunting visions of failure and the longing for death. He remembered the
face which had so greatly struck him the day before, and again those
kindly words rang in his ear, “Courage! the worst will pass.”
Who was this man? What gave him his extraordinary influence? How had he
gained his insight, and sympathy, and fearless brightness? If one man
had attained to all this, why not any man? Might not life still hold for
him something that was worth having? There floated back to him the
remembrance of the last pleasurable moment he had known—it was the sight
of the child’s enjoyment of the strawberries.
At length closing-time came. He dragged himself back to Vauxhall, shut
himself into his dreary little room, pulled the table toward the open
window, and began to work at Herr Sivertsen’s translating. Night after
night he had gone on, with the dogged courage of his old Viking
ancestors, upheld by the same fierce, fighting nature which had made
them the terror of the North. But at last he was at the very end of his
strength. A violent shivering fit seized him. Work was no longer
possible; he could only stagger to the bed, with that terrible
consciousness of being utterly and hopelessly beaten, which to a man is
so hard to bear.
Oppressed by a frightful sense of loneliness, dazed by physical pain,
and tortured by the thought of Blanche’s disgrace, there was yet one
thing which gave him moments of relief—like a child he strained his eyes
to see the picture of Bergen which hung by the bedside.
Later on, when the summer twilight deepened into night, and he could no
longer make out the harbor, and the shipping, and the familiar
mountains, he buried his face in the pillow and sobbed aloud, in a
forlorn misery which, even in Paradise, must have wrung his mother’s
heart.
Roy Boniface came back from Devonshire the following day, his holiday
being shortened by a week on account of the illness of Mrs. Horner’s
uncle. As there was every reason to expect a legacy from this aged
relative, Mr. Horner insisted on going down at once to see whether they
could be of any use; and since the shop was never left without one of
the partners, poor Roy, anathematizing the whole race of the Horners,
had to come back and endure as best he might a London August and an
empty house.
Like many other business men, he relieved the monotony of his daily work
by always keeping two or three hobbies in hand. The mania for collecting
had always been encouraged at Rowan Tree House, and just now botany was
his keenest delight. It was even perhaps absorbing too much of his time,
and Cecil used laughingly to tell him that he loved it more than all the
men and women in the world put together. He was contentedly mounting
specimens on the night of his return, when James Horner looked in, the
prospective legacy making him more than ever fussy and pompous.
“Ah, so you have come: that’s all right!” he exclaimed. “I had hoped you
would have come round to us. However, no matter; I don’t know that there
is anything special to say, and of course this sad news has upset my
wife very much.”
“Ah,” said Roy, somewhat skeptical in his heart of hearts about the
depth of her grief. “We were sorry to hear about it.”
“We go down the first thing to-morrow,” said James Horner, “and shall,
of course, stay on. They say there is no hope of recovery.”
“What do you think of that?” said Roy, pointing to a very minute flower
which he had just mounted. “It is the first time it has ever been found
in England.”
“H’m, is it really?” said James Horner, regarding it with that would-be
interested air, that bored perplexity, which Roy took a wicked delight
in calling forth. “Well, you know, I don’t understand,” he added, “how a
practical man like you can take an interest in such trumpery bits of
things. What are your flowers worth when you’ve done them? Now, if you
took to collecting autographs, there’d be some sense in that, for I
understand that a fine collection of autographs fetches a good round sum
in the market.”
“That would only involve more desk-work,” said Roy, laughing. “Writing
to ask for them would bore me as much as writing in reply must bore the
poor celebrities.”
“By the by,” said Mr. Horner, “I have just remembered to tell you that
provoking fellow, Falck, never turned up to-day. He never even had the
grace to send word that he wasn’t coming.”
“Of course he must be ill,” said Roy, looking disturbed. “He is the last
fellow to stay away if he could possibly keep up. We all thought him
looking ill before he left.”
“I don’t know about illness,” said James Horner, putting on his hat;
“but he certainly has the worst temper I’ve ever come across. It was
extremely awkward without him to-day, for already we are short of
hands.”
“There can hardly be much doing,” said Roy. “London looks like a desert.
However, of course I’ll look up Falck. I dare say he’ll be all right
again by to-morrow.”
But he had scarcely settled himself down comfortably to his work after
James Horner’s welcome departure when the thought of Frithiof came to
trouble him. After all, was it likely that a mere trifle would hinder a
man of the Norwegian’s nature from going to business? Was it not much
more probable that he was too ill even to write an excuse? And if so,
how helpless and desolate he would be!
Like most people, Roy was selfish. Had he lived alone he would have
become more selfish every day; but it was impossible to live in the
atmosphere of Rowan Tree House without, at any rate, trying to consider
other people. With an effort he tore himself away from his beloved
specimens, and set off briskly for Vauxhall, where, after some
difficulty, he found the little side street in which, among dozens of
others precisely like it, was the house of the three Miss Turnours.
A little withered-up lady opened the door to him, and replied nervously
to his question.
“Mr. Falck is ill,” she said. “He seems very feverish; but he was like
it once before, when he first came to England, and it passed off in a
day or two.”
“Can I see him?” said Roy.
“Well, he doesn’t like being disturbed at all,” said Miss Charlotte.
“He’ll hardly let me inside the room. But if you would just see him, I
should really be glad. You will judge better if he should see the doctor
or not.”
“Thank you, I’ll go up then. Don’t let me trouble you.”
“It is noise he seems to mind so much,” said Miss Charlotte. “So if you
will find your way up alone, perhaps it would be best. It is the first
door you come to at the top of the last flight of stairs.”
Roy went up quietly, opened the door as noiselessly as he could, and
went in. The window faced the sunset, so that the room was still fairly
light, and the utter discomfort of everything was fully apparent.
“I wish you wouldn’t come in again,” said an irritable voice from the
bed. “The lightest footstep is torture.”
“I just looked in to ask how you were,” said Roy, much shocked to see
how ill his friend seemed.
“Oh, it’s you!” said Frithiof, turning his flushed face in the direction
of the speaker. “Thank God, you’ve come! That woman will be the death of
me. She does nothing but ask questions.”
“I’ve only just got back from Devonshire, but they said you hadn’t
turned up to-day, and I thought I would come and see after you.”
Frithiof dragged himself up and drank feverishly from the ewer which
stood on a chair beside him.
“I tried to come this morning,” he said, “but I was too giddy to stand,
and had to give it up. My head’s gone wrong somehow.”
“Poor fellow! you should have given up before,” said Roy. “You seem in
terrible pain.”
“Yes, yes; it’s like a band of hot iron,” moaned poor Frithiof. Then
suddenly starting up in wild excitement, “There’s Blanche! there’s
Blanche! Let me go to her! Let me go! I will see her once more—only this
once!”
Roy with some difficulty held him down, and after awhile he seemed to
come to himself. “Was I talking nonsense?” he said. “It’s a horrid
feeling not being able to control one’s self. If I go crazy you can just
let me die, please. Life’s bad enough now, and would be intolerable
then. There she is again! She’s smiling at me. Oh, Blanche—you did care
once. Come back! Come back! He can’t love you as I love! But it’s no
use—no use! she is worse than dead. I tell you I saw it in that cursed
paper, and I saw it in her own face. Why, one might have known! All
women are like it. What do they dare so long as their vanity is
satisfied? It’s just as Björnsen says:
“‘If thou hadst not so smiled on me,
Now I should not thus weep for thee.’”
And then he fell into incoherent talk, chiefly in Norwegian, but every
now and then repeating the English rendering of Björnsen’s lines.
Meanwhile Roy turned over in his mind half a dozen schemes, and at
length decided to leave Frithiof during one of the quiet intervals,
while he went for their own doctor, Miss Charlotte mounting guard
outside the door, and promising to go to him if he seemed to need care.
Dr. Morris, who was an old friend, listened to Roy’s description, and
returned with him at once, much to the relief of poor Miss Charlotte,
who was frightened out of her senses by one of Frithiof’s paroxysms of
wild excitement.
“Do you think seriously of him?” said Roy, when, the excitement having
died down, Frithiof lay in a sort of stupor, taking no notice at all of
his surroundings.
“If we can manage to get him any sleep he will pull through all right,”
said Dr. Morris, in his abrupt way. “If not, he will sink before many
days. You had better send for his mother, if he has one.”
“He has only a sister, and she is in Norway.”
“Well, send for her, for he will need careful nursing. You say you will
take charge of him? Very well; and to-morrow morning I will send in a
nurse, who will set you at liberty for a few hours. Evidently he has had
some shock. Can you make out what it was at all?”
“Well; last autumn, I believe—indeed, I am sure—he was jilted by an
English girl with whom he was desperately in love. It all came upon the
top of the other troubles of which I told you.”
“And what is this paper he raves about? What is the girl’s name? We
might get some clew in that way.”
“Oh,” said Roy, “she was married some months ago. She is now Lady
Romiaux.”
The doctor gave a stifled exclamation.
“That explains all. I suppose the poor fellow honestly cared for her,
and was shocked to see the paragraph in this week’s _Idle Time_. Your
friend has had a narrow escape, if he could but see it in that light.
For the husband of that heartless little flirt must be the most
miserable man alive. We shall soon have another of those detestable
_causes célèbres_, and the newspapers lying about in every household
will be filled with all the poisonous details.”
As Roy kept watch through the long nights and days that followed, as he
listened to the delirious ravings of his patient, and perceived how a
man’s life and health had been ruined by the faithlessness of a vain
girl, he became so absorbed in poor Frithiof, so devoted to him, that he
altogether forgot his specimens and his microscope. He wondered greatly
how many victims had been sacrificed to Blanche Romiaux’s selfish love
of admiration, and he longed to have her in that room, and point to the
man who tossed to and fro in sleepless misery, and say to her, “This is
what your hateful flirting has brought about.”
But the little Norwegian episode had entirely passed out of Lady
Romiaux’s mind. Had she been questioned she would probably have replied
that her world contained too many hard realities to leave room for the
recollection of mere dreams.
The dream, however, had gone hard with Frithiof. Sleeping draughts had
no effect on him, and his temperature remained so high that Dr. Morris
began to fear the worst.
Roy used to be haunted by the thought that he had telegraphed for Sigrid
Falck, and that he should have to meet her after her long journey with
the news that all was over. And remembering the bright face and sunny
manner of the Norwegian girl, his heart failed him at the thought of her
desolation. But Frithiof could not even take in the idea that she had
been sent for. Nothing now made any difference to him. Sleep alone could
restore him. But sleep refused to come, and already the death-angel
hovered near, ready to give him the release for which he so greatly
longed.