“See what I have brought you,” said Sigrid, re-entering the sick-room a
little later on.
Frithiof took the basket and looked, with a pleasure which a few weeks
ago would have been impossible to him, at the lovely flowers and fruit.
“You have come just at the right time, for he will insist on talking of
all the deepest things in heaven and earth,” said Roy, “and this makes a
good diversion.”
“They are from Mrs. Boniface. Is it not kind of her! And do you know,
Frithiof, she and Doctor Morris have been making quite a deep plot; they
want to transplant us bodily to Rowan Tree House, and Doctor Morris
thinks the move could do you no harm now that you are getting better.”
His face lighted up with something of its former expression.
“How I should like never to see this hateful room again!” he exclaimed.
“You don’t know how I detest it. The old ghosts seem to haunt it still.
There is nothing that I can bear to look at except your picture of
Bergen, which has done me more than one good turn.”
Sigrid, partly to keep him from talking too much, partly because she
always liked to tell people of that little act of kindness, gave Roy the
history of the picture, and Frithiof lay musing over the curious
relative power of kindness and cruelty, and was obliged, though somewhat
reluctantly, to admit to himself that a very slight act of kindness
certainly did exert an enormous and unthought-of influence.
Physical disorder had had much to do with the black view of life which
he had held for the last few months, but now that the climax had been
reached and rest had been forced upon him, his very exhaustion and
helplessness enabled him to see a side of life which had never before
been visible to him. He was very much softened by all that he had been
through. It seemed that while the events of the past year had imbittered
and hardened him, this complete breakdown of bodily strength had brought
back something of his old nature. The bright enjoyment of mere existence
could of course never return to him, but still, notwithstanding the scar
of his old wound, there came to him during those days of his
convalescence a sense of keen pleasure in Sigrid’s presence, in his
gradually returning strength, and in the countless little acts of
kindness which everybody showed him.
The change to Rowan Tree House seemed to work wonders to him. The house
had always charmed him, and the recollection of the first time he had
entered it, using it as a shelter from the storm of life, much as Roy
and Cecil had used his father’s house as a shelter from the drenching
rain of Bergen, returned to him again and again through the quiet weeks
that followed. The past year looked now to him like a nightmare to a man
who was awakened in broad daylight. It seemed to him that he was lying
at the threshold of a new life, worn and tired with the old life, it was
true, yet with a gradually increasing interest in what lay beyond, and a
perception that there were many things of which he had as yet but the
very faintest notion.
Sigrid told him all the details of her life in Norway since they had
last seen each other, of her refusal of Torvald Lundgren, of her
relations with her aunt, of the early morning on Hjerkinshö. And her
story touched him. When, stirred by all that had happened into unwonted
earnestness, she owned to him that after that morning on the mountain
everything had seemed different, he did not, as he would once have done,
laughingly change the subject, or say that religion was all very well
for women.
“It was just as if I had worn a crape veil all my life,” she said,
looking up from her work for a moment with those clear, blue, practical
eyes of hers. “And up there on the mountain it seemed as if some one had
lifted it quite away.”
Her words stirred within him an uneasy sense of loss, a vague desire,
which he had once or twice felt before. He was quite silent for some
time, lying back idly in his chair and watching her as she worked.
“Sigrid!” he said at last, with a suppressed eagerness in his voice,
“Sigrid, you wont go back again to Norway and leave me?”
“No, dear, I will never leave you,” she said warmly. “I will try to find
some sort of work. To-night I mean to talk to Mr. Boniface about it.
Surely in this huge place there must be something I can do.”
“It is its very hugeness that makes one despair,” said Frithiof. “Good
God! what I went through last autumn! And there are thousands in the
same plight, thousands who would work if only they could meet with
employment.”
“Discussing the vexed question of the unemployed?” said Mr. Boniface,
entering the room in time to hear this last remark.
“Yes,” said Sigrid, smiling. “Though I’m a wretched foreigner come to
swell their number. But what can be the cause of such distress?”
“I think it is this,” said Mr. Boniface, “population goes on increasing,
but practical Christianity does not increase at the same rate.”
“Are you what they call a Christian Socialist?” asked Sigrid.
“No; I am not very fond of assuming any distinctive party name, and the
Socialists seem to me to look too much to compulsion. You can’t make
people practical Christians by Act of Parliament; you have no right to
force the rich to relieve the poor. The nation suffers, and all things
are at a dead-lock because so many of us neglect our duty. If we argued
less about the ‘masses,’ and quietly did as we would be done by to those
with whom life brings us into contact, I believe the distress would soon
be at an end.”
“Do you mean by that private almsgiving?” asked Frithiof. “Surely that
can only pauperize the people.”
“I certainly don’t mean indiscriminate almsgiving,” said Mr. Boniface;
“I mean only this. You start with your own family; do your duty by them.
You have a constant succession of servants passing through your
household; be a friend to them. You have men and women in your employ;
share their troubles. Perhaps you have tenants; try to look at life from
their point of view. If we all tried to do this the cure would indeed be
found, and the breach between the rich and poor bridged over.”
How simply and unostentatiously Mr. Boniface lived out his own theory
Frithiof knew quite well. He reflected that all the kindness he himself
had received had not tended to pauperize him, had not in the least
crushed his independence or injured his self-respect. On the contrary,
it had saved him from utter ruin, and had awakened in him a gratitude
which would last all his life. But this new cure was not to depend only
on taxation or on the State, but on a great influence working within
each individual. The idea set him thinking, and the sense of his own
ignorance weighed upon him.
One morning it chanced that, sitting out in the veranda at the back of
the house, he overheard Lance’s reading-lesson, which was going on in
the morning-room. Sounds of laborious wrestling with the difficulties of
“Pat a fat cat,” and other interesting injunctions, made him realize how
very slow human nature is to learn any perfectly new thing, and how
toilsome are first steps. Presently came a sound of trotting feet.
“Gwen! Gwen!” shouted Lance, “come here to us. Cecil is going to read to
us out of her Bible, and it’s awfully jolly!”
He heard a stifled laugh from Cecil.
“Oh, Lance,” she said, “Gwen is much too young to care for it. Come,
shut the door, and we will begin.”
Again came the sound of trotting feet, then Cecil’s clear, low voice.
“What story do you want?”
“Read about the three men walking in the fender and the fairy coming to
them,” said Lance promptly.
“Not a fairy, Lance.”
“Oh, I mean a angel,” he replied apologetically.
So she read him his favorite story of Nebuchadnezzar the king, and the
golden image and the three men who would not bow down to it.
“You see,” she said at the end, “they were brave men; they would not do
what they knew to be wrong. We want you to grow like them.”
There was a silence, broken at last by Lance.
“I will only hammer nails in wood,” he said gravely.
“How do you mean?” asked Cecil, not quite seeing the connection.
“Not into the tables and chairs,” said Lance, who had clearly
transgressed in this matter, and had applied the story to his own life
with amusing simplicity.
“That’s right,” said Cecil. “God will be pleased if you try.”
“He can see us, but we can’t see him,” said Lance, in his sweet childish
tones, quietly telling forth in implicit trust the truth that many a man
longs to believe.
A minute after he came dancing out into the garden, his short, sunny
curls waving in the summer wind, his cheeks glowing, his hazel eyes and
innocent little mouth beaming with happiness.
“He looks like an incarnate smile,” thought Frithiof.
And then he remembered what Roy had told him of the father and mother,
and he thought how much trouble awaited the poor child, and felt the
same keen wish that Cecil had felt that he might be brought up in a way
which should make him able to resist whatever evil tendencies he had
inherited. “If anything can save him it will be such a home as this,” he
reflected.
Then, as Cecil came out into the veranda, he joined her, and they walked
together down one of the shady garden paths.
“I overheard your pupil this morning,” he began, and they laughed
together over the child’s quaint remarks. “That was very good, his
turning the story to practical account all by himself. He is a lucky
little beggar to have you for his teacher. I wonder what makes a child
so ready to swallow quite easily the most difficult things in heaven and
earth?”
“I suppose because he knows he can’t altogether understand, and is
willing to take things on trust,” said Cecil.
“If anything can keep him straight when he grows up it will be what you
have taught him,” said Frithiof. “You wonder that I admit that, and a
year ago I couldn’t have said as much, but I begin to think that there
is after all a very great restraining power in the old faith. The
difficulty is to get up any sort of interest in that kind of thing.”
“You talk as if it were a sort of science,” said Cecil.
“That is precisely what it seems to me; and just as one man is born with
a love of botany, another takes naturally to astronomy, and a third has
no turn for science whatever, but is fond of hunting and fishing, so it
seems to me with religion. All of you, perhaps, have inherited the
tendency from your Puritan forefathers, but I have inherited quite the
opposite tendency from my Viking ancestors. Like them, I prefer to love
my friend and hate my enemy, and go through life in the way that best
pleases me. I am not a reading man; I can’t get up the faintest sort of
interest in these religious matters.”
“We are talking of two different things,” said Cecil. “It is of the mere
framework of religion that you are speaking. Very likely many of us are
born without any taste for theology, or sermons, or Church history. We
are not bound surely to force up an interest in them.”
“Then if all that is not religion, pray what is it? You are not like
Miss Charlotte, who uses phrases without analyzing them. What do you
mean by religion?”
“I mean knowing and loving God,” she said, after a moment’s pause.
Her tone was very gentle, and not in the least didactic.
“I have believed in a God always—more or less,” said Frithiof slowly.
“But how do you get to know Him?”
“I think it is something in the same way that people get to know each
other,” said Cecil. “Cousin James Horner, for instance, sees my father
every day; he has often stayed in the same house with him, and has in a
sense known him all his life. But he doesn’t really know him at all. He
never takes the trouble really to know any one. He sees the outside of
my father—that is all. They have hardly anything in common.”
“Mr. Horner is so full of himself and his own opinions that he never
could appreciate such a man as your father,” said Frithiof. Then,
perceiving that his own mouth had condemned him, he relapsed into
silence. “What is your receipt, now, for getting to know a person?” he
said presently, with a smile.
“First,” she said thoughtfully, “a desire to know and a willingness to
be known. Then I think one must forget one’s self as much as possible,
and try to understand the feelings, and words, and acts of the one you
wish to know in the light of the whole life, or as much as you can learn
of it, not merely of the present. Then, too, I am quite sure that you
must be alone together, for it is only alone that people will talk of
the most real things.”
He was silent, trying in his own mind to fit her words to his own need.
“Then you don’t think, as some do, that when once we set out with a real
desire all the rest is quite easy and to be drifted into without any
special effort.”
“No,” she said, “I do not believe in drifting. And if we were not so
lazy I believe we should all of us know more of God. It is somehow
difficult to take quite so much pains about that as about other things.”
“It can’t surely be difficult to you; it always seems to be easy to
women, but to us men all is so different.”
“Are you so sure of that?” she said quietly.
“I have always fancied so,” he replied. “Why, the very idea of shutting
one’s self in alone to think—to pray—it is so utterly unnatural to a
man.”
“I suppose the harder it is the more it is necessary,” said Cecil. “But
our Lord was not always praying on mountains; he was living a quite
ordinary shop life, and must have been as busy as you are.”
Her words startled him; everything connected with Christianity had been
to him lifeless, unreal, formal—something utterly apart from the
every-day life of a nineteenth century man. She had told him that to her
religion meant “knowing” and “loving,” and he now perceived that by
“loving” she meant the active living of the Christ-life, the constant
endeavor to do the will of God. She had not actually said this in so
many words, but he knew more plainly than if she had spoken that this
was her meaning.
They paced in silence the shady garden walk. To Frithiof the whole world
seemed wider than it had ever been before. On the deadly monotony of his
business life there had arisen a light which altogether transformed it.
He did his best even now to quench its brightness, and said to himself,
“This will not last; I shall hate desk and counter and all the rest of
it as badly as ever when I go back.” For it was his habit since Blanche
had deceived him to doubt the lastingness of all that he desired to
keep. Still, though he doubted for the future, the present was
wonderfully changed, and the new idea that had come into his life was
the best medicine he could have had.
Sigrid watched his returning strength with delight; indeed, perhaps she
never realized what he had been during his lonely months of London life.
She had not seen the bitterness, the depression, the hardness, the too
evident deterioration which had saddened Cecil’s heart through the
winter and spring; and she could not see as Cecil saw how he was
struggling up now into a nobler manhood. Roy instinctively felt it. Mr.
Boniface, with his ready sympathy and keen insight, found out something
of the true state of the case; but only Cecil actually knew it. She had
had to bear the worst of the suffering all through those long months,
and it was but fair that the joy should be hers alone.
Frithiof hardly knew which part of the day was most pleasant to him, the
quiet mornings after Mr. Boniface and Roy had gone to town, when he and
Sigrid were left to their own devices; the pleasant little break at
eleven, when Mrs. Boniface looked in to remind them that fruit was good
in the morning, and to tempt him with pears and grapes, while Cecil and
the two children came in from the garden, bringing with them a sense of
freshness and life; the drowsy summer afternoon when he dozed over a
novel; the drive in the cool of the day, and the delightful home
evenings with music and reading aloud.
Quiet the life was, it is true, but dull never. Every one had plenty to
do, yet not too much, for Mr. Boniface had a horror of the modern craze
for rushing into all sorts of philanthropic undertakings, would have
nothing to do with bazaars, groaned inwardly when he was obliged by a
sense of duty to attend any public meeting, and protested vehemently
against the multiplication of “Societies.”
“I have a pet Society of my own,” he used to say with a smile. “It is
the Keeping at Home Society. Every householder is his own president, and
the committee is formed by his family.”
Notwithstanding this, he was the most widely charitable man, and was
always ready to lend a helping hand; but he loved to work quietly, and
all who belonged to him caught something of the same tone, so that in
the house there was a total absence of that wearing whirl of good works
in which many people live nowadays, and though perhaps they had not so
many irons in the fire, yet the work they did was better done in
consequence, and the home remained what it was meant to be, a center of
love and life, not a mere eating-house and dormitory.
Into the midst of this home there had come now some strangely fresh
elements. Three distinct romances were being worked out beneath that
quiet roof. There was poor Frithiof with his shattered life, his past an
agony which would scarcely bear thinking of, his future a desperate
struggle with circumstances. There was Cecil, whose life was so far
bound up with his that when he suffered she suffered too, yet had to
live on with a serene face and make no sign. There was Roy already madly
in love with the blue-eyed, fair-haired Sigrid, who seemed in the glad
reaction after all her troubles to have developed into a totally
different being, and was the life of the party. And yet in spite of the
inevitable pain of love, these were happy days for all of them. Happy to
Frithiof because his strength was returning to him; because, with an
iron resolution, he as far as possible shut out the remembrance of
Blanche; because the spirit life within him was slowly developing, and
for the first time he had become conscious that it was a reality.
Happy for Cecil, because her love was no foolish sentimentality, no
selfish day-dream, but a noble love which taught her more than anything
else could possibly have done; because, instead of pining away at the
thought that Frithiof was utterly indifferent to her, she took it on
trust that God would withhold from her no really good thing, and made
the most of the trifling ways in which she could at present help him.
Happiest of all perhaps for Roy, because his love-story was full of
bright hope—a hope that each day grew fuller and clearer.
“Robin,” said Mrs. Boniface, one evening, to her husband, as together
they paced to and fro in the veranda, while Frithiof was being initiated
into lawn-tennis in the garden, “I think Sigrid Falck is one of the
sweetest girls I ever saw.”
“So thinks some one else, if I am not much mistaken,” he replied.
“Then you, too, have noticed it. I am so glad. I hoped it was so, but
could not feel sure. Oh, Robin, I wonder if he has any chance? She would
make him such a sweet little wife!”
“How can we tell that she has not left her heart in Norway?”
“I do not think so,” said Mrs. Boniface. “No, I feel sure that can’t be,
from the way in which she speaks of her life there. If there is any
rival to be feared it is Frithiof. They seem to me wrapped up in each
other, and it is only natural, too, after all their trouble and
separation and this illness of his. How strong he is getting again, and
how naturally he takes to the game! He is such a fine-looking fellow,
somehow he dwarfs every one else,” and she glanced across to the
opposite side of the lawn, where Roy with his more ordinary height and
build certainly did seem somewhat eclipsed. And yet to her motherly eyes
that honest, open, English face, with its sun-burned skin, was perhaps
the fairest sight in the world.
Not that she was a blindly and foolishly loving mother; she knew that he
had his faults. But she knew, too, that he was a sterling fellow, and
that he would make the woman he married perfectly happy.
They were so taken up with thoughts of the visible romance that was
going on beneath their eyes, that it never occurred to them to think of
what might be passing in the minds of the two on the other side of the
net. And perhaps that was just as well, for the picture was a sad one,
and would certainly have cast a shadow upon their hearts. Cecil was too
brave and resolute and self-controlled to allow her love to undermine
her health; nor did she so brood upon her inevitable loss that she
ceased to enjoy the rest of her life. There was very much still left to
her, and though at times everything seemed to her flavorless and
insipid, yet the mood would pass, and she would be able intensely to
enjoy her home life. Still there was no denying that the happiness which
seemed dawning for Roy and Sigrid was denied to the other two; they were
handicapped in the game of life just as they were at tennis—the setting
sun shone full in their faces and made the play infinitely more
difficult, whereas the others playing in the shady courts had a
considerable advantage over them.
“Well, is the set over?” asked Mr. Boniface, as the two girls came
toward them.
“Yes,” cried Sigrid merrily. “And actually our side has won! I am so
proud of having beaten Cecil and Frithiof, for, as a rule, Frithiof is
one of those detestable people who win everything. It was never any fun
playing with him when we were children, he was always so lucky.”
As she spoke Frithiof had come up the steps behind her.
“My luck has turned, you see,” he said, with a smile in which there was
a good deal of sadness. But his tone was playful, and indeed it seemed
that he had entirely got rid of the bitterness which had once dominated
every look and word.
“Nonsense!” she cried, slipping her hand into his arm. “Your luck will
return; it is only that you are not quite strong again yet. Wait a day
or two, and I shall not have a chance against you. You need not grudge
me my one little victory.”
“It has not tired you too much?” asked Mrs. Boniface, glancing up at
Frithiof. There was a glow of health in his face which she had never
before seen, and his expression, which had once been stern, had grown
much more gentle. “But I see,” she added, “that is a foolish question,
for I don’t think I have ever seen you looking better. It seems to me
this is the sort of exercise you need. We let you stay much too long
over that translating in the old days.”
“Yes,” said Sigrid; “I hardly know whether to laugh or cry when I think
of Frithiof, of all people in the world, doing learned translations for
such a man as Herr Sivertsen. He never could endure sedentary life.”
“And yet,” said Mr. Boniface, pacing along the veranda with her, “I
tried in vain to make him take up cricket. He declared that in Norway
you did not go in for our English notions of exercise for the sake of
exercise.”
“Perhaps not,” said Sigrid; “but he was always going in for the wildest
adventures, and never had the least taste for books. Poor Frithiof, it
only shows how brave and resolute he is; he is so set upon paying off
these debts that he will sacrifice everything to that one idea, and will
keep to work which must be hateful to him.”
“He is a fine fellow,” said Mr. Boniface. “I had hardly realized what
his previous life must have been, though of course I knew that the
drudgery of shop life was sorely against the grain.”
“Ever since he was old enough to hold a gun, he used to go with my
father in August to the mountains in North Fjord for the reindeer
hunting,” said Sigrid. “And every Sunday through the winter he used to
go by himself on the wildest excursions after sea-birds. My father said
it was good training for him, and as long as he took with him old Nils,
his skydsmand—I think you call that boatman in English—he was never
worried about him when he was away. But sometimes I was afraid for him,
and old Gro, our nurse, always declared that he would end by being
drowned. Come here, Frithiof, and tell Mr. Boniface about your night on
the fjord by Bukken.”
His eyes lighted up at the recollection.
“Ah, it was such fun!” he cried; “though we were cheated out of our
sport after all. I had left Bergen on the Saturday, going with old Nils
to Bukken, and there as usual we took a boat to row across to Gjelleslad
where I generally slept, getting up at four in the morning to go after
the birds. Well, that night Nils and I set out to row across, but had
not got far when the most fearful storm came down on us. I never saw
such lightning, before or since, and the wind was terrific; we could do
nothing against it, and indeed it was wonderful that we did not go to
the bottom. By good luck we were driven back to land, and managed to
haul up the boat, turn it up, and shelter as best we could under it, old
Nils swearing like a trooper and declaring I should be the death of him
some day. For four mortal hours we stayed there, and the storm still
raged. At last, by good luck, I hunted up four men who were willing to
run the risk of rowing us back to Bergen. Then off we set, Nils vowing
that we should be drowned, and so we were very nearly. It was the
wildest night I ever knew, and the rowing was fearful work, but at last
we got safely home.”
“And you should have seen him,” cried Sigrid. “He roused us all up at
half-past six in the morning, and there he was, soaked to the skin, but
looking so bright and jolly, and making us roar with laughter with his
description of it all. And I really believe it did him good; for after a
few hours’ sleep he came down in the best possible of humors. And don’t
you remember, Frithiof, how you played it all on your violin?”
“And was only successful in showing how well Nils growled,” said
Frithiof, laughing.
The reference to the violin suggested the usual evening’s music, and
they went into the drawing-room, where Sigrid played them some Norwegian
airs, Roy standing near her, and watching her fair, sweet face, which
was still glowing with the recollection of those old days of which they
had talked.
“Was it possible,” he thought, “that she who was so devoted to her
brother, that she who loved the thought of perilous adventures, and so
ardently admired the bold, fearless, peril-seeking nature of the old
Vikings, was it possible that she could ever love such an ordinary,
humdrum, commonplace Londoner as himself?” He fell into great
despondency, and envied Frithiof his Norse nature, his fine physique,
his daring spirit.
How infinitely harder life was rendered to his friend by that same
nature, he did not pause to think, and sorry as he was for Frithiof’s
troubles, he scarcely realized at all the force with which they had
fallen upon the Norwegian’s proud, self-reliant character.
Absorbed in the thought of his own love, he had little leisure for such
observations. The one all-engrossing question excluded everything else.
And sometimes with hope he asked himself, “Can she love me?”—sometimes
in despair assured himself that it was impossible—altogether impossible.