During the next few days Sigrid was absorbed in deep calculations. She
found that, exclusive of Swanhild’s small earnings, which would be
absorbed by her education and the few extras that might be needed, their
actual yearly income would be about £150. Frithiof’s work for Herr
Sivertsen, and whatever they might earn by evening engagements, could be
laid aside toward the fund for paying off the debts, and she thought
that they might perhaps manage to live on the rest. Mrs. Boniface seemed
rather aghast at the notion, and said she thought it impossible.
“I don’t suppose that we shall spend as little on food as Frithiof did
when he was alone,” said Sigrid, “for he nearly starved himself; and I
don’t mean to allow him to try that again. I see that the great
difficulty will be rent, for that seems so high in London. We were
talking about it this morning, and Frithiof had a bright idea. He says
there are some very cheap flats—workmen’s model lodgings—that might
perhaps do for us; only of course we must make sure that they are quite
healthy before we take Swanhild there.”
“Clean and healthy they are pretty sure to be,” said Mrs. Boniface, “but
I fancy they have strict rules which might be rather irksome to you.
Still, we can go and make inquiries. After all, you would in some ways
be better off than in ordinary lodgings, where you are at the mercy of
the landlady.”
So that afternoon they went to an office where they could get
information as to model dwellings, and found that four rooms could be
obtained in some of them at the rate of seven and sixpence a week. At
this their spirits rose not a little, and they drove at once to a block
which was within fairly easy distance both of the shop and of the rooms
in which Madame Lechertier gave her afternoon dancing-classes.
To outward view the model dwellings were certainly not attractive. The
great high houses with their uniform ugly color, the endless rows of
windows, all precisely alike; the asphalt courtyard in the center,
though tidy and clean, had a desolate look. Still, when you realized
that one might live in such a place for so small a sum, and thought of
many squalid streets where the rental would be twice as high, it was
more easy to appreciate these eminently respectable lodgings.
“At present we have no rooms to let, sir,” was the answer of the
superintendent to Frithiof’s inquiry.
Their spirits sank, but rose again when he added, “I think, though, we
are almost certain to have a set vacant before long.”
“Could we see over them?” they asked.
“Well, the set that will most likely be vacant belongs to a
north-country family, and I dare say they would let you look in. Here,
Jessie, ask your mother if she would mind just showing her rooms, will
you?”
The child, glancing curiously at the visitors, led the way up flight
after flight of clean stone stairs, past wide-open windows, through
which the September wind blew freshly, then down a long passage until at
length she reached a door, which she threw open to announce their
advent. A pleasant-looking woman came forward and asked them to step in.
“You’ll excuse the place being a bit untidy,” she said. “My man has just
got fresh work, and he has but now told me we shall have to be flitting
in a week’s time. We are going to Compton Buildings in the Goswell
Road.”
After Rowan Tree House, the rooms, of course, felt tiny, and they were a
good deal blocked up with furniture, to say nothing of five small
children who played about in the kitchen. But the place was capitally
planned, every inch was turned to account, and Sigrid thought they might
live there very comfortably. She talked over sundry details with the
present owner.
“There’s but one thing, miss, I complain of, and that is that they don’t
put in another cupboard or two,” said the good woman. “Give me another
cupboard and I should be quite content. But you see, miss, there’s
always a something that you’d like to alter, go where you will.”
“I wonder,” said Sigrid, “if we took them, whether I could pay one of
the neighbors to do my share of sweeping and scrubbing the stairs, and
whether I could get them to scrub out these rooms once a week. You see,
I don’t think I could manage the scrubbing very well.”
“Oh, miss, there would be no difficulty in that,” said the woman.
“There’s many that would be thankful to earn a little that way, and the
same with laundry work. You wont find no difficulty in getting that
done. There’s Mrs. Hallifield in the next set; she would be glad enough
to do it, I know, and you couldn’t have a pleasanter neighbor; she’s a
bit lonesome, poor thing, with her husband being so much away. He’s a
tram-car man, he is, and gets terrible long hours week-day and Sunday
alike.”
Owing to the good woman’s north-country accent Sigrid had not been able
quite to follow this last speech, but she understood enough to awaken in
her a keen curiosity, and to show her that their new life might have
plenty of human interest in it. She looked out of one of the windows at
the big square of houses and tried to picture the hundreds of lives
which were being lived in them.
“Do you know, I begin to like this great court-yard,” she said to Cecil.
“At first it looked to me dreary, but now it looks to me like a great,
orderly human hive; there is something about it that makes one feel
industrious.”
“We will settle down here, then,” said Frithiof, smiling; “and you shall
be queen bee.”
“You think it would not hurt Swanhild?” asked Sigrid, turning to Mrs.
Boniface. “The place seems to me beautifully airy.”
“Indeed,” said Mrs. Boniface, “I think in many ways the place is most
comfortable, and certainly you could not do better, unless you give a
very much higher rent.”
But nevertheless she sighed a little, for though she admired the
resolute way in which these two young things set to work to make the
best of their altered life, yet she could not help feeling that they
scarcely realized how long and tedious must be the process of slowly
economizing on a narrow income until the burden which they had taken on
their shoulders could at length be removed. Even to try to pay off debts
which must be reckoned by thousands out of precarious earnings which
would be counted by slow and toilsome units, seemed to her hopeless. Her
kind, gentle nature was without that fiber of dauntless resolution which
strengthened the characters of the two Norwegians. She did not
understand that the very difficulty of the task incited them to make the
attempt, nerved them for the struggle, and stimulated them to that
wonderful energy of patience which overcomes everything.
As for Sigrid, she was now in her element. A true woman, she delighted
in the thought of having rooms of her own to furnish and arrange. She
thought of them by day, she dreamed of them by night; she pored over
store lists and furniture catalogues, and amused them all by her
comments.
“Beds are ruinously dear,” she said, after making elaborate
calculations. “We must have three really comfortable ones since we mean
to work hard all day, and they must certainly be new; the three of them
with all their belongings will not leave very much out of twelve pounds,
I fear. But then as to chairs and tables they might well be second-hand,
and we wont go in for a single luxury; it will look rather bare, but
then there will be less trouble about cleaning and dusting.”
“You will become such a domestic character that we shant know you,” said
Frithiof, laughing. “What do you think we can possibly furnish the rooms
on?”
“Wait a moment and I’ll add up my list,” she said cheerfully. “I never
knew before how many things there were in a house that one can’t do well
without. Now that must surely be all. No, I have forgotten brushes and
brooms and such things. Now then for the adding up. You check me, Cecil,
for fear I make it too little—this is a terrible moment.”
“Twenty-eight pounds,” exclaimed both girls in a breath.
“You can surely never do it on that?” said Cecil.
“It seems a great deal to me,” said Sigrid; “still, I have more than
that over from uncle’s fifty-pound check, even after Doctor Morris is
paid. No, on the whole, I think we need not worry, but may spend as much
as that with a clear conscience. The thing I am anxious about is my
weekly bill. Look here, we must somehow manage to live on one hundred
and forty-five pounds a year, that will leave five pounds in case of
illness or any great need. For charity it leaves nothing, but we can’t
give while we are in debt. Two pounds fifteen shillings a week for three
of us! Why, poor people live on far less.”
“But then you are accustomed to such a different way of living,” said
Cecil.
“That’s true. But still, I think it can somehow be done. You must still
go on with your sixpenny dinners, Frithiof, for it will fit in better.
Then as you and Swanhild will be out all day and I am out for a great
part of the year in the afternoon, I think our coals will last well,
only one fire for part of the day will surely not ruin us.”
“Let me see that neatly arranged paper,” said Frithiof. “I have become
rather a connoisseur in the matter of cheap living, and you had better
take me into your counsels.”
“You don’t know anything about it,” said Sigrid, laughing. “Yours was
not cheap living but cheap starving, which in the end is a costly
affair.”
Frithiof did not argue the point, having in truth often known what
hunger meant in the old days; but he possessed himself of the paper and
studied it carefully. It contained for him much more than the bare
details, it was full of a great hope, of an eager expectation, the
smallness of each item represented a stepping-stone in the highway of
honor, a daily and hourly clearing of his father’s name. He looked long
at the carefully considered list.
£ s. d.
Food, 1 2 0
Rent, 0 7 6
Fuel and light, 0 2 0
Laundress, 0 5 0
Charwoman, 0 3 0
Clothing, 0 14 0
Extras, 0 1 6
—— —— ——
Total, £2 15 0
—— —— ——
“With a clever manager it will be quite possible,” he said, “and you are
no novice, Sigrid, but have been keeping house for the last eleven
years.”
“After a fashion,” she replied, “but old Gro really managed things.
However, I know that I shall really enjoy trying my hand at anything so
novel, and you will have to come and see me very often, Cecil, to
prevent my turning into a regular housekeeping drudge.”
Cecil laughed and promised, and the two girls talked merrily together as
they stitched away at the household linen, Frithiof looking up from his
newspaper every now and then to listen. Things had so far brightened
with him that he was ready to take up his life again with patience, but
he had his days of depression even now, though, for Sigrid’s sake, he
tried not to give way more than could be helped. There was no denying,
however, that Blanche had clouded his life, and though he never
mentioned her name, and as far as possible crowded the very thought of
her out of his mind, resolutely turning to work, or books, or the lives
of others, yet her influence was still strong with him, and was one of
the worst foes he had to fight against. It was constantly mocking him
with the vanity of human hopes, with the foolishness of his perfect
trust which had been so grossly betrayed; it was an eternal temptation
to think less highly of women, to take refuge in cynical contempt, and
to sink into a hard, joyless skepticism.
On the other hand, Sigrid, as his sister, and Cecil, as a perfectly
frank and outspoken friend, were no small help to him in the battle.
They could not altogether enter into his thoughts or wholly understand
the loneliness and bitterness of his life, any more than he could enter
into their difficulties, for, even when surrounded by those we love, it
is almost always true that
“Our hermit spirits dwell and range apart.”
But they made life a very different thing to him and gave him courage to
go on, for they were a continual protest against that lowered side of
womanhood that Blanche had revealed to him. One woman having done her
best to ruin the health alike of his body and his soul, it remained for
these two to counteract her bad influence, and to do for him all that
can be done by sisterly love and pure unselfish friendship.
If there is one thing more striking to an observer of life than any
other it is the strange law of compensation, and its wholly unexpected
working. We see people whose lives are smooth and easy rendered
miserable by some very trifling cause. And, again, we see people whose
griefs and wrongs are heartrending, and behold in spite of their sorrows
they can take pleasure in some very slight amusement, which seems to
break into their darkened lives with a welcome brightness enhanced by
contrast. It was thus with Frithiof. He entered, as men seldom trouble
themselves to enter, into all the minutiæ of the furnishing, spent hours
in Roy’s workshop busy at the carpenter’s bench over such things as
could be made or mended, and enjoyed heartily the planning and arranging
which a year ago he would have voted an intolerable bore.
At length the day came when they were to leave Rowan Tree House. Every
one was sorry to lose them, and they felt going very much, for it was
impossible to express how much those restful weeks had done for them
both. They each tried to say something of the sort to Mr. and Mrs.
Boniface, but not very successfully, for Sigrid broke down and cried,
and Frithiof felt that to put very deep gratitude into words is a task
which might well baffle the readiest speaker. However, there was little
need for speech on either side.
“And when you want change or rest,” said Mrs. Boniface, shaking his hand
warmly, “you have only got to lock up your rooms and come down here to
us. There will always be a welcome ready for the three of you. Don’t
forget that.”
“Let it be your second home,” said Mr. Boniface.
Cecil, who was the one to feel most, said least. She merely shook hands
with him, made some trifling remark about the time of Swanhild’s train,
and wished him good-by; then, with a sore heart, watched the brother and
sister as they stepped into the carriage and drove away.
That chapter of her life was over, and she was quite well aware that the
next chapter would seem terribly dull and insipid. For a moment the
thought alarmed her.
“What have I been doing,” she said to herself, “to let this love get so
great a hold on me? Why is it that no other man in the world seems to me
worth a thought, even though he may be better, and may live a nobler
life than Frithiof?”
She could not honestly blame herself, for it seemed to her that this
strange love had, as the poet says, “Slid into her soul like light.”
Unconsciously it had begun at their very first meeting on the steamer at
Bergen; it had caused that vague trouble and uneasiness which had seized
her at Balholm, and had sprung into conscious existence when Frithiof
had come to them in England, poor, heartbroken, and despairing. The
faithlessness of another woman had revealed to her the passionate
devotion which surged in her own heart, and during these weeks of close
companionship her love had deepened inexpressibly. She faced these facts
honestly, with what Mrs. Horner would have termed “an entire absence of
maidenly propriety.” For luckily Cecil was not in the habit of
marshalling her thoughts into the prim routine prescribed by the world
in general, she had deeper principles to fall back upon than the
conventionalities of such women as Mrs. Horner, and she did not think it
well either willfully to blind herself to the truth, or to cheat her
heart into believing a lie. Quite quietly she admitted to herself that
she loved Frithiof, with a pain which it was impossible to ignore, she
allowed that he did not love her, and that it was quite possible—nay,
highly probable—that she might never be fit to be more to him than a
friend.
Here were the true facts, and she must make the best she could of them.
The thought somehow braced her up. Was “the best” to sit there in her
room sobbing as if her heart would break? How could her tears serve
Frithiof? How could they do anything but weaken her own character and
unfit her for work? They did not even relieve her, for such pain is to
be relieved, not by tears, but by active life. No, she must just go on
living and making the most of what had been given her, leaving the rest
“In His high hand
Who doth hearts like streams command.”
For her faith was no vague shadow, but a most practical reality, and in
all her pain she was certain that somehow this love of hers was to be of
use, as all real love is bound to be. She stood for some minutes at the
open window; a bird was perched on a tree close by, and she watched it
and noticed how, when suddenly it flew away, the branch quivered and
trembled.
“It is after all only natural to feel this going away,” she reflected.
“Like the tree, I shall soon grow steady again.” And then she heard
Lance’s voice calling her, and, going to the nursery, found a childish
dispute in need of settling, and tiny arms to cling about her, and soft
kisses to comfort her.
Meanwhile, Frithiof and Sigrid had reached the model lodgings, and, key
in hand, were toiling up the long flights of stone stairs. All had been
arranged on the previous day, and now, as they unlocked their door, the
moment seemed to them a grave one, for they were about to begin a new
and unknown life. Sigrid’s heart beat quickly as they entered the little
sitting-room. The door opened straight into it, which was a drawback,
but Mrs. Boniface’s present of a fourfold Japanese screen gave warmth
and privacy, and picturesqueness, by shutting off that corner from view;
and, in spite of extreme economy in furnishing, the place looked very
pretty. A cheerful crimson carpet covered the floor, the buff-colored
walls were bare indeed, for there was a rule against knocking in nails,
but the picture of Bergen stood on the mantel-piece between the
photographs of their father and mother, serving as a continual
remembrance of home and of a countryman’s kindness. Facing the fire was
a cottage piano lent by Mr. Boniface for as long as they liked to keep
it, and on the open shelves above a corner cupboard were ranged the blue
willow-pattern cups and saucers which Sigrid had delighted in buying.
“They were much too effective to be banished to the kitchen, were they
not?” she said. “I am sure they are far prettier than a great deal of
the rare old china I have seen put up in drawing-rooms.”
“How about the fire?” said Frithiof. “Shall I light it?”
“Yes; do. We must have a little one to boil the kettle, and Swanhild is
sure to come in cold after that long journey. I’ll just put these
flowers into Cecil’s little vases. How lovely they are! Do you know,
Frithiof, I think our new life is going to be like the smell of these
chrysanthemums—healthy and good, and a sort of bitter-sweet.”
“I never knew they had any smell,” he said, still intent on his fire.
“Live and learn,” said Sigrid, laughingly holding out to him the basket
of beautiful flowers—red, white, crimson, yellow, russet, and in every
variety.
He owned that she was right. And just as with the scent of violets there
always rose before him the picture of the crowded church, and of Blanche
in her bridal dress, so ever after the scent of chrysanthemums brought
back to him the bright little room and the flickering light of the newly
kindled fire, and Sigrid’s golden hair and sweet face. So that, in
truth, these flowers were to him a sort of tonic, as she had said,
“Healthy and good.”
“I should like to come to King’s Cross too,” said Sigrid. “But perhaps
it is better that I should stay here and get things quite ready. I hope
Swanhild will turn up all right. She seems such a little thing to travel
all that way alone.”
When he had set off, she began with great satisfaction to lay the table
for tea; the white cloth was certainly coarse; but she had bought it and
hemmed it, and declared that fine damask would not have suited the
willow-pattern plates nearly so well. Then, after a struggle, the tin of
pressed beef was opened, and the loaf and butter and the vases of
chrysanthemums put in their places, and the toast made and standing
before the fire to keep hot. After that she kept putting a touch here
and a touch there to one thing and another, and then standing back to
see how it looked, much as an artist does when finishing a picture. How
would it strike Swanhild? was the thought which was always with her. She
put everything tidy in the bare little kitchen, where, in truth, there
was not one unnecessary piece of furniture. She took some of Frithiof’s
things out of his portmanteau, and made his narrow little bedroom look
more habitable; and she lingered long in the room with the two beds side
by side, tidying and arranging busily, but running back into the
sitting-room every few minutes to see that all was well there.
At last she heard the door-handle turned, and Frithiof’s voice.
“You’ll find her quite a domesticated character,” he was saying; and in
another minute Swanhild was in her arms, none the worse for her lonely
journey, but very glad to feel her cares at an end.
“Oh, Sigrid!” she cried, with childlike glee; “what a dear, funny little
room! And how cosy you have made it! Why, there’s the picture of Bergen!
and oh, what a pretty-looking tea-table! I’m dreadfully hungry, Sigrid.
I was afraid to get out of the train for fear it should go on. They seem
to go so dreadfully fast here, everything is in a bustle.”
“You poor child, you must be starving!” cried Sigrid. “Come and take
your things off quickly. She really looks quite thin and pale, does she
not, Frithiof?”
He glanced at the fair, merry little face, smiling at him from under its
fringe of golden hair.
“She doesn’t feel so very bony,” he said, laughing.
“Oh, and I did eat something,” explained Swanhild. “There was an old
lady who gave me two sandwiches, but they were so dreadfully full of
fat. I do really think there ought to be a law against putting fat in
sandwiches so that you bite a whole mouthful of it.”
They all laugh, and Frithiof, who was unstrapping the box which he had
carried up, looked so cheerful and bright, that Sigrid began to think
Swanhild might prove a very valuable little companion.
“What do you think of your new bedroom?” he asked.
“It’s lovely!” cried Swanhild. “What a funny, round bath, and such a
tiny tin washing-stand, just like the one in the old doll’s house on
three legs. And oh, Sigrid, auntie has sent us three lovely eider-down
quilts as a Christmas present, only she thought I might as well bring
them now.”
It was a very merry meal, that first tea in the model lodgings. Swanhild
had so much to tell them and so much to hear, and they lingered at the
table with a pleasant consciousness that actual work did not begin till
the following day.
“There’s one thing which we had better make up our minds to at once,”
said Sigrid, when at length they rose. “Since we have got to wait on
ourselves, we may as well try to enjoy it and get what fun we can out of
it. Come, Swanhild, I will wash the tea-things and you shall dry them.”
“As for me,” said Frithiof, suddenly appearing at the kitchen door in
his shirt sleeves, “I am shoe-black to the establishment.”
“You! oh, Frithiof!” cried Swanhild, startled into gravity. There was
something incongruous in the idea of her big brother turning to this
sort of work.
“I assure you it is in the bond,” he said, smiling. “Sigrid is cook and
housekeeper; you are the lady-help; and I am the man for the coals,
knives, and boots. Every respectable household has a man for that part
of the work, you know.”
“Yes, yes,” she hesitated; “but you—”
“She clearly doesn’t think me competent,” he said, laughingly
threatening her with his brush.
“Order! order! you two, or there will be teacups broken,” said Sigrid,
laughing. “I believe he will do the boots quite scientifically, for he
has really studied the subject. There, put the china in the
sitting-room, Swanhild, on the corner shelves, and then we will come and
unpack.”
By nine o’clock everything was arranged, and they came back to the
sitting-room, where Frithiof had lighted the pretty little lamp, and was
writing to Herr Sivertsen to say he would be glad of more work.
“Come,” said Sigrid, “the evening wont be complete without some music,
and I am dying to try that piano. What shall be the first thing we play
in our new home, Swanhild?”
“‘For Norge,’” said the little girl promptly.
“Do you know we had quite a discussion about that at Rowan Tree House
the other night,” said Sigrid. “They were all under the impression that
it was an English air, and only knew it as a glee called “The Hardy
Norseman.” Mr. Boniface calls Frithiof his Hardy Norseman because he got
well so quickly.”
“Come and sing, Frithiof, do come,” pleaded Swanhild, slipping her hand
caressingly into his and drawing him toward the piano. And willingly
enough he consented, and in their new home in this foreign land they
sang together the stirring national song—
“To Norway, mother of the brave,
We crown the cup of pleasure,
And dream our freedom come again
And grasp the vanished treasure.
When once the mighty task’s begun,
The glorious race is swift to run;
To Norway, mother of the brave,
We crown the cup of pleasure.
* * * * *
“Then drink to Norway’s hills sublime,
Rocks, snows, and glens profound;
‘Success!’ her thousand echoes cry,
And thank us with the sound.
Old Dovre mingles with our glee,
And joins our shouts with three times three.
Then drink to Norway’s hills sublime.
Rocks, snows, and glens profound.”